Niiai wrote:I like a good looking battlefield with loads of terain. I also think terain benefits a melee army. But today my ork opponent said he does not like terain. His ideal battlefield would be no terain. In theory, he did not suggest we did not use terain.
And I just do not think that is true. Do somebody have some insight? Or opinion?
It varies.
In general the only universal right now is that higher save [and generally tougher] infantry like Space Marines benefit substantially more from terrain than light infantry like Orks.
Some terrain, like craters and forests, impede movement, and are beneficial for melee-poor forces like
IG. Some terrain, like Obscuring terrain can give shelter for midsized melee units and NLoS guns. Tall buildings can be deep-struck on top of for short charges.
More importantly, whether you like terrain really doesn't matter whether you benefit from it, but whether you benefit form it more than you opponent
.
In general, I would agree with your friend. As Orks, there's not a lot of benefit you stand to gain from terrain. Where you gain a benefit, your opponent likely gains a bigger one. Your infantry squads are very large and likely to spill out from behind obscruing anyway [and are also going to break cover really fast in order to charge], your armor is poor and will get blown through light cover or no, and even though you might like the -1 to hit from forests, you really don't want to be slowed because failing to reach melee is death whether you havea -1 or not.
As an
IG player, I would generally like to see a board with lots of ruins and craters, and very little forests and industrial terrain. -1's to hit are almost always going to be worse for me than my opponent and I have no recourse against them. +1 save will also benefit my opponent more than me, but my guns have good
AP, so I can have so measure of benefit, and Obscuring protects my relatively fragile units and lets me leverage my artillery superiority while Difficult protects my infantry from melee.
As Marines, I like to see lots of terrain in general, with a preference for craters and forests and a few tall buildings, because I'm almost always going to gain more from -1 to be hit or +1 armor than my opponent will, and I don't mind being slowed because most of my melee units deep strike.
As Sisters, I want to see industrial zones and ruins, because the last thing I want is to have fragile repentia bogged down in a crater short of melee, but with 3+ armor the survivability boost benefits me more than most.
As Grey Knights, I want to see lots of tall ruins. Tall ruins mean real estate to deep strike, and again, good saves benefit extraordinarily strongly from light cover.
and so on.
If I played Tyranids or Orks though, I'd probably not want to see as much terrain. I have units that want to get to melee and are very fragile, so pieces that slow you but provide incomplete protection like craters and forests are right out, with poor
BS I don't want to mess around with -1's to hit from industrial zones, and with limited to no NLoS potential and large squad sizes Obscuring will limit my ability to pick things that threaten my shock force out more than it will protect my 20 and 30 person squads.
