The lay of the land...

So I've been thinking and talking about terrain a lot recently...

This has been sparked by the radically different approaches to the use of terrain in the two games I'm playing a lot of at the minute - namely Warmachine and Malifaux. I even did some research by asking on Twitter and Reddit. I am a proper blogger at last...

Fine! I asked a baby!

Malifaux, bring an objective based skirmish game, seems to take the approach of "Use as much terrain as you own (or can fit on the board)". At least when we play anyway. Having checked the rulebook it recommends "enough terrain to cover 25 to 50% of the playing surface" on a 3 by 3 table.  Each piece gains a variety of traits which then interact with an LoS system that was designed to collect tears from the Baby Jesus.

"I don't know how the elevation rules work either my son..."

Warmachine, a game of fighting designed for people who really like defining things, throws us a curve ball by saying "place as much terrain as seems appropriate" for your 4 by 4 table. I was floored by this but once I recovered I downloaded the 2015 Steamroller tournament pack and was reassured to find terrain setup defined thuslessly: As a general rule, an average table should have five to seven pieces of terrain placed closely enough to eliminate large open areas without unduly constricting movement. The size of terrain pieces is also important. No piece should be insignificantly small or extremely large". Then it says not to place terrain in deployment zones or within 5" of an objective. Like Malifaux, terrain has traits to tell you how it behaves.

No. Comment.

(As an aside, I wanted to reference the current Warhammer rules because I love the random terrain tables but it seems I've left by 8th edition rulebook somewhere...).

Something like that anyway.

So that's what the rulebooks say - two broadly similar approaches but players see me to have quite different expectations. What really struck me was what people said about abilities that let you ignore some of the terrain traits. To be specific, Malifaux players said "more terrain is good because it let's you hide and sneak around to do your schemes but some things can still get you" whereas Warmachine players said "too much terrain makes models that ignore it too good". I assume this comes down to the goal of the game. As Malifaux has less of a combat focus it's more legitimate for a model to not engage or be engaged in fights (hence "we like being able to hide" vs "ignoring it is too good"). As bring able to setup or block charge lanes is a key element of Warmachine it makes perfect sense that having lots of terrain in a game where entire factions are immune to it is a little rough.

What low wall?

So I guess the question is what do we, as gamers, do about it? I know I hate the idea of playing on an empty field with 2.5 hills, a wood and a pile of skulls that I never interact with. I've found that the trick is to make sure you know the game before you plan your terrain. If you need to be able to block off areas, you need the terrain to do it. If you need room to move, well those narrow city streets are going to ruin your fun. That said, Ben and I are determined to try Warmachine with our Malifaux approach to terrain and see what happens - my hope us that it makes movement even more important and increases the value of infantry over jacks (we are new so jacks are still the coolest bit of the game!)

Like this. But with more 'jacks

From a designer point if view I think the key is making terrain something you interact with. It's often said that terrain is the third player in a game of Infinity but the rulebook made my eyes bleed so I guess i'll never know. A Fistful of King Fu has an awesome terrain system that allows you to break up chairs and things to use as weapons or throw goldfish bowls or handfuls of dirt  at each other but it is a very low figure count game So I doubt the terrain bookkeeping gets too arduous. For me (and I know this will be controversial but hang in there) is something like GW's random terrain effects in WFB and later editions of 40K. Terrain pieces that you move around, get cover from and are occasionally eaten by.

Jackie Chan doesn't suffering penalties for rough terrain

As those of you who remember by post on 2015 goals will know I'm looking to make more terrain this year. Below are some photos of my work so far...

This is a statue using the Governor's Proxy model from Malifaux and a plinth from eBay.

These two are a sort of chemical refinery thing that didn't quite work out.

Some islands and sandbanks for Dystopian Wars. I literally bled to make these, I almost had to go to A&E after slicing my finger open cutting the insulation foam. Stupid islands...

Why I love Malifaux rather than Wyrd

I played some Malifaux with Ben this evening (I lost 10 - 7, Chompy Dreamer got beaten by Kaeris) and as we did we were talking a little bit about the recently released playtest models and campaign rules.

Better at summoning that eating stuff

For those of you who are unaware of Wyrd games they are a US company who make the Malifaux game as well as the 'Through the Breach' RPG and a few other smaller games they publish on behalf of their authors - Jetpack Unicorn and Evil Baby Orphanage being the only ones I can remember with our looking them up. When they went to the second edition of Malifaux in 2012 they decide to take a leaf out of Privateer Presses book and do a public playtest of the new rules and new models.  Cue several months of weekly updates to the stuff and (generally well managed) interaction with the playerbase.  I didn't really participate beyond reading the cards and frothing with my mates about them but I eagerly followed those that did on Twitter and on the forums.

NEW MODELS ARE OUT!!!

So far so good. A model example of player engagement compared to GW!
Then slowly it started to break down. A second wave of models were released for testing then a third containing the much maligned avatars.  Wave 2 made it to the end of the line and were published in the Crossroads book late last year but the third wave was abandoned before it was finished. Now avatars have returned as part of the campaign rules in a fourth wave of public testing, along with an admission that they weren't balanced for regular play and that their inclusion was a mistake. Oh and we aren't making anymore of the models.

"We have extracted enough urine for this test"

The production and release schedules don't win them any friends either. Rather than the GW model of released models for a faction at a time the new releases are roughly spread across all seven factions. Oh, they are also resculpting all their models in plastic from the original metal.

In gaming nothing is cheaper

So Wyrd are trying to do an awful lot at once and it was inevitable that there were going to be problems.  Ophelia is one of the gremlin masters who attracted a lot of criticism for the way her upgrades allowed her to target herself with the (0) actions allowing her to do an awful lot as well as missing the 'discard this upgrade after using' from Big Threatening Gun.  This was corrected in the next wave of card decks but also attracted the remark that the community needs to share in the responsibility for these mistakes by not spotting them in testing...

Fah. Playtesters.

I'm not sure I buy that.  I'm not sure that it's reasonable to declare that players are to blame for mistakes like that,  however slightly. I mean,  I'm not a games designer,  nobody I play with its a game designer,  the only people involved in Malifaux (to the best of my knowledge anyway) who are games designers work for Wyrd.  And are paid to design and test games. Now I get the advantage of community testing (a Legion of free testers for one...) and I get that some feedback gets overruled for whatever reason (ya know,  by professionals), but I honestly don't know how the community can be blamed...

I don't know if this baby is designing a game.

Other things that spoil my love of Wyrd are their distribution issues.  Its been nearly two years and no Brewmaster.  But it's okay -  we got a new sculpt of some guild minions that already exist. I know there will always be an element of "my faction is more important" but there aren't many book 1 models not released,  why start on the book 2 stuff without finishing the set first?

Probably not real...

So, the conclusion of my nerd rage is that I still love Malifaux, i'll still play it but I'll "right size" my collection down a bit. Probably to Neverborn and Gremlins. And then I'm done.  Stick with what I have and spend my cash on other things...