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if you're going to use non-standard AT-43 terrain while keeping in line with the AT-43 ruleset, you have to assign Size characteristics to everything.

Fair enough. I know the rule, but to be honest it went out the window fairly early on, insofar as we play. I'm mildly surprised that people would use it with terrain. True Line of Sight has always served us well.

do you consider the 40K 5th Edition rules to be "hand-holding?" Or the Flames of War 2nd Edition rules?

Well the most obvious thing to point out is that they are in their 5th and 2nd respective editions, so it would seem that their initial rules needed some further refinement, no? I'll be honest and say that I am not familiar with how FoW plays.

However, I do think the omission of more comprehensive terrain rules was a mistake, intentional or no, and has effectively forced people to create quite disparate methods of working around them that will vary from venue to venue. Most gamers will not have a problem creating house-rules, most of the time borrowing piece-meal from other systems, but the designers should learn from this. I want to see a fully-worked-out AT-43 2nd Edition, I want to see it sooner rather than later, and I want the game to last, because I do enjoy playing the game, even if I made up a quarter of the rules myself .

Here's a question we've been dealing with in deciding how to handle terrain for a pick-up ruleset: how much terrain should one use?

In the system we borrowed from most heavily there are actually charts for how much terrain one should use based on the size of the table. Amounts of low walls, high walls, bunkers, and containers are recommended with some room for less or more depending on your taste.

This works fine if all you are using is official AT-43 terrain, but once you begin using "regular" 28mm terrain the chart begins to fall apart. It necessitates a line about "If you are not using official AT-43 terrain, attempt to compare your terrain to the closest category of AT-43 terrain for purposes of using the suggested amounts of terrain chart." If the chart recommends 20 low walls for a 4' by 4' board, you have to figure out which of your terrain pieces are equivalent to low walls, and how many low walls they represent, for example.

This is extremely clunky. It also doesn't account for things like Area Terrain, or water.

In 40K there's the "25% rule" which makes it easy - we will sometimes literally fill a quarter of the table with terrain, packed in as tight as we can, then take it off the table and commence with placement.

In FoW there's a terrain generator wherein you break the table down into six equal parts, roll a d6 for the basic type of terrain (hills and forests, for example) and then a further d6 for the kind of that basic type of terrain (a big hill, or how many forests, etc.). There is a terrain generator for each theater in the war, i.e. Africa, Western Europe, and Eastern Europe.

I don't see a terrain generator as appropriate for AT-43, but what about thinking of % of the table covered in terrain?

AT-43, with the lack of armor saves and dependence on cover for unit resilience, seems to depend on a lot more cover than 40K, particularly when you get into armies like Red Blok. So - what percentage of a table would you think should be covered with terrain in an average game of AT-43?

Orlanth wrote:I would like to get to the bottom of this, I want to see your informed opinion. I get so many attempts to shout Cairnius down that if there is a case of 'blatantly uninformed-ness' it is time we saw the evidence of that. I have not read Cry Havoc. But assumably you have, or something similar from Rackham, by your decision to silence Cairunius' criticism as 'blatantly uninformed statements'. If so please prove Cairnius wrong by showing us the expanded terrain rules, post them, link them, quote them. How you do is up to you, it's not like to you dont want to prove him wrong, so you should have no problems with this, unless they dont actually exist. I ask Cairnius to refrain from trying to confirm this one way or another, let's give Platuan time to find his evidence.

Orlanth, I was calling out his stating that Rackham requires tournaments to use the published maps/scenarios. While he is correct in his statement that there are no real rules per se regarding non-RE terrain, his statement that there is some sort of requirement to use the tiles and "official" terrain and scenarios to run an "official" or recognized tournament is what I have issues with, as it is genuinely untrue. I actually do wish there were more official rules dealing with other terrain and terrain set-ups, but so far in the AT-43 groups I've played with, there have been no problems with what terrain rules we DO have.

Platuan4th wrote:Orlanth, I was calling out his stating that Rackham requires tournaments to use the published maps/scenarios. While he is correct in his statement that there are no real rules per se regarding non-RE terrain, his statement that there is some sort of requirement to use the tiles and "official" terrain and scenarios to run an "official" or recognized tournament is what I have issues with, as it is genuinely untrue. I actually do wish there were more official rules dealing with other terrain and terrain set-ups, but so far in the AT-43 groups I've played with, there have been no problems with what terrain rules we DO have.

Can you quote me where I said that, Plat? I'm pretty sure I didn't. I don't know from AT-43 tournaments short of one that was held around here last year. If I did say that consider the comment retracted with all due humility and without debate as that's never what I intended to say.

What I've said is that in order to actually be playing "AT-43" as opposed to "adaptive AT-43," one can't use anything other than gaming tiles and posters, potentially in conjunction with official AT-43 terrain, or one can only use official AT-43 terrain. The rules are quite clear on this in the "Using the terrain" section of the main rulebook, pp. 96-97, which would designate "the terrain" as being:

- Containers
- Low walls
- Bunkers
- Nanogenerators

High walls become valid terrain pieces as the rules expand so no foul for not including them in the main rulebook as they weren't in existence as produced terrain pieces when the game was first released. The same goes for Karman crystals.

We can also garner, from reading the rulebook, that the gaming tiles and posters are supported because they are discussed in the rules as "2D terrain."

Other than that...the game does not officially recognize the existence of any other kinds of terrain.


So, once you start stepping outside these boundaries, you are no longer playing "AT-43" inasmuch as the term "AT-43" is defined as "A gaming system produced by Rackham Entertainment whose rules and regulations are determined via the rulebooks and other, official publications of Rackham Entertainment as they relate to the AT-43 gaming system."

Once you step outside the boundaries you are playing "adaptive AT-43" which uses the AT-43 ruleset as its basis, but then incorporates player-designed changes which have absolutely nothing to do with Rackham Entertainment. They were not conceived of, tested or approved by RE. Thus you are not "officially" playing AT-43. You're playing something else. The same goes for any game when you don't follow the rules. If you start playing Risk with home-brewed rules, you're not playing "Risk," you're playing "house rules Risk," which is similar to "Risk" but is something altogether different.

This is semantics to some. It's very important to others - and it is precisely what speaks to the glaring need for RE to tend to this matter. I don't get why they wouldn't. It's not as though their gaming tiles or terrain accessory sets are in wide production and readily-available such that they'd be taking business away from themselves by officially recognizing the existence of 28mm terrain other than what they offer. By tending to this need which has been created by their all-important player base RE could show that it is paying attention to its customers and engender a large amount of good will, as well as serve their community by giving AT-43 players worldwide the SAME set of rules to play with.


See Strahd, I know you dislike people talking about Rackham in this conversation, but it may be unavoidable. The root of the problem we're discussing is Rackham's silence on the matter. If they deal with this then you and I and Orlanth and Duncan and Platuan4th don't HAVE to discuss this anymore.

I'd much rather have Rackham-written rules for standard 28mm terrain than make up my own, or have to use yours. Who's to say you and I are going to agree on the terrain guidelines we use? I'd rather be spared that discussion altogether and just play the damned game with a minimum of fuss.

Oh my gosh!

Cairnius, I am helping organizing tournaments for quite some time and quite some of them are officially supported by the companies. I do know how others handle it and how Rackham handles it and there have never been any problems. Heck, we are organizing AT torunaments that do have 3000+ per participant and mega battles that go beyond 150.000 AP and noone ever had the problems you had. How is it possible that countless gamers don`t have a problem and suddenly you pop up and the whole scenery rules is one big mess?

Sorry, but I really don´´t get it.

Duncan, if you have rules written or approved by Rackham Entertainment to handle non-official 28mm terrain for your AT-43 tournaments, or if you think you've been clever enough to solve non-standard 28mm terrain issues definitively for everyone once and for all by writing your own terrain ruleset which you've used and tested many times to the point of proven worth, then put your money where your mouth is and POST THE RULES UP.

Cut and paste them. Of if you really want to impress scan them, turn them into a .pdf, and stick them someplace where people can download them for free for a week.

Sorry, but I really don't get why someone who purports to have such superior knowledge of and experience with AT-43 wouldn't have done this the moment this discussion began. I would have, had I had the information ready. People on the AT-43 Sentinel forums shared what they were working with very shortly after I first asked for the information.

Where's your stuff?

Because most of it is already there in the book and we only needed to write the special rules for the scenarios we developed ourselves?

And I posted the link several times in the past on the Sentinel forum while you were there.

"Yes I have rules that cover use of 28mm terrain, but I'm not going to share them with you because most of it is already there in the book."

Blatant lie. See my earlier post as to what the book does and doesn't cover. That's not even a SMART lie as anyone can read pages 96-97 in the rulebook and see for themselves!

Check your PM's Duncan.



Now...to everyone else...the question stands: what minimum percentage of an AT-43 terrain should have terrain on it, do you think? As compared to the 40K standard of 25% minimum? I think AT-43 needs a lot more than that, but am not sure what that number might be.

I dont play to 25% per se when using a specific density I divide the board into 1ft squares. each square contains one small piece of terrain entirely within it; or two adjacent squares contian a medium sized piece of terrain that is position so that it disects the line between the two adjacent squares. Or a square of four squares hosts a large terrain piece that must cover the intersection point between the four squares.

A small piece of terrain is 2"-6" a side, but can be a removable counter to indicate no terrain.
A medium piece of terrain is 2"-6" by 6"-10" or longer.
A large piece of terrain is over 10" a side.
This is subject to many factors, terrain on bases can be larger, shapes can be off, its terrain.

Also the type of terrain is not specified, it could be low rubble, barbed wire, wood, building or whatever. It is possible to adjoin several smaller terrain pieces to count as a medium or large terrain piece, but it is prefered to make terrain to fit.

Each player has enough terrain pieces to cover half the squares on the table surface, including one or two markers to show vacant space. Terrain is placed alternately, but a player cannot place terrain in an opponents deployment zone.
Theee rules can be modified if there is a specific defender or attacker in a scenario and according to the nature of the scenario.

In other words there are absolutely no problems , as everyone is replying.

Cairnius is digging stuff up that has been answered numerous time on numerous boards. Duncan is getting tired and sick of playing into Cairnius's agenda.

If Duncan doesnt reply ( since he have done so , SO MANY TIMES ALREADY , ON SO MANY BOARDS ) Cairnius then jumps to his agenda of saying "Duncan doesnt reply because AT-43 sucks"

In other words Cairnius have been trolling profusely , reader that didnt realize he have been asking the same things ( and getting the answers numerous times on numerous boards ) would have no idea.

God how I wish for an Ignore function that could somehow be tuned to IP address such that I didn't have to log in to ignore the trolls.

Orlanth, what percentage of your AT-43 tables would you say is covered with terrain?

What I need is something to work with as a basis for testing...right now all we have is the aforementioned chart which isn't bad, per se, but it was constructed using the official terrain types, and doesn't account for things like forests, or bodies of water/rivers, building ruins, etc.

If worst comes to worst I could just lay out all the terrain from the chart, see how much that is, and use that as a basis for testing, but I'm curious as to what you think your percentage is.

Cairnius wrote:God how I wish for an Ignore function that could somehow be tuned to IP address such that I didn't have to log in to ignore the trolls.

Orlanth, what percentage of your AT-43 tables would you say is covered with terrain?

What I need is something to work with as a basis for testing...right now all we have is the aforementioned chart which isn't bad, per se, but it was constructed using the official terrain types, and doesn't account for things like forests, or bodies of water/rivers, building ruins, etc.

If worst comes to worst I could just lay out all the terrain from the chart, see how much that is, and use that as a basis for testing, but I'm curious as to what you think your percentage is.

Ya you see thats the main problem , and something i still cannot understand. You are asking the same 5 people to answer your question . Half of them are sick
and tired of repeating themselves.

So , Go Ask On The Main AT-43 Board . Instead Of Whinning The Same Ppl Are Agitated Of You. You Are The Troll Here Trying To Drive New Players Off,
When You Can Be Asking On The Main Rules Forum.

I Know Ok , I Have Read Your PM . You Dont Like The Rules , And You Would Rather Burn Rakham's Ivory Tower Down To Your Lvl So They Can Hear Your Wispers . Instead of Just Asking Them Directly Like Normal Ppl do.
What More Do You Want? They Give You Official Forum To Ask , You Willingly Chose NOT To, Instead You Come To 3 Other Wargame Forum Asking The Same Questions Which You Dont Like Our Replies.
So Who Is The Real Troll ?

LunaHound wrote:

Cairnius wrote:God how I wish for an Ignore function that could somehow be tuned to IP address such that I didn't have to log in to ignore the trolls.

Orlanth, what percentage of your AT-43 tables would you say is covered with terrain?

What I need is something to work with as a basis for testing...right now all we have is the aforementioned chart which isn't bad, per se, but it was constructed using the official terrain types, and doesn't account for things like forests, or bodies of water/rivers, building ruins, etc.

If worst comes to worst I could just lay out all the terrain from the chart, see how much that is, and use that as a basis for testing, but I'm curious as to what you think your percentage is.

Ya you see thats the main problem , and something i still cannot understand. You are asking the same 5 people to answer your question . Half of them are sick
and tired of repeating themselves.

So , Go Ask On The Main AT-43 Board . Instead Of Whinning The Same Ppl Are Agitated Of You. You Are The Troll Here Trying To Drive New Players Off,
When You Can Be Asking On The Main Rules Forum.

I Know Ok , I Have Read Your PM . You Dont Like The Rules , And You Would Rather Burn Rakham's Ivory Tower Down To Your Lvl So They Can Hear Your Wispers . Instead of Just Asking Them Directly Like Normal Ppl do.
What More Do You Want? They Give You Official Forum To Ask , You Willingly Chose NOT To, Instead You Come To 3 Other Wargame Forum Asking The Same Questions Which You Dont Like Our Replies.
So Who Is The Real Troll ?

Excuse me if I step in here, as I see and sympathise with both sides here. I do not see two trolls, and criticse both of you for accusing the other of trolling.

Luna (and others): Cairnius is entitled to his opinions, furthermore some of us are finding his insights useful. The criticisms he makes I follow, and I know I am not the only one. We independently see the same problems, and even come up with similar solutions, therefore in my mind he has some points that are valid. I really cannot accept that he is sufficiently wrong to be treated the way he has, but also understand that hostility may be sourced from a tiredness of his presence more than an intellectual disagreement. He does raise the same points repeatedly which can give the indication of trolling, until you see that in fact many of his comments have never yet been properly addressed. Cairnius is perhaps unwise to bring up the same questions in seemingly 'every' AT-43 thread, but it is perhaps more understandable allowing for the level and consistency of denial he faces. I personally would find it frustrated to be blocked at every turn, and cannot accept the justifaction that he is ostracised due to his being considered a minority of one who is blatantly and repeatedly wrong, because if he was I would not have drawn similar conclusions to him on some issues.

Cairnius: Some people here dont understand you, others dont want to and you are treading on mental toes of people who love a game and don't want to see it repeatedly criticised. This could be immaturity on their part, but its also human nature. We should therefore ensure our focus is in finding solutions to the games problems rather than the same open diagnosis of them; let alone give others excuse to suspect you wish to regress threads to a prognosis of the health of the company.

Mods: Please do not lock the thread, it's useful and the conflicting strongly held opinions yield superior total insight than a monologue.

You call me a liar? Well, as far as I can recall you had a thread going over several pages on the Sentinel forum that took care of all your questions. The majority even got out of their way to create a mission generator for beginners just for you. That is, until you decided to turn over the boat.

Shall I copy it and post it? Or should I spare you the embarrasment?

Cairnius wrote:
Orlanth, what percentage of your AT-43 tables would you say is covered with terrain?

Not much from the games played so far, but they were make do tabletops with mostly official At-43 terrain with some ruins and the moonscape crater pack added in. you can see the terrain i used in the pictures on the other thread.

Now for proper fully set up games, once i have my new boards ready (i.e. not yet) I will be using the old one item per square working that I described above. Now this isnt designed for At-43, its desgined for SF and fantasy gaming in general.

however to answer your question I would not go as high as 25%. For a start for warhammer we include more blank space tokens than for 40K and other similar games. When playing fantasy or historical medieval/ancients if we ever get round to it there is provison to always p0lace a blank terrain counter, and dont ha e enough terrain to use up each square on a standard board. For SF gaming you are limited to one blank space and need not use it, there will always be enough items for each player to cover half the boards squares.

Now 25% of a square would mean a 6"x6" piece. Some of our 'small' pieces are this size or even bigger, but in general they are not, they might well be longer and narrower but are very usually of a smaller footprint area. When doubling up for medium and larger things are more or less the same. Medium pieces are also generally much smaller than 25% of two squares. as for large, well then can be quite big, but bu no means all are over 12"x!2", though some definately exheed this, especially larger buildings. we are yet to field items that require size squares or more as they become problematical themselves.

As to my reasoning why.
We avoid very large pieces of terrain because it will require sefgeral movemnt phases to navigate them. A large building over 12" long/wide requires two or three turns movement for a tank to get around, possibly more for infantry, this is an unacceptable handicap in a game that lasts four to seven turns. terain should inconveneince units for a whole turn, or provide useful cover, excepting specific scenarios with area terrain such as ice fields or bogs terrain should be something you can move into and out of on subsequent turns.
as for the area, well the reason i will not use too deep a terrain cover is because of the size of vehicles. While cover everywhere is realistic when playing on a surface with seperate base surface and terrain items most cover ends up stuff you cannot easily drive through. With too much terain it can be very difficult to navigate a Leman Russ with sponsons across the tabletop. So unless you have specifically placed tank obstacles we make sure the terrain is spaced enough so that tread heads are vehicle friendly.

I will go beyond this with my planned urban board, which has a fixed streetscape with asphalt roads and 'islands' of flagstones on which buildings can be placed. the roads will be wider than the tower blocks between them to ensire that infantry can move into a building one turn, and through to the net one the next, or at least qwith no more than one turn out in the street between crossings. for this reason my tower blocks will be only about 6" wide though about 12" or so long and at least as high. This will also ensure that vehicles can manoeuver effectively within the rulesystem and the wide roads plus tower blocks are intended to be 'titan friendly' for maximum versatility of play.

All in all, I fixed up the terrain rules to go with the flow of the system. With At-43 some changes might be needed, but the low walls provide that. As an interim move now when I set up a battlefield each player gets a handful of low walls to place wghere thery see fit (in or near their deployment zone, or at least somewhere where their forces could conceivably have dropped them. At the moment the number I am looking at is two runs of three blocks, I might stretch to three runs, but at the moment I am adding plenty of low walls everywhere anyway. Might as well use the new terrain now I have it. Low walls are used in runs so that a canny player cannot block every road against ground vehicles with well spaced single blocks. Also all blocks on the board are destroyable terrain.
Likwise the containers will be entering both game systems as standard terrain pieces ( a single container or two stacked counts as a small terrain piece, a line of two (double stacked or not) counts as a medium terrain piece. Though I havent played 40k since getting my new AT-43 terrain, so this is a future projection.

Duncan_Idaho wrote:You call me a liar? Well, as far as I can recall you had a thread going over several pages on the Sentinel forum that took care of all your questions. The majority even got out of their way to create a mission generator for beginners just for you. That is, until you decided to turn over the boat.

Shall I copy it and post it? Or should I spare you the embarrasment?

Duncan, you are incapable of embarrassing me. You've embarrassed yourself enough by dragging your personal beef with me onto Dakka Dakka because I used to be a Sentinel and then left. You're like a lover scorned, and it's getting sad - and you're lying again. No one ever created anything just for me. They presented the disparate systems they use for pick-up play as part of a project I recommended to create something universal, and then everyone got their panties in a bunch because I had the gall to criticize their separate systems in the hope of coming up with something that incorporated the best ideas and left behind the worst.

If you want to start another thread where you post up all those systems and prove my point that everyone is pretty much making crap up as they go along to account for Rackham's inability to forsee people not wanting to play a boardgame with gaming posters and gaming tiles, feel free. It would be an interesting way for you to concede the argument. Just make sure you don't edit any of the rulesets beforehand - I have copies of them.



@ Orlanth -

Armies like Red Blok absolutely depend on tons of terrain in order to make their infantry survivable. Their only other option is to Shield Wall behind AFV's which are then left vulnerable with no cover at all. This is part of why I think a lot of terrain is needed for AT-43. With the removal of armor saves a la 40K or liberal cover saves a la FoW, you're pretty much depending on cover and Take Cover! drills to keep your infantry and battlesuits alive, so without enough cover it just becomes a shooting gallery which isn't very challenging, IMHO.

I can see the why of the system you use, trying to set up your terrain rules for ease of movement as the center of your design philosophy. That's not something I am used to from four years of gaming...I've never had a problem with it, really. If the two players are setting up the terrain they'll leave themselves room for their vehicles.

Are you counting the low walls in the "total percentage" of space covered on the tables you are using?

Cairnius wrote:
Armies like Red Blok absolutely depend on tons of terrain in order to make their infantry survivable. Their only other option is to Shield Wall behind AFV's which are then left vulnerable with no cover at all. This is part of why I think a lot of terrain is needed for AT-43. With the removal of armor saves a la 40K or liberal cover saves a la FoW, you're pretty much depending on cover and Take Cover! drills to keep your infantry and battlesuits alive, so without enough cover it just becomes a shooting gallery which isn't very challenging, IMHO.

This I can beleive, fortunately for At-43 there are fewer big units, most stuff tops out at dreadnought size, also I do not consider low walls impassable to striders, er they are striders not tanks they just step over them. I will likely have to phase in extra terrain for At-43, which is why I find the lack of cover in some official scenarios puzzling, particularly the lack of cover that would conceal a UNA ** strider, which is dead if it is seen becasuse its large, pissweak and very shooty. With bonus low walls accounting for more cover opportunities for infantry and enough standard larger features to hide striders we should be ok. Also buildings with accessible flat rooves help, battlesuits wont be able to get up there unless they have G-Pack thus giving lighter infantry a distinctive place, which also provides a tactical vantage point.
I have it mostly covered with the current and projected terrain.

Cairnius wrote:
I can see the why of the system you use, trying to set up your terrain rules for ease of movement as the center of your design philosophy. That's not something I am used to from four years of gaming...I've never had a problem with it, really. If the two players are setting up the terrain they'll leave themselves room for their vehicles.

I was being thorough, I beleive good games design includes the why and tries to account for as many outcomes as possible. Given a bit of forethrought you can design rules with far reaching subtle effects that account for more possibilities than it at first looks.

Cairnius wrote:
Are you counting the low walls in the "total percentage" of space covered on the tables you are using?

Most likely not for AT-43, the system is so much deadlier and with no meat shield cover the blocks are really needed as extra, but I do like the blocks and will be a staple of all my SF games of the scale. We shall see.

Striders are not allowed to move over or through walls or containers. Rulebook, page 97, upper left-hand corner. That might be a basic enough rule that you don't want to mess with it.

Once you get playing some more games, do me a favor and taking the low walls into consideration and see how much terrain you think is on the table. I think it is tricky to try to balance out the need to keep AT-43 as brutal as it is, which may get broken with TOO much terrain, with the need to have enough terrain such that infantry can leap-frog from terrain to terrain and not get caught out in the open. In AT-43, infantry not in cover against any army with decent accuracy is just as good as dead.

Oh look Cairn being a little whiny bitch again, what a shocker. Just stop playing the game so we can all stop listening to you bitch about it. Go play your FOW and 40K and leave AT, you can sell your crap on E-bay.

Cairnius wrote:Striders are not allowed to move over or through walls or containers. Rulebook, page 97, upper left-hand corner. That might be a basic enough rule that you don't want to mess with it.

I am all for messing with the rules, sounds like you are too. low walls blocking ground vehicles makes sense, they actually do. but I suspect they will be of less use against combat striders, even if a strider cannot entirely step over the wall, and many shown here could they could step onto the wall a foot at a time, the walls are sturdy enough for this.

On a scenario low walls are inviolable, fair enough this is because low walls are all they have, excepting the '2D terrain'. But on a gaming terrain battle we can afford to play loser with low walls. besides detroyable and limited cover is useful as you can allow it to be spread out blocking avenues of advce knowing that unlike main terrain features it is not a permenant obstacle.

As for containers, impassable to striders, no problems with that.

Cairnius wrote:
Once you get playing some more games, do me a favor and taking the low walls into consideration and see how much terrain you think is on the table. I think it is tricky to try to balance out the need to keep AT-43 as brutal as it is, which may get broken with TOO much terrain, with the need to have enough terrain such that infantry can leap-frog from terrain to terrain and not get caught out in the open. In AT-43, infantry not in cover against any army with decent accuracy is just as good as dead.

Now there should instances where infantry must leave cover to get somewhere, either by a rush move or perhaps as a gambit. What is important is not so much the amount of terrain for leapfrogging, but the avenues of fire.

I do not consider low walls impassable to striders, er they are striders not tanks they just step over them.

Just to quickly say, that it has always struck me as funny that low walls could block a strider. I understand why it's there in the rules, but you look at the sheer size of a Baal Golgoth and it's hard to imagine the overseer going "Invasion's cancelled folks; there's a three-foot-high wall in the way."

Isnt that how the main Therian invasion was stopped? Someone dropped some bollards in the steets and the Golgoth swarm was trapped with no escape.

Isnt that how the main Therian invasion was stopped? Someone dropped some bollards in the steets and the Golgoth swarm was trapped with no escape.

Yes, the Therians can move entire solar systems, but waist-high concrete will always stop their Golgoths dead in their tracks. It's yet to be seen how they react to traffic cones.

Getting back to the matter at hand, we also house-ruled that Striders could surmount walls while moving at half speed. The logic being that infantry can have sufficient cover without striders being rendered much less effective. It allowed for a greater sense of urgency for infantry, whilst still being able to use a smaller table. I mainly use a 4' x 4' table with roughly 30% terrain not including low walls, which the players get to place themselves.

The rules as written are fine for the scenarios regarding the low walls, but on my terrain-heavy table this particular change has worked quite well without totally kinking the rules out of shape.

@ Orlanth & Idaho: Ignore this idea. Writing late on a Friday night after a full working week means that my thought processes aren't quite as clear as I'd like. I about know Take Cover!, I just temporarily forgot about it . I was getting distracted by the other threads...

Considering that with todays indirect weapons even 50 yards away from the intended target counts as a bulls eye I wonder why AT should tone done indirect weapons. AT indirect weapons are already way less deadly than real ones this way they would be only slightly better than grenades.

Em, perhaps because this is a game and not real life, and that the attrition rate amongst infantry may make the game somewhat less fun to play.
Seriously, Indirect Fire is extremely brutal and when faced with two mortars, or whatever, the Type * & ** could do with even the smallest helping hand.
As I said, make it a Combat Drill wherein you have to pay LP and you have only a slim chance of a save. I do not think it would break the game.

Actually we never had problems with the revised indirect weapons and since my Therians do not have mortars I was always on the receiving end.

Strahd wrote:

@ Orlanth I'm late saying this, but I agree that the Indirect Fire rules are a bit too harsh on infantry. Infantry behind cover from the centre of the blast should get some save, or there should be some Combat Drill to accommodate this. Straight off the top my head: Incoming! Infantry Unit in cover(?) gets a 6(+) save against Indirect Fire Weapons (does not include Flamers). I will let someone else critique that freshly improvised Combat Drill, but I do think something should be introduced to increase the overall survivability of infantry against Indirect Fire without breaking the basic rules.

If you have take cover orders, so you are on the ground if you are in the open, or are already grounded then you geta a 5+ save, with a 3+ save if your cover is between you and the blast epicentre, ot a 5+ save if you have cover but are not taking cover. Either way no saves against flamers.


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Duncan_Idaho wrote:Considering that with todays indirect weapons even 50 yards away from the intended target counts as a bulls eye I wonder why AT should tone done indirect weapons. AT indirect weapons are already way less deadly than real ones this way they would be only slightly better than grenades.

50 yards away is a miss with rl artillery. I was speaking to an F-16 pilot about a friendly fire incident a few months back when a hatchback inadvertyently parked in a live fire range and got riddled. He told me that the 20mm cannon shellholes at the rear of the vehicle were a miss, the car was frakked but the grouping was not around the engine and crew area so it counted as bad marksmanship for the pilot.
Airstrikes have a somewhat higher pass mark than artillery, but not much. Only a major barrage with soviet blok smoothbore mortars is considered on target with 50 yards error, for 105's and 155's it could mean the difference between shooting the incoming enemy or your own lines, its a huge error.

looking at the dcaling a 10cm deviation is not bad, allowing fro the groundscale, remember this accounts for artillery called while a vehicle was in a different projected postion. All fire is done before or after a target moves, but we must assume it occurs during, quite often scatter is to account for units being correctly targeted but not being where they were when the shells arrive bad plotting etc. mordern artillery use is so laid back because there is normally not a huge dogpile going on with both sides suffering heavy losses, traning allowing some spotting error must ber expected in a real battle as opposed to a policing action, so the amount of scatter rules at 10cm is not bad really.

It also accounts for the Red Bloks use of 'Soviet accuracy'. This is to say some smoothbore soviet pieces, notably the 120mm mortar and the 240mm heavy mortar were designed to carry a warhead so big that its blast radius exheeded the expected scatter. This policy also accounted for why tactical nuclear weapons in the Soviet arsenal were far greater yield than western warheads. Soviet tactical warheads were 2Mton plus citybusters that needed a rocket that could relaibly take it within 2-3km of target as opposed to 200-300m for a western tactical nuke. This was 70's tech remember, not current capability.

The Dotch Yaga heavy mortar uses 'Soviet accuracy' with its blast radius of 10, its a very sovietesque weapon in its articulation and a nice bit of games design.

Well, we are talking about mortars which are intended to saturate a larger area or knock down as many as possible in the target area. And at least our German vehicle based mortars have no problem accomplishing this. Comparing cannos to mortars is a little bit strange. As far as i am concerned AT mortars behave the way real mortars behave and that was the intention when including them in the game.

Duncan_Idaho wrote:Well, we are talking about mortars which are intended to saturate a larger area or knock down as many as possible in the target area. And at least our German vehicle based mortars have no problem accomplishing this. Comparing cannos to mortars is a little bit strange. As far as i am concerned AT mortars behave the way real mortars behave and that was the intention when including them in the game.

A semantic difference only I assure you. the game only uses grendade launchers, grenades and mortars. tasking out the grenade rules at the moment which need a complete different fix all the launchers are short ranged 'lob' launchers. so i understand why they are called mortars, probably from the short range high fire arc. However few if any of the weapons are actual mortars which, vehicle mortars included, are distinguished from cannon by the inclusion of a plate in braced contact with the ground rather than a recoil spring to absorb the backward force of the shot. None of the mrtars shown are actually technical mortars, except in a poetic sense regarding probably siilarity of fire arcs. For example the Mortar on the Defender Cobra is actually a howitzer, you can even see the recoil absorbers and its clear the weapon has a recoil length. The Dotch Yaga might have a mortar as the gun is near verticle aligned and recoil force will be directed straight into the ground via the legs, in which case the vehicle itself is the recoil plate, but its unsure due to the attack angle, I would have to see the miniture to determine whether it was a mortar or not. None of the others qualify, all the weapons have a visible recoil length and fire at a flat enough trajectory that if recoil was being passed bluntly through the vehicle it would more likely knock it over. All are in fact high fire arc cannon, aka howitzers.

All this doesnt really matter, cannon, howitzers and mortars are all spotted the same, different numbers but the same maths. For the point of view of a spotter calling down artillery the type of artillery is not very relevant, although a mortar or howitzer is needed for a plunging shot right behind an obstacle, normal long barreled artillery cannon will have too flat a fire trajectory.

AT mortars differ from real ones with the fallacy that there is nowhere to hide from the shell blasts, this is not true, cover is likely more important against artillery than anything else and lying flat in open ground is the first thing a soldier will do. Rackham translates that as knockdown, in reality its take cover and the 5+ save should apply. Knockdown is the stunning effect which happens irregardless. Getting down quickly enough in the face of artillery does work and does save soldiers lives, even if caught well within the blast radius. Cover rules for artillery are wrong. Also if the blast cannon hurt the target, no knockdown. So Kolossi should ignore all grenade launchers, but not higher powered blast weapons that might appear. That is not an unreasonable change either.