Hey folks--I'm building some terrain out of 1.5" foam and will have an awful lot of hills and cliffs on the table… I've only been able to play a few games of Dust (so my grasp of the core rules isn't 100%), but I've been thinking about playing around with some house rules for handling elevation to make the table play more. Anyone else trying to house rule elevation?

The terrain I'm building will basically have several 1.5" levels, with ramps between levels in some specific defined places… Here's a few ideas I had…

1. Cover--treat shooting at terrain of the same elevation (or lower) as soft cover, treat shooting at higher terrain as hard cover…

2. Vertical movement--moving up ramps are regular movement rules. For regular squads, climbing one level of terrain (1.5" height) costs 3" of movement, while climbing two levels of terrain (3" height) costs 6" (ie, they have to start adjacent to the cliff to arrive at the top in one move). Regular squads can't climb three levels of terrain (4.5" height). "Climb" and "Jump" squads have no penalty for climbing one level, 3" for climbing two levels, and 6" for climbing three levels.

For regular troops descending down a cliff, one level is no penalty, two levels is a 3" penalty, and three levels is impossible. For "Climb" and "Jump" squads, one and two levels is no penalty, and three levels costs 3".

3. Close Combat--melee is limited to +/- one level of elevation. The higher elevation squad gets the benefit of cover. If more than half the units have an elevation advantage, the squad gets hard cover. If less than half the units have an elevation advantage, the squad gets soft cover.

What do you think?

Here's the test pieces I built earlier this week… I'm just starting work on some bigger, modular pieces that will stack…

Thays nice looking terrain. I especially like the one in the foreground. Our group uses alot of terrain as well and Ive made an expanded terrain chart for it whichs adds alittle but does not really change any of the exsisting rules. If youre intersted in how we did it the chart can be found here:

docs.google.com/file/d/0B3kbMzHKzSCqZWxfd1VLTW9IcEk/edit

For the most part we leave large impassible cliffs out of our games but have been playing around with a "Pointe Du Hoc" type scenario in which the attackers have been issued climbing gear. The gear basically lets units create a path up the cliff which other soldier units can use to climb treating it as difficult terrain. Enemy units with CC range can attempt to cut the lines.

IMO use the same rules for different levels of buildings which can be located in the Core. I think they work fine enough.

Well--the thing is, I just started making terrain and got really excited and made a lot of it… And we wanted to try using a full table (way more than 25% coverage)… And since I used 1.5" styrofoam, the elevations wouldn't come into play using the core rules…

So, we just house ruled that normal troops needed to take 3" of movement to climb an embankment. And that one level of height = soft cover, and two levels = hard cover… And that worked pretty well for us…

Awesome table / terrain!