To be clear the rules do say you can never see through terrain, even if it's less than 10cm wide. You can only see in/out 10 cm of terrain.

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The UK tournament rules of infinite height and area terrain are really just a consequence of simplicity, there are 7 - 9 tournaments a year in the UK with players from several different metas. It just came about as a result of being the easiest and simplest set of rules both to explain and arbitrate.

Also scales in epic in terms of size of models and ground scale are fairly abstract and stretched, my model of a Titan might be huge but it is not really directly to scale with the terrain on the board (I think most Titans are supposed to be in the 30-50 m range, even a fairly modest hill can easily exceed this). It also gives advantages based on the actual model I bring or how I might model something.

At the ground scale we are playing that building, or buildings, aren't really individual pieces but towns and villages. Same with forests.

At 28mm skirmish scale TLOS 'might' work but of a game on Epic's scale it really doesn't. As ever YMMV, DWWFY and all the other terms

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It's very interesting to see other tables from around the world. We tend toward to denser, though smaller prices of terrain (individual buildings etc.) more like Dave's table. Since playing in a couple of EpicUk tournaments I'm in the process of making up some larger bases and we have adapted to the basses with infinite height - much smoother/quicker in play and suits the scale IMHO, if a little less "cinematic."

In fact we used to play be even denser with TLOS - and boy does it change the game! Eldar with their small easily hidden groups of skimmers completely dominated while guard struggled ever win. Much fairer now.

IMHO these kinds of convention are essential to standardise otherwise the NetEA testing process will be virtually impossible to balance and often leads to intractable and off-putting arguments on the boards.

Yes basically "infinitely high" is really just a way of saying "uniformly high and higher than your model". You can't really use area terrain unless you apply a uniform height (otherwise the area at the edges has a height of zero), but I can see how "uniformly high" by itself could be made to work (e.g. treating an area of terrain as being as tall as the highest point). However as yme-loc says, you're still left with the fact that both the models and the terrain are abstractions of reality. They aren't in exact scale, with hills in particular often not modelled very high at all.

TLoS feels weird to me because Warhounds aren't sitting there in a static pose shooting down alleyways between buildings. Just because it can currently see an infantryman's head in its current freeze-frame state doesn't mean it has a valid target by the time it fires. It feels better for me to abstract this out - think of it more that the Warhound knows the enemy is there but isn't shooting because it's trying to get a reasonably clear shot. And for me this applies to the height too - it's just a model. The hill isn't really that high, and neither is the warhound. It just seems weird to apply such a level of detail given these obvious abstractions - the base height alone will end up influencing whether something can be seen or not. Let's face it though, this is just where I personally draw the line of "reality" - it could be drawn anywhere. The interaction between the physical model and the game mechanics can't be removed entirely, but for me it feels best when it is minimised - or at least made consistent.

In short, for me the benefits are both for pragmatism and in making it possible to play tactically. I see the AMTL example as highlighting this very well - if you make it hard to hide behind terrain then you remove that element of terrain from the range of tactical complexities that the game has to offer.

Clearly it's a topic people have different opinions on for quite valid reasons (in particular it is a shame to apply area terrain to really nice accurately modelled terrain pieces). That said, it seems reasonably clear to me that some conventions are more suited to the tournament play that playtesting is focused on, and I suspect that is why play groups such as Blip's and my own have adapted to use the EpicUK conventions. If others want to adopt those then I think it would be positive for NetEA, but I appreciate that "my way is best, you change yours" is not exactly a righteous position to adopt so if there is no consensus around it I'm not sure what can really be done. We have to be realistic about what NetERC actually has power to do.

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The Epic Armageddon rules state:
This quote directly states that terrain does not have infinite height.
This quote also confirms TLoS - "Weapons higher up"
It doesn't say units that are higher up, it says Weapons. We are supposed to get down and check what can be targeted by our units from a direct line of sight.


I fully understand why many have adopted a simpler approach to terrain.
It certainly helps speed things up in a tournament setting.
However, I see no need to change the way we play in Perth.
I can't speak for the rest of Australia but we played with TLoS (with the exception of woods) at Cancon (18 player tournament in Australia) earlier this year and it worked well. There were many very detailed terrain boards/features at that event and it would have been a REAL pity to try and treat them all as if they were infinitely high blocks.

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Can'y you just meet in the middle?

Level 0 is open ground
Level 1 terrain blocks LOS to/from anything small than a battle titan
Level 2 terrain blocks all LOS except for popped up skimmers

level 1 = woods, 1 layer hills, single story buildings
level 2 = 2nd layer hills, larger building, etc.

Having set categories would allow some deviation for infinite height LOS block and mean that 'my reaver is taller than your reaver so it can see' does not happen in competitive play.

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To play devils advocate, why would titan's not have to deal with the terrain shadows like skimmers do?

If you were around on TC when this was debated you will remember how long it took to arrive at the current solution.

But this thread was all about how Epic-UK test lists, I think we have wandered off topic just a tad?

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Mephiston I'm not so worried about wandering off topic as I think it is all relevant to it and this discussion is a very good one and one that needs to be had.

From a previous discussion with Onyx (and an obligatory shoddy mspaint diagram from me) the titan still has to deal with terrain shadowing as a function of simple trigonometry....

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Can I ask what you hope to accomplish with this specifically?
I enjoy the conversation and as always find it interesting and illuminating to see the local differences. Are you trying to build some testing consensus or just spread awareness of the differences?


OK, just really tall then!

All kidding aside, I don't really see the buildings as being literally a single building of that exact height there on the table. It's a whole complex with skyscrapers and/or spires stretching into the sky. Same with hills. To be at the scale of epic, it's more a mountain than a hill. Smaller features just get blended into the general "open" terrain and at the battalion scale it's only really significant features that are getting represented for us.


Oh I should have noted that we DO treat titans a little closer to what MephistonAG is implying above and are a slightly differing beast than say a formation of infantry or tanks.

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True, but as skimmers are forced to use an arbitrary system to generate said shadow it will be different to a TLOS shadow. They should be consistent if you are using TLOS. I guess skimmers should have a set pop up height to measure your TLOS from.

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Yes the odd difference between Titans and skimmers occurred to me too. I wonder how often it is likely to generate wrong results though. Titans aren't -that- tall, well GW ones anyway.

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They're not even that tall in the fluff. I mean I'm sitting in a building taller than 30 meters at the moment and I'm not even close to being the largest around.

Warhound = 14M
Reaver = 22M
Warlord ~ 33M based on the relative proportions to the above which are canonical

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I'm of the opinion that there can't be too much terrain, and that at least some of it should be large enough to hide a Titan behind (even using TLOS).

Typical table with tall buildings:

http://sdahl.net/~sdahl/whepic/20140519 ... .52.09.jpg

http://sdahl.net/~sdahl/whepic/20140203/sIMG_1236.JPG

Less typical table, with cityblocks that can't be entered, but with room to maneuver on top, with a Titan Legion for scale:

http://sdahl.net/~sdahl/whepic/20110528/IMAG0842.jpg

For the record, the Titan Legion lost this battle, when its maneuver Warlord's reactor detonated at the end of turn three, just after it crossed the center line as the only AMTL unit to do so. Massed Ork Zzapguns had efficiently wiped out the Warhounds by then.

We usually play with TLOS if one party is a war engine, otherwise with the 10cm rule, though I can easily see the merit in playing with "imaginary altitude" for area terrain.