Weasel | 11 Apr 2016 3:03 p.m. PST |
In the Neil Thomas 19th century rules, he handles terrain for specific battles in a sort of interesting manner: If a battlefield had a lot of hedgerows for example, rather than cluttering the board with little hedgerows, just give all units everywhere a penalty to movement, charging or whatever may be the case. Thoughts on this solution? I kinda like the idea of it, though it's a bit "gamey". Still, maybe in the end, the result is essentially the same, only easier. |
hagenthedwarf | 11 Apr 2016 3:21 p.m. PST |
Yes, do that. It depends on the level at which you are playing. Our battles use company bases and the standard terrain type will be, say, four bases by four bases in size and all units within the terrain feature are treated according to type: essentially the concept of woods used for other areas. Would not do for skirmish games. |
Rudysnelson | 11 Apr 2016 3:33 p.m. PST |
Plenty of skirmish level shooting rules will have weapon system ranges that expend off the table. So the size of the table being used is not an issue. Some quick play rules include old west Gunfight; WW2 skirmish; WW1 middle east; Colonial 1800s such as the FFL but Asia is a good one too. So many options for quick and easy small tabletop games. |
Coyotepunc and Hatshepsuut | 11 Apr 2016 3:42 p.m. PST |
I once ran a 40K game where the entire table was supposed to be waist-deep water and difficult terrain… the terrain stands were islands above water level and could be moved atca normal speed. |
Calico Bill | 11 Apr 2016 4:07 p.m. PST |
Good idea. We play his One Hour Wargames here often. |
Extra Crispy | 11 Apr 2016 6:21 p.m. PST |
What about LOS issues? Sure you can normalize movement to account for that, but what about LOS? On the other hand it would work for Shiloh. Everything is woods except the fields kind of thing…. |
XcaliburNick | 11 Apr 2016 10:27 p.m. PST |
Flames of War Vietnam (Tour of Duty/Brown Water Navy) uses this extensively. You're intended to mark out clearings and dense jungle, but otherwise assume it's all 'normal jungle' terrain. Works really well, and my gaming group just scatters some green plant material around throughout the jungle area and uses trees for the deep stuff. |
Yellow Admiral | 11 Apr 2016 10:55 p.m. PST |
I've done this for horse & musket games with large forested areas, laying out large dark cloth for the "forest" half of the table and marking only the clearings and roads and forest paths, and then randomly sprinkling all the unmarked areas with trees and lichen. It worked well. I would accept this method of marking hedgerows in higher scale games, e.g. maneuver units of battalions or larger. Such units occupied more than a single hedgerow-enclosed field at a time, so the hedgerow zone could reasonably treated as even coverage. In a game with smaller units (platoon and smaller, maybe companies?), I would prefer to see each individual field. The units actually need to pay attention to things like facing, concealment, traversing open areas, bounding attacks, covering fire, etc. Hedgerows were tricky because they didn't cover everything, and the fields between were large, exposed, open areas. - Ix |
Martin Rapier | 11 Apr 2016 11:07 p.m. PST |
I've also done "area" type terrain designations. You can pretty it up with some terrain pieces. Thomas's solution works very well for battles in northern Italy where the terrain is awful, and equally awful to model. Instead I just scatter a load of farms, vineyards etc around and only model the major features. |
normsmith | 12 Apr 2016 1:42 a.m. PST |
Neil Thomas tables for my money seem to need additional terrain adding (just for visual, not to have any effect on the game), I'm not sure the barren look is a good look. |
gunnerphil | 12 Apr 2016 4:17 a.m. PST |
Is it not already built in to some rules? In like Black Powder, or TFL games where you have dice roll that mean sometimes move distance is less than you want or expect. In my head it has been because that unit is in difficult terrain of some kind. Same with firing and or spotting. It means something that the general has not seen is causing a problem. A bare table would look dull and silly, a table with every ditch, hedge, dip in the ground would be unplayable. |
The Virtual Armchair General | 12 Apr 2016 11:58 a.m. PST |
The basic idea of the OP is encouraged in the special rules variants we produce for TSATF for combat against the Asante and Maori. As both Native Armies fought in forest/jungle of extreme density, with highly limited visibility/LOS and off-track movement, it is generally easier to assume the majority of the table is of the same general terrain type. There could be random small clearings/cultivated patches in the forests of Asanteland, but the canopy could reach 200' in places, with trees and undergrowth so close together that even at noon, lighting conditions were likened to dusk in open country. On North Island, New Zealand, the forests were wetter and broken by countless small streams and irregular ground that could be as dense as West Africa. Consequently, actually trying to represent such vast stretches of country with enough miniature trees would not only be prohibitively expensive for most gamers, but also make moving the figures impractical. So, starting the with assumption that ALL ground is of that nature is simply logical. That said, it is important still to randomly locate clearings, the paths of shallow streams (easier to walk in, sometimes, than along), and other features of tactical significance that can change the effects of weapons and/or movement. But, as has been said, the idea of a basically empty table (even if random bits of cloth/matte board/other media mark open spaces, trails, streams, etc) is not a very attractive picture, especially when the figures have been well and authentically painted, but look to be swanning about on a golf course. Use of as many proper model trees as possible, in ways that add to the atmosphere, without being confused with fixed and permanent features themselves, is the key. These approaches are covered in detail appropriate to the specific subject (as well as organizational/tactical/weapons data and other characteristic rules) in the the Asante and Maori Supplements available from TVAG. For any who'd like to learn more about the techniques mentioned here, these are $5.00 USD USD each, and available as PDF's sent as free E-Mail by requesting copies and sending payment via PayPal to TVAG@att.net TVAG |
McLaddie | 12 Apr 2016 10:20 p.m. PST |
If a battlefield had a lot of hedgerows for example, rather than cluttering the board with little hedgerows, just give all units everywhere a penalty to movement, charging or whatever may be the case. Or a lot of woods, or towns or fences or… What do you get? Slow troops on a featureless table… It is sort of like averaging American families. The average family has 2.4 children. However, you are never going to find a family with that number of children. Averaging out terrain features tends to negate any real tactical issues. It just makes for slow troops. Why bother with the hedges at all if a simpler game is the goal? |
Martin Rapier | 12 Apr 2016 11:11 p.m. PST |
It makes more of a difference if the terrain effects are disproportionate for different kinds if activities. So e.g. Thomases terrain rules for Italy basically allow the Furia Francesa to work without being shot to pieces by long range rifle fire. Try the same thing in 1870 northern France, and you die. |
Gabriel Landowski | 13 Apr 2016 2:09 p.m. PST |
I think it is a mix and match scenario. I use forest perimeters, and the number of trees in the noundry signifies terrain type and severity. It is nice because you can just slide terrain out of the way as it is notional. |
etotheipi | 15 Apr 2016 1:41 p.m. PST |
I once ran a 40K game where the entire table was supposed to be waist-deep water and difficult terrain… the terrain stands were islands above water level and could be moved atca normal speed.
This is pretty much how I handle swamp terrain, very important for Seminole Wars battles. |
Rick Don Burnette | 18 Apr 2016 7:44 a.m. PST |
Unless we are talking about a very small area, there is no such thing as uniform terrain. Uniform terrain ideas reflect the gamer or game designer ignorance of such things as micro terrain, the use by the defense of terrain and the infinite variatiins in terrain in anything larger than that tiny battlefield. or is that designrr unawae of the German use of hedgerows in Normandy |
UshCha | 10 Sep 2016 3:01 a.m. PST |
McLaddie has got it right. It is not really that simple. Even in Napolionic times the Brits made Light Infantry to cope with hedges. The tactic from then on is you occupy the hedgerow and the attackert has to advance out of cover to eneMy in cover. Thus to get all the actual conditions you would need a lot of rules. Ranges reduced, troops stopping are assumed to be in hedgerows so well protected. Cannot easily be charged. Artillery would have to move very slow. At very high level games (boardgame level) then absraction works based on posture. Attackers much slower and casualtie rates much higher. Amorphose terrain like continious forrest is more ammenable as it is closest to uniform but again posture will have its effects. even small roads become critical at quite a high level. Warefare ia about terrain, hills hedges, rivers bridges. In WW2 an almost indistinguishable hill (hill 112) WAS CONSIDERED CRITICAL. |
Weasel | 10 Sep 2016 11:35 a.m. PST |
As far as the visual tabletop goes, you can do what Rapier suggests and scatter various bits around the table. No need to look boring :-) |
McLaddie | 10 Sep 2016 4:49 p.m. PST |
I think you have to be very selective in what you do for 'table-wide terrain. I think forests, vineyards, swamps and other large area-type terrain can be effectively represented with table-wide terrain effects, but little else without really skewing any game results. If the entire area represented by the game table was historically--or purposely--rough terrain, then sure, table-wide effects without any serious terrain pieces works. If the area only had significant amounts of rough terrain, but didn't uniformly cover the table area, then I think you would want to represent it. |