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Marin wrote:


We play mostly on UKTC and i must say it killed almost all melee armies. Only custodes are fine on it, because they dont`t really need terrain.
It`s to open with to little place to hide big footprint models and armies.
Vehicles with 10 or less move are hard stuck on this terrain, since in most missions there is nothing in the middle except ruins that give -1 to hit and are hard ground.
60% of the games are just decided by the who go first roll, so i`m not a fan on this setup. Would personally would prefer terrain that decrease the value of the fist turn.

The boards I personally like are the ones that look like a bombed out city block(or a natural version hills, trees, etc thereof). Building ruins arranged to give the appearance of streets and cross streets between them

There should be SOME fire lanes. These lanes should not be universally dominant (like a 12" but should provide a risk/benefit calculation for their use as faster more dangerous vs slower less opportunistic routes for units. Especially the larger ground bound vehicles.

The theoretically long axis fireline across the middle of no-man's-land can either be interrupted by a central building or create a coveted spot to fight over. If there's a building there shouldn't be an objective in/near it.

In that vein but as a seperate point for emphasis - only VERY rarely should a scoring objective share location with a sweet spot location (i.e. great building cover you can stack infiltrating camo cloaked units in, the anchor point of one of those firelanes, areas commonly selected by secondaries like "The Center Of The Board" and so on) Triple Dipping with - Center of Board, with a ruined building you can stack lasfusil camo cloaked eliminators in, AND secure an objective - that's just too much King of The Mountain

 Grimtuff wrote:
One does not need to eat dog gak to know it will taste bad...

My own analogy is you're in prison awaiting trial and looking for legal advice, do you:
(a) Get that advice from someone who has both experience of trials and actual experience in the area of relevant law.
(b) Get that advice from someone who has experience of trials.
(c) Ask the Sovereign Citizen sitting in the cell next to you, rocking back and forth, mumbling about eating dog gak.

Marin wrote:
We play mostly on UKTC and i must say it killed almost all melee armies. Only custodes are fine on it, because they dont`t really need terrain.
It`s to open with to little place to hide big footprint models and armies.
Vehicles with 10 or less move are hard stuck on this terrain, since in most missions there is nothing in the middle except ruins that give -1 to hit and are hard ground.
60% of the games are just decided by the who go first roll, so i`m not a fan on this setup. Would personally would prefer terrain that decrease the value of the fist turn.

Thanks, that is an interesting take. Was this on version 1 of the terrain or the more recent version? They did go back and add in more ruins (removing the large vents that were "forests" that provided dense cover and difficult ground which you do mention). If you have the actual terrain at your club, there was an "expansion pack" that has the extra ruins they added to the later version.

I can see an issue for melee vehicles without fly. In my experience with UKTC, melee armies can work in the terrain, but the best melee options are often either INFANTRY that can go through the walls or units with FLY that can also go through the walls. I've lost a few games to Vanguard Vets staging behind one of the mid board ruins one turn, then moving in for the kill on the next turn. I can see how their might be an issue for Bladeguard Vets style units, as to move from your deployment zone to a safe mid board staging area probably needs an above average advance roll. I am planning on trying some melee heavy Necrons soon-ish at a tournament with this terrain, I'm quite confident that I'll be able to move up the Skorpekhs behind the mid board ruins then attack the next turn.

Remember bro, next time you criticise food you're not allowed to as you're not a pro chef....

 Grimtuff wrote:
Remember bro, next time you criticise food you're not allowed to as you're not a pro chef....

I personally like this idea, maybe when I play games and feel intense boredom I'm actually having fun, I just don't know any better, which in retrospect makes 40k the best game I ever played.

EightFoldPath wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
One does not need to eat dog gak to know it will taste bad...

My own analogy is you're in prison awaiting trial and looking for legal advice, do you:
(a) Get that advice from someone who has both current experience of criminal trials and has a relevant Law degree.
(b) Get that advice from someone who has previous experience of criminal trials and has a relevant Law degree.
(c) Get that advice from someone who has current experience of criminal trials but has never been to Law school.
(d) Get that advice from someone who has previous experience of criminal trials but has never been to Law school.
(e) Get that advice from someone who has no experience of criminal trials but has a relevant Law degree.
(f) Get that advice from someone who has no experience of criminal trials and has never been to Law school.
(hint: Very, very few people on the 40k side of Dakka fall into a/b/e, and even fewer fall into f)

There, your analogy is now accurate. I will accept as payment a drápa of no less than 20 stanzas composed in my honor.

Mmm. I like the idea that having an opinion on whether you feel a game is fun to play is exactly like being in prison. Its an enlightening take, to say the least.

In view of the recommended terrain, two boxes of the Killzone Chalnath terrain will suffice.
https://www.games-workshop.com/de-DE/killzone-chalnath-2022

 wuestenfux wrote:
In view of the recommended terrain, two boxes of the Killzone Chalnath terrain will suffice.
https://www.games-workshop.com/de-DE/killzone-chalnath-2022

Well, isn't that an interesting......coincidence.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:
In view of the recommended terrain, two boxes of the Killzone Chalnath terrain will suffice.
https://www.games-workshop.com/de-DE/killzone-chalnath-2022

Well, isn't that an interesting......coincidence.

^Hehehe

Voss wrote:
Mmm. I like the idea that having an opinion on whether you feel a game is fun to play is exactly like being in prison. Its an enlightening take, to say the least.

I think the debate though is whether or not you can decide how a game feels to play based on reading the rules and watching batreps alone vs. actually playing.

I'm not sure anyone is debating the opinions or invalidating the feelings of those who have actually played even a handful of times.

And I'm not going to say you can't have an opinion without playing- obviously, we all have some experience gaming, and we can project and extrapolate. And we can also all remember the things we liked about previous versions, look at this ruleset and see that those things are clearly not there now, and that is certainly going to create strong opinions and feelings, all of which are valid.

But a game that doesn't include some of the things that you liked about previous editions MIGHT still be more fun than you think it will be if you actually try it.

I'll admit that I've don the same thing to other games- I assume I wouldn't like Dust or Chain of Command when I look at the models. I assume I wouldn't like alternate activations in 40k but I've never actually tried it. So I too offer opinions on things I haven't directly experienced from time to time.

Sorry to disappoint, but the only reason people have these discussions is to 'debate the opinions' and invalidate other people's positions, even before they present them.

Certainly when they preface any response before it happens by claiming the 'usual suspects' will show up with their biased opinions (as opposed to their own 'unbiased' opinion).

PenitentJake 804146 11329934 wrote:

I think the debate though is whether or not you can decide how a game feels to play based on reading the rules and watching batreps alone vs. actually playing.

You don't have to know the lore, know the rules or ever play a w40k, but if you see one player just remove models and the other not. And after 20 min, the player with the models on the table asked the one without the models, if he wants to stop. You know that at best something was very bad about that specific game being played. And we have seen games like that at the top tables of large GT with both players being very good.

How many games of csm vs something else then IG, one has to see to know that playing csm is probably not fun . Or when someone thinks about starting the game, but all the lists he finds online are practically clones of each other. Bonus points if they don't include the models that he actually likes.

If I see a 30 plus year old get explained how interactions of army, sub faction, stratagem work and they just quit the game on the spot. I think it is telling. Specially as a lot of the problems GW games have, specially w40k, don't exist for other table top games or are an minimal.

If I see a 30 plus year old get explained how interactions of army, sub faction, stratagem work and they just quit the game on the spot. I think it is telling. Specially as a lot of the problems GW games have, specially w40k, don't exist for other table top games or are an minimal.

Indeed, there are big differences between editions 3 to 5 and the current incarnation of the game.
Returning vets need to learn the game anew.

Well I don't know, besides reading a bit of old GK codex, how prior editiont to 8th looked like. But even in 8th, the layers of interactions was lower. Sure if someone was trying to be an a-hole and spread 120 pox walker 2" from each other it was annoying. But when you have to keep track of opponents CP count, sub faction, stratagem, warlord trait etc interactions, the primaries and secondaries they do it gets a bit much. Specially when what you are playing is not a game of 15-20 models vs another 15-20 models.

As I said it is a good system for high end tournament players. The multi layer complexity helps weed out the weaker and worse players, and actually makes it easier for better players to progress. Eliminates a lot of the problems with turn 1-2 match ups. Oddly enough, a bit like in some sports.

Breton wrote:


One thing you may be doing differently is not playing them as Area Terrain.
This looks pretty open - but if you look close you can see the plexiglass footprint which would cause issues trying to cut those corners in a vehicle etc.

That does look fairly awful. I get the plexi bit actually means there is more terrain than at first glance, but it looks so artificial.

Epic Had a neat way of handling it where both players set up roughly 12 pieces of terrain between them (or it was set up by a tounrey organiser), then the highest strat ratihg picked sides. For comparison Marines were 5, 'Guard 2. The highest got to choose which long edge or which corner and put down the first unit (garrisons and then stuff in the deployment zone).

I confess to lacking the enthusiasm to open my 40k rulebook, but the Epic one is online and easily cut and paste...

We recommend the use of terrain features when playing tournament games in preference to modular terrain (see the Appendices for a more detailed description of the two types of terrain).
• Terrain features can be of pretty much any type, but should be roughly 15-30cm across. Hills can be up to twice this size. See below for a note of how to deal with rivers and roads.
• Divide the table into 60cm (2 foot) square areas. The total number of terrain features placed should be equal to twice the number of 60cm square areas. For example, if you were playing on a 120cm by 180 cm, you would have six areas and should place 12 terrain features.
• Within the limits above, place between 0-4 features in each 60cm square.
• The terrain may include one river. Rivers count as a terrain feature for each area that they run through. They need to enter on one table edge and leave from another, and should not be greater in length than the shortest table edge. For example, on a 120cm by 180cm table, the river should not be more than 120cm long. There should be a bridge or ford
every 30cm along the river.
• Roads may be added after all terrain features have been placed. Any number of roads may be used. They need to enter on one table edge and either exit from another or end at a terrain feature

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
I "feel" that it shows that gw knows that their fancy new terrain rules don't work very well to curb the excessive lethality that they've built into most of the 9th edition codexes outside of big Obscurring area pieces, and that's why they spam them all over their tournament boards.

They do a good job, really. The use, or lack thereof, of barricades and other such terrain isn't mutually exclusive. Those things work fine and I think the avoidance is more, because they wanted something to help vehicles. Barricades create a problem for larger footprints, which can move over, but not stand on that terrain and dense is the one thing that vehicles can pick up, so that was basically the go to.

I don't think the problem is terrain at all. It's the power of ooLOS shooting and decidedly over tuned armies. It looks more and more likely that Custodes points were set based on Tau, Eldar, and perhaps new Nids.

I actually prefer the GW terrain to planet bowling ball of the past. That said I personally prefer a more asymetrical tabel where each quarter has a decnet trrain setup but it is not a mirror. I also really like some tall thematic piece in the center of the board which the gw system lacks (like i have one big piece for every theme of terrain I have built) I don't find people in my area insisting on the GW style often but its a decent enough baseline to go by

 G00fySmiley wrote:
I actually prefer the GW terrain to planet bowling ball of the past. That said I personally prefer a more asymetrical tabel where each quarter has a decnet trrain setup but it is not a mirror. I also really like some tall thematic piece in the center of the board which the gw system lacks (like i have one big piece for every theme of terrain I have built) I don't find people in my area insisting on the GW style often but its a decent enough baseline to go by

If setup is purely symmetrical, choice of battle side will be superfluous. One roll of D6 less.

 wuestenfux wrote:

 G00fySmiley wrote:
I actually prefer the GW terrain to planet bowling ball of the past. That said I personally prefer a more asymmetrical tabel where each quarter has a decnet trrain setup but it is not a mirror. I also really like some tall thematic piece in the center of the board which the gw system lacks (like i have one big piece for every theme of terrain I have built) I don't find people in my area insisting on the GW style often but its a decent enough baseline to go by

If setup is purely symmetrical, choice of battle side will be superfluous. One roll of D6 less.

true, and by asymmetrical I don't mean one barren side just not necessarily the exact same sized footprint and maybe one quarter of the table has 2 medium and a small piece of terrain modeled as burnt out shops or shipping containers along with a few little scatter pieces of cargo boxes, meanwhile the opposite quarter has one larger piece as a blown out 2 story building husk and scatter terrain of burnt out cars around it. Both quarters have cover and lien of sight blocking but its not just "here are 4 large building ruins, plus smaller corner pieces and 2 identical diagonal pieces on the edge since they came in the terrain kit"

still i don't hate the gw setup since at least its playable

Making all table layouts the same makes chosing a side completly irrelevant. It shouldn't.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
I "feel" that it shows that gw knows that their fancy new terrain rules don't work very well to curb the excessive lethality that they've built into most of the 9th edition codexes outside of big Obscurring area pieces, and that's why they spam them all over their tournament boards.

They do a good job, really. The use, or lack thereof, of barricades and other such terrain isn't mutually exclusive. Those things work fine and I think the avoidance is more, because they wanted something to help vehicles. Barricades create a problem for larger footprints, which can move over, but not stand on that terrain and dense is the one thing that vehicles can pick up, so that was basically the go to.

That's a major concession for a game that used to focus more heavily on infantry, as well as allow vehicles to enter ruins, roll over barricades, etc.

Ugly boards because the terrain rules are sorely lacking in certain areas, basically.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
Making all table layouts the same makes chosing a side completly irrelevant. It shouldn't.

Why is this important? With the IGOUGO system why punish the person who lost a single die roll?

Because playing on the same symmetrical mirror tables over and over again leads to high player burnout as boredom creeps in and things become super sterile.

 Insectum7 wrote:
That's a major concession for a game that used to focus more heavily on infantry, as well as allow vehicles to enter ruins, roll over barricades, etc.

Ugly boards because the terrain rules are sorely lacking in certain areas, basically.

Some tournaments allow super heavies to ignore terrain less than 3", which makes some ruins a lot more traversable. The rules actually contain solutions to these problems - people just don't really use them. It could be made that barricades don't have unstable so that you can technically stop on them or tournaments could rule that vehicles don't care about unstable under an inch.

Obscuring terrain also does not need to be ruins. It could be a crop of tall trees, a ridgeline, a heavily burning wreck, etc.

Tournament terrain is going to adhere to market forces and go for the cheapest option that still serves the purpose and looks nice.

 wuestenfux wrote:

 G00fySmiley wrote:
I actually prefer the GW terrain to planet bowling ball of the past. That said I personally prefer a more asymetrical tabel where each quarter has a decnet trrain setup but it is not a mirror. I also really like some tall thematic piece in the center of the board which the gw system lacks (like i have one big piece for every theme of terrain I have built) I don't find people in my area insisting on the GW style often but its a decent enough baseline to go by

If setup is purely symmetrical, choice of battle side will be superfluous. One roll of D6 less.

The problem is you still have to roll for attacker and defender to see who deploys the first unit. Another benefit of mirrored tables is you don't have to move your army to the other side of the table.

You're at a downside if you are the defender on a symmetrical board, ideally the downside of being the defender and placing units down first is offset by a slight advantage in terms of terrain.

 auticus wrote:
Because playing on the same symmetrical mirror tables over and over again leads to high player burnout as boredom creeps in and things become super sterile.

I get that some people can feel that way. Terrain looks tickle the back of my brain occasionally, but it's never been something that disrupted my enjoyment so far. Were I ambitious I'd be buying a 3D printer and trying my hand at making alternatives.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
I "feel" that it shows that gw knows that their fancy new terrain rules don't work very well to curb the excessive lethality that they've built into most of the 9th edition codexes outside of big Obscurring area pieces, and that's why they spam them all over their tournament boards.

They do a good job, really. The use, or lack thereof, of barricades and other such terrain isn't mutually exclusive. Those things work fine and I think the avoidance is more, because they wanted something to help vehicles. Barricades create a problem for larger footprints, which can move over, but not stand on that terrain and dense is the one thing that vehicles can pick up, so that was basically the go to.

I don't think the problem is terrain at all. It's the power of ooLOS shooting and decidedly over tuned armies. It looks more and more likely that Custodes points were set based on Tau, Eldar, and perhaps new Nids.

No, they don't, really.

Yes, barricades can slow down, or even flat out stop big/slow/bracketed vehicles, but they also slow down infantry, and at best give them LIGHT COVER, so the vehicle can at least shoot at them. Meanwhile, those big ruin walls flat out stop any vehicles without FLY, and since they're all OBSCURRING + BREACHABLE, infantry get full protection from shooting, while being able to "Kool-aid Man" right through them at no cost to their movement.

And vehicles only benefiting from DENSE is one of the many problems with the current terrain rules. But even then, it's not much help if all of the DENSE cover is on the outer edges of the board, unless you only intend to use your vehicles as static gun inplacements. There needs to be a greater mix of terrain types spread throughout the board to offer advantages/disadvantages to more unit types. If it has to be symmetrical for "competitive fairness", fine. But you shouldn't be over-relying on a couple of types, and if you have to, then that means that the others aren't working well enough.

Agreed on ignore LOS shooting and some armies being over tuned. It's bizarre that whoever wrote the Tyranids codex figured out how ooLOS shooting should work, but it didn't carry over into Tau and other armies.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
I "feel" that it shows that gw knows that their fancy new terrain rules don't work very well to curb the excessive lethality that they've built into most of the 9th edition codexes outside of big Obscurring area pieces, and that's why they spam them all over their tournament boards.

They do a good job, really. The use, or lack thereof, of barricades and other such terrain isn't mutually exclusive. Those things work fine and I think the avoidance is more, because they wanted something to help vehicles. Barricades create a problem for larger footprints, which can move over, but not stand on that terrain and dense is the one thing that vehicles can pick up, so that was basically the go to.

I don't think the problem is terrain at all. It's the power of ooLOS shooting and decidedly over tuned armies. It looks more and more likely that Custodes points were set based on Tau, Eldar, and perhaps new Nids.

No, they don't, really.

Yes, barricades can slow down, or even flat out stop big/slow/bracketed vehicles, but they also slow down infantry, and at best give them LIGHT COVER, so the vehicle can at least shoot at them. Meanwhile, those big ruin walls flat out stop any vehicles without FLY, and since they're all OBSCURRING + BREACHABLE, infantry get full protection from shooting, while being able to "Kool-aid Man" right through them at no cost to their movement.

And vehicles only benefiting from DENSE is one of the many problems with the current terrain rules. But even then, it's not much help if all of the DENSE cover is on the outer edges of the board, unless you only intend to use your vehicles as static gun inplacements. There needs to be a greater mix of terrain types spread throughout the board to offer advantages/disadvantages to more unit types. If it has to be symmetrical for "competitive fairness", fine. But you shouldn't be over-relying on a couple of types, and if you have to, then that means that the others aren't working well enough.

Agreed on ignore LOS shooting and some armies being over tuned. It's bizarre that whoever wrote the Tyranids codex figured out how ooLOS shooting should work, but it didn't carry over into Tau and other armies.

Yea I get you. I'd like to see dense occasionally interspersed rather than cast out to the edges. The concern there is a couple pieces could dictate the whole flow of the game and cripple Orks.

I think the best way to solve that problem though is to just make vehicles without invulnerables or damage mitigation better.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
Making all table layouts the same makes chosing a side completly irrelevant. It shouldn't.

Why is this important? With the IGOUGO system why punish the person who lost a single die roll?

you're already punishing the person that lost a single dice roll tho (turn order)

When we say "asymetric terrain" we don't mean one half covered in ruins and the other fully exposed, just something that doesnt look so sterile. Maybe one side as more smaller ruins than the other so if i'm running vehicles, i should pick the side with bigger ruins but if i'm running infantry heavy, i'd rather have the multiple small ruins.

Its a level of tactics that actually requires skill and lowers the impact of listbuilding since you can't just build a list based on what you know the terrain layout will be like



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


Yea I get you. I'd like to see dense occasionally interspersed rather than cast out to the edges. The concern there is a couple pieces could dictate the whole flow of the game and cripple Orks.

So having terrain that has an impact is bad ?

 VladimirHerzog wrote:
So having terrain that has an impact is bad ?

Outsized impact. Orks lose half their hit rolls to dense. I'm not saying you couldn't do it, but you'd need to be really careful about it.