"Wargame Scenery - How Good?" Topic

By "As good as possible" I take it this means "As realistic as possible". That doesn't always produce a board that's very playable. And it doesn't always take into account issues of scale in larger games – that house may represent a village, for example.
So I like a decent looking table, but it mustn't get in the way of the game.

I'm not sure I have any idea what "good" is in this context.

Scenery is there first for informational purposes. I need to be able to look at a board and know that THAT is a village and THAT is a dense woods--knowing where each begins and ends. Once you've accomplished that, it should look as much like a natural landscape as possible, but if aesthetics are more important than information, build a diorama.

I'm with advocate and Robert. A balance between look and playability is what I go for.

+1

Looking good is great – but like all above, needs to be playable

I guess I'm just the odd duck. (Gee, no revelation there.) I am a very visual person. I can look at a map or diagram and see a 3-D image of features, obstacles, lines of approach, fire lanes, etc.. I like to then make a decent representation of that on the table. Opposite of the above responses, I don't want the rules or scenario to be too "gamey" to be played on the battlefield it was actually fought on.

I understand where you are coming from, zoneofcontrol, but unless the groundscale matches the figure scale, then there have to be compromises in what is shown in the scenery.

The nicest scenery possible that doesn't interfere with playability. It also depends on whether it's a game hosted at my house or a pick-up at the local game store.

I always get frustrated at work when people put in writing that a requirement is to "Do X to the maximum extent possible."

Also, my keys were in the last place I looked for them.

Nicer is always better, however I think terrain should be realistically proportioned to the games ground scale. Just need to ask yourself one question: am I building a model diorama or playing a war game?

USAFpilot: agree, completely. I take my entire approach one step further, though…

Am I playing a game, or a simulation? Honestly, I always try to play games, only. Simulations are too detailed, too complex, and far too tedious, for my personal tastes. I want action, and I want progressive results -- Sitzkrieg games bore me.

I'm an army painter: get them on the table before I die, so I can actually enjoy playing with them! Same thing with terrain: making it is fun, but it needs to be re-usable, versatile, and modular. That means it is less than realistic, but I can re-use it, re-deploy it into different configurations, in different game scenarios, without creating custom pieces, every time, for every game… Cheers!