Hi guys,

3 months into the year, and kinda failing at my attempts to make more blog posts. So I've decided to perhaps, focus my efforts on a new blog.

I'm kinda passionate about a lot of the older races, and what can be done to make them more playable in the Age of Sigmar. Games Workshop gives plenty of love of course for those armies that have battletomes and the like, but there's a lot of armies out there that don't get that attention.

So that's where I come in! I dabble a bit in creating my own rules, especially when bored at work or something (Shhhhh). I've posted some stuff in the past around the place, but I feel a blog is a good spot to write down my I guess 'designer thoughts' behind the custom rules I've made.

To get started, I thought I'd do a nice an easy one, extra terrain rules!

MysteriousLandscapes.pdf

I made these rules a while back (and by made, I basically just borrowed terrain rules common across existing types). I feel that in Age of Sigmar, there's something missing with terrain. 

Lots of people complain about the shooting phase and how oppressive it can be (Thanks Skyfires!), and I think part of that is that the core rules only really work of Area terrain. If you've got a building, or some kind of defensible obstacles on the field, well... if they can see you, they can shoot you and without any penalties either!

And that's kinda lame! If I'm behind a wall, I should be able to use that wall for defense.

Now this is where you go "Well, there are rules for Walls, go pull out that warscroll and use them" and my answer to that is "I shouldn't have to". The warscroll approach is great for units, but I feel it's not so great for Terrain. It's a struggle remembering your own warscrolls, what your enemies does, all the fancy allegiance abilities, and all that stuff, without having to remember 10~ additional warscrolls for the terrain on the battlefield at the time.

Additionally, Games Workshop do not produce terrain warscrolls for terrain they haven't produce(d). A lot of clubs have their own custom selection of scenery they've built up over the years, ranging from forests, to swamps, to various building and more. What do I do if I have a swamp? Well, luckily the default rules are probably good enough, but then it feels like you're not interacting with the board in a more meaningful manner.

So that's where the Mysterious Landscapes document I've tried to create comes in. You can basically boil down terrain to 4 types, area terrain, buildings, defensible terrain and rough terrain. Some pieces like Realmgates and the like I categorize as other, and you just use the regular terrain rules as best as you can. It's a 1 page document that details all the rules of the above as well as the Mysterious Terrain rules from the Age of Sigmar core rules. 

The intent was, that it can be difficult to remember all the custom rules for the 10 or so different terrain pieces on the board, but if you just need to remember 1 page of details, then it's not quite so daunting. Being a 1 pager, it's easy to print off and have available for you in game.

So that's the hope, let me know what you guys think, and hopefully more blog posts to follow on more rules I'm developing.