Do your games have 'enough' scenery

[TerrorPenguin]

Gun lines are very strong at the minute and true line of sight makes it very difficult to stay out of sight of them.

One of the answers to this is using a significant amount of line of sight blocking scenery 

GW currently has 27 items of scenery in their webstore for AOS. I would say that only the chaos dread hold is los blocking in most situations 

the rest are rarely los blocking for other all but the smallest of heroes.

does the dominance of GW scenery mean that there is rarely los blocking terrain on the table? 

Are there other sources of terrain that others feel do add los blocking to their games and that fit in with the aos aesthetic? 

 

 

[Carnelian]

The only time I've ever seen boards with enough scenery is the specialist boards at warhammer world 

[Arkiham]

ive invested quite heavily into scenery.

ive brought a witchfate tor, deathknell watch, dreadstone blight forests, walls, going to buy some mountainous parts, temple of skulls, dreadfire portal, balewind and throne.

i plan on getting some newer parts, probably the numinous occulmn and gates but kinda want to paint the stuff i got before buying more 

[Sleboda]

@Arkiham

That's good to hear.  I have all those as well (man, pick up the Astromancer's thing if you can find one too!) and was just looking at their warscrolls last night.  There are some really neat things in those that can have a cool effect on games.  People need to use those rules more, IMO.

[Gauche]

I play a shooting army and I will purposefully use LoS Terrain no matter what, a few pieces should be part of any game. A lot of people seem to just throw a board together but it works well when you use the 2d6 system in the rules and a nice variety in sizes/shapes. Of course not everyone has access to that but it seems perfectly fine to say that a forest blocks LoS to 25mm Bases, something like that. That'd only been if you and your opponent agreee and in the absence of LoS Terrain but it works.

I don't like the idea of abusing LoS Terrain to "deal" with shooting lists but even melee vs. melee I'd add 2-3 pieces.

[Wraith01]

I don't own any scenery, yet. 

At my local games store, where I usually go to play, they have some but it's hardly enough for one table and we tend to have 2 games running at the same time. 

[MrCharisma]

As a player with a gun line, I rarely find myself with my whole unit in line of sight of a single unit. I'm often splitting my attacks, unless I'm using a unit of 10 minutes in a rank and file 

[TerrorPenguin]

8 hours ago, Gauche said:

 

I don't like the idea of abusing LoS Terrain to "deal" with shooting lists but even melee vs. melee I'd add 2-3 pieces.

By 'abusing' do you mean adding too much? In which case I agree - however some armies have no counter to shooting. Terrain is our only chance.

I played my deathlords against a kunnin rukk the other day and basically watched as two units got deleted each turn. 

I realise that's an extreme, and I won't be playing it again in a local friendly game. Maybe we will see more tools to deal with shooting soon, but without terrain some armies really suffer (especially with GWs penchant for making models stand as tall as possible!)

[Siegfried VII]

I am too of the opinion that 2 or 3 LOS blocking terrain pieces should be used in any game. It makes for more interesting games and gives more tactical deph to the battles. 

[The Jabber Tzeentch]

I think the issue is that people don't bother with terrain rules in competitive tournaments as they see it as unbalancing the game, whereas in Age of Sigmar it is part of the game that you should make the most of the scenery.

Using 8+ pieces of scenery with their full rules, not just the random chart, changes the game in my opinion and can help balance certain armies. Especially being able to occupy buildings, try creating a whole village or 10+ garisonabld buildings surrounded by hills and woods and see how that changes your games.

The old standard of a few hills and woods is not enough for AoS, if every tournament had a lot more terrain on the table I guarantee it would change the lists of armies attending.

[Gauche]

6 hours ago, TerrorPenguin said:

By 'abusing' do you mean adding too much? In which case I agree - however some armies have no counter to shooting. Terrain is our only chance.

I played my deathlords against a kunnin rukk the other day and basically watched as two units got deleted each turn. 

I realise that's an extreme, and I won't be playing it again in a local friendly game. Maybe we will see more tools to deal with shooting soon, but without terrain some armies really suffer (especially with GWs penchant for making models stand as tall as possible!)

If an army has no tools to deal with shooting I still don't agree with using Terrain to make up for that. Terrain should never be used to intentionally favor one army, it's there to be used creatively by both players and give a better aesthetic to the game. Unfortunately AoS has Tiers like...well basically every game. Kunnin' Rukk is a T1 strategy right now and some armies truly have no counter. That's what I play so I'm well aware and I always give my opponent the option to go against a softer build in friendlies.

[NoTurtlesAllowed]

One could argue that they are T1 because of the terrain

[Lucio]

A "simple" answer to shooting vs terrain is to worry less about LoS blocking and award the +1 cover save for shooting at units if the LoS crosses a piece of terrain en-route. That way, things like Forests, walls, ramparts etc help protect units from shooting a little without massively altering the game balance.

[Gauche]

6 hours ago, NoTurtlesAllowed said:

One could argue that they are T1 because of the terrain

I rarely get Damned and almost never use Mystical unless I feel disadvantaged in the matchup. I promise it's a T1 strategy just on its own. Mystical means you almost lose the game on a 1/6, although you can hedge your bets by doing the Kunnin' Rukk shots before the Mystical roll. I don't think any Terrain is bad for them though, which is nice. Most games I'd take Inspiring over Mystical. Damned is busted though, that's the only Terrain piece I'd change for sake of game balance. It's never an okay benefit, you either don't take it because it'll annihilate you or you always take it because it pushes a Unit to 11.

[NoTurtlesAllowed]

10 minutes ago, Gauche said:

I rarely get Damned and almost never use Mystical unless I feel disadvantaged in the matchup. I promise it's a T1 strategy just on its own. Mystical means you almost lose the game on a 1/6, although you can hedge your bets by doing the Kunnin' Rukk shots before the Mystical roll. I don't think any Terrain is bad for them though, which is nice. Most games I'd take Inspiring over Mystical. Damned is busted though, that's the only Terrain piece I'd change for sake of game balance. It's never an okay benefit, you either don't take it because it'll annihilate you or you always take it because it pushes a Unit to 11.

I was over simplistic in m statement. I should have said that meta can be determined in an area by terrain. When I first started 40k some 20 years ago, our local store was referred to as "Planet Bowling Ball" on account of the lack of terrain. Needless to say, shooting armies did very well. When 4th edition dropped and all forests pretty much blocked LoS, assault armies became big. In 5th and 6th edition we gained true LoS and no one updated their old 4th edition scenery so shooting became super strong again. Now in 7th, while we still have a lot of 4th edition terrain, events are making terrain for tournaments. Things like buildings where the first floor has all windows and doors barricaded.

In short, terrain influences the meta greatly. While Kunnin Rukk may still be a big dawg with different terrain, other armies will gain and others will loose.

[Gauche]

Much more reasonable position and I'm in agreement. I would like to see an expansion of the Terrain rules, either less models in Terrain for a Cover Save (Shooting Only) or some kind of shooting through Terrain Cover Save. It would have to be implemented carefully since it's clear that AoS is meant to be simple, it flourishes like that. A rule where 50% or more of a Unit behind Cover nets you the +1 would lean to endless arguments and get us stuck in the 40k ditch, for example.

My personal desire would be Cover from Units that are in front of the target. This would give screens a cemented place in the game regardless of matchup and also add incentive to go after screens from ranged instead of completely ignoring them. I'm sure there are many options though.

[RuneBrush]

On 04/03/2017 at 5:21 PM, TerrorPenguin said:

does the dominance of GW scenery mean that there is rarely los blocking terrain on the table? 

Are there other sources of terrain that others feel do add los blocking to their games and that fit in with the aos aesthetic? 

In answer to the original question - not currently but working on it

Sadly other than the Chaos Dreadhold scenery, the AoS terrain that's been released doesn't really provide much in the way of solid buildings unless you use a huge quantity of it, which quickly becomes cost prohibitive.  That said, anybody who has some of the Old World scenery (Fortified manor, Chapel, Skullvane Manse etc) will be able to put down more LoS blocking terrain.

Personally now that we've had the timeline moved on a little, I'm hoping we may see some more non-ruin buildings make their way into the model range.

 

[chord]

4 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

In answer to the original question - not currently but working on it

Sadly other than the Chaos Dreadhold scenery, the AoS terrain that's been released doesn't really provide much in the way of solid buildings unless you use a huge quantity of it, which quickly becomes cost prohibitive.  That said, anybody who has some of the Old World scenery (Fortified manor, Chapel, Skullvane Manse etc) will be able to put down more LoS blocking terrain.

Personally now that we've had the timeline moved on a little, I'm hoping we may see some more non-ruin buildings make their way into the model range.

 

THIS!  I really dislike the current look of the dreadhold, I want them to re-release the Mighty Fortress box or something similar .