"Could you, would you?" Topic

I just set up terrain for our latest scenario in the mancave.

I look at other folks photos of games and although the terrain is very pleasant it is typically quite simple with regard to hills, mine terrain is typically are a bit more complex but not overly so. However at the Partizan Show in Newark (UK) a week or two ago thee was one game that had gone well beyond what I had done and it inspired me to do a better more complex and challenging terrain.

Typically from what I have seen with a few very notable exceptions, one being a small scale Vietnam game with very real terrain complexity, do not feature complex multi level hills.

So really, to those who have a modular terrain system, can you achieve what to me is a very interesting and challenging terrain like this.

Secondly would this type of terrain appe3al to you if you could achieve it?

/

Looks like the hex terrain from the 1990s. They made one series with hex line drawn on pieces and one without.

Is this Kallistra terrain?

TimePortal- This is all relatively new stuff from Brand new to about 10 years old. Only the 4 hills on the RHS are single pieces (and a couple og smaller sections. The rest are flat pieces and the slopes are individual pieces.
This new stuff has the advantage of being nearly indestructible and light weight.

Looks good.

Been there – done that.

Wolfhag

Wolfhag I would say not from the pictures, lots of terrain yes, but not complax hills, from the pictures.

79thPA yes Basic Hexon !! by Kalistra.

Secondly would this type of terrain appe3al to you if you could achieve it?

No, as some players find gridding is visually distracting, but, it's very useful for doing 3D-conversions of board games (or aimed at hex-based rules), like this Panzer Leader conversion from a member of our local group (nothing wrong with hex-based systems, but I'd opt for terrain w/o a grid if not needed by the rules regularly used) -

One of my own hex-based scenarios – Fox's Gap 10mm ACW , a unit-based game, the map with typographically-derived elevations and terrain features. The grid is of course used for ranging and movements. Btw, our game group is a Travelling Circus, and we can often pitch or tear down our 'tents' in a matter of minutes (anywhere) -

FlyXwireI'm impressed by the last picture the cloth you sue dapes extrodinarily well.

Our hex pattern is inevitable as the terrain is often in single hex pieces. However it does help in defining dead ground to a common and easily understood standard, no mucking around with lazers that consumes too much time.

This 6.5 oz. fleece does that nicely.

Hexes or areas are great for defining/confining terrain.

Additionally, if you define a hex space tactically (for WWII or Modern-era gaming for instance), say as a 250 meters area of ground, you can also start to use board hexes as beaten zones for field artillery fire.

Tying this back to that other thread on terrain scales and unit scaling now – by defining the distance measurement of a hex area, and using a unit scale that works within it (and a 250m formation footprint works ok for an AFV platoon), you can now have an easily seen, board grid that also functions as a ready-made, artillery beaten zone template – right off the tabletop!

It can all be +++……integration from tabletop to rules, and back again.

Just taking one game issue often seen (with all the tabletop clutter on-board), by eliminating one commonly needed game aid, like field artillery templates, or the need to measure out an impact area, saves gaming time, and cleans up clutter all in one fell swoop.

Anyway, this is just some of why hex grids can work better for some tabletop gaming, and better yet, if your user-group doesn't even need to deal with what's happening "under-the-hood", it's just working effortlessly/automatically (to the designer's plan).

Btw, on that picture above, I darkened in the slope areas along the contour lines (along the hex sides) when I graphically made this mat image for its printing out on fleece. That textured shading accentuates the slopes even more to the naked eye – for even greater 3D effect. Tricks of the trade….and knowing what works for your audience (we humans).

TL;DR: yes, I've made more complex hill arrangements without Hexon.

I've made much more complex and realistic hill patterns than I get from Hexon by using foam hills under fleece. Real-life slopes are not necessarily round or oval hills, many are bumps sticking out of a ridgeline, and from above you can see wavy patterns of inlets, fingers, curves, etc. I carved my own set of free-form foam hills so I could get this effect. I also still have round/oval standalone hills "down on the plain", by using Geohex or other foam standalone hills under the fleece out on the flat parts of the table away from hilly/mountainous areas (in ever-decreasing frequency like real-life hills).

This kind of thing looks really good with rivers or creeks flowing along the flat table areas between hills, and farm fields draped up and down the slopes of the gentle hills.

One of the disadvantages to using uncolored fleece is that it's harder to see the little hills. I've had player report being ambushed by a hill because it was funcitonally invisible underneath all the troops and other terrain (trees, lichen, farm fields, etc.) FlyXwire's shading technique to emphasize elevation changes is a great embellishment, but one I never considered because I was deliberately keeping my terrain as generic and repurposeable as possible.

I haven't built anything like this in a couple years. I'll try to dig out some photos, but I don't think it shows up well in my camera (emphasis: MY camera – I'm the world's third-worst photographer, and my cameras generally couldn't suck more with vacuum assist).

- Ix

That's one bad camera YA!

Still, what you're doing with foam under fleece is such a cost-effective way for making smoothly contoured terrain boards (and ambush positions). :)

I have modular terrain, but not small hexes like that.

Your board appears to have two levels of elevation (three if the blue bits on top of the ground are supposed to be water, beneath the level of the ground). I can't think of a game we played in the last couple of years with that few different levels of elevation.

So, could. Probably wouldn't.

Wolfhag I would say not from the pictures, lots of terrain yes, but not complax hills, from the pictures.

Of course I do. I also see gullies, rivers, swamps, cemeteries, sunken roads, pill boxes, shell holes, depressions, forests, etc.

Wolfhag

etotheipi – The blue bits are roads, grey but the camara lies, I join Yellow admiral in lack of camera skills.

What is the angle of your slopes? My hills are about 16mm tall for each contour and the slopes about 5:1, which in hindsight is about the limit for standing figures on. In effect this limits hill size simply by the available area. Ihave another system witth 2;1 slopes and that in practice is too steep to stand models on reliably.

16mm is the limiting height for 1 countour which is defined and actually the physical height of Tank approximately. Its not somthing I have considered, but do folk count heights of contours not in lime with model height?

Wolhah what I don't see, but you may have is multi contour hills. But that may be just they don't feature in these photos.

The modular elevation pieces are a mix of terraced, sloped, and slope-to-mesa pieces. The slopes run anywhere from <2:1 to 4:1.

inlgames.com/oxiplay.htm
inlgames.com/ochocinco.htm
inlgames.com/stnavmib.htm
inlgames.com/jwctd.htm
inlgames.com/jyiii.htm
inlgames.com/layers.htm
inlgames.com/mayan.htm
inlgames.com/trashtable.htm
inlgames.com/sporz.htm

etotheipi – you have the same limitations as me on slopes 2:1 to 4:1 which limits the height you can get on a Typical 6ft by 4ft table.

Now I agree with stepped hills you may be able to get closer to 1:1 (tangent definition) but Its not clear how you would get a vehicle to stay put on such a steep gradient, the steps would be too small for a vehicle at 1:1 gradient. Easier at lower gradients but then it is no better than a slope.

You are an exception nowadays, in the past every body used stepped hills, including me, but they generally seem to have fallen out of fashion, given the pictures in TMP and my own experience at UK shows and our club.

I am not sure what the problem with terraced pieces is. You're on one level, or you're on the other. Both are flat.

The rules we use prohibit units from crossing into terrain if they don't have enough movement. So if they have 6" move and the edge of the woods is 5" away and charges a -2" penalty to movement, you have to stop short and enter it the next turn. No different for crossing a step in terrain.

For elevation, this creates extremely realistic effects since real sloped terrain is not regular and identical on five different sets of hills. It creates discontinuities in movement – sometimes you hit a bit in stride, other times you don't. It allows multiple slopes like actual hills – this steeper bit has the steps closer together, so just like a real hill, you can move pretty fast, until you get to the steep bit, and then you get bogged down for a while. The same happens for LOS, which is variable as parts of hills and mountains go up and down randomly.

This creates way more realistic combat than hills with monotonic gradients. And it doesn't require scads of funky rules. You use the terrain to create the terrain effects.

The junkyard terrain creates irregular discontinuities in spades.

etotheipi At steep graients a vehicle would have to rest on just a few points as the individual steps are too short to get the vehicle on.
Thats why we have gradints that are contigious and relatively shallow. Certainly its what we gave up tepped terrain many years ago.

There are lots of hills that do have basicly monolithic gradients, there are of cousre some that don't.

Read my previous post. It already explained how that is not a problem.

I use 6" squares in D-Day to Berlin.