The terrain rules have always been the weak spot of the game, in my opinion. I've had some ideas about how to improve them kicking around for a while, and in light of the recent developments, I figured there would be no better time to throw them out for discussion.

This does require a bit of a change to terrain, though. FFG loved to create odd-shaped terrain. These ideas would require straighter sides to the terrain. The terrain doesn't have to be symmetrical, but does need flat sides, with 4-10 points (depending on terrain size and type) marked along the edge of the terrain. On smaller pieces of terrain, these points are at the middle of the sides, and on larger pieces, these marks are at the vertices.

Units in terrain can be either dispersed or focused. To be dispersed, the unit's size has to be equal or greater than half of the capacity of the terrain. Whether a unit is dispersed or focused is decided by its owner when the unit enters the terrain, and can be switched (if the unit is large enough) by executing a reform command. A unit in terrain that loses enough trays that it drops below half of the terrain's capacity automatically becomes focused, and its owner must choose a facing (see below).

A dispersed unit acts follows the existing rules for units in terrain: it's considered to have all edges of the terrain as its forward facing. Shifting or marching causes the unit to exit the terrain but not move forward, and the appropriate edge of the unit must lie flat against the terrain. The only notable rule change from the current rules is that, similar to a unit entering terrain, whenever a unit exits terrain its turn immediately ends (scuttling horror or a fleshripper's pre-action move will end the unit's turn right away, it can't get extra movement from the modifier dial, etc.)

A focused unit has to choose a facing: it picks one of the marked sides/vertices of the terrain. This side (or the two sides next to a verticie, if the terrain is large) count as the unit's forward facing. Combat is affected appropriately (the unit's firing arc is 90° from the forward side(s), other units attacking from the non-forward arc get flanking bonuses, etc.)

However, a focused unit can exit terrain quicker. When a focused unit dials in a march, the unit is placed with its back edge along the terrain on one of the sides in its forward facing, and then it can still move the difference between its programmed move and the number of ranks it has. For instance, if the unit had two ranks and programmed in a four-distance move, it would be placed with the back of its second rank touching the side of the terrain it had as its facing, then move forward an additional two distance.

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Hopefully, I did a sufficient job of explaining what I envision. I've had two main issues with terrain: it didn't make sense that a single tray of spearmen in a giant forest could see and fight in all directions. A brigade of spearmen, sure, but one? And why do archers magically become able to see in all directions when they enter terrain, when they couldn't before?

And I've never liked the movement out of terrain rules. Your knights bunch up, ready to charge... and can move just far enough to get outside the terrain, and no more. Entering terrain gives you the magical ability to spin on a dime and exit in any direction. Stuff like that.

Let me know what you think. I was also tossing around the ideas of allowing multiple units to enter terrain, if there was sufficient capacity, but the ideas weren't quite developed enough to post yet.

I like where you’re going. We had a really weird situation the other night where a unit of Rune Golems charged into terrain and smacked Ardus even though they couldn’t have hit him normally as he was out of their straight line movement (in fact, he wasn’t even in their front arc).

I like the digital approach to the terrain, but I think you should have to face your figures in a direction. Also, I don’t think you should be able to move out of beyond physically touching the terrain, but I do think you should be able to contact an enemy unit if you’re of a certain size or smaller, perhaps a “Skirmish” class or something which can charge out of terrain...

wrong thread

skirmish units would be single siege, 2*2 infantry or archers, 2*1 cavalry, hero. Anything bigger should be slowed down by terrain

I've wanted to see a rule made that basically changes exiting terrain to say 'when exiting terrain, the unit must be touching terrain between it's two most central connectors on the contacting edge'.

This would greatly limit free movement abuse.

12 minutes ago, Jukey said:

I've wanted to see a rule made that basically changes exiting terrain to say 'when exiting terrain, the unit must be touching terrain between it's two most central connectors on the contacting edge'.

This would greatly limit free movement abuse.

I had the same thought! I meant to pull out my terrain and some trays to see if this really delivers the desired effect, but I fell asleep instead. I think this would be a huge improvement. I can't wait to go home and test it out!

16 minutes ago, Parakitor said:

I had the same thought! I meant to pull out my terrain and some trays to see if this really delivers the desired effect, but I fell asleep instead. I think this would be a huge improvement. I can't wait to go home and test it out!

30 minutes ago, Jukey said:

I've wanted to see a rule made that basically changes exiting terrain to say 'when exiting terrain, the unit must be touching terrain between it's two most central connectors on the contacting edge'.

This would greatly limit free movement abuse.

The problem is that you can do a 5-distance charge in nearly any direction. Having to center your unit on the terrain will only partially limit that.

2 hours ago, Xelto said:

The problem is that you can do a 5-distance charge in nearly any direction. Having to center your unit on the terrain will only partially limit that.

Maybe. But it is a start and makes some of the relentless abuse I’m guilty of more difficult

Best way to address terrain abuse that I've seen is a blanket rule preventing entering or exiting outside your own activation

Agreed

1 hour ago, Bhelliom said:

Best way to address terrain abuse that I've seen is a blanket rule preventing entering or exiting outside your own activation

Agreed... 😀

8 hours ago, Bhelliom said:

Best way to address terrain abuse that I've seen is a blanket rule preventing entering or exiting outside your own activation

Hm. That basically affects just Faolon, Beastmaster, Gorgemaw, Scuttling Horror, and Flee In Terror.

Rippers arent affected as their shenanigans are during activation.

On 1/14/2019 at 10:01 AM, Jukey said:

I've wanted to see a rule made that basically changes exiting terrain to say 'when exiting terrain, the unit must be touching terrain between it's two most central connectors on the contacting edge'.

This would greatly limit free movement abuse.

I gave it a try just positioning units. For the most part, it actually doesn't make a huge difference. The times it does make a difference is on terrain like Forest/Stone Terrace that has a little protrusion.

Figure 1): Traditional terrain rules allow the Spined Threshers to position off the protrusion to attack the Reanimates when they scuttle out of the forest.

Figure 2): With the rule proposed by Jukey and myself, the Spined Threshers would be constrained in their deployment position....

...but of course, anybody with experience knows that the Threshers can simply scuttle out with terrain on their left side, and there's no question they can flank the Reanimates. So our rule helps cut out on silly terrain gimmicks that feel really cheap, but unless the field around terrrain is quite congested, it doesn't really cut out options for the one emerging from terrain.

And there's one more odd problem.

Figure 3): The Reanimate Archers decide to exit terrain facing southeast, but the space between their two most central connectors doesn't actually touch the Forest at this spot. But it looks on the surface like a totally legal and legitimate deployment.

Once again, all they need to do is slide to the left or right a little bit and they center of the back edge of the unit will be touching the terrain, but it does mean that terrain with concave edges get really weird, especially for larger units.

All in all, I like the rule thematically so that units can't stretch extra far when they move out of terrain, so that just the corner is touching. But as far as an gameplay, this rule doesn't really have that strong of an effect, so for the sake of clarity, I'm inclined to just leave it out. But as I just said, it's a really huge win on the appearance of not taking advantage of the system.

What about modifying the change to be that terrain has to touch between the outermost connectors on that side. Fits Jukey’s mostly. Mostly resolves your figure 3 I think. Though it may make Jukey’s idea not as effective

11 hours ago, Church14 said:

What about modifying the change to be that terrain has to touch between the outermost connectors on that side. Fits Jukey’s mostly. Mostly resolves your figure 3 I think. Though it may make Jukey’s idea not as effective

You could make the rule so you either touch between the center connectors, or you touch on two different trays.