Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

One thing I've noticed in a lot of pictures of 40k games is that the terrain on the tables are placed strictly for gaming purposes. It always looks like a garbage scow dumped random buildings from 3,000 feet. No streets, no logic, just rando scatter terrain.

It only takes a few minutes to rearrange a board so that it looks like an actual place.

Okay, rant over. I'll go back to yelling at clouds.

 ExtraCrispy wrote:
One thing I've noticed in a lot of pictures of 40k games is that the terrain on the tables are placed strictly for gaming purposes. It always looks like a garbage scow dumped random buildings from 3,000 feet. No streets, no logic, just rando scatter terrain.

It only takes a few minutes to rearrange a board so that it looks like an actual place.

Okay, rant over. I'll go back to yelling at clouds.

There was a really good WD article about making terrain look like actual cities or areas.

If you can find the old cityfight book, it had all sorts of great terrain ideas, iirc.

I think it’s the tournament pack set table layouts they look garbage. Played someone who insisted on it been that layout and the hodge lodge terrain all non matching really ruined the immersion for me. For some people the gaming effectiveness of the terrain is more important than the look or narrative. For me I want a good looking table that sets the scene.

I really dislike tournament terrain setups, as they simply do not look like a real place. WTC layouts are particularly bonkers, as every building is for some reason in slightly different angle.

I think it originally started with a way to balance Fantasy games. The various armies were often tied to terrain, so every Empire army ended up with a hill for its artillery, forests abounded for woodland critters, etc.

The 2nd ed. rulebook strongly suggested dense terrain otherwise tanks would dominate, and the boards of that era were pretty cluttered - in a good way.

When 3rd came out, it was much more tournament-oriented and the various missions involved arbitrary objectives like table quarters and there were rules for plopping terrain down which were invariably gamed. I remember how you could once tell the Fantasy boards from the 40k ones simply by the terrain used and how overnight the multi-story urban nightmare boards disappeared because the basic rules didn't handle them well (hence the need for Cityfight).

Terrain placement should be collaborative, not competitive. If you want it to have more of an edge, the traditional method is have one player set up the terrain and the other one determine who starts where.

But in all cases, it should have a theme. Most of my games are part of a campaign, and when we design it, we think ahead to how things will flow, what planet we are on, and so forth.

In prior editions terrain placement was part of the game. Divide the table up, roll for how many bits per spot, alternate placing. People who treated this as part of the competitive aspect of the game had a serious advantage over those who built tables for aesthetics.

I much prefer a more natural balanced table set up by both player mutually agreed on. But I’m fluffy like that.

One thing that helps is to put all the building footprints on a grid but then place barricades or rubble diagonally to block off some of the firing lanes you would normally get from the streets.

It has a similar effect to jumbling the buildings in the middle but looks way better.