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What do people think of these? Do you think maybe they've messed up the breakout box and terrain piece one shouldn't have obscuring?

Surely you should be able to shoot across the large bases and the actual ruin walls be naturally line of sight blocking?

Those scenarios are the way that GW intends us to play the game. Which means that obscuring is even more prevalent that expected.

Effort at standardising and making up for tiny tables with fast moving most everything and super Killy guns…

The terrain layouts are great for competitive games. They're not very pretty or thematic, but they are really balanced. This kind of discussion has come up in a lot of other topics, and people often show boards they'd been using for years but they look barren. In the old days, you could put craters and ruined walls everywhere, but those don't do enough now. 9th is all about big obscuring ruins and buildings obstructing the middle of the board. You should have to work to get line of sight on the first turn, because the game is extremely lethal. And that's a good thing, because it makes maneuvering in the first couple turns really important. You can set up and execute more complicated strategies because more of the game is decided by the deterministic movement.

I disagree that "this is the way GW wants the game to be played". I think it's an example of a fair board, but GW also supports narrative games. You can certainly take ideas about balancing the terrain layout from the competitive examples, but symmetrical boards don't work well in the typically asymmetrical narrative missions anyway. You'll always have to build boards to fit your mission and the armies playing it.

They make me wince.

Symmetrical uncreative terrain. Anti-imagination. Boring.

Boards in 9th are ugly, cramped, and small. No room to array your forces and maneuver them properly. I like terrain- including LOS blocking terrain, but not as much as GW seems to like.

I like a mix of buildings, trees, hills, etc. Preferred boards represent fighitng OUTSIDE of cities. City fights are awful and no one wants to do it in real life. You fight outside the city your home or your prize isn't ruined.

The boards suck and will just make this the standard just like the minimum board size.

Honestly not a huge fan. I'm all for lots of LOS blocking, but it's taken a bit far here. Also, they really don't use any other terrain like craters or barricades.

They REALLY don't want non flying tanks to work it seems to me.

If you want balance (as you do for a Tournament) I think these boards are great. The table top tactic guys played a game with this layout (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQcE0IKCU48) and you can see how the terrain actually mattered in this game. Yes it is going to favor infantry (especially heavy and assault infantry) over vehicles etc. I would never use this set up for a narrative game, nor even just a casual game. But in both of those situations, there is an expectation that neither player is going to bring over the top lists. If you are expecting players to bring the most brutal lists, you basically need to have the terrain like this, or first turn is basically everything.

So you think the entire base of the big terrain pieces of supposed to be obscuring?

I think as far as being boring, competition boards are generally boring and symmetrical. I don't think GW are trying to tell everybody that this is the only way to play. Anybody playing a more narrative oriented game isn't going to set up like this.

This is for standardised, level playing field tournament games.

I really like boards with dense terrain if you're primarily fighting with infantry units ala Cities of Death. I don't like dense terrain if you and your opponent want to have vehicles and room to maneuver them.

Obscuring terrain is a good concept. But I worry that GW is using it as a crutch to make up for the fact that everything is very fast and super killy.

It's a funny thing to hear "vehicles need less terrain so they can maneuver". In practice, I find that less terrain leads to less maneuvering. Most vehicle mounted weapons are 36"+, and without sufficient obstructing terrain they don't need to move to find their targets. Driving around the board edge and staying at your maximum weapons range while targeting the enemy freely isn't maneuvering. In my mind, maneuvering implies a choice with consequences; you could move this way to gain line of sight on these enemies, or travel this way to remain obscured or attack different enemies, but you can't do both.

Heafstaag wrote:
Boards in 9th are ugly, cramped, and small. No room to array your forces and maneuver them properly. I like terrain- including LOS blocking terrain, but not as much as GW seems to like.

I like a mix of buildings, trees, hills, etc. Preferred boards represent fighitng OUTSIDE of cities. City fights are awful and no one wants to do it in real life. You fight outside the city your home or your prize isn't ruined.

You can. Nothing stopping you. In fact, you can assign whatever riles you want to the terrain as you see fit.

 DarkHound wrote:
It's a funny thing to hear "vehicles need less terrain so they can maneuver". In practice, I find that less terrain leads to less maneuvering. Most vehicle mounted weapons are 36"+, and without sufficient obstructing terrain they don't need to move to find their targets. Driving around the board edge and staying at your maximum weapons range while targeting the enemy freely isn't maneuvering. In my mind, maneuvering implies a choice with consequences; you could move this way to gain line of sight on these enemies, or travel this way to remain obscured or attack different enemies, but you can't do both.

The difficulty with terrain and vehicles is that it's often easy to inadvertently create situations where a little bit of terrain becomes a huge road block for vehicles, to the point where it's impossible to go around the terrain in a feasible manner. If you end up deploying your vehicle somewhere that it won't ever be able to maneuver out of, that's less maneuvering happening.

 DarkHound wrote:
It's a funny thing to hear "vehicles need less terrain so they can maneuver". In practice, I find that less terrain leads to less maneuvering. Most vehicle mounted weapons are 36"+, and without sufficient obstructing terrain they don't need to move to find their targets. Driving around the board edge and staying at your maximum weapons range while targeting the enemy freely isn't maneuvering. In my mind, maneuvering implies a choice with consequences; you could move this way to gain line of sight on these enemies, or travel this way to remain obscured or attack different enemies, but you can't do both.

There's a reason people call vehicle heavy lists "parking lots". I've played against enough Tau/Guard/etc shooting galleries to know there are some ulterior motives to these complaints about vehicles needing less terrain on the table.

Quasistellar wrote:Honestly not a huge fan. I'm all for lots of LOS blocking, but it's taken a bit far here. Also, they really don't use any other terrain like craters or barricades.

They REALLY don't want non flying tanks to work it seems to me.

Agreed. And they REALLY, REALLY, don't want any LoW that doesn't have FLY or is a knight to work. Super Heavy Tanks will be practically unmoveable on those boards.

xeen wrote:If you want balance (as you do for a Tournament) I think these boards are great. The table top tactic guys played a game with this layout (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQcE0IKCU48) and you can see how the terrain actually mattered in this game. Yes it is going to favor infantry (especially heavy and assault infantry) over vehicles etc. I would never use this set up for a narrative game, nor even just a casual game. But in both of those situations, there is an expectation that neither player is going to bring over the top lists. If you are expecting players to bring the most brutal lists, you basically need to have the terrain like this, or first turn is basically everything.

How is it "balanced" if it favors any type of units over others?

 solkan wrote:

 DarkHound wrote:
It's a funny thing to hear "vehicles need less terrain so they can maneuver". In practice, I find that less terrain leads to less maneuvering.

The difficulty with terrain and vehicles is that it's often easy to inadvertently create situations where a little bit of terrain becomes a huge road block for vehicles, to the point where it's impossible to go around the terrain in a feasible manner. If you end up deploying your vehicle somewhere that it won't ever be able to maneuver out of, that's less maneuvering happening.

I play with Dunecrawlers on their full, dinner-plate bases, and I just push the model around the table to make sure it fits when we're setting up terrain. Also remember, models can freely move over terrain features 1" tall, which is a chest-high wall for most infantry. You'd have to really try to box them in. If you set up terrain without enough room to move, and then deploy your vehicles where they can't move, that's entirely on you.

 Arachnofiend wrote:
There's a reason people call vehicle heavy lists "parking lots". I've played against enough Tau/Guard/etc shooting galleries to know there are some ulterior motives to these complaints about vehicles needing less terrain on the table.

I was there, in 5th edition, when that codex first appeared. Chimera chasis left not patch of field uncovered. It was just artillery for 4 turns, and then a mad dash to claim objectives. Good luck actually reaching their objective behind 12" of metal boxes, especially when they wrecked into new terrain features.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
Agreed. And they REALLY, REALLY, don't want any LoW that doesn't have FLY or is a knight to work. Super Heavy Tanks will be practically unmoveable on those boards.

xeen wrote:If you want balance (as you do for a Tournament) I think these boards are great. ... Yes it is going to favor infantry (especially heavy and assault infantry) over vehicles etc. ... If you are expecting players to bring the most brutal lists, you basically need to have the terrain like this, or first turn is basically everything.

How is it "balanced" if it favors any type of units over others?

Don't be obtuse: it's balanced between factions and common playstyles, not between the specific unit types in the abstract. I play Knights on boards like these and it isn't a big deal. You can still walk into the ruins to melee if you need it, and you can shoot models in the terrain pretty much freely.

28mm as a scale just doesn't jive too well for anything above the platoon level. If anything the boards should be bigger than they used to be. Smaller tables just don't work.

 DarkHound wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
Agreed. And they REALLY, REALLY, don't want any LoW that doesn't have FLY or is a knight to work. Super Heavy Tanks will be practically unmoveable on those boards.

xeen wrote:If you want balance (as you do for a Tournament) I think these boards are great. ... Yes it is going to favor infantry (especially heavy and assault infantry) over vehicles etc. ... If you are expecting players to bring the most brutal lists, you basically need to have the terrain like this, or first turn is basically everything.

How is it "balanced" if it favors any type of units over others?

Don't be obtuse: it's balanced between factions and common playstyles, not between the specific unit types in the abstract. I play Knights on boards like these and it isn't a big deal. You can still walk into the ruins to melee if you need it, and you can shoot models in the terrain pretty much freely.

I was responding to Xeen's comment that this would favor infantry (and especially heavy and assault infantry), and I agree with them on that.

And I apologize, I meant that gw doesn't want any LoW that doesn't have FLY or isn't a knight to work. Knights have relatively small footprints compared to things like Baneblades and Fellblades, so will be able to get around better. Watching TT's report (just the start of it so far), I'm seeing most lanes barely big enough for Beard's Repulsor. A SHT without FLY will either be stuck moving around the outside of the board or the main thoroughfares, where it will be a sitting duck for AT infantry sitting in cover. I enjoy a good city fight myself, but every fight shouldn't be one.

Ah, I'm sorry for my rudeness. I agree that Baneblades are screwed in this format. It's a small shame, but it's probably good for competitive play that Baneblades aren't strong enough. Personally I don't think Knights should be a stand-alone faction either; I don't like allowing skew armies to exist, but that's another topic.

Abaddon303 wrote:
What do people think of these? Do you think maybe they've messed up the breakout box and terrain piece one shouldn't have obscuring?

Surely you should be able to shoot across the large bases and the actual ruin walls be naturally line of sight blocking?

Zzz. Boring, goes against how scenarios were written which assume asymmetric board.

Will result in bland looking　boards with predicatable games

Good if you　are inimaginative　player though

These layouts are super bland and boring. If you design 9 standard terrain pieces and only use two of them for your game, you did something very, very wrong.

The "how to build a good table" video from table top titans is still one of the best guides for making enjoyable tables - both for narrative and tournament games. GW should watch that.
Essentially there are four important categories of terrain - ruins, forest/industrial/craters, barricades and containers/rocks(natural LoS blockers). If your table doesn't have all four of these, you have already tossed balance out the window.

DarkHound wrote:Ah, I'm sorry for my rudeness. I agree that Baneblades are screwed in this format. It's a small shame, but it's probably good for competitive play that Baneblades aren't strong enough. Personally I don't think Knights should be a stand-alone faction either; I don't like allowing skew armies to exist, but that's another topic.

No matter what your stance on super-heavies is, ork Morkanauts and buggies face the same issue, as do large vehicles like landraiders, defilers or monoliths who have been part of the game for what feels like forever.

As a rule of thumb, our tables either have to have two pathes where a large vehicle can fit through and one which can fit smaller ones like dreads or rhinos OR two pathes wide enough to fit three medium vehicles next to each other. The later is more difficult to without turning the board into a shooting gallery though, but possible.

I might be a complete idiot, but could anyone tell me where I could find pictures or a detailed description of what this layout would be? I can't seem to find anything beyond what's in the rulebook and I wouldn't exactly call that dense.

You probably should have linked the article you're talking about as not everyone looks at WarCom every day.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/06/29/metawatch-warhammer-40000-building-beautiful-balanced-battlefields-for-grand-tournament-play/

It's a good thing I don't play in these tournaments, I do like actually using my doomsday arks.

Note that those big obscuring elements are for the most part traversable for vehicles, so you can actually actually maneuver decently.

My thoughts?
The only thig I see there that I like are the clear bases they've mounted the terrain on.

Spoletta wrote:
Note that those big obscuring elements are for the most part traversable for vehicles, so you can actually actually maneuver decently.

The issue is that you can't drive through walls with vehicles. In terrain setup 2 a single unit of nurglings or infiltrators can essentially make an entire ork buggy list lose their first turn because they can lock most of the army in their deployment zone.

Aside from them being symmetrical I find it to be a pretty typical layout of our tables.
Edit after watching the example tables: they're rather empty compared to what we usually do

Few things then we normally use, but does look like an avarge kind of a table. It is good that GW didn't decide to make asymetrical tables the norm for regular games.