My group has had a lot of good experiences with a "Neighborhood" style board. Basically I set up a two rows of buildings of different types, including some made of 2 L-shaped ruins and some sealed and climbable, with something kinda large in the very center and a set of barricades in between some of the buildings. Completely mirrored it works really well and seems balanced between shooting and melee.

Fish tank products make for good terrain if you want to simulate a weird xeno world. Fish tank grates and other things are great too for industrial stuff and what not

It's like auspex lives in my head. I needed this video so badly

My friends and I saw the uselessness of the catwalks but wanted to have battles that take place at all kinds of levels within an city. So we made a house rule "High ground" When a model (excluding monsters and vehicles) is on a platform at least 3.5in (we measured our terrain to get that number) high they have this rule. Enemy units that are below this height threshold when shooting subtract 1 from hit. When measuring the distance it must be done from the lower base angled up at the "High ground" model (slightly increasing the distance of course) but when a model HAS high ground and is shooting down the distance is measured completely horizontally. It isn't perfect but it did cause us to start using flying units more. If you try it out and like it or have suggestions to improve it feel free to chime in. We're always trying to improve house rules.

One technique that my friends and I use to create a more 'dynamic', yet still fairly balanced table, is to set up the board symmetrically in a tournament style - then to 'scatter' each piece of terrain D6 inches using the old GW scatter die. If the die lands on a 'direct hit' you do not move the terrain. This creates great battlefields and gives a more dynamic play experience. Try it out!

Frontline Gaming makes pretty awesome mats, mousepad material, very sturdy. Been using the same ones for a couple years and I play around once a month.

Im old school. I prefer 4x4 for 1000pt games and 6x4 for 2000pt. I would even play 500pt games on 4x4 but increase the terrain with more line of sight blocking terrain. I like Hills and Large Rocks for this. You never see hills in 40k games now.

Super informative, as usual. Thank you! I think the 44"x60" for 1000pt games would make sense for some kinds of games. Like Knights vs. Knights or bikes vs. Seraphim. But not so much for anything else.

How our local group does it is to registrer in our Nerdstore when we will be having a match and when we arrive we will accept whatever random pile of terrain is eranged for us. Then play with the gazes of hate from the magic player table who have to play with 8 less players, because we took 2 tables for a 1v1.

Still use the 6 x 4 mats because I made a wooden table myself. The 'extra' space is great for keeping the dice and data cards.

I've been waiting for a video like this since I started the hobby. Terrain setup has always been something my group struggles with. Thanks, Mr. Spex

Me and a few friends all bought the table top titans pop up terrain :) easy to store and does the job great!

Glad this came out I really needed this!

I'm generally more of a fan of larger tables and I find the recommended sizes on the small end. Larger tables allow for more maneuvering and decisionmaking

Very cool subject. We had a lot of talk about terrain and battlefield setup in 9th edition. It is certainly worth considering doing some of your deep diving videos into battlefields, based on large tournaments. Part of such a series of deep dives could be deployment when using tournament terrain. Cheers

Something I would personally recommend for gamers on a budget is using old, broken breeze blocks as ruins terrain. They tend to smash into loads of unique and stackable pieces really easily, and they work totally fine in-game as walls and floor-level buildings. Not the prettiest though lol

Been building up a terrain collection. Got a Frontline gaming mat. The new push to template floors for the terrain means I may need to pick up some more mdf kits.

RIGHT ON TIME BABY NEEDED THIS. THANKS

Something I think is helpful is to set terrain up so that the dividing firing line between the two board edges is at an acute angle to the board edges. Still try to make the terrain features parallel, but it makes for less obvious kill zones and plays more dynamically. I also try to set up terrain objects in mirrored matched pairs/groups with my opponent to make it as fair as possible. At least 2 large obscuring bits in each deployment too, having a game determined by the first turn roll-off is not what people show up for!

Definitely need this thanks Auspex!

Whenever I set up tables for tournaments I tended to go for an asymmetric map with hills on each side : 1 side with a large hill more to the center of the table and the other has several smaller placed a bit more in their deployment zone with little gaps on each quarter, have a building on one third in the longest side in the middle of the shortest side a bit further a lake that blocks movement but not line of sight (so you have to go around the building to fire on the other side of the lake) place an objective behind that lake and if you feel like it one or two obscuring trees, on the other side of the center don't place much except a big bunker with perfect line of sight on the entire no man's land and no objective in it. That way ranged and melees can both play but very differently, the ranged wants the bunker and the hills but the melee can use these to advance and fight and can defend the wanted position (you wouldn't want your fire warriors to go in the bunker filled with kommandoz alone?) but still has to endure the firepower of their ennemies. This kind of map is also segmented meaning you dedicate your units to a sector of the map (the bunker can shoot the no man's land, the hills but not the lake and behind the hills ; the hills can fire on a lot of places but are also very exposed ; behind the hills is safe but without much line of sight ; behind the lake is isolated and you need to walk behind the building to fire through the lake which isolates them from firing anywhere else and thus can be charged...)

Random, roll for first placement, Scatter die, d# inches (to match board size) from center, pick a terrain piece of your choice until board is "full" or out of terrain. Re-rolls are authorized if a section of the board already has a feature.

Thank you this video, this is very useful for newcomers!

I set terrains with respect to the locations of objective markers. There is at most one marker located behind a ruin in each deployment zone where they can be comfortably controlled for the entire game while the rest of the markers are in the no-man land NOT within range of any piece of terrain. This way, units literally have to put themselves in danger if they want to capture objectives in the no-man land. After that, I set up additional ruins for most units to hide behind before T1 and also some smaller pieces to make the board more thematic and also to provide light cover. And finally, I check the distance between the ruins by hovering the unit with the biggest base between them.

Great idea for a video! Very helpful!

most important thing to an interesting battle is to never have a symmetrical layout. That's a common noob trap. That shit belongs in a boring tournament table only.

I almost always set up mirror-like style while using largest base of the largest model to make sure it cam move anywhere, so it won't be blocked from movement on a technicality. But it really gets boring sometimes to be honest. All terrain layouts which are good for competitive play are pretty much the same. I think GW should make official terrain layouts with asymmetrical but balanced terrain sets, like maps in RTS. We as players simply don't have resources to make it work.

My thoughts on almost every video Auspex publish: YES.

Perfect timing! I was just pulling my hair out last night trying to understand terrain in 10th.

Played a 1000pts game recently on a slighty smaller board than standard; 40"×60"(an old carboard box with flock mats glued on. we put 1 big ruin in the centre, 1 L-shaped ruins in the left hand corner, another piece of LOS blocking terrain (some jazzed up tin cans and a musroom punnet bunker) in the right hand corner. Left and right of centre we had "craters" with objectives in them (actually cheap scatter terrain from a local model shop). Any where with an open area got a section of the crashed aquilla from the 4th ed set. The smaller board worked fine with the game size with only slight shuffling of the objv positions. Plenty of LoS blocking terrain to hide behind T1, and the large footprint of the central ruin gave options moving up. The objvs being in th craters might get changed next time, but it didn't cause any massive issues. Units could get cover and still at that size of game weren't just removed straight away. Also, playing tactical objvs meant neither player was focused on those areas for too long. Mirroring terrain function made for a fairer game whilst the different types of terrain kept the board visually interesting and providing plenty of cover saves.

Great video! Thx

Remember kids, cheep terrain is a one Home Depot trip away, a scrap of wood and a bunch of various sized pipe fittings from 1 inch flex pipe fittings to 3 inch PVC fittings and a little bit of black brown or silver spray paint and you now have all sprts of giant pipe terrain for maybe 30 dollars depending how much you get

Thanks!

I like to see some city fight where the models has to fight in close range for every street and house, but it might be that this will tend to a more melee game.

I usually go with the method of separating the board into six sections and adding D3 pieces of terrain to each section.

Our table has a bunch of old toys like castle and gates old collapsed walls and a bit of 3D printed pieces. It helps one of our guys had a lot of old building toys as a kid he never got rid of. I’m currently building a necron tomb world board with a abandoned archeology dig site. Everything is either 3D printed from current available necron 3rd party stuff or scrap built

I see an Auspex Tactics video, I click the thumbs up

I got a lot of wood toy bricks from childhood in various sizes. I fell they would be ideal for all sorts of terrain. Also quite weighty.

My cousin puts down a bunch of necron terrain and a few small fishtanks with different coloured fish down and we fight through a part of Trazyn the Infinites museum 🤖

I actually have started to put together my own terrain and bring it to my LGS so that we can have sufficient amounts of terrain.

I really despise the fact that the game doesn't function if you make a mistake in setting up the terrain.

I like using 2" radius smoke exhaust cents as per Killzone:Nachmund.

We've take all the stress out of creating a battlefield at the club. The mission is chosen ahead of time and every table plays the same one (makes more interesting debrief chats afterwards too) and we all use the UKTC terrain layouts. That way, the competitive players get a competitive practice game while playing a 'friendly' We have to off fluff game as well but mostly the above format.

I like to have player place terrain. It's more interesting

I built my own table years ago back in like 6th edition. Turned out pretty good with what I had. The worse game table set up I ever played on was in a tournament. I got the misfortune to play on a table that was littered with terrain on it. Also when rolling for deployment areas it was short table ends. It was my Orkz vs Tau. I did have lots of cover but because I didn't have too many vehicles I was foot slogging through terrain that slowed me down. By time my troops got to his front line "which was his deployment zone" the game was over and he won due to being able to get some pop shots on my guys. If you was wondering why the game ended it's due to the size of the tournament. There wasn't many tables available at that time so there was a time limit of playing. Which sucked and that's why the Tau player kept winning every tournament in the the early days this game store started doing 40k tournaments. I came in 2nd place almost every other tournament because of that guy. I'm glad he no longer is able to play in them because him being banned due to some illegal things he done. Lets just say he can't be in a place with people under the age of 18.

My casual group just started out a few days ago, we’ve been using our model boxes and whatever else is laying around works okay but we do run into some issues of is this full cover or partial a lot

Would've been cool to cover some alternatives like Titans Terrain or FLG instead of just GW stuff

The most key thing is terrain that blocks LOS and requires players to actually maneuver their troops instead of just sitting back and shooting freely across the board. But that is not what GW does and instead most table tops end up being large shooting galleries with barely any LOS blocking terrain and most players are able to freely blast away and the player who gets to shoots first usually ends up being the winner since they got to roll their "bucket of dice" before their opponent. Even with these very open boards that initial round of shooting could be toned down if GW got away from "IGO - UGO" since that always gives one players a large advantage since if they get to go first they get to shoot everything first. Also going with a far larger table (6' x 10') means troops would have to move so that they can get into range to shoot. But GW has been going with the "Bucket of Dice" approach for two decades now and they are not going to change.

That last Narrative map layout made me think someone got ambushed in Total War. Seems like it could be an interesting idea for a friend group.

I always play my 1000pts battles ond 44x60" and I think it's perfectly fine. But maybe that depends a lot on the armies (RG vs orks and other SM worked pretty well)

Cool video

So, with the towering rules. How can I balance ruins with windows and ruins w/o windows? Should I use windowless ruins on the edges, where deployment will be?

If your aim is to spend little money on a functional table. My recommendation is to make the ruins with foam board and hot silicone to glue the pieces together. It is an easy material to work with, you can have a table for less than 30 dollars. The only drawback is that it is a light material, but if you can add weight with soil or small stones you can solve this. Cheers

Can we get a dark mode for your videos lol. Love the videos

Luv it

I've been doing player placed terrain with about 12 pieces of terrain. 4 ruins (2 with 3 floors), 2 woods, 2 ruined walls, 2 craters, and 2 crates (3 pieces stacked however). max 3 per table quarter randomly placed by each player starting with whoever wins the roll off. Giving enough space to the largest model with some leeway. I like it better because we can be equally blamed for crappy table setup lol.

What's the point of the footprint outside the ruins?

Deep Cut Studio ftw

ok.... I have a question: Those sizes posted by GW, that is the playable area or the total area? I see a lot of tables with space around the perimeter of the table tor their dice, minis etc.

What are the dimensions of the "tournament terrain basses"?

Can someone explain what's the reason to set ruin walls not on the edge of the terrain footprint?

I got the Ultimate Starter set which came with two game boards. Am I supposed to combine these for a game?

Tau Vs orks at 1k is painful in the 44 x 60, u can't krump the blue gitz when they got so much space to zog off into

I know it's subjective but in my few 1k games, the 44x60 seemed to work perfectly fine

The 44" width is weird. I can imagine lots of people have 48" width boards.

Warhammer 40k needs alternate or random activations between units from both players. Instead of activating everything before the other player. This fix the terrain and LOS blocking issue... and no longer the needo of "cityfights"

I just got around to this video. If your Ork stompa cannot fit, its too dense. Every standard game 40k model should be usable. I've had to scrap tournament games because my Baneblade wouldn't fit anywhere outside of deployment.

💯

As someone who messed up and played my first Incursion on a 44"x30", it feels WAY too cramped for 1000 points imo

I think the second narrative board is a much better example of a narrative board than the first - terrain should do something, even if it's not fair and competitive. The first narrative board may as well have no terrain from a gameplay perspective, whilst the second may favour certain armies, but allows you to tell a narrative that fits that gameplay.

me using cups and boxes

Their example Leviathan terrain is probably the most boring setup I've seen. Nothing but L-shaped ruins, and since that's "recommended" tournament standard it's all you see in many places. They could have at least made some variety in them... Honestly though terrain seems to be the biggest limiter as well as the most common "mistake" in 40k; many times I've set up a board with terrain only to be told later that it "looks a bit light" when to my eye it has 6-7 ruins and stuff all over. So it's very nice to see examples of what "proper" 40k tables should look like as despite playing off and on since 1996, I find the board sizes and terrain incredibly confusing now.

I feel like maybe not every piece of terrain should be ruins lol. I try to keep it to like 4 ruins pieces and then a mixture of other terrain. All ruins just makes shooting awful and towering broken.

the thing i want most out of terrain is verticality. sure, theres some ruins that have little bits of floor that are a story or two high, or those weird promethium refinery gangplanks. but they arent usually big enough for a unit, or provide any real reason to be there. it also creates a bit of weirdness with the movement rules. like, my 1000lb+ terminator can climb the side of this building and get up there if he really wants to? that doesnt make any sense. they need to introduce ladders or anti-grav lifts or something. and if you'll really indulge my fantasy... imagine having a two-story building at the center of the table, and you've got an objective on the middle floor. fly units could approach from the top, while there'd be some gruesome fights when both sides rush into the building to try and reach the stairs first. the whole construction would be modular. so each floor could be lifted up, to resolve movements at the floor beneath. and the walls could be popped out if they were destroyed by heavy fire, to remove the protection of cover from inside. maybe ive just been playing too much battlebit...

Still use 4x4 and 6x4. Changing the "norm" away from that was completely pointless.

every complain you had whit the NARRATIVE setups where silly as they are not meant to be balanced as you can see in the second picture where the space marine player deploys in the center of the board in a column to have the narrative of an ambush

make 6x4 great again

I don't like insistence on wtc and only terrain existing beigb L shaped ruins everywhere. Want forsest? Nipe Normal building? Nope Crater? Nope Any other kind of ruin? Nope Table that actually looks good? Forget it

im tired of L-shaped ruins. bring on the narrative terrain!

I am going to go out on a limb and guess that they meant 1001-2000 points should be on a 44x60. A table that large would give a boring game for 1000 points

awsd

Just put ruins, ruins, and more ruins. Be sure that 80% of these ruins are obscuring. The others terrain are no longer useful in this edition (like in v9 btw) .

44" x 60" is the Minimum Size. It is not the "Recommended Size". Fixing the battlefield size to a set size is a crutch for bad list building and an unimaginative meta.

The WTC style layouts are just ugly and make absolutely no sense (does it feel like streets, roads, a place that used to be fonctionnal at some point ? no, it does not). So yeah, it may be balanced and all, but what's the point of collecting, painting and playing beautiful miniatures in a setting we love, if we play them on awful (and cloned) tables ?

Add a comment...😢

third

First lezzz goooo

The battlefield should tell a story. What are you fighting for..... All these examples are just a random crap dump.

I would say just don't play 40K right now, its a mess atm just wait until they fix it in about a year or so and play something else GW make lots of great skirmish games that don't get enough love.