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Hello all,

My local gaming group enjoys using the ITC Ruins rule, but after a match I had, some questions came up. How should the small wall pieces be ruled as? I've looked through ITC rules, through the BRB and cannot seem to find anything that would force small walls (will be pictured later) have to be given the Ruins terrain type.

After discussion with the group, it seems to be torn between whether or not they should be Ruins, if they should block LOS, or if they should be ruled as something different.



In the image above, there are three units. Dominus, behind the wall, SI-1 and SI2. SI1 is out in the open, while SI-2 is just to the left of the small wall.
If treated as something like a barricade or Obstacle, then both the Dominus and SI-2 would be valid shooting targets for SI-1
If the small wall is treated as a piece of Ruins, then the Dominus is no longer a valid target, because it would be out of line of sight, leaving only SI-2 to be shot by SI-1

Opinions? Enlightenment from those who have played with the ITC rule-set, and how smaller wall pieces such as that are treated?

So, for ITC is says in their mission packet that the “first floor rule” affects ruins, so its whatever you decide they are before the game. I would normally decide the piece in question is a ruin, while smaller things, 1” to 2” I would consider barricades so they would only offer the cover they actually do as per the barricade rules in the BRB. So yes, you’re explanation below the pic is perfectly as I would play it as a ruin

Around here, we have a house rule that says models in base to base with a piece of terrain count as being "in" the terrain for the purposes of cover even though they're really just "against" terrain. So a rhino pressed against the side of a building would benefit from cover provided it was 50% obscured.

I bring this up because it means a piece of terrain like the one displayed can potentially provide cover without blocking line of sight if you don't want to count every single short wall with a window as having said windows boarded up.

So at that point, my opponent and I would just determine pre-game whether the window was opaque or not. If we want more true BLOS on the table, we'd just agree in advance that the short wall pictured counts as completely blocking line of sight. If we just wanted to make sure it provided cover, we'd say that we're using true line of sight instead of pretending the window isn't there.

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of the "all first floor windows are opaque" thing. I"m fortunate enough to play at stores where there's enough BLOS terrain available that we can actually block line of sight when we want to. I like being able to give cover to infantry behind the window ledges of blown-out buildings without having to remember that there are invisible walls hiding everything from sight.