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Any one know if 8th has a suggested terrain density?

Aware 5th (IIRC) had the suggestion of totally cramming a quarter of the table with terrain, then spreading it out - when local group adopted that over "two or three bits and a hill" the game got a lot better. This seemed to go AWOL in 6th onwards, wondering if its back or something similar?

Terrain doesn't do much in the game, so it doesn't really matter.

Terrain can always matter unless you're lazy.

No hard guidelines, just recommend 1-2 terrain pieces for every 2' x 2' section of the board (BRB pg 186)

You definitely want a couple pieces of LOS blocking terrain though.

Design a table from a cool aesthetic perspective or a theme...and let the game take care of itself.

 Elbows wrote:
Design a table from a cool aesthetic perspective or a theme...and let the game take care of itself.

Agreed!

You want a lot of terrain or the game becomes who has the longest range.

 Elbows wrote:
Design a table from a cool aesthetic perspective or a theme...and let the game take care of itself.

Often times we have a outside party come in and make something look cool.

heck its nice getting like a gw red shirt to do it since most of the time they are bored out of there wits unless its super busy

We typically use about 4 "big" pieces of terrain and maybe 6 "little" pieces of terrain.

Big pieces of terrain are like ruin segments, with multiple floors and such, and are about the size of a Land Raider

Little pieces are approximately the size of a section of Aegis Barricade, like chunks of wall sticking out of the ground, or an outhouse.


If there's a spot on the board where you can hide a tank and there's no way for the enemy to draw Line of Sight to it from their deployment zone, there's too much terrain or your terrain piece is too big [or, I guess, too conveniently shaped. One place I played at had a ruins building that wasn't very large, but had 3 sides and no windows on the first floor. I'm sure a fellow IG player made that building.]

My general rule of thumb is there shouldn't be anywhere with a diameter of 6" that is completely free of terrain, but it should also not look like downtown new york during rush hour.

Wow this is interesting.

We usually have at least 5 pieces of "large" terrain ruins, like 3-story buildings that would require a 9" move to get to the top of, and are also fairly wide and have at least 2 walls.

Then, we have a splash of other things - including craters, walls, small ruins, small buildings, and some barricades. Sometimes we also have decimated forests / crater forests, too.

Movement is a challenge and requires thought. As it should.

 Marmatag wrote:
Wow this is interesting.

We usually have at least 5 pieces of "large" terrain ruins, like 3-story buildings that would require a 9" move to get to the top of, and are also fairly wide and have at least 2 walls.

Then, we have a splash of other things - including craters, walls, small ruins, small buildings, and some barricades. Sometimes we also have decimated forests / crater forests, too.

Movement is a challenge and requires thought. As it should.

Huh. Interesting alternate perspective.

I've found that, if there terrain takes up too much space, tanks get stuck and infantry reduced to D6 movement, and we just sit in our zones blasting away at each other.

Okay, I already sit in my zone and shoot at my enemy, but if there's a lot of terrain, my enemy does it too.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
Wow this is interesting.

We usually have at least 5 pieces of "large" terrain ruins, like 3-story buildings that would require a 9" move to get to the top of, and are also fairly wide and have at least 2 walls.

Then, we have a splash of other things - including craters, walls, small ruins, small buildings, and some barricades. Sometimes we also have decimated forests / crater forests, too.

Movement is a challenge and requires thought. As it should.

Huh. Interesting alternate perspective.

I've found that, if there terrain takes up too much space, tanks get stuck and infantry reduced to D6 movement, and we just sit in our zones blasting away at each other.

Okay, I already sit in my zone and shoot at my enemy, but if there's a lot of terrain, my enemy does it too.

Well it's possible to move without difficult terrain, it just means you have to take different approach vectors to your opponent. We have enough LOS blocking terrain that it's very difficult to get a lot of shots off on your opponent turn 1. Which means, going second isn't the end of the world. It's still possible to deploy poorly and lose a sizable chunk of your army, but you'd have to really not pay attention to distance when deploying.

What it does, is that it creates situations where you can bait your opponent into a bad charge, or move to prevent an advance down a separate portion of the city. Instead of "first charger wins," it's "smarter position wins." I recently played a game where the first charger in 2 primarily assault armies lost, largely because he couldn't simply surround and overwhelm due to buildings. Being at a numerical disadvantage isn't the end of the world if you pick a smart place to fight.

I should also mention that we only play objective based games, too, so sitting back is a good way to lose by like 10 points.

for 40k we used to make mock ups of WW2 or Vietnam war battlefields.

At the club we have ridiculous amount of terrain available to us; so the general consensus is that if you can see table, theres not enough terrain. This can vary from scratch built bunkers and fortresses, based buildings, roads, hills etc. It looks pretty amazing and heck of fun to play on.

 Marmatag wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
Wow this is interesting.

We usually have at least 5 pieces of "large" terrain ruins, like 3-story buildings that would require a 9" move to get to the top of, and are also fairly wide and have at least 2 walls.

Then, we have a splash of other things - including craters, walls, small ruins, small buildings, and some barricades. Sometimes we also have decimated forests / crater forests, too.

Movement is a challenge and requires thought. As it should.

Huh. Interesting alternate perspective.

I've found that, if there terrain takes up too much space, tanks get stuck and infantry reduced to D6 movement, and we just sit in our zones blasting away at each other.

Okay, I already sit in my zone and shoot at my enemy, but if there's a lot of terrain, my enemy does it too.

Well it's possible to move without difficult terrain, it just means you have to take different approach vectors to your opponent. We have enough LOS blocking terrain that it's very difficult to get a lot of shots off on your opponent turn 1. Which means, going second isn't the end of the world. It's still possible to deploy poorly and lose a sizable chunk of your army, but you'd have to really not pay attention to distance when deploying.

What it does, is that it creates situations where you can bait your opponent into a bad charge, or move to prevent an advance down a separate portion of the city. Instead of "first charger wins," it's "smarter position wins." I recently played a game where the first charger in 2 primarily assault armies lost, largely because he couldn't simply surround and overwhelm due to buildings. Being at a numerical disadvantage isn't the end of the world if you pick a smart place to fight.

I should also mention that we only play objective based games, too, so sitting back is a good way to lose by like 10 points.

We roll off to place terrain in alternating order. Then we roll off to select table halves, that way there's a risk that, if we set up the perfect shooting gallery or the perfect cover to advance without LOS, the enemy will take it and use it against us. I make sure to set up big terrain pieces at the back edges of deployment zones. Because I have range advantage, it does me no harm to put tall objects far back, since it gets them out of my line of fire for my direct fire weapons. Nobody ever puts the big objects in the no-mans land, because we all want them to hide our people inside of within our deployment zone and don't want to give the enemy the potential bonus of forward position that they could drive to turn 1 with a transport and occupy with something like plasmagun or meltagun vets if we lose the latter roll to select table halves. It's the same sort of thing for objectives, typically 2 get placed in each back region and 2 get placed in the middle region. They're almost always behind little terrain pieces, since we all want to be able to hide when capturing them. I make sure to put one objective at the very back, one objective in the middle of the deployment zone, and one behind a little piece of cover about 8" into the no-man's land. Rolling to pick sides separately from deploying terrain means that you have a 50/50 chance of giving the perfect positions you get up for yourself to the enemy, so the board ends up safely mirrored.

Sitting in my little box works out pretty well for my Imperial Guard. There's generally at least 2 objectives within the box at 2 in the mid-field, close enough to access with a tank, or Move! Move! Move!. The other two are usually beyond my reach, but it's not a big deal because I go first and I can generally score the D3 levels for a fair number of the other objectives. Going first is important, I sink a bunch of points into helping me seize the initiative and and preventing the enemy from doing so, and I open with a barrage of artillery fire that does it's best to score me First Blood and thin out a chunk of the enemy force. When playing my Sisters, the rear-field objectives can be a bit of a hindrance, but I can sit Rets and Exorcists on them and almost for-sure get the midfield ones early in the game, and rushing Dominions up-board can give me a pretty powerful antitank alpha-strike.

If we put out lots of craters and czech hedgehogs and barbed wire and sandbags, that takes up a lot of space and slows movement but don't really offer good cover, close-range vehicle-based forces end up dead in the water because the craters and tank obstacles end up blocking the movement of Trukks and Immolators but not the shooting of a Tau or Imperial Guard gunline, and footslogging across the board into range just isn't viable no matter what. Terrain also gets in the way of non-drop-pod deepstrikers, making it almost impossible too between the regions of dangerous terrain and the excessive amount of bubble-wrap forces to keep them out.

Admittedly, one of the funniest games I played had 6 or 7 structures over 5 stories tall that each had a footprint bigger than a Baneblade, and my opponent was Imperial Knights, so I put objectives at the tops of the towers where the Knights couldn't go and climbed up there with Camo-vets, and there was no way for him to out-score me! [We decided to never do that again afterwords]. One of the most memorable games was also played on a board that was absolutely infested with terrain, I had a city occupied at one end of the board and the rest of the board was a warren of canyons and bridges, and I had a rampart where the canyons came up to the city, and I had to defend the city from the Tyranids. The canyons were a death zone for the Tyranids, because the swarms were funneled through narrow galleries where Basilisks could kill dozens of them with a shot, and mycetic spores landed all across the rampart and trygons came burrowing up inside my perimeter, like the scene from the Starship Troopers movie at the outpost.

Terrain is definitely good, and our scattered large buildings and conveniently 8' tall walls don't look and feel nearly as cinematic as games with cratered fields and narrow gullies and city streets, but also feel more "balanced" and more mobile, with a greater emphasis on the Fast Attack, Elites, and Heavy Support elements.

I've always wanted to play a game with opposing trenches and artillery pits and craters and barbed wire and czech hedgehogs across the board, but it would be really, really one-sided.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
We typically use about 4 "big" pieces of terrain and maybe 6 "little" pieces of terrain.

Big pieces of terrain are like ruin segments, with multiple floors and such, and are about the size of a Land Raider

Little pieces are approximately the size of a section of Aegis Barricade, like chunks of wall sticking out of the ground, or an outhouse.


If there's a spot on the board where you can hide a tank and there's no way for the enemy to draw Line of Sight to it from their deployment zone, there's too much terrain or your terrain piece is too big [or, I guess, too conveniently shaped. One place I played at had a ruins building that wasn't very large, but had 3 sides and no windows on the first floor. I'm sure a fellow IG player made that building.]

Normally I'm follow the Infinity phylosopy. If you can drawn LOS from your deployment zone to the enemy deployment zone... you are doing it wrong. And I play Tau!

Unless you start with 3+ forget cover its going to be largely irrelevant go with los blocking stuff instead.

Asymmetrical terrain layout with enough LOS blocking, hills and cover all over the board (including trench lines, negative height and dangerous terrain areas), so that there are only limited shooting lanes, getting higher ground matters, movement matters, assault armies are viable and first turn advantage is limited to only a couple of possible shots. Then play two mirror games on such setup, so that both players get the same terrain advantage/disadvantage.

To me, typical batrep/tournament terrain looks featureless, empty, over-symmetrical, dull and repetetive.

In the optimal situation, I build up the terrain with a general theme; plains, heavy urban, jungle, etc, generally designed to look like a believable environment (not necessarily symmetrical.) I then set it up so that starting table edges are completely random (decided by dice roll.)

This is of course if the opponent agrees, not everyone is into an asymmetrical battleground. As long as it looks cool I'm happy.

Last but not least, plenty of LOS blocking. Makes you and your opponent have to think about deployment/defending/attacking when you can't engage everything on the table.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
We typically use about 4 "big" pieces of terrain and maybe 6 "little" pieces of terrain.

Big pieces of terrain are like ruin segments, with multiple floors and such, and are about the size of a Land Raider

Little pieces are approximately the size of a section of Aegis Barricade, like chunks of wall sticking out of the ground, or an outhouse.


If there's a spot on the board where you can hide a tank and there's no way for the enemy to draw Line of Sight to it from their deployment zone, there's too much terrain or your terrain piece is too big [or, I guess, too conveniently shaped. One place I played at had a ruins building that wasn't very large, but had 3 sides and no windows on the first floor. I'm sure a fellow IG player made that building.]

Seems that especially these days you need big pieces to afford large squads a cover save.
Why not hide a tank?
Seems that the best games I ever played had terrain that could hide tanks from at last one or two POV.
This let's the controlling player decide when to bring them out or put them back in and adds to suspense...
Otherwise why not just leave the models at home and compare spreadsheets over the internet?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galas wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
We typically use about 4 "big" pieces of terrain and maybe 6 "little" pieces of terrain.

Big pieces of terrain are like ruin segments, with multiple floors and such, and are about the size of a Land Raider

Little pieces are approximately the size of a section of Aegis Barricade, like chunks of wall sticking out of the ground, or an outhouse.


If there's a spot on the board where you can hide a tank and there's no way for the enemy to draw Line of Sight to it from their deployment zone, there's too much terrain or your terrain piece is too big [or, I guess, too conveniently shaped. One place I played at had a ruins building that wasn't very large, but had 3 sides and no windows on the first floor. I'm sure a fellow IG player made that building.]

Normally I'm follow the Infinity phylosopy. If you can drawn LOS from your deployment zone to the enemy deployment zone... you are doing it wrong. And I play Tau!

Seems a bit on the other extreme but better than too little terrain.

jeff white wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
We typically use about 4 "big" pieces of terrain and maybe 6 "little" pieces of terrain.

Big pieces of terrain are like ruin segments, with multiple floors and such, and are about the size of a Land Raider

Little pieces are approximately the size of a section of Aegis Barricade, like chunks of wall sticking out of the ground, or an outhouse.


If there's a spot on the board where you can hide a tank and there's no way for the enemy to draw Line of Sight to it from their deployment zone, there's too much terrain or your terrain piece is too big [or, I guess, too conveniently shaped. One place I played at had a ruins building that wasn't very large, but had 3 sides and no windows on the first floor. I'm sure a fellow IG player made that building.]

Seems that especially these days you need big pieces to afford large squads a cover save.
Why not hide a tank?
Seems that the best games I ever played had terrain that could hide tanks from at last one or two POV.
This let's the controlling player decide when to bring them out or put them back in and adds to suspense...
Otherwise why not just leave the models at home and compare spreadsheets over the internet?

Because the "tank" I'm hiding is a Basilisk, Wyvern, or Manticore. It never comes out. It stay in it's hidey-hole permanently, invisible and invincible, raining pie-plates on you from its safe little cubby hole.

It absolutely sucks dealing with JSJ Riptides that scoot out from behind a really big tower, fire, then scoot back in so you can't engage them, I can only imagine dealing with a group of Wyverns and Manticores hiding untouchable in a big pile of LoS blocking terrain.

I don't see how cover helps assault armies. I play Guard, and cover basically is by best friend. I ignore LoS with my artillery, and half my army can Ignore Cover. I pay points to make sure I have lots of cover no matter how the board is set up. With Sisters and Space Wolves, I hate dealing with it. -2 to charge range is obnoxious, to make no mention of troops hiding atop towers, and things that get in the way of transports funnels me into easy shooting galleries, or separates my army so I can't give units the support due or shift my focus to respond to the enemy movement once committed.

Galas wrote:
Normally I'm follow the Infinity phylosopy. If you can drawn LOS from your deployment zone to the enemy deployment zone... you are doing it wrong. And I play Tau!

Wow, I've seen an Infinity board, and that's way too much terrain. How does anything do anything? Where do you put everything?

Hell, I always feel cramped on a Dropzone Commander board, with little tiny Sabre tanks!

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:


Because the "tank" I'm hiding is a Basilisk, Wyvern, or Manticore. It never comes out. It stay in it's hidey-hole permanently, invisible and invincible, raining pie-plates on you from its safe little cubby hole.

It absolutely sucks dealing with JSJ Riptides that scoot out from behind a really big tower, fire, then scoot back in so you can't engage them, I can only imagine dealing with a group of Wyverns and Manticores hiding untouchable in a big pile of LoS blocking terrain.

Galas wrote:
Normally I'm follow the Infinity phylosopy. If you can drawn LOS from your deployment zone to the enemy deployment zone... you are doing it wrong. And I play Tau!

Wow, that's too much terrain.

Then you have to figure out how to deal with those sorts of tanks in those situations,
or flat out tell your opponent that this is a fight that you won't fight,
unless the offensive building is removed or replaced.
I mean, you can choose whether or not to engage...
sometimes you have to, but that is up to your opponent/context.

Different scenarios can offset these advantages also.
Offer to choose a scenario that does this as a compromise?

Use a different army.
Opposite deployment zones can be balanced, too.
You should have your own building or stages of cover for an advance,
and add your own heavy gunz,
force your opponent to target these
while flanking with a trukk full of power klawz.
Something like that.

Well, obviously we don't use as much terrain as a Infinity game requires, but we normally try to distribute it in a way that the central part of the battle has enough LOS terrain to avoid sitting in your deployment zone shooting at things, and making a interesting gameplay of cat and mouse with shooting units trying to shoot meele units that try to approach using that terrain.

I just listened to the front line chapter tactics on being competitive in the eighth edition "meta".

Reece recommended four big los blocking terrain pieces, one in each corner or somehow adjusted for the scenario.

with the current rules, only LOS blocking terrain matters. the rest is just for show (or incredibly big pieces).

 Elbows wrote:
Terrain can always matter unless you're lazy.

Problem being 8th ed rules makes terrain very hard to take advantage(except big total LOS blockers). Especially for big units. Have bunch of scatter terrain? Too bad. Your ork mob will struggle to fit to them without even one model being out thus negating cover bonus.

And whole idea of all terrain needing bases is pretty stinky for existing terrain owners. Whatabout all the free-form ruins and scatter terrains? Basing them would then be bad for other games.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Wow, I've seen an Infinity board, and that's way too much terrain. How does anything do anything? Where do you put everything?

Hell, I always feel cramped on a Dropzone Commander board, with little tiny Sabre tanks!

Having many smaller pieces in zig-zagging blocks LOS nicely while allowing room to manouver.

And doing is easy. Move around! Enemy is covering somewhere? Move around. Works in 7th ed, works even better in 8th ed.

tneva82 wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
Terrain can always matter unless you're lazy.

Problem being 8th ed rules makes terrain very hard to take advantage(except big total LOS blockers). Especially for big units. Have bunch of scatter terrain? Too bad. Your ork mob will struggle to fit to them without even one model being out thus negating cover bonus.

And whole idea of all terrain needing bases is pretty stinky for existing terrain owners. Whatabout all the free-form ruins and scatter terrains? Basing them would then be bad for other games.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Wow, I've seen an Infinity board, and that's way too much terrain. How does anything do anything? Where do you put everything?

Hell, I always feel cramped on a Dropzone Commander board, with little tiny Sabre tanks!

Having many smaller pieces in zig-zagging blocks LOS nicely while allowing room to manouver.

And doing is easy. Move around! Enemy is covering somewhere? Move around. Works in 7th ed, works even better in 8th ed.

That's what we have. Lots of small walls, approximately the height of a marine, some as tall as a Rhino. We've laughed about the convenient scattering of small walls across the battlefield, and how the Shadowsword's Volcano Cannon burn straight through a foot of composite armor on a Land Raider but can't penetrate a 6" thick brick wall.

Enough so you can't draw LoS to the opponent's side of the board. Being forced to manoeuvre makes the game so much more interesting.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
That's what we have. Lots of small walls, approximately the height of a marine, some as tall as a Rhino. We've laughed about the convenient scattering of small walls across the battlefield, and how the Shadowsword's Volcano Cannon burn straight through a foot of composite armor on a Land Raider but can't penetrate a 6" thick brick wall.

Don't even need random scattering. Put up main road of a city going sideway with smaller lanes diagonically with some deadends(those exists in a city). Add in couple bigger pile of rubbles and roads not being 90 degree sideway(ie main road goes more like at 30 degree angle) and you have instant logical board which ensures armies can't simply sit back and shoot at will.

As for volcano cannon not penetrating brick wall...Well so should lascannon but that's part what you need to accept along with random charge range or similar due to players having god view commander wouldn't in reality have.