Historicals aside, I always find it odd that the writers of games never give you examples of the terrain that they envisaged when designing and testing the game. I mean, terrain is clearly a big factor in balance and design, but instead most rulesets just give you a list of penalties (normally speed) or benefits (normally cover) for some typical examples, and that's it.
There are some good points raised so far in this thread:
We played a bunch of Mordheim over the weekend, and one scenario involves making a street with clutter...opposing warbands trying to get to the opposing ends (i.e. killing each other and escaping off the end). The board played a HUGE role in it.
Necromunda had similar scenarios too, reducing the board to a long narrow strip with a player's forces at each end. Although clutter along the street helps (reminds me of those third-person cover shooter videogames), it is pretty limiting in terms of tactics since the "street" is specifically intended to corral the participating forces. Also, I may be obtuse here, but which of the two photos is of the street you played along?
Now having said that my biggest problem with terrain has always been storage. I always seem to be able to cram more miniatures into my hobby space but terrain has a certain bulk that just seems to take up a ton of room. Even building things with an eye for using them in multiple periods/genres a decent terrain collection swallows space. For me that's the biggest hindrance to an expansive terrain collection.
For me, the biggest limiting factor (next to time restraints) is storage space though. And I'm sure I'm not alone in this.
You guys are not alone!
I love making terrain, but I have always struggled with trying to come up with a compromise between something useful, robust, and attractive, and then trying to store it somewhere/somehow without spending forty minutes after a game making a jigsaw of it all to get back into the storage box.
What's worse for me is that although I don't mind a compromise on scenery that looks a bit less "realistic", I struggle to make things like bigger hills or taller buildings that provide strongly interesting elements on even small 4'x4' tables.
Then, there is variety/theme, which increases the volume of general terrain needed.
I do the best I can with two or three boards, and a variety of hills and vegetation, relying on buildings or similar "hard" elements to provide more specific themes. Even so, I struggle to make more terrain when in the back of my head I'm always wondering where I'm going to put it all.
I've found that terrain is too expensive and not what I feel is right anyway. There's something about mdf (especially the way its joined) that I find to be a turn off when looking at it.
So I'm making my own terrain as well now. I find it very rewarding.
I find that the MDF stuff is a fair compromise to provide something sturdy, durable, and practical vs cost and storage space. I don't love the stuff, but at least it's consistent.
Making your own is/can be cheap. Of course, "cheap" is subjective, and still requires some effort to get a reasonable result from. For me, "cheap" is a decent amount of terrain to cover a 4' x 4' table for under £70. That's a very possible thing to acheive, but it takes some persistence - just gluing rubbish onto a base and spray painting it will look... Well, like spray painted rubbish.
I do honestly think though that terrain needs to be more fully integrated with rules (big ask, but bear with me). Terrain rules, especially for what you'd think would be interesting things like mud, swamps etc seem to do nothing more than slow the game down and so they often aren't included. I have a feeling a ruleset could add a lot if it dealt with terrain differently or set down requirements that a "strategic swamp" has to be placed in X place in X scenario/random set up system etc. I don't know the answers really, but looking at rules for mud and other terrain effects makes for uninspiring reading. ("slow down by 1 inch, 2 inches etc)
This is an excellent point, and one that I have wrestled with often.
Slowing a unit down is usually regarded as a fairly soft penalty compared to losing models or skipping that unit's move for a turn.
Then again, terrain which requires rolling on a table for random effects each time also has a similar game-slowing effect, as well as requiring the tables to roll/consult on.
A nice compromise I saw (eventually) was in Infinity:
- Some terrain reduces the number of shots a model's weapon makes through it
- Some terrain causes dangerous checks if certain weapon rolls are made (setting off a pocket of gas or such), or if certain defensive/physical rolls are made/failed whilst in it.
I liked these because the rules are usually pretty easy to remember, the penalties/benefits are not always "in play" unless something happens to trigger them, and therefore the terrain rules provide a tactical choice instead of always being something to avoid or get into quickly.
Another issue I have with terrain rules is Line of Sight. I hate models being penalised because of pose / basing / model choice, but if you abstract the rules completely, it makes the game as a whole feel more abstract. Most games use true line of sight (or close to it), which then makes dense terrain a nuisance to play on when you can't really tell clearly who can see whom.
Carelessly placed terrain can just as easily ruin a game by the way. I have seen many a beautiful ACW or AWI table with those iconic wooden fences running across the table, separating the troops and proving unsurmountable by the large formations moving on the table. Or game scenarios with a time limit that proved impossible because the terrain simply prevented the troops to even cover the necessary distance within the time limit, even without being opposed.
The thing is, as much as I agree with you, that's actually what fences/rivers/walls
do in battles! Therefore in wargames, they are supposed to separate forces, and make it difficult to get past. Does this make for a bad game? Depends on whether it's a specific scenario or not I guess.
With respect to "bad" terrain setups in general, I agree - too often a poor terrain setup serves to do little more than constrain the opposing forces, who then fight through the remaining open areas as best they can. But that partly also comes back to how games are designed - often with the emphasis on models interacting with each other rather than the with the terrain. If you have a Wild West game for example, and you're playing around a town, a handful of boxy little buildings with flat roofs and a road down the middle is about par for the course.
I will also point out that specific scenarios are far more conducive to using and placing terrain meaningfully than generic scenarios designed for pick-up games. They allow more of a fixed goal in terrain terms, and they also permit the use of asymmetrical forces to offset the (dis)advantages the terrain provides.
The terrain I dislike is the "place D6 bits of terrain in X section of the board" style of rule. It should look like a place that could exist rather than a disjointed mash of terrain pieces.
Yes I agree. I understand that it's supposed to distribute an amount of terrain in a way that is arbitrarily "fair", but it almost never actually adds much to a game - often the elements are reduced to something you go around rather than interact with.
It's the third army and sometimes the most important one.
Very much this.
Even so, many players often seem to find dealing with the "third army" frustrating, which in turn leads to just simply avoiding it altogether... See 40k for an example of the typical mentality/result.
22 November 2006, 12:35:50 PM