Canals in Mordheim question

I'm not really sure if this is counted as gameplay or scenery or both, but I was curious if you lot thought there was such a thing as too many Canals usge.

Basically this boils fomr the gaming board i'm making which is mad eup of 120cmx120 cm tiles which all have some level of canal system on.

The reason I ask is because so far 4 out of the 6 tiles have a canal either running across them or running to the middle and then turning 90degrees and continuing off the side. These all link up nicely but i'm wondering if it provided shooting warbands with too much of an edge.

There will be 3-4 bridges for ways across the water but other than that would this effect gameplay to the degree where shooty warbands will have a much bigger advantage.

below is a drawing of that i mean for the board


and heres an example of a wip canal from an older pic i took. their 3inches roughly in width




thanks for any comments

LOOKS COOL, Duce!

I'm working [kind of ] on a gaming board made up TOTALLY of smallish islands; SO... the canals are ACTUALLY fairly conservative from my perspective. The ONLY creatures I could see having an advantage with ALL the watery terrain would be amphibians. AND who'd be CRASS enough to have Lizardmen in Mordheim? [I'm SURE this should get me some hate mail ]

@Duce - I'm planning on building a board with canals on it too, and was struggling with the same, very thorny, question. How much is too much? In the end, I'm going with 3 boards, each 2 feet by 4 feet, which can be put together to make either a 4 by 4 board or a 4 by six board. Two of the boards will have straight canals, running from long edge to long edge, about ten inches from one of the short board edges. The other will have a zig-zag, with the canal coming in the long board edge, turning 90 degrees and going across the width of the board, and then turning another 90 degrees so it can join up with either of the other two boards.

Looking at it, I'd say that your board is more navigable than what I have planned, so I don't think it will give shooters too much of an advantage. Go for it! Looking forward to seeing pics of it all completed!

I'd say that if you don't have large promenades at both sides of the canals, then it won't favour shooting too much. And you could also build houses across them etc. to obstruct lines of sight a little.

I like your idea.

On your diagram, you have little blue squares in the middle of ever line. Are you planning on adding water to the middle of every side of every board?

If so, I would urge you not to. A much easier way to do it would to just detail the (middle of all the) sides on your boards, so that if a canal ends up butting into it, it looks like a wall (or drain, or w/e), But if the canal does NOT but up next to it, you would not even notice.

I do hope you make this board, it sounds awesome.

Enjoy,

@Eliazar - that's a great idea! About houses spanning the canal, I mean. Consider it well and truly borrowed for my board.

[Edit]: And Ashton, I think you're right. It's exactly what i was thinking for my own board. Detail the edge of the board that the canal will meet so that it looks like a little arched sewer or underpass. That'll do the trick!

From my experience with a river/canal heavy board i´d say that a waterway should have 3-4 (or even more) crossingpoints. These can be bridges, boats, overhanging buildings from which you can jump over the waterway (restrict those if both are playing low initiative warbands like the undead), rubble forming a kind of ford etc. If you have fewer than that it is too easy to block these chokepoints or to dominate them with missile weapons and magic. If there are too many crossingpoints to cover effectively the game is much more balanced and tactically challenging.
Missile weapons aren´t the only thing benefitting from a chokepoint, you can block them quite effectively with dangerous heroes like possessed or other close combat monsters or even objects like carts (if you play with the Empire in Flames rules). Often the mere threat of them denies your opponent the use of that particular chokepoint.
A friend of mine is playing the carnival of chaos, and one of his favourite tactics is to park his plague cart on a bridge, thus blocking it for much of a game. We should have never allowed it´s use in Mordheim

Sounds like a lot of fun, though, Horatius!

I had thought of using boats as sort of 'stepping stones' across a canal or river (I was thinking of having one or two of them as permanent terrain features, overturned and stuck in the mud), but the overhanging buildings creating a small enough gap is a nice idea too. I've also been thinking of a 'Bridge of Sighs' type building ,which could be cool. I also like the idea of a rubble 'ford'.

Lots of ideas here, Duce! I think you've hit on a very interesting topic!

Unfortently Ashton i've already done the small water bits on 4 of the boards, but I could do as you said for the remaining 2 and not put water on them , but detail a sewer or underground drain on them.

For the Canals the other point I had to decide was do i make it much deeper and have lower walkways, but then this leads it open to being abused by powerful melee teams who just use the walkways to creep up on shooty teams who could maybe not get line of sight.

So far i've done 2 bridges as crossing ways, nothing special, also thought of making a ruined house, a boat people can hop over the canal (docked but it is wide enough to allow free movement on and off) and maybe a collapsed ruin which acts as a bridge.

I'm not sure i'm going to add any prutruding walling or such, the bonus is i can place my buildings over the smaller joins in the boards and noone sees the water.

Also to note the drawing is made up of 6 boards which I can turn around to make an almost endless canal system.means I can set them up to allow street fight etc and swap around depending on what i'm in the mood for.

You could also design small platforms to put over the ponds created accros your board by these small water squares. You'd get a much more dynamic table with a lot of level of height here and there

Good point, JohnYoung. In fact, if you wanted, you could easily cover over those little 'pockets' of water by putting a building down on top of them, or, of course, leave them open to represent pools, ponds, wells, etc.

I like the idea of a ruined building spanning the canal - I might have to borrow that idea as well...