Do Terraclips give you an advantage?

[Barnaberible]

Recently got some terraclips and while putting together my first piece (a recreation of the star theatre) I found myslef planning routes and tactics for various strategies when playing on it.

The subsequent game I played I won 8-0 McMourning vs Ramos and cant help thinking that having put the clips together myself this gave me an advantage.

What are other people thoughts on this?

[edonil]

Depends on how you lay it out. If both dies of the map are evenly laid out, with equal amounts of cover to both sides and with equal complexity of routes, it shouldn't be too much of an advantage. If that's a concern, I'd recommend giving your opponent about 15 minutes or so to look over the map and concede to them the ability to pick deployment areas.

[Sholto]

You could also agree to rotate the table randomly before flipping for deployment zones.

However, there is one advantage you cannot do much about, and that is that some Terraclips layouts (esp Sewers or indoors ones) can be tough for ranged crews trying to keep an enemy at bay. But - hey - everyone loves a challenge

[Omenbringer]

Design is very important with terraclips (or any board for that matter) as crews with lots of mobility (high Wk values, Spirit, flight/ float or Fast/ Nimble) or that can ignore LOS when targetting (Guild Austringers are probably the best example of this) are going to have an advantage (though it would be the same on any heavily terrained board).

Additionally, if you did the entire layout then you would have an advantage since you placed everything, a decent work around (that doesn't take lots of time) is to mock up a few buildings (with lots of access points) then alternate placing them around the board filling in the gaps with sections of road and such. This way both of you will have had a hand in creating the board.

[Joel]

generally, if I design a board I give my opponent pleny of chance to see all the workings of it before a game - if they still seem unclear I allow them to choose deployment type and location so that they can maximize any advantage they percieve.

of course, there isn't one - I take board design to heart and I make sure to look at it from every angle and for every scenario to make sure it works...only issues are supply wagon really - and that can simply be reflipped

[Guild Monkee]

I try and make boards symetrical to avoid any advantage either way. The other option is to build sections e.g. 1'x1' and then put them together just before the game. You could even take it in turns to place the next one. I transport my board by spliting it like that and it goes back together really quickly.