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Having played many different games recently one thing that has struck me is the static nature of the game board. Are there any games out there where the battlefield evolves with the game play. Things like AT, where buildings can be destroyed to clear line of sight, but more than that. Like artillery creating craters that infantry can then take cover in, tanks leaving flaming wreaks on the board when destroyed etc.

 Tamereth wrote:
Having played many different games recently one thing that has struck me is the static nature of the game board. Are there any games out there where the battlefield evolves with the game play. Things like AT, where buildings can be destroyed to clear line of sight, but more than that. Like artillery creating craters that infantry can then take cover in, tanks leaving flaming wreaks on the board when destroyed etc.

I don't think many systems work well with that, simply due to reality's inconveniences.
It's already hard to get a nicely terrained table-imagine if you had to constantly be changing up the terrain too.

That said, it DOES sound cool. Just not practical for many.

It's one of those things that sounds awesome, but ends up being a lot of work that doesn't make games that much more fun.

Infinity had rules for destructable terrain in N3, but I never saw anyone actually bother (there was already a lot going on in Infinity though).

Vehicles becoming sort of terrain when wrecked is fairly common. It's common in WW2 games.

Gaalands is the best example I know.
There are rules for destructable terrain players can drive through and cars become destructable terrain when wrecked (unless they explode instead).
It works better because it fits in with the game as it runs (i.e. no special prep or setup) and the game state is constantly shifting anyway (as the race moves along).

Dropzone Commander, buildings can be attacked in order to degrade the infantry garrisoning it (very inefficient way of doing it but your only effective option if you aren't equipped with weapons that can target them directly, like flamethrowers, or weapons that are specialized in demolishing structures) - they can also be outright destroyed if they sustain enough damage

Often as not I think the barrier is that many games manufacturers never make easily destructible terrain kits. So even when they come up with rules for it, the models aren't there to use it for and many games groups don't make it so the rules get left out after a while.




That said a good many years a go (probably in the 90s or so) there was an issue of White Dwarf with jetbike game.

In that you were basically playing with speeders flying through the terrain. I don't remember all the details, but basically every turn all the terrain would move X inches in the same direction. Any that fell out of the play area vanished and new terrain was rolled in at the "front" of the game table.

Thus you got the simulation of a fight between speeders being fought over a moving landscape.

Any speeder that hit terrain when the terrain moved, was either destroyed/took damage from the hit. So you had to plan around the fact that that tree would be in a different place in a turn.

BattleTech allows for the destruction of buildings/bridges. You can even set fire to forests!

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
BattleTech allows for the destruction of buildings/bridges. You can even set fire to forests!

Setting fire to forests sounds cool, thats the sort of thing i'd like to see more of.

I get that physically having the terrain could be barrier to these types of rules, as for each building you had you would have to have a destroyed version, and who has a burning forest on hand!

Maybe I'll try some house rules for dropzone to add crashed dropships etc. I like the idea of the battlefield becoming a chaotic mess as the battle progresses.

Not just physically having terrain...but actually taking old terrain out and new terrain in...Easy if nobody is there. What happens when models are IN there?

That's the reason I don't use full objective area markers on scenarios where objectives are removed. Removing the marker from underneath models is major PITA.

I’m pretty sure the Marvel superheroes game has the option to throw small terrain pieces around.

I know both Warmachine/Hordes and Malifaux have the option for destructible terrain, but I don’t know how often it gets used.

One of the Imperial Armour books (the one with Elysians vs Orks) had a mission representing a desert chase. Units were limited in how far they could move, but the terrain moved 6" back every phase/turn representing the high speed pursuit.

Shame we don't have more thematic terrain/missions these days, everything has to be "symmetrical ruins with objective markers".

 Tamereth wrote:
Having played many different games recently one thing that has struck me is the static nature of the game board. Are there any games out there where the battlefield evolves with the game play. Things like AT, where buildings can be destroyed to clear line of sight, but more than that. Like artillery creating craters that infantry can then take cover in, tanks leaving flaming wreaks on the board when destroyed etc.

I cannot speak for other games, but W40K used to do all these things in previous editions. Sometimes it was fun. Sometimes it was frustrating. Most of the time it was ignored because it meant having to buy or make terrain.

I used to use little flame markers by GaleForce Nine to indicate flaming wreckage of a vehicle. An old friend used to get 'rescue models' off eBay and model them into wrecked versions.

While this made for a thematic tabletop; in the end it is easier and best to just pull the model (or terrain feature) and leave an empty space.

 solkan wrote:
I’m pretty sure the Marvel superheroes game has the option to throw small terrain pieces around.

Yeah, Marvel definitely has destructible terrain. It doesn't result in rubble, but that's certainly an option for players. Most of the time you're just taking pieces off the board, but it still results in a table that's very different to what it looked like at the start of the game. You can also break terrain up into smaller sections to interact with as probably the best way to get the kind of destruction I think people would like to see.

The best game for terrain destruction though is probably MonPoc. Every game starts with a very nice city but ends with piles of flaming rubble.

 Tamereth wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
BattleTech allows for the destruction of buildings/bridges. You can even set fire to forests!

Setting fire to forests sounds cool, thats the sort of thing i'd like to see more of.

I get that physically having the terrain could be barrier to these types of rules, as for each building you had you would have to have a destroyed version, and who has a burning forest on hand!

Maybe I'll try some house rules for dropzone to add crashed dropships etc. I like the idea of the battlefield becoming a chaotic mess as the battle progresses.

If I recall, standing your mech in the aforesaid burning forest even messed with its heat management. Battle tech is crunchy!

Yep.

Easier in what's essentially boardgame with hex markers and markers. Hex gets flames, easy to remove mech and put to same hex. Good luck putting model to exaltly same spot on free-placement board

Notably you can do destructible terrain pretty easily with Warmachine; its just not popular with the players. For example, there's rules for burning forests and its very easy to take off the normal trees and replace them with burning trees if the template is hit with a fire damage attack. This just takes terrain, which is not exactly something Warmachine players are known for.

There's a few other options too. Poison water and there's definitely ways to replace buildings with ruins. It just takes time to make the terrain and parse through the rules needed to make it happen.

Terrain is always a hard sell. GW has struggled for years at selling it and only really started cracking it with faction terrain and more terrain and model sets.

I do wonder if we might see modular "fixed and then destroyed" terrain from Gw, but they seem to heavily favour destroyed environments. Even AoS terrain is mostly broken stuff compared to the forts and towers that littered the Old World

 LunarSol wrote:
Notably you can do destructible terrain pretty easily with Warmachine; its just not popular with the players. For example, there's rules for burning forests and its very easy to take off the normal trees and replace them with burning trees if the template is hit with a fire damage attack. This just takes terrain, which is not exactly something Warmachine players are known for.

There's a few other options too. Poison water and there's definitely ways to replace buildings with ruins. It just takes time to make the terrain and parse through the rules needed to make it happen.

How you plan to remove models from intact terrain, replace terrain with ruin and models back to original positions?

tneva82 wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
Notably you can do destructible terrain pretty easily with Warmachine; its just not popular with the players. For example, there's rules for burning forests and its very easy to take off the normal trees and replace them with burning trees if the template is hit with a fire damage attack. This just takes terrain, which is not exactly something Warmachine players are known for.

There's a few other options too. Poison water and there's definitely ways to replace buildings with ruins. It just takes time to make the terrain and parse through the rules needed to make it happen.

How you plan to remove models from intact terrain, replace terrain with ruin and models back to original positions?

Yep any destructible terrain needs to be the kind you can take apart without moving the models. I think that's honestly part of the reason you might see it feature more in games that use grid movement because there you can move things around and put them back in the exact same positions. There's no sudden endless argument or problem because something is 5mm different than it was before and is now in a different range status for something than it was before. A model facing N in grid A2 goes back into grid A2 facing N and its in exactly the same game state.

tneva82 wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
Notably you can do destructible terrain pretty easily with Warmachine; its just not popular with the players. For example, there's rules for burning forests and its very easy to take off the normal trees and replace them with burning trees if the template is hit with a fire damage attack. This just takes terrain, which is not exactly something Warmachine players are known for.

There's a few other options too. Poison water and there's definitely ways to replace buildings with ruins. It just takes time to make the terrain and parse through the rules needed to make it happen.

How you plan to remove models from intact terrain, replace terrain with ruin and models back to original positions?

Buildings are impassible so there's no models on it when changing to a ruin. Swapping trees for burning tress works in a pretty easy, similar manner. Water is harder to pull off. I've seen people mark it with a token and once upon a time saw a little skull and crossbone sign created that was put by the water to warn people it was dangerous.

There are quite a few STL Sets now that do intact and ruined versions of the same buildings. Makes a lot of sense when you can start from the same base model. But even if you can make the things easily, you still need to paint and store it and scenery is not compact.

I don't have any destructible terrain, but we played a Song of Blades and Heroes scenario where the entire board was being slowly covered by lava as the warbands rushed to the harbor.
https://www.chicagoskirmishwargames.com/blog/2012/11/song-of-blades-heroes-campaign-session/
The terrain setup was kind of amazing and the game was great, but we didn't actually represent the lava except by an encroaching line of counters. If running it again I'd definitely at least acquire a red blanket.

or any unit that's inside a destroyed bit of terrain has to bail out (as passengers in a vehicle do) or be considered dead/out of the fight

perhaps with a few specific units (eg snipers) that get to choose to stay put, test to see if they survive and if they do the controlling player gets to put them back wholly within the new ruin