Terrain gives the board height: every tile carries a level from 0 to 5, drawn dark when low and light when high. The lit side is the high side, and a tap on the legend chip writes the exact number on every tile, so a read is never a guess.
Five maps ship today: Caldera, Summit, Ridge, Canyon, and Twin Peaks, each a different argument about who owns the high ground. All five live in Kindling and in private boards you Ignite yourself while they earn their way into rated play. Everything else in Torris still applies: trails burn, ash blocks, the last flame with a move wins. Height changes one thing only, where a slide may go, and that one thing changes everything.
The law is one sentence: slide down any drop, climb one step at a time. Descent is always free, however far it falls, rim to basin in a single move. A rising slide may only step up one level per tile; ask for two and the path is blocked, and the board says so plainly: Too steep. Surge scales it.
Surge is the exception, once a game. A surged slide ignores the climb limit on top of its usual license to cross ash, so one charge can take a wall the law forbids. The game refuses a Surge that buys nothing: if the slide was already legal, the charge stays in your pocket. On a terrain board an unspent Surge is the key to a door your rival believes is locked; hold it accordingly.
Edges between tiles come in three weights. A step of one level is a terrace, free in both directions. A rise of exactly two is a riser: free coming down, Surge only going up. A gap of three or more is a cliff, and a cliff is a wall, not a slope: it blocks the slide in both directions, the drop as much as the climb, and not even Surge crosses it.
Only Ridge and Canyon carry a true cliff, one authored notch per board, and every cliff has a way around. When a line dies at a sheer face, the answer is never force. Find the pass.
A high rim around a sunken heart. Both flames start on the rim, so the opening is a Classic style knife fight bent into a ring. The basin is free to enter from anywhere, all of it is descent, but the way back out is slow, one terrace at a time. Count the basin before you dive: once your rim burns behind you, the low ground has to hold more moves than your rival's ground does.
Caldera turned inside out: a high plateau in the center, a low rim where both flames begin. One ledge stands between the floor and the roof. Whoever takes it first holds ground the rival can only reach the same slow way, and every plateau tile is a banked move the fight below cannot touch. Watch the ledge itself: ash on the doorstep locks the door.
A spine of level 5 splits the board, flanks stepping down to both sides. One pass cuts the spine, a riser Surge can take in a single leap; one notch is a true cliff nothing crosses. Duels only. The whole map is a single question: who owns the pass. Cross early and the fight happens on their flank; sit on it and the spine fights for you.
Ridge inverted: a sunken channel between two sheer banks. Dropping in is free from anywhere; climbing out the far side is the whole problem. Duels only. Two honest plans exist: cross the floor early and take the fight to their bank, or refuse to cross at all and play the canyon as a moat while their side burns down.
Every flame starts on its own summit with the whole map downhill from home. The opening is pure initiative: descend early to shape the middle, or spend nothing and bank your peak as endgame ground. The saddle between the peaks decides most games. A summit you never left is worth exactly the tiles still standing on it, and no rival can climb up to spend them for you.
Ability effects are height blind; the climb law gates only the slide itself. Douse reopens a burned tile, which on terrain can mean reopening the one ramp out of a basin, but it never changes a tile's height. Firebreak torches a tile beside your landing at any level, the one way to poison high ground you cannot reach yet. Phase passes through a rival's body, never through a slope. Trailblazer still slides without burning.
Backburn never appears on a terrain board: both twists eat the rim, so the game refuses the combination outright.
Pick a map on the Terrain row when you Ignite a private board, or spar one in Kindling. Terrain composes with the Hearth board at 7×7 and 9×9, Basalt at radius 3 and 4, and Flint at sides 7 and 9. The 5×5 Turbo board is too small to hold a mountain, and rated queues and the Daily stay flat while the maps prove themselves.