As a disclaimer, Bandua reached out to Goonhammer to grab a writer to help influence and shape the terrain. I was picked as Ace was already working with Bandua on the Spanish side. We wouldn’t be at this juncture if we didn’t believe in the product Bandua is putting out, but we thought everyone should know!
We’ve got some exciting news over at the Goonhammer HQ, where contributors like me and Ace have been diligently working in the background with Bandua Wargames to give feedback on a new affordable set of MDF terrain! As a player I’ve had my fair share of games on laser cut MDF terrain, with some highs and some lows; many tournaments are still using plastic GW terrain. We couldn’t help but try and improve the overall experience on terrain that is often times unfairly maligned in the Kill Team community.
The World Team Championship is coming up on August 11th, and the Kill Team group needed its own set of terrain. An international team worked together to go from an early draft of the terrain to the set above, which you can grab at our Goonhammer affiliate link that funds a voucher on your next order through Bandua.
The team at Bandua solicited feedback from around the world and we are expecting to see a slew of map packs in the coming days. We know of one from co-contributor Can You Roll a Crit?, and we’ve heard that Ace and the WTC are hard at work on another for the August event! Meanwhile Just Another Killteam Podcast has noodled around to come up with the UTC’s first KT map pack for the terrain, which you can find here on the Google Drive or here hosted locally.
See Just Another Killteam Podcast’s thoughts on the terrain:
Can You Roll a Crit’s thoughts on the terrain:
Table of Contents
Why Does Terrain Matter So Much?
Over the 2023 competitive season, many tournaments have defaulted to the Octarius and ITD standard for Kill Team, with the World Championships being no different. The strain of the many design philosophies on map making, especially since the advent of Turning Point Tactics map pack, has allowed many teams (especially melee-centric ones) to remain fully hidden far too often.
In the original design of the Octarius terrain, play proceeded without the concept of walls having doors, which meant these “Ls” as we lovingly call them were much more annoying to get around. By the time of Chalnath most players had standardized certain door-like openings as actually functioning as such. Seen as a great change at the time, the invention of doors allowed melee focused teams to stage themselves with low risk of visibility and low chance of needing to use light cover at all.
It’s no fun getting blasted off a map on the first activation through some rogue blast weapon. However, it’s equally disappointing when the majority of Vantage Points are merely used to score the Vantage tac op. We’ve always found there to be a better mix of play styles when Vantage points are a risk/reward play over being relatively pointless.
What Makes the Bandua Terrain Different?
This isn’t the first set of MDF terrain for Kill Team that has seen popular usage! That honor would go to LVO’s Dakotah, who runs Luster’s Workshop. While his terrain is a big part of what makes LVO what it is, it does cost a pretty penny and the Etsy shop is currently on a break.
The traditional perfectly-flat angles on MDF terrain need some adjustment. While Octarius has the issue of a nub of terrain giving you cover, it has become a critical part of the line of sight rules within high level tournament play, forcing players to move and jostle for angles to break cover everywhere.
Just like the competitors, the WTC terrain trims away some of the confusion and angle arguments of Games Workshop’s Octarius terrain kit. However, we’ve kept some of the ability to hide alongside walls with the addition of buttresses on the sides of the flat walls. It’s much more obvious here when a base should or should not be snagging cover.
Additionally we’ve worked to give more teams a greater ability to catch visibility and shooting angles. The L-shapes come with both doors AND windows, leading to a much more dynamic shooting environment where melee monsters can no longer camp behind doors and a large amount of heavy to stay safe. Remember that once a pair of operatives is within 2″ and visible, the hiding operatives lose all benefits of cover! This makes the super-safe hiding on Octarius terrain much harder to get away with here.
In addition to terrain that simulates the Octarius kit, we’ve got a small interconnected set of “ITD” style heavy walls. With both doors and windows here as well, we’ve increased the amount of obscurity while giving teams more ways to prep both shooting and charging. All these options give TOs more leeway to mix and match layouts, or combine pieces into unique forms.
Terrain Formations
With so many straight elements in the kit it’s important to realize that you can combine the elements in many novel ways to improve the kit’s lifespan. For instance, the tall walls can be stacked on top of each other to turn an L-shape into a U-shape.
The shorter walls with their clean connecting notches can be laid out into a longer interlocking line, while the myriad of heavy pieces can be laid out alongside the deployments to give teams more leeway to hide against big blast threats early on.
Set Up and Break Down
This new set of terrain is startlingly easy to build compared to some of its competitors. We’ve gone with wood glue for our assembly, which works well on Bandua’s older and newer terrain alike. First off, two tables come in a small flat pack form factor with five “sprues.” Each one is already pre-finished to skip over the worries about needing to paint wood, or shell out additional money for a paint job.
After punching things out there are a handful of organizational tips to get your build finished quickly. I was able to bang out a set in about 40 minutes without too much issue and with one major deviation from the WTC layouts: We’ve elected to invert a pair of the Ls to give us some other map choices.
I suggest having all the pieces popped out first and sorted into their appropriate piles, starting with the easiest large pieces and working your way down to the smaller fiddlier builds. The L-shapes are dead simple, with their buttresses slotting easily into place. Smaller barricades go next, using one half to stand up the other for the gluing. This leaves the boxes for last, as they can require the most fiddling around with.
This leaves us with two sets of matching Ls that we can stow the smaller pieces into. Using a set of rubber bands I’ve managed to compress the overall footprint of the Bandua terrain down into roughly two boxes the size of the L-shaped walls, which is surprisingly tight for a set of terrain. The playmat that can be purchased also comes with all the important 22×30 layouts laid out for players, which makes this an excellent buy for budding TOs looking to standardize their player experiences.
UTC’s Tie In
For any one interested in picking up a set, and getting involved in the creation of the UTC terrain packet grab a set through our affiliates link here! We’re extremely excited to see the fan reception and what WTC cooks up for the rest of the year!
