Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So, I've currently hit my ideal army size at the moment with my custodes, so to tide me over until they release the rules for their 30k kits in a book, I've decided to create my own 6x4 game space inspired by the new kits from GW.

The mat I want to get is this one: Quarantine Zone 6x4 Neoprene mat

And I'm planning to get this amount of terrain:
1 x Impirialis Basilicanum kit
2 x Impirialis Sanctum kits
2 x Impirialis Administratum kits
3 x Impirialis Ruins kits

Now, I'm just wondering if it's the right amount of terrain for a mat this size? The terrain kits are what's included in GW's relm of battle megabucks set, and the photos in that look a little sparse. Anyone with experience of the new kits able to guide me if the a mount of terrain I'm going to buy is enough for a 6x4 mat without overloading it or making it look empty?

Its a balance between usability and awesome.

if a table was built as is in some art work then you would need chopsticks to move models around in places.

buildings should be placed in a way that you can without too much effort reach around and move things.

as well the buildings should be built so that you can move models inside without too much fuss ether (basically no or removable roof)

id say there should be at least 5-8" of space between most buildings

 Dr. Mills wrote:
So, I've currently hit my ideal army size at the moment with my custodes, so to tide me over until they release the rules for their 40k kits in a book, I've decided to create my own 6x4 game space inspired by the new kits from GW.

The mat I want to get is this one: Quarantine Zone 6x4 Neoprene mat

And I'm planning to get this amount of terrain:
1 x Impirialis Basilicanum kit
2 x Impirialis Sanctum kits
2 x Impirialis Administratum kits
3 x Impirialis Ruins kits

Now, I'm just wondering if it's the right amount of terrain for a mat this size? The terrain kits are what's included in GW's relm of battle megabucks set, and the photos in that look a little sparse. Anyone with experience of the new kits able to guide me if the a mount of terrain I'm going to buy is enough for a 6x4 mat without overloading it or making it look empty?

That is perfect. TBH. As to the "Mat".... that is optional, most of us just use the terrain on the table. Add in a couple of low rocks and sandbags, or the Line of sight Break up stuff, and you are good to go with just that. As a matter of fact, you can use even half of that list and you are good, it just depends on your style of game and size of the armies, because the terrain will influence movements, and shooting, as well as the large weapons- THEN you add in the effects of the buildings/ ruins/ etc. ( if you use the datacards) and it all depends on your level of experience for the game play.

If that is your terrain, add that on your table, add in some low level stuff like rocks, or rubble piles, or sprue piles scrap heaps in the open areas. You could also go make some swamp/ sump puddles/ lakes, and piping out of PVC pipe, and spread them around as well...

From the looks of it, I would say that amount of terrain is probably on the conservative side of "city" terrain. Which basically means what you're planning on getting is probs the minimum you'll want. So just get it and if you find you want more then get some more. Worst case scenario you buy a couple ruins too many but then you can just use them to create more varied terrain for different missions.

My personal preference for terrain is "all of it" so take that as you will. I don't have much in the way of GW terrain but right now I have about 7-8 free standing buildings plus storage containers and loads of barricades and that gives a decent coverage for 4' by 4' board, though I would like 3-4 more buildings for the same size board. Were I to do a 4' by 6' I could see myself using at least 16 (maybe 20) buildings, in addition to more containers, barricades and such.

BTW if you build a city board and you don't end up using the Cities of Death rules then you're a filthy heretic.

Mixing buildings up with low debris is a good idea - you don't want to interfere with trying to play with models in the middle of the table, or risk jabbing yourself in the eye when you try and get a model's eye view. That shopping list sounds like a pretty good density for 6x4.

The mat is fantastic. I'd even suggest getting the double sided version to give you more options.

Dandelion wrote:
BTW if you build a city board and you don't end up using the Cities of Death rules then you're a filthy heretic.

Oh don't worry, I introduced the Cities of Death game rules to my group and its proving a hit!

This much!!

All the terrain. All of it.

Keeping playability in mind is of course important, but the terrain should pose restrictions:

There SHOULD be places where troops or tanks cannot enter. There SHOULD be broken mazes without clean firing lanes. There SHOULD be more open areas where things die. There SHOULD be elevation and negative height if possible to make visibility and movement more complex. What you have on your list seems to go a long way towards this, but something like the pic above is a good goal. Make it your own, make it interesting for your group. That will do.

A guideline I usually try to adhere to in any ‘shooting’ game (so effectively Napoleonics onward) is that if I can walk around the table at game-height and draw an unrestricted LOS from one side to the other, it’s wrong.

This was taken from a WW2 set I tried many moons ago which had the rationale that, if you went outside and looked around, you’d be surprised at how much you couldn’t see. Even if it’s simple contours for a steppe, or a ‘blocking’ copse of trees, it’s something.

I was thinking, " before or after the orbital strike". Sometimes I'm annoyed when I look at a city table and ask myself, how the feth do I get from the promethium station to my favorite Tasty Noodle™ driving a rhino (realizing I can't). But that's prebombbardment. Post bombardment road ways constricted by ruins and other scattering effects could be normal. Or was the city designed around pedestrian traffic in the first place? In which case the question becomes how do I walk to the Tasty Noodle....thinking next big city we play on needs a roundabout at the center.....

as much terrain as you can fit and still play the game. with a variety of choke points, impassable terrain for anything other than troops, fatal funnels, etc. but that doesn't mean no open areas, just make them have an objective right in the middle so you have to risk being out in the open to score it.

What's "too much" terrain?

stroller wrote:
What's "too much" terrain?

Not enough room to deploy your army in proper coherencey.

 Insurgency Walker wrote:

stroller wrote:
What's "too much" terrain?

Not enough room to deploy your army in proper coherencey.

Sounds just right then. Ideally the terrain should restrict your deployment, make it challenging, force you to make hard choices, keep some in reserve.

In all things seek to make the terrain break the min/max/ideal of the game and force both players out into new lands of decisions and methods.

In fact, the largest problem in almost every tournament and nearly every single web battle is the lack of terrain. Same reason people complain about shooty armies. Sure, it's a problem if you've got a WHFB type battlefield, nice, flat, and open lines. But that makes for crappy game play.

Hard choices make for better play. The rules keep removing them because folks don't like to have to think or to choose from a set of less than ideal options.

Quite silly.

Ideally you want rational terrain. Roadways are death traps with open lines. Buildings and alleys are tight and restrict/slow movement, limit the number of guys in your squad that can actually shoot. Enemies lurking behind corners limit number of casualties.

Same goes for non-city battles. You want impassable terrain to break the table up, There should be limited access or crossing between, into, etc the impassable terrain. Ideally it should force the army to move very far out of position in order to access it or escape it.

Objectives should require out of position staging and dangerous model positioning.

People complain about spam or horde armies but the simple solution is terrain. Makes it rough on that horde, constantly in it's own way, little progress, jammed up line of movement. Shooty army a problem? Terrain is the solution. Ideally no single 10 man squad should be able to fire all 10 weapons at any given enemy squad and even if they can then they should not be ale to kill more than a few as the rest will be out of LOS.

If you want a game light on terrain, WHFB or AoS is your game. 40K thrives and the rules function best with very little open ground. Otherwise it tends towards min/maxed bull-crap and shooty/hordy stuff.

Ok a (hopefully) more coherent answer: LOTS of ruined buildings. One, maybe two, main streets with a lot of rubble in the street. Burned out vehicles unless the bulldozers have JUST done a sweep, in which case the wrecks block ALL the side streets. Side streets effectively impassable to vehicles unless VERY slow with dozers. Sniper and anti tank foxholes or rooftops. Maybe a park with craters. If so, wrecked fences/walls around it.

To the OP: if it isn't road it should have ruins or craters/rubble on it. Google "city fighting" and aim for that look.

Does it make it tough for vehicles? Of course. That's partly the point. House to house fighting is the dirtiest, nastiest, hardest fighting you can have. No such thing as "too much", but hey, what do I know?

meatybtz wrote:
In fact, the largest problem in almost every tournament and nearly every single web battle is the lack of terrain.

It's one of my biggest pet peeves with Battle Reports and especially tournament reports. I remember a report from years ago where one round had the instruction "remove all terrain from the table", and they just had to play on a flat terrain-less board.

Bad terrain is the reason I keep this picture in my gallery:

Masses of buildings don’t make the table as good as masses of street furniture amongst less red volumes of buildings does. Buy large amounts of the small things and masterplan it correctly

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:
Masses of buildings don’t make the table as good as masses of street furniture amongst less red volumes of buildings does. Buy large amounts of the small things and masterplan it correctly

By Red, I am going to presume you mean "unusable/impassable" terrain. Red terrain is important. Consider this. I don't like 40K climbing rules as they wreck the barrier of terrain. 6" of vertical? Wow. Mind you it still is going to slow the enemy the hell down. But I like "impassable" terrain because it can't be climbed.

So consider the implications of a game with 1 minor, 2 normal, and one major objective. The Major objective is setup to be a king of the hill type so it is on the 2nd (or third) level of a major red structure where only the top is passable terrain and to get up you have to go use one of two side buildings and one of two narrow walkways that lead to it. Now consider the same with just spiderman models and how it alters game play entirely.

The picture linked above your post is a great example of WHFB board thinking. That wold be a perfect board for WHFB because there is just enough there to make wheeling and charging a bit more thoughtful but not enough to impede the gameplay of old school WHFB (which units need more flat open space to actually function, too much reforming would just wreck the flow of the game).

Red is a stray word that shouldn’t be in there. It’s meaningless.

All of my buildings are built to be accessible and move through. Otherwise it’s just boxes on a table

While I admit I occasionally don't spend as much time as I should on constructing a table for 40K, I do think the process should be simple.

1) Create a table which is based on a realistic lay-out. Get a little "Sim City" on it, and justify how and why you're placing stuff. Do not for one second consider playing a game of 40K on it. Start with the table first, as if you're cutting a slice out of a real location.

2) While doing this, consider having various types of areas on the board. Have a few cluttered, closed off sections, and a couple wide open streets, maybe a park in one area (dead or alive). Provide a small variety of locations which each present a tactical challenge. This adds an element to the game. It also rewards more versatile lists.

3) While it's tough with 40K...detritus/debris/scatter terrain can really make the table live. Rubble, street lamps, boxes, crates, broken down vehicles, etc. My 40K boards are nowhere near the level of my Old West boards, but it's a goal I'm shooting for eventually.

4) At all friggin' costs avoid the "tournament" style set up, where the table mimics one of those online RTS where the map is mirrored on each side. No battle in history has ever been fought on terrain like that, short of an open field. Just don't. Keep the table as varied as possible and make deployment zone selection actually matter.

 Elbows wrote:
While I admit I occasionally don't spend as much time as I should on constructing a table for 40K, I do think the process should be simple.

1) Create a table which is based on a realistic lay-out. Get a little "Sim City" on it, and justify how and why you're placing stuff. Do not for one second consider playing a game of 40K on it. Start with the table first, as if you're cutting a slice out of a real location.

2) While doing this, consider having various types of areas on the board. Have a few cluttered, closed off sections, and a couple wide open streets, maybe a park in one area (dead or alive). Provide a small variety of locations which each present a tactical challenge. This adds an element to the game. It also rewards more versatile lists.

3) While it's tough with 40K...detritus/debris/scatter terrain can really make the table live. Rubble, street lamps, boxes, crates, broken down vehicles, etc. My 40K boards are nowhere near the level of my Old West boards, but it's a goal I'm shooting for eventually.

4) At all friggin' costs avoid the "tournament" style set up, where the table mimics one of those online RTS where the map is mirrored on each side. No battle in history has ever been fought on terrain like that, short of an open field. Just don't. Keep the table as varied as possible and make deployment zone selection actually matter.

I like this thinking for board layout! The one thing I’d add is after you get the base location in sandbag emplacements, tank traps, and craters will help break up areas you decide are too sparsely covered.

As nice as mats like this one are, it's streets are aligned with the board edges. One thing you can do if you're not buying a mat is try to off-set the terrain to the edges.

Have everything at an angle, so it's not a straight shot down a road to the other side.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:


Have everything at an angle, so it's not a straight shot down a road to the other side.

This is one of my biggest pieces of advice for terrain. You need long fire lanes in order for long ranged weapons to work, but they shouldn't stretch deployment zone to deployment zone.

I’ve found more terrain to be better, and you’ve got a decent start Dr. Mills. I’d recommend either counting the lowest windows as line-of-sight blocking, or board them up as if they were reinforced after being ruined. Also if you have the budget get some other non-building terrain(like bridges or rubble piles), and scatter(ammo boxes or cargo containers) to spread around the board.

meatybtz wrote:

Sounds just right then. Ideally the terrain should restrict your deployment, make it challenging, force you to make hard choices, keep some in reserve.

Well. 8th ed has no reserves so terrain cannot really make you keep in reserve. No depth in DZ so they cannot be on reserves and unless scenario has specific rules there is no leaving off board(and the way reserve rules work lots of units become unplayable. Fun for h2h unit when you are set within 6" of edge and that's it).