Terrain

[Generalissimo_Fred]

Fine. Give it a try at the AWC. It will take Gorham 20 extra minutes to set up terrain. You know it will. His games rarely finishing on time as is. Try explaining these rules to Curzi while you are at it and get him to finish deploying before the hour mark.

Just let us know when you want to do this so I can bring big bugs. These rules will let me flood the midpoint line with tons of terrain and all my bugs will have a 5+ (or 4+) cover save until 4-6" past the halfway point of the board.

It will also help out your Zombie/Spawn Adepticon army by giving them all cover from shooting. Should help you guys out a lot.

Ah hell what do I know. It will probably be just fine. Everything Sparky does is just fine. Like taking generalists lists to the ETC each year and getting hammered by Poland and their specific lists.

[swampthing]

as far as the amount of terrain, 25% of the board works well for me.

My problem is the timing of the placement, according to 6th ed. Terrain placement happens as the fifth step in set up protocol. It should be step ONE! before, you choose the mission, deployment style, table edge, or place fortification.

This would prevent, LOS blocking of fortifications, preferential terrain placement(put all the big ones on my side), lopsided terrain placement and anyother problem .

Terrain should not be used as a the "eleventh man" in your army. Though succesful generals choose the battlefield for the fight, they dont get to plop a huge building in front of the enemy fortification. thats just not realistic, or fair.
[a favorite technique of my son, that rat bastard]

also, placing the terrain first tends to go fast because players are motivated more by having a fair table just in case they dont get to go first.

finally, concerning the problem of terrain being moved around at tournaments between rounds. Why not have a crude drawing of the terrain placement on graph paper for each table. simple and cheap.

thats it , im out.

[Turtle]

how do you resolve placing terrain, and then placing a larger fortification such as a fortress of redemption?

[swampthing]

I view purchased terrain just like any other unit in your army, it should be adapted to the table, not the other way around.

allowing a fortress of redemption or the like to have the prime spot on the table is an unfair advantage and can skew a game just enough to make it unfun(thats a word, i looked it up in the interwebs)

[Turtle]

except that with preplaced terrain, it can sometimes be impossible to place a fortress legally. What then?

[Generalissimo_Fred]

That's easy. Any terrain that is in the way of a fortification that is placed is removed from the table. It disappears, poof. That way no one gains an advantage of clogging an area with terrain and fortifications. It also keeps the percentage of terrain on the board relatively equal. If you put down a Fortress it is a huge piece of terrain. It will eliminate a percentage of the terrain that is already out there and keep the board less cluttered. If someone puts down an ADL and spreads it out to eliminate a lot of terrain, then it will only be on your half of the table and not affect the opponents deployment. It will also give both sides lots of 4+ cover saves from shooting through the ADL which the eliminated terrain would have provided anyway.

Fluffwise it can be explained by the owning players army chopping down trees or clearing ruins to initially build the fortification in that spot anyway.

[Turtle]

that is a really bad idea.

So now I can bring a fortification thats large like a adl, or fortress and clear piles of terrain off the board. (very easy to fanagle 3 or 4 pieces off) So now my shooting army has giant clear areas all around it and there is no way to approach my lines without being seen.

This is the worst idea I have seen on terrain by far.

[Generalissimo_Fred]

You can only deploy fortificatioins in your half of the board. You can not remove terrain away from your opponents half. You know, the side your opponents army is in and getting cover from. Your opponent doesn't get cover from terrain in your deployment zone, normally. Remove it all. It doesn't help you shoot any better.

Next if you spread an ADL out 24" and snake it across your half to remove the terrain close to mid-board, then YOU ARE GIVING COVER TO YOUR OPPONENTS ARMY FROM YOUR OWN ADL. On top of that it will be a 4+ cover save and normal terrain is only a 5+. How does a shooting army benifit from giving it's opponent 2 feet of 4+ cover saves? I don't understand.

[Cptn_Snuggles]

My problem is the timing of the placement, according to 6th ed. Terrain placement happens as the fifth step in set up protocol. It should be step ONE! before, you choose the mission, deployment style, table edge, or place fortification.

This would prevent, LOS blocking of fortifications, preferential terrain placement(put all the big ones on my side), lopsided terrain placement and anyother problem .

Terrain should not be used as a the "eleventh man" in your army. Though succesful generals choose the battlefield for the fight, they dont get to plop a huge building in front of the enemy fortification. thats just not realistic, or fair.
[a favorite technique of my son, that rat bastard]

also, placing the terrain first tends to go fast because players are motivated more by having a fair table just in case they dont get to go first.

I couldn't agree more. The fact it is done after setup of fortifications doesn't make much sense with me. I was fine with the NOVA style setup where your fortifications cannot overlap terrain. Tough on fortress of Redemption, but everything else shouldn't have a problem. I would echo Fred's comment that AA fortifications are very much needed by some armies that don't have dedicated flyer defense. They are not under-costed. 50 point twin autocannon may seem cheap but really it's only 2 wounds, is setup before the armies are placed and is static. Not hard to ultimately remove.

My biggest problem will be how it slows things down.

I guess I'll pile on with the previous statement that it is pretty lame that I set up a bastion, and then proceed to get the line of site blocking terrain placed directly in front of it. How does that make sense?

Cheers,
BC

[Redbeard]

I guess I'll pile on with the previous statement that it is pretty lame that I set up a bastion, and then proceed to get the line of site blocking terrain placed directly in front of it. How does that make sense?

Gamewise, it makes sense because the rules say that's how it works. Remember, this is a game, not a military simulation.

If you insist on having a story behind it, perhaps consider that your planners built a bastion to defend against attacks from the south, using the LOS terrain to the north to shield the bastion from outflanking enemies. Now you're facing an enemy army that outflanked your position and is attacking from the north and the bastion is initially safe from attack.

(Remember how useful the Maginot Line was after the Germans were on the west of it...)

You can spin anything... remember, the justification for the terrain placement rules is that good commanders pick favourable terrain. It's not a sign of a good commander to see that their opponent has a fixed fortification and run headlong into it. That didn't work out so well in WWI, and it's probably no wiser in the far future.

[Turtle]

really?? how many line of sight blocking pieces of terrain that are as big as a bastion are out there? Something that would completely neuter a bastion? Pretty much zero