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As per topic title.
I know the alter of war mission book has expanded a lot on this but in general do you find the basic 3 limiting and a bit old at this point?
Given that most games are played on a 6x4 what other options can you come up with?

One problem is having them be balanced. You can do the “last stand” where one person starts in the middle, and the other surrounds them. But that only lends itself to some scenarios. When you separate deployment type from mission type, you have to keep something vaguely balanced and symmetrical.

In general, I find by mixing up the terrain and the 3 basic deployments I get enough variance to keep me happy.

A friend and I set up a fortress somewhere (anywhere) on the table and have deffenders inside and attackers 12 = 24" away for deployment. (depends on where it is on the table as to how far away we set attacking deployment)

We also have one deploys 12" either side of the centre of the table and the other deploys on either side of the table to have them attacking from two sides.

And then we have 3-6 person games. Good times.

Here are a few from 3rd edition:

#1 - Instead of one side deploying everything, followed by your opponent, try alternating deployment. You start with Heavy Support, then Troops, then Elites, HQ, and finally Fast Attack. I'd suggest fitting Super-Heavy LoW in before Heavy Support, and non-super-heavy LoW after HQ's.

This used to make deployment a bit more of a cat & mouse affair, and Infiltrating was a lot more frightening. Having a small unit-size army was also a penalty, since your opponent would see your final deployment before they were done deploying.

#2 - Cleanse mission. Break the table into quarters, then make a 12" radius circle in the middle (24" diameter). These are the deployment zones. Our casual games often use a tertiary objective of "score 1 victory point for each table quarter you hold", with the entire table quarter being an objective that you can only capture by being in it.

#3 - Disarray Deployment. This is for use with the alternating deployment method above. The entire table is the deployment zone, and you are merely restricted to deploying 18" or more away from enemy units (no first-turn charges allowed). You end up with a totally messed up slaughterfest where there's enemies EVERYWHERE.

Ah yes cleanse, that was a good one actually.

I never stopped playing cleanse. I love it :-)

I did a really weird match once where EVERYTHING scatters. so you place it where you want, and the whole unit scatters. It took awhile to set up but led to funny scenarios where one unit started halfway up the board (my HQ, go figure!) and the rest of my army was practically cut off from him. Oddly enough, my HQ survived until the very last turn!

Just make up your own

It's really just what your terrain allows.

- Horizontal, vertical, diagonal, obviously.
- Then castle in the center, castle on an edge, castle in a corner.
- 4 Kill Teams on 4 corners.
- Split forces with player 1 taking NE, SW, player 2 taking NW, SE.
- Player 1 has castle in center, plus reinforcements only from edges. Player 2 deploys anywhere
- Player 1 has castle on one edge, reinforcements from far edge; Player 2 deploys near center.
- Player 1 has castle on one edge, and reinforcements come from inside the castled area; Player 2 starts on opposite edge.
- Player 1 has a hill at center of table, must protect flag for X turns.

It can literally go on forever...

Just another thing 40k is missing.

Id just make your own. There are plenty in white dwarfs and online.