So the more games I play I am finding that certain terrain will completely change everything. For example I have water and mud fields that I have incorporated into my Endor board features. These difficult terrain parts made environmental gear an absolute must.

Also we have found placing objectives on top of structures requiring a climb also makes a huge difference.

I bet as more peoplE experiment with carrying terrain cards once thought useless will gain traction.

Thoughts or experiences similar?

I'm never gonna stop linking this thread

Yep. Thus has it ever been, thus will it ever be.

Terrain. Enemy. Self.

The natural formation of the country is the soldier's best ally; but a power of estimating the adversary, of controlling the forces of victory, and of shrewdly calculating difficulties, dangers and distances, constitutes the test of a great general. He who knows these things, and in fighting puts his knowledge into practice, will win his battles. He who knows them not, nor practices them, will surely be defeated. ... If we know that the enemy is open to attack, and also know that our men are in a condition to attack, but are unaware that the nature of the ground makes fighting impracticable, we have still gone only halfway towards victory. ... Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt; if you know Heaven and know Earth, you may make your victory complete.

- Sun Tzu, The Art of War , Chapter X.

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/276309-are-you-playing-with-enough-terrain/?do=findComment&comment=3343131

https://ibb.co/jTjOLJ

Hate me for saying this if you must, but this gorgeous table has too much terrain for a non-narrative 'tournament style' game. Almost every square has terrain on it; it must be closer to 50% covered than 25%.

Does look nice though

22 minutes ago, MattShadowlord said:

Hate me for saying this if you must, but this gorgeous table has too much terrain for a non-narrative 'tournament style' game. Almost every square has terrain on it; it must be closer to 50% covered than 25%.

I doubt it's that much over. Looks like it's 9x5? In which case, 25% would be 11.25 tiles completely covered in terrain.

All that terrain stuffed onto 4x3? I can see it being close.

It doesn't matter how many tiles have terrain on them, since it's about distribution. Covering 25% of each individual tile would get you there just the same.

We tend to read the gap between objects rather than the actual volume of them, so the large amount of very small objects (individual trees) tricks the brain here a bit.

And, anyways, having too much terrain is much less of a problem than too little is.

23 hours ago, animattor78 said:

So the more games I play I am finding that certain terrain will completely change everything. For example I have water and mud fields that I have incorporated into my Endor board features. These difficult terrain parts made environmental gear an absolute must.

Absolutely. The solution (assuming you don't like this situation, which may not be true) is randomized terrain. Terrain charts, aka terrain generators, are lots of fun. You have a list of terrain pieces (either you customize the chart to your collection, or find a chart you like and build those terrain pieces) with numbers next to them. You roll dice and whatever number(s) come up, that's the piece of terrain you place.

After you've made your army, you setup the table. Each person takes turns rolling dice and placing a piece of terrain. Depending on the game system, you decide how many pieces each player gets to place. There are a lot of ways of deciding that.

The tweak my friends and I made to this commonly used* method was, before anyone places any terrain, something that blocks LOS is placed near the dead center of the table. This keeps artillery from dominating the game.

Doing this makes your add-ons less of a "must have". You don't know for sure what terrain will be rolled up! A lot of terrain generators are not purely random though. I don't know about nowadays but when I was a kid, the Warhammer Fantasy terrain generator made hills and woods very common, rough terrain was next in typicality, rivers and towns were rare. This also tended to reflect the scenery people had available so it worked well. Everyone has lots of hills, since they're cheap and easy to make. WFB didn't use much scenery, so the rule was, everyone had to place at least one piece. Then you took turns placing pieces until someone said their was enough and declined to place any more. Their opponent then had the option of rolling up and placing up to two more pieces. Then after all the terrain is placed, you randomly determine who gets which setup area for their armies. Alternatively, you can declare one player the "defender", let them place more pieces than the opponent and choose the setup zones, but they get far fewer points worth of guys than than the "attacker". This is a fun way to include people who don't have a full sized army yet.

*You see it a lot in historical gaming, and in GW games who I assumed copied it from historical games, because a lot of their early designers had historical backgrounds.

In my last tourney I brought 2 lists- one had 3 of my important units outfitted with grappling hooks incase the terrain on most of the boards was buildings, the other list had inviro gear incase there was alot of hard cover area terrain.

1 hour ago, TauntaunScout said:

The solution (assuming you don't like this situation, which may not be true) is randomized terrain. Terrain charts, aka terrain generators, are lots of fun. You have a list of terrain pieces (either you customize the chart to your collection, or find a chart you like and build those terrain pieces) with numbers next to them. You roll dice and whatever number(s) come up, that's the piece of terrain you place. 

Runewars uses a similar system, except since it's an FFG game it uses cards instead of a chart. Every card has a picture of the terrain piece and lists its effects: LOS blocking, difficult terrain, etc. That might be a nice system to apply in Legion. I like your tweak about putting something in the center, too.

I suspect many of the under-performing issues folks are having with the ATST and Air Speeder are from terrain that greatly inhibits their longer range weaponry. The ATST's mortar is all but useless on anything other than the first turn on most of t5he boards I've seen since troops can easily hide behind something while getting into the Mortar's minimum firing range.

Yes, overall, terrain setup does have a very big impact on build/unit performance. This is why Legion has a more casual tourney environment than competitive. Diversified terrain layouts are great fun, but don't lend themselves to a hard-core tourney game. Great for Legion imo.

Some boards should have long open areas and others should be densely populated. Variety is great for this game.

4 hours ago, MattShadowlord said:

Hate me for saying this if you must, but this gorgeous table has too much terrain for a non-narrative 'tournament style' game. Almost every square has terrain on it; it must be closer to 50% covered than 25%.

Does look nice though

If you squished it all together, it's well within the 1/4 table limit for actual coverage. The smaller trees provide light cover, but if I showed you alternate angles of the same table you'd see some very clear and obvious shooting lanes. I played this configuration last week, and I'm playing it one more time this week. It's pretty fun!

Dont tell the 40k players or international Flames of War players that their tourneys are casual because they have cool looking 3D terrain. Just the opposite, as a general you have to build an army for many situations and you must also be able to look at a battle fields quickly to determine if you want to choose side and maximize you armies strenths and weaknesses. There is so much more thinking in these types of games than throwing down some random cardboard obstacle like xwing. And it just looks so much cooler.

On 2018年6月17日 at 9:15 AM, svelok said:

I'm never gonna stop linking this thread

Never say never.

Agree with Chris Cook, casual is the wrong word. Both for the reasons he suggests and for another. But his point is dead on: you have to think very hard and very fast about deployment and maneuver in these games in a way that some people aren't used to. When you base your game plan around calculated damage output and re-rolls and whatnot, and suddenly some of the pieces to your machine don't work, you need to come up with a new plan on the fly and that is 1) part of tabletop battles and 2) usually not the kind of thing, that the sort of person who meticulously plots out their stats, likes to do!

But on to my second reason it's not casual. There's nothing casual about painting an army for months even if it's not minmaxed and has only a basic level of painting detail, and then creating a model countryside to fight in. It takes a lot of dedication and it has a huge payoff. It irks me when people who use grey swarms, that they can just resell for 60% of what they paid for them if they don't like their performance, call my highly personalized armies that I spent ages tracking down just the right parts for and painting to the best of my very limited ability, "casual".

The attitude surrounding these games has changed a lot over the decades since I started. Everything was a lot more casual, for lack of a more apt word, even the tournaments. Back in the day I played in tournaments where organizers allowed people to make up their own stats and costs for scratch built vehicles! When a new edition of the rules made figures obsolete, people at conventions would just guess on a new points value for the old figure and plop it on the table! The internet changed things a lot, as did the rise of ccg's and then the growth of meeplish games. A think those games inculcated a much more "math and geometry" mindset as opposed to "painting and storytelling". The rules also became limitations instead of a jumping off point. It would have been rare for someone to say "you can't do that, it's not in the rules" unless you were breaking a core rule. Like dividing your fire between targets when the rules for shooting don't allow it, or whatever. But if the book didn't actually say squad A could take weapon B, no one would stop you from trying it out anyways.

The internet wrought three big changes. The well known one is "net lists". The second and less well understood reason is, now people can buy exactly the figures they want, instead of making due with the ones they can find. Even well stocked hobby stores tended to not have everything you were looking for in the early 2000's and before. Now there's eBay etc. so you can buy the models you want for some killer list. Used to be, gaming paraphernalia was much harder to come by and your expectations in games reflected that. it had an oddly realistic feel to it: no commander in real life gets exactly the forces they want and neither did you! If you wanted Stormtroopers but the store only had Scout troopers and Navy Troopers, guess what you had to work into your army list? The third change the internet wrought is not meant to be mean, but will be difficult to articulate in an unoffensive manner so I'll leave it off.

Course another reason for ongoing standardization is, it's good for sales!

In most terrain posts, and at LGS, I see a lot of area terrain. I would like to see some clarification on how it is supposed to be intended. For example, you'll see a terrain piece in the shape of a square, with maybe a little building and some debris, but there is still a large portion of flat, unraised sections. You can see it often in the terrain thread. I would assume that if there are no elevation changes, it should not apply to the 25% rule, but this does not seem to be the case. As such, you end up with 4 or 5 large terrain pieces that supposedly cover 25%, but if you counted the flat, unraised sections it would be far less. In the post above with the Endor terrain, IMO those round bases of the radar tower should not apply towards the 25%.

BRB Page 6, Point 2:

10 hours ago, OccasionallyCorrect said:

If you squished it all together, it's well within the 1/4 table limit for actual coverage. The smaller trees provide light cover, but if I showed you alternate angles of the same table you'd see some very clear and obvious shooting lanes. I played this configuration last week, and I'm playing it one more time this week. It's pretty fun!

I think it's possible you're either overestimating what 25% would look like, or not counting things like the hills with cliffs (they are built into the board, and green, but still higher than models and would count as terrain).

The table appears to consist of 56 squares (6x9). To cover it with 25% terrain only requires filling 14 of those squares. Try fit it all into the first 2.25 columns of the 9 if you can .

I don't doubt it's a fun table, I would absolutely ❤️ to play on it, but if I was going to a tournament where that was the norm I would load up on fleet troopers, flamers, enviro gear and grenades, and drop T45s, ATSTs, Ewebs and FD lasers immediately.

I’ve gotten 2 full games of legion in so far..., my first game, we only had about 10% terrain, it was miserable. Second game we came up just shy of 25% and it was a much more interesting game. I think I’ll enjoy it a lot when I can fill out on terrain properly.

23 hours ago, MattShadowlord said:

Hate me for saying this if you must, but this gorgeous table has too much terrain for a non-narrative 'tournament style' game. Almost every square has terrain on it; it must be closer to 50% covered than 25%.

Does look nice though

It may be 25% but the bigger problem IMO is that there is an overemphasis on LoS blocking terrain with a bit of covering terrain (small trees). If you neglect terrain that effects movement (which falls under the 25% rules and has an equal emphasis in the RRG) but doesn't obstruct LoS then you are bypassing a large portion of the movement rules and devaluing a lot of special abilities.

5 hours ago, Zerker said:

...and devaluing a lot of special abilities.

Yes. And that's ok . Next game, some other unit's special abilities will be under or over valued. That's miniature wargames.

Although if you really only own a few relatively big bases with small buildings on them, you could just treat them like woods. Pretend that the building's surrounded by crates, wandering droids, and other things that would be too densely packed to allow for models to move. The whole thing blocks LOS through but not into or out of the base, and it slows movement.

No set of rules can cover every piece of terrain you might make, you have to figure it out. I'd hate for Star Wars to go the route of GW with the books assuming that only Citadel Terrain is being used.

For people with a deckbuilding background this may be uncomfortable, they often want the choices they made before the game to be more important than they are in miniature wargames. The choices you make during the game, after you made your army and after you see the table, are usually at least as important, sometimes more. That's not a bug it's a feature. Your killer list might become useless for a game due to terrain. See also: the French at Agincourt, the Scots at Culloden, or the Confederates at Gettysburg.

2 hours ago, Zerker said:

It may be 25% but the bigger problem IMO is that there is an overemphasis on LoS blocking terrain with a bit of covering terrain (small trees). If you neglect terrain that effects movement (which falls under the 25% rules and has an equal emphasis in the RRG) but doesn't obstruct LoS then you are bypassing a large portion of the movement rules and devaluing a lot of special abilities.

While the above table is fine for reasons I've gone into previously, I do think your point is important for those collecting their first terrain. Make one of each rules-effect-thing first! Something that hinders movement but not shooting, something that precludes all movement and shooting, and something that provides cover. I love that board, but like the all the professional minis paint jobs out there worry me that people don't paint their figures from sheer intimidation, I do get concerned that new people will not use scenery because they think it has to be expensive and/or hard. You can (and should!) easily make interesting looking scenery for the cost of paint, glue, and maybe a bag of lichen (lichen is around $6 at most craft stores).

Get an old unwanted CD, cover the hole in the middle with a scrap of cardboard glued down. Paint them brown or green, maybe glue a twig to it for a fallen log, a tiny chip of gravel for an exposed boulder, and a clump of lichen or three. Forest! Or skip them for now because the game comes with some fences for cover.

I once made a bunch of fences from those paint stirring sticks that stores like Lowe's give away for free. Rulers would work too. I cut off the "handle" part and cut some the sticks in half, lengthwise. I then used white glue to affix them to the other, normal width, sticks to make walls with bases. Spray paint them grey, paint the base brown, drybrush with white. If you buy your spray paint from them, the paint guy will let you lift a lot of those stirring sticks.

Get another old CD and spray paint it blue, glue a flat rock over that hole in the middle and 1 or 2 other tiny rocks for effect. Pond! Some gloss varnish on the blue will make it pop.

It's generally worth the 5 minutes it takes to paint rocks and twigs grey or brown. I know, they're already grey and brown. But it takes almost no motor skills or mental effort, and makes them like fifty times better. Paint them grey or brown and give them a quick drybrush highlight. Rocks and sticks have a lot of texture and respond well to drybrushing.

If you keep your eyes open, society is awash in free styrofoam. Make a hill by rounding the edges off a big flat piece and brush paint it green or brown with 50 cent craft paint. Flock if ambitious.

Get another big, oddly shaped piece of styrofoam packing with lots of weird holes/protuberances. Paint it brown and you have a Tatooine building. Grey if you want a building that fits in better on other worlds. Upside-down plastic trays can also make great sci-fi buildings. It really helps if you pick ones that don't say SOLO or have a recycle symbol on them. You can spray the whole thing black or another dark color. Then after it dries according the can instructions, put on masking tape where you want doors and windows to be. Spray it a lighter color like grey, tan, silver, etc. Then flock the lip around the edge like a base, or just brush paint it to match the planet you imagine most of your battles happening on. Sometimes, the same paint store where you knicked your stirring-stick walls, will have free mixing tubs that work great for bunkers...

Don't spray paint styrofoam though, it'll dissolve. Also, styrofoam grain can make your buildings and hills look like, well, styrofoam. If you find this too noticeable (I do) give them a quick coat of spackle or texture paint and you will reap huge visual returns. Also, if you DO make sure your styrofoam is completely spackled, it becomes safe to spray paint it, so, it won't add much time to the project in the end. And spackle responds well to drybrushed highlights, making your scenery look good fast.

Now that you have one cool looking example of everything, you can worry about themed tables, or swapping out for nicer looking pro-grade stuff, or whatever.

If you actually take the time to paint this stuff it'll look pretty good for your first year or two of gaming. Or until you get out of high school and get a job.

I find that using the full amount of blocking terrain and some area terrain is critical for this game. If you want good movement of units and make this feel like an active war game instead of World War I trench warfare it's pretty critical.

End of the day I'm having a ton of fun and so are all the people I'm playing with.

Here are some alternate layouts I've played with as well

1 hour ago, OccasionallyCorrect said:

I find that using the full amount of blocking terrain and some area terrain is critical for this game.

So you mean more than 25? A full 25% of the table covered in LOS & movement blocking terrain, plus some swamps or whatever?

1 hour ago, OccasionallyCorrect said:

The foosball table and boardgame table behind it look like it should be labeled "good, better, best". Also reminiscent of Zallinger's March of Progress .