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Just had my first couple of 1000 point games.

The thing we both noticed off the bat, though, is that the board was stifling. It was so small, I could barely fit my army in my deployment zone, and it felt like there was almost no room to maneuver once we started pushing to the centre.

I know combat patrol uses the same board, so I'm wondering if it simply scales well at that 500 point level but not as much at 1000.

Has anyone else had this experience? If so, what have you done to mitigate? Should we drop down to 500 or 750?

tulun wrote:
Just had my first couple of 1000 point games.

The thing we both noticed off the bat, though, is that the board was stifling. It was so small, I could barely fit my army in my deployment zone, and it felt like there was almost no room to maneuver once we started pushing to the centre.

I know combat patrol uses the same board, so I'm wondering if it simply scales well at that 500 point level but not as much at 1000.

Has anyone else had this experience? If so, what have you done to mitigate? Should we drop down to 500 or 750?

All the boards are too small. I've said my piece on this before.


I played GK against Sisters at 1k on the recommended board size, and I would say it worked out fine with lots of space for our stuff to move. In 8th, I played 2k Guard vs. Chaos on a 6x4 and ran out of places I could put a tank.

The boards are probably fine if you play into the Space Marine paradigm of having a small number of powerful units with a small footprint, but if you have a lot of models, especially if you're Tyranids or Guard where you have a large number of large-footprint models and units, the boards are way too small at any game scale.

Keep in mind that you are using the minimal recommended board size. Just use a bigger board and see if it feels better for you.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:


All the boards are too small. I've said my piece on this before.


I played GK against Sisters at 1k on the recommended board size, and I would say it worked out fine with lots of space for our stuff to move. In 8th, I played 2k Guard vs. Chaos on a 6x4 and ran out of places I could put a tank.

The boards are probably fine if you play into the Space Marine paradigm of having a small number of powerful units with a small footprint, but if you have a lot of models, especially if you're Tyranids or Guard where you have a large number of large-footprint models and units, the boards are way too small at any game scale.

Matchups were Mech Orks (me) vs Eldar.

Eldar was easy enough to move around, but yeah, all of my MSU vehicles just swamped the board. I almost used ever inch of my deployment zone with the terrain that was in it.

I was also able to effectively push into his edge turn 1 with a good advance roll, meaning he had no room to fall back if he wanted to be a little cagey.

I haven't really had this experience previously in 8th on the 6x4 board at 1500-2000, although I haven't usually fielded the full green tide, but it felt a bit much. I could see 44x60 feeling tight for some armies that don't wanna go into CQC, but it does seem like you could retreat somewhere unless I literally just controlled the entire board.

I'm wondering if we just need to go beyond the min size requirements if we do strike force.

1000 points on 44x30 is ridiculous. I got a deff dread in combat vs guard on turn 1, and my entire dread mob had the guard side engaged on turn 2. There wasn't even room to bring the kommandos in. They had to come in turn 3.

At 1000 points, I'd recommend a 48 x 48 board. 1500 go to a 72 x 48 if available.

It's not GW's recommended size, but I'd always rather play on a board "too big" than too small. The objectives all cluster near the middle-ish anyhow.

That said, the bigger the board, the more mobility and range play a factor. If you're crushed into your opponent, then even "weak" melee becomes strong. I think that's part of GW's pointing structure for melee focused units. That you're *likely* to be able to blitz and get engaged early.

 greggles wrote:
1000 points on 44x30 is ridiculous. I got a deff dread in combat vs guard on turn 1, and my entire dread mob had the guard side engaged on turn 2.

You don't start any closer on the smaller board than you would if you were playing on a 10'x10'. So these comments aren't relevant.

Well, there's how "deep" the board is, so there's nowhere to fall back too once engaged.

That said, given the importance of pushing forward, if you need to be falling back like that you're probably in a bad way as is.



Anyway, the real issue is that the deploy area is just too small for armies like Guard, Tyranids, and Orks that field a lot of models to reasonably just find space to put things, but it's not just a factor of the smaller boards or at smaller game sizes, since it happened to me last edition when running IG Tank Horde on a 6x4.

At 1000pts I'd us a 3' x 4' board. We used to use 4' x 4' but that would feel slightly too big these days.

 DarknessEternal wrote:

 greggles wrote:
1000 points on 44x30 is ridiculous. I got a deff dread in combat vs guard on turn 1, and my entire dread mob had the guard side engaged on turn 2.

You don't start any closer on the smaller board than you would if you were playing on a 10'x10'. So these comments aren't relevant.

They're perfectly relevant.

If deployment zones are the same distance apart on a 3' wide board and a 4' wide board, the 4' wide board allows someone to deploy further back, mitigating the example greggles gave.

Did you not understand him?

To the best of my recollection, the back of the board is always 44” apart. The 44” x 30” maps are 44” deep, 30” wide. So hypothetically, regardless of game size, there’s usually a 10” deep deployment zone with 24” between.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:

 greggles wrote:
1000 points on 44x30 is ridiculous. I got a deff dread in combat vs guard on turn 1, and my entire dread mob had the guard side engaged on turn 2.

You don't start any closer on the smaller board than you would if you were playing on a 10'x10'. So these comments aren't relevant.

They're perfectly relevant.

If deployment zones are the same distance apart on a 3' wide board and a 4' wide board, the 4' wide board allows someone to deploy further back, mitigating the example greggles gave.

Did you not understand him?

What he meant was that the objectives are clumped near the center anyway. Deploying further back is detrimental to playing the objective game.

To the question at hand, 44x30 is a perfect size for 1000pts. Granted I haven't played with a horde army yet. I'm sick of guard etc sitting well back and destroying my army by end of second. Smaller board gives my Wolves a fair chance at competing.

And also as mentioned earlier it's a MINIMUM size. Feel free to play on bigger boards if you feel like it's too crowded.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
They're perfectly relevant.

If deployment zones are the same distance apart on a 3' wide board and a 4' wide board, the 4' wide board allows someone to deploy further back, mitigating the example greggles gave.

Did you not understand him?

Deployments are either 18" or 24" apart.

The corner deployments give ~ 300 in^2 except for the Dawn of War style which is ~265. In Strike Force you're looking at 600 in^2 for Dawn of War, but mission 23 is 448 (28" no mans land though). The hammerhead goes to 790.

I can see where the Dawn of War might feel cramped, but in general you get half the deploy for half the army. That said I think army design needs to be a bit different to account for things that can reliably get across 18".

I've been planning on making a 44(maybe 48" for ease of construction)x30 board soI can play at home, or even out on normal tables. I'm wanting to focus on 1,000 and below.

How are folks making their boards?

I recently made a modular board consisting of three 2*4 elements that can be bolted together and placed on a table. On top of these I put mdf boards, mine are 1*2 but that's mostly for ease of storage. The whole thing easily fits under the couch.

Were you playing a non-(Primaris Marine) army? If so that might be the problem.

If I didn’t already have tables, cutting an 8x4 sheet of plywood into 3x4 and 5x4 boards would be very efficient.

I don’t think that an extra 2” of deployment depth is going to warp the game.