How do you guys treat True Line of Sight?

[JPjr]

slightly on a tangent here but trees & forests in 28mm (or thereabouts) games always crack me up, these little bonsai thing that are often, at best, maybe 3 times the size of a model. 

has anyone ever done vaguely realistic mature "forest" trees that are around 15-20 times a normal models height with each tree spaced out around 15" apart. I wonder if that would just look really ridiculous to us.

[Overread]

1 minute ago, JPjr said:

slightly on a tangent here but trees & forests in 28mm (or thereabouts) games always crack me up, these little bonsai thing that are often, at best, maybe 3 times the size of a model. 

has anyone ever done vaguely realistic mature "forest" trees that are around 15-20 times a normal models height with each tree spaced out around 15" apart. I wonder if that would just look really ridiculous to us.

You think trees are bad, most buildings are hardly big enough to stand in let alone swing a cat or a choppa. It's nearly always been the way for "army" games in that terrain is always vastly undersized. We get the same thing in computer games too, barracks hardly bigger than 2 tanks and yet providing enough room to train legions of infantry (who appear one at a time). 

Even cutting down to 8-15mm sometimes terrain is still underscalede, though there's more potential to have things a bit closer to true scale because you can at least fit more than 1 house on the table before its full. 

Heck even unit to unit there's scale issues - vehicles are often undersized (there's loads of arguments as to how many marines can "really" fit in a rhino ;)). I believe one of the big selling points of Dropzone Commander was that everything was true-scale to each other and that's a smallerscale game to accommodate such a system. 

[Beliman]

23 minutes ago, Overread said:

Heck even unit to unit there's scale issues - vehicles are often undersized (there's loads of arguments as to how many marines can "really" fit in a rhino ;)). I believe one of the big selling points of Dropzone Commander was that everything was true-scale to each other and that's a smallerscale game to accommodate such a system. 

You should see the inner rooms of an Ironclad when there are 25 dwarfs!!
What happens in the Ironclad, stays in the Ironclad

 

[pnkdth]

If a model could be placed in a manner where it is hidden I wont target it. Ultra-pedantic placement slows the game down and I rather my opponent is focused on placing their models correctly that meticulously placing models so each tiny little detail remains hidden. I play to win but I am allergic to "gotcha" moments and winning through a technicality. It sours both wins and defeats.

That said, if I enter a setting where everything is measured down to the millimetre I'll accept that's how they like it. Besides you can play TLoS and still be lax when it comes to things like a tiny feather or spear-tip sticking out. Like if my opponent is obviously trying to hide a model or stay out of range of X unit I will inform them if I can still see them or allow them to move into hiding/OOR. The only exception is if they're trying have the cake and eat it too, as in getting both the benefit of my sportsmanship and getting advantages mechanically. Thankfully those kind of players are a rarity in my experience.

The most important guidelines for me is to establish expectations, how you're going to deal with terrain/LoS and inform your opponent of any "gotcha"-mechanics. Good communication and flow leads to a good experience (and hopefully a few laughs on the way).

[Popisdead]

I think it's okay to play mostly loosey goosey.  

Such as feel free to allow your ranks to shoot through each other and such.  Just assume they can draw a bead on the enemy at most times (extremes could get tricky like 60 goblin archers).  

I feel like most things in the game if you are more permissive in the game you get a more friendly games scene.  As soon as you start doing dumb restrictions the games get less fun.  

Try not to abuse the rules too much.  In the past (6th ed? or 7th?) there was a time you could have skirmishers closer to the enemy within woods but your visible models out of reach and based on rules overlap FAQs, etc you couldn't charge because the closest was not visible.  This is to emphasize my point that if you try not to game weird rules you avoid NPE.

[warhammernerd]

It forever irks me and seems totally waac that units can freely shoot through one another. In old Warhammer you simply couldn’t do this. In AoS an archer unit stood behind another shoot can almost always shoot through it. Seems retarded not to suffer at least some penalty to shoot. Yes, arrows can be arced up and over (distance permitting) but why should a unit of hand gunners be able to happily fire through one of their own friendly units? Smokes balls.

The intent is solid enough, as in with TLOS, but I’d much prefer modifiers to hit when the target is partially or almost fully in cover - as in, behind a unit or terrain. TLOS means ****** if you can shoot a unit providing you can see a gnats ****** of it. 

[warhammernerd]

Loosey goosey, imho can sometimes resort to lazy ass rolling buckets of dice and a whole heap of not much strat.

[warhammernerd]

On 4/4/2017 at 9:55 AM, KillagoreFaceslasha said:

So I had an argument with a certain someone and amongst the jewels that came the highlight (well, one of many) is this:

In the games I was watching, terrain has almost no effect. It was irrelevant most of the time because of the ridiculous true line of sight system. The guy sniped the character from across the map with his bolt thrower. didn't even bother looking down to check LOS because it's almost impossible to compeletely hide the characters: if you can see the tip of his spear, you can shoot him with the bolt thrower. The result of this was that nobody even bothered putting terrain on the table.

Please don't comment on intent or most of the content of the message, just to ilustrate the point. This made me think: what do you guys consider true line of sight? I generally say you see the model if you can spot clearly the head of it, but, I'm considering TLOS wrong?

(dunno if this should go into rules now... if it should, mods please move it!)

The reason it’s been nuked in AoS from the get go, was to significantly lower the bar of entry by dumbing down the core rules. And you know what, it worked. Problem is, now we have a dumb game. It needs to be cranked up, the rules are now incredibly complex in terms of the nuances between warscrolls, batallions, faction terrain etc etc etc. But the CORE rules, the basic ****** is, in a large part a bit too basic and a bit ******, and that’s not even getting into ‘shape hammer’ a Wargame all about standing in circles and making sure everything is 9” apart. But shooting, terrain interactions and battleshock need a serious re-examine.

[Nick Larking]

On 4/6/2021 at 11:33 AM, JPjr said:

slightly on a tangent here but trees & forests in 28mm (or thereabouts) games always crack me up, these little bonsai thing that are often, at best, maybe 3 times the size of a model. 

has anyone ever done vaguely realistic mature "forest" trees that are around 15-20 times a normal models height with each tree spaced out around 15" apart. I wonder if that would just look really ridiculous to us.

Impossible to do proper scale battlegrounds. something will always be out of scale certainly when it comes to GW games.
true LoS has always been a bad rule but GW does not want to go to the old way of LOS rules requiring multiple pages to explain. Makes more sense overall but its not as easy to remember especially for new players.

Range of attacks, miniature size, base size, travel distance, total battlefield size, buildings, trees and other envoirements are misaligned in size to use "true line of sight" properly, so i basicly just assume its always visible unless its impassible terrain, giant cliff/hill or building. For friendly games it shouldnt matter much if at all.