A Great Game Starts With…

An Overview Of All Pieces In Our "City Ruins" Themed Table. We also have a realm of battle board that goes with it, but i don't have any pictures of it at the moment.

"Good Day" people of the blogosphere! Today I felt like talking about a thing that i find very important to our dear hobby. It's somewhat something that just makes a game of 40K complete, as well as something i find interesting to do on a hobby basis. However, it is something that at times gets overlooked alot by many people(at least in my experience). In fact, it is something that affects the game directly in how we deploy our units and how we try to come up with a battleplan so we can ensure victory. What I am thinking and writing and probably talking
to myself about at the time being is terrain.

Me and a friend of mine were sitting in each our own homes doing nothing except playing stupid flash games on facebook and wasting our precious time with being retarded. That was until we suddenly thought of all the stuff we had lying around that was planned to use for gaming tables and terrain pieces.

As you can see, there are many spots you can claim a pretty good cover save.

Now, Why would i like to talk to you about terrain? Indeed, a solid question i would say. It's something that we don't actively think about that often, yet it is such an important part of the game. As i regularly play very different armies for my own sake, trying not to get bored with my units, i think alot about terrain. Some armies do very well out of terrain(MEQ units, yeah i'm talking to you), while others like squishy little dark eldar performs terribly bad if there are little good terrain pieces around the table. That would be since they ride around in cardboard boxes and have close to no armour saves on many of their units, but I digress.


"A Great Game Starts With Great Terrain"

Some might disagree on the impact terrain has on the game. If that is the case then you might want to try playing something without a 3+ armour save for a rather large epiphany. That came out a bit more harsh than i intended.

What is great terrain? I have a few things that i would say defines it for me.

Oh My God, There Is Paint On It?

Yeah, i'm actually quite serious about it. Put some paint on it. It doesn't have to look like the diorama of a golden demon winner or anything like that, just grab a spray can of paint, a shitty brush you don't care about and some acrylic paints and get working on it. To me, painted terrain adds so much more to the game.

Somethings i like a lot is the rust and the weird Tiles.

If you sit down with a buddy, maybe even several buddies and work a little on it for a few hours, it's going to look great! You know why? Because you guys made it :) I know time can really be hard to find for many people and i understand that completely, but it's only for a few hours right? Besides, it's really nice to be social once in a while just hanging out doing mindless stuff while talking smack, eating snacks and listening to music or having a tv-show running in the background.


Build-It Bob!

Don't be afraid to create something yourself using lots different junk nobody else needs. Like small cogwheels in plastic that are in different kinds of small electrical articles. Broken alarm clocks, Paper clips, guitar strings, bottles and cans, computer parts and  RC Parts from your son's mangled toys. Anything goes really.

Now, i'm going to knock myself of that high horse of mine and tell you that i'm not that much better than anyone else when it comes to these kinds of things. Luckily for me I have a few friends that gets me out of the apartment and into the world filled with genuine horrors.

Functionality

The use of random bits we had lying around combined with lots of other stuff shows pretty well on this one.

Terrain should have a specific purpose. What type of terrain do you want the piece to be? Giving this a thought before you start doing anything with a certain terrain piece you want to make, it can help alot with your creative process as well. How much of a cover save should the piece grant? Already deciding this in advance should also give you an image of how you should build it.







Some Types of Terrain:
Line of sight blocking terrain, Forests, Ruins, Rivers, Buildings, Portals?, Hills and whatever you can imagine.


It can be cool to add some special rules to some pieces of terrain if you like to play with a narrative flair. I like to do so myself at times, but most times it's enjoyable enough without those special rules.

I couldn't resist using Azrael as an imperial statue.

 What do you guys think about terrain? How important a part is the terrain pieces to you when you play games?

Next time I might have some pictures of a second terrain set that we have been working on. It's theme is "Exotic Jungles".

Until then, have a good time as always :)

-Rune