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As it stands, you can generally see 90% of the board 90% of the time. Other games, such as Flames of War and Infinity, use a more abstracted LoS method when dealing with area terrain that could go a long way towards blocking off parts of the field from view and so promotin more movement and positioning in the game

Essentially, it works like this;
~Models can see *into* area terrain but never *through* it.

Line of Sight is blocked at the far edge of any piece of area terrain. Models inside can be seen, models sticking out from the edges etc can be seen, and models inside the terrain can see out of it without issue. The difference this makes to the forementioned games is enormous - tactical positioning becomes extremely important, and units are able to actually take cover from enemy fire if needed.

A compromise version of that rule could be a 6" vision distance into Area Terrain.

I've tried this in several games and its worked fantastically well. Wondering what dakka thinks though

Edit: Removed some jerkass attitude stuff =/

Well 40K's take on area terrain has always been that that patch of ground with 2 trees on it is a forest, hence the area terrain cover save, it doesn't make sense to then treat that "forest" like it's 2 trees for shooting through it. I think it'd be a solid rule change, though the group i play with doesn't really deal with area terrain too much and typically sticks to city-fight scenarios and ruins, so i'm not the most reliable source on balance.

Im in favor of it being may only shoot into, but not through. Dealing with 6" into area terrain means more fiddling about when it doesn't really improve anything. A better compromise for anyone who objects might be a higher cover save than the terrain would normally provide for units behind the terrain piece, to make sure they benefit but are still able to take damage.

One issue I didn't really deal with (cuz I don't have an answer at hand), was if theres a unit at one edge inside the terrain, and they fire all the way through it at a unit outside, should units outside the terrain get some kind of protection?

One issue I didn't really deal with (cuz I don't have an answer at hand), was if theres a unit at one edge inside the terrain, and they fire all the way through it at a unit outside, should units outside the terrain get some kind of protection?

I see what your problem is, its just that its easier to say its an abstraction and leave it be rather than try to specify that kind of stuff, because if you go that route, how big does the piece have to be to trigger this situation? I think we can agree that if i was shooting from the edge of 1" thick area terrain wouldn't cause this effect, but shooting from the edge of 12" thick area terrain would, but do you really want to have to decide arbitrarily at what thickness that change is triggered? And eventually someone would ask about shooting from the center of 12" terrain, so 6" away, and if the "thickness limit" to trigger the change was 6", surely that would be an equivalent barrier to trigger the change in cover, even though its not at an edge, and even more rules and exceptions would be necessary to cover this situation.

So yeah, let it be an abstraction, otherwise its going to spiral out of control and be way more complex than it needs to be.

Remember that according to the current rules, all you need is to be 25% obscured from the point of view of at least 1 firer (firer...what kind of word is that??) to get a cover save. Thus, if you shoot through a tree your opponent will probably get a cover save. This allows a hill to function differently than a forest and differently than tall grass. I think that simply using area terrain as an LOS shield actually takes out a little bit of the tactics. I could see this system lending itself to abuse ("oh, you can't see my guys cause they're behind a swamp") as well. A better option might be to simply grant a cover save if you have to draw LOS through terrain based on it's type, regardless of LOS.

Also, at my FLGS, your 90%/90% of the time statement just isn't true, we put a moderate amount of terrain out, including LOS-blocking hills and buildings, so that's an easy way to avoid rule changes altogether...just get more terrain.

The flip side of that, is that if you are 1% visible you can be shot at. Thats what I'm trying to avoid.