How much Terrain to use?

[Grass4hopper]

How many pieces would you use for a 2 player game?
what about 3-5 player game?
How sturdy would you make the terrain?

Thanks for you input

[VitorFaria]

Don't worry too much about that. The game works with many styles and quantities of cover.

Build some random walls and you're set for an intro game!

Just keep in mind that terrain needs to be 3 bricks high to count as cover.

[Blorf]

The typical answer to this is "build the type of game you want to play." This is completely and entirely true—but unhelpful to a beginner. Here are a few starting suggestions. Try some things out and adjust from there to your liking!

- The game plays well with a wide range.

- A good starting point is enough cover that most frames can be deployed into cover, plus a few extra bits.

- It's generally accepted that "light" cover takes only one hit. "medium" cover takes 2–3 hits. Anything soaking 4 or more would be "heavy" cover. It's a good idea to have a mix of all types. A game would be fine with all light and medium cover, but you should probably avoid having a great deal of heavy cover all over the board. Heavy cover slows the game down.

- It's good to also mix up the space between cover. Avoid the urge to scatter it evenly around the field.

Here are some good examples.

Small bits of scattered cover work fine.
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=6832
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=4278

Small-to-medium scattered cover is fairly popular, too:
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=6254
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=6071

This one has a lot of variety in weight and density:
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=6247

Great big set pieces are impressive and lots of fun, but sometimes you have to enact special rules about how to destroy them so they don't become impenetrable:
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=5316
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=5337
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=6898

Hope that helps!

[Mantisking]

Basically what Blorf wrote. Take a look through the Battle Reports forum and see what other people have put on their tables.

[Hackjob]

Blorf has some good points. I the terrain is too durable, it enables "turtleing." This is a small problen I have had in some of my games. I just played a game with more smaller pieces and since they are destroyed more frequently it encourages players to keep on the move as the cover is shot out around them.

Usually, more cover makes the frames more survivable, and less cover makes the game more deadly.

I am a fan of more cover in general, thinking "more cover is more interesting." However, you don't just want to overfill the board, make areas that have cover, but also include open areas to force player to make decisions. You don't want them thinking "I'm safe wherever I go." I usually try to set up my boards in a "realistic looking" way, that is- buildings and ruins are set along avenues, and forested areas are usually seperate from most buildings. A realistic looking map will usually have naturally occuring areas of mixed density, like parking lots, streets and parks in urban areas, with fields and commercial farming, forests and mining operations in more rural settings.

[Grass4hopper]

Thanks for the advice, I really appreciate it.