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My thought on terrain is that its a difficult thing to balance. Too much favors the assault army, too little favors the shooty army.

Generally, I use the random terrain density, and it tends to work really well. I classify my terrain into 2 categories, small pieces such as small rocks, ruins, sandbags, and groups of trees, which I combine 3 for 1 toward terrain density, and large pieces which are 1 for 1. Since I normally set up the table before everybody shows up (so we can get to playing), I feel this is the only fair way to do it. I also try to establish a theme with the terrain, such as blown out village, mountain foothills, and the like.

better too much than too little.

And too much terrain doesn't favor the assault army actually. The assault army has to roll difficult terrain to move and assault. The shooty only has to roll it to move.

Too much terrain is neutral more than anything.

It needs a mix of LoS blocking and area as well. You see a lot of tables with plenty of area terrain, but nothing blocking LoS which then makes it somewhat unbalanced in favour of a shooty army. Regardless of cover saves, when an assault army spends the whole game rolling for difficult terrain it's not that hard to shoot them to bits before they get to you.

I've always wanted to make terrain, but the problem is my locals either don't have room for a lot of terrain or already have a lot of terrain. And I have absolutely no room for stuff at home.

I must say I agree with a lot of what has been said here. I am more a city fight person, I love the idea of battles taking place on multiple levels, but the nature of the game makes un-ruined buildings hard to play in and anything with more than 3 levels nearly impractical. Its great that games workshop has come out with all these great kits but It seems there is a bit of a Imperial defense line obsession going on somewhere in the design studio. The most balanced bit of terrain from GW(ish) is Forgeworld's cityscape, but Forgeworld is always good at this sort of thing.

Too little terrain feels quite boring to play in tbh, although its nice not to have models falling over all over the place, the terrain is what adds flavor to the game and allows a player to pull of the occasional piece of tactical wizzardry. Without enough terrain the only valid tactics are gun-lines on the table edge and marines in rhino spam (ok this is a little extreme but you get my point), anything on foot ends up being slaughtered.

I feel the urge to make some small pieces of scatter terrain.

i love my terrain the more the better and i play tau

After reading this thread, I decided to use ALL the grass/hill terrain in a game. It turned out to be pretty fun. Here's a couple of pics (sorry for the poor quality):

wfischer wrote:
After reading this thread, I decided to use ALL the grass/hill terrain in a game. It turned out to be pretty fun. Here's a couple of pics (sorry for the poor quality):

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

That looks great, I'd love to have a game on that.

At out FLGS, there is shelves upon shelves of terrain. They are also building a giant ruined cathedral thing: https://www.facebook.com/UniversalBitsandGames?fref=ts (scroll down for picks).

We also get people who leave the hobby will sometimes donate there terrain.

Our group likes to make things interesting (mixing BLoS, area, impass, etc), but they usually do so for their advantage (units that can sit on impassable giant wall, etc). At tourneys I wish there was more variance and such - there is SO many nice pieces....they need love too....

wfischer wrote:After reading this thread, I decided to use ALL the grass/hill terrain in a game. It turned out to be pretty fun. Here's a couple of pics (sorry for the poor quality):

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

That table looks awesome. Lots of LoS blocking, but the hills are such that someone could foolishly climb to the top to get LoS on something farther away. I would happily play on that.

Amaraxis wrote:At out FLGS, there is shelves upon shelves of terrain. They are also building a giant ruined cathedral thing: https://www.facebook.com/UniversalBitsandGames?fref=ts (scroll down for picks).

We also get people who leave the hobby will sometimes donate there terrain.

Our group likes to make things interesting (mixing BLoS, area, impass, etc), but they usually do so for their advantage (units that can sit on impassable giant wall, etc). At tourneys I wish there was more variance and such - there is SO many nice pieces....they need love too....

That cathedral is really good, and it looks like they're taking how it's going to be played in into consideration. No rooms seem inaccessible to fat-armed guys, or even skinny-armed girls (gotta be PC). Is that all Pegasus stuff (besides the plasticard, obviously).

we've been playing random terrain alot and ive noticed that all of our shooty armies have been getting too much wins over our assault brethren. Many of them are getting discouraged and im going to try a denser board for our fights. Not as a handicap mind you, but in order to create more tactical play. I can use the straight aways, run the chance of getting gunned down in the open, or forge my way slowly through the difficult terrain of buildings in order to get closer more safely. Im also going to have more use of strategic height based terrain. Not so much a tower on each side where devastators hide, but something thats slightly forward of the deployment zone that makes you want to delpoy into it for the advantageous height, cover saves, and lanes of fire.

I also built an awesome elevated highway out of posterboard and stereo styrafoam usually going diagonal across the board. I love that terrain piece but i feel its just a bit too big. usually if someone runs underneath we have to take the top off, but its great for avoiding barrages!

Anyone ever make joke terrain? we built a factory that looks alright, until some joker put hello kitty stickers on it and now its really popular to have on the table.

My first game was on the dining table with no terrain. Meh. My second: lots of hills. Better.

Since then we've added buildings, forests, canyons, rivers, and more recently, trenches and pill boxes. It adds a huge element to both gameplay and enjoyment.

We even built the hallways of a space station. That board setup has its own deployment rules.

We don't roll for density. Instead we have an idea of the type of area we want to play in: forest, city, boarding action, etc and simply put enough pieces ( plus a couple ) to make it look good. Then we roll for sides.

I hate seeing tables with close to nothing on it. I want a 3 dimensional battlefield in which position plays a big part.

I love this thread. A lot of really great ideas here and a number of very cool looking game boards. I've long considered the idea of scratch-building an entire city block of ruined buildings made from plasticard, foam board, and card board. Using these materials, a huge amount of terrain can be produced very cheaply. .

http://www.miniwargaming.com/content/xlpZfUPk1hmW This is a great video, if you haven't seen it. The structure he builds is pretty simplistic, but the concept could be used to make everything from a tin shack to a sprawling factory. I think the rules of 40k play really well when there's more terrain, especially when a three story building completely eliminates LoS and winding streets force you to maneuver. Nothing is cooler than having multiple objectives in several different areas of the battlefield where each objective becomes a separate struggle of its own.

I recently played a game where a single unit of 24 slugga boyz with a big choppa Nob fought against a divided Tac squad and a five-man Scout squad for possession of a three-story ruin with an objective on the third floor. Isolated from the main armies slugging it out on the other side of a series of hills, it was a seesaw affair of attack and counter-attack, grenades and stikkbombz, arguing about LoS, retreats, focus fire with devastating boltgun volleys and finally ferocious hand-to-hand combat. Out in the open those same five hundred points of models would be cut to pieces in an instant, but all that terrain made it a five-turn brawl and the centerpiece of the game. Every nuance of model placement and LoS cover saves became crucial and presented really interesting tactical decisions with each phase of the turn, as opposed to predictably charging across 24" of nothing.

The FLGS here has terrain but most of it is geared towards WHF. single story ruins, flat hills that are 2 inches tall, hedgerows and crumbled walls. Most of the regulars play 1/4 table of terrain (or less). its actually made me change my list based on that.

on the flip side my group of friends game at someones house. I have hammered out a crap load of terrain so we can make a city that covers a 4x8 table.

I think the random D3 per table section is brilliant and adds a whole new strategic element to the game. An important aspect of it is that you determine your table edge before you place any terrain on the table. This means that you can use this "terrain phase" to improve your chances and perhaps hinder your opponents. In my opinion this adds a lot to the game. I play Dark Eldar so try to have good 'Raider-coves' on my side and about 2/3 of the way across. This can puzzle my opponents somewhat, when I place terrain at the central extreme of one of the sections on their side of the table. The secondary benefit of that move can also be to deny your opponent placing a piece where they might really want to. If an area on your opponents side can only contain 2 pieces maximum and you put a decent sized piece right near the centre of the table within that area they might not catch on to what your'e doing and place a piece elsewhere, then you can put a smaller piece in there and deny him any cover towards his board-edge. I know I've gone on a bit, but this is something I've given a lot of thought to. The possibilities are practically infinite.

Or, you roll on a table to see if you are fighting in a city or out in the countryside somewhere. Desert, jungle, city ruins, etc...

Its always best to have a themed table.

I am seriously considering getting some of the FW terrain board just because some of them are very very cool looking (the brand-new Necron one espeically!) and they would make getting a decent amount of terrain on the board quite easy.