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It is actually still quite open. There is enough cover, but it is relatively easy to circumvent the LOS-blocking terrain.

You should deploy LOS-blocking terrain where it is necessary. In the area more than 12" away from each table edge (short and long ones).

Ideally it should be possible to hide the majority of a 1850p army against a stationary purely defensive opponent. If you need to be active, you will lose protection and if the Tau wants to see you, they have to move out to meet you.

@Maelstrom missions

Yes they are fun, but they force you into a certain playstyle. You need to be somewhat aggressive on the board and maintain control and presence over a large portion of the table in order to be able secure most possible objectives immediately.
Therefore if you are up against a superior list, you can't deny it very well since you have to move out to not lose and you can't since you will serve your army to the opponent on a silver plate.

Yes, the old misssions resulted in the opposite, but I guess it was more balanced, since it was easier to play for draw.

5th Edition was my favorite for all kinds of reasons. The ITC missions mix Maelstrom and Normal missions together and the result is a somewhat strange paradoxical game in which you're trying to do two things at once that are OFTEN at odds with one another. I honestly dislike this, especially since they changed the Maelstrom part of the game to be worth 4 points and the Main mission to be worth 4 points. I think Maelstrom, as random as it is, should go to three points as it was before, as a "second path to victory" but ultimately your win would be from the Primary mission unless you just did exceptional on Tertiaries and Maelstrom together or the opponent did poorly on the Primary. Just my feeling. The points being the same is not as good an idea. Sounds good on paper but it plays terribly conflicted.

Does it matter if real battles are fought in the open or not?

Grats on your victory, terrain helps alot, vehichles too.

If you dont have vehichles, all his squads will take anti infantry weapons.

What matters is that people realize that the current game is balanced around fairly dense and tall line of sight blocking terrain, where open spaces favor one play style over others. If you can't get close enough to be effective, you are nit using enough of the right terrain.

SJ

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
What matters is that people realize that the current game is balanced around fairly dense and tall line of sight blocking terrain, where open spaces favor one play style over others. If you can't get close enough to be effective, you are nit using enough of the right terrain.

SJ

You're a grey knight player. I'm a BA player. My only hope is to out-shoot you. I can't beat you in assault. On that kind of table, I've got no shot at all.

This terrain debate just makes me more form in my belief that a mixed table is best... Lots of terrain on one side, more open on another, with objectives on both sides and in between. Better for everyone?

Quit printing codices that can face-roll other codices off the table.

Martel732 wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
What matters is that people realize that the current game is balanced around fairly dense and tall line of sight blocking terrain, where open spaces favor one play style over others. If you can't get close enough to be effective, you are nit using enough of the right terrain.

SJ

You're a grey knight player. I'm a BA player. My only hope is to out-shoot you. I can't beat you in assault. On that kind of table, I've got no shot at all.

I think you meant to say, "on that kind of table I can't take advantage of armies that need to close."

SJ

 jeffersonian000 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
What matters is that people realize that the current game is balanced around fairly dense and tall line of sight blocking terrain, where open spaces favor one play style over others. If you can't get close enough to be effective, you are nit using enough of the right terrain.

SJ

You're a grey knight player. I'm a BA player. My only hope is to out-shoot you. I can't beat you in assault. On that kind of table, I've got no shot at all.

I think you meant to say, "on that kind of table I can't take advantage of armies that need to close."

SJ

No, I really didn't. Generally, all that kind of board ensures is that I get none of my own shots off before the Eldar and Tau murder everything because they have mobile firepower.

"the current game is balanced around fairly dense and tall line of sight blocking terrain"

What you meant to say is that the game is balanced around four power codices, and everyone else is a victim.

Martel732 wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
What matters is that people realize that the current game is balanced around fairly dense and tall line of sight blocking terrain, where open spaces favor one play style over others. If you can't get close enough to be effective, you are nit using enough of the right terrain.

SJ

You're a grey knight player. I'm a BA player. My only hope is to out-shoot you. I can't beat you in assault. On that kind of table, I've got no shot at all.

I think you meant to say, "on that kind of table I can't take advantage of armies that need to close."

SJ

No, I really didn't. Generally, all that kind of board ensures is that I get none of my own shots off before the Eldar and Tau murder everything because they have mobile firepower.

"the current game is balanced around fairly dense and tall line of sight blocking terrain"

What you meant to say is that the game is balanced around four power codices, and everyone else is a victim.

Actually, no. Look at White Dwarf batreps. Look at the True Line of Sight rules. Look at the terrain rules. Look at Maelstrom. Proper terrain forces gunlines to more for the object or stay for the shot. Proper terrain allows melee armies to survive closing. Proper terrain forces Podding armies to decide between arriving in a kill zone or delaying an alpha strike. Proper terrain changes the game from "I win because I play X, and you didn't" to "wow, that was a tight game".

SJ

No, it really doesn't. Terrain can't change the math of Eldar, gladius, or Tau.

Gunlines are over. It's about mobile gunlines now, which don't have a feth about your terrain. They can move to get their shot off. Maybe if you put excessive terrain to the point where no one can shoot at all, and then shunt your GK over, that might explain it. You proposal does nothing for BA.

There is no such thing as "proper terrain" anyway, as GW no longer provides guidelines for terrain placement. The most fair thing to do is play on a variety of table set ups, which is generally what happens for me. I haven't noticed any real change in going from heavy terrain to lighter terrain in outcomes.

If you can't move 12" and shoot, what kind of kompetitive army are you? Not one to roll with the flow.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Oh Noes!

SJ

Bay Area Open results are in at bestcoastpairings.com. Competition was fierce. Lists were filled with Forge World crap. But the terrain was pretty good on every table. I fought Daemonkin, Y'varah spam, Forge World Stompa orks, Canoptek Harvest Decurion, Super Tau suit spam AGAIN, and then Chaos Cabal/Khornedog Deathstar to wrap it up. My experience was that any list that plays to the mission can do well and those who forget the mission struggle. Maelstrom is so random that it gives anyone a punchers chance...sadly that does include the power army. So keeping the mission end game in mind is more important than the terrain. I never saw the terrain nor the list decide games except in one case where Warp Spiders got in a big los blocker and were able to jump out and in, avoiding all counter damage for rounds on end. That game was kinda decided by terrain. Luckily it wasnt me. But aside from that one game...

Waaargh wrote:
If you can't move 12" and shoot, what kind of kompetitive army are you? Not one to roll with the flow.

Not Eldar

Carnith wrote:
Thought I'd give an update since we played our game last night.

So his updated list was

6 man breacher
2 double plasma suits
2 double missle suits
2 double burst cannon 1 flame suit
2 HYMP broadsides
4 path finders
2 pirhannas
9 Fire Warriors
1 Cadre fireblade
3 stealth suits w/ fusion gun

This was vs the list I posted. We had a pretty terrain heavy board and I'll post the picture of that next. It ended up being my victory as we played Maelstrom and I proceeded to grab quite a few objectives early on. Also I rolled Geo on the new astartes powers and got both Phase form and Shifting Worldscape. I ended up placing the librarian with the devastators who then became MVP due to pretty much neutering anythign they touched. They killed most of the stealth suits first turn, with the last suit killing itself on dangerous terrain. When some of his suits came in and threatened the devastator team, they took no wounds and murdered the suits. They also took out a broadside. Most of my other units didn't do a whole lot. The sternguard suicided to kill a broadside, not making their points but freeing up part of the board. The dreadnought killed a few pathfinders. My assault marines also did a lot of work though, they killed the cadre and his firewarrior team as they were left outside while the breachers took the devilfish. They landed right outside and killed all but one and the fireblade, they survived the next round and shot off the rest of that squad giving me warlord.

The game was called after his plasma suits never reached the board and none of his objectives were even close to reachable, while I got a few easy ones like Harness the Warp, capture objectives that I was sitting on already, or just kill something entirely with my squad of point of and delete devastators, so it ended up being 6-1. The vehicles were a much welcomed edition, and they gave my 5 man marine team a little more survivability when the rhino survived a round of shooting on an objective, and only died the following turn, but the guys were fine exiting, still holding that objective.

Good looking table, now paint it!

Was the game fun for you? For your opponent?

As for how much terrain to use, the old 40k rule book stated that 25% of the board should be covered at a minimum. So, on a 4'x6' board (24 ft^2) you should have at least 6 ft^2 covered, or 2'x3' covered. Minimum.

Further discussion: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/353996.page

the first game we played a few weeks ago was such a bad stomp in his direction we changed up his list (it had two double plasma suits that I couldn't touch) and changed the board around, that game became a draw.

The second game was a grab the middle objective, but the objective was open to his gunline with Obsec crisis suits. I took the loss as is and we moved onto this game. I had set up the terrain as you saw it on the board, just throwing everything we had on there, trying to create areas of line of sight blocking so that neither my heavy weapons or his had free reign on any unit. It was unfortunate for him that I ended up rolling Phase form on Geo librarian powers and spent a turn deleting or massively crippling any unit they pointed their missles at. Since we played Maelstrom, the objectives were on my side. I got a few objectives that I had my devastors already on, or a rhino nearby to push up to, or harness the warp. He unfortunately got Blood and Guts, Domination, or Supremacy, when all but 2 missle suits were in reserve and his reserves were not coming in when he needed them to. After scoring one objective in 3 turns, he conceded with a good chunk of his army dead, two plasma suits still waiting to come on, two missle suits that didn't do much, and two pihirannas, with breachers that were out in the open for my rifledread to murder. We decided after the game what our advantage would be for winning, he wanted to give the winner 50 extra points, which I declined, I wanted something small that would be helpful but wouldn't throw things overboard, which I felt 50 points could certainly do.

So since we are on 1250, I'm thinking of what I can add, which will be the last game which I have to stick with the list. We agreed that in our story, the Crimson Scion (My chapter) and his sept (can't remember the name) are moving away from the skrimishes, which so far have been going after Imperial outposts for sector data and securing the artefact repository. We haven't decided what will be the last skirmish scenario will before our redeployment.