Should terrain be explodable?

By Ophion, in Star Wars: Legion

Just been watching a few of the excellent video batreps going around...

Would some rules for buildings etc getting blown up add to the game?

Obviously there would be some challenges.

But we already have basic universal rules for terrain.

Could use of blast or impact weapons blow up buildings doing damage to occupants and turning them into ruins?

Could blast or spray weapons set fire to forests making them dangerous to infantry?

Terrain type "Building":

Instead of declaring an attack against enemy figures on or around the terrain piece, roll your attack dice against the terrain. After exceeding a certain amount of wounds (Small building/rubble=3 Medium building/ruins=4 Large building/large ruins=5), roll a black defence dice. On a blank result, remove the terrain from the board and deal 1 wound to every figure on top of the terrain that is not a repulsor unit. Units in base contact with the terrain when it is removed roll their standard defence die to attempt to avoid damage.

Terrain type "Volatile":

While providing cover for a unit, assign 1 wound to this terrain for every damage result blocked by the cover. After reaching certain number of assigned wounds (3-5 wounds based on size), remove the terrain from the board and roll a white defence die. If you roll a blank result, deal 2 damage to every unit that is in base contact with or on top of the terrain. If any other result is rolled, deal 1 wound instead.

EDIT: Attacks with the "Blast" or "Pierce" keyword will destroy "Volatile" terrain after it blocks 1 damage.

Edited by Indy_com

We’ve been playing with some house rules. I made a load of market stand/stalls for my tattoine map. For groundlings they make no difference but for an AtSt or an airspeeder running for cover out of sight they work pretty well. They’ve made our games more dynamic for sure. Not tonnes of them, but just enough.

-Not targetable, but we said if an AtSt or Atrt walks through them they get smashed to pieces.

I was playing with my son last night, a supply objective was in the middle of area terrain of trees. He proceeded to run multiple squads in there while I had squads, speeder bikes and mortars hitting the area. We both thought that forest would be a smoking crater by round 4.

Destructible terrain sounds fun but its more of a headache than its worth.

Warzone Resurrection has destructible terrain and we actually started ignoring it because it was so obnoxious to keep track of

1 hour ago, Vineheart01 said:

Destructible terrain sounds fun but its more of a headache than its worth.

Warzone Resurrection has destructible terrain and we actually started ignoring it because it was so obnoxious to keep track of

Isn't this just the truth about like 90% of the "Wouldn't it be cool if..." ideas?

Fact is... most of that stuff just isn't worth the effort for the payoff. The most common features we see repeated between wargames (the ones people "get tired of") are repeated over and over because they're the ones that actually work, and are quick/easy/simple enough to use regularly enough for a game to be mildly competitive.

....as a sapper....i very much enjoy this topic.....wunderboom!!!....

In bolt action it’s possible to turn buildings into piles of rubble. I keep ruined versions of my buildings around for this purpose, but in most cases it is a pain to track otherwise. That said, if using 2d cardstock terrain it would be very easy to pull this off. You could easily place craters, or have a modified print on the back to simulate a destroyed or altered terrain piece.

The most annyoing part is always trying to work out what happens to someone who is in the building you're reducing to rubble.

I can see some form of destructible terran working as an optional advanced rule. I mean how you gonna stop them Rebels if you can’t target their shield generators?

12 hours ago, Drasnighta said:

The most annyoing part is always trying to work out what happens to someone who is in the building you're reducing to rubble.

Inflict 1 wound to each model for each segment of the range rulers that the building is tall.

That way, dropping a building that is 7 range rulers tall on Vader won't defeat him at full strength.

most troopers will be crushed, but heroes are hurt. Seems pretty simple for Legion, and keeps it thematic.

Edited by That Blasted Samophlange

House rule something and tell us how it goes.

imo destructible terrain is all about how you build the physical objects.

i would start by using something modular like dwarven forge game tiles. Its very easy to remove a tile.

keep in mind how long the game takes. A single lightsaber attack should make a door in most everything. Same thing with at-st melee attack.

Give players a good reason to interact. Put objectives inside buildings with no pre made entrances. That kind of thing.

1 hour ago, That Blasted Samophlange said:

Inflict 1 wound to each model for each segment of the range rulers that the building is tall.

That way, dropping a building that is range rulers tall on Vader won't defeat him at full strength.

most troopers will be crushed, but heroes are hurt. Seems pretty simple for Legion, and keeps it thematic.

It’s more than that.

its a huge hassle to:

remove the models from the table.

repjacr the terrain with debris.

replace models on table WITHOUT AN ARGUMENT, since there’s a chance things that were in or out of range have now changed... if the models can even be placed stable on the debris terrain...

... in 40k varieties with terrain destruction, those were the worst arguments.

Agree it would be a cool effect, but not worth the complexity it would bring. Bolt Action rules work good enough for me. House rule it if desired.

1 hour ago, Drasnighta said:

It’s more than that.

its a huge hassle to:

remove the models from the table.

repjacr the terrain with debris.

replace models on table WITHOUT AN ARGUMENT, since there’s a chance things that were in or out of range have now changed... if the models can even be placed stable on the debris terrain...

... in 40k varieties with terrain destruction, those were the worst arguments.

I agree, it is a major hassle, and I won't be doing it, but there are some that want it, and I'm trying to think of a balanced (mechanically and themstically) way of doing a collapsing building.

1 hour ago, TylerTT said:

House rule something and tell us how it goes.

imo destructible terrain is all about how you build the physical objects.

i would start by using something modular like dwarven forge game tiles. Its very easy to remove a tile.

keep in mind how long the game takes. A single lightsaber attack should make a door in most everything. Same thing with at-st melee attack.

Give players a good reason to interact. Put objectives inside buildings with no pre made entrances. That kind of thing.

Well, to be fair, it was taking a lightsaber a fairly long time to start melting through a door. It has limits as a weapon.

For the main topic, I’d suggest building your terrain as modular if you want it to be destructible (aka able to remove the roof/walls).

But it would require quite a bit of probably unwieldy rules additions to figure out how various weapons affect terrain and any units near them (or vice versa). Consequentially, I for one remain unmotivated to futz with that.

Edited by Derrault
Adding more discussion

lightsabers have been used in the movies to cut through doors and while its fairly quick, its slow enough to still be a problem to attempt in a battlefield

As an aside, for those interested in a game that incorporates this as a core rule (either for the game in its own right, or as inspiration for house rules), DropZone Commander does this, and demolition can be pretty important in some situations.

It is worth noting, though, that one of the factors that makes it reasonable to use as a standard rule is the high degree of abstraction with soft targets, and the fact that other factors in the game mean they're rarely left out in the open on their own to begin with. So they're most often within transports (which are less numerous when it comes to checking ranges to the collapsing building, reasonably able to assign damage that isn't instantly fatal, and so forth), or within the building that's collapsing, in which case they're so highly abstracted that things like position within the building aren't really relevant or debatable. And when the building finally collapses entirely, everything in it just instantly dies.

I don't see it happening by FFG as one does not have destroyed AT-ST, AT-RT, Speeder, Bikes, and any future vehicles as wrecks. It could happen, but I don't see the needed complexity, which is what it comes down to. 'More' realism adds more complexity.

One attack can easily be seen as 1/6th the effectiveness of a weapon/model for the entire game. So even a single attack is quite an investment.

One saber attack to make a door from a wall feels like plenty of time, also It’s not like everything is made from super heavy blast doors. And I like the 2D clone wars cartoon a whole lot more than the prequel films.

i don’t see destructible terrain being an official thing unless they want to sell a bunch terrain kits.