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Hi everyone,
I'm getting back into actually playing after years of being sort of a collector (hoarder) lurker. I've started playing Bolt Action also, which really requires lots of terrain. It's a lot of fun and shiny to have a bunch of terrain on the table - like a European village or farm with roads and walls, etc. Do you tend to have a lot of terrain on the table when you play a scenario for 1000-1500pts per side? I'm going to try it. I'm just building a Dark Angels army. My son has Chaos Space Marines. Do you like the terrain rules (buildings, terrain damage, etc.) in 7th Ed?
Thoughts?
-Bill

I use lots of terrain. High line of sight blocking terrain is important. I dislike the 7th rules. they are the 6th rules but less of them. Most of the time I use parts of the 6th rules (including stronghold assault) for more exotic terrain.

I love terrain. I love it to death and to me it's one of the most effective ways to have fun in the game itself.

I know the suggestion is 25%. But usually depending on the "world type" I push for more. Especially in City or Urban style engagements. It's probably because I'm more of a thematic player and love to have interactive terrain on the board so a building can be more than just a place to park a dev squad or hide a sniper team.

We tend to also pull a lot of the older terrain specific rules, and I use the rules for terrain types from ForgeWorlds Horus Heresy books too.

More terrain especially LOS blocking terrain is important this edition in balancing the gap between shooting and assault. It also helps mitigate how easy it is to get around cover this edition.

Fill a quarter of the table with mixed LOS blocking terrain. Then distribute (ensuring routes for tanks).

Here are some examples:
For a 3-4000pt game


From a three player game (500-750 each)


From a 2000pt game


EDIT: Worth noting that we either play Maelstrom or our own custom scenarios.

The best games I've played have tended to be closer to 50% terrain saturation than 25%. As far as rules go, basically do it however you like, especially if you're just playing with your son! LoS-blocking is definitely important, but don't let that hamstring you in choices; boggy ground being difficult terrain without a cover bonus; barbed wire and minefields for dangerous terrain; hills and multi-stores buildings to add a third dimension to the battle. All of these and more add to the fun of the game, with different tactics presenting themselves all the time. In the tournament scene, it is usually, unfortunately, LoS-blocking terrain and that's it. Makes the game feel very two-dimensional at times.

25% coverage minimum, 50% ideally.Having line of sight blocking terrain also makes games a lot more interesting.

Love well built and painted terrain. Makes game feel so much better. I mean how often are modern armies caught out in open against each other. Maybe tank battles. Urban settings are epic.

I'm a big fan of urban combat boards, so lots of buildings and BLOS. Even though I like shooting armies, and terrain does bad things to shooting, I feel like a heavily built up board does a lot for making the game more interesting.

The rules recommend 25% minimum coverage. Most people wildly underestimate how many pieces or how much area of terrain it takes to fill up even 25%.

A lot of people maybe don't have enough terrain, because it's hard enough work to build up an army, let alone a lot of terrain pieces.

Love terrain. Not only is it important for changing how shooting works, but it also brings a table together and makes a battle *feel* awesome. I'm really surprised the newer releases haven't featured more campaign or faction specific terrain. The rules in the main book are neat and (mostly) straight forward, but also rather limited. I'd like to see more stuff along those lines.

Wyldhunt wrote:
Love terrain. Not only is it important for changing how shooting works, but it also brings a table together and makes a battle *feel* awesome. I'm really surprised the newer releases haven't featured more campaign or faction specific terrain. The rules in the main book are neat and (mostly) straight forward, but also rather limited. I'd like to see more stuff along those lines.

I'd love to see more faction-specific terrain! The Tau stuff looks really nice. I'd love to see some Necron, Ork and Tyranid terrain. Doesn't FW make some?

I love to cover the board but sadly my local club limits the terrain per table to a few small pieces.

 EnTyme wrote:
. I'd love to see some Necron, Ork and Tyranid terrain. Doesn't FW make some?

Jsut make your own. It isn't that hard really. We used to make all of it ourselves. I am sure that any of us can do it now perhaps even better with the new techniques available.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 master of ordinance wrote:
I love to cover the board but sadly my local club limits the terrain per table to a few small pieces.

Is this to share the terrain ? If so just bring some of your own terrain to add to it. I do this quite a lot and most opponents love it.