Terrain Size vs. Model Size

[Grantholomeu]

I was just realizing, at least with 40k and AoS, haven't the unit models been creeping up in size, especially over the past couple years, while terrain has pretty much stayed scaled back how it's always been?

A lot of you played before me, but even I remember when a dreadnought or a carnifex was a big model. Land Raiders were basically the biggest thing you could get. A dreadnought laying fire down one lane of the board was terrifying, but had tactics revolving around taking cover, avoiding it, etc.

I feel like now a lot of people play with a dozen models that are scaled to be like 30+ft tall. With all the old buildings and ruins and whatnot that we all use, there's basically no viable cover because everything is too small. Now a days you can probably fit a 5 man marine squad out of LoS behind a house, but not much more. Remember the size difference between an older marine and an 8th ed primaris?

And it's a pain because terrain already takes up so much space to store and transport. I'd love an upscaled industrial complex or something where anything short of a knight could find cover, but realistically if you don't have a dedicated gaming table no one is going to have that because of logistical problems.

I feel like people always mention needing more LoS blocking terrain, but I think a lot of it used to be, and people just don't realize they've kind of outgrown it.

[Primarch]

While I agree that the terrain in games has some issues, I don't believe it's scale related. Wargaming terrain has always suffered from compressed scale. If the measurements are to be believed, every building in the 40K universe is no more than 10m wide and 2 storeys high (with a flat roof). Yes, minis are definitely getting bigger, especially the centerpiece figures like Abaddon and Guilliman. Primaris are noticeably bigger, and marine bases in general were embiggened not so long ago, but Eldar, Orks and IG haven't changed that much. Big stuff will always be tough to hide (Knights, Trygons, Bloodthirsters etc), but not being able to hug cover with your squad of tactical marines is, IMHO, caused by two different factors.

1) Quantity of Terrain
The recommendation for terrain on the table used to be 25% of the table area. I'm not sure what is suggested these days, but I would hazard a guess that it's probably not specified and is just 'place terrain until both players are happy.' What I suggest you do is to mark off a 2' by 3' area on the table and place all your terrain in that area. If you can still see any of the table surface, you don't have enough terrain.

2. Variety of Terrain
Ideally, you want a mixture of stuff on the tabletop. Terrain that slows movement, but doesn't give much cover (craters and the like), terrain that provides cover (walls/barricades), terrain that blocks LoS (hills/tall buildings) and terrain that provides a mixture of effects (woods/ruins).

I feel a terrain collection should take you about as much time and effort as your army. You don't have to spend a lot, you can build a good mix of terrain from 100 yen store goods and stuff from your local DIY store. If you don't fancy the idea of carving through sheets of polystyrene, there are a lot of good options in MDF, Plastic or even Resin. There are a lot of companies offering files for 3D printing too.

It can be far too easy to overlook terrain when starting out in the hobby. It can be expensive, it takes up a lot of space, it's difficult to transport and it isn't as exciting as that new unit of elite troops that was just released. However, a good set of terrain will be useful in every game, it offers tactical depth (assuming the game rules care about terrain, some games seem to largely ignore it) and it makes the table look better.

There are Youtube channels dedicated to terrain making skills, you can buy what you need cheaply if you shop around and if push comes to shove, GW does make some lovely kits.

My recommendation would be to wait until the Black Friday sales (not that long now) and then head over to either Sarissa Precision (cheaper and with low cost shipping) or 4Ground (prepainted, more expensive but with free shipping over a certain threshold) and buy a bunch of kits for the game/s you play the most.

Storage and transport will always be an issue with terrain, but if everyone commits to having enough, the burden on individuals is greatly reduced.


TL;DR - Buy/build more terrain!

[Konrad]

I have built some terrain where the "box" I put the terrain in is a piece of terrain. You can build ruined walls by cutting slots and tabs in a piece of foam-board. The walls just stack flat inside the "box". Not real pretty, and sometimes a pain to re-stack/pack the bits, but it does take up a lot less space.

[The Other Dave]

Basically agreeing with Prim here. In the "game design space," true line of sight is the debbil and all terrain is to some degree or another an abstraction (ever seen a stepped hill in real life?) so I've never seen it as a huge deal if things are a bit out of scale or whatever. But really, it's more about terrain density than the size of the individual pieces - you can always make up for having houses with small footprints that only 5 marines can hide behind by just getting two of them, or buildings that aren't tall enough to hide a knight by getting stackable hab-blocks or whatever. (That said, 40K is fundamentally designed by and for people who live in houses and have closets...)

I also agree that getting a modest collection of terrain together is dead easy, not to say a fun hobby muscle to exercise, and it's really not expensive or difficult to collect and paint up enough terrain to cover a table and be a Good Terrain Citizen (TM), and in some sense I feel that if you're going to commit to playing 40K, or whatever game you want to play, you also kind of have to commit to being able to supply enough terrain to fight a fun game over. It's a bit harsh, but I guess my stance is more or less that if you have to choose (and I appreciate that, because of storage space in Japanese apartments, many of us do), it's better to have one army and a box of terrain than to have two armies, you know? (Pet peeve: do paint up your terrain though! It's easy!)

As for manufacturers, in addition to the companies Prim mentioned (I like Sarissa a lot, although they aren't really designed with "chucking the thing in a box and carrying it into Nagoya" in mind - lots of breakable bits), I'll shout out for TTCombat and Miniature Scenery, both of which are built with a nice chunky 40K-compatible aesthetic, and TTCombat in particular is dirt cheap.

(I also think that this is all a great argument for sticking to skirmish-size games in 28mm, platoon-scale games in 15mm, and anything larger in 6mm, but that's a whole nother soapbox that I know I stand on very much alone, heh. )

[Jye Nicolson]

I actually have a lot of terrain as an accidental byproduct of playing Kill Team and warcry, but the transportation problem is real. Most of it is sitting in my friend's game room in Tajimi, in need of being glued back together because the trip from Australia was not kind.

I've been bringing the Corpsewrack Mausoluem stuff - which even in Warcry has a problem of literally being too short for some mission objectives and model abilities - because it fits in the box it came in with room to spare for some scatter terrain. I could definitely contribute more to a big event like Nagoyahammer but for an ordinary game day the smaller stuff articulates a compelling transportability argument >_>

[Grantholomeu]

Yeah I think the model vs terrain problem has just been slowly becoming a thing, where just lack of terrain has always been a problem. Transportation is probably the biggest limiting factor, because we feel like yeah I can bring some trees and fences, but it's much more difficult to bring a cityscape.

[Konrad]

(I also think that this is all a great argument for sticking to skirmish-size games in 28mm, platoon-scale games in 15mm, and anything larger in 6mm, but that's a whole nother soapbox that I know I stand on very much alone, heh. )

Maybe you need a soapbox bigger than 6mm?

[The Other Dave]

Maybe you need a soapbox bigger than 6mm?

There'd be nowhere to put it, you see.

[Primarch]

Maybe you need a soapbox bigger than 6mm?

There'd be nowhere to put it, you see.

Maybe if you cleared out some of your 28mm platoon-scale forces you'd have more space?

[The Other Dave]

Real talk, I'm actually thinking of it - I probably don't need both Marines and AdMech when it comes down to it, and storage space is getting tight.