Getting shot of the board still on turn got you down? Today Jstove is giving us the rundown on why he thinks there should be tournament sanctioned terrain for 40k.
Jstove here, and like everyone else on the internet, I’m still unpacking the last FAQ. But recently, I heard something that really resonated with me as a long time 40k player and lover of plastic dudes that prefer to punch and stab other plastic dudes, rather than shoot them.
There’s a vocal group of players out there now that are playing the blame game on terrain, and I’m pretty excited about that, because I’m definitely one of them, but I’m not the first 40k blogger to write about it.
What am I talking about? Well, everyone (everyone with assault armies) is bummed out that turn 1 Deep Strike slingshots are dead, and that it must obviously means that gunline armies are stronger because of it.
But the terrain blamers are saying “Assault is fine, gunline is fine, there’s just not enough crap on the board between the two armies!”
Game Mat EU’s Badlands Terrain & Sands of Time Mat
And let me tell you, boys and girls, something. They’re right. But they’re not just right because I agree with them, they’re objectively right. IF the table was populated with stuff properly, it would be difficult to execute a turn 1 drop-and-hop, because your first turn chargers would be isolated by bad sight lines and cut off, and they probably just wouldn’t have a lot of real estate to drop in and get easy charges. IF the table was populated properly, gunlines wouldn’t have open sight lines and a gunline army wouldn’t blow you out of your own deployment zone on turn 1.
It’s actually PRETTY SIMPLE. But if we all know it, why haven’t we done something about it?
Two big reasons.
- The hobby culture in America is toxic to terrain. In America, we tend not to consider table building as part of the wargaming hobby experience. The table is the responsibility of whoever owns the table, which often means it falls upon a sorely overtaxed games store. European gamers tend to understand that more crap on the table makes a better game, and plan accordingly.
- The independent tournament organizers are totally aware of this issue but struggle with it because it’s not only their job to populate tables, it’s their job to populate 40-60 tables, and then store, transport, and unpack it.
WHAT’S THE FIX?
In the bad old days, I would have told you that you were on your own. When I was a teenage boy playing 40k, those old plastic Necromunda bulkheads were basically gold bars because of how useful they were, and most of our terrain was chunks of styrofoam and corrugated cardboard. I used to have to drive out to home depot to get a gallon jug of wood glue, and then dump it all over my styrofoam ‘rocks’ to seal them so that I could spray paint them without the aerosol chemicals eating the foam. Now I’m happy to say that styrofoam terrain goes where it belongs- The garbage. Sorry, Mother Earth!
Laser cut wood terrain is a GAME CHANGER. It is the new hotness. It’s precise, it looks great, it’s easy to build, and it comes in sheets and you punch it out like stickers on a sticker sheet and slot it all together. It’s also affordable. Laser cut terrain is the hero we deserve, but more importantly, it’s something that can be standardized.
Back when everyone had to chop up cardboard and pink foam to make hills and bunkers, there was no point in trying to standardize terrain, because everyone was just making cancer fumes out of insulation foam in their own garage with hot wire cutters. (Or if you were really low budget, just an old kitchen knife and the burner on your stove.)
But now that we can use a computer to design and pop out little laser buildings, we can have a dialog about standardizing terrain. You can go to a designer and tell him, “Look, I want a two-story ruin that has no windows in the bottom floor, and a footprint that is X inches by Y inches” and he can design it and sell it.
Which is precisely what I’m proposing.
It’s time for ITC standardized terrain packs.
Imagine if you will, a perfect world in 40k. A world where you knew exactly what to expect on every table, everywhere you went. A world where it actually SAID in the TOURNAMENT PACKET what the tables were expected to look like when you got there, and you could reliably design your army to fit a battlefield, rather than just hope or pray there was enough line of sight blocks or cover to castle up your objective sitters.
Let’s say for example, that we made an ITC standardized “wishlist” and that laser cut terrain designers could design pieces of terrain to this standard, and put a sticker or something on them that said “ITC Compliant.” Then, they would take this ITC compliant terrain, and sell it to hobbyists who were serious gamers that cared about that sort of thing, and of course, offer discount packages on bulk purchases by TO’s for filling up tournament tables. They could make it in gothic, evil robot, space elf, and Orky style.
You would have, for example,
- 6″x1” section of modular barricade/ non-LOS block cover.
- 6″x1” section of modular line of sight block wall/billboard
- 8″x8” intact building with 2 points of ingress/egress and removable roof.
- 8″x8” ruin with no windows on the first floor.
- 8″x8” statue/monolith line of sight blocking impassible object.
Once the terrain is standardized, the battlefield can be standardized as well. TO’s will be able to write into their tournament packet, “players should expect X number of XYZ items per table quarter on tables A, B, C and ZXY items per table quarter on tables D, E, F.”
Why would a nationally standardized terrain packet, that we would call “Jstove’s salty terrain packet” (Because on the internet someone will come up with a reason to hate it) be a good idea? Allow me to list the reasons.
- Strategic planning for large models. Many large models like Land Raiders, Big Bird, Stinky Big Bird, and assorted other giant monsters, tanks, and Knight Titans struggle to find homes in competitive lists, not because they are cost-prohibitive or inefficient, but because they are fat boys that can’t hide behind rocks. A standardized terrain packet would allow players to make an informed decision to include large models in their armies, using concrete knowledge of whether or not there’d be enough crap on the board of a significant size to hide them.
- Strategic planning for models that interact with terrain. Models that fly and models with weapons that do not require line of sight to fire go up and down in strategic value based on how easy it is for them to use their relevant mechanics. Flying and no LOS shooting are advantages that are cooked into the cost of the model but are made strategically relative by terrain. By knowing what the boards will look like, players can make better assessments of models with strategic terrain interaction.
- Strategic planning for roof campers and anti-campers. Models that sit on roofs are effectively un-assaultable since Big FAQ 1. However, with a standardized terrain packet, players can plan going into the event whether or not they will be able to gain or deny roof camping advantage based on the dimensions of the buildings available, and plan accordingly.
- Tournament practice at home. With a standardized terrain packet, competitive players will be able to re-create ITC standard tournament tables for list testing in the garage.
Finally having decently populated tables. Here’s somewhere that creates a benefit for the TO’s and a benefit for the terrain designers. Players need to understand that running big tournaments is a logistical nightmare and that they don’t keep all those ducats they take in for registration fees, and a lot of the prize support is locally sourced from a sponsor store that wants to pull in that tournament traffic. TO’s are always on the hunt for a better way to put more stuff on their tables, and most of them are functioning alcoholics that are up all night slamming Costco beers and flipping the empties over and gluing them to MDF boards to make industrial chemical tanks.
With standardized terrain, we have a mutually agreeable relationship between TOs and designers. The TOs can buy the terrain from a vendor wholesale, and the vendor can sponsor the tournament, set up their booth, or just print their website URL all over the terrain to get exposure for their product.
Among the competitive hobby scene, terrain sets that adhered to a national standard would be a godsend to players and vendors alike.
