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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.

It's all because the game is far too lethal. If that was toned down you could then more easily create good looking, narratively satisfying terrain set-ups without worrying that someone will get blown off the table in one turn. Tournaments want to balance the game through the terrain set-up, and it leads to the madness we have now. I've played games at my club where we were halfway through our game before the people doing tournament practice had even set up their board, thanks to the density and bizarre arrangement of each terrain piece.

On our game days, I usually come an hour early to set up 3-4 tables in a way that they both work well rules-wise and look nice from a narrative point of view. At this point I neither know the missions, nor who plays where.

Any time I can't invest that hour at least one game ends early with one player getting blasted off the board because someone set up a nice looking board which was functionally identical to planet bowling ball.

With the current terrain rules playing a good game on a nice looking board is something extremely hard to achieve.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
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.

Huh, I'm going to try that. I'm always struggling with our city table and it's carved in roads. Though barricades and rubble usually doesn't cut it because they can't even hide infantry, containers and high walls are usually what I'm using.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slipspace wrote:
It's all because the game is far too lethal. If that was toned down you could then more easily create good looking, narratively satisfying terrain set-ups without worrying that someone will get blown off the table in one turn. Tournaments want to balance the game through the terrain set-up, and it leads to the madness we have now. I've played games at my club where we were halfway through our game before the people doing tournament practice had even set up their board, thanks to the density and bizarre arrangement of each terrain piece.

Not a fan of the tournament set-ups either, but I can see why people who struggle to set up good table themselves would rather use that than waste hours on a game decided before deployment.

I'd also argue that the game would automatically become less lethal if terrain like craters, barricades or wood actually did anything. In past past edition, people would stick to those because their life depended on it, but in 10th, the chance of the benefit of cover actually having an impact on the outcome of unit's shooting is just way to low.
Right now pretty much all terrain except ruins or physical LoS blockers (containers, walls) have no impact on the game besides reducing movement and thus benefitting long range shooting units instead of hindering them.

 Jidmah wrote:

I'd also argue that the game would automatically become less lethal if terrain like craters, barricades or wood actually did anything. In past past edition, people would stick to those because their life depended on it, but in 10th, the chance of the benefit of cover actually having an impact on the outcome of unit's shooting is just way to low.
Right now pretty much all terrain except ruins or physical LoS blockers (containers, walls) have no impact on the game besides reducing movement and thus benefitting long range shooting units instead of hindering them.

I think that's the biggest problem. The actual rule for benefit of cover is usually useless. +1 save won't save you with how lethal 40k is, so cover boils down to a binary "can you see me" check. When we had Dense cover giving -1 to hit and other cover giving +1 to save, you could at least stack cover types or try to use the most beneficial cover type for the attacks coming at you. One other problem is so many units in modern 40k are far too fast, making staying out of LoS even trickier.

 Jidmah wrote:

I'd also argue that the game would automatically become less lethal if terrain like craters, barricades or wood actually did anything. In past past edition, people would stick to those because their life depended on it, but in 10th, the chance of the benefit of cover actually having an impact on the outcome of unit's shooting is just way to low.

This right here. Ruins are the only terrain that gets used because they're the only terrain that doesn't use the outdated TLOS nonsense.

I actually think the layouts mostly look fine. Like the GW ones are set up in a fine setup. Most mats with streets should have them at angle anyway. That has straight line streets have never created interesting lines on the table.

I do second making ruins basically whatever you want to look cool though. The advantage of them is that they're abstracted so they can look like anything. Don't like a building there? A crashed tank is a valid ruin on a good template. Simple terrain rules create the ability to play on good looking terrain. Take advantage.

Slipspace wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

I'd also argue that the game would automatically become less lethal if terrain like craters, barricades or wood actually did anything. In past past edition, people would stick to those because their life depended on it, but in 10th, the chance of the benefit of cover actually having an impact on the outcome of unit's shooting is just way to low.
Right now pretty much all terrain except ruins or physical LoS blockers (containers, walls) have no impact on the game besides reducing movement and thus benefitting long range shooting units instead of hindering them.

I think that's the biggest problem. The actual rule for benefit of cover is usually useless. +1 save won't save you with how lethal 40k is, so cover boils down to a binary "can you see me" check. When we had Dense cover giving -1 to hit and other cover giving +1 to save, you could at least stack cover types or try to use the most beneficial cover type for the attacks coming at you. One other problem is so many units in modern 40k are far too fast, making staying out of LoS even trickier.

It's not a lethality problem, it's a statstics problem. -1 to hit is not a feasible solution in a game where both 2+ and 5+ BS armies exist.
Whenever you are shot by something actually good at killing you, +1 to armor just upgrades a 6 to a 5 or a 5 to a 4, which looks a lot better on paper than it does in reality. That one extra save your succeed might not save your unit because it was getting overkilled anyways, and there is a high chance of either not rolling well enough to hit that magic number OR rolling so well you didn't need it.
The only time the benefit of cover matter is when shooting a lot of shots with AP0 or 1 at infantry with bad saves.

The only terrain rule that does work is obscuring. You get absolute protection for being in the right place at the right time.

My suggestion would to add obscuring to more terrain pieces. Craters should obscure infantry and mounted within them unless you are close enough, barricades and trenches obscure infantry when shooting through them, forests obscure everything behind them just like ruins.

As for fast... most units in 10th are way slower than they used to be in previous editions. I can't actually think of a fast unit that's both good at shooting and not easy to kill in retaliation right now.

Good news only 6 months until we find out how bad the terrain layouts will be for 11th. I'm getting the sense that this will be another no play edition for me.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

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.

While I see your point, the ol’ you cut I pick system, there’d be a problem with how some armies are heavily tilted towards types of terrain. The tau would love to fight on planet bowling ball and if they set up the terrain, it wouldn’t matter which side you picked if the entire table is flat. Similarly melee heavy armies would spam terrain so they couldn’t get shot, regardless of which side the other put down. Yes, both scenarios are obviously win at all cost and jerk moves, but I can see why the system isn’t used just out of fear that it might happen.

Edited to not be a run on sentence.

I wish that 40k would bring back rivers/chasms/impassable terrain that you need to fly over.

It would make use if all the FLY keywords on so many Vehicles.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I wish that 40k would bring back rivers/chasms/impassable terrain that you need to fly over.

It would make use if all the FLY keywords on so many Vehicles.

What about the armies that don't have Fly units? Knights, Genestealer Cult - do they have options to navigate past/around these features?

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I wish that 40k would bring back rivers/chasms/impassable terrain that you need to fly over.

It would make use if all the FLY keywords on so many Vehicles.

What about the armies that don't have Fly units? Knights, Genestealer Cult - do they have options to navigate past/around these features?

And that leads to the challenge. I'm one of the old guard that preferred when you used to have attacker/defender missions where you let the defender set up the terrain, made it difficult and winning meant more.

But that's just me. I understand it's not balanced.

 The_Pilot wrote:
While I see your point, the ol’ you cut I pick system, there’d be a problem with how some armies are heavily tilted towards types of terrain. The tau would love to fight on planet bowling ball and if they set up the terrain, it wouldn’t matter which side you picked if the entire table is flat. Similarly melee heavy armies would spam terrain so they couldn’t get shot, regardless of which side the other put down. Yes, both scenarios are obviously win at all cost and jerk moves, but I can see why the system isn’t used just out of fear that it might happen.

That's not all bad. If your opponent does that, you know that you probably shouldn't waste your time with them. Life is too short to play against jerks.

Basically, it becomes a filter to find WAAC types.

As others have said, it's the tournament mindset and seems to be what tourney players want and that feeds over into everything else. At Adepticon this year the 40k tournaments were awash with near-mirrored terrain setups with no attempt at cohesion, dominated by legions of L-shaped ruins.

Interestingly, much of the interesting 40k terrain from earlier years was on the 30k tables which had much more thematic and cohesive terrain setups.

I'm no longer a 40k guy (still play alot of Grimdark though with 40k figures), but I always setup my tables with a "scene" in mind and usually it's with a denser terrain arrangement. Terrain-building is almost my favorite part of the hobby and I put alot of effort into it so I like the use and display of it to be equally well attended too.

As someone who adores a well designed table and has really focused on building a terrain collection to enhance my games, I have to say that its really not the fault of tournaments that most terrain doesn't play well. I have played many a game of staging a cool diorama for the first player to shoot off the board from their deployment zone and frankly, its more fun to do that with actual dioramas.

You can have terrain that is interesting, but if its not functional it loses its luster very quickly. As someone who really doesn't care for tournaments, I'll say I also don't care to argue about what can see what or if we shoudl count a gap in the pipes as opaque. I just want rules that don't get between me, the game and my opponent. Honestly, the ruin template concept is so vague to begin with I'm not sure why its such a divide. Put whatever you want on the templates, call them ruins, and play on whatever cool table you want, IMO.

It's really jarring coming back from 5e how weak the "benefit of cover" is, and how casually special rules hand it out and take it away. But bringing back LoS-blocking "area terrain" is a huge advantage.

I wouldn't even bother putting something on the table if it couldn't block LoS, unless it was just for aesthetics. My group always runs forests like ruins if we use them.

 Jidmah wrote:

Slipspace wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

I'd also argue that the game would automatically become less lethal if terrain like craters, barricades or wood actually did anything. In past past edition, people would stick to those because their life depended on it, but in 10th, the chance of the benefit of cover actually having an impact on the outcome of unit's shooting is just way to low.
Right now pretty much all terrain except ruins or physical LoS blockers (containers, walls) have no impact on the game besides reducing movement and thus benefitting long range shooting units instead of hindering them.

I think that's the biggest problem. The actual rule for benefit of cover is usually useless. +1 save won't save you with how lethal 40k is, so cover boils down to a binary "can you see me" check. When we had Dense cover giving -1 to hit and other cover giving +1 to save, you could at least stack cover types or try to use the most beneficial cover type for the attacks coming at you. One other problem is so many units in modern 40k are far too fast, making staying out of LoS even trickier.

It's not a lethality problem, it's a statstics problem. -1 to hit is not a feasible solution in a game where both 2+ and 5+ BS armies exist.
Whenever you are shot by something actually good at killing you, +1 to armor just upgrades a 6 to a 5 or a 5 to a 4, which looks a lot better on paper than it does in reality. That one extra save your succeed might not save your unit because it was getting overkilled anyways, and there is a high chance of either not rolling well enough to hit that magic number OR rolling so well you didn't need it.
The only time the benefit of cover matter is when shooting a lot of shots with AP0 or 1 at infantry with bad saves.

The only terrain rule that does work is obscuring. You get absolute protection for being in the right place at the right time.

My suggestion would to add obscuring to more terrain pieces. Craters should obscure infantry and mounted within them unless you are close enough, barricades and trenches obscure infantry when shooting through them, forests obscure everything behind them just like ruins.

As for fast... most units in 10th are way slower than they used to be in previous editions. I can't actually think of a fast unit that's both good at shooting and not easy to kill in retaliation right now.

I once read a suggestion where modifiers in 40k were multiplicative/divisive instead of additive. So that instead of a -1 to hit penalty, there was instead a 0.75x hit modifier. That would be a big deal against a 2+ BS (lowers the hit chance to 5/8). But does little against a 5+ BS (lowers the hit chance to 1/4). Rerolls were replaced with a 1.25x hit modifier.

That won't work well in a D6 system, but I liked the idea.

My suggestion would to add obscuring to more terrain pieces. Craters should obscure infantry and mounted within them unless you are close enough, barricades and trenches obscure infantry when shooting through them, forests obscure everything behind them just like ruins.

I've been pitching something along these lines for a while now. It would be pretty simple to have some or all area terrain basically make units within it untargetable outside of X" (18" feels about right.) Then stealthy units could change that to something like 12".

You could also probably use terrain to make reserves more interesting. Let enemy units deploy closer to the enemy than normal when arriving from strategic reserves if they're set up wholly within a piece of terrain that doesn't contain any enemy models. Give GSC the ability to plop down manhole covers on area terrain before deployment and arrive from reserves 6.1" away from the enemy if they arrive wholly within the terrain piece, etc.

You could go:
5+ -> 6+
4+ -> 5+
3+ -> 5+
2+ -> 4+

50%, 67%, 50%, 60%

 Calbear wrote:
I once read a suggestion where modifiers in 40k were multiplicative/divisive instead of additive. So that instead of a -1 to hit penalty, there was instead a 0.75x hit modifier. That would be a big deal against a 2+ BS (lowers the hit chance to 5/8). But does little against a 5+ BS (lowers the hit chance to 1/4). Rerolls were replaced with a 1.25x hit modifier.

That won't work well in a D6 system, but I liked the idea.

Last time this was discussed Orkeosaurus made the suggestion you can see above. The more I think about it, the more I like it.
I fear that people with less math-affinity would freak over how unfair this would be to their faction's power fantasy though.

 Orkeosaurus wrote:
You could go:
5+ -> 6+
4+ -> 5+
3+ -> 5+
2+ -> 4+

50%, 67%, 50%, 60%

This buffs very specific armies, and seems to be made to nerf marine shoting a lot. Also promotes multi shot weapons, the more shots the better. Especialy if there was a rule that you can never go below +6 to hit and that those +6 hits still proc what ever special on hit of +6 rule the unit/model/weapon has.

There’s definitely an art to laying the table.

Ideally, I’ll take themed terrain for the look of it, and laid down by a third party.

There’s also traits to certain commercial kits. Sector Imperialis for instance has a LOT of windows. So from the right angles perhaps doesn’t block much LoS. But, once the piece is deployed at say, 45 degree angle to the board edge? And you get much better LoS blocking.

For Necromunda? Don’t forget your scatter terrain. Whilst there should be open areas, scatter terrain brings tactical challenges. They might force a more circuitous route, or provide game winning cover at the right time,

But, sometimes we just have to accept we got to the club late, or it’s never had the funds and drive to do themed collections. And so you’ve got to make the best of whatever is available,

You know what I’d love to be commercially available (braces self for links…it’s a hopeful bracing) would be vines, shrubs, bushes and small trees. Such that might be readily glued to any surface to create a locale being taken back by nature.