Fully Grounded: #5 Toppled Pillar (Patreon)

This is part of the terrain series, other entries can be found at the contents page here.  

Terrain from Emporium Miniatures. Link:  https://www.etsy.com/shop/EmporiumMiniatures 

• Number: 2
• Size: 4x1
• Passive: No
• Activate: Yes
• Obstacle: Yes
• Classification: Defensive

The other half of the Stone Columns "duo", the Toppled Pillar is one of my preferred pieces of terrain for protecting a support or archer survivor because of its activated ability. 

For the most part, the pillar is a piece of terrain that has low usage on the streams I have seen, this is in part because blocking terrain just isn't important in this game and in part because the way that you activate it is very costly.

If one could move, attack, move by splitting your movement up into two chunks in Monster, the Pillar would become a premium piece of terrain because it would be possible to step out, attack, and then retreat. But this operation requires use of Dash, or Surge (if you are hopping over the pillar), and as such this terrain isn't worth too much.

However, a pure support survivor who does not attack, or attacks as little as possible can use this to ensure that the monster never has line of sight to them. Combining that with a Fecal Salve can make the support survivor effectively non target-able, especially when you can hop over the long side if the monster gets around the pillar.

I think it is worth mentioning that this terrain would have been a LOT better if you could use your movement (knight) to hop over, rather than the actual activation. This is something that probably would never change, but if you are creating your own terrain at some point, remember this. 

This terrain can be used in the same way as other obstacles, it can be deployed to shield very dangerous terrain (sinkhole, lava pool) in order to avoid a survivor being suffering knockback into it. Check the stone columns piece for an example of how this is done. It does require smart deployment of the terrain and good positioning from the survivors because of the deployment limitations on this terrain and the way that the super dangerous terrain is always stuck next to the monster at the start. I'll demonstrate this on stream at some point I'm sure.

Finally, never forget that this terrain can be climbed over by the monster but it is NOT destructible.