(Un)real Estate

[Primarch]

Buildings. We all live in them, work in them, eat, drink and sleep in them. But how many of us fight in them? (Aside from those of us with spouses who disapprove of our spending money on minis that is).

Most of the games we play allow us some leeway in how we set up and arrange the table and terrain. Some games work well with open fields broken up with the occasional stand of trees or shrubs. Other games need buildings and other tall pieces of terrain to block LoS and stop every game from simply being a case of bringing as much long range dakka as possible. Some games go into quite a bit of detail about how terrain works and others are kind of vague and don't bother to spell out the differences between a small shack and a twelve storey block of flats/apartments.

Personally speaking, I love terrain. I want to see nicely laid out tables with a nice thematic esthetic. A green cloth and a couple of empty PET bottles just doesn't do it for me. Now, I am quite happy sticking together a few hedges or chopping up some polystyrene for some hills, but with buildings, especially intact ones, I prefer to purchase them. Recently, I have been contemplating buying some kits from different parts of the world to fill out my collection more and offer a wider variety to my games.

Buildings, I have found, usually come in one of three types. The first is a solid piece of resin/plastic etc that has no way to interact with the interior of the building. The second is for a hollow shell with a lift off roof. You can put minis in there (don't forget to take them out once the game is over), but their exact position inside can be hard to judge. The third and final type is the highly detailed kit with removable roof, interior walls and floors. Your sniper can happily sit on the 4th floor picking off enemy officers to his hearts content.

So, rules aside, how do you see buildings taking part in your games. Are they simply something to hide behind and move around? Are they perhaps some vague representation of terrain where your figures enter a Schrodinger's Cat state of being inside them. Or are buildings more important to the game than even your little plastic minis themselves? Or should we just play on an empty green mat and have done with this discussion?

[me_in_japan]

Interesting and timely question, as I, too, have recently become enamoured of buildings. If possible, I like em fully interior'd. Practically speaking, though, this is a bloody pain in the arse, and nigh impossible if you're doing it yourself. I bought 5 or so 4ground buildings for Infinity, a game which dearly loves its buildings, and which would be very difficult to play without them. I also have a bunch of catwalks and industrial buildings which have less in the way of interior, but are bigger and have plenty of roofspace. I still feel that I'm very lacking in sf terrain, though, especially for infinity, and also dredd.

I kind of feel that the more buildings you have, the more important the interior becomes. If you build a cityscape with 2-3" wide streets your models are going to need to go inside/up the buildings at some point or run out of space to move.

fantasy-wise, for something like mali or warmachine I dont feel buildings are so critical, and for warhammer (sigmar) type games its almost irrelevant. Trees and hedges are the order of the day. Frostgrave is another matter, and I'm keen to get some more 4ground stuff for that (the ruins look very nice). The issue Frostgrave has is that it's supposed to be a ruined city and is generally depicted as snowy and made of stone. The former can be done, but will take a lot of time. The latter can be worked around by building stone foundations a-la Skyrim.

e.g.



Anyway, I like buildings, and anticipate spending most of my hobby budget on them this year.

[The Other Dave]

Nice terrain makes a table, and (for most games) lots of it makes for an interesting game!

That said, I do think there's a fine line between looking good and being practical for gaming, especially in the area of buildings. For example, I love the idea of the card-and-bulkhead terrain for Necromunda, but in practice it leads to lots of bending over and squinting and pushing at guys with fingertips and lots and lots of fudging. Not to mention occasionally forgetting whole parts of your army or - worst of all, for me - reliance on the dreaded laser pointer. So, on balance, I'd really only want to go to the trouble of fully-detailed building interiors in cases where a) the model count is low, and b) there are few enough buildings on the table that you can still get your hands physically into them to manipulate your models.

Of course, I usually play games and scales where "building abstraction" is pretty easy - put some guys in (or, more often, on top of) the building model, and the game just considers them to be "somewhere in the building," end of story. A bit abstract, but for most cases in my experience, more than enough to make buildings tactically interesting through providing vital cover and being tricky to assault. Even Dropzone's actual consideration of where doors and windows are modeled on the building is frankly a bit finicky for me.

[YellowStreak]

I'm with ToD on this one. Love a good looking table and nice terrain.

Seems this is really a discussion on the interior of buildings more than anything else. Small skirmish - more detail is probably better (exactly which window is he looking out of?), bigger scale (e.g. Bolt Action) I guess it's more abstract so not as important.

[Primarch]

@ToD - Laser Pointers have their uses. If you can't get down to table level to check LoS because your grim dark terrain is covered in eyeball gouging spikes and razor-sharp points, a pointer saves you from needing surgery. If you are trying to prove that you can see a smidgeon of a fraction of a guy's kneecap so that you can shoot him without penalty, then perhaps you are taking things too seriously?

I guess the style/rules of a game play a big part in how much detail is necessary inside a building. Certainly buildings became much more important from a military point of view once technology allowed soldiers to project a threat from the building with firearms. Ten guys with axes inside a wooden house will usually lose to one guy with a burning torch outside. Give those ten guys muskets or assault rifles and suddenly the guy with the torch is much less of an issue.
The rules should also support movement within buildings. A five storey tower block in the middle of the board isn't going to see much internal use if it takes the length of the game for your troops to get to the top.

Abstraction can be good, especially in games where units are already abstracted. (E.g. In a game like Black Powder where 24 men represent 500. 1 building represents a small village). I think with games like Bolt Action, that do have a 1:1 scale of soldiers, then the rules should reflect that level of detail. I often find though that when you compare rules for ruins and houses, they don't always line up. E.g. in BA, minis in a building are abstracted, but those in ruins are in whichever place the mini is standing.

I do love nice looking terrain though, so I guess all of the above can be worked around if need be.

[The Other Dave]

@ToD - Laser Pointers have their uses. If you can't get down to table level to check LoS because your grim dark terrain is covered in eyeball gouging spikes and razor-sharp points, a pointer saves you from needing surgery. If you are trying to prove that you can see a smidgeon of a fraction of a guy's kneecap so that you can shoot him without penalty, then perhaps you are taking things too seriously?

Perhaps it's just that my formative experiences with laser pointers-as-gaming aids were with "smidgen of kneecap" guys.

[ashmie]

Buildings. We all live in them, work in them, eat, drink and sleep in them. But how many of us fight in them? (Aside from those of us with spouses who disapprove of our spending money on minis that is).

Ahhh not since my divorce I'm happy to report. It's so peaceful here now. Just me and the Ps4 and some good movies. Work, eat, watch movies, play Fallout 4, sleep.

Seriously though only recently I've seen more value to having terrain and getting more use out of buildings from skirmish games like Dredd and more recently Frostgrave. There is so much terrain in Frostgrave and Mordheim it really makes a difference to the gameplay. I was never much of a fan of shooting through walls in previous editions of 40k so I like the use of cover.

'Smidgen of kneecap guys' lol, that's funny. I tend to go with a 50 percent of the model visibility as a general house rule on most of the games I play these days. Seems fair.

[Konrad]

The laser pointer sees all..... They are handy for Necromunda. I don't know how many times I have been, "Ah, ha! I'm safe behind all these pipes and gantries." Only to find lo and behold, my guy is beautifully framed for a HB shot from halfway across the table.