In every tournament, I have ever attended, the terrain has been incredibly sparse.
So much so, that I've had to learn to play on sparse terrain.
And if anything, that terrain got in the way, more than it provided a helpful cover save.
Although I was able to hide the odd small unit here or there.
I've been plating on some VERY open battle fields where hugging cover from a hill or tree would provide a 5+ cover save.
A 1/3 chance of passing a cover save is pretty damned slim!
However, because they were all very uniform in their design and they were ruins, providing a 4+ cover save - games played at home were nothing like the games played at tournaments.
My friends and I just weren't used to the Games Workshop plastic terrain, which had now become the standard scenery at most events.
I should also mention that my foam core terrain did not back away very easily.
So with this in mind, I start looking for examples of 40K gaming boards that other people had built.
After finding this picture of a 4x4 gaming board from an event, I discovered that all of this could be made from a single Sector Imperialis boxed set. It just took forever to count all the tiles, walls and compare this photo to the contents of the box.
All I needed to do now was to fill the remaining 2x6 space.
Fortunately, I was able to pick up an old Crashed Aquila terrain piece on eBay for £10. Although some Quake Cannon craters would have been my second choice, as they occupy roughly the same area of terrain.
I purchased this 'Snowstorm' battle mat from Gamemat.eu for £52 and laid out the base of each ruin from the Sector Imperialis box (approximately £60 from Element Games).
Even with the Crashed Aquila area terrain, this looks super sparse!
So to keep in with the current trend of MASSIVE terrain pieces appearing in the Greetings From The Warp tournaments I keep attending, I feel I need an Aquila Strongpoint to provide something large, line of sight blocking and a large piece of area terrain with which to keep the battlefield interesting.
My only grip is that this massive building costs £60 from Element Games, which is the same price as the entire Sector Imperialis box - although I have spread it out very well.
Sector Imperialis: £60
Aquila Strongpoint: £60
Crashed Aquila: £10
'Snowstorm' battle mat: £52
TOTAL: £182
So how much does Warhammer 40K Terrain cost?
About £200 if you're doing it properly.
Now I just need to glue the ruins to some wooden bases, build it all, paint it all, then measure it all to hopefully fit in a big plastic storage box.
This terrain is made from such thick plastic and I will not be sticking any of the fragile bits, like lights or little spikes on any of the buildings.
My terrain is being built to pack neatly in a box and be built to last.
But most importantly, it's being built to reflect the games I would typically play on the tournament scene.