Welcome back to Metawatch Warhammer 40,000 – your go-to series to learn all the hot topics and tricks of the trade for competitive gaming on the battlefields of the 41st Millennium.
Using terrain effectively can give you a significant advantage in battle, so whether you’re jumping into a pick-up game or a tournament match, it’s essential to consider the distribution and layout of your terrain pieces. With the US Open events coming up, our resident events guru Mike Brandt shares his approach to building balanced battlefields for Grand Tournament play in the 41st Millennium.
Mike: Terrain is as intrinsic to the game – and thus the meta – of Warhammer 40,000 as the missions and core rules themselves. In this edition of Warhammer 40,000 Metawatch, we’re taking a break from our regularly scheduled programme to discuss several key terrain considerations.
What’s more, these are the very same terrain principles that will be used in the US Open Roadshows held later this year – in Orlando, Florida (August 14th-16th), New Orleans, Louisiana (October 1st-3rd), and Austin, Texas (November 19th-21st). At the time of writing, a handful of spots remain in New Orleans for Warhammer 40,000 and Orlando for Warhammer Age of Sigmar, so grab the last few tickets to these fantastic events today.
The layout, density, and type of terrain being used dramatically impacts how a battle plays out. One of the great strengths of Warhammer 40,000 is the entirely fresh and new gaming experience players can have just by changing up the nature of the terrain on a given table. For the purposes of the US Roadshow, we’ve paid special attention to battlefield aesthetics, layout diversity, balance, and fairness. Let’s take a look at each of these in turn.
Aesthetics
Warhammer 40,000 is a stunningly visual game, stoking the imagination with beautifully painted, finely detailed miniatures as they battle it out amongst the devastated ruins of a futuristic war zone. Every table of terrain used at the US Open GTs will look fantastic, with different colours and styles to match the look and feel of each battlefield.
Below you can see both US Open GT layouts decked out in fully-painted scenery. Read on for diagrams of these layouts and Mike’s thinking behind each arrangement.
Layout Diversity
Each game in a given round of the tournament will use the same terrain layout on every table. However, the GT Missions for Warhammer 40,000 are quite diverse when it comes to deployment zones, and the newer board sizes introduced with this edition are tighter and more action-packed than the standard table size of 72″x48″ used previously.
That means that one single terrain layout probably won’t suit every single mission. Therefore, at the Opens, we’re using two different layouts depending on the deployment zone and round. These will change by the day to add variety and to challenge players to adjust to different factors and variables on the fly. The most successful generals are often the ones who can adapt to whatever they’re faced with.
Balance
Warhammer 40,000 caters for a wide variety of play styles. Long-range specialists like the Astra Militarum and T’au Empire are the polar opposites to melee-focused forces such as Tyranids or Chaos Daemons, for example.
Terrain placement needs to take these contrasting styles into account. Too much Obscuring terrain makes it too easy for close combat-oriented armies to cross the board unencumbered, leaving them free to slaughter their enemies wholesale. Too little, and the very same armies can be shot off the table in the first turn.
With the layouts we’ve chosen for the US Open events, the goal is a combination of risk and reward when it comes to remaining hidden or exposed. An army can deploy with a substantial level of protection from first-turn shooting, but a lower level of board presence due to how far back some units might be from key positions on the battlefield.
The concept of balance also comes into play for Obscuring terrain. This rule allows players and organisers a great deal more freedom when creating aesthetically pleasing, gaming-friendly battlefields. By identifying the outline of Obscuring pieces, you can make terrain block line of sight that otherwise permitted “gamey” and unrealistic shots in the past (e.g. firing a battle cannon shell through several windows at the barely visible corner of a rival battle tank).
That said, this same rule permits line of sight as normal to units inside or firing out of Obscuring terrain. As a result, we took care to ensure a mix of Obscuring terrain elements that include true, physical, line-of-sight blockage, as well as openings (such as windows). This ensures that units can enter some Obscuring terrain without being overly exposed, but aren’t always protected from all angles.
Terrain Piece Types
With all that in mind, let’s take a closer look at our two US Open tournament layouts. Each features three types of terrain piece.
Terrain Piece 1 elements will almost always be “true” line-of-sight blocking pieces (i.e. obstructed windows, solid walls, few lines of sight drawable through the physical terrain pieces themselves).
For Terrain Piece 2 elements, the opposite is true – the physical terrain elements are themselves quite porous, so while Obscuring makes the entire piece line-of-sight blocking, this benefit largely dissipates once your units enter the terrain.
For Terrain Piece 3 elements, the terrain will be fairly broken up, reflecting their Dense Cover rules.
A Note on Objective Placement: For the US Open events, following the guideline of the Grand Tournament Mission Pack 2021, no Objectives may be placed on any of the physical terrain elements. However, there is an “otherwise noted” caveat that they may end up on top of the area-terrain bases for some elements in certain missions. Where this occurs, it has been considered in the overall terrain layout and selection of mission/deployment according to layout.
Fairness
No game is ever perfectly fair. Nevertheless, at the US Open events this year, we aim to level as many external factors as possible so it’s the players and their armies who determine victory or defeat. In classic matched play fashion, each game is all about the contest between the opponents themselves as they engage across the table, matching wits, rolling dice, and building connections with their fellow Warhammer fans. This goal underpins the decision to use standardised terrain layouts across the many battles of Warhammer at the US Open GTs.
Another component to determining fairness includes the type of models people will be using. While the concepts of breachable terrain, and limitations upon the free movement of larger vehicles and monsters, present a flavorful gaming experience, an overly restrictive terrain set-up can create unintended situations. The last thing we want, for example, is an impressive centerpiece model being unable to move across the battlefield to engage with the enemy forces and contest the mission.
Accordingly, while the terrain used at the US Opens will be on area-terrain bases, the physical elements on those pieces will not be situated in such a way as to prevent models like Imperial Knights or large Tyranid bio-constructs from manoeuvring across the battlefield. They may not always be able to move in perfectly straight lines, but there will be no locations that are simply blocked off to them entirely.
We couldn’t be more excited to bring large, exciting Warhammer tournaments to Orlando, New Orleans, and Austin this year. We also look forward to attending increasing numbers of events all over the world in the future! Since the opening of US Open registration, we’ve seen many questions about the terrain layouts in the Warhammer 40,000 GT packet, and are happy to share a bit more about the structure and philosophy behind those layouts.
Keep in mind, there is no single, official way to set up and use terrain for Warhammer 40,000 – variety and experimentation are always fun. We may find ourselves using modified or even noticeably different layouts at future events, pending feedback and the continuing evolution of the game itself. While we hope this article provides some useful insight for players and organisers looking for a place to start, all that really matters to count as a great Warhammer 40,000 battlefield is great looking terrain that contributes to fun, memorable battles.
In future months, we’ll return to our regularly scheduled Metawatch programming, as we cover results from events the world over (including the US Opens). More Warhammer is being played more often all over the world with each passing week, and there’s much to cover in July.
Thanks, Mike. If you’re looking to follow Mike’s guidelines for populating a battlefield using his principles of aesthetics, layout diversity, balance, and fairness, check out the full Warhammer 40,000 terrain range on games-workshop.com for everything you need.