Terrain and LOS

Hi all,

I'm curious how many terrain you guys use in your casual games. More specifically, how many piece of terrains that provide LOS blocking for our transport.

a few years ago it was easy for me during deployment to hide venoms, ravagers and raiders behind obstacles. But now that we have built a lot of ruins, we use them instead of cardboard boxes and I cant hide anymore, my ships get destroyed during the first turn.

thanks

I use at least four or five, in smaller games. I had the same problem with boards being covered in nothing but chest high wall sections etc, so I built my own portable LOS blocking terrain. I bring it with me to every game, and insist that at least some of it is used if there aren't enough to hide behind on the boards. So I would advise you to do the same: either build/buy some medium size intact houses or some bigger ruins.

My local game stores have zero terrain you can hide a raider behind.

Some friend and I bought a pack with some ruined buildings and some segment of aegis defense line like walls from a site I don't remember. The walls are high enough to hide a venom, but are about 2' long on total. The buildings are riddled with windows so you can draw line of sight pretty easily. It helps with long range games. Luckily nobody uses ignore cover heavy lists.

There is no point in playing pure DE on planet bowling ball.
With all the massed firepower in the current meta its just a turkey shoot where first turn wins. Boring. Yawn.

Like Scrz says build it, buy it, whatever but get it on the table. I like 3ish peices that can hide a raider and 3ish peices that can hide a venom.

interesting to see such variation. Good idea to build my own, I'll check for that.

In parallel, I'm also trying to adapt to also benefits from the ruins.

I recommend Mantic Battlezones, too for this. Their industrial battlezone is comparatively inexpensive but it can be a pain getting the connectors to work.

https://i.servimg.com/u/f37/19/29/51/28/tmp_1610.jpg

That's an example

I've had plenty of experiences playing at stores/clubs/tourneys with open tables or tables with scenery built to protect tac squads and give 25% to rhinos.
Plain and simple, shooty armies point and shoot, click, bang, dead.

We use a lot of good LoS blockers in our casual games.  If you have a lot of ruins my simple fix was to get some coffee stirers and board up the ground floor windows.  It helps a lot to break up the board and you can still put your ground pounders on the ramparts to shoot from cover.

I'm going to be building some Harlequin themed scenery after I finish my Veiled Path project.  I might do a tutorial, it'll be really simple, easy to store and most importantly - block LoS!

Ive sceencapped some of my battle reports to show you.





As you see, there is usually some BLOS or ruins with ground level walls than BLOS in the middle of the board and then some ruins/woods.

If you cant hide a venom, you arent using enough scenery or the wrong elements.

Showbiz care to explain where you hid venoms on table 1 then?

It doesn't look like any of the vehicles in the first video are hidden at all, or that any of the terrain is capable of it.

A couple of them are in the other two tables, but the construction of those ruins looks highly irregular. If your group builds most of their ruins that way--with the ground level almost completely composed of full wall segments, with no windows or openings--then you're very lucky. However, my experience has been that most groups build their ruins with at least a few openings on each level, so you can always shift a little to get a shot at a big unit hiding inside (such as a vehicle).

In around fourteen years of playing, I think I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen terrain pieces large and solid enough to reliably block LOS completely to a vehicle the size and profile of a raider. You might be able to squeeze or finagle it out of some pieces some days, but it's definitely not something you can count on.

I think that what we're finding out is that terrain, like many rules applications, is something that's going to vary wildly based on location.

A bastion will.

Not too common on tables unless you're bringing your own, in my experience anyway.

Also only takes a miniscule adjustment to achieve a firing visual.

Actually those Tau buildings can hide a venom, and the command tower (left of the land speeder) can hide a raider no problem.

In respect of the ruins, as I said we tend to build some of them with BLOS ground floor. Its not luck, it's done on purpose. If you play with no BLOS elements at all in your area you are playing 40k wrong Imo.

The last 2 photos look like my boards.

Windows and doors have to be taken into account but I can usually hide my most valuable transports for the 1st turn or 2 which is what i need.

I think the frequency of people lamenting the difficulty of hiding a Raider/Ravager indicates that many, if not most, players live in areas where the buildings aren't built that way. (And I'd wager that areas with lots of guard, orks, or other armies that need to be inside cover and shooting out might disagree with your preferred method of building ruins.)

A venom is much, much easier to hide than a Raider or Ravager, though.

That's why I and others recommend building or buying terrain yourself.  

No fun playing in a shooting gallery where 1st turn wins.

Edit: The majority of the terrain on most tables can be used to sit in and shoot out. Ork players i play against like any extra LOSB terrain to hide key units/transports behind.

Building or buying your own terrain is only an option in casual play (and some might call it stacking the deck in your favor).

Competitive play usually requires people to play with the provided terrain.

I think I might shoot a video on the angles and geometry of hiding behind LOS blocking terrain. Now I'm interested.

Id say playing on planet bowling ball is "stacking the deck" in favor of heavy shooting armies like eldar or tau. These armies don't need the extra help honestly.

Winning easily with a devastating alpha strike is hardly fun for both players IMO.
I understand tournament play is a different beast tho.

I would be interested in that LOSbt video if you make it.

This year except one table in the last GT I cant recall a single table in wich I couldnt hide venoms or reavers, and I'm an avid competitive player.

As @Painjunky said, playing with a standard level of scenery that has elements that BLOS in the table is not "stacking the deck in your favour", is playing in a table with proper scenery. Having low level of scenery is what is unfair.

My club tends to use one large piece of terrain per table eighth. (so eight per table) Plus a few small pieces.

I'd argue that no matter how you do it, if the scenery you built and put out for your games gives your army a mechanical advantage over your opponent's, then you're stacking the deck to have an unfair edge. (And you can't count on that same edge being available competitively.)

It's incredibly easy to have a table with 25-30% scenery that can't completely hide a raider.

However, regardless of whose experience is more typical, shouldn't we discuss it both ways? The number of people who say they can't get their vehicles hidden on a typical table they face indicates that this is a common problem.

Jim, I know you've said many times how your local meta doesn't use terrain that you can hide behind well. This seems like a local problem, for the most part. I've found that national level tournaments like LVO and adepticon have had so much terrain that I don't think it's fair to shooting armies.

LVO in particular has a policy of putting 2 very large LoS blocking terrain pieces just offset from the middle of the board, cutting off so much vision that it's essentally making 36"-48" range guns a waste of points unless they have barrage.

I recall you mentioned going to a tournament at dragoncon or something like that. How was the terrain there?