Discussing Terrain

I played a round of 40K back on April 9 with some of the guys in my 40K circle, and as is wont for a group of people who are passionate about their hobby we spent quite a bit of time discussing the game after it was done.  Most of our discussion was in chat rooms as we bandied about different ways we would have handled different situations, or bemoaned how the dice were so blatantly in love with James and Connor, among other observations and critiques of the game.  At one point, and I don't have a log of our conversation to remember what exactly I said, I commented that the terrain we placed played right into the strategies employed by James and Connor.  They both had very shooty armies, and with wide open fire lanes and extensive line of sight, it really helped them out.

This really got me thinking about terrain, and the importance of it.  The rules call for 25% of the board having mixed terrain, I think we had about 20% of the board covered last time we played.  Not only that, but the terrain pieces we used were fairly short and unless you were directly behind a piece did not do much to block LOS or give much cover.

This came up again after one of the guys read this blog article on terrain.  Now, normally I'm not one to post to another blog outside of my sidebar links (after all this site pretty much has barely enough room for my hot air), but this guy made some really interesting points.  My favorite notion is the idea of measuring out 25% of the board and filling it with terrain and then placing it around the board.  Our group normally does terrain as part of setup, with each team/player alternating to add terrain until we have coverage we are happy with - Probably around 15-20% of the board.  My thinking is next time we play each team/player alternates placing terrain in the allocated 25%, and then alternates moving the terrain out to fill out the board.

Think about it, non-shooty/assault heavy armies get cover so they aren't so easily destroyed just trying to maneuver to attack, and shooty armies can maximize shooting lanes making enemy units pay dearly for leaving cover.

How do you guys handle terrain?  I'm curious what other ways people utilize terrain, or how other people handle adding terrain to the boards.