In this new series we’re looking at various terrain layouts for Warhammer 40,000 and exploring how they work, what you need to know about playing on them, and how you can improve your play when you play with those layouts.Â
Many games of Warhammer 40k are won or lost in deployment and a key part of that is terrain. In this series we’re going to look at various terrain layouts, looking at how the affect the game and how you can use them to your advantage. In this article we’ll start by looking at Layout 2 from the Games Workshop Tournament Companion, specifically with regard to the Chapter Approved 2025-26 Missions Pack.
This is the second article in the series – if you missed last week’s article on Layout 1, you can find that here.
A Note on Terrain
In these articles I’ll be using Games Workshop terrain but it’s worth noting that terrain will change from event to event, and the layouts shown in the Games Workshop Tournament Companion are guidelines more than hard-and-fast rules about how terrain has to actually look. Most often you’ll find that terrain features may be longer or shorter than the layouts dictate, based on what the tournament organizers have available.
With that out of the way, let’s get into the layout:
Meet Layout 2
Welcome to Games Workshop Layout 2. This layout has similar “L-shaped” ruins in each corner of the table, but these are notably made out of a 4″x6″ base with a 12×6″x base instead of two 12″x6″ plates. These, and the other hinged ruins in the middle of the table, act as separate ruin pieces, meaning that you can’t see through one if you’re in the other – despite being connected by a corner they’re two separate ruins.
Shrinking that L shape in the corners changes this layout dramatically from Layout 1 – it doesn’t section off massive corner areas of the table, and notably because this layout doesn’t have ruins breaking up the sides of the table, you can see down the entirety of each long table edge. This layout is generally recommended for missions with the Search & Destroy, Crucible of Battle, and Tipping Point deployment maps.
When you’re setting this table up, it’s worth noting that those midtable ruins sit along the center line of the table, making them easier to set up. Those diagonal ruins are a bit more of a chore to get right, and it’s important to get their angles correct to limit sight lines across the middle of the table. It’s also important to note that this table uses slightly different ruins from Layout 1, and will require additional ruins facing a specific direction.
Let’s label these ruins. For the purposes of this article, I’m grouping the ruins connected at their corners, even though those are technically distinct pieces:
The key pieces here are:
A. The corner ruin. Made of a 4″x6″ and a 12″x6″ base connected at the corner. This more or less pulls the 12×6 way back toward the short table edge, and means that on Crucible and Search & Destroy Layouts, half of the objective will be behind the ruin wall while the other half will be out in the open. Because of this, that corner between the two ruins has a lot less value – you can still sit in that corner and still be on the objective with a vehicle, but this won’t give you much of a sightline anywhere useful, save the C objective – but you could likely already see that by just being wholly within the terrain feature instead of on the corner, and that would be a safer spot.
B. The angled ruin in the middle of the table. These offer large spaces situated perfectly for staging melee units. They keep Layout 2 from otherwise being a shooting gallery. That said, you can also hide in the B ruin and get some decent sightlines toward the C ruin, as show below:
C. The 12″x6″ ruin in the open corner. These will either be part of your deployment zone on Crucible and Tipping Point or fully in No Man’s Land on Search & Destroy, changing their role a bit. They offer a long, line-of-sight-blocking ruin to sit behind. On Search & Destroy, the no man’s land objective will overlap this terrain base, making it possible to hold from behind a wall in the ruin. But if you’re on the objective it can be difficult to screen the corner behind you unless you have more models or a 12″ denial aura:
D. The smaller ruins in the middle of the table. These two pieces are connected at the corners and act as secondary staging and screening ruins for units moving around the table. While the corner between ruins on the A ruin isn’t super useful, the corner here is, since it gives you clear views of multiple objectives. These provide awesome staging areas for vehicles, particularly ones less than 5″ wide.
The A ruin in the corner gives your units a reliable place to hide while they’re on your home objective, but it’s far enough back that, when combined with the open space in the middle of the table on this layout, it can be really hard to hide with your deployment on Layout 2, especially if your plan is to actually move somewhere useful on the first turn. This is made more difficult by the long sight lines running down the sides of the table.
That said, there are still a few places you can hide, though one is dependent on the opponent and their placement along the long table edge. Example:
Here there are two key “safe” spots – behind the diagonal B ruin in the middle of the table, and behind the C ruin near the table’s edge. You can potentially be safe behind the D ruin, but only if there isn’t a threat lurking behind the C ruin. In the diagram above, the Space Wolves Predator Annihilator is “safe” behind the D ruin because there are no threats behind the C ruin in the upper left corner. If the Night Lords Predator Destructor was in the same position on the other side of the table, they’d be vulnerable to the other Predator Annihilator in the bottom right corner, as it could move down 10″ toward the long table edge and shoot down that lane. We’ll talk more about those in a moment.
Sitting behind the C ruin with a vehicle at the start of the game is pretty common on Crucible and Tipping Point layouts, and because that area terrain is 6″ wide, vehicles can typically move across it pretty easily, or at least get wholly within it to be able to shoot out effectively.
On Layout 1, the big corner A ruin offers a safe spot for wider vehicles thanks to having a large wall to block line of sight. This is typically not going to be present on Layout 2, where there’s only an L-shaped ruin on the A terrain piece, so a vehicle wider than 4″ has to overlap the terrain, and will be visible from across the table:
By contrast, thinner vehicles can still fit this gap. This mostly means Rhinos, Chimeras, and vehicles without sponsons:
Objectives
Despite being a layout intended for lengthwise deployment, Layout 2 makes it easy for a unit on each midtable objective to see the other two, creating some long diagonal sightlines down the table. This can make standing on those objectives pretty dangerous, and not just against shooting armies – melee armies have places they can stage against each objective, staying hidden behind walls as they set up for a charge.
Note that on Search and Destroy, the control areas for those No Man’s Land Objectives (from a corner to the center objective) are more than 12″ apart, meaning you’ll need a lot of movement to get from one to another. On Crucible and Tipping Point they’re closer – just under 10″ apart, making it easier to get from one to another in the same Movement phase.
If you’re playing on Search & Destroy, the objective marker “above” your Deployment zone will be the closer of the two, and generally sits next to a safe spot in your deployment zone. That said, Search & Destroy also lets you deploy in the nook of the D ruin, which is helpful – just be mindful that you may be deploying closer to the enemy than you’d like.
One final note on objectives here: Depending on the terrain and your set-up, whether you can actually tag the objective on C through the wall may not be possible. This is worth confirming before the game starts, and if your ruins have really thick walls it may just not be possible. These objectives are 14″ in from the short table edge, which means that there’s exactly a 0.5″ overlap between the C ruin and their control area.
If the terrain has been set up correctly and is the same size, then it should not be possible to hold a corner objective through the D ruins in the middle of the table on Crucible or Tipping Point, but this will vary based on the size of your ruins on those objectives. Make sure to get a consensus with your opponent on this before the game if it isn’t clear.
Depending on terrain, you may be able to get within 6″ of the middle of the table from a corner on one of the angled B ruins to score Area Denial. But most of the time if you want to score anything around that middle objective you’ll need to put yourself in the open.
Sightlines
There are lots of big, ugly sightlines on Layout 2, making it ideal for armies that want to shot you from a distance. In the diagram above I’ve pointed out most of the major ones but the ones we’re particularly interested in (and these are mirrored) are:
- The long sightline down the long edge of each table. This runs 60″ effectively, making it one of the few times in tenth edition 40k where having a weapon range over 36″ actually matters. If you want to shoot from the A ruin to the C ruin you’ll need to have just over 36″ of range – that’s how far it is from the edge of one to the other.
- The diagonal sightline across the middle of the table runs longer here than it does on layout 1, and you really need 48″ range to shoot the entire line. That said, 36″ plus some movement will usually get you there.
- The other diagonal, going across the three objective markers, is about 40″ long on Search & Destroy and something more like 36″ on Crucible of Battle and Tipping Point.
- A unit wholly within the C ruin can potentially see every single objective on the table, depending on how you’ve positioned it and the terrain being used. If the Plagueburst Crawler in the image below moves out an inch or two, that’ll be possible.
That said, as you can see in the photo above – it’s usually possible for a unit on the enemy’s home objective to be hidden from objective C, so just be mindful if you’re on your home objective that you haven’t left yourself open to this. The flipside here is that the Plagueburst Crawler in the above can move toward the long table edge and get an angle on the Vindicator, but it’ll be more than 36″ away so its Entropy Cannons would be out of range.
For TOWERING units, dropping a toe into the B ruin near the middle of the table more or less gives you visibility on the whole board, save what’s behind the other A and B ruins. Toeing into the C ruins also gives you a lot of sight to most of the board, and it’s easy for a large knight to see every objective on the board from the C ruin.
One more thing to note is that you can typically fit a tank wholly within that D ruin near the long table edges and get visibility out of said ruin if it doesn’t go all the way to the edge of the table. This can give you pretty protected visibility into the middle of the table.
Just make sure your vehicle actually fits – That Vindicator doesn’t make the cut, but there are vehicles which might, and if the terrain doesn’t run all the way across the terrain base, you may end up with other sight lines you can use – or that your opponent can. That Vindicator can’t see out of that terrain to either objective, but it can be shot there, and that’s not great.
Melee Staging
While Layout 2 has some long, brutal sightlines, it also has some great areas for staging a charge, where you can easily challenge units on each objective from the safety of terrain without having to worry about eating Overwatch.
The biggest and most important of these is the angled B ruin in the middle of the table. This offers a safe spot from which to start your move and a wall on the other side of the objective to cover the second part of your move. These corners are realistically about 12″ apart, so if you’re trying to go from one to the other you’ll want to move out of the ruin to make that charge realistic.
When it comes to the other No Man’s Land objectives, you can stage through either the C or D ruins – and which you stage from will typically depend on whether you’re heading to them directly or arriving via deep strike.
Charging from behind the wall of the midtable D ruins is trivial on Crucible/Tipping Point, and will typically require something like a 9″ charge on Search & Destroy. Meanwhile, coming in from behind the wall on the C ruin is pretty easy – if you’re charging a unit on the objective from the D ruin, make sure there’s no unit in C that can charge in with Heroic Intervention and cause problems.
Who Does Well Here?
This is a really open table… but it also has some great melee staging spots. Knights particularly love this table, and tank-heavy shooting armies love it as long as they’re not playing Search & Destroy deployment. On Search & Destroy it becomes much more melee-friendly, as you have decent spots for a turn 1 charge with even a mediocre Advance. Tipping Point also gives you a solid amount of space to stage from inside the B ruin, but be mindful that if you go second, your unit in that ruin may be easy to spot from your opponent’s C ruin.
For most intents and purposes, this is a pretty open table if you’re playing on Crucible of Battle, Hammer & Anvil, or Tipping Point. On Search & Destroy the ability to deploy in the midtable ruins helps melee armies quite a bit, but the connected nature of those ruins means they can shoot across at each other pretty easily. You’ll generally want to avoid walking into that long, 36″ killing zone that runs down the middle of the table between the two small Ls unless you can completely own it with your own shooting. This often will push melee units to fight on the side objectives, forcing vehicles to cross the small ruins at midtable to engage with them, typically at a range where they can close and charge.
Being more open, this table tends to offer a lot of options when it comes to movement. Tanks will typically have to pick one of four movement lanes – moving along either long table edge or between one of the two gaps around the B ruin. For infantry the plan will often be to move into and through the middle B ruin and through the opposite one. This terrain ends up being a lot less restrictive for vehicles than it looks, in part because they can easily just move over those 4″x6″ ruins in the A and D ruins, meaning they can get out of those protected areas much easier if they need and change their plans.
As always, where you can place your Infiltrators or Scouts will depend on the deployment map – you have to stay 9″ out of your opponent’s deployment zone – but generally speaking there are a few common moves. The two crooks on the D Terrain piece are both common and generally safe spots on Tipping Point/Crucible, while on Search & Destroy you’ll likely be looking at dropping in or behind one of the C ruins.
One common move with Scouts is to deploy on the objective outside the ruin on C and then scout back into the ruin if you’re going second, keeping the unit safe, or scouting forward if you are going first, occupying a safer space behind the D ruin.
When it comes to deep striking, that L-shaped ruin creates a lot of the same issues as the one on Layout 1, in that it immediately creates a semi-protected area for units to deep strike into if their opponents don’t screen them out. Layout 2 doesn’t offer a ton of safe spots to drop in, and units will most often be coming in on the corners ore behind those D ruins on the long sides of the table unless someone messed up really bad at screening.
Final Thoughts
Layout 2 has some long sightlines and open areas which can make it challenging for melee armies to compete. That said, it also has two great ruins in the middle of the table for staging big melee pushes, so if an player isn’t careful about deployment, they can find enemy melee units just crashing through those walls and into their army. Layout 2 may feel more generous to vehicles at first, but note that while it offers easier movement options compared to Layout 1, it also has fewer safe areas to hide during deployment, which can make it difficult to deploy safely when you have a lot of units. Despite being pretty open, Layout 2 has longer sightlines than almost any other GW layout, and you may find it’s one of the few boards where shooting units just can’t reach each other without putting in some serious movement first.
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