Arena Rex Forums

Are their rules for how terrain should be placed? The rule book says just to use some different hazards, but I was wondering if there are guidelines people usually follow or a specific set of rules for tournaments.

Not to my knowledge. I usually use between three and six pieces with a symmetric distribution, a mix of pillars, fences and pits.

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The game changes a lot depending on terrain but because none of it is "go here for protection" style terrain where it gets placed isn't tremendously relevant. Where you put the terrain largely determines where players will move to avoid it or position themselves to protect against it so all that matters is that you scatter enough around to make it so there's not a large open space to avoid it entirely.

I find 5-7 feels about right. You don't always need a pit but they're nice to have. Wounding/Lethal Hazards generally are areas of the board players avoid but attempt to push their opponents towards. If you make them central, players flank each other a bit more, if you put them out towards the edge you get more of a central rumble. Mixing those two configurations up makes for varied and interesting table configurations.

Depends on what the teams are, in my opinion. When I'm against my buddy's beast pack, I don't play with pits, since he can push my models but I can't push his. Otherwise, I like a good mix of mostly standard terrain plus one or two wounding terrain pieces.

The whole "don't play with pits if one side plays titans" thing still bothers me. I get that it feels unfair that they can't be pushed, but... ungh. It suggests a problem with the game if the special rules of a class of models makes people not play a certain type of terrain.

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That makes sense to me. I am assuming Titans are balanced with can't be pushed in mind.

They... probably are....?

For one, most of them don't have a ton of pushes themselves. The only ones that can push you more than 2" are Dex (and someone has done something horribly wrong if you get to pit someone with Overrun), Nero, and Ace though their riders can certainly add quite a bit. Most of them aren't super survivable, have a pretty low ATK and/or damage and kind of rely on terrain to do the job. Ace is something of an exception, but he also isn't able to redirect particularly well in spite of Momentum due to Juggernaut. Nero2 is scary though if he hangs out near a pit.

The bigger issue is probably the potential to create a standoff where I titan hangs out near a pit and the other player hangs near not the pit without any advantage in engaging. Haven't encountered this, but its a possible problem.

Do you mean that the titan wants to stay near the pit to capitalise on its advantage, whereas the opponent doesn't want to go near the pit for the opposite reason, and so they just stare each other down? I see the point in that, but would think the same would apply whenever one side has some maneuver/push advantage that the other doesn't.

And I think many games have terrain issues like this. In a traditional fantasy wargame, they usually have forests as a terrain feature, and certain armies and models that get an advantage to fighting around forests. And then you have the problem of it feeling unfair for the sylvine player if there are too few forests, but feeling unfair for the other player if there are too many.

You could argue the same here... that if you don't include lethal hazards when one side plays titans, then that is unfair for the titans, since their hazard advantage is part of their design.

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Right, but in those cases most games have ranged attacks to dislodge models or scenario elements to prevent turtling. There's just a few ways, particularly with last man standing, to generate a scenario where whoever engages loses, which is the kind of problem that slowly creeps into games as players get more experience because its not an intuitive strategy or what people really want out of the game; it just tends to win.

Titans do have their balances, and LunarSol makes a good point about their low survivability and lack of pushes from most models. The other downside to titans is, for the two-stage models, you're forced to take both stages, and usually one of them is underwhelming.

I suppose I'll try pits next time. Perhaps I just had a knee-jerk reaction to not being able to push, which is pretty tantamount to the game.