{"id":29984,"title":"Talking Terrain","description":"What makes for a good table in Bolt Action? What should you look to include and avoid? Read our top tips!","content":"

20\/07\/23<\/em><\/p>

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What makes for a good table in Bolt Action? What are some of the key things to consider when building your tables? More importantly, what might you want to avoid? Here are some of our top tips for putting together great looking and highly playable tables for Bolt Action.<\/p>

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First and foremost, it is important to remember that Bolt Action is a game and, as such, there are key rules that interact with the type, nature and extent of terrain on the tabletop. This may sound obvious but it can be easy to drift away from this when creating visually impressive and appealing tables: whilst something might look great, if it isn\u2019t enjoyable to play on it\u2019s missing the point.<\/p>

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Equally, Bolt Action is massively rewarding when played with fully painted miniatures battling it out across realistic tabletops with a decent semblance of historical accuracy: if these things didn\u2019t matter, we could just as well play with card counters on a 2D table, using different colours and shapes of paper to represent types of terrain.<\/p>

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So how do you make for a visually appealing game that doesn\u2019t compromise on playability?<\/p>

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For us, having a clear boundary to area terrain is an absolute must, because of the impact that area terrain has on things like cover, movement and assaults. An obvious example of when a lack of clarity around boundaries becomes a problem is that of woods and forests: how often have you played a game of Bolt Action with stand-alone trees and haven\u2019t been exactly sure where the forest or woods begin and the open ground ends? The same is often true for ruins.<\/p>

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A simple way around this is to use a base to mark the area of the forest or woods, with separate trees that can be placed on the base and easily moved when needed. For ruins, ruling that the entire base the ruins are modelled on counts as rough, dense and hard cover, rather than being marked by a specific wall, pile of rubble or broken ground, gives clarity.<\/p>

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Terrain density is another important thing to consider. When you think of iconic battles of World War 2, I am sure that Stalingrad will spring to mind for many. Visually, the chance to create a beautiful, ruined city-scape may be high on a modeller\u2019s bucket list, but be careful not to produce a table that has so much terrain on it the game slows to a crawl. This is especially true if there is a lot of rough ground, dense areas or linear obstacles \u2013 precisely what you would have seen in the city-fighting of Stalingrad \u2013 because your units are either going to have to keep advancing through and over them, or take time to go around them.<\/p>

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Whilst there are no hard and fast rules, a good approximation is to aim for a density of no more than 1\/3rd<\/sup> of a table\u2019s worth of terrain, spread relatively evenly (but not completely uniform).<\/p>

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On the flip side, what if a table has too little terrain? How does this affect playability and enjoyability? Put simply, tables with minimal terrain can quickly become frustrating to play on, as you\u2019ll find your units will have little cover to benefit from. This can force you to make some uncomfortable decisions: do you bunch up in one area and run the risk of losing board control to your opponent (not to mention becoming a tasty target for any multi launchers), or do you push forward in the hope that aggression will overcome an absence of cover? (It probably won\u2019t\u2026)<\/p>

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Again, whilst there are no hard and fast rules, taking the time to make sure there are few or no lines across the width of the table without any form of cover to break these lines up is a good place to start.<\/p>

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Our final consideration is that of statement terrain pieces, like a church, factory, bridge, ruined building or landing site. Whilst the rule of cool scores highly when playing on a table centred on the church at St Mere Eglise, a Stalingrad tank factory, Pegasus Bridge, the Reichstag or Omaha beach, there is a danger that such tables can either channel units into certain areas of the board, create impassable areas or dramatically reduce the playing area available to you and your opponent. If you do include large statement pieces of terrain, consider placing them off-centre and avoid shutting down large areas of the playing area.<\/p>

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If this has got you inspired to start a new terrain project, or maybe add some terrain features to an existing table, please consider buying from Firestorm Games<\/u><\/a> and Wayland Games<\/a>. Not only will you get a great discount on a range of products but, as affiliates, every purchase you make via the links above will help us to continue to produce top quality content on all things Bolt Action!<\/p>","urlTitle":"talking-terrain","url":"\/blog\/talking-terrain\/","editListUrl":"\/my-blogs","editUrl":"\/my-blogs\/edit\/talking-terrain\/","fullUrl":"https:\/\/tabletoptommies.co.uk\/blog\/talking-terrain\/","featured":false,"published":true,"showOnSitemap":true,"hidden":false,"visibility":null,"createdAt":1689789665,"updatedAt":1691618380,"publishedAt":1691618380,"lastReadAt":null,"division":{"id":292213,"name":"Tabletop Tommies"},"tags":[],"metaImage":{"original":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/b6fk3whfjciuzpv0fiqhekftesvukbwqfy5pelvtxvs8pzzo.jpeg?z=1.3&fx=0.61538461538462&fy=0.45058333968078","thumbnail":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/b6fk3whfjciuzpv0fiqhekftesvukbwqfy5pelvtxvs8pzzo.jpeg.jpg?w=1140&h=855&z=1.3&fx=0.61538461538462&fy=0.45058333968078","banner":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/b6fk3whfjciuzpv0fiqhekftesvukbwqfy5pelvtxvs8pzzo.jpeg.jpg?w=1920&h=1440&z=1.3&fx=0.61538461538462&fy=0.45058333968078"},"metaTitle":"","metaDescription":"","keyPhraseCampaignId":null,"series":[],"similarReads":[{"id":34942,"title":"Bolt Action Through the Ages","url":"\/blog\/bolt-action-through-the-ages\/","urlTitle":"bolt-action-through-the-ages","division":292213,"description":"A collection of community-produced supplements for Bolt Action, covering WW1, A Very British Civil War, the Vietnam conflict and modern and ultra-modern actions.","published":true,"metaImage":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/bafy3f3d8gwij4nzh1kimwlt49dgpbv8bgimbr9tokjatvb5.jpeg.jpg?w=1140&h=855","banner":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/bafy3f3d8gwij4nzh1kimwlt49dgpbv8bgimbr9tokjatvb5.jpeg.jpg?w=1920&h=1440"},"hidden":0},{"id":29449,"title":"A Bunch of Tankers","url":"\/blog\/a-bunch-of-tankers\/","urlTitle":"a-bunch-of-tankers","division":292213,"description":"In support of our podcast episode on Tank War, we highlight some of our favourite AFVs that aren't often seen on the Bolt Action table top.","published":true,"metaImage":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/x9ux2zoxpqbscy7eg39vfaf3fuulmnpuvzp7qqmltofueodl.jpeg.jpg?w=1140&h=855&z=1.1&fx=0.45454545454545&fy=0.54545454545455","banner":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/x9ux2zoxpqbscy7eg39vfaf3fuulmnpuvzp7qqmltofueodl.jpeg.jpg?w=1920&h=1440&z=1.1&fx=0.45454545454545&fy=0.54545454545455"},"hidden":0},{"id":42016,"title":"Warlord GT Update - 2024 Bolt Action UK Tournament Players Rankings","url":"\/blog\/2024-bolt-action-uk-tournament-players-rankings-gt-update\/","urlTitle":"2024-bolt-action-uk-tournament-players-rankings-gt-update","division":292213,"description":"Our unofficial ranking system of players at the UK competitive tournaments.","published":true,"metaImage":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/ft8acxioztmh38wjx117gzpcygye8qv2mi643qstnv2wdmhi.png.jpg?w=1140&h=855","banner":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/ft8acxioztmh38wjx117gzpcygye8qv2mi643qstnv2wdmhi.png.jpg?w=1920&h=1440"},"hidden":0}],"labels":[]}