I know scenery distribution varies a lot in this game from region to region because there are quite a lot of legacy threads about it on the old forum and on fan sites, but I'm looking for any formulae or rules of thumb that can help us put our tables together more successfully and more reliably; does anyone have any such? Any numbers you can provide would help, like ratio of open space to buildings; how many tall buildings where - it's endlessly complex I know, but the better and more experienced players must surely have worked out some basic rules.
For Urban scenery, I subscribe to a rule that I call 9+4+Scatter. First, divide the table (assuming a 4x4 here) into 18" squares, 3x3. You need 9 large-ish buildings (or a clump of smaller buildings about the same size), roughly 8x8 (20x20cm) to 12x12 (30x30cm). You place one building or clump in each square. And the objective room in the middle, of course. Remember that the objective room is almost always infinitely tall! For some interesting maneuvering, try to make your clumps of smaller buildings no more than 3" apart, so models can jump from rooftop to rooftop. You don't want the building clumps less than 2" apart because you won't be able to stick your hands in there to move minis. Next, you need 4 smaller scenery pieces, roughly 4x4 (10x10cm) to 5x5 (12x12cm). Again, this can be made from multiple smaller pieces. Put those on the intersections of the grid lines. Since the 3x3 grid tends to make for "city streets", you can use large vehicles in the "intersections" instead of just random buildings. You can have a bus going one way and a garbage truck going the other, you don't have to make some accident or police barricade (or even just a long bus turning). Finally, you add enough scatter terrain (like parked cars, trash cans, vending machines, etc, that you have solid cover every 4-6"(10-15cm). This is really the expensive part, because that's a LOT of scatter terrain. Assuming a ~2"/5cm sized piece of terrain, you will need about 60-80 of these smallest pieces! But a variety is great. You can do planters, parking meters (there's a guy on Shapeways that sells the parking meters from the original Blade Runner), a street food stand, parked cars/motorcycles, anything. As for height, you don't want to play inside buildings more than 3 stories tall, they will rapidly end up sucking up all your orders/time. But you can have buildings like the apartment towers from CNC Workshop in Australia, where only the rooftop is accessible, no interior detail. You will want billboards and rooftop scatter like air conditioning equipment, big skylight boxes, maybe even rooftop gardens with trees. Also, vary your roof heights. Go ahead and put a 4-story building in one of those 'clumps', but have it right next to a 2-story. You should have one or two long sigh tlines from one side of the table to another. If you're sneaky, you have some more long sight lines running from side to side, too. At ground level, you might have 6 narrow sight lines that go from Deployment Zone to Deployment Zone (and 6 more going side to side), up the "streets". But most of your ground-level sight lines are going to be shorter, often ~24" or less, a Warband's paradise. Up on the rooftops, though, you're looking at much longer shots and wider fields of fire, sniper/HMG paradise. These suggestions still apply for rural tables, but they're a bit harder to actually apply. But what Black Op to steal secret corporate/government data is taking place on a farm someplace?!? Wow, that ran on longer than I thought it would. Hope it helps!
So I knew someone would have some kind of system that they'd actually thought through, but what about that for a reply? Legend! So anyone got anything else like Section9's '9 + 4 + Scatter'?
30-50% total area of the board covered depending if buildings have interiors. Avoid ground level lanes of fire from DZ to DZ. Rotate buildings 45 degrees so they are not parallel to the board edges. Leave lanes for TAGs/bikes to move around (remember they can vault low cover). Avoid the bowl of death! Bias taller buildings towards the centre of the board. Give one (and only one) DZ a good sniper perch.
To explain: the reason for using the rotated buildings is that it encourages sight lines to run corner-to-corner, and not edge-to-edge of the table.
Theres allways a pattern in my designs. never put building edgeing the limit of the DZ, allways a bit back or in between the limit line , that way is not always a benefit to use a building. asimetry, war is not fair. so make that choosing who starts or side of the table really matter, not just the mission. This means a hight ARO tower for a sniper or TO ML, or just a good path to centre objectives without too much exposure to enemy aros. try that the sniper tower is never in the DZ but in his half of the table, that way you dont allow of an entire fireteam to have the best place but an infiltrator aro piece must be use for that spot. Combine scenery elements: if you add a wall to a building suddently you gain a lot of area denial and cover for movement. big and small elements can combine between them to make great partners. Range bands A good table needs to allow all weapons to come into play, this means dont abuse long range, and short length, let every weapon have a space on the table. Edges: put some elements stuck to the edges of the table, normally they are neglected and become huge shooting lines impossible to play and to play with AD troops, they have a need for care even though that "!·"@~@#@# akali kills half your team. Cover size: try to vary different sizes for the elements, so that cover doesnt mean total cover or edge cover. use bushes that allow s2 to have cover but not s6, make it so s6 cant see but s7 can. Angles: as said above Access: Everything can access everywhere, this doesnt mean it has to be in the fastest way. an example will be that for a palbot to go heal an aro piece it has to go by a ladder that is facing the enemy DZ, or a TAG can only access an objective going through a path on the left of the table. etc etc. I think I dont leave anything behind. GL with designing tables.
9 buildings at least. One, for the center of the table, is the tallest (or you use an elevation to raise it, picking a box and decorating it with printed textures can help) so you break line of sight for snipers. Then, at one deployment zone, you place a sniper's nest, but be sure there are shadows for the enemy models to move around. Also, make sure that there is enough space between buildings for a S4 to go through, at least 2 or 3 viable routes are needed. Finally, remember that as many buildings as possible need to have enough space for the circular template to fit in, and if that's not possible, make one or two safe landing zones, so the AD troopers are not forced to enter from a side or not at all. About ancillary stuff, stairs and catwalks allow a degree of tactical movement that is very useful to ensure no two games are similar, and for the scatter terrain you need to feel comfortable with the amount. Remember that, while it blocks LoS, most of it can be vaulted over, so it won't impede movement! In that regard, I consider cars, buses, trucks... more like big terrain than scatter. Finally, if you are crafting your own terrain, try to cover what is meant to provide cover (several MDF kits have "empty rails", because it makes a lot of sense: enough structural integrity, less weight), you can do this by glueing cardboard pieces during assembly.
I like to make 1 side hard for AD models to reach deployment zones from the table edge. I usually put buildings or walls touching the front corner of the deployment zone making the AD models walk in towards the center of the table before moving into the deployment zone.
Yeah, my current methods - such as they are, including putting circular impact templates down in places that look like they should be big enough to allow ingress, and shuffling the buildings along a bit. Then doing likewise with silhouettes - making sure narrow lanes do fit an S2, and that wider ones will fit the larger bases as appropriate. I had 6 months last year playing on the terrain at a great shop that was an independent Games Workshop supplier (perhaps for the manager to pay off some sins he'd committed in a previous life; who can say? ) but our conclusion at the end of that time was that the terrain simply didn't work unless it was properly designed for Infinity. I now accept that as a given limitation of the game, and don't try to fight it.
This has been a minor annoyance of mine for some time. It's pretty easy to build tables that overly reward or punish lists, especially TAGs. I know a chunk of the community really likes the random rewarding nature of unknown tables and even think being able to overcome a bad table is a valuable important skill. I can respect that to a point but in highend competitive play there really should be baseline "standards" if not outright soft maps for types of missions. 9+4+Scatter is a good fix but I would like to see it taken even farther.
Well in a perfect world I would like to see maps based on mission type. Playing capture and protect? then the game recommends map layout A-2. The maps don't have to be exact, something as simple as what is shown on page 187 of the rule book is fine imo.
But do you have something in particular to suggest? I like the idea, but without some examples, I'm not sure how this could work without becoming stale or excessively "gamey."
@Andre82 I do kinda like this idea, which really isn’t so strange when all’s said and done, but I’d bet you a beer (or beverage of your choice) that such recommendations will not come from CB in the foreseeable future. There might be mileage in building an online share point though; some place that players could upload play-tested table designs?
I re-read all the replies so far - thanks for your interest, and this remark of Section9’s otherwise terrific post kinda scares me. I have many photos of the tables at last years Interplanetary- 120 or so tables, and don’t think I saw anything like this amount of scatter terrain! Not that I’m saying there shouldn’t be; I’m the one asking for guidance here; but it does seem a hell of a lot as you yourself say, Section9. What do others think about this recommendation; is it about right as an ideal target?
Seems like a bit much, but I would love to see some pictures. I could easily see this making for a cool battle-ravaged urban district.
Didn't see it linked here, but this is the official guideline from Corvus Belli, @Wolf . It is quite similar to Section 9's 9+4 rule. Note than you are actually advised to include a deployment-zone sniper nest, contrary to some players' convention. http://infinitythewiki.com/en/Setting_up_the_Gaming_Table
Yah this is the pic I was talking about when I said pg 187. You can build this or something much like it with most terrain on the market. In fact I think I am going to play on this exact map tonight for a game of highly classified. Yah then I am going to owe you a beer lol. Still a online table tested database that TO's can use would only be a good thing.
It sounds like a hell of a lot. Then you buy 4 dumpsters, 2 of each of Antenociti's civilian car sets (only 1 of each police car, but that's at least 36), some of MAS' civvie cars (or that whole Traffic Jam bundle of 19 items), and any other scifi cars you can find (another 12), some planter boxes (another 10 items), and you're up to 80 items in no time flat! Most of those cars you can just spray a single primary color, pick out the wheels and windows and lights, then seal the heck out of it, too, so it's really quick to get them painted and on the table. Not cheap, granted, but spread out over about a year it's not hard at all. Comes out to about $20 a month, in addition to your minis. Or you don't buy terrain when lots of minis for factions you play all hit and buy more terrain when no new minis are released. Add a whole pile of those Blade Runner parking meters from Shapeways (you need about 80 of them all by themselves if you're putting them every ~4" on the sidewalks of 4 cross-streets), and you're now eyes deep in a lived-in city. I'm very short on having enough of those, but they're so iconic I couldn't resist one set to start out with. They do take some time to paint up, though, since they're 3d printed in Frosted Ultra Detail and need to be cleaned, then sprayed and picked out in ~4 colors not counting highlights or washes.
