Tuesday, August 31, 2010

The Prince Has Arrived

While I was out getting the latest White Dwarf, I ended up picking up one of the new Demon Prince kits! I'm pretty excited to bolster my black legion with this bad-boy. I know I'm giving him wings, but I'm not sure how else I want to model him. Do I go hardcore 40k parts or do I make him more fantasy? Any ideas?

Of late I've listened to some podcasts that brought up terrain as a topic. It sounds as if there are pretty big regional differences as to the rules people use with terrain and just how much they are putting on the table. It sounds like (at least in the US) tables are pretty sparse for terrain or people use house rules as to how a terrain piece works (ie: for purposes of line of sight and cover saves). My basic approach has been simple: follow the rulebook. It has clear rules as to how each common piece of terrain works for cover and movement purposes and when it comes to line of sight, well, true line of sight. Take a gander. Use your eyeballs and a laser pointer. I think the rules are very clear on how this works. If people think it's too grey area then they are either doing it wrong or being poor sports. Further to this, the rulebook states that the table should not only have about a 1/4 of it covered, but that it should be a mixture of area, short, tall, and line of sight blocking terrain. In my experience the best tables for balanced and tactical gameplay follow these rules. A lot of pictures I see around the web of game tables (notably tourney tables) are either far too sparse, or feature short terrain or terrain that doesn't block LOS. Try it according to the rulebook and you'll find it to be a better game.

I wonder how much of the above is due to people remembering previous editions or just local flavour that came out of a misinterpretation of the rulebook?

1 comment:

  1. I really think that people cling to older editions of how terrain worked... which is dumb, it is much easier now

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