Game setup & terrain

Hi all,

just wondering if you play with the default rules for setting the terrain up - especially in tournaments. It seems to give the defender almost total control of the terrain.

Unless I'm misunderstanding it, I can put 6 pieces of terrain across the middle of the board wherever i like at all, and the attacker can then remove two.

This is significantly more control than FoG / DBM etc (almost any other game I can think of really)

Under the Core Rules if you want to do that you can.

They must be of mixed types.

I can then move or completely remove 2.

So I can then decide where I want the cover to apply. If I have long range weapons I can move up to that cover and then use forests etc to shield me as I rain death down upon you.

Or if I have a small elite high VBU force (Teutons or Crusader Knights) I can create channels for charging and move two terrain pieces into your deployment zone so I break up your deployment whilst calculating where I want to strike.

You are right to think that terrain placement is important in Impetus, equally the ability to modify terrain placements to gain your best advantage as an attacker is a skill you will need to acquire.

Take a look at Advanced Impetus. For most games it is 3 pieces of terrain.

Ah didn't notice that I'll take a look. I just kind of looked over the setup rules expecting to find the usual semi-random placement of terrain with players able to influence it to various degrees.. the rules are very close to a 'we couldn't actually be bothered to write a rule here, so just put some terrain down and you'll be okay or play a historical scenario'.. feels a bit weird considering the rest of the rules are excellent.

I agree that the terrain set up is a bit on the weak side in Impetus. We've toyed with using different approaches for our games.

A fair call. What mechanism(s) do you guys use?

Impetus terrain has the advantage of speedy setup, other systems can get bogged down in rolling for type of terrain by quadrant modified by 3 dice rolls and the Pantone Colour number of your ancient grannies teeth...

I've been using the sword and spear one which is very simple, since we're currently having an intra-club debate on the better system (between Impetus and S&S).

it's just 2d6 the first one is where you put it.
1: left edge. 2: right edge.. etc

2nd one is allow oppo to alter it
1-2: no ; 3: move 10cm.. etc

Baroque will introduce a different type of terrain placement. I think I will publish also as a free pdf as it can work also for Impetus (and will be used for Impetus 2, maybe with few adjustements)