Knowledge is power, and that’s true in games of Warhammer 40k as much as it is in any other area of human competition. The better you know the game and the scenario you’re playing, the better the decisions you will make, and the more likely you are to emerge victorious. If you want to speed up the process of mastering the battlefields of 11th edition, there’s a handy new community-made web tool to help you on your way – the Map Distance Calculator.
The premise for this tool is simple: it’s a single web page that allows you to measure the distance between any two points on any official Warhammer 40k battlemap. There are simple toggles for you to define the combination of Force Dispositions for the match, and then which of the three deployment maps you’re using – then you click and drag to measure the actual distance between points in inches.
Now after that description, the Map Distance Calculator probably sounds like the most boring thing I’ve ever discussed in relation to Warhammer 40k. That doesn’t mean it isn’t useful. The last batch of community tools I highlighted were mostly useful for familiarizing yourself with 11th edition; this one is a training aid.
Specifically, it allows you to check the distances between any two points A and B on the map – such as between different terrain areas. If you know that distance, you know which weapons can project fire from point A and hit point B, and how risky it will be to advance from one point and try to charge the other. When you know that, you know how safe and how threatening your units will be on any point of the battlefield.
This is all open information that you can measure mid game, but why wait until the game begins to work out where your forces will be most effective? The more subconscious your knowledge is, the more mental energy you have free to actually make the decisions that matter.
This tool will be more meaningful for some 40k factions than others, of course – the World Eaters are going to be checking pretty short distances for most of their units. But you can at least look up how much of the board will be beyond the Detection Range of your units.
Do you have any tips for learning scenarios and layouts, or other useful training tools? We’d love you to share them in the Wargamer Discord community!
Source: Wargamer
