Terrain rules

[Rich Gause]

I could almost like the 3.0 terrain rules. The problem is they make armies that need relevant bad going; ie terrain in the center or in 2 opposite quadrants significantly less competative. You can't place terrain in the center and to try to insure 2 opposite quadrants the defender, if bad going dependent, is almost forced to maximise the number of bad going pieces he tries to place in order to get them into places they will matter. A lot of times you wind up with terrain too cluttered. An easy fix would be to allow a defender to place the first piece wherever he wants even if it is right in the center. Has anybody suggested this in the development process and if not is there anyone with any influence who might suggest it?

[Bobgnar]

Here are responses from two Helpers:
-----------------------
1
I'm not in favour of this. One thing that I dislike about 2.2 is the ability to create perfectly symmetrical terrain, or to stack the terrain smack in the middle of the board. This was gamesmanship and this comment smacks of someone complaining that they can't do same.

If the board is too cluttered, well guess who is responsible for this.
------------------------------
2
I would think we would want to keep bad going out of the center of the battlefield, if only to improve the chances of actually having a battle. Ancient and medieval armies generally chose at least some open ground to fight on. As it is, the defender can get bad going pretty close to the center. My memory of DBA 2.2 includes aux-heavy defenders putting down a “measles sheet” of offset bad going in such a manner that the board was filled and all defiles were about 2BW wide. This constipated the game, of course. Now the odds are that a couple of quadrants will be open and (if the defender wants it) a couple will be bad going. This likelihood of at least some maneuver room is a good thing.
*
If two quadrants with bad terrain are side by side rather than diagonally across from each other, an open-terrain favoring attacker is unlikely to deploy either fully in the open or fully in the rough. If he does the former he has impossible terrain to advance into, and if he does the latter his own deployment will get hopelessly screwed up. He is more likely to pick an approach that gives him at least one open lane from one end of the battlefield to the other. This seems realistic to me.
*
I would be wary of introducing rules or usages that particularly favor a “bad going” army – or that particularly favor an army that wants no terrain at all either. The best – and most fun -- battles are going to be between armies with mixed abilities in terrain that is *not entirely predictable and mixed as well.

[mdsanderson]

It seems to me that the "Whiny DBA Generals that are against terrain that does not seem realistic to them because it does not make it easy for them to win Society" should just use low aggression armies and shut up about it. Some of us like the challenge of not having control over every last detail of our gaming.

Mike Sanderson

[Rich Gause]

"If the board is too cluttered, well guess who is responsible for this."

I would say the person that wrote terrain rules that make a bad going army put out the maximum pieces available to try to ensure that they have somewhere to fight in. The 3.0 terrain rules as written are going to cause more cluttered battlefields than in 2.2. If they don't want terrain in the center they could instead allow the defender to reserve one piece to place last in any quadrant he wants.

"This was gamesmanship and this comment smacks of someone complaining that they can't do same."

This is just downright insulting and seems to be a fairly typical type of response when something in 3.0 is questioned IMO


"I would be wary of introducing rules or usages that particularly favor a “bad going” army"

The problem is that the current 3.0 rules very much favor an army that wants to fight in good going, a good going defender can make a battlefield with 2 little pieces of bad going on the edge of the battlefield with the rest of the table good going and a bad going player has no such advantage when he is the defender and nothing he can do about the attackers terrain placement when he is attacker. This skews army competativeness in favor of armies with few bad going elements. In 2.2 either good going or bad going defenders could make a battlefield that favored their army, in 3.0 the good going defender still can but not the bad going defender. What is really needed is some sort of balance between the two. It seems the commentors either don't care that good going armies are getting a huge boost in competative advantage or that they are unaware they are getting one. That is sad. There are lots of different ways the 3.0 rules could be tweaked to make them a good set of competative terrain rules but if the people making the decisions aren't interested that the game is competative between a wide variety of army types then there seems little chance of that happening.

[Rich Gause]

You could mostly keep the 3.0 rules as is, allow the defender to reserve one piece to place last in whatever quadrant he wants. That takes care of the disparity in the current rule in defenders desiring a good going battlefield vs those who want relevant bad going. Make a requirement for at least two bad going pieces for all battlefields. Allow the attacker to place the piece if the die roll is 6 rather than just picking the quadrant. If both pieces wind up in the same quadrant allow the attacker to place one of them in a different quadrant of his choice. You would still have the same basic system without any defender having as much certainty in tailoring a battlefield to gives him an overwhelming superiority over his opponents army. Also play with victory conditions that score a draw as a loss for both players that prevents a lot of cheesy maximum bad going setups that lead to drawn games.

[Dangun]

Originally Posted by Bob and his dog

My memory of DBA 2.2 includes

I thought this was interesting.
While it may be over-inference, I would have hoped that the DBA 3.0 testers/helpers would have actually played the game in the recent past.

[Captain Rabbit]

Originally Posted by Dangun

I thought this was interesting.
While it may be over-inference, I would have hoped that the DBA 3.0 testers/helpers would have actually played the game in the recent past.

It's a fair comment if he has been playtesting V3..

[peleset]

Originally Posted by Rich Gause

"If the board is too cluttered, well guess who is responsible for this."

I would say the person that wrote terrain rules that make a bad going army put out the maximum pieces available to try to ensure that they have somewhere to fight in.

Touche! A salient point, right to the goolies!

I understood that they referred to themselves as Dwarves rather than Helpers, thats besides the point though.

Complaints of gamesmanship while playing a game seem to me to be a curious accusation. Unless, of course, the ramping up of the complexity level by the a
Author is an intentional move towards simulation and away from game.

[broadsword]

Given that Psiloi have no standoff kill capability, and no way to cause attrition against enemy in a delaying action, then any Psiloi-based army with no chance of placing bad going in the centre is pretty much toast as a viable army.

Not sure if DBA provides the most plausible model for such armies anyway, though...