[Auere]

Hey!

A couple of friends and I are working on some rules for fighting battles entirely within forest. I dont know if there are other discussions on the subject, but I thought I would share our experiences.

We have invented rules for fighting within normal forest and dense forest. We playtested both yesterday (dark elves vs wood elves 1000p), and it actually worked VERY well!

The system is that the entire battlefield is covered by wood that gives movement penalties and limited range of sight. Instead of creating terrain as normal, you create inverted terrain like a glade or lake in the forest, where the line of sight is normal.

Below is examples of normal and dense forest terrain generators (we generate terrain randomly using the below generators and place the terrain randomly using scatter die).

Forest
General area penalties: Area is forest. Flyers cannot fly. Units move at ¾ speed, but can march. Units that ignore penalties for moving through terrain ignore these penalties. Visibility is 10’. Chariots roll D6 at the start of their turn. On 1 they take a S6 hit.
Terrain piece movement penalties replace the general area movement penalties.​

Selecting terrain pieces: 2D6
2: River. Impassable. Width: D3+2. D3 bridges
3: Lake. Impassable. Size: 2D6+4
4: Little lake. Impassable. Size: D6+3
5: Stream. Very difficult terrain. Width: D3. D3-1 bridges.
6-7: Glade. No general area penalties. Units that are looking through the glade will only be able to see into 2’ forest on the other side as normal. Size: 2D6+4
8: Dense forest. General area movement penalty is increased to ½. Visibility is 6’ Chariots take a S6 hit on a roll of 1 or 2. Size: 2D6+4
9: Forest Hill. Size: D6+2
10: Impassable forest. Impassable. Blocks LoS. Size: 2D6+4
11: Boulders. Difficult terrain. Hard cover. Size: D6+1
12: Stonehenge. Hard cover. +1 to dispel rollsfor both players.​

Black Forest
General area penalties: Area is dense forest. Flyers cannot fly. Units move at half speed, but can march. Units that ignore penalties for moving through terrain ignore these penalties. Visibility is 6’. Chariots roll D6 at the start of their turn. On 1 or 2 they take a S6 hit.
Terrain piece movement penalties replace the general area movement penalties.​

Selecting terrain pieces: 2D6
2: Lake. Impassable. Size: 2D6+4
3: Quicksand. Very difficult terrain. Size: D6+1. Units attempting to move through or are partly or wholly within the patch at the start of their turn take D6 S3 hits with no armor save distributed as shooting hits.
4: Little lake. Impassable. Size: D6+3
5: Stream. Very difficult terrain. Width: D3. D3-1 bridges.
6-7: Normal forest. General area movement penalty is reduced to ¾. Visibility is 10’ Chariots only take a S6 hit on a roll of 1. Size: 2D6+4
8-9: Glade. No general area penalties. Units that are looking through the glade will only be able to see into 2’ forest on the other side as normal. Size: 2D6+4
10: Forest Hill. Size: D6+2
11: Boulders. Difficult terrain. Hard cover. Size: D6+1
12: Monolith. Magicians within 6’ get +1 to their casting rolls.​

And it actually worked very well! We obviously had some problems with a few of the wood elf special rules and magic items, like moonstone and so on, but we quickly added reasonable rules for these. Like:

- wood elves obviously dont get their "free" forest within a forest
- moonstone transports the unit anywhere but not closer than 10' to enemy units.
- treesinging doenst move forest, but can be used for D6 S5 hits within a range of 18'
- The stupid arcane magic item where every model that enters the same wood as the wearer takes a S5 hit is momentarily just not allowed. We are considering a VERY reduced range like 3'.


These rules are a part of a grand campaign ruleset that we are working on (30 pages so far), and are not meant to be balanced - rather to be funny! Much to our surprice dark elves actually won both games even though they suffered massive penalties to movement and took heavy damage from treesinging. But again - thats just dark elves (and quite a bit of luck!!!)

Just thought I would share! Anyone else tried something similar with forests?

/Auere

 

[Digger]

nice rules it makes a good basis allready, any chance you guys live in Netherlands and need another player?

i see some serious issues for dwarf players (especially if the flamecannon misfires and burns down the entire tabletop), and you might need some special rules for flyers, who may normally not fly and land in woods.

perhaps, flyers may fly and land through woods, but reduce total flight distance to 15".

perhaps cannons could shoot if nearby units have a visual on target?

 

[CaptainSarathai]

I like this idea a LOT. It's actually very innovative.
I have only 2 suggestions:

1- allow wood-elves to choose any single piece of terrain to deploy, instead of deploying their usual wood. The idea is that the woodelves can bring the enemy to battle wherever they please near woodlands (hence the free wood). Within the woods, they would still be able to dictate the battle somewhat.

2- if anything affects a unit within a wood, give it a 6" radius. The largest wood that you can field normally is a 1' diameter wood, according the BRB. Giving a 6" radius would be akin to standing that model in the center of the largest available wood.

 

[ArtificiallyEnhanced]

Sounds cool. Do you have access to the Lustria sourcebook? This has a lot of useful tips for fighting in dense areas of forest like this.

 

[Auere]

Actually we live in copenhager. But come by some time and play a game

Thanks for the responses guys. It made me think on.

Flyers: Actually the rules are pretty simple. Flyers cannot fly within a wood. MAYBE one could allow very small flying models to fly within a forest, but even untis like harpies have what would look like 2-3 meter wings, which would never take them anywhere in forest.

Dwarves: We havent playtested dwarves, but I imagine that they could do better than expected - they just have to bring another kind of army than normally. War machines and normal shooting are really out, unless you find yourself a nicely positioned glade. But a meele dwarf army with the rune that gives a unit an extra move each turn would proberbly do well. In my second game unseen lurker practically speaking won the game for me.

Cannons/stone throwers: Well you dont often see medival armies bringing these to the fight within forest. I dont know why nearby units should be able to target for warmachines and not for other ranged units. I dont want the rules getting to complicated.

Regarding Flaming weapons: Burning down the entire forest would proberbly be disbabled ;-) You could make some rules for parts of the forest burning. Like if a hydra uses flame weapon the forest will ignite on a roll of 1 on D6, and if a flame cannon blows up it could be 1, 2 or 3 on a D6. The fire would then spread 1D6 each turn and do heavy damage to everyone caught. It could work, but it is proberbly a little complicated in the middle of a game.

The 6' radius: Excactly! We just agreed on that yesterday. It makes sense that every model within 6' of the unnamed wood elf arcane artifact takes a S5 hit. (it is still pretty badass considering that he could put a mage on a steed and march him up to a 20+ model unit doing 5-15 S5 hits).

The Wood elf extra forest: I like your idea with wood elves choosing a terrain piece, but some of the terrain pieces can be rather freaky like a river or stonehenge, and have huge impacts on the game (hence why you roll them on double 1s and double 6s). Maybe wood elves could place a glade as they wished instead?

 

[ironmaiden]

Was these rules written in 7th or 8th edition?

 

[Filthor]

7th.
The thread is started december 2009.