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Hi Chaps,

I'm making up some terrain for kill team and wondered if the veterans here could recommend what sort of Terrain makes for enjoyable games.

For example, does multiple levels make for good gameplay, do they need to be 6" or higher to prevent kill teams clambering around like monkeys? Do I need lots of waist high barricades or are higher walls better? Are walkways between terrain good or should I have isolated pieces? etc.

Any advice is greatly appreciated

I find that Line of Sight blocking terrain creates more tactical options than different elevation. The additional levels only serve to make the board a little bit bigger as it takes longer to move up and down but doesn't really change the scheme of maneuver. Different elevation may give you some shooting angles that negate an obscured penalty, but it's generally not enough to be game changing.

Really the Munitorum Containers and the Thermic Plasma Conduits are some of the best additions to a Kill Team board. The former block LOS (and give elevation changes) while the later provide good linear cover. The sprue for the containers also has some good scatter terrain that provides cover.

We typically play combining the terrain from Sector Mechanicus or Sector Fronteris with the Sector Munitorium (6 containers, Crane, and 2 servo haulers) to give you an idea of how busy our boards are.

My experience has been that elevated positions don't see all that much use to worry all that much about making sure each board has some available. My group's terrain rules even include things like automatically having cover if you have the high ground. Units don't use up movement going vertically down less than 6" (which I think is the Kill Team rule already). We also tend to ignore the within 1" of the edge falling rules too. So we have a lot of rules to make elevated positions a good place to be. Still, they are rarely used.

I think this largely comes from the fact that these areas are okay for a single sniper's perch, but don't really help win games since your team probably had somewhere else to be. Sure, they offer better threat area, but they take at least a round to get into position most games. Would be snipers can very easily just get into ground level cover and start shooting into a fairly target rich environment without taking the high ground.

Additionally, it a unit takes gets on the high ground, there is almost no way they are going to be completely hidden. So any enemy unit that wants to shoot they can. It can occasionally limit assaults, but this is more of delaying the assault 1 round and being in a worst position overall than just accepting the charge.

My group's common boards are Sector Mechanius (probably my favorite), Deathworld Forest (which I do like quite a bit), Sector Imperialis (I am getting a little bored of this one) and now Warcry's Starter (which is really like a denser Sector Imperialis).

What works fine are vehicles in scale ranging between 1/60 and 1/40.

I started using Ural military truck in 1/43 scale and it works fine. Big enough to act as a LOS block and define the battlefield. With some simple conversion one can make it look just fine to fit the 40k aesthetics. Also, very few people use cars, despite kill team usually takes place in urban areas and a car here and there can make the battlefield look more appealing. Recently I bought some 1950s cars to convert them as well.

I also got 1/60 Trabant that serves as cover due to it's tiny size.

Nice thanks for the advice chaps! I'm making my own Armageddon style desert terrain so I'll make sure to have plenty of sight blocking stuff. It obviously a lot easier to hide one or two models than whole units in 40k!

I might do a few multi-level bits, but I won't worry about it too much since it doesn't add much to the gameplay!

For Armageddon, try picking up some poor second-hand Chimera or two and make them as old, rusty burned-out wrecks. Works well with Ork vehicles too.Kit-bashed/scratch-built wreck of Ork Stompa or Gargant would be very thematic.

Yea true, shame to waste good plastic on terrain though! I've just been using MDF, DAS clay, polystyrene and plasicard so far for some cheap and easy terrain

That's why I said poor, second-hand model. Some total wreck, badly painted or converted piece that is beyond salvation, or something that misses parts or was damaged by some other means.

Also, one tank kit will male two terrain pieces if you saw it in half diagonally and bury them into the ground.

Anything from TT Combat! Cheap and cheerful MDF.

Otherwise I've been finding that LoS blocking is more important than height, so I've been using Arena or Rogue Trader boards...

Even been thinking of considering using some kind of Space Hulk style boards and there are rules for using Blackstone Fortress boards in a White Dwarf

The Ork Fortress they do does look pretty sweet... maybe a Christmas prezzie idea!

Some of the boards we have played on, full on max terrain, lots of fun, we have played 4 way free-for-all games, have played 1v1, have played custom home made scenarios

There is no easy rule. We use different terrains all the time.
These are some of our setups, as you will see some have less terrain pieces than others and none are symmetrical. We find players should be able to adapt to all situations. Also always having the same setup will favour certain lists.
Please note the Starship table, will be placed with the ordinary rules, except that the walls can't be crossed by any rule like FLY, Filp Belt, Necron whatever it's called. The walls can be rearranged between games.

Here is most of the terrain I have in action. I am mostly featuring multi-player games as my group makes use of two boards when playing those.


This is from my last game at the time of this writing. It is nearly all my Mechanics and Imperialius terrain along with some random bits such as Ryza stuff I have. This terrain is what we use most as I can only bring 2 of 4 the terrain sets I have easily to the FLGS. In this game, I was the only one that made use of high ground except the Ork player who only did to get into melee with them. I would consider these setups very dense for Kill Team, but I like making use of all the terrain I have painted and brought and the group hasn't had much of a complaint this affecting games much. Of course, we all pretty much run melee-centric armies and like the cover, LOS blocking stuff too.


I also have enough forest terrain for a jungle/rain forest board. Only a little bit of it is shown here. Unfortunately, It hasn't been used in a while. I really like playing on it, but I am not a sure the rest of the group does. The special rules we use for this terrain is looking through two pieces of terrain blocks LOS. This was done more for practical reasons of not spending a large amount of time trying to lose/find LOS. The other special rule is moving though a forest piece causes a Mortal Wound. We should probably tone that back or something, but I like the idea that if you absolutely need to get somewhere and group of razor vines are blocking the route you can always risk just coming away with a Flesh Wound.



This picture is more there to show the Warcry Starter terrain. Also, never mind the Repulsor Executioner. I had brought in my 40k space marine army to show off and decided I wanted a bit of it as terrain too. The Warcry terrina did actively get complaints because while there is a lot of terrain, very little of it actually blocks LOS. Additionally, making use of the upper level has been practically suicide for units. There just isn't much that can be done to give cover up there and it also doesn't really offer extra threat area nor protect that well against assault. As much as I like the aesthetic, it has mostly been shelved with very little play time.

Thanks for all the nice pictures guys! I especially like that board with the Ork infested mangrove swamp.

Wow those are some great terrain setups. Way to go! We mostly just play arena.