How to do an unbalanced table right?

[Angelshard]

I read several terrain guides that recommend you give one table side a better setup than the other, in order to make the decision between deploying last or choosing deployment zone meaningful. 

This makes a lot of sense to me.

But I'm really struggling with getting a fair imbalance in zones.

One of the problems are that none of us have more than a couple of masters and ~20 models yet. So the terrain have to be balanced for all crews instead of us choosing models depending in the board.

I tried a setup where the three key buildings all had their staircase pointing towards one deployment zone and the other player had to either crawl up or walk around. That turned out to be way too much.

 

What I'm asking is, do people have some rule of thumb on how differentiate the sides or is it just a question of trial and error until you learn it?

[Tokapondora]

Don't purposely imbalance your setups. Not sure where you got that from, but even when deploying first a clearly superior set up will win games by itself. Unless they're completely symmetrical, there will always be a side slightly more preferable to the crew you're taking. It's the little things that make you go "I might get some use out of that" that should steer you towards a side.

Our boards tend to be about 50% terrain, with 50% of that being buildings, bridges and walls(climbable, enterable; in general something to give extra options positioning), 30-40% folliage, lakes, rubble (dense, severe, hazardous; general hinderances for both range and melee), and fill the rest up with some scatter terrain. 

Now with that try building a board organically, but always be on the lookout to give both players at least some access to all the terrain elements. Make sure both players have some access to height, but if one side happens to have some easier access, give the other some more protection against possible range (forests, crates, etc). If one side has some more severe swamps, give them a bit more height to allow them to play around it. Just start building what feels like a natural map with your biggest pieces, then look what weaknesses each side has and try to cover for them. 

Obviously experience is going to give you some good insight into what is and isn't balanced, but until it all comes naturally to you, just try and think of what each piece allows you or your opponent to do, and how the other side would be built to counter that.

[Adran]

I am one of the people that suggest you should not try and balance your boards. (I see a lot more games decided by the person that was able to match up the engagements by deploying second, than the person that was forced to deploy in a bad location). 

But I can't really offer a guide to how to do it, as it is hugely crew dependent  as to what counts as an advantage and what doesn't. I wouldn't normally say that the staircase being nearer to my crew helps out my crews, but if you have several shooting options, then it might. 

I generally try to set the board up before I even know what type of deployment there is going to be (And at my local club every table normally comes with 4 possible deployment zones), so I will do things like having a river cutting through 1 corner, or perhaps forests concentrated more in 1 area. 

All areas of the board should be near some form of cover, but you might have more hard cover in 1, and soft in another, or make one area harder to move around due to severe or impassable options. Just remember what is a down side to some crews might be viewed as an advantage to others, for example I piece of hazardous terrain blocking the main route to the middle seems a bad thing, but if you are playing with lures, then its suddenly something that helps you out to have it on your side. 

 

 

[Gnomezilla]

It's a great question! I'm still learning.

The quickest improvement was to set up the same symmetrical terrain on the board but tilted 30 degrees or so relative to the table edge, and then look at it from the perspective of the table edge. Lanes of fire required more work to get into and didn't reach as far across the board. Impassable terrain covered more breadth of the deployment zones. Advancing straight forward was less possible raising the value of flight/incorporeal, but LoS blocking stopping points were more available along those straight forward routes.

[iamfanboy]

So some things I've been doing:

Set the streets on a diagonal, rather than a perpendicular, line across the board - main street goes from corner to corner, for example. I find that this REALLY helps clear up some crew's issues of hiding from LOS while still allowing the occasional clear lines that other crews rely on.

Have one half be predominately burned-out buildings, while the other side has mostly intact buildings.

Establish one half as the wilderness with woods and water, with smaller shack/western style buildings on the other side.

EDIT: You ninja'd me, gnomezilla!

[Squirrelich]

My .02, I just try to make sure my board sides are not mirrors. Doing this will inherently make one side "better"than the other. But since "better"is also crew dependant I don't try to specifically skew it to make one side stronger. I leave it up to the player to decide what their crew prefers and make the correct decision based off that when they choose.

Edit: Adran said it well IMO

[Ludvig]

I like to do assymetry near the center so that one crew has an easier time getting at the objective. I also try to give one side a little more hard cover. If you do them symmetrical the person deploying second will always get to match their models better which is a huge advantage. Before we started doing asymetrical boards my club had a streak where more or less every win was by the person setting up second.

Edit: I never ever put perches, steep hills accessible from one side or sniper's nest that are hard to reach on any of my boards. If I use a clocktower or something I make it completely impassable and inacessible. 

[Angelshard]

Thanks for the answers. It's very much appreciated. 

The building advantage worked horribly because it was a gremlin lacroix vs shenlong melee. 

I think I'm going to argue that we should roll deployment before setting up terrain, and then try to give a side of the board an advantage by placing better lanes to center.

I'm still a fan of the idea that one side is marginally better so the deploy first/choose sides is a consideration. 

I can see the argument that different crews want different deployment zones, but I still feel an advantage is a good thing to make the decision harder 

[Angelshard]

Also I think the terrain advantage issue will change when we get more masters and models.

But I still want it to be a decision and not just a flip on who deploys last

[solkan]

To be honest, I think the biggest thing to do is to set the table up sideways so that no one is closer to "their" deployment zone in the non-corner deployments.

I played some games this weekend that now that I think about, I didn't even stop to consider the other deployment zone because it would have meant getting up and moving my stuff.

 

[Dogmantra]

28 minutes ago, solkan said:

I played some games this weekend that now that I think about, I didn't even stop to consider the other deployment zone because it would have meant getting up and moving my stuff.

This is why I like mats, if you're gentle you can swirl the mat around without disturbing the terrain. Or I've also come across people who flip for deployment before getting stuff out too. I think I appreciate both of these methods.

[Angelshard]

Honestly the "I don't want to switch side cause I sat down here" mentality.  I want the decision between deploying and board advantage to be a meaningful one. 

I just find that malifaux offers so many different viable crews that terrain advantage becomes extremely difficult 

[tmod]

My take is similar to others' here. Try to make the four sides balanced, but asymmetric. And set up the board first, preferably by someone not playing. And a slight tilt (ie no streets parallel with any board edge). This goes a long way in making the games interesting and deployment more meaningful...

[Tokapondora]

Your boards will naturally be not perfectly balanced if you don't mirror them. What you do by giving one side an advantage like for example height, however, is shifting the balance to favour ranged crews. Give both sides access to terrain that fill roughly the same role, and compensate the sides that get a bit less of one with a bit more of the other. Build organically, with houses to one side and the trainyard to the other; let the rockformations slowly encroach into the forest; loop a river around a corner, possibly picking up the center of the map.

There's just no need to go out of your way to make them imperfect. A map will always have areas that are favoured by your crew, and by being the one to have to deploy first you will always be able to pick your ideal set-up, possibly forcing your opponent into a less than ideal one if they want to directly counter you. But again, that will happen naturally. 

[Bengt]

Almost half the time (8-13 on the flip) you'll have diagonal centre line so don't make LoS lanes completely diagonal, i.e. from corner to corner. Pivot the map to in between diagonal and orthogonal or try to make an "old town" style layout where there are no straight streets.

[Ludvig]

What Bengt said. Diagonals are just as bad, don't make long streets but break stuff up. 

[Angelshard]

Gonna try tomorrow with a ruined city placed asymmetrically and with no straight lines longer than 18" without cover, unless you get up on something