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.

Agree that LOS blocking terrain is a must. At least one big piece in the middle of the battlefield to create flanks.

 Bottle wrote:
Agree that LOS blocking terrain is a must. At least one big piece in the middle of the battlefield to create flanks.

The scenario where all terrain blocks LoS...and eats running or charging models...really showcased how strategic this game can be and was the most fun I've had playing the game...just stinks most FLGS don't have a vast amount of terrain to be shared and GW stores don't like non-GW stuff used, or so I've heard.

Most games I've played though have been on planet bowling ball :( and even a few tall concrete walls would help that.

Mj445 wrote:
I feel shooting into combat, and shooting in general, would be less of an issue if people used more terrain and added LoS blocking walls and such...I never played WHFB but it seems to me like terrain wasnt a very big part of the game and AoS rules for placement only enforces playing with few pieces. If everything can hit anything whenever, it makes shooting that much stronger. My two cents.

I always found WHFB played better with a good amount of terrain, but the rules for 'special' terrain in the core rulebook were absolutely stupid so no one wanted much terrain.

Forests that would start murdering everyone and walk if you cast a spell near them, rivers that could murder your troops horribly if you try to cross, hills that grand a quarter of the table flaming weapons.. there was some really BS crap in there.

I maintain that the pitched battle and no terrain boards that people really lamented towards the end of WHFB's life is entirely because no one wanted to roll a 6 and play the watchtower mission that some armies absolutely dominated (WoC) and others had no way to win (Bretts) and no one wanted to roll on those stupid magic terrain charts for every single piece of terrain.

It's a good point about using plenty of terrain to block LoS. The same thing applies to 40K too, where a lot of people are complaining that shooty armies are too good.

Terrain is vital. Playing on barren tables and doing nothing but pitched battle variants was common where I am as well, to the point that if you did NOT play on barren tables people would accuse you of rigging the game in your favor and "screwing over" shooty armies.

And people seem to love the games where no terrain is in the center of the table and they met in the middle and pounded on each other until one fled.

However if you could get games in that WERE NOT this, whfb was fun. Double fun if you didn't have to play against 4th level wizards six-dicing their killer spell as their primary "tactic"

In AOS terrain is still vital as it breaks up the board, though for Azyr Empires we have it so forests block line of sight and that helps break up the table even more.

Mj445 wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
Agree that LOS blocking terrain is a must. At least one big piece in the middle of the battlefield to create flanks.

The scenario where all terrain blocks LoS...and eats running or charging models...really showcased how strategic this game can be and was the most fun I've had playing the game...just stinks most FLGS don't have a vast amount of terrain to be shared and GW stores don't like non-GW stuff used, or so I've heard.

Most games I've played though have been on planet bowling ball :( and even a few tall concrete walls would help that.

You don't even need to play a specific scenario; the Time of War rules for Realm of Fire have the following special rule that can be put into play simply by you choosing to use the Realm of Fire rules:

Clouds of Smoke and Steam
Terrain features in the Brimstone Peninsula are wreathed in smoke and steam that block sight. A model cannot see over a terrain feature to any targets that lie beyond it.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It's a good point about using plenty of terrain to block LoS. The same thing applies to 40K too, where a lot of people are complaining that shooty armies are too good.

To be fair, it's not simply that "shooty armies are too good" it's that specific shooty armies(Tau) are too good because of their ability to gain Ignores Cover at the drop of a hat.

Whenever I play I set up plenty of terrain but there's too many ways to ignore it like marker lights.

Terrain is not a panacea that solves all issues and its silly that the answer to valid complaints is "use more cover", the answer is better written rules.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Mj445 wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
Agree that LOS blocking terrain is a must. At least one big piece in the middle of the battlefield to create flanks.

The scenario where all terrain blocks LoS...and eats running or charging models...really showcased how strategic this game can be and was the most fun I've had playing the game...just stinks most FLGS don't have a vast amount of terrain to be shared and GW stores don't like non-GW stuff used, or so I've heard.

Most games I've played though have been on planet bowling ball :( and even a few tall concrete walls would help that.

You don't even need to play a specific scenario; the Time of War rules for Realm of Fire have the following special rule that can be put into play simply by you choosing to use the Realm of Fire rules:

Clouds of Smoke and Steam
Terrain features in the Brimstone Peninsula are wreathed in smoke and steam that block sight. A model cannot see over a terrain feature to any targets that lie beyond it.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It's a good point about using plenty of terrain to block LoS. The same thing applies to 40K too, where a lot of people are complaining that shooty armies are too good.

To be fair, it's not simply that "shooty armies are too good" it's that specific shooty armies(Tau) are too good because of their ability to gain Ignores Cover at the drop of a hat.

I never understood that..... If I am standing behind a tree how does a guy see me or better yet shoot me.

hobojebus wrote:
Whenever I play I set up plenty of terrain but there's too many ways to ignore it like marker lights.

Terrain is not a panacea that solves all issues and its silly that the answer to valid complaints is "use more cover", the answer is better written rules.

I don't think that the argument was that more terrain fixes problems, more that not enough terrain creates/compounds them.

Correct. Terrain doesn't fix everything, but playing on planet bowling bowl makes the problems much much worse.

Better written rules would be great, but the community is largely shunned from producing house rules and GW has no interest in writing better rules so - rock and hard place.

I think the terrain rules are nice and succinct. Even the local GW has lots of LOS blocking terrain. The giant tower from the Chaos Castle set being the main one.

Now is a perfect time to get the Ruins of Osgiliath. £18 for some sweet as terrain that will block LOS for grunts

hobojebus wrote:
Whenever I play I set up plenty of terrain but there's too many ways to ignore it like marker lights.

Terrain is not a panacea that solves all issues and its silly that the answer to valid complaints is "use more cover", the answer is better written rules.

It is certainly not silly. Or would you enjoy a video game cover shooter like Gears of War if you suddenly removed the "cover" part of the levels? The rules are designed to work best with lots of terrain, just like Gears of War is designed to be a cover shooter.

All games are improved with terrain. I'm not sure it's possible to have too much of it.

Herzlos wrote:
All games are improved with terrain. I'm not sure it's possible to have too much of it.

Yes there is. If you are a 40K player and rely on a shooty army to fire from far away then the person will say there is too much terrain.

If the terrain eats three-quarters of your army before it contacts the enemy, you might be a little hesitant to use it...

I know I only used the mysterious terrain rules for 8th once or twice a game, keeping the rest as generic forests and such. Are people doing that with Age of Sigmar?

Yeah we generally dont go for mysterious terrain, maybe one in the center for some extra interest but once youve had a few games where one teams terrain was all nasty on top of all there objectives, well thats just sucky.
Id rather we just picked out and wrote some of our own rules for certain terrain, if i wanted more narrative pieces id happy just to make them and have done just that, i have wayshrines and sigmarite statues and lizardman spawning pools, meteor craters, hermit caves ect. The terrain is super important for me, in any war game lots of terrain is a must. Its great fun making home made terrain like this to enrich the battle field narrative.


That reminds me, anyone know of company's that do good fantasy cottages that are quite reasonably priced, laser cut mdf or similar?? thx

At our store they use mysterious terrain all the time.

For our campaign, each piece of terrain is only special on a D6 roll of a 6.

I usually pick 2-3 pieces before the start of the game to be mysterious and roll for them, so not strictly mysterious so much because we both know what they are during deployment. I like how it affects the game doing it that way.

We use full mysterious terrain all the time. It adds a lot to the game in my opinion. We usually just use the basic mysterious terrain though and don't use the specific warscrolls for things like the Archway or the Realm Gate... Unless it's a special scenario revolving around it.

Once I've finished putting together my home set up I am going to compile a list of house rules for the pieces - such as where is impassable and what always counts as a certain type (for example I would like my walls with spikes on top to always count as deadly.

 Spinner wrote:
If the terrain eats three-quarters of your army before it contacts the enemy, you might be a little hesitant to use it...

I know I only used the mysterious terrain rules for 8th once or twice a game, keeping the rest as generic forests and such. Are people doing that with Age of Sigmar?

In Sylvaneth terrain is army!

We do mysterious terrain if we remember to and it's fun. There are several options on each side of the Atlantic to get tokens, markers or templates, or just make your own.
Hell, Erik from Mortal Realms podcast made some to sell for cost coverage but also put out templates for free if you don;t mind doing the work and printing them off.

I hope the new point base system will help repair the shattered fan base AoS has caused. If I walk into a new store and see a game of warhammer being played,
I can not assume it is a game of Age of Sigmar. It could be 9th age, old 8th edition or kings of war. I am sure Games Workshop didn't see this coming and thought
everyone would just except the new system and move on.

One thing that also troubles me is the scale of new miniatures being released. All newer models are a lot larger than previous, I don't know if this is to help newer
players with painting or GW just decided to separate themselves even more by moving again to a new scale of models. But comparing the sigmarites, Orrcks
and models like the vanguard chaos knights they are clearly a different scale of model.

A complaint I have heard a few times is about the older boxes still having square bases and more groups are starting to mostly use round bases. I know it don't
matter, but if every army you play has round bases its kind of peer pressure to go ahead and change over bases. Plus most older sets still have squares so the
additional cost is there to buy round bases to your purchase.

 n0t_u wrote:

 Spinner wrote:
If the terrain eats three-quarters of your army before it contacts the enemy, you might be a little hesitant to use it...

I know I only used the mysterious terrain rules for 8th once or twice a game, keeping the rest as generic forests and such. Are people doing that with Age of Sigmar?

In Sylvaneth terrain is army!

In Sylvaneth Russia, tree chop YOU!

 Genoside07 wrote:
I hope the new point base system will help repair the shattered fan base AoS has caused. If I walk into a new store and see a game of warhammer being played,
I can not assume it is a game of Age of Sigmar. It could be 9th age, old 8th edition or kings of war. I am sure Games Workshop didn't see this coming and thought
everyone would just except the new system and move on.

One thing that also troubles me is the scale of new miniatures being released. All newer models are a lot larger than previous, I don't know if this is to help newer
players with painting or GW just decided to separate themselves even more by moving again to a new scale of models. But comparing the sigmarites, Orrcks
and models like the vanguard chaos knights they are clearly a different scale of model.

A complaint I have heard a few times is about the older boxes still having square bases and more groups are starting to mostly use round bases. I know it don't
matter, but if every army you play has round bases its kind of peer pressure to go ahead and change over bases. Plus most older sets still have squares so the
additional cost is there to buy round bases to your purchase.

The scale isn't bigger actually, take a look at comparison pics of the new dwarves, they're exactly the same scale as the 8th edition dwarves. Your other examples (Stormcast, Orruks and Varanguard) all represent completely new types of elite units that are supposed to be a lot bigger than normal people of their race. Varanguard are not Knights, they're huge chaos champions of Archaon. Orruk ironjawz aren't normal orcs, they're huge orcs who are to normal orcs like LotR Uruk-Hai to goblin orcs or even bigger. Same with Bloodbound. And so on. The dwarves on the other hand not supposed to be bigger than a normal dwarf, and indeed they aren't.

There is a definite scale creep happening in my opinion. The design notes in the 2nd White Dwarf from the Silver Tower mention that the Kairic Acolytes are standard human sized and yet I have put one side by side with an upright Empire model and it is much larger (the article actually compares the acolytes to the new Warrior Priest who is even larger still!).

 Bottle wrote:
There is a definite scale creep happening in my opinion. The design notes in the 2nd White Dwarf from the Silver Tower mention that the Kairic Acolytes are standard human sized and yet I have put one side by side with an upright Empire model and it is much larger (the article actually compares the acolytes to the new Warrior Priest who is even larger still!).

Design notes don't always mean model fact, and it's also likely that they could mean standard -chaos- human size which has always been bigger than empire. Comparing them to WoC marauders would be a good check for scale creep. Other than that we don't have any real evidence because the bigger stuff released is supposed to be bigger and is described as such in the fluff.

I'll have to dig out the White Dwarf again later, but it was a direct quote from the sculptor and definitely read as though they were talking about a standard human size and not a chaos enhanced one.

I would love to be wrong, and for a new human or Aelf faction to be released on 25mm bases.

I really don't mind the mechanics for age of sigmar. What really kills me is killing off the old world. I can't get past that, which is why I refuse to buy any age of sigmar stuff.

i am loving the scale of the models...
it is only a slight increase, but makes painting so much more enjoyable...
it isn't really new, in my experience...
it noticed it back in about 2013-ish, with that last Dwarf release, and with the first round of new style Marines...
the minis just seemed to be a slightly bigger all around, and gives the perfect size canvas for awesome paintjobs...

there are just as many stinkers as there have always been, but when the stars align, the sculpts are brilliant, like the Auric Runemaster and the Ironjaws Megaboss...
cracking open Silver Tower made me feel like a kid at Christmas again...
so many awesome minis!!!

i am happier with the sculpts than i have ever been in 30 years of collecting minis...
the future's so bright, i gotta wear shades

cheers
jah

 Genoside07 wrote:
I hope the new point base system will help repair the shattered fan base AoS has caused. If I walk into a new store and see a game of warhammer being played,
I can not assume it is a game of Age of Sigmar. It could be 9th age, old 8th edition or kings of war. I am sure Games Workshop didn't see this coming and thought
everyone would just except the new system and move on.

One thing that also troubles me is the scale of new miniatures being released. All newer models are a lot larger than previous, I don't know if this is to help newer
players with painting or GW just decided to separate themselves even more by moving again to a new scale of models. But comparing the sigmarites, Orrcks
and models like the vanguard chaos knights they are clearly a different scale of model.

A complaint I have heard a few times is about the older boxes still having square bases and more groups are starting to mostly use round bases. I know it don't
matter, but if every army you play has round bases its kind of peer pressure to go ahead and change over bases. Plus most older sets still have squares so the
additional cost is there to buy round bases to your purchase.

The points system may get a few people back but it'll also cause some to leave when they can't do the pointless play they prefer.

And end of the day it's still not the rank and file game people want.