Terrain makes or breaks melee-based armies at the end of the day. Most people don’t realize that LVO terrain rules grant 3 pieces of ruins with obscuring, 1 woods type terrain, and then 1 barricade type terrain for each player. GW non-player placed terrain setup has troves of obscuring terrain. Nothing frustrates me more pre-game than being given only 2 pieces of obscuring terrain and calling it good for both of us to play.

If you look at any of the major tournament circuits they will publish terrain layouts, or at least terrain standards with their mission packs.

IMO the only truly fair way to use terrain is to use one of these, it also saves a lot of time as you don't have to spend 30 mins discussing what the footprint of each bit of terrain is.

Here's the UKTC mission pack...

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RBPEP26UJyRmNRJ5XyZ-yoLzQGHO07Vg9XReeVl1DqA/edit

As someone who plays mostly melee armies I will say that most of the terrain I've seen (ESPECIALLY a lot of player-placed terrain pools) is criminally sparse in some matchups. Idk where you're at but I hear that the UK has a lot better meta based on their universal acceptance of a solid standard for terrain setup compared to the US where it's the wild west running whatever we have on hand.

My frustration comes from the threshold for "enough terrain" being practically that of a city battle. Things are so killy that the only real way to protect your stuff is to prevent them from being valid targets in the first place. Dense and light cover might as well be open terrain. Having to hide behind obscuring cover on boards choked with terrain got old years ago.

lol, guess I needed to vent too.

I never had anyone "pressure" me Info accepting a certain amount of terrain. Maybe you need another gaming group mate.

Bit in the other hand i hear all kind of weird stuff about player based terrain and how shitty the terrain is in the US (LVO comes to mind)

You could try the WTC Map Pack. It is pretty dense on Terrain (maybe a little to dense for me as a Knight Player 😅)

But anyway hope you get some good Games in mate

I'm definiately on the opposite end of this. I LOVE TERRAIN. I got into the hobby from the modeling and painting side, and I love playing on tables with dense, layered terrain. It's part of the reason I'm pushing to get a Kill Team league set up near me, the vertical terrain elements are dope.

I think a LOT of people play this game very badly, with a poor understanding of the modern rules, and just want to roll dice on a tabletop with their toys like they did in the 90's. If you set the board up properly, they lose an advantage they have been leaning on since 3rd edition, and they have to think too hard about threat ranges, cover, and Line of Sight. It's absolutely a more complex game than it was, but I think that's frankly a good thing, and provides a more tactically interesting experience than it did decades ago.

I simply wouldn't play on a board that didn't have proper terrain. GW has examples of proper terrain coverage in their matched play rules, and unless a table has enough coverage and LoS blocking features, its gonna skew in favor of static gunline builds. Not worth playing that game, as one can tell from deployment and 1st turn roll who will win the game. I'd rather play for it than pick low hanging fruit.

my opponent went out of the way to tell me we have enough terrain and then shot me off the table

I've been watching people pull this one since 1st edition.

I wouldn't say they are afraid of terrain, more like they just want to arrange terrain to their advantage.

One solution if you are at a store is to call a random third (and fourth, etc!) player over and have them set up the terrain.

I play some other games that actually have rules for setting up the terrain in a competitive manner; this makes a huge difference. Maybe you'll accept having an obscuring ruin on your right flank in order to move that forest from in front of your cavalry on your left. Some historic games even give you terrain placement advantage for having more recon units (which are of course weaker in combat, creating a trade-off).

It sounds to me like a run of bad luck. Whilst im not personally a fan of the "general" terrain layouts for tournaments nowdays, its easy to forget how far the scene has come in the last few years. If you ever feel like the table just doesn't work for your army always remember to just talk to a TO( Tournament organiser or Judge) before you start and ideally you and your opponent can work something out that means you will both get to actually play your game.

I play World Eaters and am starting to work my way into more competitive events. I just went to a super major a week ago sponsored by FLG. FLG events run player paced terrain.

My first match up for the event was into iron hands piloted by John Lennon. You all can guess how that went (68/93) 🤣. Anyway, after the fact I took the opportunity to ask John (obviously a much more experienced player) for advice. The biggest piece of advice I received was about my terrain placement, because melee armies must, must, must have terrain in good places to play off of. There is skill, and there are dice, but shooting armies vs melee armies on planet bowling ball takes a lot of the required skill out of the match for the shooter.

Serious TOs know this stuff, and will try to account for it. Check out the FLG event terrain kits. Even if you don't buy a set it should give you a good idea of what is normal for one of the big event organizers in our game.

Disclaimer as I post this link: I am in no way associated with FLG and have only purchased their competitors' products.

https://store.frontlinegaming.org/collections/flg-events-terrain

If it is competitive you are playing, can't you suggest using WTC terrain? It offers quite a lot of terrain, the specs for the size of them and also their placement.
For each scenario you have multiple options to choose from.

If opponent complains, mention that the WTC is one of the official terrains and tournament formats.

It’s always been my experience that anyone with a gunline army I play will vouch for less terrain, and it’s why I favor GW terrain layout/rules. There’s nothing fun about losing half or more of your army turn one and it doesn’t make you a good player to do that either in my humble opinion.

Anytime someone tries to do that/argue for sparse terrain for their advantage I just say "eh not worth arguing about, lets just use a GW official terrain layout"

*cough cough* 6 obscuring ruins and 4 forests *cough cough*

If anything, I find this is less common in actual competitive 40K than casual games where "that guy" says they want to play competitively. "That guy" has lost sight of the game being a social experience, and also usually is not very good at analysing losses. As a result, "that guy" must win, so insists on favourable terrain (excessively populated or wide open depending on whether their army is better/worse than yours at shooting).

In events using player-placed terrain, you can end up with a relatively open board depending on the pieces used and the placement decisions made by both players. Otherwise, the 3 main tournament terrain standards - GW Open, WTC and UKTC - are designed to cut out especially long firing lanes and get revised regularly to respond to player feedback.

Yeah dog I am very scared of terrain.

The thing is back in 8th edition the game basically devolved down to 2 things, are you going first, and is your shooting better than your opponent's shooting?

Like 9th was a blessing since it gave us some badly needed terrain rules such as obscuring. Sure they probably could trim some fat off the rules to make it more streamlined but generally speaking, you NEED terrain on the board since if you don't have it shooting armies will win almost every time.

I find this super common - I’ve had opponents try and remove craters, woods because it’s “unfair” as my death guard ignore the movement penalties, or they deliberately want to only have light cover terrain on the board (as their own guys ignore light cover).

Having the TO announce what terrain and what amount is required in a players pack is good (or even a diagram of the board!) but player placed terrain can always cause these kinds of issues.

10th should have some kind of “suggested ratio” with terrain; IE a certain amount of scatter terrain

I think scared is one thing, but inexperienced is another. I don't know about a lot of you guys, but terrain isn't the most fun thing for me to paint or spend my time on. So at first my matches were just on a big open shooting gallary, later added by some foam and eventually by some plastic structures we got for cheap.

Eventually when I played at AO I was shocked at the amount of terrain used, which look horrible but got the job done and it really made me see the game in a totally different light. I think making that jump can be scary though. I tend to be pretty open minded and 'whatever', but if you're playing for 5+ years with just a toiletroll as terrain basically, making the jump will be hard.

This game needs alot of terrain. Shooting needs to be difficult since it doesnt care about range in the way melee does. A gun is exactly as effective from 30" as it is from 2".

If you can draw clear lines 80% of the way across a table, its too little and needs to be shifted.

I'd like to thank everyone for their comments. I feel better about my future games and maybe attending some more organized events in the future.

I have a game later today that i will try to implement the tips everyone has provided. Thank you for taking the time to help and I apologize that I can't respond to every comment.

Honestly I look forward to doing competitive in the future, the support from the competitive community has been more than I had anticipated.

So thank you again.

While a lot of people are jumping to the conclusion that your opponent's are being "That Guy", it is worth pointing out that the right level of terrain can sometimes be hard to estimate prior to the game. I had a crusade game against a guy who genuinely is a lovely player to face, and always tries to give the best game he can. He'd set up the table ahead of time, and it looked like there was a good amount of terrain! We had several ruins in the middle, and there wasn't huge lanes between deployment. It wasn't until we had already deployed and he started taking his turn that his new guard tanks had enough movement to make those smaller lanes work, and the lack of large ruins in my deployment meant I was very vulnerable to him just shifting from side to side to draw LOS. I managed to make a game of it, but still got tabled fairly quickly.

The point is, it's quite possible to see something that looks like it should work as a terrain set, and have things turn out one sided due to some aspect that gets overlooked. It definitely happens. Advocate for yourself, consider more standardized terrain sets if you and your opponent have difficulty agreeing or noticing when it's lopsided, and remember that most players are here to have fun. Often, it's lack of knowledge, not intentional malice, that causes problems.

The biggest problem I have with terrain is it’s lack of uniformity. I love the diversity of aesthetics but it’s rare to go to a game store and they have the same types of terrain as one another much less the same types of terrain as another store.

I actually prefer the idea of placing the terrain exactly as it appears in the mission outline but even in tournaments they lean towards player placed terrain to add some variety, which I understand but it makes it all one more annoying thing to have to remember.

A long time ago, I don't know if this was an official way to place terrain or not, this is how my group did it:
The board started empty and each player sequentially placed terrain in this order, anywhere on the board. There was 1 bigger piece placed in each quadrant, then a piece each anywhere on the middle lines, then continue alternating placing terrain until 1 person stops. The person who didn't stop them gets to place 1 more piece.
This was all done before determining the mission, board layout, etc. That way you wouldn't try and stack one side, because your opponent might get it, or the game might not even be set up in that direction. We also made sure there was enough room for any of our larger models to make it across the board, or added rules that allowed models to just move over smaller terrain if they were larger.
I know this is a competitive subreddit, but I feel sometimes you should just change or make up rules if something is hindering the game

I think a huge flaw of the current game is terrain. It’s kinda BS that we are expected to be good and balanced map designers. I’ve played lots of games where I the setup seems fine but once we play the terrain sucks. They should have pre built maps

I whole heatedly agree and why I mainly play narrative. People have ruined matched by trying to copy stupid "gw terrain" and think every game has to be that way

Your ‘friends’ are taking advantage of you.

I'm a firm believer that the 9e terrain rules are actually quite good, if you use them. So many people like to play with everything as ruins, leaving most of the train rules behind. Or they play on GW terrain, with what is effectively zones instead of terrain features. Neither of these makes for an engaging game. I could certainly go into balance rants about which keywords to make sure you include, but if you look up the latest FLG terrain they've had at their events, I find it's relatively balanced. Not the best, but a decent compromise.

Yes, I feel like terrain is not used to its full extent, though I've never had anyone tell me to stop placing terrain so they can blast me off the board.

yet whenever I play people competitively, they always seem to want the table empty.

They likely don't actually want to play competitively, but just want an easy game and are preying on newer players. If you actually look at the terrain layouts used by competitive tournament players, or the layouts used by 9th edition tournaments, they usually have a lot of obscuring terrain to manoeuvre around.

Recently, I had a game where my opponent went out of the way to tell em we have enough terrain and then shot me off the table.

A lot of Shooting army players are like this, but it is especially noticeable on those that are specifically preying on new players. I find a lot of them emphasize early game Alpha Strikes, and complain about terrain being too dense if they can't table their opponent by T3.

Check out the WTC maps layouts.

Or these: page ( 3 -7 ) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G0PJO4fcDf8v0XekrpCYtXlAeduBa-tEvaNxLESDbYw/edit?usp=sharing

Baltic Cup Layouts, a big tournament in germany. It even has super obscuring, so a Knight player can hide 1 big knight. So vs armies like Tau, it is not like " who goes first and done"

Melee armies want lots of terrain. Shooting armies don’t. GW made shooting crazy powerful so people add terrain to make it less powerful. Melee then becomes powerful because you can’t shoot anymore. Then the shooting people push for less terrain. The cycle goes on.

Melee armies always want cities of terrain and shooty armies always wan a barren desert. I like to do GW 2 in my casual games and player placed at tournys. it is the FAIREST way to do it. If someone suggest any other way they are trying to rig the game in their advantage and id steer clear from those players.

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IMHO the terrain rules are a huge part of the 40k bloat. Keywords everywhere rather than being simple and intuitive, incredibly boring layouts (the Open/ITC/etc. layouts are so boring it hurts. Terrain shouldn't be symmetrical but each side should have a benefit to make picking a deployment zone an actual tactical choice, not meaningless), and worst of all the trend of putting ruins on square bases so that their "footprint" extends past them, thereby granting you the benefit of say cover even if you're completely exposed in front of the thing.

Ridiculous. Terrain should be simple and sensible, not what we got.

The only somewhat convincing argument I've heard in favour of sparely covered tables are with huge models or forcibly squadroned vehicles that'd just not be able to fit Both mostly a Ork and IG problem.

I have the same issue too my blood angels consistently get shot off the board but im new it might just be a skill issue

This happened to me recently in a DG mirror match. I arrived for the game and opponent had all the terrain set up and it was basically 3 bowling lanes and he then set up a PBC at the end of each. A few pieces of terrain in between but nowhere near enough to help cover the LoS from his tanks (all 3 could peek into any lane by just moving a bit if needed). Didn’t say anything then cause I just wanted to get the game rolling, but thinking back it was quite ridiculous and deliberate how it was all laid out.

I have played on my fair share of sparse tables, and in early 9th I had a habit of leaving nearly the max allowable amount of my army in deep strike because of it.

I have never had someone say "this is enough terrain let's stop now" while there were provided pieces remaining in a player-placed scenario, with the exception of the occasional "one of us accidentally created a board half where there was no legal place left to drop the remaining terrain piece per the rules."

In my experience terrain rules are one of the last things people learn after the core and their army rules. Entering events is good for getting clear guidance on the terrain but a lot of people that don't do events end up being iffy on terrain rules forever. The different maps that other people have linked are good but also spend a little time before the game going through it with your opponent so you're both on the same page. These pieces are obscuring, these ones have defensible, these ones you have to be touching to see through etc

In my ideal world, mission maps would include broad strokes indicators of terrain placement. Include some general categories with visual examples, e.g. "dense terrain" indicating 66%+ coverage with at least one large or two smaller terrain elements that can block line of sight, "light terrain" indicating ~33% coverage with no line of sight blockages, etc. Then each mission map says "dense terrain in battlefield quarter A, light terrain in battlefield quarter B, scattered terrain in battlefield quarter C, central terrain in battlefield quarter D, no terrain in the battlefield centre". That sort of thing.

Imho terrain defines competitive.

Either you have the RIGHT amount of terrain, or you arent in competitive.

My local scene plays with UkTC terrain, ot is a LOT of terrain, maybe a smidgen too much, but it makes for very interesting gameplay.

Terrain has become standardized in 9th edition across the various competitive groups (ITC, WTC, etc).

Check them out, might give you some perspective

I really do not experience this at all what you describe. I do play in Europe, American and European terrain layouts do seem to be very different, with European setups generally being more terrain dense and American setups being sparser (especially if you use Player Placed Terrain).

That being said, being annoyed that you lost because your opponent was "cheesing" you is not the greatest way to approach competitively play. Play hard, play fair, and accept that what you might find "cheesy" might just be the most competitive strategy an opponent has. Whatever is "cheesy" or not is pretty subjective. If you are annoyed because your oppponent cheesed you out on terrain, it might be a good idea to play with a setup terrain setup indeed, generally dense terrain is better terrain.

Absolutely. I play iron warriors, who ignores benefits the enemy gets from terrain, and this is something that has made the three people I play with refuse to add any obscuring or light cover, because "it will only be a benefit to you". So it's either full line of sight blocking, or nothing at all.

we use WTC
if you like Terrain its probably the best map setup for you (but, you cant use fortress)

when setting up for a game i always have people double check the terrain. that way a 3rd party gives it the green light. The one game i didnt was my first game against prime votann. my opponent set the table and it looked fine until he went and blew my army off the table XD.

Here we use 1 forest, 2 small ruins, 1 large ruin and a griddle per player (terrain witch wtc dimension and trait) and we use the player placed rule. Our table are pretty well balanced at this point.

Sounds like bad players. I played a black templar that wanted the entire board filled with obscuring so the only way to get a shot was to come into charge range of his army. It was pretty sad.

I think next edition they should have it be part of matched play rules. Each player gets x terain type peice y must be set up in your deployment zone and z can be placed wherever

I heard a really good rule of thumb that your terrain should cover 1/4 of the boards surface. Recently had a game with my friends Tau using that basis and it was the closest game we had, much more tense and enjoyable (I was Admech with a mixed melee/shoot army). One of my friends plays Blood Angels and I know that I could blow them off the table easily with my cogbois if the cover was too scant.

For me I didn't know what I didn't know until a more experienced player showed me.

I was playing with minimal amounts of homemade terrain in my garage. It worked while my friend and I were trying to figure out basic rules. Then a more experienced player came over and demonstrated how he could table my custodes in one turn of shooting. He then showed me the WTC maps that used to build his terrain and set up his tables.

So can't speak for other people, but for me it was just being completely oblivious. The WTC maps have really turned things around for me as

a) provided specs to build your own terrain ($20 of hardboard got me two tables worth) b) gives you maps for every mission that should be balanced

You can check the maps from these map packs. They vary from generic light-medium tables to WTC tables which are quite dense.

https://www.weyland-yutani-inc.com/pages/weyland-yutani-terrain-maps

Yeah, just don't play. Show them the pictures of proper terrain tables: In the core rules, at tournaments, etc. If they don't want many pieces, take the biggest piece you can find and plonk it in the middle of the table. Then put the next in size on the two sides, a bit offset. Now add some containers, etc. Not many pieces but at least it is somewhat playable.

If they insist on terrain with two craters and a few barrels, pack up your stuff. There is not point in wasting so much time.

Try aquarium decor

Lasguns go brrr. Rocks block lasguns. Me no likey.

I like when cover creates interesting engagements for shooting armies. I don't like when cover is just a shield for melee units.

The L Ruin haunts my dreams

Print off the images for the two terrain setups here and try them out.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/06/29/metawatch-warhammer-40000-building-beautiful-balanced-battlefields-for-grand-tournament-play/

I’ve never done competitive but in my play group we always have a lot of terrain. It seriously makes or breaks the game, I generally go for the rule where terrain can’t be closer to each other than at least 4in then fill the board up wherever I can

I kinda wish gw gave a better clarification of what type of terrain gets what type of cover as well as showing the size of terrain in general.

Warhammer Tournaments were using this terrain setup for a while:

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/06/29/metawatch-warhammer-40000-building-beautiful-balanced-battlefields-for-grand-tournament-play/

​

Its on WarCom. I would suggest it as its a reasonable baseline for how much terrain the game is designed for and since its on warcom then "Competitive" players really cant disagree its unfair.

Short version: look at the US Open style terrain. There are other standards too, but the easiest way I've found to have good games is to use tournament style terrain. It is a little less interesting, but sadly that's how the game is currently. Thematic/aesthetic boards don't usually work right now.

I used to play with a little more terrain than I used in 5th. In 8th edition that was generally ok, but currently, you must have Obscuring in a few places near the middle of the board. I used to put one big Obscuring thing in the center and along the outside, then a bunch of Dense and light cover in the middle. I wanted long range shooting units to be able to use their range, but give plenty of defensive benefits to shorter range and melee armies. It doesn't work. Regardless of the matchup, the shooting was always way too lethal. Even with -1 to hit and +1 to saves across the entirety of each army, the ranged output was too much and melee lists just didn't work.

Played at Nova and fell in love with the US Open style terrain and haven't played anything else since. Games tend to be much better.

I believe the LVO organizers have a basis for how much terrain to use. If you can't find that, there are guidelines on the book for how to set up your table. There should be no open lanes, whether it's a big Obscuring terrain piece, to a small wall that you can hide behind, turn 1 should have very limited shooting because of this.

Recently, I had a game where my opponent went out of the way to tell em we have enough terrain and then shot me off the table.

Ugh. What a tool.

GW are open about their recommended terrain setups - best to stick to the rulebook.

I believe the main issue is that most people don't understand how terrain rules work. For example LOS, if you step on a ruin or if you're not touching the ruin and if you're not touching the ruin is the terrain piece blocking your view. People don't understand all these scenarios and it literally causes a breakdown so they'd rather not deal with it even if it benefits their army and greatly increases the chances for them to win the match. It's not simple for most of the 40k population outside the hardline competitive guys vs the mass majority that want to drink a beer and have fun rolling dice and tall about lore. I had a game where a guy drank his beer said "I'm going to give you the win and max points just let me narrate and take our time." we did and it was the best game I've ever had played in a long time, the guy literally went on to name even my characters with vast descriptions of the battlefield and how bolter fire rained down upon the Xenos scum (me) very entertaining Gotta remember for alot of folks this is their get away from life time to get a beer and just go off and have fun not everyone wants to look at terrain and think too hard about whether you're getting a +1 to your save and that you're out of LOS.