We've established how to go about moving and fighting with our forces in the Rules Book. In the Battles Book we're going to take a look at how to set up a battle between two opposing armies and fight it out using those rules. This includes creating the battlefield by placing terrain and scenic pieces on it, choosing armies to fight with (this also links in with the Armies Book later), different missions to attempt and victory conditions so you can work out who's won when the dust settles.
Choosing Forces
A battle can be as big or as small as you like – from a simple skirmish up to a full-blown slaughterfest. You can play with all of the forces you have available or choose equally matched forces to ensure that neither side has an unfair advantage. To help in picking equally matched forces we have assigned values to units of troops, tanks, heroes and weapons in the theoretical and universal coinage of 'points'. These points values are detailed in the army lists for different races in the Armies Book. The army lists also include information on how many troops are included in each unit, what weapons they are armed with, and so on.
Most Warhammer 40,000 players use these army lists to organise and collect their forces as well as field them in battles. For a battle it is common practice for players to organise armies around an agreed points total of either 1,000, 1,500 or 2,000 points. As a guideline, a battle between two 1,000 point armies will take two to three hours to play, making it eminently suitable for an evening's or afternoon's gaming. A battle between two 1,500 point armies will last for most of a day, and larger games are best tackled with an eye to them taking a day and evening or a couple of days over a weekend to complete.
A word of advice is to start out with fairly small games until you have picked up the rules – it's better to start a small battle and finish it than start a mega-thrunge and have to abandon it halfway through. As you gain experience you will find the time it takes to complete a game will decrease and larger and larger battles become more manageable.
Scenarios
The most simple and straightforward battle is where two sides line up on opposing sides of the table and battle commences, last man standing is the winner. This is the ideal kind of fight for seeing who's got the toughest army and can slug it out for longest.
However, in the 41st millennium warriors and war machines fight in all kinds of circumstances. Roving patrols clash in disputed territory, recce units try to penetrate their enemy's battle line, assault forces try to overrun defensive positions or two commanders unleash their armies in a straightforward attempt to cleanse the battlefield of their hated foes.
This is where scenarios come in. They give details of different sorts of game you can play and are used in combination with the army lists to select appropriate forces. When you arrange a game you can decide which kind of scenario to fight so that you can choose your army beforehand. See Choosing a Scenario & Mission for the full rules on picking a scenario.
Setting Up a Battlefield
In order to fight a battle you will need somewhere to set up your battlefield – a flat, stable area unlikely to be ravaged by natural disasters like The Feet of Doom or the equally terrifying Household Pet Monster. Some people make do with a smooth bit of floor (although this is likely to fall prey to The Feet), but most use a largish kitchen or dining table (suitably protected by a cloth or blanket). By far the best option, if it's available, is to fight over a gaming board made up of sheets of chipboard, plywood or MDF laid over another table. Typically the battlefield should be between 6 to 8 feet long (around 1.8 metres to 2.4 metres) and 4 to 6 feet broad (1.2 to 1.8 metres). You can play on a smaller area quite easily, but you'll need to keep the forces fighting proportionately smaller to ensure that you've got some room to manoeuvre.
Building up a collection of scenery is an important and enjoyable part of the hobby. It is possible to buy all kinds of terrain like trees, bushes, hedges, fences, ruins, tank traps, crates, barrels and card or plastic buildings. Take a look in your local Games Workshop store (if you have one nearby) and you'll find all kinds of scenery that you can buy as well as textured cloths for covering your tabletop and lots of other useful tools and materials. Failing that, model shops and particularly places that specialise in model railways have a good selection of scenery, although it is often comparatively expensive.
If your budget is limited, simple pieces like rocks and logs can be represented by small stones and twigs scavenged from the garden, hills can be indicated with books placed under a blanket or sheet, and so on. Beyond this there are almost limitless opportunities for making scenery easily and very cheaply. With a little effort you will soon become an expert at building hills, jungles, craters, trenchworks, bunkers, temples and all manner of terrain. The list of different types of scenery is endless; from ash wastes to ice worlds, jungles to volcanoes, all could feature on your battlefields. White Dwarf magazine often contains articles about making scenery and is a great source of ideas and inspiration.
- Terrain
Terrain lets a commander block enemy fire, find good firing positions, and conceal troops, turning a flat table into an interesting battle.
- Placing Terrain on the Battlefield
There are several acceptable ways to set up terrain before a game, as long as the result is a fair and entertaining battlefield.
- Setting Up Terrain – Method 1
One player sets up all the terrain, and his opponent then chooses which board edge to deploy from, keeping things fair.
- Setting Up Terrain – Method 2
Players split the table in half, each places terrain in their own half, then dice off for choice of deployment zone.
- Setting Up Terrain – Method 3
For a historical refight, terrain is set up to represent the real historical battlefield as closely as possible.
- Setting Up Terrain – Method 4
Divides the table into 24 inch squares and rolls a D3 and 2D6 per square against a random terrain generator to fill each one.
- Random Terrain Generators
A 2D6 table you roll on to randomly populate a battlefield with terrain suited to a particular kind of world.
- Different Worlds
Flavour examples of other kinds of world you could model terrain for, beyond the four sample terrain generators.
- Ash Wastes Terrain Generator
A 2D6 terrain table for hive-world ash wastes, covering toxic rivers, sludge, chem wastes, ruins, mines and settlements.
- Agri-World Terrain Generator
A 2D6 terrain table for farming worlds, covering rivers, crop fields, woods, hills, obstacles and farm complexes.
- Ice World Terrain Generator
A 2D6 terrain table for ice worlds, covering glaciers, crevasses, frozen lakes, blizzards and research stations; can double for desert worlds.
- Death World Terrain Generator
A 2D6 terrain table for a jungle death world, covering marshes, carnivorous plants, jungle, carnivore lairs and boiling mud pits.