Terrain for 44x30 boards

[Jye Nicolson]

I think most of us have had a few games of 9th edition on the smaller boards now, what are people's thoughts about optimal terrain?

In face to face we're somewhat limited to what we can actually bring (so for me it's Munitorum Armoured containers, ruins, and "craters" made of scatter terrain), but in TTS we have a bigger palette to draw from so we've seen a few variants.

It seems pretty easy to slip into the extremes of "can't hide anything from first turn shooting, game potentially decided by first turn roll off" and "horrible maze where you can't see anything and psychotic vikings jump out of nowhere to massacre you". Avoiding those is first priority, after which variety probably matters more than anything else, followed by provoking interesting decisions.

I feel like:

- There should be firing *lanes* into deployment zones, say two fairly central ones, or one central lane and on the sides. You should be able to hide a lot of stuff, but the tradeoff would be when placing objectives a more shooting focused player can make sure to put at least one in the lanes and make it awkward to get to them from hiding.

- The blockers that create those lanes should be a mix of hard LOS blockers (eg container stacks) and Obscuring (eg ruins). The LOS blockers will usually be better for avoiding getting shot, but are harder to deal with movement wise. The Obscuring stuff is interesting because of the tradeoff between staying outside (and blocking LOS) and moving in (and having mutual visibility to a *lot* of stuff). A mistake I've made a couple of times is making the obscuring ruins too big - if everyone can move into them right out of deployment they may as well not be there. I've also done double L blockers and that's probably too much on the smaller board.

- Having hard LOS on one side and Obscuring on the other is probably OK? You just need to consider both directions on the board. That might mean if you set the board up so that the (more common?) short edge deployment has both LOS blocker and obscuring terrain are accessible from both deployment zones, on long edge deployment one zone will be close to a lot of LOS blockers and the other will be near a bunch of obscuring. That is probably OK since it makes the attacker vs defender decision consequential.

- There should be cover options in the spaces remaining - some things like craters that give light cover in return for a movement tradeoff, some barrier type stuff that gives light cover from one direction but doesn't hurt movement, some dense cover to slightly offset shooting. For face to face play good to be clear on what this stuff is vs any random scatter terrain that's there for looks.


This is all in the context of only being 2xKill Team boards though, there's not actually that much room I'm wondering if building smaller ruins and L blockers (or rather than doing the L put up multiple container walls that block different directions) will make it practical.

What does everyone else think?

[Karantu]

I agree with you about having limited firing lanes by having a variety of LoS blocking, obscuring, and dense terrain. However, as tempting as it is (especially in TTS) to fill up the entire board with some sort of terrain there should be areas/lanes without any terrain.

Also, one other thing to consider is that the optimal terrain density depends on board size too. So does the size of terrain pieces you'd want to use. Massive terrain pieces might look cool and thematic on a small board but it probably makes for really clunky gameplay.

I've been trying to come up with some guidelines that I've been testing out so I'll try and post them later.

[Jye Nicolson]

Yeah my instinct to completely hide the table is not helpful

I might try a few things in TTS and get screenshots, I expect I'll find it's hard to actually put down terrain to the principles I outlined *without* falling into the psychotic viking maze.

Edit: I don't think dense counts for defining firing lines though, there's too much good shooting around to make them a *significant* factor in surviving alpha strikes.

[Primarch]

The old 5th ed. guideline was to cover 25% of the total table area with terrain, which should include some LoS blocking pieces, cover and something to slow movement. I always found that to be a reasonable level for playing on.
So, for a 44" by 30" table, you would need enough terrain to completely cover 22" by 15". A couple of big LoS blockers between the deployment zones, some rough terrain in the centre, and walls, ruins and other cover scattered around.

[Jye Nicolson]

The old 5th ed. guideline was to cover 25% of the total table area with terrain, which should include some LoS blocking pieces, cover and something to slow movement. I always found that to be a reasonable level for playing on.
So, for a 44" by 30" table, you would need enough terrain to completely cover 22" by 15". A couple of big LoS blockers between the deployment zones, some rough terrain in the centre, and walls, ruins and other cover scattered around.

That sounds pretty good. I think there's a feeling a bit more terrain benefits 9th Ed (especially with the weapon buffs coming ) but the big LOS blockers should be most of the battle.

[The Other Dave]

My feelings on terrain have never really gotten much more sophisticated than 2nd edition's simple axiom of "the more terrain, the better the game." Chuck a bunch of stuff on the board that looks cool and call it a day, and some days you'll have a board that favors your army and some days you won't. (That said, flippant answers aside, alpha strike dominance in 40K will probably always be a thing, and terrain to mitigate that is probably something to work towards, although I have horrific visions of the ITC perfect mirror image tables at the end of that slippery slope.)

[Jye Nicolson]

I tried throwing together a couple of things I thought would work well without completely filling the table:



This has limited firing lanes into deployment zones, but offers little shelter for the mid field objectives. Turn one bloodbaths are relatively unlikely but turn 2 onwards would be a fierce fight for the middle.



That's Sweep and Clear - 2 and 3 are subject to heavy fire from both sides, 1 is very difficult to access but its protectors can't do much (and if you leave it it's tough to knock sneaky deep strikers off it), 4 is easier to attack but its defenders can likely shoot. Of course 1 and 4 could be placed elsewhere but it looks to me like there's a legitimate decision on whether to be Defender or not.



Supply Drop moves the core action right into the middle, with the same tradeoff over the (likely) corner objectives.

Downside is it sucks for Assassin. That mission may mean a clear firing lane down the center from the short edges may be a no-no.


The other attempt was using Concealing in the middle as the rule book suggests on its "good" examples. The problem I have is that it falls apart as soon as a good shooting unit walks in. So I tried *two* Concealing ruins in the center like so:



You can easily get into the one near your deployment zone but that doesn't let you shoot through the other. You can shoot *in* to the other ruin but the other player isn't obliged to enter.



On Sweep and Clear you have a choice to either go into the ruin and hold a point with cover, or try to hold it from outside the wall and be blocked from most firing angles but still be in a clear firing lane from a chunk of the deployment zone.



Supply Drop made me feel a little gap in the middle would be even better, allowing anyone on that thin strip to be protected from *almost* anyone who wasn't in the ruins. This might allow a narrow shot from the deployment zone in Assassin though

[Jye Nicolson]

(That said, flippant answers aside, alpha strike dominance in 40K will probably always be a thing, and terrain to mitigate that is probably something to work towards, although I have horrific visions of the ITC perfect mirror image tables at the end of that slippery slope.)

I love the ITC perfect mirror tables, or at least the Ls

Not actually necessary though, I think it's OK to make the ability to choose deployment zone an advantage, as long as it's a reasonably mild one.

[Karantu]

One way to reduce firing lanes without increasing the overall amount of terrain is by placing most terrain at a 45 degree angle. This way, with both long edge and short edge deployments you tend to have limited LoS on the enemy deployment zone. It also artificially increases the distance between deployment zones for all ground units.

Tournaments like ITC use mirrored maps since they're more balanced for competitive play but I find that asymmetric maps tend to be more interesting.