The General Terrain Thread

[Guest]

There's a lot of talk about terrain in the SCGT winners thread, so I thought it might be useful to spin some of that out into its own thing. 

Some things to think about:

• How much terrain do you use in your games?
• How important do you feel terrain is to your enjoyment of the game?
• How do you decide how to set up terrain for a game?
• Which units are most/least impacted by terrain?
• Where do you get your terrain? Use your club's terrain? Buy it? Make your own?
• What kind of terrain would you like to see available to buy?

 

I think that terrain and terrain building in particular has become an undervalued part of the hobby. I used to love the terrain building articles in WD, but they seem to be gone for good sadly. I also think that building terrain for AoS is potentially a bigger challenge than it was for WHFB - it's much easier to build a medieval cottage out of coffee-stirrers than it is to first imagine and then sculpt some twisted high fantasy edifice. I'd give my right arm for a YouTube channel with regular tutorials that focus on building high fantasy scenery cheaply. Also, there are too many terrain companies out there still churning out near-identical medieval town buildings and almost none focusing on the infinite possibilities of high fantasy - I feel that there's a niche there that's urgently in need of some enterprising people to fill it.

[Guest]

12 minutes ago, Auticus said:

I roll on the chart for terrain.  I also use a mixture of GW terrain and my own terrain.  Example: I have a lot of aquarium stuff that I use for jungles.   I make use of rivers and lakes.  I like a decent amount of LINE OF SIGHT blocking terrain.  

Keep in mind the mortal realms are a mix of all kinds of fantasy tropes.  

Building high fantasy terrain is indeed a challenge, but you can start with the basics like forests that actually block LOS (keeping the trees removable), hedge rows, walls, and hills.  

 

As well as LOS-blocking terrain I also feel that interesting choke points are underused. Fighting for control of a bridge is a classic battle situation that was quite hard to do justice to with rank-and-file blocks, but can work really well for AoS. I once played the Breakthrough scenario* where the only way for me to get my army across the board was by first making it over a chasm crossed by three bridges, and that added a whole new layer of strategy and drama to the game. But encouraging people to set up terrain in a way that makes the game more dynamic rather than instinctively giving their army a reasonably clear run at the enemy is an uphill struggle.

 

In terms of building terrain, the challenge I currently have is that given that infinite variety of fantasy landscapes to draw on, the last thing I want to do is play on a table that looks even remotely like a historical battlefield. So all those things you mentioned - forests, walls, hills - what do they look like in the realm of fire/metal/light? How do you make them both interesting and realm-appropriate? Wooden fences, for example, are easy to make but feel completely out of place just about everywhere in the mortal realms. What form would a plausible waist-high barrier take in these places, and how do you execute that reasonably cheaply with the hobby tools available?

 

_{* The one where you have to get a certain percentage of your models to escape across your opponent's table edge.}

[tolstedt]

I use Warhammer townscape buildings printed on heavy yardstick and assembled in a few afternoons.

You can see we use felt to indicate what counts as cover.  The proximity of the buildings must be managed when setting up the table to create areas that tough to get into and areas that larger skirmishes can occur to make it strategically dynamic when deciding where to fight.  

I will get some blue to add for ponds and be happy with our board.  I like the minimalism on the terrain that is achieved with our table and the functionality of felt for cover saves.  Plenty of LOS blocking buildings.  The aesthetic of our table lets the imagination do the work.

 

[Ratatatata]

59 minutes ago, Jamie the Jasper said:

There's a lot of talk about terrain in the SCGT winners thread, so I thought it might be useful to spin some of that out into its own thing. 

Some things to think about:

• How much terrain do you use in your games?
• How important do you feel terrain is to your enjoyment of the game?
• How do you decide how to set up terrain for a game?
• Which units are most/least impacted by terrain?
• Where do you get your terrain? Use your club's terrain? Buy it? Make your own?
• What kind of terrain would you like to see available to buy?

- Usually 10-12 pieces. When I organize tournaments that's also the standard I'm going for

- Very. Both  because it influences the game as such (hampering movement, giving LoS- blockers) and because a good game needs to look good

- Take turns putting down terrain. Altough as a TO, I pre-arrange all the tables.

- Influences shooting units most, in some part also magic casters. And big hordes.

- We have 12 shelves of terrain + 10 big boxes down at the club. Not a problem.

- We make our own so don´t really care.

[BunkhouseBuster]

1 hour ago, Jamie the Jasper said:

Some things to think about:

• How much terrain do you use in your games?
• How important do you feel terrain is to your enjoyment of the game?
• How do you decide how to set up terrain for a game?
• Which units are most/least impacted by terrain?
• Where do you get your terrain? Use your club's terrain? Buy it? Make your own?
• What kind of terrain would you like to see available to buy?

- I try to have an even amount of terrain around the board, with no large expanses of empty table space larger than 6 to 10 inches between pieces.  I also try to set up my game boards with an even amount on either side of the board, basically in a "2 Fort" style of mirrored terrain across sides (at least as best we can with out selection of terrain pieces).

- It helps make things look better more than anything.  As far as rules go, I'm not too concerned with that, as those are just extra things to remember in a game and usually gets forgotten quick.

- Same as above: no large expanses of empty table space larger than 6 to 10 inches between pieces in a "2 Fort" style of mirrored terrain across sides.  I don't think in my group we have rolled for terrain placement yet.

- Since there is no real movement penalty for horizontal movement across the board, the only times I see models getting affected is by "wobbly model syndrome".  We don't have tall enough terrain for LOS blocking, but none of us are playing really shooting heavy lists (at least, for now).

- I pretty much only play at my local FLGS, and use the terrain there.  I have made some of my own terrain and have several unfinished projects, but I have yet to get those at my house yet after moving last year.

- More available options are always a good thing.  In the Mortal Realms, any type of Fantasy scenery is possible, so anything would look good on the board, IMHO.

I keep thinking about the time I almost ordered a bunch of Hirst Arts molds for casting plaster bricks to make scenery.  I was REALLY close to buying some of those and making a bunch of terrain with them, but my previous job outsourced my department, and I had to cut back on spending.  Since then, I have just been focusing on collecting & painting models and getting games in.

Maybe I should get those molds in the future...

[Jharen]

For matched player we roll a die for each 2x2 section of the table with each player rolling for 2 corners on one side and the middle of the other side (so in a checkerboard fashion).  Each die is a d2 (1-3 = 1, 4-6 = 2) and then we pick from the collection of terrain we have about to set the table up taking turns to place terrain.  We use a mix of home built stuff, GW terrain, and stuff from other companies.  We use warscrolls for terrain on the GW stuff and buildings (houses, etc) we allow to entered using the garrison rules found in the GW warscrolls for various structures.  We roll on the terrain chart for anything not using a warscroll and anything not a building.  We find this gives us a fairly good battlefield with plenty of terrain on the board.  We'll usually make adjustments before the game if anything is 'off' (one side seems too stacked etc) but that's rare.  We then roll for scenario.  Then we roll to pick sides.  Whoever picks sides also starts deployment.

We've found this really help prevent the stacking of table sides when setting up terrain while allowing the use of lots of different terrain warscrolls.

It sort of baffles me when I see or hear about people not using terrain rules,  it's such a huge aspect of the game imo that they are missing out on and really steps up the diversity of the battlefields you find yourself on other than "oh does this block LOS?".  It forces us to think about our deployments more, our movement plans more, and our master plans more.  It makes a better game.

[Oppenheimer]

I remember a day when building your own terrain was part and parcel of what we did.  I even have the GW book on how to build your own terrain.

It makes a part of my soul wither and die when I see that this art died long ago and people are dependent on terrain kits now.

My local GW store actively actively forbids bringing home made terrain because they were told by the higher ups that it doesn't help sell product.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Jharen said:

It sort of baffles me when I see or hear about people not using terrain rules,  it's such a huge aspect of the game imo that they are missing out on and really steps up the diversity of the battlefields you find yourself on other than "oh does this block LOS?".  It forces us to think about our deployments more, our movement plans more, and our master plans more.  It makes a better game.

 

I have to admit, I don't generally use the terrain table. I get that it provides an extra layer of tactical consideration, but I just find the effects so abstract and arbitrary - so some random peasant hovel or clump of trees adds 1 to wizards' casting rolls for some reason? Yes, you can concoct some absurd narrative justification for it, but it breaks the immersion for me and seems like complexity for the sake of complexity. It's just not fun for me. Time Of War rules, on the other hand, I think are great and can be very fun and immersive if supported by an appropriate looking battlefield.

Also, I always forget about the terrain effects that are in play so obviously the whole system must be rubbish. 

[Jharen]

12 minutes ago, Jamie the Jasper said:

 

I have to admit, I don't generally use the terrain table. I get that it provides an extra layer of tactical consideration, but I just find the effects so abstract and arbitrary - so some random peasant hovel or clump of trees adds 1 to wizards' casting rolls for some reason? Yes, you can concoct some absurd narrative justification for it, but it breaks the immersion for me and seems like complexity for the sake of complexity. It's just not fun for me. Time Of War rules, on the other hand, I think are great and can be very fun and immersive if supported by an appropriate looking battlefield.

Also, I always forget about the terrain effects that are in play so obviously the whole system must be rubbish. 

There's always the option of assigning terrain pre-set effects based on what they look like (an altar being arcane, a forest being mystical etc) and roll to see which type of terrain goes in which area.  This is also why in my group we don't roll on structures, because it doesn't make sense for a house to generally be damned or mystical etc.  As far as remembering what terrain effects are in play - there's loads of cheap token sets out there to help with that or you can make your own easy enough.  But hey if it's not your thing and the people you play with don't care for it either then do what's fun for you.  I guess my point with the terrain rules is...I see them as a guideline for a very simple system that you can use and customize very easily for your own group.  Change how you choose terrain, change how it's applied etc, and try different things out to spice up the games you play.

[Redmanphill]

I don't use the terrain table for more than two or three pieces. Anymore and it can become over bearing. I like one or two pieces to be impactful on  the game more than just providing cover or blocking line of sight that is.

A lot of terrain seems to be relegated to the sides of the board leaving a large open area in the middle. I saw a game today with almost all of the terrain in both players deployment zones. 

I also noted that the pieces that come with rules such as the numinous occulum are completely ignored. These should be centre pieces on the board.

[Wraith01]

We hardly have terrain at my local store. 4 rock formations made from styrofoam and a few trees. I don't owe any for when I play at home. Having terrain should make the game more interesting. I do have my eye on a few GW pieces like the Dreadfort, wyldwoods and Realmgates. 

[BunkhouseBuster]

21 minutes ago, Jharen said:

There's always the option of assigning terrain pre-set effects based on what they look like (an altar being arcane, a forest being mystical etc) and roll to see which type of terrain goes in which area.  This is also why in my group we don't roll on structures, because it doesn't make sense for a house to generally be damned or mystical etc.  As far as remembering what terrain effects are in play - there's loads of cheap token sets out there to help with that or you can make your own easy enough.  But hey if it's not your thing and the people you play with don't care for it either then do what's fun for you.  I guess my point with the terrain rules is...I see them as a guideline for a very simple system that you can use and customize very easily for your own group.  Change how you choose terrain, change how it's applied etc, and try different things out to spice up the games you play.

What I would like is simplified rules for terrain.  Forests work this way, Hills work that way, Rivers work another way.  Hm...  Maybe I should just write something up...

The reason I and my group don't use the terrain rules is because we forget about them in the game.  Same case for Mysterious Objectives in 40K - it's an extra couple rules that are easily overlooked and forgotten since they aren't part of our army and won't come into effect every turn.

[Jharen]

The way to remembering rules for things is in using them.  If you never use the terrain of course you're not going to remember them.  Try assigning types to rules if it helps make more sense of it for you and keeps it easier to stabilize the rules.  Set rivers as deadly, statues as inspiring, etc. 

I guess everyone wants GW to come out and say "hills do this, rivers do this, and forests do this" instead of just sitting down and using the basic outline they've provided to come up with ways that work for our groups and the terrain we have available.  Under older edition of WHF there were fairly set rules for terrain types and what I saw happen is tables became open middle grounds with everything shoved to the sides.  GW can't fix this with changing rules, only we as players can change this by simply accepting the use of terrain as one more element of the game that we have to contest with on the field.  Stop being afraid of its use.  I mean, if you're looking for balance on your table and that's all, well then don't use any terrain because even a LOS breaking hill is going to upset the balance of a table.  If you're looking to add interest to your games then the answer is always going to be the same - get creative and communicate with the people you game with.

[chord]

There are terrain warscrolls that can be interesting.  I think the time of war rules can be real fun

[WoollyMammoth]

Bringing in your TK army doesn't sell product either, or any old discontinued GW terrain. I really hope this is not a standard rule.

I typically do the 6 quadrant thing from the core rules, but Matched specifically says to ignore setup, so technically there is not a "Matched Play" set of terrain setup rules. 

The special rules are generally ignored (except in regards Sylvaneth cheat-woods of course). The 6 types of terrain rules I use every single game. Shout out to terrain dice - they work awesome. Personally I hope they tweak and update the rules for GH2 though. Damned terrain can dominate games, where I have never had Sinister Terrain do anything ever.

Some people love making terrain. There is a million videos on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=making+hobby+terrain
I played one game in an awesome cave terrain:



There are all kinds of kits you can get. Modular terrain, terrain made from card or even wood. Terrain kits where you use some kind of clay to make your own building blocks and build your own terrain piece by piece.

But its hard to beat the newer kits. What would you rather see on the table?

THIS:


Or THIS?


 

[rokapoke]

15 minutes ago, WoollyMammoth said:

I typically do the 6 quadrant thing from the core rules, but Matched specifically says to ignore setup, so technically there is not a "Matched Play" set of terrain setup rules. 

"The Battlefield" precedes "Setup" in the rules, so terrain setup is not ignored for Matched Play. 

[VBS]

A good looking gaming table is as essential as a good looking army. It is the sort of thing that really adds immersion and enjoyment, two painted armies fighting on a table full of great looking terrain really makes you look forward to the fun. I couldn't play anymore on my kitchen's table with books counting as hills as I did when I was 12 y/o  

I use to learn a lot from the terrain tutorials GW put in their books. Made many years ago some cool tropical jungle when the Lustria book was out, including a pond! (sorry, no pics). Too bad they don't do that anymore and prefer to put out ugly af terrain (with a few exceptions...). For buying terrain I'd consider Tabletop World, looks absolutely gorgeous.

Otherwise, not too sure of giving special rules to terrain outside the usual block sight, shoot from above, etc.... Randomly generated rules makes it hard to follow sometimes (on top of your army rules) and must add all those markers and stuf.... But of course, the table needs to be quite full of scenary to be cool.  

[Kosmion]

We use alot, and its important too - as terrain on a real battlefield really is. We houserule that units cannot charge or run up terrain that is taller than themselves, and ofc use the GW chart aswell

[wayniac]

I feel that GW's guidelines for terrain are what should be followed.  The problem with this is that there isn't a lot of LOS blocking terrain GW makes, and while you can make your own the GW range of terrain provides a common baseline and example for what "should" be followed, because it's the common ground without getting into custom terrain that can be nothing but buildings or whatnot.  So I tend to look at GW's battle reports for an example of the "correct" way and number to set up terrain.  The main issue I have now is we always forget to use the terrain rules, or if we use them we forget them during the game!

Let's look at a few examples:

The sample matched play battle in the general's book, which could ("should" is another story?) be considered a solid example, has 9 pieces (not counting the big wall thing in the corner because it's irrelenvant to the game):

• 2 Numinous Occulum
• 3 Woods (presumably not Sylvaneth)
• 1 Dragonfate Dais (in the middle of the table)
• 1 Realmgate (middle of the rightmost table edge)
• 2 Ophidian Archways (one looks to be converted somewhat)

The stormcast side has basically no LOS blocking terrain, it has two woods and one occulum. The chaos side has one occulum, both of the archways.

Next up, the KO vs. FEC battle report from the most recent White Dwarf (April 2017 as of this writing). They use a Shattered Dominion board with the following terrain:

• 1 Ophidian Archway convrted to be in an L shape
• 1 Dragonfate Dais (ruined, so has less blocking pieces)
• 1 Realmgate (double stacked)
• 1 Magewrath Throne
• 1 Numinous Occulum (converted)
• 1 Ophidian Archway (looks to be two glued together to be wider)
• 1 Balewind Vortex

So basically nothing other than the two Archways that block LOS and even then you can see through the door to snipe a character.

[Nin Win]

• How much terrain do you use in your games?

In my historical and sci-figaming, I use a ton.  Like enough that the table looks like a place.  I try to make the table lose it's sense of being flat.

• How important do you feel terrain is to your enjoyment of the game?

I would say making terrain has become my main hobby and I would be sad if the terrain was irrelevant to the game or shouldn't be used.

• How do you decide how to set up terrain for a game?

I want the battlefield to look like a real or fictional place.

• Which units are most/least impacted by terrain?

I have insufficient experience with the game to answer this.  I've played only 3 games so far.  I have some notions from other games like shooting is inhibited if every firing lane is shorter than weapon ranges and things like that, but not enought AoS experience to comment further.

• Where do you get your terrain? Use your club's terrain? Buy it? Make your own?

I make my own.

I am also really interested in lower model count games as well as skirmish gaming like Hinterlands and AoS28.  These type of games can often handle more terrain than pitched battles on an open field.  I imagine this might also be true for the full AoS game as well, but probably not as much for the 2000+ point games.  You need places for the models to stand where they can actually contribute to the game and too much terrain if you have 100+ models a side can make that annoying.

Similarly, I am not going to do matched play.  It's all narrative battleplans and campaigns for me.  So that means terrain can become part of scenario design.  It can be made extra impactful on the game through rules in the battleplan or campaign document.

Here's some 15mm sci-fi terrain I made.  I plan on having this same density for the Hinterlands/AoS28mm games, but less for the 1000+ point AoS games.  Or perhaps the same amount of terrain, but different types of terrain to make it more mass battle appropriate.

[Redmanphill]

Some simple rules for forests or similar terrain could be no running into or through them. All the rest stays the same.

There was a battle plan that had everything shrouded in mists and blocking LOS. I like that a lot. 

[mmimzie]

4 hours ago, Nin Win said:

•  

Terrain like this i like. I don't like terrain so much when it's big block houses that just sorta get in the way. I think the big block house terrain really screws over horde armies as they have issues getting the nessary surface areas. As horde armies are on the low end doesn't seem like it's worth ****** them over. 

I think of this kind of terrain as being "interactive" you can play with it. Houses just make the table smaller.

I do however think it's a good idea to increase the number of non interactive terrain features if your playing on a 6x4 at small point scales to artificially make the table smaller. 

[Nin Win]

Interactive vs non interactive and seeing the table footprint as changing with more or less non-interactive terrain is a really smart way to look at it.  Thanks for posting that.  I'll definitely think carefully about increasing and decreasing available footprint to the game size as well as considering the nature of both armies in terms of model count relative to the other.  It just went in as the first entry in the terrain section of my scenario journal.

[wayniac]

Really though, I like the GW aesthetic for terrain (just hate how limited it is).  I see too many AOS battlefields that look like they belong in a historical game, which makes sense because old world and all that, but IMHO don't really fit the new aesthetic.  And the GW terrain doesn't have a lot of LOS blocking pieces (at least not where you can't figure out a way to draw a line to some part of it) so it is also IMHO (very much IMHO) that saying terrain is the answer to shooting heavy lists is not a valid suggestion because GW's terrain is meant to be the baseline/default and doesn't really do anything to prevent that (see my prior examples of actual GW battle reports with terrain)

[Jamopower]

I think it's one of the great things in AoS, that there is finally a Fantasy mass battle game, where you can actually have terrain on board without a fuzz. Therefore we usually have quite a lot of it (as there is lots available at our club). We also have house ruled forests to block los, rivers (and some other terrain like swamps) to reduce movement and use the warscrolls for buildigs, obstacles and such. Generally we don't use the mystery terrain table as no one really wants to use it due various reasons, including extra complexity, hardness to remember and immersion.