Age of sigmar & terrain

[SuperHappyTime]

I got a few hills and forests from http://terrains4games.com/

Pretty good starter sets.

[bsharitt]

15 minutes ago, SuperHappyTime said:

I got a few hills and forests from http://terrains4games.com/

Pretty good starter sets.

First I see ftdscenery and it looks neat, but they don't ship out side of Europe.

Fine I'll learn to make my own scenery.

Now I see this website and the seem to shop to the US and even have prices listed in dollars so maybe I don't have to do that. Shipping for the basic starter is $18(i.e. half the price of the terrain). Back to square one. I guess I'm back to making my own again. I don't need anything super high end, I just want some really basic outdoor terrain(really just something that's an upgrade over fish tank terrain).

[TheWilddog]

What are your guys opinion on MDF laser cut terrain?  I have seen it used very well in other games like Infinity but I have yet to see anything in a high fantasy setting that stands up to the plastic and resin kits. 

[TheWilddog]

9 minutes ago, Auticus said:

I haven't seen decent fantasy MDF laser cut pieces yet.

I have heard good things about Fabled Realms stuff but I have not seen any of it in real life.  I would like to get my hands on some to see if it gets close to the more traditional stuff.

[SuperHappyTime]

25 minutes ago, bsharitt said:

Now I see this website and the seem to shop to the US and even have prices listed in dollars so maybe I don't have to do that. Shipping for the basic starter is $18(i.e. half the price of the terrain). Back to square one. I guess I'm back to making my own again. I don't need anything super high end, I just want some really basic outdoor terrain(really just something that's an upgrade over fish tank terrain).

Terrain building is an exercise in the Unattainable Triangle. Since you want ideally the same quality terrain, its going to cost you your time or your money. Whether you choose to build or buy is up to you.

[chord]

I just use cheap materials around the house and some spray paints to come up with terrain.  Sure it's not great looking but I have a lot that didn't cost me much.

Would love a castle

[chord]

45 minutes ago, bsharitt said:

First I see ftdscenery and it looks neat, but they don't ship out side of Europe.

Fine I'll learn to make my own scenery.

Now I see this website and the seem to shop to the US and even have prices listed in dollars so maybe I don't have to do that. Shipping for the basic starter is $18(i.e. half the price of the terrain). Back to square one. I guess I'm back to making my own again. I don't need anything super high end, I just want some really basic outdoor terrain(really just something that's an upgrade over fish tank terrain).

Yeah, great prices high shipping. 

[Veillotron]

2 hours ago, Rhellion said:

Steve Herner.

That's one stupid mistake, thank you for correcting me!

Steve, if you are reading this - apologies!!!

[BunkhouseBuster]

The Reaper Bones 4 Kickstarter now has scenery options available as an add-on:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1513061270/reaper-miniatures-bones-4-mr-bones-epic-adventure

[Arkiham]

Loving these pics. Keep them coming.

 

@Ben Maybe you could do a short show on terrain, the importance of it and variance ?

If you've already done one could you link it 

[BunkhouseBuster]

As far as the gaming side of terrain goes, I'm lucky if I remember to give my army the +1 the their Saves.  Back when I was playing 40K, there were rules in the rulebook that said "if Ruins, then it works this way" and "if a Crater, it works this way".  We don't get that in Age of Sigmar, sadly.  While the abstraction of the rules for AoS is its strength, the way it handles terrain and scenery is lacking in my view - it's either "just +1 to the unit's Saves", or Warscroll with as many rules as a regular unit.  I would like a middle ground.

Sure, we can try to come up with our own house rules and home-brew in some custom rules for scenery, but that doesn't fly with many players.  Whether because they only want "official rules", or they are afraid of a possible "imbalance" in the game, or because they had prior negative experience with home-brewed rules before, there are plenty or reasons and excuses as to why players will avoid non-GW rules for anything.  Which is a shame, because limiting one's self to a certain perspective (in this case, GW rules only) can let one miss out on so many cool ideas or concepts that the fans can imagine.

Personally, I would like to see something akin to the "Open GL" for Age of Sigmar.  Maybe not full-on where folks would be selling books for profit, but at least a sort of "pseudo-official" home-brewed rules.  A place where the community could catalog all their ideas, collaborate and playtest their ideas together and figure out what works for everyone, having some form of "officializing" hub of many rules that many players work on together.  I mean, which would sound better to one of those "official-ness" seeking players: "Let's try this castle-siege module that was playtested by 300 players across 700 games" or "let's try this thing I wrote up last week"?

[BunkhouseBuster]

1 hour ago, Auticus said:

Before GHB we had the Open GL for Age of Sigmar with community driven rulesets and points.  That didn't work out very well.  People need their "official".

Open GL worked for D&D because D&D is private and in people's homes.  There are no world championships of D&D.  Warhammer / AOS is a competitive game where people want a governing body and everyone playing with the same rules.

I hear you, @Auticus, and I suffer the same problems from local powergaming meta-chasers that you do, which is why I quit playing 40K last year.  But I refuse to let them affect me.  I respect that others don't play like me, so I try to seek out folks who play in the same style as myself.  You seem like one I would play with based on those reasons. There are some who don't play in tournaments and don't worry about the "competitiveness" of the game.  While I don't play at my house, I do play on a semi-regular basis and against like-minded folks.  As such, I will posit two points to you:

1 - My thinking is that we direct everyone to one location for hosting everything.  TGA already has a decent method for hosting files, and using the discussion boards is an excellent way to discuss rules tweaks and playtesting.

2 - To quote one of may favorite game and movie reviewer from the past few years, "Not everyone will get it, but the right people will."  I like to think that there are enough people playing Age of Sigmar (and 40K for that matter) that there is a market for such content, however small.  I mean, historical wargames and miniatures like those by Warlord Games and Perry Miniatures stick around and release new models on a regular basis, which tells me that there is a interest in non-competitive, more Narrative driven games.

Maybe I'm a perpetual optimist, but I don't want to give up on a dream before it even happens.  If I had the time and resources, I'd try to put my idea into motion.  But as is, it'll be a while before I can start doing anything beyond the basic games I have been playing lately.

[BunkhouseBuster]

To get things back on track on the thread, Warlord Games has a plastic castle and other old-fashioned buildings and terrain that could easily work for AoS:

https://us-store.warlordgames.com/collections/hail-caesar-terrain

Mantic Games even has a couple neat looking Dwarven buildings:

http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/kings-of-war/scenery-accessories.html

[Alfascozzesi]

They look really good and some even come prepainted!

Some of the model armies in the second link look good as well..............

[TheWilddog]

I really think that the next big push will be with 3D printed terrain.  I think we are years away from 3D printing effecting miniatures but the tech is ready to rock out some terrain right now.   I have a buddy with a 3D printer and he is cranking some nice stuff out.  Here is a sample from a company selling 3D printable terrain files: https://www.printablescenery.com/

This stuff is getting pretty crazy.

[someone2040]

On 02/09/2017 at 3:13 AM, BunkhouseBuster said:

As far as the gaming side of terrain goes, I'm lucky if I remember to give my army the +1 the their Saves.  Back when I was playing 40K, there were rules in the rulebook that said "if Ruins, then it works this way" and "if a Crater, it works this way".  We don't get that in Age of Sigmar, sadly.  While the abstraction of the rules for AoS is its strength, the way it handles terrain and scenery is lacking in my view - it's either "just +1 to the unit's Saves", or Warscroll with as many rules as a regular unit.  I would like a middle ground.

Sure, we can try to come up with our own house rules and home-brew in some custom rules for scenery, but that doesn't fly with many players.  Whether because they only want "official rules", or they are afraid of a possible "imbalance" in the game, or because they had prior negative experience with home-brewed rules before, there are plenty or reasons and excuses as to why players will avoid non-GW rules for anything.  Which is a shame, because limiting one's self to a certain perspective (in this case, GW rules only) can let one miss out on so many cool ideas or concepts that the fans can imagine.

I think this is pretty important. I feel that terrain really suffers from the distributed nature of the warscrolls and lite core rules approach AoS has.

I remember back in 8th edition, everything was 'mysterious', but there were common rules for the different types of terrain. Didn't matter if your building was a Watch Tower or a Sigmarite Chapel, they still had building rules. No matter what type of fence/wall it was, they shared common wall rules. And they were all in the core rules, so even if you didn't want to play with the 'mysterious' terrain, you could still play the different terrain types as ordinary versions with more grounded rules. And it was all in one common place, the core rules.

But AoS doesn't have that. If you need rules for a fence, you need to get out the fence warscroll. You need rules for a Watch Tower, you need to get the Watch tower warscroll. In a tournament, I guarantee that people aren't going to want to have to flip not only between their own warscrolls, but to load up the warscrolls for all the different types of terrain on the table either.

I truly think in this respect, the super 'lite' AoS rules causes terrain to suffer a bit. Personally I think the core rules should probably have rules for 4-5 core types of terrain, but you can use the rules on warscrolls for specific terrain pieces if you feel like it.

For example:

All terrain unless using a Warscroll Terrain roles on the Mysterious Landscapes table. In addition, certain types of terrain may confer additional rules based on the terrain types below:

Area terrain (Forests/Ruins/Rubble/etc) - Units gain cover as long as they are wholly within the terrain feature.

Rivers/Swamps/Ponds/Lakes - Units gain cover as long as they are wholly within the terrain feature. Halve the movement and charge distances made for units that start their movement/charge in the terrain unless they can Fly.

Walls - Gain cover if your unit is on one side of the wall, and the attack unit is on the other side of the wall.

Buildings - Gain cover while garrissoning a building. Rules for entering/departing buildings.

Impassable (Small buildings, unique terrain) - No bonuses, but units may not move over/through the terrain unless

 

I guess what's important is it's not too different to the core rules, but adds additional flavours for common types of terrain such as buildings, walls, and water features. People can play stuff like Realmgates as a Realmgate, or they can play it as Impassable terrain with a Mysterious effect. 

I think to be even better, there'd probably be different Mysterious Landscape types for the different types of terrain (similar to 8th edition), so you don't get thinks like Deadly Impassable Terrain (no effect in essence, since you can't move across/through them).

 

Maybe I'll try print out some of the terrain warscrolls next time I play.

[rokapoke]

23 minutes ago, someone2040 said:

Maybe I'll try print out some of the terrain warscrolls next time I play.

Yeah, I'm sort of thinking I might pull out some nice cardstock and print out terrain rules. Then I can leave those sheets at the FLGS (where the terrain lives) for convenience. 

[bsharitt]

I was at hobby lobby today to get stuff to make terrain and I was there I saw some fairy garden decorations that are in a rough scale to Warhammerish miniatures. Some of it is fairly cutesy fairy looking, but there were few pieces that looked generic fantasy enough.

 

[Marc Wilson]

I've been making tonnes of terrain for my event (might also be used at Blood and Glory) @Ben    It's very common to see a table devoid of any LoS blocking terrain so maybe 3 or 4 pieces per table will be.  Also it's a bit boring seeing 8x8' sharper terrain - vary it up! It's not hard to do and looks ok. I always think the more terrain the better the narrative, the better the narrative the better the game - it isn't chess. Make it part of the game.

[Darth Alec]

I believe one of the keys going forward will be large, open terrain pieces, possibly with LOS-blocking bits. A lot of terrain still has that WHFB-feel where you just walk around it. It's rare to find a table where you are fighting on the terrain, as opposed to around it.

[someone2040]

So this is the kind've thing I think would be extremely useful in changing things up for terrain. I honestly don't know anyone who's played a building as a building, regardless of the terrain warscrolls available (Perhaps if we were playing some form of siege type game with the Chaos Dreadhold it'd be a different story). 

So I've basically created a 1 page cheat sheet for different types of terrain you might find in your games. So you can play a Watch Tower or Chaos Skull Fort using regular Building terrain and a mysterious attribute, or you can pull out the warscrolls on your app. It's really up to you, but having a handy cheat sheet makes it more accessible so that people can play different types of terrain without needing to pull up another 10 or so odd warscrolls. This is the kind've thing I think that really fits 'Matched Play' while Open and Narrative players may wish to invest in using more complex rules as found on the terrain warscrolls.

 

Anyway, let me know what you guys think. I thought about making even more complex ones akin to the old Warhammer 8th edition terrain rules (So basically, a different random chart for each type of terrain), but decided against it for ease of simplicity for now.

MysteriousLandscapes.pdf

[inunn]

2 hours ago, someone2040 said:

So I've basically created a 1 page cheat sheet for different types of terrain you might find in your games

I think this is great, I especially like that it doesn’t feel like house rules because so much of it is just gently extending rules that already exist to cover general cases. I think it would be great if the next version of the core rules had something like this at this level of detail. Or maybe it could be included in the GH as supplementary to all three ways of playing.

[JontyGoesGaming]

22 hours ago, Darth Alec said:

I believe one of the keys going forward will be large, open terrain pieces, possibly with LOS-blocking bits. A lot of terrain still has that WHFB-feel where you just walk around it. It's rare to find a table where you are fighting on the terrain, as opposed to around it.

A good point, and really important to bear in mind for anyone making their own terrain. I fell foul of this slightly with my Rotwater Blight/swamp terrain - the centrepiece at the back is great on the table, but I should have built more stable areas  on it for models to balance on! 

 

[Aegisgrimm]

I feel really sad for gamers who demand sparse terrain, or are stuck with those demands of green wastelands just so shooty army players don't have a cow.  Terrain construction is half the hobby for me, and I love tables full of it.

 Maybe back in the days of maneuvering regiments made too much terrain a complication, but in my opinion green fields with 3-6 terrain pieces are not a fun battlefield to play on, as it's just an exercise  in dice rolling.

 

 

[JontyGoesGaming]

2 hours ago, someone2040 said:

 I thought about making even more complex ones akin to the old Warhammer 8th edition terrain rules (So basically, a different random chart for each type of terrain), but decided against it for ease of simplicity for now.

That download is fantastic work, great job - will try and print out and take it to the club tonight.

I think you're right about keeping it simple. The 8th edition tables with different types of wood, river etc were very evocative but it felt like overkill rolling for every one of them. I would rather have a simple rule for most scenery, but then a characterful set of options for whatever the key terrain piece was on the board or in that scenario- so for instance,  a battle to control a river crossing could have more depth and fun if we needed to roll to see what its effects were (blood, souls, light, icy water, aetheric ur-gold current etc )