Line of sight

[TimM85]

you just need some bigger terrain solves all problems most people are still playing with terrain from warhammer fantasy days where a hill blocked LOS or the tree is only twice the size of a blood warrior or to thinly packed or going off gw terrain with a billion holes in it just because it looks fancy a nice 6-8inch wide 8-10inch tall rocky outcrop, tower, building, column should do the trick bang a few of of those down and it really enhances the game.

[Dead Scribe]

Our store rule is that it has to be citadel GW terrain or you can't use it.  So no custom modeling for advantage terrain.  Otherwise anyone with a shooty army would just show up with teeny tiny non blocking terrain and everyone else would just make and bring big fat huge terrain.

[TimM85]

19 minutes ago, Dead Scribe said:

Our store rule is that it has to be citadel GW terrain or you can't use it.  So no custom modeling for advantage terrain.  Otherwise anyone with a shooty army would just show up with teeny tiny non blocking terrain and everyone else would just make and bring big fat huge terrain.

just follow the terrain rules, when running our tourneys I try to ensure there are at least 2 large LOS blocking pieces on each table along with 4 other large pieces and 4 small, making the 10 required pieces for a table. Also theres so many good manufacturers of terrain out their being listed to just GW terrain is silly. (warmill, dark fantastic mill etc) or for basic affordable full table £40 terrains4games. Ive got a couple of ophidian archways and although fantastic in design they are far from LOS or movement blocking pieces also 10 gw pieces 1 table would set you back £300-450 and no way near as good as stuff they used to produce witch fate tor, orc encampment, dwarf mountain, the absolutely massive tower that extended to building.  

Limiting you games to just AOS scenery seems mad, until they bring more affordable options and actual LOS blocking. Unless its a GW store, also my options might be a bit out as we have all games at our store and all the terrain is provided I just have 7 tables to help supplement them when running tourneys.

[Vextol]

Personally, I wish GW could make up their mind on line of sight.  Or better, make it specific to the given ruleset.  Either it's a non-narrative fun-petetive game with excellent models or it's a narrative casual game of enjoyment with excellent models. 

"Do you think this guys eye's can see the tip of the Spear on that guy?" has no place in matched play.  "Can you draw an uninterrupted line from one model's base to the other model ignoring your own units" is 2020 terminology in competitive play.  Make it sound pretty or whatnot but LoS has been handled by 100s of games at this point (including GW games lol). 

You can keep it eyes to stuff in narrative but in that case, make it eyes to 'reasonable stuff'. 

Personally, we treat everything like it's in LoS unless it's ridiculously clearly not or rule specific. 

[Nighthaunt Noob]

I am a fan of the Middle Earth Strategy Battle LoS rules that requires an "in the way" role for any models that can only partially see another model, but I admit that it would slow down and add complexity to games which seems to not be in vogue. 

Edited January 6, 2020 by Nighthaunt Noob

[Dead Scribe]

10 hours ago, Nighthaunt Noob said:

I am a fan of the Middle Earth Strategy Battle LoS rules that requires an "in the way" role for any models that can only partially see another model, but I admit that it would slow down and add complexity to games which seems to not be in vogue. 

I would agree with that.  It has to be as simple as possible.  Checking if things are in the way would put people off to the game.

[Frowny]

Terrain rules are for sure a weakness of age of sigmar...

 

On 1/3/2020 at 8:39 PM, Vextol said:

 

"Do you think this guys eye's can see the tip of the Spear on that guy?" has no place in matched play.  "Can you draw an uninterrupted line from one model's base to the other model ignoring your own units" is 2020 terminology in competitive play. 

This. 100x this. Just make everything measrued base to base and be do be done with it.

[Dead Scribe]

I can agree with that.  That would be cool by me.  However, having taken part in this conversation about 100 times last year at various events and local shop talk, most people I know don't want to add additional rules and the counter argument to this is that "waac neckbeards will slow down the game with laser pointers taking up too much time finding the right angle to prove they can see when its just easier to say they can see like the rules say now".

[chord]

1 hour ago, Frowny said:

Terrain rules are for sure a weakness of age of sigmar...

 

This. 100x this. Just make everything measrued base to base and be do be done with it.

Agreed base to base with no other bases/terrain in the way.  Except flying units with shooting since they can see over units but not terrain

[PraetorDragoon]

13 hours ago, Nighthaunt Noob said:

I am a fan of the Middle Earth Strategy Battle LoS rules that requires an "in the way" role for any models that can only partially see another model, but I admit that it would slow down and add complexity to games which seems to not be in vogue. 

It works there because if you have 30+ shots you probably have an optimized shooting list (so those are for your entire force), while 30+ shots might be just a single AoS unit. 

[RuneBrush]

23 hours ago, Frowny said:

Terrain rules are for sure a weakness of age of sigmar...

GW have been quite open in saying that if anybody has any ideas on improving terrain, they'd love to hear them.  The challenge comes from the fact that quite often improvements normally complicates things.

[Overread]

I think its also not helped that with AoS and 40K Gw is trying to make terrain an in-house thing. It's why we've seen more terrain focused on specific terrain kits and those kits having specific warscroll style rules rather than more generic terrain such as rivers and hills and such which tended to be far more dominant in the past. 

[Dead Scribe]

21 minutes ago, RuneBrush said:

GW have been quite open in saying that if anybody has any ideas on improving terrain, they'd love to hear them.  The challenge comes from the fact that quite often improvements normally complicates things.

I've seen many suggestions.  Some simple.  Some complex.  All rejected.  If the goal (and I believe it is, and I believe most of you believe it is and want this) is a simple game, you have to accept abstract gamey terrain rules and enjoy that for what it is.

You can't have both a very simple game with simple mechanics, and complicated terrain rules.

If one wants a more complex game there are several on the market right now that might make one feel better without complaining about aos not having those rules (when aos is designed for simple gameplay marketed at a wider audience that doesn't want complicated rules)

Edited January 7, 2020 by Dead Scribe

[JPjr]

I love the new push by GW to get more terrain in use, there are long periods where I will happily do little else than build and paint the stuff.

my only concern with it is that whilst the kits they’ve been producing are fantastic we end up in a situation where the worrying large percentage of people who need every single thing to be 100% official and GW approved will push out the space for interesting home made stuff.

not only Is building terrain one of the easier and yet more satisfying ways of getting into and developing confidence in modelling but it allows the creation of much more interesting and larger terrain.

proper line of sight blocking hills, Rocky outcrops etc, valleys, rivers, lakes and all the kind of things that make the game more interesting and block line of sight, make movement & deployment more tactical etc etc.

Wouldn’t be that hard to create warscrolls/rules that aren’t too intrusive for non-fantastical terrain pieces like rivers and hills, in fact most narrative players have probably got their own versions already I know I have, but sadly as I can’t see a market for GW to create these more ‘mundane’ terrain pieces it’ll probably never happen.

Edited January 7, 2020 by JPjr

[Overread]

GW could do a lot making some "its not a ruin" terrain too. Ruins are fun but freaking heck not everywhere in the Mortal Realms is falling apart

 Also not-ruins gives room for actual line of sight blocking terrain as opposed to "if you can jus tstand in the 1 place this wall sort of blocks most of the line of sight to you but there's a big hole in it and a window or three 

[Zanzou]

1 hour ago, Overread said:

GW could do a lot making some "its not a ruin" terrain too. Ruins are fun but freaking heck not everywhere in the Mortal Realms is falling apart

 Also not-ruins gives room for actual line of sight blocking terrain as opposed to "if you can jus tstand in the 1 place this wall sort of blocks most of the line of sight to you but there's a big hole in it and a window or three 

This is literally my biggest issue with GW terrain.  Although chunks of walls are practical for setting up different configurations, I don't understand why - other than the skullvane manse rerelease - there has been hardly any actual buildings.

Edited January 7, 2020 by Zanzou

[Dead Scribe]

I just don't think GW games are the place for homemade terrain anymore.  I think it opens up abuse of the system.  Its like people modeling their characters crawling on their bellies so that they can't be seen.  If I was a shooty player I'd bring terrain that was tiny to the table.  At least with requiring GW terrain, you have a standard and don't have to worry about people showing up with 24" tall tree models glued in an inpenetrable line or the massive foam keep that does a great job of blocking line of sight - to everything.  

I think GW not releasing buildings and rivers tell that they don't really see a use for those in today's game at the moment.  At least, not a lot of use.  They set the standard for the game with their releases.

Edited January 7, 2020 by Dead Scribe

[Overread]

Nothing in the rules for any GW game has changed since the early days that makes custom terrain any more nor any less abuseable by anyone who would wish to abuse things. 

 

Also you write it like terrain is a one person affair; it takes two to tango and setup a game. If your opponent clearly games the game by setting up terrain to benefit them more so then they will do that no matter if its GW brand or home made. And its up to you to either agree to the game or disagree. 

[JPjr]

I suspect the ultimate solution to this is to eliminate models entirely then. Tournament players can just turn up, feed their lists into the Computron Mathammer 3000 mainframe and after bit of whirring and clanking it will spit out all the results, perfectly and scientifically correct to 12 decimal places. Would save a lot of unnecessary fuss it seems.

[Superninja]

Making terrain is awesome.  We definitely need more LOS blocking stuff. 

[Beastmaster]

Such themes show me I’m not really a tabletop gamer. When I played Mordheim, we just built an interesting townscape together, without any thought other than make it nice and atmospheric. Then we rolled who would start on which of the four sides. And only after that, you wasted thoughts on tactics and saw to make the best out of the cards you were dealt. 
 

Not saying a more gamey approach is wrong. If anything, I am wrong here in this forum.  😄

[Dead Scribe]

48 minutes ago, Overread said:

Nothing in the rules for any GW game has changed since the early days that makes custom terrain any more nor any less abuseable by anyone who would wish to abuse things. 

 

Also you write it like terrain is a one person affair; it takes two to tango and setup a game. If your opponent clearly games the game by setting up terrain to benefit them more so then they will do that no matter if its GW brand or home made. And its up to you to either agree to the game or disagree. 

They will absolutely do so regardless, but I'd rather the collection they can pull from be more standard (gw terrain only) as opposed to them being allowed to bring whatever they want or create that benefits them more.

[TheCovenLord]

I wish they treated blocking models as cylinders the size of the models base (or irregular shapes) that extend to infinity walling off vision to models behind them.  It would make using behemoths as walking cover viable. 

[BarfAtTheMoon]

If all the gw terrain has tons of holes and doesn't block line of sight anyway, i'd say the shooty army doesn't really have to worry even with exclusively gw terrain, now do they?
There definitely needs to be more line of sight blocking terrain, or at least some area terrain that provides the benefits of cover.  It makes no sense to have those rules if they are never used, and with the way terrain is now, I have maybe one time in the last 4 years gotten cover for a unit from terrain. 

 

[Riff_Raff_Rascal]

@Dead Scribe If you mean the house rule is both players have different rules, then yes, house rules would be bad. My argument was that we are supposed to have the same rules and its the interpretation of those rules that are way off.