Art De La Guerre

[KevinD]

Are concave terrain features legitimate?

They can make it particularly difficult to ambush troops who want to exit the terrain in as the ambush marker needs to be deep within the terrain feature in order to avoid any part of the ambush marker extending into the concavity.

An attacker who wants to place obstructing terrain but deny the defender decent ambush locations can place these to his advantage.

[Zoltan]

Why do you ask such a niche question like this Kevin - did you have a “bad experience” in an actual game where there was a concave terrain piece?

[KevinD]

Yes. I don’t think it was intentional on my opponent’s part but that’s the way it worked out.

But having now seen it (and hence not being able to unsee it) the question at hand is can I do this also, or should it be avoided?

[SteveR]

Was the terrain piece in question able to have a 2UD by 3 UD rectangle entirely in the terrain?

I'm having difficulty envisioning how a legal piece could cause a problem such as you describe

[Zoltan]

I'm also having difficulty envisioning the problem terrain piece!

@Kevin - did the piece comply with the Terrain rules (pp.70-72)?

[KevinD]

Yes, I think it did comply with the rules.

For an extreme example, imagine a woods which is generally a 6 UD radius circle, but on has many narrow (less than 1 UD for example) insertions that are spaced less than 1 UD apart into it which are about 1.3 UD in length. (So one half or a bit more looks like a semi circle and the other half is half of a many pointed star.) Now just round off all the corners so there are no sharp corners. If you like you can slightly deform this shape. It will the be an “irregular shape with rounded corners” that fits within a 6 UD circle and contains a 2 UD by 3 UD rectangle (itself mostly on mostly on the semi-circle side). Now deploy it with the semi circle facing the enemy and the “star” part facing you. If your opponent does not eliminate or rotate this piece he will find it very difficult to have a useful ambush in it as anything (except LI) won’t be able to ambush close enough to the edge to escape it in one move and thus before it can be trapped in there by the player who initially placed the feature.

I realize that not all examples will be this blatant or intentional, but look at the odd shaped feature (a woods I assume or maybe a brush, which was actually esthetically pleasing and probably not deliberately designed to be cheesy) used in the Munster tournament this weekend on Facebook. If those indents had been just slightly deeper, as a woods it would be very tough to usefully ambush non-LI in it without them getting trapped. It was seeing this shape that reminded me of this issue.

As an aside I think concave terrain pieces should be prohibited as they seem prone to abuse and bright line rule prohibiting the abusive from non-abusive concave terrain piece seems tough to draft.

[Zoltan]

@Kevin - so your "concern" springs out of a piece of terrain used in a game on another continent, that you saw in a Facebook post, that never actually affected you, but you think theoretically might get exploited into some really sneaky shape per the design specifications that you have now provided on this forum, somewhere, sometime, just maybe?

Lord give me strength!

[babyshark]

I think the answer is that, if the terrain piece complies with the rules regarding terrain shapes then it is legal and can be used. But, at the same time, the actual in-game benefit of such a terrain piece is quite small. For example, no matter how precisely one engineers the shape of the piece, one cannot prevent the opponent from using it as an ambush site. ADLG is not DBM, and is deliberately engineered to reduce the value of edge-case rules exploits that will surprise and discomfit the opponent.

Because everyone knows this, the chances of seeing such a terrain piece in a game are quite small. Not zero, obviously, but still quite small.

Marc

[madaxeman]

[KevinD]

[Neep]

It's irrelevant whether it occurred in a game or not.
If one cannot add something to our understanding, please consider whether your post is taking away from the pleasant and friendly atmosphere of this forum.

[Zoltan]

[lionelrus]

[Mark G Fry]

Sadly, this is not novel or unique to ADLG.

I was UK Armati Umpire for years and we saw a spate of 'sculpted' terrain pieces - e.g curved hills that were designed to hide troops in ambush behind (the player using them claimed they were the remains of Chinese mud-brick forts in the Gobi desert!) or long thin steep hills that allowed a player to place a unit behind them and thus be immune from shooting, but if an enemy unit ventured onto them they had a hard time to evade away.

But as Tim states - I just ruthlessly and consistently outlawed them and in the end sense prevailed.

I can see the challenge that lionelrus outlines - it is all so very familiar and so very 'gamey' (sadly).

[KevinD]

I’d like some guidance about where to draw the line. Clearly the terrain piece I outlined above is abusive and should not be allowed.

But what about less extreme convex shapes such as a kidney-shaped terrain piece?

Or a terrain piece with a central blob (at least 2x3) with a long finger that’s ;1 UD wide (and hence too small to ambush in but would impede movement).