Editing Warhammer Terrain Guide (section)

==Buying Terrain==

When it comes to buying terrain, your options are a bit more limited. Game companies, especially Games Workshop, regularly produce terrain just for miniatures games that help establish scale and aesthetic. In addition, other companies produce items that are eminently suitable as Warhammer terrain. A few quick highlights

-[[Mantic Games]] produces a line known as Terrain Crate. While intended more for TTRPGs, it can provide some nice features and details. As of this writing, the first wave is available on store shelves, and the second is expected to come out sometime in late 2020.

-[[Warlord Games]] produces a range of terrain for their own games that works well with Warhammer, thanks to the similar scale they use. There are plenty of options on their website, some made of plastic and others of laser cut wood. Special attention should go to their Ruined Farmhouse and Ruined Hamlet sets, which provide for a very nice burnt-down or collapsed home.

-Aquarium fixtures are very often good sources of terrain. Rocks, weird skull-shaped mountains, giant mushrooms, and a huge array of plastic plants are all excellent sources of non-proprietary terrain, and they're broadly available. The one downside is that, aside from multi-packs of plants and such, these terrain pieces can be as expensive or even pricier than GW terrain. Keep an eye out for good deals on Amazon and discounts at your local pet stores.

-There are plenty of minor companies out there that produce terrain kits, some old, some having just been born on kickstarter. Quality is variable, so do your research before you invest in a whole battlefield's worth.

-Various model companies produces items for model train and railroad layouts, and across the industry they have a wide range of high quality and useful products makes them especially useful when working on your terrain. Plus you might think about the adding an actual train as either terrain or even a small diorama. However your quickly run into an issue of scale: Model rail roads run there scale off a letter code which refers to the '''distances between the two rails'''. Which means you can have models of different official 'scales' running on the same track. For example an "O" scale model and an "O27" model are very different scales since "O27" is at a small scale to make the model overall shorter so it can better go around tighter radius corners. On the other end an "ON30" model runs on "HO" track but there scaled for narrow gauge engines and so are considered "O" in scaling making them look a lot bigger. To cut this story short, this author at least is of the opinion that you want to go for "S" gauge, ON is too small, and O might be slightly over sized for 40k when compared to existing terrain, (and keep an eye out for On30 narrow gauge this author has yet to get a wagon to do a size comparison). However "S" is a bit uncommon so O might be the best option, plus O tend to be done by Lionel and there three track system looks pretty fitting for 40k. However Even if you think that model train terrain pieces are often the wrong scale and too modern-looking for Warhammer, they're still a great source of flocks, water effects, molds for making rocks, and other similar tools. Also as an aside: if you want to add smoke, sound and light to a tank model, train companies already have all those ready almost off the shelf if your willing to put in some work.

===Buying from Games Workshop===
So, let's get it out of the way. Buying terrain from GW is rarely cheap. You can sometimes get a lot for your money if you're buying the big box sets they occasionally put out, but in general, if you're using GW terrain, expect to lay down a big chunk of cash for your table.

That said, GW terrain has a few major selling points to it. The first is aesthetic - naturally, terrain produced by the same company that makes Warhammer will fit perfectly with Warhammer. The second is quality. Despite what some say, GW terrain tends to be extremely high quality, extremely detailed, and in some cases, extremely customizable. The last and most important feature of GW terrain, however, is intercompatibility. Especially in the 40k line, the more GW terrain you buy, the more interactions you'll find with it. 

GW kits are all standardized in a few key places - their walls and floors all work in intervals of 5", meaning a Sector Imperialis building and a Sector Mechanicus structure have the exact same height on each level. The plasma pipes they sell are also the exact same length, allowing them to serve as columns or to run exactly along a given floor segment with no excess, and nearly every 40k terrain piece has properly sized mounting points for the plasma pipes. 

For another example, the Galvanic Servohaulers set contains a flatbed trailer that's designed to carry the large crane included in the set. However, that flatbed also has the exact grooves needed to carry a Munitorum Armored Container, or the Genestealer Cults' Tectonic Fragdrill piece. The Fragdrill even includes a small tow point designed to go on the back of a Goliath Truck and connect to the trailer, letting the truck tow around any of these three things.

More recent kits of course stray from that 5" floor height (since most infantry can barely move an inch after ascending or descending making climbing or descending multiple levels awkward), like the Battlezone: Manufactorum/Command Edition terrain floor interval is at 4" while remaining fully compatible with other imperial kits, the Warzone: Fronteris kit, which expands upon Moon Base Klaisus kits has a mix of 2", 3", and 5" terrain pieces, the former two of which can be combined to make a 5" building, also compatible with previous imperial kits, and the Ork terrain for Warzone: Octarius which reaches 3" in height with the two doubled up main structures allowing for a big rectangular building of scrap (4 instances of the same corner can also be combined into a building with a square footprint if you're into that).
Nothing of this is cheap of course, but if you're made of excess money, time, and space you can make a sweet interconnected landscape.