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Hello, I've recently gotten into Warmachine and Hordes coming as a 40k player where the basic idea for a good board is to have a healthy amount of terrain, both LoS blocking and not. Is it as an integral part of creating a balanced Warmachine game as it is for 40k? Or is a more sparsely decorated board okay?

Terrain is very important. Terrain makes and breaks games. This is because terrain has very powerful effects, los is extremely important and precise, and many models have rules that interact with terrain, ignoring it or giving them benefits. This means "a little bit goes a long way" at least in comparison to some other games. You need the right amount. No terrain is going to make a dull and unbalanced game because nothing hinders shooting and threat ranges become super-static. Too much terrain is going to make for a dull game as things have trouble moving and stuff that ignores terrain dominates.

Luckily the kind folks at PP give strong, clear guidelines for terrain.

You should have 4-7 pieces of the board. Terrain pieces should have no side smaller than 4" or longer than 7". Terrain should be a good mix of types. It should be laid in such a way that while it doesn't hand the game to one player or the other, it should be asymmetrical and make going first vs choosing your board edge a real decision.

The volume of terrain the game is designed for is lower than other games. WM/H is about combat in relatively open areas on the outskirts of civilization, rather say crowded street-to-street fighting or in the depths of wild forests. That said the relatively low volume doesn't mean terrain fails to be a meaningful part of the game that has a huge effect on gameplay.

Unless you play against Legion of Everblight. Then all terrain does is slow you down

tremere47 wrote:
Unless you play against Legion of Everblight. Then all terrain does is slow you down

Not necessarily. They pretty much ignore only forests as far as terrain goes. Eyeless sight doesn't ignore things like cover, elevation or LOS blocking terrain like buildings. Mage Hunters are much worse when it comes to ignoring LOS.

@OP: Terrain is just as important in WM as in 40K. IMO, I like lots of it even when I play my shooty Cygnar. One of my most favorite games was an urban city table that had about a dozen or so buildings. Depending on how terrain is set up it can give one side or the other a major advantage, though. My recommendation is to play with different types of terrain, not just say forests. As mentioned above there are entire armies that can ignore forests.

On a 4x4 we generally have 1-2 buildings, 1-3 forests/ponds and then just walls/fences/barricades and stuff to provide cover and make people work for their charge lanes!

Works well!

The above is all well stated, but keep in mind, you can play on as dense a table as you want (though the game is not designed for such play). That said, some strange and original scenario tables I've played on had elevated train tracks, support columns, construction devices etc and created the most varied and fun games I've ever played.

Yup, of course boards like that lend themselves better to narrative play or something prearranged.

I was actually about to post a separate topic, but it seems appropriate to just take onto this thread:

I have a bunch of GW 40k ruins that are decently painted. Do those fit in on a WM table or are they a little too goth? I'm debating whether or not I should eBay my terrain along with my 40k armies, or if I should hold onto it for Warmahordes.

Grey Templar wrote:Yup, of course boards like that lend themselves better to narrative play or something prearranged.

Undoubtedly. Not great for pick up games unless you discuss before hand, but those oddball scenarios make for great Bat Reps!

slowthar wrote:I was actually about to post a separate topic, but it seems appropriate to just take onto this thread:

I have a bunch of GW 40k ruins that are decently painted. Do those fit in on a WM table or are they a little too goth? I'm debating whether or not I should eBay my terrain along with my 40k armies, or if I should hold onto it for Warmahordes.

I've played on a lot of tables that use 40K ruins. So long as the bolters and servo skulls are removed, I find you barely even notice.

 slowthar wrote:
I was actually about to post a separate topic, but it seems appropriate to just take onto this thread:

I have a bunch of GW 40k ruins that are decently painted. Do those fit in on a WM table or are they a little too goth? I'm debating whether or not I should eBay my terrain along with my 40k armies, or if I should hold onto it for Warmahordes.

That architecture is a bit different than most of what you'd find in the Iron Kingdoms. With some extra spikey bits, they could probably serve as Orgoth ruins though. I'm not sure most players try particularly hard to do real representations of canonical IK architecture.

What's more likely to cause can issue with 40k terrain is the pieces to be big, like XBOX huge. WM/H is definitely a game designed for open terrain broken up by bits of rough terrain, and a few scattered (if any), LoS blockers. No so much advances under cover with a need to really break up fire lanes..

If the terrain pieces has a a footprint much bigger than 7" on any one side, it may prove disruptive.

Interesting. I have a large number of craters and smaller wall-type terrain, too. Sounds like they're more appropriate?

Thanks, guys. I'm looking forward to this.

Terrain is all important. Sadly, it's so important in the rules that it causes players to use so little of it, and making sure that there's mirrored terrain.

So many games at my store and others have players playing on that same damn stretch of land with two hills, two forests, mirrored on both sides, and maybe a large rock.

If you want to try using terrain, I'd suggest that you avoid craters, the walls are often never well defined and all they really do is make your models tip over if you're on the edge.

 Vertrucio wrote:
Terrain is all important. Sadly, it's so important in the rules that it causes players to use so little of it, and making sure that there's mirrored terrain.

So many games at my store and others have players playing on that same damn stretch of land with two hills, two forests, mirrored on both sides, and maybe a large rock.

If you want to try using terrain, I'd suggest that you avoid craters, the walls are often never well defined and all they really do is make your models tip over if you're on the edge.

Mirrored terrain is a strict no-no if you're playing by anything resembling the official terrain guidelines. If you're playing with mirrored terrain well I won't say you're playing "Wrong" but you're not playing the game was designed to be played. Certainly you're handing a huge incentive to choose to go first rather than pick board edge, at minimum. I won't call 2 Hills, 2 Forests, Mirrored off to the edges the most degenerate of the common table setups, but it's close.

Craters are fine but if they're hard to stand on they're probably best played impassable terrain or an obstacle.

One of my favorite bits of warmachine is that buildings can be entered and used and abused. I make my own scratch built buildings to use. 32mm is a slightly odd scale for most terrain.

I have a question, concerning buildings and the like. I haven't read the rules as of yet, but am curious about the game. The building pictured above brought this too my mind.

Can you smash through walls and create openings/make charges through, buildings and terrain?

You can't smash through walls and create openings.

You can charge through rough terrain and if you have Pathfinder or Flight (or a spell that allows it), you can charge through all types of terrain, including in the case of flight: buildings.

 Carnikang wrote:
I have a question, concerning buildings and the like. I haven't read the rules as of yet, but am curious about the game. The building pictured above brought this too my mind.

Can you smash through walls and create openings/make charges through, buildings and terrain?

The game does contain rules for breaking through buildings/walls. However it never comes up for a few reasons:

A) Terrain has to be defined as destructible before the game. In other words you to go out and calculate ARM and Health values for the objects based on the rules and how you want ot break them up. This is a big pain, so nobody ever does it.
B) Even you did set it up, it'd almost never be a more effective tactic than just like going around or eating the defensive penalties to attack their model.

For practical purposes the answer is gonna be "No" since.. like you'll almost never run into someone who wants to use those rules. They do exist though, if you want to try and convince someone to give them a try at some point.

PhantomViper wrote:
You can't smash through walls and create openings.

You can charge through rough terrain and if you have Pathfinder or Flight (or a spell that allows it), you can charge through all types of terrain, including in the case of flight: buildings.

Actually the structure rules can be flexed a bit with some house rules treating each wall as it's own sub-structure while requiring all walls to be destroyed for the structure to collapse.. It can create fun scenarios.

Generally, buildings are just ruled as impassable. The building rules are good, but the detail is too complex for regular games. Its almost RPG level of insanity on that level.

 Chongara wrote:

 Carnikang wrote:
I have a question, concerning buildings and the like. I haven't read the rules as of yet, but am curious about the game. The building pictured above brought this too my mind.

Can you smash through walls and create openings/make charges through, buildings and terrain?

The game does contain rules for breaking through buildings/walls. However it never comes up for a few reasons:

A) Terrain has to be defined as destructible before the game. In other words you to go out and calculate ARM and Health values for the objects based on the rules and how you want ot break them up. This is a big pain, so nobody ever does it.
B) Even you did set it up, it'd almost never be a more effective tactic than just like going around or eating the defensive penalties to attack their model.

For practical purposes the answer is gonna be "No" since.. like you'll almost never run into someone who wants to use those rules. They do exist though, if you want to try and convince someone to give them a try at some point.

That's both interesting.. and a bit disappointing. I can see it being cinematic in it's own way, though I can understand the rules being too complicated for a normal pick up game. Thanks for the answer.