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Structure heights.


Guyon

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I was going to make my first scenery item, which a hangmans scaffolding.   What is the suggested height for the deck in inches,  I was going to make stairs walking up to it.  I know it can be what ever I want but this will be the piece that others will be scaled to.

Also if you can see under it what kind of cover will it be considered?

 

It will look different but this is the like the i have for mine.

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I think the major feature which will improve the interaction with the game is to make the significant terrain features a whole number of inches tall, and design the flat surfaces keeping mind that bases have to stand on top of that surface.  Stairs and ladders are really difficult to make both look good and functional at the same time, and the sort of staircase you see in a dollhouse don't work unless you specifically have 'model support wedges' (or lots of non-sticking clay) to put underneath the model so that it can walk up the stairs while remaining level.  (Models that walk up stairs at an angle fall over, break, and make everyone sad.  :()  Two of the functional approaches that I've seen:  a staircase build out of overlapping platforms (where each platform was large enough for a model to stand on); a ladder built with base sized slots so that you can slide a miniature's base into the slot.

If you want models to be able to move around underneath the platform, you're probably going to want to make the platform three inches tall.

 

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Two inches and just blocking off the area underneath it is also an option. Kind of comes naturally if you have X-shaped wooden supports. I'd go with an exact inch measurement and either 2 or 3 inches in height. Lower terrain will not block LoS in a satisfying manner.

 

The cover depends on how you define it from game to game. Solid wooden structures are usually played as hard cover in my group but if it's only crossed planks (like our ready-bought gallows are) we usually define it as soft. Always up to the players before each game. Do remember that if you see through it, it will only grant cover if the model being shot at is withing 1" so a terrain piece like that would mostly be a hindrance to people trying to move past it but allow long ranged models to dominate the board even more. A solid plank structure would block LoS better.

 

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I'm thing of making a 4 person Gallows myself.

I'm going to use a 3" deck height with X-braces on the sides and back and nothing across the front--this is important (and historically accurate) so the crowds can watch their grim entertainment. My stairs will be decorative (and the only way up) but not playable.

I'll call the braced sides Soft Cover and Difficult. The railing around the top deck will also be soft cover.

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Making terrain is all about what effects you want the terrain to have on the games. Making the platform Ht 3 or 4 will mean falling damage from pushes or lures can come into play, unless you put a railing around the edge. Ht2 would get rid of dealing with the fall damage. It also makes it more likely for someone to actually climb the sides to get up there, rather than everyone funneled up the stairs you want. Yes, they could climb Ht3, and rarely will, but given the extra 2" of Mv it takes to go that extra Ht point, it strongly cuts down on it, from what I've witnessed over the years.

Beyond that, it's all about what type of other terrain keywords you want to add to your board. Maybe the front is open, the sides are soft cover but passable cross braces and the back is solid wood hard cover, impassable. Maybe the hangman has an assortment of axes or other painful looking bits hanging from leather straps off one edge and suddenly it's a small bit of passable hazardous right there.

If this is your first piece, you're really in luck because you should make it however you imagine it. Once you've got some terrain already built, tailoring the rest of the pieces you come up with based on what you already have so that you have a good assortment on the board becomes more important.

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