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On my local hobby shop website a couple of the 40K tournament tables had a photo up for them, and looking at the live feed. What I see is tables that do not have the suggested 25% coverage. Is this why everyone says shooting dominates the game? Is this "normal" for most tournaments? We use the 25% coverage so shooting armies usually die to assault armies.

A lack of balanced terrain does indeed favor more shooty armies.

With my friends we make sure to have at least 25% of the table in various types of terrain, be it craters, buildings, hills, etc. A mix of difficult, dangerous, and LoS blocking not only make the game more enjoyable, it also makes it more tense when you need that transport to get to an objective and you have 3 Dangerous Terrain rolls ahead of you.

Terrain is a tough part of running an event. adepticon has to provide terrain for 200ish tables. Making that much quality terrain is no small feat. For 25% coverage thats roughly 1200 sqft of terrain, no small feat to store and move either. Not making excuses, but its one thing to get terrain for 8 tables at your FLGS, quite another to get it right for a huge con.

That said, the pics I have seen from last year showed pretty good coverage. They usually had 6 large-ish pieces (not quite 1 sqft) and some smaller ones. Which puts it darn close to 25%. My quibble from the pics I have seen was there was often little variety in terrain on each table (eg all 6 peices would be trees as an example).

winterman wrote:Terrain is a tough part of running an event. adepticon has to provide terrain for 200ish tables. Making that much quality terrain is no small feat. For 25% coverage thats roughly 1200 sqft of terrain, no small feat to store and move either. Not making excuses, but its one thing to get terrain for 8 tables at your FLGS, quite another to get it right for a huge con.

That said, the pics I have seen from last year showed pretty good coverage. They usually had 6 large-ish pieces (not quite 1 sqft) and some smaller ones. Which puts it darn close to 25%. My quibble from the pics I have seen was there was often little variety in terrain on each table (eg all 6 peices would be trees as an example).

That answers a bit of it, for number of tables. Question, the not quite 1 sqft, do you mean per piece or total? Six one sqft pieces would be 25% of the table. One sgft total would be about 1/6th of what is needed.

Since I can't see every table, and have about 20 or so that I have seen, I do have limited view. The ones I do see look to be about 1/8th to 1/6th coverage, even counting the large pieces.

25% is a minimum advised by the rulebook, you will find many people recommend closer to 40% for a more balanced game

They either did the best they could to get all of the terrain together or just didn't care enough to make enough to cover all of their tables.

I doubt we'll find the answer out.

megatrons2nd wrote:On my local hobby shop website a couple of the 40K tournament tables had a photo up for them, and looking at the live feed. What I see is tables that do not have the suggested 25% coverage. Is this why everyone says shooting dominates the game? Is this "normal" for most tournaments? We use the 25% coverage so shooting armies usually die to assault armies.

A grainy picture from the "live feed" doesn't really give you the best frame of reference to judge. I'm sure if you pushed all the terrain into a corner of the table, (a table quarter), you'd see that it's probably good to go. Even if it is a little shy, you also got to give the guys credit for running that many games simultaneously, and I'm sure the majority of the attendees don't mind at all.

whitedragon wrote:and I'm sure the majority of the attendees don't mind at all.

I know I didn't.

Seeing the tables in pictures and playing on them in person are two very different things.

Platuan4th wrote:

whitedragon wrote:and I'm sure the majority of the attendees don't mind at all.

I know I didn't.

Seeing the tables in pictures and playing on them in person are two very different things.

It's also easier to armchair quarterback something when you're not in attendance isn't it?

I'm confused.

Are you calling him a armchair quarterback, or everyone else in the thread?

My last job required me to do lots of measuring. I got really good at judging distances/sizes. I got to within 1/4" consistently even from a fair distance. Something I needed to be able to do to line up 110" radius window tops for those arched windows, many of the "legs" which are the sides would be around 2-3" and the top(highest point) around 4.5-5.25", if you were off by 1/8" of an inch on the center point of the radius bar(similar to a compass only much bigger) you would miss the leg intersect points by about 1/4-1/2". You could do each half separate if you desired but then the arch could have to different radius points which makes it look really weird.

Addition: We used hand, pen, and stick. We did not have any laser cutters, mechanical cutting arms, computerized mobile cutters......

Emerett wrote:They either did the best they could to get all of the terrain together or just didn't care enough to make enough to cover all of their tables.

I doubt we'll find the answer out.

I highly doubt that they don't care. Actually the organizers of Adepticon really do seem to care about their gamers and the quality of the experience.

inquisitorlewis wrote:

Emerett wrote:They either did the best they could to get all of the terrain together or just didn't care enough to make enough to cover all of their tables.

I doubt we'll find the answer out.

I highly doubt that they don't care. Actually the organizers of Adepticon really do seem to care about their gamers and the quality of the experience.

This has been my experience as well, but it's much easier to assume the worst I suppose.

The tables I played on the last two days all had 25% terrain coverage (at Adepticon).

Maybe the camera angle was funny?

Lorek wrote:The tables I played on the last two days all had 25% terrain coverage (at Adepticon).

Maybe the camera angle was funny?

The angle of the dangle as it were.

megatrons2nd wrote:On my local hobby shop website a couple of the 40K tournament tables had a photo up for them, and looking at the live feed. What I see is tables that do not have the suggested 25% coverage. Is this why everyone says shooting dominates the game? Is this "normal" for most tournaments? We use the 25% coverage so shooting armies usually die to assault armies.

This is pretty normal. Most of the tournament reports in the BetRep forum are ruined by the empty tables they play on.

Last years NOVA Open has excellent terrain, large pieces that blocked some serious LOS. In one game against Nids I had trouble getting LOS to Fex's for a large portion of the game and in another a smart GK player used a huge mountain to shield his army from half the board.

I didn't bother trying to figure out if they were 25% or not, but as someoneusing a largely close-range army, I had no complaints about the amount of terrain in my championship or combat patrol games.

The tables looked great, and were all quite consistent, which counts for a lot. And there was generally a reasonable amount of proper los blocking terrai. All in all, thumbs up from me.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

megatrons2nd wrote:On my local hobby shop website a couple of the 40K tournament tables had a photo up for them, and looking at the live feed. What I see is tables that do not have the suggested 25% coverage. Is this why everyone says shooting dominates the game? Is this "normal" for most tournaments? We use the 25% coverage so shooting armies usually die to assault armies.

This is pretty normal. Most of the tournament reports in the BetRep forum are ruined by the empty tables they play on.

I'll have to try to start getting some tourney days off then, because our store does a great job on terrain.

The terrain was fine, some of the best I have played on at events. Also if you factor in the quanity needed it was amazing.

I never had any trouble getting cover saves when I needed them. Of course that doesn't mean that I made those cover saves...

I've been about 5 years removed from the behind the scenes aspects of Adepticon, but while I was invovled I can remember many a weekend dedicated to churning out even basic hills, let alone themed aspects for tables.

And that isn't taking into acount the repairs the terrain crew went through afterhours to assure that day two was at least on par with day one. Those guys put in ER caliber hours that weekend to try and make sure the quality of experience was the same on day three as it was on day one.

Again, I haven't been invovled since I moved to the Denver area, but I can't see how the level of dedication would have backed off any, even with more tables and events being added.

Heck, I can remember telling the guys to actually slow down as the fantasy tables didn't need near the same level of terrain and that yes, really, even a couple hills, a couple forests, and a building or two for flavor really was okay in fantasy.

I was there, played in the event and had some days to just walk around and look at all the tables.

1) they were consistent
2) they had significant LOS blocking terrain on each table
3) They all had ~25% or more terrain

I'm guessing it's just the camera angle, but the terrain at Adepticon was excellent this year as far as I was concerned.

Remember, when you see a big platform with trees or crystals sticking out of it, that entire platform is area terrain, so the whole foot print is giving cover/etc.

Target wrote:I was there, played in the event and had some days to just walk around and look at all the tables.

1) they were consistent
2) they had significant LOS blocking terrain on each table
3) They all had ~25% or more terrain

I'm guessing it's just the camera angle, but the terrain at Adepticon was excellent this year as far as I was concerned.

Remember, when you see a big platform with trees or crystals sticking out of it, that entire platform is area terrain, so the whole foot print is giving cover/etc.

I'll echo the above post. They did a good job with terrain. The scale of the amount of terrain they need overall is staggering.

A couple of pictures from the tables I played on:





Keep in mind that pretty much everybody played the bases of the terrain as area terrain. So there was lots of cover and good table coverage.

Just look at these Knights:

That terrain looks great. Heck those crystal area terrain pieces are providing cover to those huge knights.

Was Adepticon doing 'base=area' and nothing impassible?

That seems to work very well for tourneys and consistancy IMHO even if it has stuff driving over buildings...

nkelsch wrote:Was Adepticon doing 'base=area' and nothing impassible?

It was pretty much left up to the players to sort out pre-game.

The games I played, pretty much everything was just difficult area terrain, although the game I played on the spiky cactus table we ruled the cacti as dangerous, and there were some buildings on other tables that wound up as impassable due to not having obvious access points.

Yeah, we sometimes played the buildings or other particularly high/non-traversable pieces as impassible.

Usually the hills are just hills, not area; they're on bases for portability and durability. But there's a bunch of area terrain as well, with lots of moveable pieces which have cut-outs on the bases so they can be moved back to the same exact spot.