What follows is a comprehensive guideline on building the terrain for your Legion tournament.

Set up

Terrain should be set up prior to the start of an event, as it can tend to be a lengthy process. Typically the TO and/or marshall, as well as any other helpers the TO might have should assist in this process and provide multiple points of view.

Quantity

Terrain should cover roughly 25% of the board when placed all to one side. There should be a mix of terrain that is tall enough to block line of sight from trooper minis, as well as terrain that can be used for “firing positions”, however the ratio of LOS blocking terrain to smaller terrain can (and should) vary to keep maps different and interesting.

Terrain Types

Terrain generally falls into 3 categories: LOS-blocking terrain, area terrain, and scatter terrain. LOS-blocking includes items that are tall enough to completely block line of sight to standard trooper minis; area terrain does not block line of sight, but provides cover to units shooting through it (forests, rubble, etc.); and scatter terrain is smaller items (like barricades or random mechanical pieces) that are perfectly suited to filling up leftover empty space or breaking up long firing lanes.

The distribution of these terrain types can vary from table to table, but we recommend providing a minimum of 33% and a maximum of 66% LOS-blocking terrain (within the total ~25% table coverage). These values are very easy to measure with range rulers on the table, as shown in the diagrams below. Most tables will sit somewhere between these two extremes, but it is generally not recommended to go above or below these limits.

Placement

There are many things to keep in mind when actually placing terrain on the table. Visualizing the possible deployment zones as well as where objectives might get placed are key. The below diagram is an overlay of all of the possible deployment zones, as well as where any fixed objectives could get placed. Note that Red player gets roughly the top left, while Blue player gets the bottom right, and the top right / bottom left are hardly used.

General Tips

1. Do not over-crowd deployment zones, so that larger bases can find places to deploy

2. The first key position is automatically placed in the middle. Do NOT place your largest piece of terrain there.  You can cheat this a little by purposefully putting something like a control panel, crate or other item closest to the center, ensuring it is not a large unwieldy piece.

3. Avoid putting multi-level terrain in the middle, as it presents confusion as to whether or not the first supply of Recover the Supplies gets placed on top, middle, bottom, etc.

4. If you do put any terrain in the middle, consider ensuring that troopers have a way of reaching the middle objective without having to climb or jump.  Ramps are best. Ladders as a last resort.

Determining Cover

What type of Cover a specific piece of terrain provides to different types of units should be discussed before the game starts. To aid in this, the TO should provide Terrain Cheat Sheets (see below) to aid in interpretation, but ultimately it is up to the players to agree.  Your pre-event briefing should emphasize that the sheets are not all encompassing and that if players cannot agree, a judge can assist them.

Whether or not a piece of terrain should be considered Light or Heavy Cover is determined NOT by how much of a mini or unit that terrain is currently covering during an attack, but rather based on what type of material that terrain is representing. If the terrain is representing something harder like wood, earth, stone, or metals, than this should be considered Heavy Cover. If rather the terrain is just obscuring the attacker’s view (like with tall grass or bushes, or snow) then this should be considered Light Cover. Cover vs Concealment for you military folk.

Terrain	Cover Type	Trooper Movement	Ground Vehicle Movement	Repulsor Vehicle Movement
Building	Heavy	Impassable	Impassable	Open
Dense Woods	Heavy	Difficult	Impassable	Open

Link to terrain cards: HERE

When looking at your terrain you may freak out after reading this when you realize “oh no, my terrain is mostly heavy cover, and no light cover!”. This is absolutely fine. Troopers will still get light cover from being out in the open and having a suppression token. 

Common Practices

It can be easy to fall into some traps when building a table. Building a truly great and memorable table can be quite easy. Let’s talk about building a playable but also appealing looking city table:  

Cities and towns are usually laid out in lines, which in turn creates firing lines for shooters to fight in an urban environment, as well as providing good places to duck and hide, or fight over terrain.   

A common trap in laying out multiple tables can be to align any streets along the board edges, which can be good for some deployments, and troublesome for others. Even if you are using more of the same terrain, for several tables, you can create dynamic play experiences by just rotating your alignment 45 degrees either direction, and forcing the lines of play to be diagonal to the board edges. This will drastically change the deployment layouts, as well as the lines of fire for play, and ensure differing play experiences between tables.

Final Note: When assigning players to tables, if you’ve randomized your layouts on tables, you can ensure players have the most dynamic play by randomizing their table numbers rather than assigning the top players to the lowest table numbers. Players unlikely to play on the same table twice.