Finding True Tabletop Balance

The problem is not to find the answer, it’s to face the answer

If you’ve been around the Warhammer 40,000 ecosystem (and actually played multiple games) for a few editions, you get a visceral sense of all the different ways this tabletop wargame can be played. There are plenty of other game systems with similar dynamics, but the focus of this post is specifically 40k as it pertains to our approach to the upcoming Warhammer 40,000 Grand Tournament at BOLTERCON 2025 (and probably forever).

Many groups all over the world will give you the what of their approach to balance in 18 page home-brew FAQs. They generally are in pursuit of true competitive balance (in a game with true line of sight and dice lmao). What we’re chewing through today is our view on balance in 40k: emphasizing the excellence of sportsmanship through hobby and in-game enjoyment while bringing in elements of the competitive scene to lower the friction of playing five games of 40k over two days. Maximizing the hypest experience requires knowing the sum (yin-yang) is greater than either part (yin or yang).

Interested in reading a manifesto-adjacent blog post about terrain and modeling standards? Read on! For some context, see where our rant started earlier on this very blog with Bring Back The War In Wargaming .

TLDR? Skip ahead to the conclusions section to get the bullet points (no em dash).

What? Yin and Yang of Tabletop?

From here on, I will be talking about yin and yang in the context of the tabletop wargaming hobby, and specifically Warhammer 40,000. These definitions and specificity may be something you disagree with – great! I’m still going to use them to make a point (lots of points). There’s quite a bit to unpack here & I am very much looking forward to discussing in meatspace. Something important to note: there is no good or bad in the yin-yang . There is only the constantly mobile balance between the dualities of yin and yang in an eternal cycle. Realize also that yin cannot exist without yang and they are the core of each other. Without both, there is nothing!

I am also here speaking for myself as a representative of Bolters at Dawn. Not everyone in our staff and officers will completely agree with all this manifesto goodness, but we do all agree on the core values of our club (and events). Don’t blame them; this wordsmash is not their fault. Anyway, onward.

Competitive wargaming is the yin: the dark of the yin-yang. A purely competitive approach seeks optimize the game experience, striving for absolute equality amongst players when it comes to missions, deployment, time allotment, and game balance between factions/armies. Hobby requirements and lore knowledge are minimized in order to maximize access to playing the game. Thematic game elements have no place here and only serve to confuse/cloud the competitive efficiency. Think about a nurturing approach to getting everyone under the big tent by lowering the barriers to entry. However, too much of this influence generally leads to stagnation and apathy.

Immersion focused wargaming is the yang: the light of the yin-yang. An entirely immersion-based approach goes all out in bringing thematic elements to the game, throwing the bulk of efforts into hobbying, lore deep dives, and creating environments for narrative expansion. This kind of wargaming is very much focused on effort and action ahead of the actual game, which takes a back seat. We’ve all played a game where our opponent wasn’t even sure what edition we were playing but brought a well painted, lore-accurate, amazing force. The downsides of an outsized portion of this influence are all too familiar: burnout, aggression, and over-estimating our abilities.

The yin requires the yang (and vice versa) to make the magic of the tabletop experience the absolute hypest. Too much of either results in missing that hype-peak. We’re always so close: just a couple of tweaks to the rules/terrain/points/wargear/stratagems/missions/layouts/codexes/datasheets/models and we will for sure it fixed this time. But the peak for the yin? The peak for the yang? I would argue (loudly) we’ve completely lost sight of the balance, the power of both competitive and immersive wargaming together, that makes this hobby so amazing. I’m going to touch on a couple examples of the competitive-immersive balance and how it will affect our upcoming 40k GT at BOLTERCON 2025!

Terrain: The Crowd Pleaser

When you look to the most popular events out there, it’s clear that in 40k land the competitive focus has the quantity of engagement. The darkness of the yin has consumed all – nothing but uniform ruins area terrain as far as the eye can see. And as efficient game masters, competitive players have all but eliminated the thematic elements from the table. How do I know our terrain yin-yang is completely out of whack? This is a real product that exists and is sold completely unironically:

Instead of a war-torn battlefield, we have a grid of inches. Instead of a blown out building infested with orks, we have an acrylic L that is completely transparent so that everyone knows their location (but blocks line of sight – why are there little windows etched on it??):

To the pure competitive player, this all makes sense. To anyone with the slightest inclination towards immersion, this is flatly embarrassing. I will say that the standardization of what makes a gameplay-balanced terrain layout work (line of sight blocking lanes, symmetry across missions) has been amazing for the game as a whole. The immersion wargamer generally assumes the terrain layout is busted & a worthy sacrifice in the name of a sweet narrative space to do a Warhammer 40k – win or lose or whatever. But the immersion wargamer can’t finish a game in a day. What good is an immersive experience if you’re two hours in before deployment is complete? More on clocks some other time.

For us here at Bolters at Dawn, we have all sorts of players who span the yin-yang spectrum. What drives our collective hype is finding a way to use both – the goals of standardization in terms of competition and the goals of sick looking boards in terms of immersion. Do I hate the acrylic rectangles? Absolutely. Do I think they make 10th edition work in a tournament? Definitely. We’re going to do our best to do both!

We want our boards to play well competitively without completely eliminating the immersion. For the 40k GT at BOLTERCON, this means eliminating as many house rules as possible (sorry WTC, UKTC, ATC, whoever), using the area terrain footprints from the official GW layouts (yuck but fine), and leaning as much as possible on the simplification of ruins everywhere (big shrugs energy). Let’s get back to yin-yang balanced wargaming and maximize that tabletop hype.

A major factor in keeping with the 40k line-of-sight spirit is the concept of what-you-see-is-what-you-get, aka WYSIWYG. In my humble opinion, a player should be able to walk up to a table, see the terrain, and know exactly what it is. In the era of ruins maximization, this is pretty straightforward – if you see a cursed acrylic rectangle it is a ruin. Where the immersion-competitive balance is struck is relenting that the area terrain footprint doesn’t have to actually contain literal terrain to the edge but any terrain in the area is literally there.

Are you going to have to use your brain and interact with non-completely-bland setups? Yes! Seeing through first floor windows? Yes! Finishing a move partially on a barrel? No! Removing terrain to mimic a game you saw played on Youtube? Yellow Card (also No)! We’re excited to finish up our 40k RTT series on October 11th as we have been playing these boards and refining them, balancing them, HYPE-ING THEM.

Modeling & Hobby Standards

Speaking of WYSIWYG for terrain, it is even more important for miniatures in conjunction with a reasonable hobby standard in our beloved 40k wargame. Here we see the interplay between the yin of the competitive and the yang of the immersive manifest in a very real and personal way.

From the competitive and event perspective, there is a strong pull toward the lowering of friction, the removal of barriers, and knocking off all the rough edges to get as many players as possible. This big tent approach works well to cover the costs of the event as well as raise the profile of the event with a large number of players. Additionally like anything at scale, the per-unit effort (in this case player/attendee) must be minimized. While you might be hype as a player to attend something very competitive focused, that energy is buffered knowing the pressures and nature of what (horrors) you’ll likely experience.

Our perspective will once again reiterate wargaming is an immersive experience, manifest here in meatspace reality. In the case of an army you are fielding, all units should be readable as to their composition and wargear choices, for you and your opponents! The abstractions of competitions with no modeling/hobby requirements very much get in the way of playing the game itself. When I hear things like “the model with the Storm Bolter has a Plasma and the model with the Grenade Launcher has a Melta” or “the model with the blue dot on the base has the Thunder Hammer” I’m left with the same pain behind my eyes that the clear acrylic terrain gives me. What are we doing? Why are we here?

The yang of immersion can go too far as well, and needs the balancing influence of the competitive yin. We do not require all characters to have names and backstories consistent with the heraldry on their miniatures. We do not expect that your army composition will reflect a documented army fielded in a codex or book or TV show somewhere.

But we do expect a vehicle pintle mounted Heavy Stubber is not a Storm Bolter. You can’t fire a Hunter Killer missile that doesn’t exist. And if you field a Knight with no arms, well it can’t do any shooting with the weapons that would typically be present on those conspicuously absent arms. It should go without saying that an army of Ultramarines can’t be blue armor Blood Angels, but here I am saying it. All these things must be explicitly laid out because they might be quite unfamiliar to the average Warhammer 40k tournament enjoyer.

All of this to say as clearly as possible: the list submission process for the Warhammer 40,000 GT at BOLTERCON is submitting a picture of your army as well as a text version of your list. Any and all proxies must be pre-approved. All miniatures must meet the Bolters Ready Standard as outlined in the Player Packet and given additional fleshed out detail in our Technical Manual . We literally do not care if your miniatures have been approved by other tournaments, they will meet our standards to play in our events.

The yang says they’ll paint an army (for sure this time), the yin makes them do it to play in the 40k GT (who also painted their first army despite playing for 10 years). The sum is greater than the parts, and one side cannot exist without the other.

You might even actually enjoy playing in our 40k GT (gasp)! I know many who do.

We have a very high energy group of players in our club that run the whole spectrum of competitive to immersive and back again. Club members know our official event schedule generally has a more narrative season (crusades, narrative story arcs, etc) and a more competitive season (hellboards), but outside the scheduled events people are free to use their membership benefits as they see fit. That’s the beauty of communicating our intent as players as to what we’re expecting from a game – it gives power to the yin-yang balance of this wide-ranging tabletop hobby (manifest in the dopest clubhouse for at least 250 miles or 2,500 or maybe 25,000?).

TLDR and Conclusions

Here is the TLDR for the 40k GT:

TERRAIN

Terrain will largely follow the official GW layouts. One layout for day 1 and a switch for day 2.
We are avoiding any house rules that override the 40k core rules, tournament companion, and FAQs/Errata.
A small number of boards will have house rules to make them more smoothly playable. This will be communicated clearly with materials at the table.

MODELS AND LISTS

All models must meet the Bolters Ready standard to be eligible to participate in the 40k GT.
List submissions must include both the text version of the list and at least one picture of the army.

I think I covered everything? At least enough to start some conversations and communicate the core of our intentions with the 40k GT (and other games eventually). We here at Bolters at Dawn acknowledge the competitive yin and immersive yang. Above all, we believe the sum yin-yang is greater than the parts. In recent years, the competitive yin has been pushing the balance out of whack in a very visible way. The immersive yang is in full retreat. With the BOLTERCON 40k GT, we’re here to incorporate a hype-maximizing balance in the yin-yang.

In related news, I’m stuck with a clanker slop picture for the article title because all our staff & officers are BUSY – busy painting terrain. Regardless of system, we’re striving to be the absolute dopest experience you can get at a tabletop tournament. We may fall short of absolute perfection (the target is constantly moving), but rest assured we’re always pushing to do better. And I know the same is true for our players out there, across systems, painting their armies and getting the hype trains all rolling to central station aka BOLTERCON 2025!

Next up on the manifesto tour: clocks, cards, and scoring, oh my!

The cutoff of October 13th for shirts is rapidly approaching, and we’ll cut off VIP sales then as well. Immediately go register for BOLTERCON 2025 if you haven’t already, select a very dope event shirt for pickup at BOLTERCON, book your BOLTERCON hotel stay at the Holiday Inn West Chester , play in our last 40k RTT series game on October 11th, join our Discord for the latest news, and please consider joining our club for year-round Bolters at Dawn goodness.