beginner Absolute new starter - Terrain questions

[Medic6666]

I have nothing and am looking for a good place to start.

I read on another post that for a 3 x 3 game area you should cover a 3rd with terrain, is this a default amount or is there advantages/disadvantages to less/more.

Going to get a cobblestone mat with the 3e markings because i am going to need all the help i can get but where do i start on buildings and such.

Is there guide line of "must haves" and then "nice to haves" to make the game playable or can i just wing it?

I will be making some bits no idea how far my skills will take me but crates, walls and such should be within my abilities to start with. 

Many thanks

[mythicFOX]

Welcome to Malifaux!

Having a third of the board covered in terrain is a rule of thumb.  It can be more or less, and a lot depends on the type of terrain you're using, as some stuff impacts the game more than others.

Generally terrain is there to do some combination of; disrupting movement, giving cover/concealment, and completely blocking line of sight.  When building terrain I generally aim for 1/6th of the board doing all three and 1/6th doing two of the above things.

In Malifaux it's best to have a lot of little pieces than a few big ones.  You don't want any single piece of terrain covering half a sheet of paper worth of board, with the majority of the terrain being smaller than your mobile phone.

Quick tip for easy terrain;  FOG.  Grab the smallest bag of teddy-bear stuffing from amazon, cut a few shapes in a grey felt (or even card) and drop the stuffing on top.  Looks good and it's cheap.

If you look on my twitter you'll see examples of the kind of terrain I use, for example;

https://twitter.com/mythicfox83/status/1105783544935268352?s=21 

 https://twitter.com/mythicfox83/status/1111942581292879873?s=21 

(Note that this Arcanist lab board is probably lighter in coverage than average because the wall sections have a higher impact on play than their footprint suggests).

Hope that helps, any questions just ask.

[Adran]

Welcome.

The 1/3rd is a very good guideline.

A game with too little terrain will be very in your face and Violent ( a combination of lots of shooting attacks, and clear charge lanes for melee attacks), where as a game with too much terrain will have little interaction between crews and lots of time spent moving. 

If you are at these extremes you may think some crews are crazy powerful and others rubbish just because of the table.

There are no "must haves" but you do want a range of types. Mythic Fox gives very good advice about the variety of what you want.  You can do a fair amount with Fences/walls,  just making them different heights and make ups, so things like Victorian Park railings could be high enough to completely block movement, but not line of sight where as a solid wooden fence might block line of sight and movement and provide cover and a picket fence just slows down movement a little without providing cover or LOS blocking.  

If you want buildings, I would start of just wanting buildings that can't be entered. You can buy paper, Laser cut MDF or Plastic from a wide range of places. Things like the old GW Manor house is probably on the almost too large size of things, but could make a nice board if you're just using it as a centerpeace., where as its graveyard (garden of Morr) mausoleums are all good size for buildings. A wide range of laser cut MDF is out there, in a huge range of styles. I'd start with 1 style and expand it, be it wild west town, Victorian town or train station, depending on what you want.

If you're making your own, then you are probably wanting then to be squares about 3" tall, and 4" square (give or take), or roughly the size of 2 selection pack (Single serving) cereal boxes.

 

[Medic6666]

Thank you for the quick reply. FOG seems like a great idea to fill spaces on a starter map.

change of plan, instead of doing a street/building plan would this be better for a starter setup.

a grass field 3 x 3

a cemetery for the center, something like:

• https://www.ainstycastings.co.uk/product/cemetery-set/
• https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Sigmarite-Mausoleum-2017

And then walls and fog placed around the cemetery to create blockages and pathways.

• https://www.ainstycastings.co.uk/product/12cm-damaged-cemetery-wall/
• https://www.ainstycastings.co.uk/product/3cm-cemertery-corner-wall-x2/
• https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Walls-Fences

I could make a lot of the walls and bits to custom how walls and fences would fit in the plan. But would proberly buy a few bits to get me started.

And then FOG/Mist across a grave yard / fields is never a bad thing.

Its a much simpler setup for starting with but would it be too simple?

[Maniacal_cackle]

@mythicFOX, that is an amazing looking board!

OP, I find terrain to be hugely impactful on games, and different setups will affect different crews differently. It may be worthwhile just making some super basic terrain (a chunk of cardboard representing a forest, a mug representing a building) until you've played with the effects and have a feel for what they are.

But I'll try to give a breakdown of some of the terrain effects on gameplay here.

• Blocking: blocks Line of Sight (LOS), so hampers ranged crews.
• Concealing: Gives bonuses against ranged attacks.
• Dense: Hampers LOS, so hampers ranged crews (but also can give them good sniping positions, for instance shooting you from inside a forest, they're protected).
• Destructible: Good way to be able to influence terrain with actions. Favours crews that can afford to spend actions altering the landscape.
• Hazardous terrain punishes squishy crews, and crews that need to get to specific locations. Typically worse for melee than shooty crews.
• Climbable: can give shooting crews a nice vantage point to shoot from, but also gives access to them. Mitigates the impassable nature of say a building.
• Impassable: limits mobility. Typically is blocking as well, so tends to give some good hiding places for melee units advancing. However, it can also force the melee units to advance along 'murder corridors' where their predictable movement gets them picked off by a sniper waiting at the end.
• Severe: reduces movement by half. Extremely effective terrain, tends to hamper crews that need to move (so usually melee crews).

Incorporeal models and flyers can ignore terrain for movement purposes (and incorporeal also ignores hazardous terrain damage and effects).

All the models in the game are balanced around an assumption of some of the relevant terrain, but not overwhelming amounts. When I play against Kirai with my Molly crew, the amount of severe terrain makes a huge difference. Not enough, and her incorporeal models are useless. Too much and I can't move anywhere.

So try to get a mixture of terrain types, and at a very basic level, consider "some stuff to limit mobility, some stuff to limit shooting, some stuff to bolster shooting, and some interesting effects."

A note of caution about interesting effects, however. Almost every time I've used hazardous terrain in one of my games, the entire piece of terrain was just avoided by both sides all game. Terrain is very impactful!

EDIT: Also, the big thing is to just experiment. Part of my point here is that there's a huge amount of variety, and it does matter. But when faced with a choice like that, the best cure for it is experience. Just try different stuff out. If you have to use a piece of paper to represent a forest the first few games, that's fine.

[Adran]

I use the GW cemetery sets to make an interesting table. I think I use between 1 and 1.5 sets worth (They used to sell it at half the size it is now). Its certainly one of the simplest ways to get a reasonable table, as that 1 box will make a a varied table.

[mythicFOX]

@Medic6666

A graveyard is a good plan.  Keep in mind that Ainsty Castings stuff is great, but they are famously slow to deliver orders (like 60 days slow), although this may have improved in recent years.

If you start from the Sigmarite Mausoleum and grab some fog you've probably got a good start. 

Rendra do the cheapest plastic grave stones, as well as fences, etc.  http://www.renedra.co.uk/index.php. 

Sarissa do loads of MDF stuff;  https://sarissa-precision.com/

Also I wouldn't under estimate what some cheap model railway trees on a felt bases will do.  You can get a board's worth of spooky woods for <£20.

@Maniacal_cackle - Thanks!