Begin Work On Your 11th Edition Terrain With Battle Kiwi
April 14, 2026 by brennon
Getting in quick with the Warhammer 40,000 11th Edition accessories, Battle Kiwi are now selling a set of Mission Terrain Areas which are based on the measurements from the recent previews by Games Workshop.
11th Edition Mission Terrain // Battle Kiwi
These are designed to match the new terrain footprints, which are used across all of the missions that you'll find when 11th Edition lands. The shapes themselves mark out the extent of different terrain areas on the board and you then simply put whatever terrain you want on them to provide additional cover (as you can see here).
11th Edition Mission Terrain // Battle Kiwi
The kit from Battle Kiwi is all laser-cut MDF, so nothing revolutionary there, but if you're looking to get a set sent to you rather than doing all of the measuring and cutting yourself at home, this might be a good starting point. The kit includes...
- Four large rectangles – 7” x 11.5”
- Two large right-angle triangles – 8” x 11.5”
- Four medium rectangles – 6” x 4”
- Two long lines – 10” x 2.5”
- Four short lines – 6” x 2”
I'm sure that other companies out there will start to do something similar but it seems like Battle Kiwi are first out of the gate. They currently offer options for shipping to New Zealand, Australia, the US, the EU and the UK, so you have different places that you can source your bits from.
11th Edition Mission Terrain Templates // Battle Kiwi
I like that Games Workshop actually bothered to put the information out there already about the terrain layouts for the game. It allows tournament organisers to be, well, organised, but it also means that folks can start to get a bit more creative when it comes to the tabletops they build.
Rather than just plonking terrain down, you can now build up these "bases" to suit your particular army and the terrain collection that you have. It's nothing revolutionary or new and people have been doing area terrain for decades but I like that it might spark a bit more creativity in the Warhammer 40,000 space.
What do you think?
"These are designed to match the new terrain footprints, which are used across all of the missions that you'll find when 11th Edition lands..."
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Aren’t the GW “triangle” buildings measurements wrong? I thought someone did an analysis of the grid layout of the graphics and found there was something 2″ off on it, so you would need to have a bit of a gap between them.
G’Wullu defined them as
in their article. https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/xlppkx5s/new40k-take-cover-with-updated-terrain-rules/
Since those are the official numbers I wouldn’t use the graphic as a guide.
Battle Kiwi have also noted that the correct sizings have been included
I understand that they might want standardised terrain for tournament play, but I’d much rather have an interesting mix of terrain on the battlefield than precision.
Nothing agaist battle kiwi here but this who concept of standardised shapes of terrain just looks soulless and dull.
Fully agree. This is for tournament gamers who need everything spoon-fed to them so they can win at all costs. But I can’t deny the tournament “scene” is insanely popular here; they sell out 4-6 months in advance. It’s kind of bonkers really. I don’t think anyone plays for fun anymore. Game has evolved into a different monster.
To be honest I at first totally agreed! (Oli here from Battle kiwi 😉 ) but once you chuck some basing on the shapes to pretty them up, it does mean your terrain set up actually becomes quite flexible as you can chuck any of your terrain pieces on. All terrain being the same in the upcoming new edition is a little bland though and I’m not totally convinced :/
From a gameplay perspective, it works extremely well. From a thematic standpoint, it feels very weird. My buddies and I have experimented with a similar idea recently in 10th (treating all terrain as “Obscuring” and putting them on area bases), and there was a lot of mental gymnastics it took to get used to it.
For example, a tank not being able to shoot past those craters at some mooks on the other side feels very wrong. It’s also hard to remember that you can’t shoot over the base of certain terrain, sometimes, like a reactor in the middle of a big footprint.
Workshop just needs to cut the range of every gun in half and be done with all this weird layout/terrain nonsense. Take a page from Warmachine, BattleTech, Dropzone Commander, Malifaux, etc., and stop letting everyone shoot across the entire board. Just put some line in the rulebook about how the ‘fog of war’ means that weapons can never shoot up to their theoretical max range and you’re good.
@greyhunter88 AGREED! Half range is a good suggestion. Way too much emphasis on long range, destroys the fun of close combat – again, tourneys are the “game now”, and … I’m not feeling it.
Good games like Infinity and Chain of Command have essentially unlimited ranges, and Bolt Action rarely goes under 24″. And they’re closer matches to 40K “scale” than the games you mentioned – Warmachine is tank-less steapunk, Malifaux is about squad battles, while BT and DZC have are at 6mm-15mm or w/e scale where it’s easier to pretend that guns actually have no range whatsoever.
To limit the discussion of 40K’s problems to something that would fit in a comment is that there are few/no ways to degrade enemy shooting without a) killing models or b) being out of sight. Compare it to Infinity’s range bands (positive and negative!), aggressive cover mods or, God forbid, mimetism, impersonation, or smoke. Chain of Command does some of those things and then adds in morale effects on shooting, where you straight up lose firing dice to shock – and that’s in addition to shooting always having to be balanced against the need to move.
As their One Good Rule Change that 40K is allowed per-edition, they are moving to cover being a mod to hit rather than a type of save. However, since the largest game studio in the world is somehow also among the least competent, the idea is going to be poorly implemented, same as it was with AP mods when they replaced the dog-awful all-or-nothing AP, or when they equalized monstrous creatures and vehicles with wound tracks (compare it to Bolt Action, which has vehicle damage work on the same hit/wound system as infantry, but entirely immune to small arms, and also contain sub-system damage).
Warmachine has cannons which only fire 16″ while many pistols can fire 12″. This is a gameplay decision, not a thematic one.
Malifaux has military rifles which fire to the same range that an average man can run in a single round. This is a gameplay decision, not a thematic one.
BattleTech has a scale (30 metres per hex), so many weapons are only effective out to 90 metres or so. This is even corroborated by the lore, where books will specifically call out long-range missiles firing to a maximum range of 630 metres. The rulebook specifically points out that this is a gameplay decision, not a thematic one.
DropZone Commander gives weapons unlimited range for the most part, but introduced a gameplay mechanic called “Countermeasures” like shields or anti-missile systems that limit the effective range of weaponry when fired at them. So a missile will have unlimited range against a building, but only 12″ range ‘countered’. Almost every unit has Countermeasures.
Bolt Action, ignoring the fact that it’s a random/alternating activation system preventing you from concentrating damage the same way you can in 40k, is a completely different kettle of fish. If you compare the output of a single squad of Veteran Infantry into some mooks in the open…
In Bolt Action, 10 men will get 10 shots with their rifles, -1 to hit for moving and shooting, -1 to hit for long range… so they get 1-2 hits, and then need 4+ to wound their enemies.
In Warhammer 40k, 10 Intercessors will get 40 shots with their bolters, 3’s to hit, 3’s to wound, and average guys will get a 4+/5+ save after AP.
So from 1 kill in Bolt Action to 8+ in 40k, before you even take into account the increased potential of stratagems, enhancements or attached characters, which are mechanics that do not exist in Bolt Action.
The issue in 40k is that you can pretty reliably delete half of an opponent’s army with your shooting in a single turn, before they can react. So as a result, players need to bend into a pretzel to create a board that is so cluttered and so abstracted that nobody can see anything, and then add rules where units can move through walls and stuff to prevent the movement from becoming unplayable. If you reduced weapon ranges, you would achieve the same effect… a player would be unable to concentrate their entire force’s shooting as easily and the game would require a few turns of maneuvering before the killing started in earnest.
If my Lascannon shoots 24″ instead of 48″, I can only reach out across half the board. Same effect as you covering the middle line of the board with “Obscuring” terrain that cannot see through. You’d need to massage the rules a little bit, of course. I’m not saying just cutting the range of everything in half would fix the game overnight, but that alone would get you pretty far, and our boards wouldn’t have to look so stupid anymore.
Nothing sells a game like an interesting and evocative board set up. It is the set for the game.
Something I am sure GW once championed and understood. But then they are now chasing that tiny percentage of the customer base that want to be the best general but cannot deal with terrain challenges.
I love how 11E is introducing even more unpainted MDF to the game to go with the unpainted MDF L-shapes already on the table. If only the unpainted plastic armies could also be unpainted MDF…
Oh I’d be horrified if people didn’t texture and paint these terrain areas! I left them uncovered in the photos to clearly show what they are…but think I need to pretty some up now as I’d hate for players to get the idea they should remain untouched! ugly tables make me sad 🙁
You can only do so much against 40K players’ dislike of a nice looking table. Even the GW suggested standard deployments would look nice if someone incorporated both the GW Official Warhamer 40,000 Tournament Approved Terrain and then did something fun with the rest of the footprint.
But I’ve see people at the FLGS play with naught but a mat and unpainted MDF