But there's a problem when you're talking about hills that need to rise 3m above the board -- all said and done, at 520 odd meters, Monte Cassino's a relatively garden-variety mountain: it not Mt Washington, and it's certainly not Mt. Elbrus.

Elbrus Battle monument

(It's always been unbelievable to me that Germans and Soviets managed to bother to shoot at each other up there).

FWIW, in another locale that demands a game-table -- Dien Bien Phu --  we're talking about hills on the order of 1000m (twice as high as Monte Cassino).

3m??

What the heck kind of buildings or trees do you use for your epic games?

Buildings and trees scaled to the figures.

If Space Marines are 2m tall.  And a small, but militarily significant hill such as Monte Cassino was 520m above sea level.. then we're talking about a hill that is 260 times the height of one of our 8mm figures.  

260x8=~2000mm=2m...

That is if one persists in judging los by looking from the 'eye' of one figure to the 'eye' of another.

So... stop scaling your trees and buildings to the figures and scale them to the hills.

Or, build a 40' x 60' Epic board so all the terrain is in scale with the models.  You can put your 3m tall hills on that.

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Neal

What you are talking about is relative hights from one part of the battlefield to another, not absolute hights. You do not need to build scale mountain ranges in the living room (unless you are modeling Mount Jackson 'Close Encounter' style   ). In the sixties and early seventies people used sand tables to create the desired contours which is the best approach for providing detail, but totally impractical. I am definitely with the others here that we really only need to represent the different relative heights rather than modeling them.

This boils down to whether anything can climb the slope or not and what effect that has. So now we are describing the slope of hills as 'Gentle', 'Steep' and 'Cliff', where Gentle slopes have no effect, Cliffs are impassable and Steep slopes both slow movement and confer an advantage to one side in an assault. (Actually you really need to classify slopes differently for infantry and vehicles). I guess you can use contoured hills and measure the distance between contours to determine the slope, or use slightly different shades of colour.

Taking the question to its ultimate conclusion; How realistic do you like to make the battlefield? (And here I am refering to geographical realism). Often E:A battlefields are represented by a random set of features scattered across the table rather than a coherent representation of hills valleys etc (the 'big hills' mentioned earlier). Does anyone here use modular terrain, or try setting up historical battlefields?

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Sir Hemry Newbolt

But it doesn't seem right if my figures can't fit in the doors of my buildings.

And to build the 'table' you suggest, I'd have to pack away my 1:5000 maps of the Russian Front.

.... we can all dream.

Heh.

Actually, if I had the space, time and money to build a 40x60 board, I'd probably use 40K models and everything would STILL be out of scale...  

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Neal

Heh, I see -- I thought we were talking about "game appropriate" rather than trying to get everything in scale with one another.

A hill is a hill. Even a 3m hill might present an advantageous position. The trick is just making it "big enough" to be of use in the game.

I think we're basically in violent agreement -- my point was that the game's horizontal and vertical scales were not synchronized.   This poses particular problems when it comes to hills, until and unless one realizes that they can't easily be modeled to scale, and thus their effects have to be abstracted and written into rules.

The idea of "building bigger hills" is, of course, noble... but even so, the problem is that hills will very quickly expose contradictions between horizontal and vertical scale -- they just won't look "right" from a realist perspective.

This is just me, but I don't think I've ever seen a hill in epic games that's tall enough to provide LOS over intervening terrain. Perhaps some folk have achieved it here, but from what I've seen it these must be exceptional cases rather than the norm.

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http://www.tacticalwargames.net/forums....28;st=0

If you look at this batrep you can see that the hills can be pretty big without taking up the whole board and we had room to make them much bigger.

This is just me, but I don't think I've ever seen a hill in epic games that's tall enough to provide LOS over intervening terrain.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

Then change the scale of your intervening terrain.  It sounds like your buildings and trees are too tall relative to your hills.  So use 1-2 story buildings and build smaller trees.  Not every battlefield has to have 150 ft tall redwoods.    

I know this doesn't solve all your problems, but you have to remember that the distances, ranges, and movements are all relative to proximity so scaling it the way you want is just never going to work on a 4'x6' board.  This is the best solution I could come up with.

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Make some of your own.  If you use a felt mat you don't even have to decorate it, just shove it underneath.  Cut them out of foam and make sure the incline isn't too steep.  You could easily get a 5-6 inch tall hill into a game and not have it be overwhelming.  The tough part is doing the rest of the terrain around your hills...  Trees tip over on inclines and buildings look weird.  Plastic roads don't lay correctly and neither do the water pieces.  But if you want big hills a set of 6 inchers would make for a great saddleback on the board and some unique challenges for both armies.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

Isn't it simpler just to accept that vertical scale on hills (like everything else) is abstracted, and devise some house rules to deal with LOS in the vertical dimension.

Otherwise, we're doomed to fighting our battles in a sci-fi version of Kansas.

Dave and I regularly use hills which are tall enough to see over the Ork cardboard buildings and all of the SM1 buildings as well. I'm guessing the hills are at least 4" high. (Actually they are more like bluffs with steep sides and have a rough surface that helps prevent infantry stands from sliding off)

Also, I specifically bought short trees which might be twice the height of a Rhino. Like Mosc, I've reasoned that not all trees need to be Sequoias.

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"I don't believe in destiny or the guiding hand of fate." N. Peart