Ok so given that no-one has actually come and stated, in idiot proof terms, what the big difference in ground rules that people are playing with is - I'm going to assume it's infinite height area terrain and possibly something to do with air assaulting past scout screens?

I can see how that would have a considerable effect in determining the power of large walking robot lists vs everything else...

Come on, someone help me out here...

Terrain and line of sight are the major ones probably. Not just how terrain works but how much of it, how it is distributed, the size of the pieces etc.

I imagine there are differences in what counts as in cover (touching vs partially in vs entirely within).

A fair number of people apparently also play with a house rule that you can CAP a CAP (equivalent to a real life bomber escort rather than combat air patrol).

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The other one that can make a difference on some builds / lists against certain opponents is range stretching.

anything else that's big thing?

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This is a typical UK tournament table. It has 4 hills, 4 ruined areas and 4 woods. All 12 pieces are generally considered infinitely high. The entire grey base boards are ruins, so can't be seen through, and as they tend to be 11cm or more wide you can be in the edge and not be shot by other formations in the the same area.

Hope that helps.

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Actually it totally does (sexay titans, there too incidentally )
A great example is around here we'd often see 20% more LOS blocking terrain easily (and tends to be smaller bits more scattered around). It's totally going to skew the strength of infantry, the reason we like our IC and BP weapons, and why assaults are overwhelmingly used and shooting isn't as big a deal (probably why no one is interested in Tau either ).

I've got the general feeling that the LA crew is slightly less than what you have. That's probably a good indicator of the shooting mechanics that seem to be favored (Predator Annihilator Love is quite prevalent).

All the above are 100% OK in my book but flavor people's experiences.

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Typical tournament tables from Perth, Western Australia (7 tournaments in recent years along with 5 campaigns).




Terrain is not considered to have infinite height (mainly because that would effect the rules for hills and because we seem to have a lot of pretty terrain that makes area terrain conventions illogical). Basically it's TLoS with the exception of woods that are considered to block LoS to the edge of the template and to the height of the highest tree on the base (units can see 10cm into and out of trees as per the EA rules).

I make sure that each table has a laminated printout on it with all the rules for that table's themed terrain as well as the 1.8.4 Terrain Effects table.

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I think New England's epic group errs more to the side of "more" when it comes to terrain. This is pretty standard for most of our tests in MA. The hills' lower levels are scrub (6+ cover for infantry, and -1 to hit) but you can see more than 10cm through it. The top levels are forest. There's also 4-6 forests on table itself, along with 12ish buildings and 2ish pieces of rubble. All terrain is thought to have infinite height... most of the time. Sometimes if the opponent's feeling generous we give it a 50% chance of being true LoS.

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What Dave posted is similar to the amount of terrain we use in our games. The difference is we play buildings as TLOS rather than infinite.

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We'd probably play like that if Titans were fielded more often. Without their height though it doesn't come up a whole lot, and so infinite height is just the defacto.

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Thanks, that's actually a really useful flurry of posts - sort of surprised it's not appeared somewhere before.

So infinite height terrain seems to be the big difference, more so than terrain density. Having said that the Australian tables look towards the sparser end as well, so that has to be skewing the effectiveness of some builds right?

So what is the thought process that's lead to infinite height being so widely adopted? There's no particular precedent for it in the rulebook. Doesn't it pretty much make hull down defunct? Or does it neatly solve a bunch of problems? Or does it just make it easier to play with squares of card representing terrain?

It's not how I would have imagined playing to be honest but I've been playing online with tabletop over the past year so it's kind of become unconsciously adopted for a number of reasons. It would be interesting to hear how it became such a "thing" in real world play.

I suspect it's just for sake of ease as it saves arguing over what terrain piece does what at the start of a game or having to get down at models eye view repeatedly on terrain dense boards.

My main issue with infinite height is that it makes being on top of a hill pretty useless and oh so frequently control of the high ground is a meaningful strategic and tactical concern.

This might not a typical board we play on because of the city part. But when i host games theres alwats 12 pieces of terrain with several of them being quite big. We play TLoS.

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I do notice that many of the tables tend to have small pieces placed separately (eg individual buildings or groups of individual buildings). Unless you count them as one single contiguous piece, it becomes practically impossible to hide a formation behind anything at all - moving just the smallest amount will bring some part of it into partial view in TLoS.

What I like about area terrain is that you can make tactical decisions about how to position you troops, which can't be undone by "if I squint I can just see the rifle of your infantryman". For example you can choose between putting them just inside the terrain piece - in cover but possible to see from the right angle thanks to the 10cm rule, or behind it - out of cover but very hard to see. What I like about it is that it follows the principe that if you want the benefit of something you have to take the negative too - if you want to see, you can be seen, but if sacrifice your ability to see you can not be seen. This is basically what area terrain plus infinitely high gets you.

I can certainly see how hills are not as good in that they don't give you the ability to see across the entire battlefield. They aren't useless - you can of course see anything hiding behind a hill simply by moving onto it. Still, I tend to think of hills as things to be behind and avoid sitting on them. I try to place cover on top of some of them for that reason. If they have cover I think they are good places to be, which is at least not inconsistent with "real life".

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Ok, so I can see the merits of pretty much making everything area terrain, even buildings, that way as long as it's more than 10cm wide you can't see through it, if you're in it you get cover - that makes sense. Infinitely high though? I'm having a hard time with that, infinitely high hills just seem a bit wonky no being able to see a Titan over the ridge of a hill for example; and surely a Titan should be able to see over something that an infantry stand can't? Isn't that the point? And not being able to see between two buildings to something on the other side? I have no problem having a WE totally block line of sight, so no shooting under Harridans or between the legs of Titans, that makes sense, they're in constant motion but a building isn't and you'd still get a cover bonus anyway.

Obviously, it doesn't really matter as long as you're all playing by the same rules but on the UK table for example, if everything on there is infinitely high there are very few fire lanes across the board unless both shooter and target on on the internal side of a piece of terrain. I can certainly see how that would make Titans less dominant and skimmers popping up more powerful which seems to be borne out by the, how can I put it diplomatically - complaints and counter points? - in Dobbsy's recent Tau vs ATML battle for example. Skimmers suddenly become the only unit in the game capable of seeing over, and more often than not through, anything at all - which, as Steve54 keeps on saying, is pretty strong.

On the True Line of Sight and infinitely high point, by 'true', are we talking model's eye?

If so, how are newer fan made titans balanced against GW/FW minis? proxy reavers are pretty much in the towering colossus category.

Relates back to Glyn's point (maybe another thread?) about shooting through the legs of a titan on true-LOS.

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