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This poll is up in one of the big fb groups and had me going "wow" to the number of people that don't use all of the rules and just terrain as cover and thats it.

How do you play it?

We never have all the terrain as mystical, but often will have 1-3 pieces on the board that we roll for before deployment. So I suppose my answer is 'sort-of'. If I had to pick one or the other I'd use just cover rules, but thankfully I don't!

I always play rolling for every piece and that's the tournament standard. It's such a big part of the game. I never use the specific scenery warscrolls though (outside of balewinds and wyldwoods). Playing with "active" realm gates in a generic scenario is a pet hate of mine (realm gates are supposed to transport you to another of the mortal realms, not 30 feet across a field).

We almost never use the mystical terrain. We typically have 15-20 terrain pieces on the board at any given time, so it would just be too much book keeping.

 EnTyme wrote:
We almost never use the mystical terrain. We typically have 15-20 terrain pieces on the board at any given time, so it would just be too much book keeping.

Wow! You boards must look epic! :-) Yeah I would probably skip a little if I played with that many.

Adding to what I said above - if there is a building we play it can be garrisoned using the Chapel (I think) rules and fences/walls provide cover to units touching them when faced with attacks coming from the opposite side.

We also play hills as terrain (otherwise, why have them on the board?) - and lastly, although we roll for everything in basically every game Sinister and Inspiring don't have any affect (or are forgotten about) so it's only Damned, Arcane, Deadly and Mystical that are important.

We usually roll for the larger pieces without warscrolls and have been assigning rules to certain scenery items that look the part (deadly for rivers, arcane for towers, etc).

In most games a lot of it does not have an effect though. Deadly is the only one we always care about, arcane often affects deployment (but no one fights over it), mystical is usually let slide (esp. in games with newer players, because it feels like it gives an unfair advantage/disadvantage), I am yet to see anyone use damned and we always forget about inspiring and sinister.

I think the way to make sure that terrain rules matter (I wish they would) is to mention it at the start and to set an example.

I want to but nobody at my shop seems to. In fact I don't even recall them using cover.

For me my general rule would be to use it unless it's a specific scenario and maybe even then but I don't know how well it would be received. I certainly have never seen anybody use Mystic Terrain.

We play terrain as simple cover, and also simple walls and fences also give +1 cover if the unit is within 3" behind it.

My LGS favours huge "complexes" as terrain (think of areas in ruins, whole blocks, like a small palace) so we do use the terrain rules but for the whole area. Cover bonus will only be applied when something major (ie: a pile of rubble in the eastern hall) is found.

I can't say my store uses the terrain, and most of the players are still iffy about too much terrain. Last tourney we had the organizer made some interesting boards, but didn't use the mystic rules.

Cover though, is definitely a thing.

Image of one of the boards

We use them all, we even use the special ones from the scenery book.

Realm gates are really fantastic, but you need to place them so that nobody can use them turn 1. (at least 6" outside deployment zone)

and having some special buildings adds to the game

I had to write some myself for our campaign for sieges based on the old GW fort (and am still playtesting) to make it play like siege (and not having horses run up the steep fortress walls etc)

This game becomes a tactical challenge by placing different kinds of terrain. otherwhise it really becomes a game of who has built the best list for the battleplan which is quite lame.

It can even help to even things out a bit against a player with less experience, or at a disadvantage due to shooty vs close melee etc...

I think using only cover might be good for the first couple of games (if you never played a wargame) to get the system in.

I want to encourage using terrain as they are intended, because games seem really bland otherwise. I'm not sold on all the different pieces though that have rules, since some of them seem really weird, also that's most of the terrain we have at the GW store (I wish they had more, but I think they can only use official GW terrain of which there is woefully few)

At my shop we generally choose 2-3 terrain pieces to be represented by their magical warscrolls and then the rest is just cover.

Because going all cover is a bit bland and going all magical has too much book-keeping involved (And we're only playing Age of Sigmar. I mean, we can only just about read anyway )

I personally prefer to use the mystical rules whenever I can, though most of my opponents prefer to only use basic cover rules. Occasionally we well use the warscroll abilities provided they don't give one side an unfair advantage. We also on occasions use a pair of Realm Gates but we disregard the table edge ability.

Well, I used some of the terrain rules from the main basic rule set for my first real game. The scenery table thing. But we only had five terrain pieces on the board, and because I have a terrible memory i wrote down what each piece was on a scrap of paper and we had them visible next to the piece.

I can see how keeping track would get quite confusing on more terrain heavy boards, where it would make sense just to worry about cover, or maybe only give 1-3 notable pieces special rules.

We will always use some terrain rules. Like some have said rolling for every piece requires a bit too much book keeping though. Generally we will roll for 3-4 pieces of terrain on the mystical chart. Beyond that we will throw 1 or 2 pieces of terrain with warscrolls on the board.

I especially enjoy using the Watchtower or Witchfate Tor as the central focus on the board. The "orbital lazer" spell from the Dreadfire Portal is fun as well!

PS: I've found that using Damned terrain works well with skeletons since they regenerate.