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How do you set up terrain? My playgroup tends to split up the table into 6 sections and then rolls a d3 for each section. Each player then rolls off and takes turns placing any piece of terrain on the field, a player may not choose to place nothing. We do this before mission, deployment type, or sides to make it hard to build the field in your favor. We also found it gives us some good randomness in that one night we'll play a heavy terrain board, while others we play a less dense field that happens to have only LOS blockers.

How do you guys play it?

That is exactly how I do it. I often feel like people use too little terrain for the most part.

I love playing with lots of terrain as I find it adds a bit of depth to the game, but when it comes to placing it I usually just let my opponent do it. I dont like to place it myself because I feel like the guy I am playing might think I am trying to place it to give myself an advantange.

I do like the idea of the system above though.

We just use the guideline from I think 6th? Where you fill a quarter of the table up completely then spread it around evenly.

I prefer that a third party set up the table in a competitive setting. Makes things more even and makes a table that makes sense.

For casual I'm fine with talking to my opponent and figure out what kind of story we're trying tell.

Grab terrain, put it on the table. If either player wants more, grab more terrain. Complicating the pregame just takes up time. My FLGS has six crates of terrain from craters to 3rd Edition ruins to the wrecked Aquila lander from Macragge to official GW terrain buildings and trees. If we get the urge to play something more fortified we can just grab that big tower centerpiece model, five Bastions and have a game. Or a Zone Mortalis table if we want that. But it's never regulated beyond 'I think we should put more crap down'.

My FLGS is awesome... I'm so spoiled.

At my local store, we don't really use any formal guidelines. After letting my opponent pick which table to play on, we just put down terrain until there's a decent amount on.

Sometimes, I can see an obvious thematic way to set up the terrain, like connecting ruins with walkways or putting a statue on an island, and my opponent almost always goes along with it.

But in all cases, I prefer to have at least the total area of a citadel woods piece worth of terrain in each 2x2 section. That makes it fair, especially as we don't know which way we'll be deploying, what mission it is, or sometimes even what the opponent has brought.

Generally my friends and I play at my place, or at the local GW. Both locations have lots of terrain to use. We'll use the following approaches for setting up our games and terrain. First off, we usually don't tell each other much about the army we are going to play; sometimes you don't know until you're both ready to play.

If we are going to be pressed for time and playing at my house, then I might set up the table. I try to lay things out symmetrically more or less. A couple LOS blockers. 25% table is terrain. Then roll for table edge etc... So it keeps it fair and random. Often times I will offer my opponent the option of choosing which ever table edge they prefer, but no one has taken me up on it yet.

If we have the time then we either do the d3 terrain per 2x2' section. Or we just lay down terrain (maybe with a theme, maybe not). We keep going back and forth until one person says they are satisfied with the amount of terrain on the table. Then the other person gets to lay one last piece. Then roll for table edge etc...

I've got some pics of table's set up in my gallery if you're interested. Over all though, I believe it's better to have lots of terrain than to little.

We set it up so that the table is evenly spread with terrain and it looks like a pleasing battlefield to play on. We play with at least the 25% rule, probably leaning more to 33% (much to my chagrin). No one I've ever gamed with has griped or fought over terrain placement.

I prefer to have a third party set it up, but if that's not possible I usually just set it up in a way that looks cool, but also somewhat even at the same time. Granted, we probably should do the d6 thing, but I'm not that picky about it.

If either player wants more, grab more terrain.

How do you stop people from putting so much terrain that their opponents don't have space to deploy their vehicles?

Makumba wrote:

If either player wants more, grab more terrain.

How do you stop people from putting so much terrain that their opponents don't have space to deploy their vehicles?

Generally you set up terrain before you know where you're setting up. Otherwise people would do exactly that.

Makumba wrote:

If either player wants more, grab more terrain.

How do you stop people from putting so much terrain that their opponents don't have space to deploy their vehicles?

You say 'that's a bit too much and I can't get my Land Raider through there'. If a player ignores that and just packs it in with no care for fairness, they're not someone worth playing against. I have never come across someone like that. If a player has a Land Raider, there is room to move it without Dangerous Terrain IF they go the long way around. They should always have that choice.

We place and remove terrain until both players agree, then we roll for the game etc. If one player is early ( or the other late ) he usually starts building it.

 SharkoutofWata wrote:

Makumba wrote:

If either player wants more, grab more terrain.

How do you stop people from putting so much terrain that their opponents don't have space to deploy their vehicles?

You say 'that's a bit too much and I can't get my Land Raider through there'. If a player ignores that and just packs it in with no care for fairness, they're not someone worth playing against. I have never come across someone like that. If a player has a Land Raider, there is room to move it without Dangerous Terrain IF they go the long way around. They should always have that choice.

So he wins, still gets the table to play what and who ever he wants and you still had to pay for the 1 hour of game time minimum. Seems like a bad deal to me.

The more terrain the better. I see so many barren setups on battle reports; drives me mad.

We take everything we have and take it in turns place scenery in interesting and coherent ways.

Plenty of los blocking pieces and also verticallity.

As a base rule: You completely fill a quarter of the table with scenery (plenty los blocking). Then take it in turns placing it across the board.

What I like to do is to set up a table assymetrically. I feel it provides a more interesting tactical environment.

People tend to understimate the amount of terrain needed to fill 25% of a table -- and that is a recommendation for the minimum!

I also like to make my setups look 'realistic'.

I feel it's important to have a large impassable and line-of-sight-blocking piece in the center of the table. Playing around this makes the game more interesting. And it can be a great-looking centerpiece.

Makumba wrote:

 SharkoutofWata wrote:

Makumba wrote:

If either player wants more, grab more terrain.

How do you stop people from putting so much terrain that their opponents don't have space to deploy their vehicles?

You say 'that's a bit too much and I can't get my Land Raider through there'. If a player ignores that and just packs it in with no care for fairness, they're not someone worth playing against. I have never come across someone like that. If a player has a Land Raider, there is room to move it without Dangerous Terrain IF they go the long way around. They should always have that choice.

So he wins, still gets the table to play what and who ever he wants and you still had to pay for the 1 hour of game time minimum. Seems like a bad deal to me.

When are you gonna figure out that not everybody in the universe pays for tables? You say this in practically every threat when someone says you don't have to play someone.

In most places if people want to play this extremely expensive hobby, game stores will happily welcome them in and say "the tables over there, our stock is over here, have fun"

Even if you don't pay for the table, he still gets it because you walk away. And now he has the table to play a game and you have to hope someone will be missing an opponent and don't deploy terrain in his favor too.

If I'm playing someone I don't know very well, I use the 6th ed. rules for table set up.

If I'm playing someone I know, we both set up the terrain with the 'rule of cool' being the deciding factor. It doesn't matter if it's technically balanced - what matters in this case is, does it look like an actual location for a battle. This might mean half the board is a city and the other half plains. This might help in decide if you lose, but if you go down fighting then you did well. Or if you win, more's the glory! These are of course not competitive games - it's these games that I enjoy the most.

Again, competitive would just the rules from the BRB for table set up.

axisofentropy wrote:
I feel it's important to have a large impassable and line-of-sight-blocking piece in the center of the table. Playing around this makes the game more interesting. And it can be a great-looking centerpiece.

It can also be interesting to have a wide open space in the middle of the table. Thisalso is something to play around, but in the opposite way.

Makumba wrote:
Even if you don't pay for the table, he still gets it because you walk away. And now he has the table to play a game and you have to hope someone will be missing an opponent and don't deploy terrain in his favor too.

This may be difficult to believe, but in some stores, there is neither a shortage of free tables or willing opponents.

I've never heard of paying for tables.

SprinkKnoT wrote:
My playgroup tends to split up the table into 6 sections and then rolls a d3 for each section. Each player then rolls off and takes turns placing any piece of terrain on the field, a player may not choose to place nothing. We do this before mission, deployment type, or sides to make it hard to build the field in your favor. We also found it gives us some good randomness in that one night we'll play a heavy terrain board, while others we play a less dense field that happens to have only LOS blockers.

We do this exact same thing for our league games. Split into 6 sections, roll a D3, and then take turns placing terrain until it's done, then roll mission type/deployment/etc. For our tournament games, the store will set up several tables already, then the first round, randomly places players at each table, with subsequent rounds going to the victor's choice for table. Works pretty well, and the store's tables are never light on terrain. Each table is thematically different, ruins on one, hills and craters on another, dense forests on another, urban city on one, etc. Keeps it interesting.

We used to do it using 6th edition rules, but that often leads to not enough terrain. Nowadays, we just mutually set up and re-arrange the terrain. We want it to look nice, be fairly balanced, and lead to interesting strategic/tactical decisions.

Some specifics I look for when setting up:
* 1 big LOS in the middle -or- 2 LOS blockers near the middle -or- 3 LOS blockers in an equilateral triangle in the middle. It's important not to just set terrain around the edges, you want to have some fighting near the middle of the table.
* Avoid open firing lanes that extend the entire length of the table. This is the big downside of setting up buildings in a grid, and it can make gunline armies overly strong. Place some little LOS blockers to disrupt those fire lanes.
* Avoid placing lots of very strong defensive terrain pieces in deployment zones (e.g, ruins with ramparts). This incentivizes players to just turtle up, and never break out of their deployment zones. A good trick here is to place a piece of very strong defensive terrain just outside deployment zones, so that the player has to actually maneuver to take advantage of it.
* Asymmetry looks good, and can be balanced (it can also be very unbalanced if you do it wrong).
* Sticking to a theme looks good, and can be balanced. Have a jungle map, or an urban wasteland, or rolling hills. Mix and match themes - have one side of the board have hills and trees, and the other half be urban, and stick a little cluster of buildings in the corner to be a command post or something. This will make the game more memorable, and can be balanced if you set up well.
* Always think about where objectives will probably be placed, as these will dictate the tempo of the game.
* Experiment. Nothing can substitute for experience.

We usually play with a decent amount of terrain. For friendly games we spilt the terrain between the players and take turns placing it. Which you have to give some thought to because you don't know what side you will be deploying on.

Locally, players here like a ton of terrain (to much, methinks) but there's a few ways that we like to set up:
1) make it look "realistic. If were playing on a game mat with roads, then set the buildings in the "correct" spots. Yes, it's not perfect, but it makes the game look better imo.
2) 3rd party set up. Fixes most problems as they are hopefully not biased

We roll to see who picks first, than alternate choosing terrain peices.

I love terrain, the more the better!

 Resin Glazed Guardsman wrote:
We roll to see who picks first, than alternate choosing terrain peices.

I love terrain, the more the better!

It does keep the game from turning into a bigger shooting fest. I have had some better luck with my Jump Infantry going cover to cover to get into Melee.