Donate to the Lead Adventure Forum to keep it alive!
Although the tables look naff I think people are missing the point. This is a 40k tournament, I doubt whether the attendees would actually want more complexity of terrain, the layouts are all near perfectly symmetrical and mirrored to have absolutely the minimum complaint about any table being 'imbalanced'. The blocking terrain has to be tall enough that there is no getting down to eye level to have a 10 minute argument about whether being able to see exactly one mm of a figure counts for Line of Sight. I imagine for organisers and competitors matters are too 'serious' for aesthetic concerns like pretty terrain or a natural looking table, it is a matter of mathematics (and also of preventing some of the more abysmally over-competitive from having the judges over for every single line call).
Each table is symmetrical with 5 identical pieces per side in mirror positions. Each table is identical to the first one and there are a lot of tables.So perhaps this thread is being overly harsh (I don't know).I have no idea whether there is a 'historical' significance to the set-up, but clearly there has been a need to produce the terrain on a sort of industrial scale, ensuring measurements and look etc for each table are exactly the same. If one divides effort by time, then even what we see will have taken an age to build, room to store and an effort transport (both ways?). I think the end result here alone must have been an exacting job, making a more detailed or exciting or aesthetic lay-out would clearly have had build implications. I would think that once people get set up and get into the game and those of a competitive streak having other concerns to think about, the terrain probably becomes a less of an issue. I know nothing of tournaments or of this game system or of the administrative burdens to get something like this up and running, to be able to know whether to call these bad tables, but am left wondering whether this thread is unduly harsh, not that I care, my own tables are not works of art.
Well, they've made their bed and they've got to lie in it.
I think the title of this thread sums it up: it's not wrong from a rules point of view, it's just very sadIt's sad that it's been boiled down to such a clinical system. May as well use cardboard cut outs (Standard sized of course) and a hex grid.
Are we having a go at hexed tables now? perhaps we need some kind of guide so we know which is 'the right way' to wargame.