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Hi everyone,

I had a sort of a 'clash of cultures' with a guy at my flgs some time ago. He insisted on placing all the buildings in the box together and perfectly aligned, because he deemed it to be logical for the setting, while I've always randomly placed terrain on the board so that both sides have a roughly equal amount of terrain. In the end, we managed to get a mutally acceptable terrain placement, but it got me wondering: how do others usually deploy their terrain?

A bit of explanation on the four choices:
1) Place them in a way the terrain would be realistically (for example, on one side of the board there's a few bastions placed neatly together, towards the other end there's a progressively dense treeline)
2) Place them in a way that both players would have almost equal amounts of terrain, regardless of which side they get (a bastion on this side, a bastion on that side, two craters here, two craters there)
3) Just take all the terrain out of the box and spread them around for a bit until it looks interesting enough
4) Everything not covered by the above. Note that this does not apply to cases where your method of deploying combines two of the above, in which case you should pick the most relevant.

A good example of 4) would be the way I usually set up terrain when practicing for tournaments or other semi-formal games. The terrain is placed on the board with equal distance between all pieces, and then is scattered using the Warhammer Fantasy method of scattering. If either a misfire or a hit comes up, the terrain stays where it is, otherwise it moves the indicated amount of inches.

we roll a d3 for each of the 2x2' sections. the number on the d3 tells us how many terrain pieces go in that section. We alternate placing terrain.

 Icculus wrote:
we roll a d3 for each of the 2x2' sections. the number on the d3 tells us how many terrain pieces go in that section. We alternate placing terrain.

Yeah, we use the rules in the book, that should have been an option in the poll.

 ductvader wrote:

 Icculus wrote:
we roll a d3 for each of the 2x2' sections. the number on the d3 tells us how many terrain pieces go in that section. We alternate placing terrain.

Yeah, we use the rules in the book, that should have been an option in the poll.

Lol, I should read the rulebook more often

We usually make something that looks sort of logical, and gives both sides roughly equal terrain.

I mostly play at tables where the terrain is more or less permanent due to belonging either to the Unfriendly local gaming store, or the more friendly local gaming store.
Onw has the terrain arraged rather fairly, while the other has tabels witch all more resmebls the remains of a ruined hive city than anything else. So very, very much terrain

We play the rulebook method. D3 per each 2X2 board. Its fair and even. No one wants to stack a side then lose the deployment roll and be screwed. Its a very fair method of doing it. I've never had it end up wacky.

Both option 1 and 2 applies to our games.

We divide it roughly equally but nothing that looks unfluffy.

I don't know if the rules in the book are the best but if you placed it randomly you know if someone lost he would blame not following the terrain rules in the book.

We set up a cool map, when we are all happy we play. So whatever is most natural looking and as even as possible but thats not overly important.

We generally set up the terrain As best as possible so it doesn't favor either shooting or close combat armies.

We used to do the D3 pieces of terrain per 2x2 but found that depending on the size of the terrain people put down it got way too cluttered.

There was an article on setting up terrain for tournaments:

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2011/06/40k-editorial-proper-terrain-setup.html

I've found that using the 1/4 table bit and the spreading it around either equally if you're looking for a more competitive game or having a 3rd party setup something more narrative but still mostly equal works a lot better. I think the key is having the right balance of LOS blocking terrain so you don't sway the right to much towards assault vs. shooting.

Get an independent 3rd party {some one else at the club) to set up the table (throw an adequate amount of terrain down).

I'd like to try the D3 per quadrant deployment, though. Might give it a go this weekend.

 Kr00gZ wrote:
Get an independent 3rd party {some one else at the club) to set up the table (throw an adequate amount of terrain down).

I'd like to try the D3 per quadrant deployment, though. Might give it a go this weekend.

Be sure to do it per 2x2 section...not quadrant...could be sparse with the average 8 pieces that way.

 Kr00gZ wrote:
Get an independent 3rd party {some one else at the club) to set up the table (throw an adequate amount of terrain down).

I'd like to try the D3 per quadrant deployment, though. Might give it a go this weekend.

My local club does the same thing

The way it's listed in the book is a recipe for disaster. It just winds up with people placing the terrain to screw their opponent, and justifying it by saying that the rules allow them to do so, therefore it MUST be intended to be part of the tactics of the game in this edition.

Random terrain looks awful and just ruins the game for me. Part of the fun of the game is the illusion that it's an actual battle. If the terrain is setup up in a ridiculous fashion it just kills the suspension of disbelief in that regard.

At our local club, we have a third party set up terrain as they see fit. When it's my responsibility to do so for someone, I try to set the terrain up so it looks like an area people might be fighting over. At the same time, I try to keep the terrain balanced across the board, and balanced across types, without making the whole thing look like a perfectly symmetrical map from some kind of PVP video game.

If I could make any change to 40k rules, it'd be adding a way to fire into melee to make our way of doing terrain the official way.

Half the time we follow the rulebook's method, which sort of nudges you towards placing terrain to your advantage. Other half of the time we will let a 3rd party place it (or just use what is already set up). In all cases, we do prefer that it be aesthetically pleasing and follow a theme.

I don't like the BRB's method of choosing table sides and missions before placing terrain; it just encourages players to place all sorts of crazy nonsensical terrain to gain an advantage. I do feel that a big appeal of these tabletop miniatures games is the cinematic nature of having all your little army dudes on this cool looking battlefield.

At my LFGS the players and I just throw terrain until it looks good enough with some cinematic choices here or there. (Once, we had a bunch of hills and trees on the table except for a church in the center where we said that it was a abandoned temple. Best part was that we rolled the Relic mission so lulz were had trying to get into the stupid thing without being gunned down by the other forces.)

 Jimsolo wrote:
The way it's listed in the book is a recipe for disaster. It just winds up with people placing the terrain to screw their opponent, and justifying it by saying that the rules allow them to do so, therefore it MUST be intended to be part of the tactics of the game in this edition.

Random terrain looks awful and just ruins the game for me. Part of the fun of the game is the illusion that it's an actual battle. If the terrain is setup up in a ridiculous fashion it just kills the suspension of disbelief in that regard.

At our local club, we have a third party set up terrain as they see fit. When it's my responsibility to do so for someone, I try to set the terrain up so it looks like an area people might be fighting over. At the same time, I try to keep the terrain balanced across the board, and balanced across types, without making the whole thing look like a perfectly symmetrical map from some kind of PVP video game.

If I could make any change to 40k rules, it'd be adding a way to fire into melee to make our way of doing terrain the official way.

Cant' say that I've ever had the first issue you list, as someone else mentioned you don't tend to want to stack one side and lose the deployment roll and be screwed yourself.

We also tend to make a narrative before the game and pick the terrain that best matches that narrative and then just do the D3 2x2

We have a rule in our small group that each board is given roughly 4-5 pieces of terrain, devided evenly and each boards terrain is usually the same (In terms of buildings, each one gets 1 universally) we mark the center of each board tile, then roll the scatter and 2 D6. Place the Terrain so that it is not touching any other piece of terrain and reroll results of direct hit once it has already been rolled once.

This method basically ensures we always have random terrain placement.

Just recently started placing via the rules in the book.

It was an amazing difference.

In the past, it has always been a cooperative thing - we would set up things that look decent, and maybe move a few here and there.

The taking turns, where player each place pieces, is awesome. It adds another dimension to a player contributing to the game.

don't knock it until you actually try it, its pretty cool.

We just get enough terrain to cover 25% and place it in the most balanced way we can. Personally I have no idea why people bother with that silly 2x2 thing

 tybg wrote:
We just get enough terrain to cover 25% and place it in the most balanced way we can. Personally I have no idea why people bother with that silly 2x2 thing

Actually, it allows for another layer of tactical choices.

Think about it, when two armies march off to war, they're both going to try to meet on a ground that leverages their strengths.

 ductvader wrote:

 tybg wrote:
We just get enough terrain to cover 25% and place it in the most balanced way we can. Personally I have no idea why people bother with that silly 2x2 thing

Actually, it allows for another layer of tactical choices.

Think about it, when two armies march off to war, they're both going to try to meet on a ground that leverages their strengths.

You opinion will change as soon as one of your fellow players will discover the "synergy" of a shooty army and a 72" long impassable river. Or the 13" tall tower with no ladders to the top level.

 AtoMaki wrote:

 ductvader wrote:

 tybg wrote:
We just get enough terrain to cover 25% and place it in the most balanced way we can. Personally I have no idea why people bother with that silly 2x2 thing

Actually, it allows for another layer of tactical choices.

Think about it, when two armies march off to war, they're both going to try to meet on a ground that leverages their strengths.

You opinion will change as soon as one of your fellow players will discover the "synergy" of a shooty army and a 72" long impassable river. Or the 13" tall tower with no ladders to the top level.

A 72" long river isn't legal as 50% of it wouldn't be in the 2x2 section.

I actually play with a respectable group of players.

 ductvader wrote:

 AtoMaki wrote:

 ductvader wrote:

 tybg wrote:
We just get enough terrain to cover 25% and place it in the most balanced way we can. Personally I have no idea why people bother with that silly 2x2 thing

Actually, it allows for another layer of tactical choices.

Think about it, when two armies march off to war, they're both going to try to meet on a ground that leverages their strengths.

You opinion will change as soon as one of your fellow players will discover the "synergy" of a shooty army and a 72" long impassable river. Or the 13" tall tower with no ladders to the top level.

A 72" long river isn't legal as 50% of it wouldn't be in the 2x2 section.

There is no such restriction. You terrain piece can cover the whole battlefield if you wish (and you have a suitable model for it - that's the hardest part).

And all I1m saying is that just because your buddies happen to be decent guys it doesn't change the fact that the BRB terrain setup rules are just crying for cheese. it is like saying that D weapons are perfectly okay because you never encounter them anyway.

I'm just saying that I've had much better games with terrain placement this way.

It's made assault much more viable than old school a LoS blocker in the middle two forests etc etc.

But I digress, we've strayed from topic of how-do-you with why-do-you.

Well, me and my opponent put on blindfolds, then we take turns chucking dice at the table, then when we feel like we had enough we take the blindfolds off and place a piece of terrain on top of each dice.

It was kind of awkward at first, but once we figured out how hard to throw the dice in order to keep them on the table it's been great.

 dementedwombat wrote:
Well, me and my opponent put on blindfolds, then we take turns chucking dice at the table, then when we feel like we had enough we take the blindfolds off and place a piece of terrain on top of each dice.

It was kind of awkward at first, but once we figured out how hard to throw the dice in order to keep them on the table it's been great.

I read that at first as , Me and my opponent put on blindfolds, then we take turns chucking terrain at the table

 Elgrun wrote:

 dementedwombat wrote:
Well, me and my opponent put on blindfolds, then we take turns chucking dice at the table, then when we feel like we had enough we take the blindfolds off and place a piece of terrain on top of each dice.

It was kind of awkward at first, but once we figured out how hard to throw the dice in order to keep them on the table it's been great.

I read that at first as , Me and my opponent put on blindfolds, then we take turns chucking terrain at the table

Pretty much, but it's gentler on the terrain

Personally, I like to balance things but make it look like it makes sense as an actual facility (we normally play over fortress or industrial terrain).