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Most of the games I've played at the FLGS have used "generic" terrain that can be used for multiple different games. Don't get me wrong, the terrain is very nice, but the generic nature of it limits some aspects I'd like to see in 40k.

I have played with the occasional building, hill, or tower but to me I think the game would benefit a lot from adding more of a third dimension. I'd love to see desert themed boards with a half-dozen Indiana Jones style rope bridges connecting rocky cliffs. How about a city scape with pedestrian bridges connecting buildings 30 feet in the air?. A large catwalk system running over a suspended pipeline for an industrial board.

I know that if you add too much of this it starts to become hard to move models, measure ranges, etc., but to a certain degree I think adding a vertical aspect to terrain would significantly add to tactical decisions. Also, people would have to remember that vehicles have a 45 degree limit on up and down shooting. On the other hand things like skimmers and jump infantry would drastically rise in value.

One problem being basic infantry struggles to reach anywhere on upper sides. 24" forward and 12" upward? Takes 6 turns rather than 4 nevermind difficult terrain...

That's one practicality you need to consider.

It seems like a good idea as long as the board doesn't become too crowded. I think you would need to make it possible for both players to deploy units on the upper levels to begin with and include stairs to minimise difficult terrain checks.

 roflmajog wrote:
It seems like a good idea as long as the board doesn't become too crowded. I think you would need to make it possible for both players to deploy units on the upper levels to begin with and include stairs to minimise difficult terrain checks.

Would also help to let anyone playing on it know beforehand. It would allow everyone to get more jumppacks to move around the buildings (and other things that get more out of the terrain.) And honestly, encouraging a different than normal list building could be a lot of fun.

Just don't play vs elfs - you'll get disappointed with you having to spend 5+ turns to get anywhere while they still jump across the board in one go.

Scatter terrain is easy to scratch build or buy, also relatively straight forward to set up. If you're gonna start to build interlinked verticle scenery you gonna have to invest serious time and money into building or buying it.
I quite like the idea but it wouldn't really work that well in most games of 40k without a heck of alot of work. And a game of 40k is already a heck of alot of work.

Great idea.
You can overcome problems of moving by using lifts instead if ladders for vertical movement. Maybe they give +6" to movement per turn or something.
Fixed teleporters are an option as well. Whole squad follows the embarkation rules to get onto the teleporter pad then follows the deepstrike rules to come out the other side.
I think we quite often get cought up in the false notion that we have to only use the terrain as defined in the rule book when this is not the case at all. For example the rules for an imperial bunker state that number and position of firing slots state 'as per model' which means the writers do not have a specific model layout in mind. This becomes clearer when you compare this to the ADL which has more specific rules, if you see what I mean.

Go for it. Just make sure everyone knows before hand that the terrain layout will be 'none standard'.

The biggest issue with verticality on a table is storage space; most people struggle to find space to stash a 6"x4" board in the first place, let alone a two-foot-tall elaborately-constructed cityscape with that footprint.

If you're going to do this it is worth trying to enforce movement rules more strictly; I've played with people who insist on letting models move through walls, climb any surface they like (even if they're tanks), and measuring horizontal distance only for flying units. If you're going to bother to make a three-dimensional board you ought to treat it like one.

I might even go so far as to suggest writing up a page-long pamphlet describing how everything actually works.


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 koooaei wrote:
Just don't play vs elfs - you'll get disappointed with you having to spend 5+ turns to get anywhere while they still jump across the board in one go.

Terrain rule: epic windy canyon. Epic windy canyons are impassible to all models that aren't jetbikes, jump infantry, jet pack infantry, skimmers, flyers, FMCs, or FGCs. When placing an epic windy canyon on the field choose a direction for the wind and mark it clearly. When any model smaller than an FGC/superheavy flyer/superheavy skimmer enters the canyon it is swept away by the wind and must make a Dangerous Terrain test. Whether the test is passed or failed move the model 12" in the direction indicated by the canyon's wind direction rule. Models moved in this way are too busy struggling to retain control in the wind to run, turbo-boost, move flat out, shoot, charge, cast psychic powers, or do anything else for the rest of the turn. A model that begins a move in the epic windy canyon and manages to move out has escaped the clutches of the wind, but may not charge and must fire snap shots for the rest of the turn as he regains his balance. FGCs/superheavies are too massive to be swept away by the wind, but they must snap shoot any turn they move through part of an epic windy canyon as they are buffeted and destabilized by the wind.

There. Make the elves have to spend 5+ turns to get anywhere too.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
The biggest issue with verticality on a table is storage space; most people struggle to find space to stash a 6"x4" board in the first place, let alone a two-foot-tall elaborately-constructed cityscape with that footprint.

If you're going to do this it is worth trying to enforce movement rules more strictly; I've played with people who insist on letting models move through walls, climb any surface they like (even if they're tanks), and measuring horizontal distance only for flying units. If you're going to bother to make a three-dimensional board you ought to treat it like one.

I might even go so far as to suggest writing up a page-long pamphlet describing how everything actually works.

I'm one of those guys. Well I don't insist, I do so unless anyone objects. So far I've not had that happen.
The games just don't take vertical into account. And my terrain pieces are designed with models in mind. Instead of building an incline for everything to fall of off, people build stepped terrain, so my Rhino might literally be moving up a vertical step as tall as a man's waist/chest, but in my mind it's scaling an incline. It might look like my tank's phasing through a wall, but in my mind it's smashing through it.
It also cuts down on the exploits a player can bring. Back when 40k had the rules stating that vehicles/bikes/whatever couldn't climb buildings having those units designed for melee wasn't viable.

Or parking a Predator in between two rocks that were just too narrow with the sponsons, imagine it's shoving the rocks to either side, or blasting one away, it's just easier not to be constantly measuring what can fit where.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
...And my terrain pieces are designed with models in mind...

This seems like the primary point here. If you're going to have a three-dimensional table with walls, stairs, firing positions, bulwarks, etc. you've got to think about how models are going to interact with it.

People who complain that melee armies are worthless if you don't use a loose interpretation of the rules that lets them teleport through walls are half right; they're useless if you don't let them teleport through walls and you've set up a table with too few doors/stairs and too many shooty killzones.

Terrain is an opportunity to restrict movement, shooting, and assault, to make positioning more relevant, to make decisions made in the Movement phase matter more than they would on a blank open table with no terrain and no line-of-sight block.

Try playing with low-effort mock-ups of the table before building it. Make sure you've got enough access built in to enforce the involability of walls. Because badly-written terrain rules are at least as much a consequence of badly-designed terrain as it is the other way around, and if you're going to build a table you've got a chance to break the feedback loop.

I'm not talking about going totally hog wild with this. I meant something like a couple catwalks/bridges connecting two or three building rooftops that are about as big around as an Imperial Bastion. Or possibly something like a highway overpass for city themed boards.


However...... What if we did take this to the ultimate extreme? Imagine a board that is 6x4 feet, except it is hung up sideways on the wall. Terrain would have to basically be perminantly mounted (for the most part) hanging off the side of the board, forming 12 or so inches of depth. Something themed like a sewer system or underhive with the top layer being ground level. Of course there would be elevator shafts and stairwells.

It would look a bit like a 40k Ant farm

 cuda1179 wrote:
I'm not talking about going totally hog wild with this. I meant something like a couple catwalks/bridges connecting two or three building rooftops that are about as big around as an Imperial Bastion. Or possibly something like a highway overpass for city themed boards.


However...... What if we did take this to the ultimate extreme? Imagine a board that is 6x4 feet, except it is hung up sideways on the wall. Terrain would have to basically be perminantly mounted (for the most part) hanging off the side of the board, forming 12 or so inches of depth. Something themed like a sewer system or underhive with the top layer being ground level. Of course there would be elevator shafts and stairwells.

It would look a bit like a 40k Ant farm

Board built with city terrain stacked on top of a level or two of Zone Mortalis board?

It's a very cool idea (and something which attracted people to Necromunda/Mordheim) but it's not very suitable with "modern" 40K. Way too many models and the seeming expectation to be done within 1.5 hours. It will also limit certain armies so people will cry cheese or advantage etc. (instead of actually building a force which is capable of adapting to varied terrain).

Terrain is the third army. Any game can be made much better by some genuinely interesting terrain. 40K does suffer from limited turns though - it can be a paint to get units up onto other levels.

My upcoming 40K board will feature a bunch of Necromunda-inspired terrain on industrial platforms over an acid ocean, etc.

I've spent nearly half as much money on good terrain as I have on my armies. Making the game 3 dimensional is important and definitely helps level the playing field between armies. I generally set up my board to represent a City Fight style board. It's a pain only because you spend just as much time building and painting that terrain as your army and, as others have noted, even as separate pieces, it can be problematic to store.

The other issue is doing anything in a flgs or GW store. Those set ups are pathetically sparse. It'll be hard to fight certain armies outside solid terrain.

Ive made a simple sky scraper with my 8year old son and we love it you can get troops on to every floor and with a bit of time you get some great floor to floor c,combat.

A better pic of said Sky Scraper.