use-able/effective terrain

[loempiaketzer]

Hi there, seeing all those great tables here in the terrain section makes me want to make my own table. Being new to 40K I am wanting to know what kind of features do great in a decent game.
Im planning on making bombed houses and stuff, buying some of those sweet craters GW got going and all kinds of stuff. Main question is,
how big do houses need to be? or is it just.. create what you want and go with it?
I am affraid to make pieces of scenery that are too large/impassible so thtat it tends to negate parts of the board because its too far to walk and things get really heavy on transports and such. Without much gaming experience i tend to like a lot of cover-scenery that doesnt block LOS but gives the decent 4+ coversave. guardwise this would be very nice, but would it leave the other armys in a bad position?
i would hate to make a table just to fit my army in playstyle and make other suffer for not playing IG/long ranged shooting armys...

plz discus or tell me your point of view, or tel me it all doesnt really matter that much

cheers and thanks in advance.

[ElegaicRequiem]

Play with no terrain or available cover. It'll make a man out of you.

Otherwise, go for buildings and area terrain with loose tree formations. Junk with hills and landscaping might be cool too for a less urban feel.

[jerbat123]

Yes it work well for general Armstrong Custer......."No wait where did all these Indians come from". Famous last words.

[rarves]

In my area we generally play with large amounts of terrain. Almost everyone prefers the city fight feeling, because it really does present interesting advantages to some armies. You have the harder to kill Guard but marines aren't left out in the dust either. the cover protects them from heavy weapons and LOS sometimes, so they can assualt the Guard alot easier. If you want plenty of terrain do it.

[treadiculous]

scan the street floor for suitable junk...

make buildings out of card using pizza box or postage packaging, use a model to get the height of the floors and windows right and put loads of bullet holes in the walls....!

lots of small pieces are easier to store and can be positioned in many more ways than a big terrain piece, and some chalk can be used to indicate terrain boundaries.

slate is great or suitable stones will do.. take a model as its really easy to get stuff too big...

scan your kitchen cupboard for interesting containers.. take a large base board with you to make sure heavy weapon teams / dreadnoughts will fit (the s~*nsbury supermarket gravy tubs are awesome)...

card tubes like the ones from inside kitchen foil are good... especially when cut down into a smaller collection of smoke stacks

old speaker covers have a great industrial style texture

urrm.... I can't think of much more at the moment - the GW craters and jungle trees are worth the cash, though get lots of the trees if you do go for that option - at least 4 or 5 sets!

[fatuous]

TBh it is hard when building terrain to not have your own army in mind, but it is important imo to doyour best to ensure that it is fair for all.

I've seen IG based tables with too much 4+ cover saves on, and tables built by marine players that only have LOS blockers and no area terrain. Neither IMO are really very fair.

For buildings, try to think about what the building is, and also how big you want that piece to be.

For example. I built a bombed out church. now ideally I'd like ti to be a huge cathedral sized thing, but that takes up all the battle field, so I went for a regular sized church you'd get in a town in the UK, scaled down to the size I wanted to terrain peice to be, which ended up being about 1.5' sqaure base, with the bombed out church taking up most of it.

I think that you need area terrain for cover saves, but also LOS blockers, as these really do add to the tactics in game.

I try to set up area terrain pieces about 9-12" away from each other, so that thier is room for tanks to manuvre, but also, infantry can just about get across the gap in one turn with out getting stuck in no mans land and shelled to bits (as long as their run rolls and diff terrain roles arent too bad), or can leave enough in cover to still get a save, but this comes at the expense of shooting, so becomes a tactical choice in itself.

I guess the bottom line is. Make an interesting, but above all fair table, and people will come and play on it. If if is tilted to give advantage to a certain army, people wont like playing on it.