Re: [Epic] Eldar tactics

From: DAVID C LADO, DEPT OF NEUROSCIENCE <LADO_at_...>
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 20:05:38 -0500 (EST)

>>>is so crowded that no one can hide, and everyone has targets.
>>
>>Inflicting casualties: you're right. Crowded board: not really on a 10 feet
>>table. Rather, it tends to create several battlegrounds. Maneuvering
>>remains important, but some armies are better than others, then. More on
>>that below, as you're talking about that later in your post.
>
>To me a 6,000 pt game on an 8 foot table is crowded. So even if you add
>bigger units (high point values, that is) a 10-15k game is gonna be quite
>crowded. Note that I defined "crowded" as the fact that terrain to hide in
>is scarce, and the large majority of people can find a target (so no wasted
>shots).

I don't know homany units actually have to be on the table to make it
"crowded", but I do think 6,000 pts is about as many as you can put on the
table and still leave room for meaningful maneuvering. With really large
battles, the big units start to come out and eventually the battle is
reduced to a titanic slugfest (pun intended). Even if the total number
of units is not significantly increased, the presence of all that fire-
power makes it basically pointless to charge enemy units since, win
or lose, whatever is left gets blown away anyway.

>>Simply the rules: 1-3 random pieces for 60*60 cm squares. I proposed adding
>>terrain or reducing squares size to help Chaos and the like, but the result
>>was far from convincing: as they can indeed hide more easily during
>>advance, I have more places to hide my own troops and what they call my
>>"damned pop-up rubbish" (not sure about the translation - in French:
>>"foutue saloperie de pop-up").
>
>I've found that an average of about 2 1/4 - 2 1/2 terrain pices per square
>makes for better combat, as opposed to the 2 that you get from the book system.

I don't know how other people work it, but when I made my terrain, I
made the woods stands fairly small. to make up for this, we would bring
out 1-3 (rolled randomly) stands for each roll of woods on the chart.
Similarly, we brought out 1-3 buildings, marshes, and craters per roll.
For a while, we even brought out 1-3 hills per roll, but this got to
be too much (they weren't undersized). Even with my undersized terrain
peices, I think the D3 still gave more overall terrain (certainly more
buildings) and spread the terrain more widely over the square.

Personally, I liked the extra terrain. Now that I have remade my terrain,
I would still suggest bringing out 2 woods/buildings per roll. In my
experience, most players like having alot of terrain, especially if it
looks half-decent, even if their armys don't particulary like it. I
would also go so far as to say that more terrain makes for more strategy
and more interesting game play. Also, all armys can adapt to high
terrain boards, but not all armys can adapt to low terrain boards (IMO,
of course). For example, squat armies and eldar armies love wide open
boards because they dominate in long-range weapons, but both can fight
equally well in terrain heavy boards by simply fielding a different
mix of units. Chaos can only adapt to open boards by fielding units
from different army lists (IG and Marines), which isn't really adapting
it's army as much as abandoning it for a different one.

David
Received on Fri Apr 11 1997 - 01:05:38 UTC