"Appropriate terrain for 40k" Topic

I am starting to get into 40k after many years of fantasy and historical. For me, terrain is important and I consider building nice terrain and landscapes that are plausible as well as add interest and help put the player in the setting very important. The Old World had many clear geographic descriptions to make this easy. From my limited perusal of fluff in White Dwarf it seems that the 40k world is mostly ruined futuristic cities. Is it possible to set engagements in any type of more natural landscape? Do any of the 40k books describe the world or landscapes in them?

It is possible to do all kinds of natural landscapes.

The first Dark Angels book is about Caliban and describes the dark, dense forests of that world in there. While Caliban doesn't exist anymore in the 40K universe there are lots of what are called Death Worlds, which have all kinds of voracious plants, animals or fungi running around on them eating people or turning them into piles of goo like a Spinal Tap drummer.

There are also desert world like Tallarn. One of the battles in the Thousand Sons Horus Heresy book describes a battle between two possessed Eldar Titans and a force of Thousand Sons as Space Wolves that takes place in a desolate mountainous area.

One good short story to read, to give you an idea of the terrain you can use is Wolf at the Door in the Tales of Heresy collection. It is from 30K fluff but details a bunch of ambushes and so forth that the Space Wolves carry out against the Dark Eldar.

Pretty much your imagination or what you want to game in is up to you in 40K.

There are even world that are covered in water and have floating islands of coral on them that the warriors fight on.

What armies are you planning on using? That can determine what kind of scenery would be useful.

If you have a Kroot army that you will be using then you might want to make some jungle terrain as they do well in that. If you have necrons some moonscapes with Necron pyramids around might be cool.

You can even do tunnels for underground fighting or build a space ship table for boarding actions.

Thanks, I'm thinking Tau. They seem very original.

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Pink Fluffy Alien terrain:

Perfect for your 40K or other science fiction games!

Now that is original! I have an idea that the new Age of Sigmar board could be cool as well. Those themes seem to be diverging.

My introduction to the 40K universe was via Space Marine (2nd edition 6mm.) Somewhere in the rulebook there was a mention of dinosaur pens that inspired me to buy a couple of the plastic model beasties for use with the larger scale Warhammer 40K. I think they were considered a food source. I never got anywhere with my plans, but think Jurassic Park.

Also, anything in the Star Wars universe can be an inspiration for non-ruined (at first) civilizations.

Here are some pictures from the Games Day Canada 2001 Tau table

and another non-ruined city scape 40K table

A lot of those boards should never be used for 40K.

The reason why they are just to wide open.

You really want to cut down on large open areas, since LOS is very important.

So put as much stuff on the table so that they is very little LOS, which will cause both sides to actually move their troops instead of just sitting back and blasting everything from one position.

There's a lot you can do. I encourage you to take the "official" tabletop terrain with a grain of salt. Not every sci-fi building looks like a church, despite what you may see.

Here is a sample of what we use at my place.
It's set up as a winter board in this pic. We change the area tiles on the mat for different climates.

We've added quite a bit since this was taken. Should post another article to the blog sometime soon.

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Our ongoing campaigns in the Corvus Cluster have included battles in forests, farmland, and deserts to date. See below.

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Thanks for so many inspirational ideas. My impression of the local group playing 40K is a stuffed board just big enough to hold the troops lined up edge to edge and blasting away with much bloody results. As Tolkien once said, fantasy (or science fiction) should be plausible. My questions related to that are "Who would want to be a Space Marine if you just die?" Somewhat related to this is the way battles are conducted and battles are always related to the landscape which should pose the problems of how to utilize space and that your flank and rear should be a little threatened by the open spaces that you cannot possibly occupy. All real world battles have this issue. I always play on bigger than recommended tables for this reason. I am going to try 40k in this same approach with some open spaces mixed with "cover".

Too bad on the stuffed board. The rules allow and suggest a bigger board for larger battles.
The choosing of the terrain is always interesting. My regular opponent likes to choose as little terrain as possible and we had several discussions about what constitutes 'substantial' terrain.

I've devised a random probability system to set up the board ahead of time to speed up the game.

That being said, often the game ends like a chess game with few pieces standing after turn six. We rationalize by thinking the troops removed from play did not necessarily 'die' they just lost their combat effectiveness and withdrew.

Either way, we've enjoy the game this past year; and acquiring and painting the models.

Scored big time at the Historicon Flea Market this month.

That sounds great, I need to get to Historicon once. How does your random system work?

I find terrain to be a key feature in a satisfying wargame. It's not always possible to go "whole hog" for a quick game, but I like to go all-out when possible.

While the 40K rulebook only allows 1-3 terrain pieces per 2x2 space (not counting City of Death games), there's nothing to say you can't add extra details to really bring the table alive (On an agri-world, for example, I may put out cropfields and fencing that "don't count.")

The Gaffer has spent a lot of time on small terrain pieces to add flavor to the battlefield. An industrial area, for example, might include a small set of refinery pipes rising up and disappearing into the ground. They may offer a little cover--or just be added as "color" to the table.

Take a look around the Corvus Cluster website: thecorvuscluster.com.

I saw that Wealdmaster is thinking Tau. Here's a Tau tower I built out of plumping pipe. It's two feet tall.

This sounds appropiated to me…

Amicalement
Armand

Unique terrain at reasonable prices (with an option to come painted). Mostly urban but some other pieces.
blueforgeterrain.com