Ironically I find the friction between the poster's points of view very informative. As someone who's about to get into Eldar it's really interesting to see obviously experienced players with very different points of view and different play-styles argue about units.
(I mean the unit arguments, which are much more informative than concensus. I don't want to be seen to encourage name-calling between gentlemen and generals )



The way it is played locally is if a unit can draw line of sight to (ie see) an enemy, it can fire on it. If a building is large enough to block sight, the target cannot be seen. If it is not, the target is either obscured (if partially covered) or can be shot at freely without penalty. The depth of terrain feature is not a factor, so it could be 50cm deep and a unit would still get shot through it if it was visible.

The exception is forest-terrain, which blocks LOS to enemies more than 10cm from the edge (I honestly couldn't tell you why this exception exists )

The disadvantage is that this is not exactly as per the rules, and it must inevitably affect the viability or competitiveness of some units.
The advantages are it allows for larger, more elaborate terrain without blocking all shooting, and that it feels more natural to players used to other systems that use true line of sight.

Of course we do not allow shototing through solid buildings.
In all effects we play as normally but complications arose with low ruins that by the letter of the rules would block los but in reality, should betreated as craters. This got more complicated when skimmers got involved.

We follow the hull down rules 100%.

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Here are some examples I made for a discussion we had about LOS blocking a few months ago.

Example 1
Here's an example of the way we usually play terrain here. There is one unit on the table: a Tau Broadside (white).



Every piece of terrain on the table at a minimum offers -1 to shooting, and a cover save to infantry in it. I've put down some labels with guesses at what sort of Line of Sight blocking each terrain piece provides. "Hide Large" should give cover to any large models behind it.
The large round "cylon" pieces are pretty low and come to a peak in the centre, so would give a cover save to infantry on the close halves, but only block line of sight to infantry and smaller vehicles on the far sides.

This particular table has no woods, jungles or forests, so nothing is an abstract Line of fire blocker. If a unit can see its target, it can shoot its target.

Example 2

I've edited the same image to show approximately what would be visible to the Broadside if all terrain blocked Line of Fire to anything past them and anything more than 10cm into the piece.



It's a quick hack job so the angles aren't perfect, but the the blacked out areas would be invisible to the shooter.
If we played it like that (all terrain blocks LOS to anything more than 10cm in), it would probably be prudent to have less large, low terrain pieces.

To use a picture Onyx posted in the same discussion, this would mean the way we play by default here (assuming neither player asks for a change before the game starts) is that this Necron Monolith would not count as out of sight to a shooter on the opposing side of this sort of a low scrub and ruin terrain feature.



I hope that clarifies the issue, and I'd be interested to hear if other areas handle the LOS entirely literally or also use variations like this.

normally we tend to play that all terrain blocks LOS unless agreed beforehand, as we play at a variety of venues we bring all our terrain, it's normally on a base with either buildings, ruined buildings or trees, as we've always played it, the base blocks line of sight and you need to pop-up to see over it

I often find myself moving buildings and trees around to make it easier to spot which unit is where, or so they can all fit.... in things like engagements which can get fiddly, I'll often pull all the terrain off entirely so you get a plan view of who is really contacting who

there have been exceptions, we have some pieces of terrain with road sections, generally we play that the road does not block LOS, but for us that kind of thing is a 5-min warmup question

This is how I learned to play the game, perhaps due to my learning at the feet of veteran tournament players, it works fine for us, and was probably developed to make life easier for tourney organisers.... not having to rule LOS in games every 5 mins helps events run smoothly!

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Spot on.

The only thing to add here is that units that have part of their base on terrain are considered to be "in cover", and I tend to use a convention from other rules that a unit is partially obscured if both side of the firing unit cannot see both sides of the target unit.

I might add that all our tournament terrain is separated, so we do not encounter the situation in M-S third picture above, which under our conventions would probably be "hidden" to firing units from the bottom of the picture.

indeed, although typically in our games/tournaments we don't tend to have two pieces of terrain touching like that either

in that last pic, I would typically play that the terrain blocked line of sight in either a 'standard' or tournament game, in a scenario or special game then it would need defining much more as certain features may block LOS and others not intentionally

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How would you play the bottom picture with a Warlord titan instead of a Monolith?
This is what I have issue with.
Terrain doesn't have infinite height and common sense has to come into it at some point.

As I've said in local forums, we could just use the old cardboard buildings and be done with it. That would solve the problem nicely but there are players (myself included) who like playing on pretty boards and this sort of terrain calls for some common sense to play with.

I have made swamp terrain based on old cd's. It would be nonsense to claim that they block los to units on the far side (not in the terrain). A bit of common sense and the terrain rules (10cm etc) can all be obeyed and realistic terrain can be used.

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I'll add that I have made cheat sheets for all my themed terrain tables which are always lft with the terrain. This explains exactly how to treat ech piece of terrain and also includes the terrain tabl from the rules for clarity.

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same story, it would block LOS to and from the warlord in 'standard' games

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unless discussed in the 5-min warmup of course, I've played games in tournaments where ruins don't block LOS and you can see over woods at tall stuff

I think this is very much an eye opening moment for me, you guys play terrain very differently, I can imagine it being a different game all-round!

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For us, trees block los to the edge of the base and to the height of the highest tree.
We can still only see 10cm ino tree as per he rules. This allows us to shot at an Imperator titan as it's much taller than the terrain (with a -1 to hit modifierof course) which is common sense.

It really is only because we have some interesting terrain pieces that questions have arisen.

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We play it like Onyx and Co does it. Makes most sense to me.

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so where would you draw the line and say a warlord is blocked?

in the diagram, it's fairly clear but how would you judge a situation like this? and yes that is meant to be a warlord titan....



A is approximately the same distance from terrain as the warlord, but with 'true' LOS he can't actually see it, whereas B can see easily.... in your games could A still shoot the warlord (with hull down naturally)?

in a game this would require a tabletop level view, or trigonometry! (I mean what could be better than calculating trig while playing epic?)

Also this is a genuine question, not a dig in any way, considering how this forum has been over the past few days I didn't want my curiosity misconstrued as an attack

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During the 5 min warm up, I have agreed with opponents that a certain titan / model may "see over" a given piece of terrain, though that would still count as partially obscuring (so -1 to firing). In that sense this is what I believe Onyx and others are playing.

Seeing past hills is another discussion, where units can be seen over some part of a "bevelled" edge or contoured step, and where one hill overlooks another and thus there is a "shadow" beyond the lower one. This is why playing that given terrain types "block LOS, period" is marginally simpler and easier, hence its use in the tournament setting.

Resorting to using lasers targeting tools is another option though doing this tends to slow the game down significantly, and also arguing over such minutiae can result in bad feeling during the game, both of which are to be avoided if at all possible.

IMO trigonometry is to be avoided at all costs . . .

At Heavy Bolter I just run it that vertical terrain blocks LOS. Rivers and flat stuff doesn't. It's simple and hard to forget or get wrong. Then again I don't run hedgerows etc so I guess there'd be a caveat on low obstacles if I did.