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Ok, here's what happened:

2000 pt game. Me and my opponent did alternating terrain. First off, my FLGS has three tables, each with a different theme: ruined city, desert (which can flip over and become frozen tundra, which is pretty cool), and grassland/plains/forest. We played on the grassland table. When it came time to set up terrain, I decided to keep it real and use terrain appropriate to the theme of the table (hills, forests, etc), but, whenever it was his turn to setup terrain, he would dig through the store's various terrains and bust out city ruins (nevermind there was already a pile of grassland terrain already set aside on the table), AND A FORTRESS OF REDEMPTION ("umm, its a building! It doesn't have guns or anything...") and put it on his side of the table, in essence giving tons of 4+ cover to his side. Needelss to say, he won. Now, I know I should have trounced him and started setting stuff up on his side, but the act of taking and using terrain that is not in theme (and in essence giving himself free Aegis defense lines minus the quad gun), but do I have a right to be upset and call cheese on this?

Sides of hills is also 4+ cover if you can manage it well. Personally I think all terrain should be determined at the start and then you guys take turns placing so it doesn't go so one sided.

The terrain rules in 6th edition are specifically designed to allow you to set up terrain to your advantage. If you wanted to play a themed table with balanced terrain (for example, set up terrain and then roll for deployment zones) then you needed to make that clear and agree on it before the game started.

I don't think you'll get in this situation if you follow the "Setting up a game" or whatever, in the back of the BRB. It calls for setting up terrain before choosing sides. It makes it too dangerous to fortify one side, because your opponent may get the side you built the perfect fortification on.

Plus, you could have agreed beforehand that you should only have used themed terrain. Also, when he started with his cheese, you could have called him out on it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:
The terrain rules in 6th edition are specifically designed to allow you to set up terrain to your advantage.

How's that?

 SgtSixkilla wrote:
I don't think you'll get in this situation if you follow the "Setting up a game" or whatever, in the back of the BRB. It calls for setting up terrain before choosing sides. It makes it too dangerous to fortify one side, because your opponent may get the side you built the perfect fortification on.

Plus, you could have agreed beforehand that you should only have used themed terrain. Also, when he started with his cheese, you could have called him out on it.

I know. Lesson learned. BTW, you actually roll for sides before terrain is placed.

True. I had the order wrong. I had to look it up now. That's actually quite silly.

 SgtSixkilla wrote:
True. I had the order wrong. I had to look it up now. That's actually quite silly.

If that were the case, my opponent could possibly benefit from my Aegis line and quad gun.

But, if there's anything this battle has taught me is that being a terrain nazi would be in my best interest. I can be too nice at times (the whole tournament sportsmanship thing is hard to turn off).

Oh well, live and let live.

PS

I did tell the player that unless he grants me a rematch on the same table with PROPER terrain, I won't stop making fun of his mother.

tiberius183 wrote:

If that were the case, my opponent could possibly benefit from my Aegis line and quad gun.

I always thought it was silly that fortifications went up before terrain, but I guess those cheesemongers who use the fortress of redemption would never have been able to deploy it. It wouldn't be hard to houserule that terrain could be removed to make room for fortifications, though.

This is why I like to set up the table far in advance of a game or have a third party do it for us. No advantages on either side.

Now, if you are using major fortifications, that can be a problem. We don't right now.

Another way to do things is for one player to set up the terrain, and then allow the other to choose sides. That way they'll be trying to make the field as balanced as possible, and it's also handy when one person arrives before the other!

The way we handle terrain is we split the board into 6 sections. Each player gets 3 sections, the two corners on your side of the board and the middle on the opponents side. Then you roll a D3 for each section for how much terrain goes there. Large items counts as 2 pieces of terrain. Keeps it pretty fair.

You are to blame yourself. You wanted to have "fluffy" terrian, he wanted to have terrain used to his advantage. We therefore have two conflicting ideas.

It would have been your task to communicate before placing terrain e.g. one tells the other what he thinks of how terrain should work. Then place the terrain.

He did everything correct and is not to blame for anything.

A lot of people need to realize that it's a game played by 2 humans, not like a video game where an AI checks the rules...

You really have the same complaint as someone bringing a fluffly list to play against a player with a list more suited to playing the game.

You could have asked him before hand if you could use fluffy forest type terrain but count it as ruins. Really though, I don't see it being an issue if you just addressed your concern the first moment he put down a ruin.

Maybe he thought it was fluffy that there were city ruins and the city was just becoming overgrown.

should have said you have to take terrain relevant to table or he has to let you get similar buildings then you could play the table as a over grown ruined city with jungle / forests growing into it so just get bushes and trees and put them in and around buildings for decoration not for use. tho i think its a douchy thing to do but i guess sense he wants to play it like that spell every thing out for him.

In the future, set the expectations early.

In this case, you played a guy who was more interested in winning than in playing.

Some people are like that. Plan accordingly.

Yes, setting up terrain is now a strategic exercise, unfortunately.

Usually, when I play, I always ask my opponent if they want to just set it up narratively. When they say no (which they almost always do), I look to see how they're going to set things up.

If my opponent is going to make a table that looks interesting, but is slightly biased towards them, then I'll do the same. If my opponent starts hammering down terrain for advantage as much as possible, then I'll do likewise - placing large objects in front of his ADL guns, putting impassable terrain behind stuff my opponent was planning on hiding behind, etc.

I'm usually the guy to set up terrain for my games. I seriously dislike other people doing it as they tend to alternate between placing it in an illogical manner, or not putting enough down. Place terrain for cinematic effect or the like, not because the rules day "roll a D3 for every table quarter and place that amount of terrain in each", otherwise you'll find yourself with a battlefield that's just a shooting game. We have our terrain in a number of boxes at our club, each box having a theme (western, steampunk, french village, etc), with each box being enough for a table. This limits what terrain people use, and reins in the silliness (though there is a Big Bird statue doing the rounds as an objective marker in some boxes). If the board isn't set up in a way that takes into account fun more than stringent adherence to the rules then I wouldn't play it. The board should be set up to give each side an even advantage, but still be playable.

Oh, and a bit of advice I give to people (though no-one ever seems to follow). Set your terrain up diagonally, not straight in line with a table edge. This way shooty armies can't deploy their fire power without redeploying, and close combat forced have a lot more terrain in their way (instead of just blasting targets turn one, or running straight across the board). =/