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I'm currently in the middle of building a new game table, and am planning on building an imperial homeworld that has been overrun by tyranids, and the hive is overgrowing the current state of the planet.

But what I want to do, is build everything into the table (i.e. not modular), but have it be interesting, and continually fun.

What makes a table fun and dynamic to you? What are some of your more memorable games, influenced majorly by the setup/type of terrain you had?

Just looking for ideas to build off of - thanks guys!

Well, if you want it to be balanced, you'll have to make it either symmetrical with the terrain features or try to provide both(or all four given the corner deployment missions) sides with different but equally rewarding terrain pieces. Main issue with trying to figure out a proper, balanced table is that you'll either have to make all the sides mirrored and then you'll have to remember that some armies will benefit more from that set up than others...

...which may collide with the table being fun, because if you put too much los-blocking terrain, obviously melee/short ranged armies will have an advantage. And if you go too scarce on buildings/terrain, the table will not look cool, especially if your idea is some tyranomorphed landscape.

If you'll have swathes of terrain and too many bio-spires already, you can make some bigger, infested terrain or even pillbox bunkers(especially if they could be manned!). A good idea would be a biomass pool and some 'roots' to serve as walls/short obstacles. Also sprinkling it with tunnel entrances/exits like those from Macragge box(or even a wreckage) would work great and it could be treated as area cover or difficult terrain.

 Klerych wrote:
Well, if you want it to be balanced, you'll have to make it either symmetrical with the terrain features or try to provide both(or all four given the corner deployment missions) sides with different but equally rewarding terrain pieces. Main issue with trying to figure out a proper, balanced table is that you'll either have to make all the sides mirrored and then you'll have to remember that some armies will benefit more from that set up than others...

...which may collide with the table being fun, because if you put too much los-blocking terrain, obviously melee/short ranged armies will have an advantage. And if you go too scarce on buildings/terrain, the table will not look cool, especially if your idea is some tyranomorphed landscape.

If you'll have swathes of terrain and too many bio-spires already, you can make some bigger, infested terrain or even pillbox bunkers(especially if they could be manned!). A good idea would be a biomass pool and some 'roots' to serve as walls/short obstacles. Also sprinkling it with tunnel entrances/exits like those from Macragge box(or even a wreckage) would work great and it could be treated as area cover or difficult terrain.

This is probably the best thing to do.

What would be a good material for doing the infected/tenticle/etc type stuff? So far I've been using green stuff on smaller pieces, which works wonderful. Though I imagine it getting pretty costly to go the same route on entirely infested buildings!

My opinion: a good 4x4 gaming table has the following:
1-2 large LOS blockers
0-2 small LOS blockers
1-4 hills or patches of area terrain
2-4 partially transparant terrain (forests, ruins with windows)
0-1 (non-impassable) buildings
1 piece of terrain with a special effect

You'll definitely need an LOS blocker as least as high as the biggest model either player brings, located somewhere towards the middle of the table. I'm always convinced that terrain in the center should always be roughly 1 rhino length apart. Towards the corner, tank manouverability is less important. In deployment zones, there should be some room to deploy fortifications, but I usually prefer to have a piece of large terrain towards the middle of the deployment zone, just to make deployment a bit trickier and more strategic.

Also, a single thing with a special effect always adds to the fun of the game

tremulant wrote:
What would be a good material for doing the infected/tenticle/etc type stuff? So far I've been using green stuff on smaller pieces, which works wonderful. Though I imagine it getting pretty costly to go the same route on entirely infested buildings!

cover the sides of the buildings with regular white glue. Then, while still wet, cover the white glue with super glue (CA). The white glue will become gnarled up and look VERY much like infected/tentacle/stuff. It's far cheaper than using green stuff, will result in something that looks very cool and doesn't take weeks. I've done this on all of my Tyranid bases and some of my Nurgle ones. Here's where I stole the idea: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/407768.page

A good gaming board is one that encourages the use of the most rules possible.

For example, a good board encourages the use of the movement phase. On the one hand, it harshly penalised units that just sit around, offering them a few, crummy fire lanes, rather than being able to obliterate the whole board with a single phase. On the other hand, make sure you add in some blocks of terrain that both block line of sight, but are also considered impassable terrain. That way you have to choose to move one way or another, rather than moving everything straight forwards because it doesn't really matter.

Likewise, it should be terrain that encourages close combat and short-ranged gunfights. Not only are they more dynamic, but it will balance things out as well: long-range guns work at short range as well, but close combat never works if everything gets blown off the table by turn 2.

The best bet for this is going to be a crowded cityscape. You'll still have long streets to provide the occasional shooting lane, but you'll also have plenty of line of sight blocking terrain to force players to have to actually try to get their units to support each other.

In any case, you win no awards for underdoing it with terrain.

A problem with a crowded cityscape is that it can make maneuvering vehicles very difficult if the "streets" are to small, Besides that cityscapes are really nice and done well make for some really interesting games.

Yeah. Make sure there's enough space for a land raider, at least, through the main route.

In any case, making a table that looks like a replica of an FPS map would be a good start. Level design by people who spend all their time designing levels and getting paid for it, you know.

A) Dynamic terrain. Terrain that models can get on, get in, shoot through, gain concealment from, and completely hide behind. The more functions the terrain has, the better it is.

B) Functionality. If you have a thick forest of trees glued in place, it's worthless. Models can't be reasonably moved through it. Similarly, texturing, rubble, or other terrain effects can make parts of the terrain impossible for a model to stand on. (We have a lovely terrain piece at my local store which has some very realistic rubble on large parts of it. It looks great--but minis can't balance on those parts, so it's pretty useless as a gaming aid.

Those are just my opinion, however.