Has Anyone Noticed...

[Lucidum]

...that Warhammer 40,000 seems to be a very dry place? Maybe it's just me, and the five or so major game stores in my state that I've played at, but I almost NEVER see a single game board for 40K with water on it. I played Imperial Guard for a while when I was younger, and Chimeras have that nice "amphibious" rule, which back in the day I was always excited about, thinking it'd give me a huge advantage in games....and to this day I've never seen a table that I was able to use it on.


Is it just me, or does Warhammer 40K need a wet season?

[Schlitzaf]

I think it is most people don't have water terrian (my local gw store does but those darn Fantasy players (joking there) use it most of the time)

[Bean]

There just aren't good rules for water terrain.

[Rissan4ever]

There just aren't good rules for water terrain.

There are plenty of good rules for water terrain. You decide if it's impassable, difficult, or dangerous, just like anything else. Where's the problem?

[wittdooley]

There are plenty of good rules for water terrain. You decide if it's impassable, difficult, or dangerous, just like anything else. Where's the problem?

It doesn't provide any cover :D

[gendoikari87]

...that Warhammer 40,000 seems to be a very dry place? Maybe it's just me, and the five or so major game stores in my state that I've played at, but I almost NEVER see a single game board for 40K with water on it. I played Imperial Guard for a while when I was younger, and Chimeras have that nice "amphibious" rule, which back in the day I was always excited about, thinking it'd give me a huge advantage in games....and to this day I've never seen a table that I was able to use it on.


Is it just me, or does Warhammer 40K need a wet season?

one Store i played at had two boards with huge rivers running through them.

[Bigred]

I think the Chimera's amphibious rule is the least used rule in the game.

You very occasionally see a water feature here or there, but in general water is hard to do on the tabletop.

[Tepogue]

At the Battle for Stones River tournament, all the boards have at least 1 river running through them.

But in general I agree, water features are few and far between.

[vharing]

I any time we have ever used it when my friends and I play it is just difficult terrain. If it is chemical sludge or something make it dangerous. Most people I think dont bother because water effects stuff can be pricey and it is hard to make it look good.

[ElectricPaladin]

We've got a great set of rubber rivers at my FLGS, and we use them all the time.

[Emerald Rose Widow]

Main reason I believe it is? Water rules don't give tangible benefits, and they are not easy to do properly. If you do it the easy way of painting blue on the table it looks like six loads of crap. If it is done properly with coloured resin, properly cut out and the like, its not cheap for one, and it takes a lot of time and can be screwed up really easily

[plasticaddict]

We always have at least one table with a river running through it when we hold tournaments at out FLGS.

[Soups]

Water only works as ponds. My LGS has a few, and some 3rd party latex rubber river. The rubber river is super sweet, since it hugs the table, but is horrifyingly expensive.

Good river=playable
No idea what you were doing when you made it river=no fun :(

[wittdooley]

Yep. They're really hard to do. And at $25, horrifyingly expensive, too ;)

http://www.flamesofwar.com/Portals/0/all_images/Misc/BB514_tn.jpg

http://www.flamesofwar.com/Portals/0/all_images/Misc/BB530_tn.jpg

[frommage]

In the Grim Darkness of the Far Futur there is only very dry places to fight over...:D

Got some rivers from Armorcast, but I usually use them for Fantasy.

[Elahir]

For me the reason is that I don't really like the available terrain kits and I'm too lazy to do it myself.

[Wildcard]

Few points:

On any imperial world (save for agri-worlds) a place where water flows, is a place wasted for building stuff..

Any aggriworld that gets assaulted:
- By orks: Roks orbit entry tends to do create some minor heat thus vaporising all the water in the warzone in question..
- By Nids: "First i was like nomnomnom, and then i was like glup glup glup". I mean, after eating billion meat-pizza, you tend to get thirsty..
- Retaliation by Imperium (any world actually..): Torpedo salvoes and lance bombardments tend to fu*k up your local flora - for a good while :)

Chaos dudelings hardly got any water on their barren wastelands, necrons would only get all rusty and stuff, not many scenarios are played inside eldar craftworlds (although i have no idea if they got any fountains, rivers, waterfalls etc in them..).

The only place i believe would have larger areas of water are in the Tau empire, and those areas are only reserved for the peeps who embrace the greater good.. And when decides fu*k it, its all going to vaporize by the reasons mentioned before..

[Wolfshade]

I thin terrain tends to be built in terms of ruins or things like that. It is rare to see hills that aren't stepped hills. Woodlands are just harder to build than Buildings and with the abstraction that occurs between LoS and Area Terrain it seems better jsut to build ruins.
The earth of the 40k world is dry with the oceans having been boiled off, but there are plenty of references to planets with water.

[MrGiggles]

I picked up a river from Pegasus Hobbies which my group uses a fair bit. I get the impression though that pieces like that and the Gale Force 9 Battlefield in a Box series are newer. Prior to the release of kits like that, most of the water terrain I saw was home made. Some of it was nice and some less so.

I found that most of the nice stuff was done using some form of Water Effect. Personally, I've yet to try working with it. At the very least, it's a pretty specific tool to do a single thing, so I can see why not everyone uses water terrain though I'd think that at least some of the folks running Chimeras would be tempted to use that Amphibious rule here and there.

[helvexis]

i use skimmers so fairly redundant for me :P

but yes good water terrain is lovely and good for land based armies as it creates interesting avenues of movement ... we usually have them as really really rapid impassible ... strangely enough by the land army users choice :)

[Demonus]

One set of tiles a friend made has a toxic green river on it, sort of an industrial waste river. we treat it as Dangerous terrain, and even have a bridge over it. Good for funneling troops.

[Kaiserdean]

We've got a great set of rubber rivers at my FLGS, and we use them all the time.

Rubber Rivers sounds like a good band name...

However, I think the fact water doesn't provide cover saves keeps it off a lot of tables.

[Rissan4ever]

It doesn't provide any cover :D

Which is precisely what makes it so interesting. It changes the shape of the battlefield. But it doesn't get used enough. I'm going to try to change that in my area. I'll use blue felt and cut it into fun shapes. Later, I may get some Water Effects or what have you, but I'll start with the felt until I know what shapes work the best and have the most impact on the game.

[Thornblood]

hen I were a young teenager, I was one of those grungers that hung around GW every saturday, playing 40k in the morning and fantasy every afternoon. In between we did lunch, in occasionally made the new game boards for the store.

We made an 8' x 4' board with the sea and a beach along one long side, and the staff, who made far more amazing models than we could (and with New Labour going from strength to strength were all studying 'model-making' for free at a local college), made a full dock and an amazing lighthouse for fantasy. It looked surprisingly good. Anyway, the major problem was that one side always started the game in difficult terrain, because it's deployment zone was three quarters sea, a boon for long-ranged missile troops as it was more difficult to charge them, but normally a massive problem.

Nonetheless I kept half the table when it was time for a new one and amongst my friends whilst gaming we had to call the sea 'open terrain' assuming the shallows were simple to walk through.

A different nearby GW store however had their demo board as Tau vs Orks, on an ocean world with big white floating circular tau things to fight on and bridges between. With the ork trukk and the devilfish in play it was alot of fun, but, pretty much the water below was an area that only the devilfish could get to, and because it was a 4' x 4' board with severely limited areas for figures to actually stand on, it didnt really work with forces greater than 750pts.

In normal games we rarely use the river sections because, really we don't like the way they bi-sect the battlefield, needing an entrance and and exit.

[ZenPaladin]

My local crew made some modular terrain boards out of plywood and foam insulation. We carved a deep river in a lot of the 1 foot square tiles. We always considered it area terrain. I once walked my periahs up the thing and managed to charge and kill my friends chaos lord.

Loved our rivers. Even if we were playing them wrong.

[Warped-Bitz]

In the grim dark future there is only drought...

My local GW hasn't got any, but my local gaming club has a few water themed boards, they make a pleasant change from fighting over a city, i mean, even Marines must like a walk in the countryside every now and again?

[heretic marine]

I have never been in a Warhammer 40k battle that had water on the bored:o. you know what i am going to make some water terrain pieces now:cool:

[Hive Mind]

In The Grim Darkness of the Far Future There Is Only Drought

EDIT - Damn you frommage and warped-bitz, beat me to it.

[Tarasque]

We sometimes play with a few rivers or something locally, and sometimes even a pond, but the rivers are usually pretty small and we still designate them as being open. They're mostly just there for looks. For Fantasy, we do usually make them at least something.

The pond has trees and such around it though, so it does become difficult with a 4+, just like every single other piece of terrain on the table.

[TheCoolGuy12]

We made some river tiles for our home games. They get used most of the time. They add more depth to the board. I like them