Age of Sigmar and TERRAIN

[gabbi]

6 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

Practicality - you're playing a game where you're trying to move models in/out of scenery and across the board, I get clumsier when I'm tired so more likely to knock stuff over.  It's no use having a piece of scenery that looks amazing if it latches onto your clothes or models like Whomping Willow from Harry Potter.  Equally don't stick down a hill that's gloss varnished and models move of their own accord when there's a breeze.

If that's a point, a good portion of AoS models should be banned from your tables, then

[Richelieu]

I typically set my tables up to have 3 medium sized cover granting pieces (around the size of a citadel wood) and 3 medium LoS blocking pieces (around the size of a numinous oculum).  This way there is one cover puce and one LoS piece per side and one reach in a neutral position.  The space between is then filled with varying sizes of scatter.  The key is to have a variety of geographical features surrounding the objectives so that no single army composition benefits more than others.  Good TOs do this.  

A few shots from Bugeater GT in June.

[Orsino]

There are lots of good common sense suggestions in this thread: Randomising terrain placement, negotiating it, taking it in turns to place pieces before picking sides. To me these suggestions are going to give a much more interesting game than having a couple of token bits of standard GW terrain pushed to the edge of the table.

More broadly I think this comes back to what people mean by "competitive". To my mind you can use terrain to create interesting strategic scenarios and there's a great deal of competition in how you respond to those challenges, and how you respond to possible asymmetry, which you can always balance with a points bonus if it really bothers you .

To some people "competitive" seems to mean two perfectly balanced forces, on an empty board where there are no possible advantages to either side. I enjoy chess but AoS is it's own game with it's own particular pleasures, like having little plastic people cross little rivers to lay siege to little scratch-built forts.  

[Skabnoze]

11 hours ago, Jamopower said:

We generally use quite a lot of terrain and agree before the game what everything does and what is impassable terrain. Common agreements are that rivers halve the movement from non-flying models and forests block line of sight through them. For special terrain pieces, such as statues or ritual stones we often give mysterious terrain rules, but not for stuff like forests and such.

I was glad to see GW add line-of-sight blocking to forest area terrain in this new edition.  That is a very standard table-top wargame forest rule and I never understood why GW went with absolutely pure true LoS rules rather than a combination of True-LoS and some abstractions.  The only conclusion I could come to was that they were simply too lazy to write more than a sentence or two for Line of Sight and it was simply a matter of laziness.  So much of games like this, Age of Sigmar included, are based heavily on abstractions that it does not make sense to leave if out of Line of Sight.  In fact, it led to GW having to write some really bizzare rules language like the wording for getting cover from obstacles.  That convoluted bit of verbage is completely due to the very basic true line-of-sight rules.

One of the things that I think is still lacking in Age of Sigmar is a variety of terrain rules - and I don't mean the mystical terrain effects chart.  I mean simple things like areas of difficult terrain that slow units down, area terrain that blocks line of sight but not movement, rules for water, hazardous terrain, defensive positions, etc.  These things are very easy to implement and for the most part they are simply missing from the game.  The result is that you either have 2 types of terrain: a big impassable blob thing, or an area template you can stand on and get cover.

The mystical terrain chart can make these 2 types of terrain interesting to stand next to or on, but terrain only really serves to block line of sight or to grant a positive or negative buff to something close by.  Positioning and maneuvering can be a lot more interesting when terrain has an impact on movement aside from "go around it".

[Overread]

Honestly I think the GW team tried so hard to streamline the rules for Sigmar that they cut a lot of sensible things out to make it simpler. One can only hope that they add in more detail to the functionality of the game over time. There are certainly more than a few areas of the rules where I wish they went into more detail; or had a few revisions and terrain is one of them 

[amysrevenge]

5 minutes ago, Overread said:

Honestly I think the GW team tried so hard to streamline the rules for Sigmar that they cut a lot of sensible things out to make it simpler.

Ha yes this.  Like, even the exact same 4 pages of rules only in 6 pages with some movement diagrams would have been awesome.

[Jamopower]

Well there are plenty of terrain rules, but as in 40k, just for the GW produced plastic kits, and as they don't sell water elements or areas of rough ground, they don't have rules. Luckily that kind of rules are really easy to tweak and agree. For other common types (woods, fences, buildings), their rules are pretty sensible in the new edition. 

 

Actually I think that in principle the terrain types we already have are already pretty good for most stuff. The only main thing missing is difficult ground that you can move through with reduced speed (like ground fields, rivers, swamps, etc.). The fences are sensible enough and with the forests you have a type of terrain that blocks los, but not movement, with big hills and stuff you have terrain that blocks los and movement and with buildings, you have type of terrain that blocks los, but you can move through if you spend a turn getting in it.

 

The other thing worth of clarification would be the vertical measuring in places like ruins. Especially as it's the main terrain type they are selling. As now, there are annoying stuff like can you attack models that are standing on the second floor and occupying it totally etc. 

[RuneBrush]

11 hours ago, gabbi said:

If that's a point, a good portion of AoS models should be banned from your tables, then

I know completely what you mean - the unit of Grimghast Reapers I was running this past weekend were a nightmare when fighting against Dryads

[Kramer]

12 hours ago, gabbi said:

If that's a point, a good portion of AoS models should be banned from your tables, then

Yes back to The mono pose models that don’t overhang at all so you can finally rank them up again ?

*not my picture. 

[Rachmani]

10 hours ago, Overread said:

Honestly I think the GW team tried so hard to streamline the rules for Sigmar that they cut a lot of sensible things out to make it simpler. One can only hope that they add in more detail to the functionality of the game over time. There are certainly more than a few areas of the rules where I wish they went into more detail; or had a few revisions and terrain is one of them 

I agree. 
But given how they expanded from AoS 1.X to AoS 2.0 I‘m pretty confident we‘ll see one to two pages on terrain in the future. 

[ianob]

3 hours ago, RuneBrush said:

I know completely what you mean - the unit of Grimghast Reapers I was running this past weekend were a nightmare when fighting against Dryads

They're Voltron in ghost form. I swear to Nagash they are the most beautiful, horrible models I've ever played with.

[Overread]

2 hours ago, Rachmani said:

I agree. 
But given how they expanded from AoS 1.X to AoS 2.0 I‘m pretty confident we‘ll see one to two pages on terrain in the future. 

Agreed,  I think part of the simplification (at least once they got the Generals Handbook out - lets not speak of the - ahem - actual launch rules for Sigmar ;)) is making the game break its "oh that's the complicated game" image. Break that and get people new into the hobby; then steadily ramp up the detail along with revisions and errata to keep it as tight as possible. A steady buildup so that the community grows and matures with the games rules - with the idea bieng that in the future yes the rules will be more complicated, but there will be a big and active fanbase to bring people in. 

[Rachmani]

5 minutes ago, Overread said:

Agreed,  I think part of the simplification (at least once they got the Generals Handbook out - lets not speak of the - ahem - actual launch rules for Sigmar ;)) is making the game break its "oh that's the complicated game" image. Break that and get people new into the hobby; then steadily ramp up the detail along with revisions and errata to keep it as tight as possible. A steady buildup so that the community grows and matures with the games rules - with the idea bieng that in the future yes the rules will be more complicated, but there will be a big and active fanbase to bring people in. 

Agreed. Personally I‘m a big fan of modules. 
With the „Core Rules“ module allowing for easy entrance into the hobby & subsequent modules adding more flesh to the bones. Albeit in a balanced way. 4 pages of core rules & 65 additional pages of rules is not „adding depth“ its bloating up the rules.

They actually do that already, with their realms of battle rules etc. But it just needs the right balance.

[Skabnoze]

I agree that hopefully they add some of this stuff back in.  I don't need the most complicated rule-set on earth - there are other games that handle complexity better.  GW games have always had a level of simplicity as one of their main draws (even the more complex games they make), but I think they dropped the ball pretty hard when it comes to terrain. 

This is an even more profound issue in 40k currently than it is in AoS - at least it feels that way in the games I have played so far.  I find it telling that Killteam primarily uses the 40k rule set with a few tweaks and one of the most noticeable tweaks they made was to return cover (they call it obscured) to making units harder to hit rather than granting a cover save.  Warhammer Fantasy had that rule up until 8th edition, but 40k shed that particular rule (to it's detriment) when they created 3rd edition almost 20 years ago.  But, at least 40k had a fair amount of terrain rules and things that blocked line-of-sight with their area terrain abstractions over the years.  8th edition picked up the basic terrain rules from Age of Sigmar and it does not fit well given that ranged attacks are the primary attack and the ranges in the game are huge.

In regards to Age of Sigmar, it still is similar to Warhammer Fantasy in that maneuvering is extremely important to the game.  So it saddens me to see that the current terrain rules impact maneuvering so very little other than to serve as pure obstacles.  The terrain rules are just so binary and so are the abilities that work with terrain.  You either ignore terrain effects or you don't.  The change for woods was an improvement in my opinion.  If I could add one more thing into the base core terrain rules it would be the concept of difficult terrain that slows movement.  I would like to also see hazardous terrain as well, but slowing movement has a broader impact. 

The Deadly terrain effect can represent hazardous terrain, but it only triggers if you end in the terrain - which seems really strange.  You can walk over a lake of acid or lava and you are fine as long as you don't stop and stand on it? 

[Dead Scribe]

I've read about some guys running narrative events that use terrain like that, where it would slow your movement and what not.  However, I can see how that would just be irritating and frustrating.

[amysrevenge]

1 minute ago, Dead Scribe said:

I've read about some guys running narrative events that use terrain like that, where it would slow your movement and what not.  However, I can see how that would just be irritating and frustrating.

Yeah I like the idea of it in the abstract, but the actual gameplay would be often an exercise in frustration.  Folks with movement shenanigans are largely unaffected, folks without are doubly affected.

[Skabnoze]

9 minutes ago, amysrevenge said:

Yeah I like the idea of it in the abstract, but the actual gameplay would be often an exercise in frustration.  Folks with movement shenanigans are largely unaffected, folks without are doubly affected.

It depends on how it is placed on the table.

Ideally you place it in ways where it can be avoided, but there are strategic decisions someone would need to make about whether they should go through it.  Players can also use that terrain to make it harder to be engaged from different directions.  Sure, some units in the game can ignore that terrain, but theoretically those sorts of movement rules are worked into the cost of said units.

That said, one thing I don't care about given the current terrain is that you can charge targets that you cannot see when you declare a charge move.  I don't think this is a good rule since it really leads to things like flyers being able to charge from behind a mountain.  A lot of the issues people have with Nighthaunt ignoring most terrain as a whole army could probably be solved by requiring Line-of-sight to declare a charge.

[Overread]

One thing I think that is going to be critical is if GW goes for generic terrain rules with specific featured terrain with warscrolls or if GW decides to make all terrain ruled on with warscrolls. The former at least allows for a core understanding of rules with regard to terrain; the latter can be done the same but will almost make all terrain feel like it must be a GW model to have an official warscroll. It could be a subtle change in perception that GW won't intend but could be picked up on, esp by new to wargame players. 

 

[Dead Scribe]

Honestly until recently I was unaware that it was allowed to have terrain on the table that wasn't a GW kit.  Thats just how everyone seemed to do it.  

[Skabnoze]

1 hour ago, Dead Scribe said:

Honestly until recently I was unaware that it was allowed to have terrain on the table that wasn't a GW kit.  Thats just how everyone seemed to do it.  

Do you mainly play in GW stores?

Obviously in GW stores the terrain is almost always 100% GW products.  But my experience is that when you get outside to other stores or at people's houses that you run into other terrain pretty quick.  GW terrain is not always the most expensive terrain, but it is rarely the cheapest and not always the most functional.

[Overread]

One big change over the last 10=15 years is that there is a LOT more terrain on the market now. In the past a lot was home made, now there is a lot not just from GW but from many other companies. 

[Skabnoze]

40 minutes ago, Overread said:

One big change over the last 10=15 years is that there is a LOT more terrain on the market now. In the past a lot was home made, now there is a lot not just from GW but from many other companies. 

Yeah, you can especially see it when you view pictures of tournaments.  It appears that a few of the terrain packs from the game mat manufacturers are quite popular.  Gamemat.eu terrain seems to be getting more common at events - which makes sense given that it is well-priced, durable, and pre-painted.

[Jamopower]

I believe the GW/self made terrain experience is a matter that relates how long one has played the game. GW started proper terrain production, backed with only providing rules for their own terrain, relatively recently. Around 7th edition Fantasy battle the white dwarfs and army books were still full of fantastic scratch built terrain and guides how to do it yourself, but when they started producing the plastic kits, it has been almost entirely that stuff in all material.

[Skabnoze]

3 minutes ago, Jamopower said:

I believe the GW/self made terrain experience is a matter that relates how long one has played the game. GW started proper terrain production, backed with only providing rules for their own terrain, relatively recently. Around 7th edition Fantasy battle the white dwarfs and army books were still full of fantastic scratch built terrain and guides how to do it yourself, but when they started producing the plastic kits, it has been almost entirely that stuff in all material.

I still have the old Citadel how to make terrain book.  Now that the internet is around most of what is in that book is well known or easy to find on blogs.  But when that book first came out it practically blew my mind.  It is still a solid resource about building terrain from household junk.

One of my favorite items from that old book is the crashed spaceship escape pod made from a toilet float.

[Johann]

I really love tables filled with terrain, from my perspective it adds a lot to the game play and prevents one huge fight in the middle (we play 4x4 most of the time, so less space). I always put a lot of terrain on the Battlefield, my opponent can then adjust the terrain features, so both are happy. 

But i‘m not a tournament player, just love epic fights  on a epic battlefields ?So I spent quite a lot of money on terrain (Main Source: https://m.facebook.com/der-Müller-tabletop-wargaming-terrain-scratchbuilts-170500416342058/?__tn__=%2Cg)

attached some AoS&40k games ok my table.