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This is probably a stupid question, I've been hearing a lot about how 9th Edition calls for smaller play areas (and all that that implies), but isnt the wording "minimum"? As in 44"x30" is the minimum for a Patrol/Incursion, 44"x60" minimum for Strike Force etc? Whats to stop people from playing larger tables?

Nothing, you can play on larger tables all you want, thats why its a minimal.

But it does sort of take a gentlemen's agreement. You can play on a battlefield a mile long if you so desire. But i'm pretty sure the guard player with 9 basilisks would have an advantage over the player with an immobile army.

The current minimum or the old default of 6X4 works well enough.

 Sunsanvil wrote:
This is probably a stupid question, I've been hearing a lot about how 9th Edition calls for smaller play areas (and all that that implies), but isnt the wording "minimum"? As in 44"x30" is the minimum for a Patrol/Incursion, 44"x60" minimum for Strike Force etc? Whats to stop people from playing larger tables?

The GW police will show up & smash your best painted models.

I really don't even think that their board size is a minimum persay. I've played on smaller boards by far. It's just a pull out of their butt figure. Whatever players choose to play on for a size is their minimum.

Personally I like larger boards as I like the idea of movement and flanking mattering as opposed to forcing everything to just become a scrum in board center asap.


Edit: I'd point out any game of 40k you play involves a gentlemans agreement as even following the holy grail of GW rules doesn't mean you have to play against anyone. Just play the game and have fun with your board size and layout. So long as its not a one way smack down shouldn't be any kind of issues. At least I've never had any in all my many games, though much less of them this year.

GW has only set that size because its the size they sell. That's basically it, which is why its only a minimum. You can play on any boardsize you want and many will stick to "regular" sizes that they've had for years because that's the size of the boards they already have.

Yeah. It's optional. Tournaments are the only places I would say that might enforce that as the baseline, but I have my 6 by 4 mat that I'm still using because I'm not going out of my way to get a board that's smaller simply because GW told me to.

 Grimskul wrote:
Yeah. It's optional. Tournaments are the only places I would say that might enforce that as the baseline, but I have my 6 by 4 mat that I'm still using because I'm not going out of my way to get a board that's smaller simply because GW told me to.

This.
In the end it matters much more for the game what kind of terrain you put on the board than the size of your mat.

I don't know we played 9th with new and old tables sizes and at 2250pts, there is a big difference between the 6x4 table size and the GW one. With GW table size, for some armies, it doesn't matter at all, because they are touching practicaly everything on the table turn one with their over 24" moves.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:
Yeah. It's optional. Tournaments are the only places I would say that might enforce that as the baseline, but I have my 6 by 4 mat that I'm still using because I'm not going out of my way to get a board that's smaller simply because GW told me to.

This.
In the end it matters much more for the game what kind of terrain you put on the board than the size of your mat.

We'll just have to disagree on this one. Whatever the terrain, the smaller the board, the less I enjoy the game.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Grimskul wrote:
Yeah. It's optional. Tournaments are the only places I would say that might enforce that as the baseline, but I have my 6 by 4 mat that I'm still using because I'm not going out of my way to get a board that's smaller simply because GW told me to.


This.
In the end it matters much more for the game what kind of terrain you put on the board than the size of your mat.


We'll just have to disagree on this one. Whatever the terrain, the smaller the board, the less I enjoy the game.

Yeah - honestly, we found that the game vastly improves when you play on the bigger tables at anything over 1000 points. It makes a huge difference. I've been banging this drum for a while, but people keep saying "maneuver matters so much more in 9th". IMO, that's a misinterpretation of what's happening though. When the table is so small, and everything is so close together that you can easily get to everything no matter what, movement becomes a lot less important than on a board where, if you deploy poorly or make a bad decision in an early movement phase, you now have one or two squads irrevocably out of position. What matters on smaller tables is timing. Especially given the predictability of 9th ed games. I know the objectives and it becomes obvious pretty quickly which of your units are challenging which objectives, so it becomes a matter of just deciding "do I rush the objectives now and try to resist your attempts to club me to death, or do I let you capture them and club YOU to death". So like I said, just timing. NOT maneuver.

On a larger table maneuver matters way more. You can be caught out of position, different weapon ranges suddenly matter more, the speed of your models means something. It becomes slightly less predictable as to whom is going for what, etc. The larger table size "fixes" a lot of what's wrong about 9th imo.

 Sunsanvil wrote:
This is probably a stupid question, I've been hearing a lot about how 9th Edition calls for smaller play areas (and all that that implies), but isnt the wording "minimum"? As in 44"x30" is the minimum for a Patrol/Incursion, 44"x60" minimum for Strike Force etc? Whats to stop people from playing larger tables?

Check the rules. It's minimum. As in smallest size rules functionally work. By definition thus not even optimal.

Small tables do make the game a mass up - you've far less room to move around; you've far less chance to avoid things or even just not end up in a huge fight brawl in the middle. They also make plans far more important because on a larger board if you move things wrong you could end up missing key objectives or getting overwhelmed.

OF course what can happen with larger boards is that you might wind up needing more than 6 turns to complete the game; you also need more space, more terrain and also more time.

OF course what can happen with larger boards is that you might wind up needing more than 6 turns to complete the game; you also need more space, more terrain and also more time.

The game is 5 turns now no matter what. It ends on turn 5 regardless of table size. We found you might more regularly get to a turn 4 or 5 than on the smaller table (where you basically run your mosh pits into one another and the game ends on turn 3), but it's a much better game imo, and has really only added maybe 20 minutes or so to the length.

You do need more terrain, but we've all played long enough that this isn't an issue for our group.

 AngryAngel80 wrote:
I really don't even think that their board size is a minimum persay. I've played on smaller boards by far. It's just a pull out of their butt figure. Whatever players choose to play on for a size is their minimum.

Personally I like larger boards as I like the idea of movement and flanking mattering as opposed to forcing everything to just become a scrum in board center asap.


Edit: I'd point out any game of 40k you play involves a gentlemans agreement as even following the holy grail of GW rules doesn't mean you have to play against anyone. Just play the game and have fun with your board size and layout. So long as its not a one way smack down shouldn't be any kind of issues. At least I've never had any in all my many games, though much less of them this year.

A lot of it depends on what armies are on the board, I could probably get my 2k marine list into a 1k deployment zone, my friend who plays guard usually doesn't have space for his whole army in a 2k deployment zone and pretty much has to put units in reserve.

I love the new terrain rules and it usually works best if it is more dense than last edition so that definitely limits the space on the board.

Well I play guard as well so standing room only deployments are for real an issue I've seen and had. I'm just saying I wouldn't mind a smaller or larger board though I prefer larger board size personally just because I like the space, feels better and more immersive to me.

Tycho wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Grimskul wrote:
Yeah. It's optional. Tournaments are the only places I would say that might enforce that as the baseline, but I have my 6 by 4 mat that I'm still using because I'm not going out of my way to get a board that's smaller simply because GW told me to.


This.
In the end it matters much more for the game what kind of terrain you put on the board than the size of your mat.


We'll just have to disagree on this one. Whatever the terrain, the smaller the board, the less I enjoy the game.

Yeah - honestly, we found that the game vastly improves when you play on the bigger tables at anything over 1000 points. It makes a huge difference. I've been banging this drum for a while, but people keep saying "maneuver matters so much more in 9th". IMO, that's a misinterpretation of what's happening though. When the table is so small, and everything is so close together that you can easily get to everything no matter what, movement becomes a lot less important than on a board where, if you deploy poorly or make a bad decision in an early movement phase, you now have one or two squads irrevocably out of position. What matters on smaller tables is timing. Especially given the predictability of 9th ed games. I know the objectives and it becomes obvious pretty quickly which of your units are challenging which objectives, so it becomes a matter of just deciding "do I rush the objectives now and try to resist your attempts to club me to death, or do I let you capture them and club YOU to death". So like I said, just timing. NOT maneuver.

On a larger table maneuver matters way more. You can be caught out of position, different weapon ranges suddenly matter more, the speed of your models means something. It becomes slightly less predictable as to whom is going for what, etc. The larger table size "fixes" a lot of what's wrong about 9th imo.

I've always liked big tables with smaller points values. We played on 8x4's with approx 1500pts(nowadays) and it made maneuvers much more important and gave you options on how to deal with terrain features.

Only reasons GW did it are arbitrary. They saw a market for something & they changed the game to fit around that new product. We haven't seen it for sale yet, but GW has specific battle mats made to their new specs. So only reason is they wanted to copyright the specific battle mat layout and a specific playing area size helps them to achieve that.

Play on as large of a table as available. If that's 30x42 or 92x60, so be it.

Funny how I seem to remember a lot of panicking on this board over how GW is "forcing" people to move to the smaller table sizes when they were introduced. And now, almost a year later, the tone on the forum is very different..

I suppose it makes practical sense to try to enforce a smaller table size so as to make it easier to find a suitable playing surface. But I feel like the 40K hobby as a whole is so expensive that investing into dedicated folding tables for your games hardly makes a dent in your hobby budget comparing to the cost of collecting a 2500pts army. I've paid less than a hundred for mine so far, that gets you what? A start collecting box?

I like to play on three sizes, depending on the game size: 4x4', 6x4' and 8x4' for the biggest battles. Still prefer 6x4 for most 40K games I play, and love 4x4' for KillTeam.

 tauist wrote:
Funny how I seem to remember a lot of panicking on this board over how GW is "forcing" people to move to the smaller table sizes when they were introduced. And now, almost a year later, the tone on the forum is very different..

Hm, I don't remember there being much panicking over being required to switch in normal games. I recall there being 'panicking' if you call it as such in regards to tournament play. Lo and behold the major tournament organizations were already prepared to switch over because they had been involved in playtesting and so knew about the change. Why, they even had mats in the new size for sale.

Racerguy180 wrote:

Tycho wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Grimskul wrote:
Yeah. It's optional. Tournaments are the only places I would say that might enforce that as the baseline, but I have my 6 by 4 mat that I'm still using because I'm not going out of my way to get a board that's smaller simply because GW told me to.


This.
In the end it matters much more for the game what kind of terrain you put on the board than the size of your mat.


We'll just have to disagree on this one. Whatever the terrain, the smaller the board, the less I enjoy the game.

Yeah - honestly, we found that the game vastly improves when you play on the bigger tables at anything over 1000 points. It makes a huge difference. I've been banging this drum for a while, but people keep saying "maneuver matters so much more in 9th". IMO, that's a misinterpretation of what's happening though. When the table is so small, and everything is so close together that you can easily get to everything no matter what, movement becomes a lot less important than on a board where, if you deploy poorly or make a bad decision in an early movement phase, you now have one or two squads irrevocably out of position. What matters on smaller tables is timing. Especially given the predictability of 9th ed games. I know the objectives and it becomes obvious pretty quickly which of your units are challenging which objectives, so it becomes a matter of just deciding "do I rush the objectives now and try to resist your attempts to club me to death, or do I let you capture them and club YOU to death". So like I said, just timing. NOT maneuver.

On a larger table maneuver matters way more. You can be caught out of position, different weapon ranges suddenly matter more, the speed of your models means something. It becomes slightly less predictable as to whom is going for what, etc. The larger table size "fixes" a lot of what's wrong about 9th imo.

I've always liked big tables with smaller points values. We played on 8x4's with approx 1500pts(nowadays) and it made maneuvers much more important and gave you options on how to deal with terrain features.

Only reasons GW did it are arbitrary. They saw a market for something & they changed the game to fit around that new product. We haven't seen it for sale yet, but GW has specific battle mats made to their new specs. So only reason is they wanted to copyright the specific battle mat layout and a specific playing area size helps them to achieve that.

Play on as large of a table as available. If that's 30x42 or 92x60, so be it.

There are limits. Back when I played WHFB with my friends at school nearly 30 years ago now, one of my friends was pretty rich and had a full-size snooker table in his house that we played battles on. My dwarfs moved 3 inches. It took a while...

 tauist wrote:
Funny how I seem to remember a lot of panicking on this board over how GW is "forcing" people to move to the smaller table sizes when they were introduced. And now, almost a year later, the tone on the forum is very different..

I suppose it makes practical sense to try to enforce a smaller table size so as to make it easier to find a suitable playing surface. But I feel like the 40K hobby as a whole is so expensive that investing into dedicated folding tables for your games hardly makes a dent in your hobby budget comparing to the cost of collecting a 2500pts army. I've paid less than a hundred for mine so far, that gets you what? A start collecting box?

I like to play on three sizes, depending on the game size: 4x4', 6x4' and 8x4' for the biggest battles. Still prefer 6x4 for most 40K games I play, and love 4x4' for KillTeam.

I think people who are using the new size are just sick of arguing the same things over and over again, and there really is no reason to convince people who don't want to change anyways.

Our group tried both sizes and we now only use the old sizes if the game is on one of the two tables which become wonky when you block off parts because they have trenches/canals on them.

For all other games, we have frames to block of the excess playing area, line the table with terrain to shrink it naturally or even have some new boards and mats in the correct size.

In our experience, proper terrain placement with a good mix of LoS blocking, obscuring, barricades and dense cover create a much more interesting game on small tables. Meanwhile larger tables put too much emphasis on deep striking, high movement speeds, FLY and weapon range - all things which are plenty powerful already.
Which also kind of explains why many people don't want to change, because older editions also favored those things. Therefore armies build back then will play better on large tables, so it just makes sense that two players running 4th-8th edition style armies have more fun playing on a 6'x4' table than on 60"x44".

We haven't seen it for sale yet...

Kill Team boards. It's the right size for multiple Kill Team boards ...

I like the new size for our 50 PL crusade games. It feels more skirmish level combined with the limited options that list size gives as well as the terrain density. For full sized matched play I say the old standard 6x4 is best for the added room and less intimate feel.

 Brotherjanus wrote:
I like the new size for our 50 PL crusade games. It feels more skirmish level combined with the limited options that list size gives as well as the terrain density. For full sized matched play I say the old standard 6x4 is best for the added room and less intimate feel.

That and I already have several 6x4 mats that I really like. It does definitely help my IG playing friend actually have space to deploy his army especially with us using more terrain this edition.

Tycho wrote:

We haven't seen it for sale yet...

Kill Team boards. It's the right size for multiple Kill Team boards ...

I'm referring to the 6x4 mats they have @ WW with spaces for dice rolling, codex, etc along with the smaller sized playing area.

Haven't seen them for sale yet...

It's a minimum but as with most things, if it's standard for tournaments it will become standard for all matched play games and then standard for all games to where it becomes a matter of asking permission to use a larger board.

Wayniac wrote:
It's a minimum but as with most things, if it's standard for tournaments it will become standard for all matched play games and then standard for all games to where it becomes a matter of asking permission to use a larger board.

The vast majority will simply not care and go with whatever the other person prefers, with the default being whatever table is available.

 Jidmah wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
It's a minimum but as with most things, if it's standard for tournaments it will become standard for all matched play games and then standard for all games to where it becomes a matter of asking permission to use a larger board.

The vast majority will simply not care and go with whatever the other person prefers, with the default being whatever table is available.

somehow I doubt that. in my experience whatever dominates the tournaments tends to dominate every game because nobody wants to deviate.

The difference between 48"x72" is not huge compared to 44"x60".

That said, it is weird that they decided to change the standard after so many years of the old standard. Kinda typical of modern GW. It also means that all the bigger bases will take up even more of the board.

But maybe they did some market research into the average size of a playing surface? Maybe that size really is closer to the "kitchen table" size most people have at home and improves accessibility?

 Da Boss wrote:
The difference between 48"x72" is not huge compared to 44"x60".

That said, it is weird that they decided to change the standard after so many years of the old standard. Kinda typical of modern GW. It also means that all the bigger bases will take up even more of the board.

But maybe they did some market research into the average size of a playing surface? Maybe that size really is closer to the "kitchen table" size most people have at home and improves accessibility?

It's as simple as someone stated above: the new size is exactly 4 kill-team (or 2? I'm not familiar with their actual dimensions) boards pushed together. Those boards are the dimensions they are due to the packaging GW uses and how the board folds.

There's no greater purpose or mastermind strategy behind the new size. The closest thing you get to an in-game consideration is that the smaller boards are far superior for the use of the new Outflank strat to deepstrike any unit. That, and it encourages less spread out armies due to a narrower tunnel (by one foot) to engage thus much more likely to finish the game faster...hence 5 turn games as-per standard now.

This is the new standard. As someone above stated: tournaments will use this, thus practice will happen on the new size, this matchplay games will almost always be on the new size. Some people do whatever they like so there will be 6x4 games played but they'll get rarer and rarer each month. In fact...once people start bringing new-sized mats the standard will be 6x4 or larger boards with the smaller mat and plenty of space for your stuff around the board! This is my favorite part.