Just can’t understand Terrain placement?

[Keith]

Regarding these terrain rules placement FUBAR. How does this get past the play testing stage?

[svnvaldez]

It is a mystery. One thing though... pg 70 of the GH19 is PITCHED BATTLE TOURNAMENTS. #6 says "Terrain for the battles will be provided and set up by the tournament organizer."

To me this implies that the TO is responsible for placing the terrain in such a way that placement of faction specific terrain is possible.

[Kramer]

42 minutes ago, svnvaldez said:

It is a mystery. One thing though... pg 70 of the GH19 is PITCHED BATTLE TOURNAMENTS. #6 says "Terrain for the battles will be provided and set up by the tournament organizer."

To me this implies that the TO is responsible for placing the terrain in such a way that placement of faction specific terrain is possible.

That almost makes it sound like they only playtested it with in a tournament setting  

regarding the original question. I’m guessing that they wrote this because it looks good on paper but everybody on the playtesting team is so comfortable with bending the rules they never found it an issue. Again just a guess because i agree it’s weird. 

[sal4m4nd3r]

Whats so agregious other then it totally effs with faction specific terrain.. which will ASSUREDLY be faq'd?

[Grimrock]

1 hour ago, sal4m4nd3r said:

Whats so agregious other then it totally effs with faction specific terrain.. which will ASSUREDLY be faq'd?

Well that and it sets up every death player to have 3, absolutely massive and almost unlockable, extra gravesites.

Essentially it turns the terrain setup into a new competitive phase of the game where people try to work for advantage. Players can bring terrain that does something beneficial for their army like block LoS, or obstruct movement to give an extra turn of shooting. Or they'll just toss it in the corner and ignore it all game. In theory it seems fine, but I'd rather have a nice looking table set up without bias that give interesting tactical challenges instead. No clue how the rules as is made it into the game.

Edited June 24, 2019 by Grimrock

[sal4m4nd3r]

Well gravesites aren't terrain so they are unaffected by the setup rules for terrain. Other then that.. I think its pretty basic restrictions. Nothing on the board edges (gnaw holes will get faq'd) nothing near an objective, or another piece of terrain.  Its not that restrictive IMO. How is it fair for a gitz player to drop that big fething loonshine right on top of an objective and block me from being able to get models on top of it?

[PJetski]

1. Wait for the FAQ

2. Assume you can use faction terrain as it says on the warscrolls and allegiance abilities

[tripchimeras]

Its a complete mystery to me how this got past qa,  I would go so far as to say that it being included may have been a mistake.  Perhaps it was a rule they were working on, and accidentally left in the final version, or it had since been updated but the old wording was left?  Idk.   Terrain has always been placed by the players in non tourney settings, but dare I say for fantasy that this is almost... too much terrain?  Tourneys never would allow player set terrain so this isn't going to have a huge effect on them (though I still think it puts way too much restriction on faction terrain even in a tourney setting).  Its not like faction terrain was a HUGE issue that needed to be fixed anyway, like keeping it 6 inches from an objective was enough for me.  Putting it in a bottleneck position was just about the only circumstance most factions' terrain was even useful to begin with. 

Regardless of why though, it was a massive oversight and however minor of an issue it is in the grand scheme of things, its one of those eye-popping mistakes that will be used as fodder for years against GW in saying they don't know their own game.  And honestly, it is kinda hard to argue with that in this one instance, it takes about 5 seconds to see the numerous flaws with this change...

 

Edited June 24, 2019 by tripchimeras

[amysrevenge]

I notice that the faction terrain rule for Meeting Engagements is different from Pitched Battle.  Much more reasonable.

Pitched Battle:  >6" from edge, >6" from terrain, >3" from objective

Meeting Engagements:  >3" from edge, >3" from terrain, >1" from objective

Until we hear otherwise, I think I'm likely to suggest in my PB games that we use the ME rule.

[Kramer]

9 minutes ago, amysrevenge said:

I notice that the faction terrain rule for Meeting Engagements is different from Pitched Battle.  Much more reasonable.

Pitched Battle:  >6" from edge, >6" from terrain, >3" from objective

Meeting Engagements:  >3" from edge, >3" from terrain, >1" from objective

Until we hear otherwise, I think I'm likely to suggest in my PB games that we use the ME rule.

More reasonable but meant for a smaller table. So good call on using it for PB’s but I do think they just went: ‘smaller table, hmm let’s halve the distances’.

[Grimrock]

2 hours ago, sal4m4nd3r said:

Well gravesites aren't terrain so they are unaffected by the setup rules for terrain. Other then that.. I think its pretty basic restrictions. Nothing on the board edges (gnaw holes will get faq'd) nothing near an objective, or another piece of terrain.  Its not that restrictive IMO. How is it fair for a gitz player to drop that big fething loonshine right on top of an objective and block me from being able to get models on top of it?

For gravesites I meant that a death player can bring 3 mausoleums for their 3 large terrain pieces, which count as gravesites in addition to their usual 4. So 7 total, and the mausoleums are extremely hard to to block off to prevent summoning unlike the usual gravesites.

I get the idea of managing how terrain is placed and it makes sense that they wanted to add some rules for it. I'm sure they want people buying terrain to make the games look more exciting, but turning table setup into a competitive phase just means tables are going to look worse not better.

[SaJeel]

4 hours ago, Grimrock said:

For gravesites I meant that a death player can bring 3 mausoleums for their 3 large terrain pieces, which count as gravesites in addition to their usual 4. So 7 total, and the mausoleums are extremely hard to to block off to prevent summoning unlike the usual gravesites.

I get the idea of managing how terrain is placed and it makes sense that they wanted to add some rules for it. I'm sure they want people buying terrain to make the games look more exciting, but turning table setup into a competitive phase just means tables are going to look worse not better.

You wouldn't be able to summon destroyed units from moseleums tho, as it only counts for the battletrait and not the command ability

[Mirage8112]

I’ve gotten a good deal of pushback on the interpretation I’m about to give. At this point we are all inclined to wait for the FAQ, but right now, this is the only thing that makes sense to me.

The rules says that you may substitute any terrain feature no larger than 10” wide or 10” tall as a “unique terrain feature” and if that terrain feature has a warscroll you must use it. There is nothing in the rules as written prohibiting you from choosing you whatever terrain you like as one of your 3 primary pieces. Gnawholes, Wyldwoods, shipwrecks, whatever.

In the faction terrain section, I think GW is making a distinction of “faction terrain” to mean “terrain that is deployed AFTER the board is set up” and the term “faction terrain” refers to terrain placed by an allegiance ability and not the actual “terrain” itself.  

The prohibitions on dropping “faction terrain” after the regular terrain is already on table, specifically mentions terrain deployed via “an allegiance ability”, and gives an extra set of restrictions (which everyone is losing their minds over) should you not be able to place it, it cannot be placed at all. It seems it only terrain that is deployed in this manner (i.e. after the board is set up and players have chosen sides but before the game begins) is subject to the additional “Cannot be placed” restriction.

I think this might be GW’s intention from writing the scenery rules in this manner. They want at least 10 pieces of terrain on the table, but no more than 12 or so. They also want faction to be able to use their unique terrain features, but not to overcrowded the board with them. i.e for every terrain pieces you put on the board, you displace one of the primary pieces. Not knowing what side you’ll get also means dropping them in forward positions might not be helpful. 

Skaven players could now deploy their gnawholes in the middle of the board, but the trade off is that there is less scenery for cover, and since each gnawholes counts as 1 scenery piece (you’d displace 2 secondary and 1 primary piece to do this.) Your opponent will also know where they will be and place their own terrain accordingly. Same with Idoneth players, Maggotkin and Sylvaneth. (My only question is whether or not the loonshrine is over 10”). it also mean if you wish to wait and get helpful terrain ina place you KNOW will be useful (after other terrain is out and sides have been chosen) you run the risk of not being able to place it (helping avoid the “gotcha” terrain piece.)

This is the only way I can think to read the rules that explains the free gravesite feature, or TZ armies subbing out realmgates to access summoning, and factions getting their unique terrain blocked out by placement.

The faq coming out will hopefully clear this up, but right now as I said, this is only thing that reads proper to me.  

Edited June 25, 2019 by Mirage8112

[SaJeel]

To bounce of Mirage's post with the new Match Play rules

Every Army can place 5 Terrain pieces, This can be ANY terrain feature so long as 2 of them are smaller than 6"x4"2 and all of them must be less than 10"x10" 

After these terrain pieces have been placed, you can use Allegiance abilities to place terrain, 

These are what the rules say, a lot of people just jumped to the part were it talks about Allegiance ability placement without reading the general terrain placing rules.



 

Edited June 25, 2019 by SaJeel
Grammar

[Bufkin]

The main issue, beside the actual rules, is that everything around it is just to obfuscated.  

If GW actually had made an enormous spreadsheet, were they had all the scenarios, and all the faction terrain and then said “hey faction X will not be able to place its terrain in 16% and Y not in 50% of the battles that’s sounds about right for the balance we are after”… and they also published a design article were they outlined the big changes and the thinking behind them and said things like “we saw that faction terrain had become an issue, to many army lists were designed around them and some were just too good and reliable and we wanted to have more variety. So we wanted to make rules were it was not always certain that you could bring them. It’s the same design philosophy we had in malign sorcery realm rules with restrictions to shooting or that some battleplans force you to deploy everything on the board”.... then that would have been fine… now we know why, that there is an actual design philosophy and now we can argue about “is that a good idea” and are the rules correctly parametrized.

But that’s not the case and now we need to argue along the lines of “what are they doing, why are drunk gerbils designing my favorite game by drawing random sentences out of a hat”….

[oniwan_shinobi]

8 hours ago, SaJeel said:

To bounce of Mirage's post with the new Match Play rules

Every Army can place 5 Terrain pieces, This can be ANY terrain feature so long as 2 of them are smaller than 6"x4"2 and all of them must be less than 10"x10" 

After these terrain pieces have been placed, you can use Allegiance abilities to place terrain, 

These are what the rules say, a lot of people just jumped to the part were it talks about Allegiance ability placement without reading the general terrain placing rules.



 

is it possible for you to give examples of "faction terrain" that ISNT part of an allegiance ability?  not calling you out in anyway im fairly new to AoS and been trying to follow this subject. 

[Kasper]

I played a game yesterday using the new terrain rules. We took turns placing terrain, but also rolled 2D6 pr. terrain to determine what effect they gave. It really wasn't that bad. I understand that Gnawholes are an outliner compared to the other terrain pieces, so will expect a FAQ. I just wonder exactly how many have actually tried using the new rules before complaining about something written in a book.

[Xoledas]

Tested it once in game at 2000pts, Alternative terrain placing is fine, the table of terrains effects and the range of the power is cool, the +1 CP is a HUGE side choosing argument.  Will realy encourage me to get 10 decors on my shelfs.

[XReN]

1 hour ago, Kasper said:

I played a game yesterday using the new terrain rules. We took turns placing terrain, but also rolled 2D6 pr. terrain to determine what effect they gave. It really wasn't that bad. I understand that Gnawholes are an outliner compared to the other terrain pieces, so will expect a FAQ. I just wonder exactly how many have actually tried using the new rules before complaining about something written in a book.

Not yet, but I'm not thrilled about the changes, we discussed it yesterday between local players and figured out that, for example, to place a Khorne altar you need a 18" bubble of unoccupied space, which is drammaticly huge. You also can't waste time re-setting terrain on tournaments before every game.

[SaJeel]

4 hours ago, oniwan_shinobi said:

is it possible for you to give examples of "faction terrain" that ISNT part of an allegiance ability?  not calling you out in anyway im fairly new to AoS and been trying to follow this subject. 

The rules for terrain have fundamentally changed.

 

 First both players select ”any 3 terrain pieces ”no more than 10" wide and 10” tall and two that are between 6 and 4. 

 

Players alternate placing them a set distance from the board edge objectives and other terrain. 

This terrain can be ANY terrain piece and if it has a warscroll that warscroll must be used according to the rules

In addition the Faction terrain section only says that allegiance abilities can allow you to set up additional terrain but it is subject to the same limiting factors.

The rules for setting up terrain found in battletomes are allegiance abilities for terrain that is ”added to a players army”

 

[tripchimeras]

The massive faction terrain issue aside, I think the way they are written they are obviously meant to encourage people to spend money on terrain, as depending on what you place it can really give you a leg up in the game without spending any points, only $$$, which is pretty dumb.  They are also not nearly specific enough rules for matched play.  This sounds like something that belongs in open play tbh.  This just seems like a rule that most people are going to ignore when playing friends or have liberal "unwritten" or house rules around its use, and its just going to be a way for "that guy" to be an even bigger ****** then normal when you happen to play randos.  It is completely inapplicable to tourney rules, which means an even wider gulf in the logistics of tourney play and normal matched play, which means it is just going to serve as another barrier between tourney players and the rest of the population.   Best case scenario, like I mentioned in my previous post on it, this rule was a poorly thought out mistake that they meant to change or remove before publishing.  Worst case scenario, this was an extraordinarily poorly thought out cash grab to try to encourage more people to purchase terrain.  Either way it looks like it is going to be faqed, but I am not holding my breath that the faq isn't going to introduce as many questions as answers.  I am mostly positive on what the new GHB did, but the matched play changes have been a very mixed bag.  The tourney template is also pretty sub-par for example.  I get why they introduced it, and it also bodes well for GW sponsoring more tourney's themselves in the future, but damn its yet another one of those sections where it makes you wonder whether they actually have any tourney players on staff at all (I know they do, they just continuously make you doubt it as a consumer).  I expect most independent tourneys to ignore it (especially for painting I hope), just like I expect many people to ignore the terrain set-up rules, but the last thing you want to see in a wargame is players routinely disregarding entire sections of your games "matched play" rules.

[Dead Scribe]

Well people constantly remind me matched play is not tournament play and that tournament play is essentially house ruled matched play.

Edited June 25, 2019 by Dead Scribe

[the_master288]

I find it absolutely hilarious that something like this made it into the GHB.  It's amazing to me that we have to wait for FAQ on a rule that shouldn't have been even entered into the book in the first place.  Clearly, no one on the dev team plays Skaven.

I understand that it's impossible to not miss something, but, in this case, they only needed to have played 1 game to have the revelation that the rule is terrible.

[amysrevenge]

In general, I really don't care for the as-written Terrain Placement Minigame.  Gaming the terrain can very easily result in a negative play experience - for instance, ending up with most of the terrain hugging as close to the board edge as allowed, or big clumps and big open areas, or other strange formations, or massively limited deployment zones, or other tomfoolery.  If you are accidentally hosed by terrain (say, terrain that was pre-set before battleplans were chosen), it is such a different experience than if you are deliberately hosed by terrain by your opponent.

[tripchimeras]

9 minutes ago, the_master288 said:

I find it absolutely hilarious that something like this made it into the GHB.  It's amazing to me that we have to wait for FAQ on a rule that shouldn't have been even entered into the book in the first place.  Clearly, no one on the dev team plays Skaven.

I understand that it's impossible to not miss something, but, in this case, they only needed to have played 1 game to have the revelation that the rule is terrible.

They only needed to have played 1 game where they tried to do the most optimal thing possible to have the revelation that the rule is terrible.  Fixed.  I fully believe they played a game with it, I also fully believe they didn't even for a second think about stretching that terrain rule to the most optimal "build", they just set it up in a "fun" way, and were like "yes this is awesome".  That has always been how it has seemed GW has approached their own game.  The problem is that GW far too often makes wacky assumptions that players are going to follow some sort of ill defined self restraint in addition to whatever rule they write.  Its just a terrible way to approach rule writing.  That type of reasoning works in open and narrative play, has no place in matched play rules.

Edited June 25, 2019 by tripchimeras