|
First, bad-looking terrain can really ruin the overall appearance of extremely well-painted minis used on it, which is a shame. I am always ready to spend time painting or assembling decent-looking terrain, even if it means less painting for units.
IMHO, it's nice to have a central piece for most games, which will draw attention and make for nice pictures. A large building generally fulfills this role very well (FW Cathedral, Stalingrad elevator...).
VARIED THEMATICS: It's also good to have various parts of the board with different thematics: on the large board (4x8), I often put both an urban setting (buildings, rubbles...) and a good amount of open ground (with just a few woods, hills).
CHALLENGING TERRAIN: If you spread the objectives well, full control of the battlefield will be hard to achieve for an army, and I think such a board rewards good players (all city favors fast moving/small units armies, and open ground is a piece of cake for firepower/large armor armies).
PRACTICALITY: Also, a good terrain piece has to be practical to handle, especially when considered as a whole with miniatures. Some pieces I was very proud of didn't pass the game test, sadly, like woods where the cramped trees made putting a single stand in cover an heroic task.
|
MULTI-GENRE: I intentionally build scenery that can fit into several different genres as often as possible. Modern building double in sci-fi. European villages do fine for the Rennaisance, Middle Ages and often for Ancients as well. The same goes for Adobe brick / Middle eastern villages. 
