The Last Hundred Yards uses contour lines on the game map for elevations, which sounds nice but, to me, actually make LOS around hills more complex rather than clearer.
I was going to post yesterday on this topic and one of the things I was going to mention was The Last Hundred Yards.
One of the things (and this is with The Last Hundred Yards too) is making maps "prettier"...it comes at a cost which is often making the line of sight more difficult.
I'm going to bang on about my favourite solitaire game - so look away if you wish.
Fields of FireIt's pretty simplistic in Fields of Fire.
1st aspect of the ruleLine of sight is always available to adjacent cards.
2nd aspect of the ruleLine of sight is reciprocal. When an enemy can see your card, you cans see the enemy card
3rd aspect of the ruleThe terrain cards have a either a white or green solid or dotted border. The dotted/solid aspect isn't related to line of sight but actually affects fire modifiers into the card. The line of sight aspect is the green and white coloured border
(1st picture). A white border (dotted or solid) has line of sight through the card and a solid border stops line of sight. The border on the firer's card does not matter to the firer's line of sight.
4th aspect of the ruleLine of sight is only slightly complicated by elevation
(2nd picture)...which is also kept fairly basic. A unit can either be in the upper floor of a building (normal 2 story building or church tower) or on a normal terrain card place don top of (one or many) hills terrain cards.
This is all explained over 2 pages (with graphic examples) on the new revised Fields of Fire ruleset.
Weigh this up against the Line of Sight rules for The Last Hundred Yards which are only a page (no graphic examples) and are considerably more complicated (in my opinion) and, I think, made worse with the maps. Terrain has a huge part to play on how Line of Sight works in a game. The terrain in TLHY has non-significant terrain which adds clutter and, at least initially, some confusion. It also has hills depicted with contours. But there are light and heavy contours which make a difference on line of sight. Then there's the particularly complicated aspect of line of sight in a built up area...sown a street a particular enemy unit may (or may not) have line of sight to your troops on the street.
I can't remember the specifics - but I did find TLHY line of sight particularly complicated.
There's a warm familiarity to older maps in older games (and some new ones too) where it's just plain old colours for elevation and there's no blurred lines on whether that is a heavy woods hex or a light woods hex or whether that is a cultivated field or an orchard. Shadows of features, unimportant minor terrain features, unclear elevation - they all help to overcomplicate the matter -- but they can be simplified even then.