"Terrain Matters More Than Figures?" Topic

I've been working on more scatter terrain for our WW2 games lately and I'm finding I enjoy it at least as much as painting figures.

It's also made me question something: are we overvaluing figures in the hobby?

We tend to pour time into painting figures and units but games are often fought over fairly sparse or generic terrain: especially tournament games. Yet it's the terrain that really defines the battlefield—cover, movement, line of sight, objectives—arguably the game itself.

A table with great terrain and average figures can look and play superbly. The reverse… maybe less so.

So:
Is terrain actually the more important element?
Do we underinvest in it?
Can good terrain compensate for average figures but not vice versa?
And does this change with scale? (6mm vs 28mm, etc.)

I'm curious where others land on this.

And finally, if you had to choose—beautiful army on a bare table, or average troops on a convincing battlefield—what wins for you?

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A lot of people under investigation in terrain, myself included. That said, I have fond memories of games with masking tape roads and blocks of woods for hills. Figures and terrain or not in competition with each other. To me, good rules and good company trump both figures and terrain.

If by making the terrain more involved to make a game more interesting I think your right. Now terrain can be quite eye catching like ypur example, I still do old school but do have plenty of terrain features ( fences, buildings, trees, walls) to use as I want.

Damn autocorrect. Under invest -- not under investigation.

And finally, if you had to choose—beautiful army on a bare table, or average troops on a convincing battlefield—what wins for you?

Second choice for me, please.

I think you can have extremely mediocre figures (like mine) as long as the bases are decent. The bases are what makes them.

Time spent on terrain is rarely wasted and certainly adds to the immersion of the thing however. It is always a compromise between representing the critical terrain features and how much stuff you want to be getting out of boxes and putting away later though.

Your terrain looks really good!

Investing more? Depends on the game. I've been playing Test of Honor recently and decided to go with 1 leader and 3-5 followers. Changing the storyline to more of a 70's ronin and ninja TV show. I have more terrain than I'll ever need on the table. What I had to do is to buy female figures without weapons to populate the village, factory or fields.

Yes

Terrain is an important element for me. I strive to make the most eye appealiing game table I can along with well painted figures. However there is no right or wrong here. Its whatever makes you happy or what you can afford….

We tend to pour time into painting figures and units but games are often fought over fairly sparse or generic terrain

Don't know who this "we" is.

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I started playing hex and counter games – chits on maps. Terrain has to be functional first. How the battlefield affects manuever and engagement is at least as important as the stats given the forces on the board.

A good looking topo map is also a joy to play on. But not what TMP is for.

Terrain can be evocative. Good looking terrain can also help bridge the gap between abstractions in rules and the milieu of the game on the board. In psychology, they call things that provide heuristics toward function "affordances".

I would say it depends on the type of game. With smaller skirmish based games, I would say yes you are right.

However the larger the armies, the less focus is on the terrain.

I think nice terrain (same with bases) makes the game that much more enjoyable.

Painted figures making or breaking the game…no. I have played with some seriously badly painted miniatures and guess what, they performed spectacularly.