Just can’t understand Terrain placement?

[the_master288]

2 minutes ago, tripchimeras said:

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.

It's funny because you would think the GW would have the resources and knowledge over all of these iterations to know that players will try and play the edge of any rule.  Ah well.

[tripchimeras]

6 minutes ago, amysrevenge said:

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.

I 100% agree with this.  That is why the terrain rules should need to emphasize "random" or purposefully balanced.  Ideally a third party sets up the table and rolls terrain before sides are determined.  But if its just the 2 players it should be roll on a chart and then scatter the terrain from the center point of each table quarter or something.  Personally I have always played with the third party rule and in cases where its just 2 of us just making an equitably agreed upon set-up with whatever terrain is on hand with my opponent before either of us have seen our lists or determined the scenario or know who is on what side.  It has never failed to produce a table I didn't feel purposely screwed on, and I've never had an argument over it.  Its all pretty simple if you remove it as part of "gameplay".

[stato]

Given each player places pieces alternatively, how hard is it for a player who wants to place Faction scenery to just pick small pieces and place them in places that holds gaps open or does not take up a lot of space.  It feels like the opposing player couldnt lock out the entire board with only their 5 pieces.

[Dead Scribe]

Its mostly skaven that suffer from the current rules since their terrain has to be set near the table edges and you can lock those out.

[amysrevenge]

Well, it wouldn't be too hard even with only 5 terrain placements to shut out almost any of the Faction Terrain pieces with a 6" bubble around them.  We're talking about circle-ish areas 15" to 18" in diameter that need to be completely clear to place these things.

To be honest I haven't measured it out, but I would suspect that if you were to try placing all 10 suitably sized pieces of terrain yourself, following all the spacing requirements with regard to board edges, other terrain pieces, and objectives, it would be a challenge to leave yourself enough space for one Charnel Throne.  There are just so many no-man's-land bubbles on that board.

[Travis Baumann]

6 hours ago, Dead Scribe said:

Its mostly skaven that suffer from the current rules since their terrain has to be set near the table edges and you can lock those out.

I was under the impression that the GHB was finished before the release of Skaven hence why their update is coming at a later date.  I know it throws a wrench in the idea of them working out all the details a year or two in advance but it sure seems that Skaven are not taken into account here at all.

There definitely is a different mind set in terms of the "spirit of the game" from the dev team and real world.  Hence why they printed the code of conduct both in the GHB and in White Dwarf.

In my opinion the table should be set up before anyone knows who is where so that way if a player is  aiming to ****** someone with it, they may be ****** themselves.

 

edit: Those asterixis make what I said seem way more vulgar than what I did... not sure the censor helps in those cases...

Edited June 25, 2019 by Travis Baumann

[Acid_Nine]

I didn't know both opponents took turns placing terrain! I thought it was only faction specific terrain.

 

that kinda makes me a little sad. Setting up the bored to tell little scenes I thought of while waiting for my paint to dry was a fun way to pass the time. I think I made pretty even battle fields, or at least made it look like a lived in part of the realms with some kind of story even while thinking of matched play games. Having to split up terrain placement like that kinda ruins that small part of the hobby for me.

 

heck, before each game I always ask "does this terrain look fun/ fair?" Before we even start setting up armies. I think that's all it takes really.

[Keith]

They charged me a lot of money for this book..........

[Kasper]

18 hours ago, XReN said:

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.

But actually playing with the rules is completely different than sitting there and theorycrafting based on what you read in the book. You should give it a go. The table is quite huge and we had plently of space tbh.

[The World Tree]

6 hours ago, Acid_Nine said:

I didn't know both opponents took turns placing terrain! I thought it was only faction specific terrain.

  

that kinda makes me a little sad. Setting up the bored to tell little scenes I thought of while waiting for my paint to dry was a fun way to pass the time. I think I made pretty even battle fields, or at least made it look like a lived in part of the realms with some kind of story even while thinking of matched play games. Having to split up terrain placement like that kinda ruins that small part of the hobby for me.

   

heck, before each game I always ask "does this terrain look fun/ fair?" Before we even start setting up armies. I think that's all it takes really.

You can still do that! Hardly anyone ever coplies with these sorts of rules. As always, talk to your pponent and don't get het up with this

[Dead Scribe]

We always do a 3rd party sets up the table.  I can't see that changing unless tournaments start letting there be a terrain placement phase of the game.  If thats the case then we will move to that as well.

[Xasz]

17 hours ago, Dead Scribe said:

Its mostly skaven that suffer from the current rules since their terrain has to be set near the table edges and you can lock those out.

Khorne too, the Skull Altar is rather big and if we would have played according to GHB2019 I would not have been able to place it in my recent games.

I expect this part to be redacted or changed significantly in a couple of weeks (FAQ).

[Battlefury]

Why are they releasing rules, that will be FAQ'd or errated just shortly after release? Why can't they just get it right at the first try?

Sry for being that cynical, but it really buggs me.

[Mirage8112]

7 hours ago, Xasz said:

I expect this part to be redacted or changed significantly in a couple of weeks (FAQ).

I highly doubt that this is going to be removed or significantly changed in the Designers commentary. That’s not really the way the designers do things. 
 

7 hours ago, Battlefury said:

Why are they releasing rules, that will be FAQ'd or errated just shortly after release? Why can't they just get it right at the first try?

I really think this is the result of people trying to read the new ruleset like the old ruleset. Sort of like how when AoS first came out, people couldn’t understand that a model with 2 hand weapons didn’t get +1 attack (and instead RR 1’s) like they did in WHFB. Or when AoS 2 came out and they removed summoning points from the game. Players couldn’t wrap thier heads around it despite it being there in black and white. they just gnashed their teeth and complained that it was under/overpowered and that it would “kill” the game; and yet here we are and everything is ok. 

I really think GW is trying to put a tighter restriction on how much terrain is on the table, preventing people from putting faction terrain and regular terrain on top of objectives, and still making sure people can get their faction terrain on the table by subbing it out for regular terrain pieces rather than relying on “allegiance ability” drops. We’ll find out soon how they intend to handle it, but I very very much doubt GW is just going to say ”nevermind”. 

Edited June 26, 2019 by Mirage8112

[XReN]

On 6/26/2019 at 9:36 AM, Kasper said:

But actually playing with the rules is completely different than sitting there and theorycrafting based on what you read in the book. You should give it a go. The table is quite huge and we had plently of space tbh.

So, I finally got a look at the new rules first hand aaaand you can't place skaven gnawholes, period. You. Just. Can't.

What are those rules? Correct - they are BS that never was playtested by any competent person.

[kench1]

Look guys if you are at a tournament the TO just needs to leave 6 big pieces and sets of 4 walls, on the table.  You place Objectives, then place the Terrain (like in a game of x-wing).  Then all they need to do is FAQ that Faction terrain is 1" from other terrain 3" from objectives, and everything will be fine.

Depending on the scenario most tables are going to look like  the dots on 6 on a D6, with walls in between.  (which I would also faq to be 1" from other terrain.  Walls next to a house makes more sense.

[Kasper]

5 hours ago, XReN said:

So, I finally got a look at the new rules first hand aaaand you can't place skaven gnawholes, period. You. Just. Can't.

What are those rules? Correct - they are BS that never was playtested by any competent person.

If you bothered to just look one post back instead of randomly quoting a part of a conversion, you would see I literally stated that the Gnawhole rules are silly and will obviously be FAQ'd. Beyond that, it really isn't too bad when you actually play with it.

[XReN]

1 minute ago, Kasper said:

If you bothered to just look one post back instead of randomly quoting a part of a conversion, you would see I literally stated that the Gnawhole rules are silly and will obviously be FAQ'd. Beyond that, it really isn't too bad when you actually play with it.

It is irrelevant if "it's not that bad" if someone's models that came out 4 month ago are now can't be used!

GW are charging money for this ****** and it's not okay to have such f-ups

[Wraith01]

Just ignore it and play as usual. 

 

[SwampHeart]

45 minutes ago, XReN said:

GW are charging money for this ****** and it's not okay to have such f-ups

Why? If they're going to fix it for free I don't see the issue. Obviously the book was being written before Skaven so there is a discrepancy in the rules, they're not leaving it to fester for months - they're fixing it. 

[Dreadmund]

On 6/26/2019 at 7:55 PM, Mirage8112 said:

I really think GW is trying to put a tighter restriction on how much terrain is on the table, preventing people from putting faction terrain and regular terrain on top of objectives, and still making sure people can get their faction terrain on the table by subbing it out for regular terrain pieces rather than relying on “allegiance ability” drops. We’ll find out soon how they intend to handle it, but I very very much doubt GW is just going to say ”nevermind”. 

I get the same interpretation as you from the rules as printed. We need to wait for the faq, but there doesn't seem to be any rule -against- using faction terrain at setup. But I worry that tournaments will not let you bring your own terrain for logistical reasons, meaning that even if the intent is to let you place faction terrain in a new way you won't actually be able to do that. That creates a really wierd dynamic though, where armies who benefit from lots of unique terrain like nurgle and sylvaneth would be more powerful in home games using the rules as printed than they would in official tournaments.

Could the intention going forward be that all players bring 5 pieces of terrain with them to tournaments along with their army?

[Mirage8112]

55 minutes ago, Dreadmund said:

But I worry that tournaments will not let you bring your own terrain for logistical reasons, meaning that even if the intent is to let you place faction terrain in a new way you won't actually be able to do that.

I’m not sure how that will work. Tournaments usually pre-set tables, but I know at a couple off tournaments we’ve moved things around slightly (always by mutual agreement). We both agreed that was alright, since battelplans change between rounds anyway, and terrain is always incidental to that. Good tournament organizers should account for faction terrain anyway. I would prefer to place terrain myself, but if they don’t go that route, hopefully they’ll take fraction terrain into account.       
 

59 minutes ago, Dreadmund said:

That creates a really wierd dynamic though, where armies who benefit from lots of unique terrain like nurgle and sylvaneth would be more powerful in home games using the rules as printed than they would in official tournaments.

Well, I’m of two minds about this.  If tournament organizers leave plenty space for faction terrain then it’s not an issue.  What I worry about is the opposite, faction like maggot kin and Sylvaneth are at a real disadvantage if they can’t get their terrain out on the table. Armies that don’t use faction terrain don’t really need it (Daughters of Khaine for example) but armies like Sylvaneth have terrain cost figured into their units point totals  (drayds for instance are much better in woods, and marginal out of them).  Preventing them from using something that they have pointed into their cost is way more unbalanced than forcing them to play without it.

[Dead Scribe]

Interesting.  Was there a commentary that stated that the points cost of units also included how powerful they were with their faction terrain?  I hear people talk all the time about how summoning armies are balanced because summoning armies have their points cost added into their totals but I've never heard that sylvaneth and nurgle had their points costs inflated to account for their free terrain.

[Dreadmund]

1 hour ago, Mirage8112 said:

If tournament organizers leave plenty space for faction terrain then it’s not an issue. 

I dunno, to summon a piece of scenery now you need about an 18" clearing with no other terrain, objectives, board edges or enemy models. Even with careful placement thats pretty limiting. It's going to be tricky, and very easy for an opponent to deny with unit placement. Even if you can place one, it's probably not going to be where you want it ideally. Any way I look at it, it's a nerf-by-proxy to armies that rely on scenery for one reason or another.

[FlatTooth]

I’m a big fan of companies showing how much terrain they think a game should have (and by that token how much terrain they’ve hopefully play tested with). I just think this needs to have a bit more thought put into it.