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My home gaming space is really limited (I have children and there's a darn guinea pig run in my "comfort zone" front room). My gaming space is a pasting table, 22 inches wide, 66 inches long.

Does anyone have any experience playing 40K in a small space by halving all movment, distances, weapon ranges? Any ramifications I should be aware of aside from the obvious not being able to field as many models? (I guess one-quarter the normal amount?)

In other news, Forbidden Psalm works okay since it plays in a 2'x2' area.

The biggest problem you will have is that your models are much a bigger than they should be. when you half all ranges.

You might consider Kill Team, which plays on a 22"x30" playspace.

Seconding what alextroy said.

Conversely, if you halve all ranges but switch to using epic scale models, might be fun as well?

It probably complicates some things around bigger models and the like, but halving all distances shouldn't make the game fundamentally unplayable. It might affect some balance elements, but we're talking about GW balance so that's not something I would worry too much about.

One more serious complication that I can imagine has to do with terrain. Especially terrain with multiple floors might end up unclimbable. But that kind of terrain is best avoided then.

Kill Team is great for small games, but if you really want to play 40k instead of a different game with 40k miniatures, Instead of halving distance, try using a lot more terrain and boarding action rules.

Boarding action massively cuts down on the lethality of units and make even small boards viable, assuming the board is sufficiently cluttered. As you cannot see or measure through any kind of wall, moving across the board takes longer despite the small size.

Thank-you for your replies everyone.

If Kill Team plays on 22x30 that sounds perfect, I will look into it.

I do also have a bunch of 6mm models (the space marines and orks from Epic, and a whole bunch of tyranids, imperial guard with hellhounds, and modern day tanks I could use for imperial guard) - so I might try that with 40K rules

 Jidmah wrote:

Boarding action massively cuts down on the lethality of units and make even small boards viable, assuming the board is sufficiently cluttered. As you cannot see or measure through any kind of wall, moving across the board takes longer despite the small size.

You are very much mistaken on BA reducing lethality.
Do you know what happens when you turn something like Kharn & some Khorne 8 bound/Exalted 8 Bound loose in an environment where the enemy has almost no chance to shoot them up before melee happens?
As for shooting.... if you can shoot, you're almost definitely within range of melta-guns.

Do you know what happens when you turn something like Kharn & some Khorne 8 bound/Exalted 8 Bound loose in an environment where the enemy has almost no chance to shoot them up before melee happens?

Actually, I do. I played against WE this Sunday and they totally got shot to smithereens by my plague marines, despite savage resilience. The opponent was running a Master of Executions and a unit of goats instead if Kharn though, because expensive characters suck in that mode since they impact your action budget negatively. So technically, his list was even more powerful than the one you described, as stopping 6 eightbound plus five zerkers and a captain equivalent running at you screaming is super easy, and even if you don't they will likely lose on points.

Boarding action tends to require actual tactics though, so if you aren't utilizing the terrain or leave yourself open to getting flanked from one of the detours GW builds into their missions, you got no one but yourself to blame.

And to be truthful, if meltaguns are the worst you can think of, it's already a clear sign that lethality dropped by leagues.