Creating a battlefield for Combat Patrol games at home

The current restrictions of real life make it largely impossible to play at your local club or store, so why not make the best of it and take the time to create a small(ish) battlefield for smaller at home games of 40K.

The Combat Patrol level of games are the smallest scale on which you can play 40K without having to resort to the Kill Team rules. I wanted to create something at home that allows me to play both Combat Patrol missions up to 100 Power Level and Kill Team with the almost exact same set up.

By using the two boards of the "Battlezone: Manufactorum" as a playing field I automatically have the correct dimensions for Combat Patrol games and it can easily double as the playing field for Kill Team games by just using one of them.

In 9th edition obscuring terrain features are a very important part of the game. This allows for both players to manoeuvre their units tactically to minimize casualties from shooting. Compared to 8th edition the playing field is smaller and most, if not all, armies will have some form of potent shooting that is in range from turn 1. This makes "hiding" units from enemy line of sight a very smart thing to do.

With this "test-set up" I could see if I had enough suitable terrain pieces to create a visually interesting table that allows for enough obscured line of sight and height differences to make for a fun game. It also allowed me to visually aid myself in making up a list as to what terrain features need to be completed first.

The way the battlefield is set up in the example above both armies, of let's say 25 power or 500 points, have enough room to move and take cover while the high ground provided by most of the terrain opens up firing lanes if units are placed tactically.

It can however be somewhat limiting for vehicles and large walkers, but some tweaking of the placement of the terrain features or removing some of the features will resolve this.

Now on with painting it all in a unified scheme!