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How do!

Spinning off from News & Rumours’ general thread, as this is a topic that definitely spares discussion.

In short, a large part of an enjoyable game relies on decent quality and variety of terrain. No, not linked to the material you’ve made it from. That doesn’t really matter a whole lot. Could be made from bits and bobs, or entirely from GW’s plastic offerings.

Rather, you need a real variety. Because if any level is too open? Range favouring gangs have a clear advantage. If it’s too cluttered, close up favouring gangs can get into position without ever exposing themselves to enemy fire. Instead, you want a happy medium.

What’s a happy medium? Let’s face it, that’ll entirely boil down to who you ask. Hence it’s kinda a fine art to get it somewhat right.

And that’s the question I’m putting to you, Dakka. I want your thoughts and experiences, including those for Zone Mortalis. And if you’ve demonstrative piccies, so much the better!

I have several pics of Flinty's excellent Sector Mechanicus type terrain, mostly from model PoV.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/images-55408-60683_Necromunda%20Reports.html

As we both use relatively shooting heavy gangs (Van Saar and Orlock) we both need to find places where we're in cover, but with good fields of view.

I, however, also have a tendency to run people with demo charges.

The terrain is good for this. As there's a lot of low-level total line of sight blocking terrain, I tend to stay low down initially. LoS blocking forces you to move into position to get a good line of fire, or place to throw a charge from. You can't do a line-up-and-shoot gallery.

Higher up, there's a lot of areas with long lines of sight. But you can be terribly exposed.

I playing with the cardboard Zone Mortalis boards, as it allows you to very easily set up a board with reliable yet balanced parameters.
I also quite like buildings designed for Infinity that my local group uses, although that tends to be quite shooting focused as it's relatively hard to get in close. I'm sure more buildings, and more connections between buildings, would solve this issue though.

My hobby plan for 2021 (starting today as my holiday has now begun) is to paint 6 Necromunda gangs and 6 terrain boards. The terrain boards will be intended to display the miniatures as I have no plans to play Necromunda in the near future but I'm going to try to construct the boards in such a way that they can be joined and arranged in different configurations to create a variety of possible gaming surfaces. This is the start of the first board, I don't know how I'll construct them all as there is no full plan, but you get the idea by looking at these pics how board number two (and subsequent) could be built so as to attach to this board in a number of different ways, as well as being a standalone board for a single gang display. I intend to concentrate mostly on aesthetic appeal but hopefully it will work out so that the finished project would be enjoyable to use in game too.

The six gangs will be GSC, Van Saar, Enforcers, Delaque, Orlock(ish), and Inquisimunda.







I think this first board will be pic number 2 (with other bits added - chain fences, rubble, metal floor panels, etc etc, this is an early WIP). I might do a blog or something, it has been years since I did anything like that, seems like it might be enjoyable to document the project.

One rather memorable game I had was where we created a container maze near the middle. Made for quite a tense scenario as you were playing a kind of mini Zone Mortalis, but with walkways above making you extra vulnerable. Problem was, the walkways were all clearly visible from the container maze! So, in effect, it was this odd game of Cat and Mouse

Zone mortalis is an odd thing - there's a tendency to be either wide out in the open, or completely obscured. This is no bad thing, and a bit of scatter terrain can help but it makes for a tense game of close-in fighter trying to dodge across fire lanes and shooting gangs watching the corners. I'm in the middle of painting a LOT of ZM terrain which should make for some interesting games.

First time I came across this type of setup was in Old Necromunda. Escher with hand flamers on overwatch were BRUTAL...

Wider shots of my necromunda kit





I kept the original.necromunda 3" height bands,.and tried to leave enough gaps in building.g to let hands get in. Plenty of barricades, Jersey barriers and gubbins to block the gaps up for play but can be shifted about to allow.access.

Good start guys!

My terrain journey this year has been interesting. We went from exclusively playing on the cardboard tiles unless the store had stuff we could use. To have just slightly too little terrain, to finally having enough terrain that we could make the truly immersive boards we wanted. That said, I do need to invest in some more scatter I think.

Currently, the meta for my area on my terrain tends to skew towards Blast weapons and template weapons. So the shooting gangs are still really strong especially if they can pair overseer or run and gun. The Van Saar were a terror in my last campaign (The only thing that ended their reign of terror was the release of House of Blades when the Escher climbed to the top rather rapidly due to no one knowing how to fight them off with their new toys).

Anyway, here is a Picture dump of all my tables this year below. If anyone knows how to make gallery images spoiler tagged let me know. because I don't.

I forget what rulebook I read it in (I think it was Reality's Edge, a cyberpunk skirmish game), but there was a tidbit about if you have a spot on the table with unbroken line of sight longer than 12", you should put something in to break it up. Not necessarily full-on blocking terrain, but something. Seems a good rule of thumb, though for Necromunda the distance may be different.

Really interesting evolution of terrain, balmong7

I can see why VS would have been terrifying at the start - that's a very sparse board. By the end you've got a lot of walls, containers, and other solid stuff. Really breaks up sightlines.

I do worry that even with those last few images, I can't see fighters getting very close at all, the top level is *completely* exposed to anyone trying to move around.

Remember - just because you can go up, doesn't mean you should. Ground level looks fairly dense, and the big flat floors block vertical LoS from snipers on high.

If that's your experience with that table I'll concede.
Although I've played on similar boards and melee basically wasn't a thing. Especially with the need to climb up levels, losing even 3" of your move to to go up a short ladder is a big chunk of your movement.

Don't know if it's of any help but this is the board that my gaming buddy and I play on for Necromunda, although we play old school 2nd edition Necromunda (the rulebook circa 2003) and it's a 4' x 4' board give or take 2" either side -





We did get into melee once last game. Needs a bit more terrain I think, especially as I run a Van Saar gang, although the jersey style barricades that were an addition to the terrain last game did make a difference....

I've asked this question myself on another forum, and was advised that 2 sets of the original cardstock terrain (that you can see in my photos above) is generally a good starting place. Trouble is the time, and money for raw materials, to make such terrain or finding cheap suitable alternatives...

I love variety in games. Even though it would be the most balanced approach to always have the "terrain best practices" checkboxes ticked, I tend to disregard such things and whenever I get to "build a board" I just try to make it as interesting and cool looking as possible.

Instead of obsessing over firing lanes and all that, I try to form a "functional" scene for the setting, and then proceed to place the terrain in a way that would make sense. For example, lets assume some sort of central structure existed on the map; I'd then place all the rest of the terrain outwards from that central structure bearing in mind the logistics and function of the scene (it's a power generator - maintenance access is from northside via ladders, tow space for vehicles & cargo on the east side with loading ramp, all the power cabling is piped somewhere off towards west, working personell have a break space in a hab container next to the loading ramp etc). At the end, I add scatter terrain to even out things, might add some crates or debris to give a bit of cover into super sparse / exposed areas of the board, or embellish an important vantage point even further.

It's nice to mix it up, sometimes having denser builds/areas, and other times having more sparse builds. It's a great way to spice things up.

I think if our games always had the same amount of terrain and terrain density would be constant, things would get more boring. Its much more challenging when the benefits/risks in terrain and movement are unsymmetrical. It's more "realistic" too, if we can even call anything realistic in a fictional tabletop board game..

If you need more easy blocking terrain I can recommend plastcraft containers
https://elementgames.co.uk/paints-hobby-and-scenery/paints-hobby-and-scenery-by-manufacturer/plastcraft/plastcraft-science-fiction/sci-fi-big-container

£3 each and are sturdy enough for play. A couple of mine





Alternatively just look out for MDF barricade sets.

In terms of fire corridors, scatter terrain and that?

I think variety is important. Clear fire corridors shouldn’t be actively avoided. And scatter terrain doesn’t need to be entirely LoS blocking, or offer the same protection from every angle.

If we consider relatively humble stuff, like crates and and barrels. These can provide LoS blocking, hard cover and light cover, depending on how they’re placed/stacked, and the relative size of a model.

GW’s plastic terrain is an interesting example of this. Depending on the angle it’s viewed from, the walls (Imperialis) and supports (Mechanicus) will either block LoS, provided limited LoS (and thus cover) or leave a model fully visible. And the barriers/upper floors relatively rarely entirely obscure models - again largely dependent on the angle of view.

Other kits may not have that built into their design. So we as the gamers need to take that into account with our scatter and other “set dressing” pieces.

Me? On a personal preference, I quite like to have upper levels relatively open. Their height provides a protection of its own, as anyone more than a level below is going have tight angles to work with. The trade off of course is that if they do hit you, there’s a chance you’re going for a plummet to make a Lemming proud.

Overall, as someone who generally prefers to DM, it’s important to listen to player feedback. And where possible in a campaign, have someone not taking part in that game setup the table. And if you’re super prepared, and lucky enough to have enough stuff for multiple boards? Get them setup before determining who is playing on which. Whilst still not foolproof, it does about as much can be hoped to remove biased terrain placement.

Zone Mortalis? Hands up honesty, I’ve not played it often enough to have the experience necessary to really comment. Overall it feels that just the general layout and doors etc are a good start. But I’d still want me scatter terrain, because that stuff is great!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Reckon I’ll break out the old Photato tomorrow (my real life super power is turning any camera into a photato due to my mad skills), alongside me Zone Mortalis bits. Do a demonstrative series, featuring Baldy Bill, one of my Delaque Gangers.

This might inspire you: https://www.instagram.com/sol_vince/?hl=en