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Short answer: Yes!

Long answer: YEEEESSSSSSSSS!

Wayniac wrote:
Yeah, tournament standard tends to be lax on terrain so as a result, all games are lax on terrain because of the push to use tournament standard as the norm for games. The same problem you find with not using interesting missions that can change up the tactics you find with the lack of good terrain. It all goes back to "tournament standard" being A) bland and boring and B) infecting non-tournament games as the "right" way to do things.

Counter-point: I've seen plenty of "casual" games played with random cardboard boxes and such as terrain, while tournaments seem to at least attempt to make legitimate terrain even if it's only the boring old GW kits and they can't afford enough to properly fill every table.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nou wrote:
Agreed, I too heard that my board is overcrowded and unfair to gunlines (sic!).

Which is a fair point. Gunlines and long-ranged weapons in general exist and it isn't fair to cover the table in terrain so thoroughly that all those long-ranged units/armies (which pay for their range) are forced to pretend to be armed with chainswords and pistols.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

nou wrote:
@Peregrine: You seriously build your argument against Sector Mechanicus terrain on boring repetition and narrative limitations and counter it by boring repetition and narrative limitations of ruins? C'mon...

There's a substantial difference between using ruins on a themed table, mixing up the kits (which are designed to be converted) for variety, and putting a bunch of copies of the exact same model in a row to build a LOS-blocking wall.

You made hilariously exaggerated claim and tried to shove your opinion as undeniable fact and you were countered from numerous angles, by multiple people, with whole google search and multiple lifetimes worth of counterexamples. But we all perfectly know that you will now go at absurd lengths to defend it, because well, that's what you do. But maybe, just maybe you could try another path this time - you made a mistake, you are clearly, fundamentally, hilariously wrong on this one. Man up, own it, learn from the experience, it will only do you good.

Sigh. Of course image searches show pictures, but that's a very biased way of getting information. Those pictures are generally selected to be the best of the best, the tables that people found to be impressive enough to post about. The lazy people with their cardboard boxes and model railroad trees don't appear as much because nobody wants to promote something so boring.

Fast forward to modern times, my local FLGS had a huge terrain collection and it was a mix ranging from unpainted lasercut MDF ruins or infinity dwellings, through GW ruins, bastions and wall of martyr pieces, to entire based and painted hillside bunkers/military bases that spanned across a third of the table, really huge pieces. And guess what 40K players typically used (I witnessed it in person and then went through FLGSs photo album to confirm this observation) - 4-6 ruins and a bastion or two, rarely more than 8 pieces of medium medium sized terrain and no barricades, low walls, rarely any hills... The terrain was there, Bolt Action or Flames of War players used those, infinity players had access to appropriately dense tables, 40K players played standard scarce setups...

Your store seems to be the exception to the rule. I have never, out of any of the stores I've visited, seen anything like that. Maybe 2-3 conversions (using GW kits with all the standard issues of GW kits) that look pretty nice, but mostly foam hills and model railroad trees and such. Most if it is mediocre at best, and never have these stores had enough of it to make multiple terrain-heavy tables at the same time.

“The game is crap!”

Try using more terrain.

“Can’t afford it!”

Build your own.

“Home made terrain looks like crap!”

Here’s a bunch of examples where it isn’t crap.

“The overall trend is that home made terrain is crap!”

I have several stores and garagehammer players that enjoy the home made terrain.

“I’ve never seen it so you’re all wrong!”

Seems unlikely. Why not try a game with mediocre terrain, that makes for an interesting and enjoyable playing experience?

“Why bother? The game’s crap!”

Have you tried using more terrain?

“Can’t afford...”

Oh FFS, I'm not rejecting the idea of using more terrain as a solution, I'm simply observing the fact that most of the people I encounter reject it.

Would that not perhaps indicate that if most people are down with lots of terrain, and your area is not... your meta isn’t an accurate reflection of “most” people’s meta?

Perhaps your opinions of the game are less widely applicable than you might think?

Night Perils, it’s been fun.

If you make the assumption that most people are down with lots of terrain instead of the opposite assumption that, as demonstrated by the people I have encountered in multiple stores in multiple states, some people may claim to be down with lots of terrain but most people don't really give a about it. Perhaps your meta is the fortunate exception to the rule.

I came to a conclusion ages ago based on what was said here that tactics do matter, and the amount of tactics that you can used is limited to what terrain you are playing on and also what kind of army's are fighting. Considering there is a lot of luck involved with dice rolling, and considering it seems that LOS is a popular thing in a lot of house rule casual games, i think tactics in general can play a larger part then a lot of people are saying, maybe not so much for competitive, but like i say this can depend on the circumstances e.g what terrain or type of army, so it for me doesn't rule out having a army that you built on looks is completely un winnable in a competitive situation, and as i stated earlier winning in this situation instead of having a list based army would be more rewarding IMO.


What am i completely wrong? - Edit

 Stormatious wrote:
I came to a conclusion ages ago based on what was said here that tactics do matter, and the amount of tactics that you can used is limited to what terrain you are playing on and also what kind of army's are fighting. Considering there is a lot of luck involved with dice rolling, and considering it seems that LOS is a popular thing in a lot of house rule casual games, i think tactics in general can play a larger part then a lot of people are saying, maybe not so much for competitive, but like i say this can depend on the circumstances e.g what terrain or type of army, so it for me doesn't rule out having a army that you built on looks is completely un winnable in a competitive situation, and as i stated earlier winning in this situation instead of having a list based army would be more rewarding IMO.


What am i completely wrong? - Edit

If I understand what you're saying correctly then you're not entirely wrong, but I would say you haven't really grasped the essence of the discussion. For example, saying "the amount of tactics that you can used is limited to what terrain you are playing on and also what kind of army's are fighting" is a bit of an odd statement since those are 2 of the 3 main variables in a game of 40k, with the other being the mission. Your statement is correct but devoid of any useful application because the "limit" you're talking about is everything in the game. An army that's built on looks, or any criteria other than trying to be as competitive as possible, will be extremely unlikely to win against a competitive army. No amount of tactics will overcome the disparity in power between two lists like that. None of this might matter, of course, if your local meta doesn't feature such competitive lists.

@Peregrine:
Have you even looked for any actual Sector Mechanicus setups before going down your ridiculous path of argument? This whole range of terrain kits was specifically designed for easy kitbashing and converting, with matching diameters and lenghts of components. Straight copies of Ferratonic Furnaces may be repetetive, but throw in an Alchomite stack parts or Haemotrope Reactor or two and you now have a silo or a horizontal tank or whatever you can come up with. There are even official GW videos to inspire such approach (just look at their GT sets and tell me that they are boring) and even if you go with “by the book” assembly, there is enough variation in those kits that if you have enough of them the sheer density of overlaping parts blocks LOS perfectly fine. Stock GW terrain, without any converting.

And it must be the first time ever that I find a person who thinks that google search actually filters for quality... Depending on exact phrase you’ll find an entire spectrum of examples, from thrash to jaw dropping. Same with Pinterest - some searches will return eye candy only results, but include a “magical” DIY abbreviation with your search phrase and now you have mostly a range of pictures straight out from tutorials on how to turn XPS board into a themed set of landscape pieces in a single evening using a knife, a glue and a couple of pots of paint. Will those look as good as Realms of Battle boards? If you throw in some sand and some plaster to the mix they will, but even a simple knife or soldering iron will give you great looking rocky board easily. And people do make those.

The main flaw in your logic is dismissing entire garagehammer movement as marginal (when in reality it is where most of the hobby happens and even GW themselves openly admit that) and focusing solely on US based FLGS pick-up culture. We have gaming clubs all across Europe (which, btw, have a larger population than US) and here in Poland many of those originated from general hobby clubs, so terrain building skills are pretty common and cross-polination from historicals is fairly typical - most places are multi system gaming dens. Something as basic as utilising styrofoam appliance packaging as a basis for accurately looking concrete bunkers has a 30 year long tradition - and that is the lowest, most simple and straightforward way of populating a table with themed terrain and every FLGS here had at least a couple of those even during 2nd ed, when GW didn’t even produced terrain sets. Nowadays most FLGSs here have a range of MicroArtsStudio hardfoam terrain pieces (MAS is polish company) and lasercut Kromlech or similar kits, and at the very least accomodating 40K, general fantasy/rural WWII and Infinity themes, with some GW terrain and some donated unique pieces usually added into the mix. A place with the worst selection of terrain I’ve been to here was a primarily boardgame club which tried branching into Warmahordes and AoS and indeed had only few simple hills and huts and not even a single tree. What is indeed rare are scenic modular boards - I had to make one myself to actually play on one, but otherwise availability of usefull and nice enough terrain is not a problem here.

And the whole point of non-tournament standard terrain is to discourage static gunlines and alpha deep strikes and promote on board thinking and tactics - this is the topic of the very thread we are discussing here.

Slipspace wrote:

 Stormatious wrote:
I came to a conclusion ages ago based on what was said here that tactics do matter, and the amount of tactics that you can used is limited to what terrain you are playing on and also what kind of army's are fighting. Considering there is a lot of luck involved with dice rolling, and considering it seems that LOS is a popular thing in a lot of house rule casual games, i think tactics in general can play a larger part then a lot of people are saying, maybe not so much for competitive, but like i say this can depend on the circumstances e.g what terrain or type of army, so it for me doesn't rule out having a army that you built on looks is completely un winnable in a competitive situation, and as i stated earlier winning in this situation instead of having a list based army would be more rewarding IMO.


What am i completely wrong? - Edit

If I understand what you're saying correctly then you're not entirely wrong, but I would say you haven't really grasped the essence of the discussion. For example, saying "the amount of tactics that you can used is limited to what terrain you are playing on and also what kind of army's are fighting" is a bit of an odd statement since those are 2 of the 3 main variables in a game of 40k, with the other being the mission. Your statement is correct but devoid of any useful application because the "limit" you're talking about is everything in the game. An army that's built on looks, or any criteria other than trying to be as competitive as possible, will be extremely unlikely to win against a competitive army. No amount of tactics will overcome the disparity in power between two lists like that. None of this might matter, of course, if your local meta doesn't feature such competitive lists.

Oh yeah missions, true, thank you .

TBH terrain design is something that is not wholly implemented into the game design of 40K. Think about maps in computer games like Starcraft or Quake - the whole level of design and thought that goes into them to create fair play, like symmetry, spawn and resource placement, etc. The general opinion on advantages of having some los blocking and cover providing pieces is more of a common hobby knowledge, nothing more. Terrain, for example, is not implemented in any way into set up phase of the missions or anything like that. Wouldn't it be nice if every mission had some recommendations with pictures on how to set up proper terrain for it, with idea of balance, equal opportunities for attack and defence and LOS consideration?

Was it back in 5th where terrain set up was tactics? As part of the game set up you carved the table up into 2x2 sections and rolled a d3 for each for how many pieces of terrain each one got. Players then took turns adding things to the table until all the spots were filled.

You want cover in you deployment zone, plonk some down. Big LoS blocker in the middle, got for it. But you were taking turns, and there were limited slots. So that gunline player might stick a tiny little hut in the center to make sure that no major objects were placed there.

Obviously not everyone played with these rules, as they required a lot of spare terrain and took time to do. Most tournaments just wouldn’t have the resources per table. Heck, most FLGSs couldn't cover all their tables if the d3 rolls were good.

i have a feeling that things are turning more simplistic in order to bring in more people to the game, if that's the case, there needs to be a big tent that is created for those who don't want that sort of simplistic change, and it should also be highly encouraged that, if you really want to go to war the proper way you should be playing in the "players" tent, or call it what you want, ma bey a new name sort of like how there is 30k, it could be renamed some thing else, but its important that this takes over this other stuff, to encourage also GW to roll back. Yes i know you can always just make your own rules up etc etc, but im talking about making it a mainstream gameplay style.

 Stormatious wrote:
I came to a conclusion ages ago based on what was said here that tactics do matter, and the amount of tactics that you can used is limited to what terrain you are playing on and also what kind of army's are fighting. Considering there is a lot of luck involved with dice rolling, and considering it seems that LOS is a popular thing in a lot of house rule casual games, i think tactics in general can play a larger part then a lot of people are saying, maybe not so much for competitive, but like i say this can depend on the circumstances e.g what terrain or type of army, so it for me doesn't rule out having a army that you built on looks is completely un winnable in a competitive situation, and as i stated earlier winning in this situation instead of having a list based army would be more rewarding IMO.


What am i completely wrong? - Edit

No you are not wrong. Tactics are still a huge part of the game. The complexity of the tactics this game uses can be debated but the fact that tactics are used and important is a given.

 Shadenuat wrote:
TBH terrain design is something that is not wholly implemented into the game design of 40K. Think about maps in computer games like Starcraft or Quake - the whole level of design and thought that goes into them to create fair play, like symmetry, spawn and resource placement, etc. The general opinion on advantages of having some los blocking and cover providing pieces is more of a common hobby knowledge, nothing more. Terrain, for example, is not implemented in any way into set up phase of the missions or anything like that. Wouldn't it be nice if every mission had some recommendations with pictures on how to set up proper terrain for it, with idea of balance, equal opportunities for attack and defence and LOS consideration?

A huge issue with 8th terrain and cover rules is that you need very specific types of terrain (large piece of area terrain or completely solid LoS blocking stuff) for it to have much of an impact. Unless your counting everything as statues then most terrain isnt very impactful when you can't cram every model of a unit inside a piece of area terrain or behind a LoS blocker. All the small pieces of terrain that use to give 5+ cover saves when shooting through or slowed movement when crossing tend to have zero impact in 8th and thus making the board feel barren even when it's full of stuff.

 Vankraken wrote:

 Shadenuat wrote:
TBH terrain design is something that is not wholly implemented into the game design of 40K. Think about maps in computer games like Starcraft or Quake - the whole level of design and thought that goes into them to create fair play, like symmetry, spawn and resource placement, etc. The general opinion on advantages of having some los blocking and cover providing pieces is more of a common hobby knowledge, nothing more. Terrain, for example, is not implemented in any way into set up phase of the missions or anything like that. Wouldn't it be nice if every mission had some recommendations with pictures on how to set up proper terrain for it, with idea of balance, equal opportunities for attack and defence and LOS consideration?

A huge issue with 8th terrain and cover rules is that you need very specific types of terrain (large piece of area terrain or completely solid LoS blocking stuff) for it to have much of an impact. Unless your counting everything as statues then most terrain isnt very impactful when you can't cram every model of a unit inside a piece of area terrain or behind a LoS blocker. All the small pieces of terrain that use to give 5+ cover saves when shooting through or slowed movement when crossing tend to have zero impact in 8th and thus making the board feel barren even when it's full of stuff.

If one is only using the barest skeleton of the core rules, then sure. Counting all little things as statues is a step in the better direction, as is restricting Advance and Charge moves through difficult terrain, as is -1 for obscuration, as is +2 to saves when in hard cover, as is... List goes on. Terrain and rules for it are still there, if people just wanted to take that step and use them. It's not the edition's fault if it does in fact offer those very tools people say it doesn't, but they just don't utilize.

I encourage everyone to send coherent and non-hostile words to 40kfaq@gwplc.com and petition them to make those rules mandatory, perhaps they'll put them in Beta and everyone will start using them

 Vankraken wrote:

 Shadenuat wrote:
TBH terrain design is something that is not wholly implemented into the game design of 40K. Think about maps in computer games like Starcraft or Quake - the whole level of design and thought that goes into them to create fair play, like symmetry, spawn and resource placement, etc. The general opinion on advantages of having some los blocking and cover providing pieces is more of a common hobby knowledge, nothing more. Terrain, for example, is not implemented in any way into set up phase of the missions or anything like that. Wouldn't it be nice if every mission had some recommendations with pictures on how to set up proper terrain for it, with idea of balance, equal opportunities for attack and defence and LOS consideration?

A huge issue with 8th terrain and cover rules is that you need very specific types of terrain (large piece of area terrain or completely solid LoS blocking stuff) for it to have much of an impact. Unless your counting everything as statues then most terrain isnt very impactful when you can't cram every model of a unit inside a piece of area terrain or behind a LoS blocker. All the small pieces of terrain that use to give 5+ cover saves when shooting through or slowed movement when crossing tend to have zero impact in 8th and thus making the board feel barren even when it's full of stuff.

I'm not following you.
A turned barrel can give the cover save to a baneblade with proper positioning. Are you sure that you are playing the correct way?

 Sherrypie wrote:
Counting all little things as statues is a step in the better direction, as is restricting Advance and Charge moves through difficult terrain, as is -1 for obscuration, as is +2 to saves when in hard cover, as is... List goes on

I am not sure I personally want more imperal guardsmen in 3+ instead of 4+ and more penalties to hit in the game like the "Kill Team: You always hit on 5s" game

 greatbigtree wrote:
Would that not perhaps indicate that if most people are down with lots of terrain, and your area is not... your meta isn’t an accurate reflection of “most” people’s meta?

Perhaps your opinions of the game are less widely applicable than you might think?

Night Perils, it’s been fun.

I asked around polish forums, and more then normal terrain is not something people want to do. Specially if the change is to be made so good armies get worse. From what other people write about other countries meta, it seems like Poland is not the only one where having a ton of terrain is the norm. Plus it isn't even a garente that it fixs stuff. Fast moving fly armies would still have an edge, as would armies with ignore LoS stuff. Meq armies that have to walk to their objectives would have just more problems of a different kind.

 Shadenuat wrote:

 Sherrypie wrote:
Counting all little things as statues is a step in the better direction, as is restricting Advance and Charge moves through difficult terrain, as is -1 for obscuration, as is +2 to saves when in hard cover, as is... List goes on

I am not sure I personally want more imperal guardsmen in 3+ instead of 4+ and more penalties to hit in the game like the "Kill Team: You always hit on 5s" game

The benefits to power armour are better, though, as that cuts their casualties in half more often than not. Sitting in the cover also negates the most broken abilities guardsmen have, taking up space and running faster than planes. My plague marines with -1/-2 to hit with 1+ armour save have traded fire all day long with guardsmen while sitting on objectives. When you can still kill them with potshots from bolters and they must divert actual antitank fire to shift power armour infantry, I'm reasonably happy to force those decisions on them.

Mission first, making the greatest number of guardsmen explode second