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Opening the floor to a open discussion of Warhammer 40k and Organized Play. How it's done, where it succeeds, how it fails, what is needed to improve it. Or you know, theory creating in general.

Having been off playing other games until 8th edition intrigued me into returning, I've learned a lot about organized play games and what in absence was missing from 40k. I spent a ton of time with X-wing and Armada. Reflected allot on card games, looked at several others, studied balance mechanics. The usual, I played a bunch. And I discovered that organized play was massively successful where there was one thing present: a common play setup. Not a place, but the actual board you play on. Warhammer has never really had that.

What I'm referring to is the fact that for any game I go play in organized events, the play space we'll be on is known and familiar. In X-wing it's 3x3 and has 6 obstacles, three of mine and three of my opponents drawn from a pool of 18 options all roughly the same size and with two different types. In Magic or any other card or card and dice game, they get it easy, the zones are well known and the space we'll be a table. In Armada the board will be 6x3 and have a specific designed setup parameters that will be used to create the board with common elements. But when I go from what place to another to play Warhammer...I have next to no clue what I'm getting into. I have no idea how much or little terrain there will be, what size, what type, what style... Nothing is certain.

And that's great for just Dorking around and playing with plastic soldiers from space. But it makes it difficult to be inspired to play somewhere, especially if I don't already know the place. I also miss out on all the planning I get to do around knowing something around the battlefield I'll be fighting on an how my army will interact with it. Or how I'll hope for the setup to go, or how my opponent might foil mine.

With 8th edition, we have a unique opportunity. The game has specific data now for all these different game types, matched play being one of them, but nothing to air a player that wherever they go they can count on at least a few elements of the game their about to play being being on a 6x4 board and XXXXpts. So I would say that to create a healthy organized competitive play environment, we need to establish a readily available, common set of terrain pieces, to use in matched play games.

This will allow and even encourage more army pre-planning.
Help reduce terrain relevant arguments by having a set of common examples.
And allow better unit balancing in matched play by stabilizing it's most varied variable.

I pass the floor on.

I think this is a very interesting idea and I'm surprised no one has commented yet.

I think this is obvious from a competitive gaming perspective but it would have to be community driven because it's the complete opposite of GW's narrative, don't worry about points mentality.

40k is obviously different from ffg that happen in space. I want to terrain that represents a battlefield. But I think that is not an impossible ask. In Kings of War the community has basically agreed for tournaments that there will be 8 pieces of terrain: 2 hills, 2 forests, 2 impassable, and 2 obstacles. This creates balance particularly when certain armies or units benefit from certain terrain types.

I read someone post where they were complaining that they tried to run combat nids and faced a suit eldar army that flew on to the top of a bunch multi store buildings so they couldn't be reached. That's clearly a problem with terrain and board set up. The playing field, like the rules, and the teams need to be balanced in order for the game to be fun.

The problem with this idea is that the investment required is much greater than the cost of standardized tournaments in other games. The X-Wing system for obstacles works fine because the obstacles are cheap cardboard tokens, and each player brings their own. But how many tournament hosts are going to spend the level of money and painting time required to get all the standardized terrain for who knows how many tables? How many players are going to be willing to buy specific terrain kits, assembled in the standard way, and reverse the current situation of the tournament host providing the terrain?

Actually FLG is working on something like standardized terrain for tournaments, though they are not targeting players, but instead TOs. Whether or not it catches on is another issue.

Plus there are already pieces of terrain you can buy like void shield generators, aegis defense lines, or skyshield landing pads.

KnuckleWolf wrote:

And that's great for just Dorking around and playing with plastic soldiers from space. But it makes it difficult to be inspired to play somewhere, especially if I don't already know the place. I also miss out on all the planning I get to do around knowing something around the battlefield I'll be fighting on an how my army will interact with it. Or how I'll hope for the setup to go, or how my opponent might foil mine.

And for others(like me) having board etc preset would make it difficult to be inspired. Same scenario, same board all the time? No thanks. I want all my games be unique. Every game with different army lists, terrain, scenario.

tneva82 wrote:

KnuckleWolf wrote:

And that's great for just Dorking around and playing with plastic soldiers from space. But it makes it difficult to be inspired to play somewhere, especially if I don't already know the place. I also miss out on all the planning I get to do around knowing something around the battlefield I'll be fighting on an how my army will interact with it. Or how I'll hope for the setup to go, or how my opponent might foil mine.

And for others(like me) having board etc preset would make it difficult to be inspired. Same scenario, same board all the time? No thanks. I want all my games be unique. Every game with different army lists, terrain, scenario.

Agreed! The ETC guys do something like this for their tournaments and, IMO, it turns the game into a soulless exercise in statistics and rote learning rather than a test of tactical flexibility. If battlefields are always the same, perhaps even with fixed deployment zones, it makes games the same, which quickly becomes boring. I can see maybe having a requirement for a certain number of different types of terrain but even that seems very prescriptive.

Is there really a problem with not having standardised terrain anyway? I can understand some tournaments may not have very good terrain but if a TO doesn't have the means or desire to improve their terrain the presence of some sort of approved list is unlikely to help.

Guidelines are good, but in general doesn't the ITC have a set of board setup guidelines?

What is ITC?

I would point out that adding standardized terrain doesn't preclude it being different from game to game. Indeed how such rules are implemented allow for massive variety. Any number of various options to the rules would make the game almost never the same when combined with the alternating placement of terrain between players and randomly determined missions from the main book. To lack of strategy and flexibility for adding such rules I would counter by asking where is the strategy to not having a little Intel about where you will be fighting.

Consider, I build a Force of Cadian jungle fighters and bring four stands of trees, a Marsh of some sort, and some kind of big hill. My opponent is playing chaos Marines and brings two ruined buildings, some craters, some other debris. We alienate placing pieces from the collective pool to the limit of the mission, from our combined stuff and Bam, were off to the battle. Both have some idea of what was going to be there, but now have to adapt to the added bit of what the chaos of battle brings.

KnuckleWolf wrote:


Consider, I build a Force of Cadian jungle fighters and bring four stands of trees, a Marsh of some sort, and some kind of big hill. My opponent is playing chaos Marines and brings two ruined buildings, some craters, some other debris. We alienate placing pieces from the collective pool to the limit of the mission, from our combined stuff and Bam, were off to the battle. Both have some idea of what was going to be there, but now have to adapt to the added bit of what the chaos of battle brings.

Ok, now I want that to be a thing.