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Being a long time 40k player, I'm used to larger more scenic pieces of terrain, but a bunch of the Warmachine players at the store keep telling me I need to make much smaller stuff for Warmachine, and then a podcast I listened to today talked about them making "forests" the size of a large base, only 2" diameter. What stuff do you use for terrain yourselves? Opinions in large v small?

2" diameter? That's too small.

I'd say 4" at least.

The trouble with large terrain is that whole units that ignore the terrain penalties benefit
from the defensive properties of that terrain. A hill the size of your army can give your
army a permanent +2 DEF bonus, a forest that can house two whole units protects them
from most charges and grants them concealment, etc.

Terrain should be big enough to be dealt with, but small enough to maneuver. I know
that sounds contradictory, but once you've played a few games you'll understand what
I mean.

First and foremost the terrain should be usable (you should be able to put models on top without them falling over, hills should either be gentle sloped or have some kind of block you can use with them to keep models from falling over. As long as the terrain is usable, you can use more of it. I've played some 40k at the LGS where they used the GW terrain (like the temple of skulls, I think its called) and more or less the whole thing is treated in impassable. I suppose thats OK if you're playing on a 4x6 table, but on 4x4 large pieces of impassable terrain really get in the way.

My typical games include 1 to 2 3-5" forests, one to two 3-5" hills, a couple of fences, and maybe a small water piece.

What are the general thoughts on % table covered by terrain? I've noticed that they tend to be very, very empty, with maybe a total of 160 square inches of terrain on more than 2,000 square inches of table, or less than 10%. I'm used to 40k 25% terrain coverage, so going to less than 10% seems absolutely sparse by comparison. The book gives no guidelines beyond 'play what you want to play', but what is the baseline for tournaments, etc?

sourclams wrote:What are the general thoughts on % table covered by terrain? I've noticed that they tend to be very, very empty, with maybe a total of 160 square inches of terrain on more than 2,000 square inches of table, or less than 10%. I'm used to 40k 25% terrain coverage, so going to less than 10% seems absolutely sparse by comparison. The book gives no guidelines beyond 'play what you want to play', but what is the baseline for tournaments, etc?

There was a Steamroller Addendum a while back that actually had board lay outs for tournaments. The usually included 2x Hills, 2x Forests, 4x Fences / other linear obsticals, + misc terrain. I highly doubt coverage was over 20% in any of the maps.

Remember that any kind of rough terrain is crippling to melee armies and that aren't heavy in pathfinder. Additionally, some factions nearly entirely ignore terrain (Legion & Circle in particular). The more terrain you throw on the board, the larger advantage you give to those factions and the more you penalize factions like the Protectorate & Skorne.

sourclams wrote:What are the general thoughts on % table covered by terrain? I've noticed that they tend to be very, very empty, with maybe a total of 160 square inches of terrain on more than 2,000 square inches of table, or less than 10%. I'm used to 40k 25% terrain coverage, so going to less than 10% seems absolutely sparse by comparison. The book gives no guidelines beyond 'play what you want to play', but what is the baseline for tournaments, etc?

It's not 2000 square inches of table. Terrain is often left out of the deployment
zones, which means you're dealing with 1300 square inches.

Is that a tournament standard? The tables I observed during games at the shop certainly did have terrain in the deployment zone.

sourclams wrote:Is that a tournament standard? The tables I observed during games at the shop certainly did have terrain in the deployment zone.

For what its worth, in the past 4 years of playing in Gen Con nationals, I can only recall 1 game with Terrain in the deployment zone, and that was in the finals where they tend to bend the rules just a little bit.

Current PP policy about tournament terrain setting seems to let the TO decide how to set the tables without any serious restrictions and/or guidelines. Whenever I'm running a tournament I'm still using the old SR3 settings, dating back to 2007 (LINK) as they're very playable and our players enjoy them much.

mazgier: The Steamroller revison wth the deployment zone changes will have
notes on terrain. (Very broad ones, though)