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So I've noticed something when it comes to hills.

Now, most wargaming veterans are familiar with foam oval-or-kidney shaped hills. It's quite common to see these staples of the terrain world stacked atop one another to create taller, more complex hills. And therein lies a conundrum. Frequently (very frequently) I see people under the impression that hills with multiple levels should use the rules for ruins when it comes to placing templates and blast weapons on the hills. (Specifically, the rules on page 100, but I've seen other ruins rules imported and applied to hills.)

So...do you use the ruins rules on multi-tiered hills? Or not?

No, hills don't have levels.

Talk about them before the game starts like the BRB tells you too.

 insaniak wrote:
No, hills don't have levels.

I agree. But I recently had an opponent who seemed to think I was cheating for stating that. And this issue seems to come up frequently.

We usually roll for difficult terrain and move appropriately without a 3" level penalty. If you have the tape measure at the appropriate angle from point A to point B on different levels, it will account for the vertical movement.

I've never seen it played that way, and the poll is reflecting that too. I'd be very annoyed if someone tried to claim I had to declare what level of a hill I was firing at with a template.

I figured it was either a local thing (some veteran player in the past spread misinformation, leading to a local infection of rules misinterpretation) or a result of people trying to grasp at straws since I use an obscene number of blasts/templates.

There is no RAW rule stating that anything is to be treated as a ruin, except for a ruin.

I don't even see a case for RAI or HIWPI to call a hill a ruin.

One major difference between the two is simply that models are likely to be underneath part of a ruin. Hence the reason you have to call out what level you are targeting. Whereas it is incredibly unlikely you are going to be underneath a hill....excepting, of course, hobbits - but I don't know anyone that plays those....




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Almost forgot: some people abusing WMI might try it, but I don't think they would get too far.

 Jimsolo wrote:
I figured it was either a local thing (some veteran player in the past spread misinformation, leading to a local infection of rules misinterpretation) or a result of people trying to grasp at straws since I use an obscene number of blasts/templates.

It's not a completely local thing, it pops up from time to time. I think it's just people going off the idea that as the hills in question have 'levels' and there are rules for things with levels, that those rules should apply to the hills... Overlooking the fact that those level rules apply specifically to ruins, rather than terrain in general.

Nothing is stopping you from declaring that that terrain piece is in fact a ruin though. And has levels.

But it wouldn't fly with me at least.

I generally just hills as open terrain, sometimes difficult.

Probably use 3'' up and down, but that's just being lazy with the tape measure.

Not for blasts or anything else tho.