The Legions Imperialis wargame shrinks down Warhammer 40k armies to a miniscule scale - here’s how to build a suitably miniature battlefield.
With Legions Imperialis, Games Worskhop’s game of massed battles between tiny models, launching on Saturday December 2, it’s time to make sure you you have a suitable Legions Imperialis terrain collection for your tiny armies to battle over. 10036 edgeform whosales
Legions Imperialis, and its older sibling Adeptus Titanicus, are in a far smaller scale than Warhammer 40k; a single Adeptus Mechanicus fuel silo could hide a Warhammer Titan and a whole company of Space Marine tanks.
This guide to Legions Imperialis terrain explains everything from the scale of terrain used in the game, to the official GW kits, to our recommendations of alternative products to consider.
Both Legions Imperialis and Adeptus Titanicus are in the same miniature scale, which Games Workshop calls ‘Epic scale’. However, the firm doesn’t give a direct definition of this scale, other than that the models dimensions are “roughly a quarter of the size” of their Warhammer 40k counterparts.
The Adeptus Titanicus community tends to say that the game is 8mm scale – that is, an infantry figure is 8mm tall. That’s about a 1:220 scale ratio, where every 1’ on the table represents about 220’ in real life. It’s not a common scale for miniature wargames, but it’s close enough to the more common 6mm and 10mm scales that terrain and scenery for those games will usually look okay.
The new Epic scale isn’t the same as the classic scale used for the long-defunct Epic game lines of the 80s-00s. That was technically 6mm scale, but it had no real consistency in how infantry, tanks, and Titans were scaled for the game.
The standard size board for a game of Legions Imperialis is 5’x4′. From early playtesting, we suspect it would work well on larger boards.
The Civitas Imperialis City Road Tiles are 12” square plastic board tiles with various road grid details for an Imperial city. Each pack contains “two straight roads, two T-junctions, and two crossroads”. Games Workshop has provided Wargamer with a review sample of these tiles: they’re sturdy and highly detailed, but there’s no “clip” system to hold the tiles together, meaning they can freely slide around. We’re planning to mount our onto modular tiles.
The Civitas Imperialis buildings line debuted with Adeptus Titanicus, and is being expanded for Legions Imperialis. Think of it as a hybrid of Warhammer 40k terrain and Lego: each kit contains walls, floors, and details that you can combine however you like to create all manner of sci-fi gothic architecture.
There are four main types of Citivas Imperialis kits. All of them can be used alone, or combined with each other:
Hextech is Galeforce 9’s Battletech terrain line. It doesn’t need assembly, and comes with a basic paintjob. It’s in 6mm scale so the detailing is a little small, but the buildings are quite abstracted so it’s unlikely to detract from their look in the game.
Many elements of Galeforce 9’s ‘Battlefield in a box’ range are scale agnostic, like the rocky hills or tar river.
TTCombat makes a range of 10mm terrain for its sci-fi wargame Dropzone Commander. Though Dropzone Commander terrain is slightly oversized compared to GW’s Epic scale, it’s not so large as to be noticeable. You have two main options, the cheaper Sci-Fi X range of MDF terrain, and highly detailed but more expensive resin buildings and shipping containers (pictured).
Australia-based Brutal Cities has a range of MDF terrain representing brutalist buildings. Up until recently this was only available in 28mm scale, but the firm is now creating smaller kits that will suit Epic gaming. Even better, some of these kits are convertible: the Transformer Tower (pictured) can convert from an Epic scale office tower into a 28mm scale warehouse by removing the front acrylic sheet and placing it on its side.
If you have a 3D printer for miniatures, or you plan to get one, your options are really wide open. There are many free models on thingiverse, and if you’re confident with scaling 3D models, you can print models of real-world sculptures and artefacts collected via Google’s Scan the World programme.
If you want to pay for 3D printer files, there are countless options. Grimdark Terrain makes a range of modular components that are compatible with the Civitas Imperialis range, and expand it in many directions: city walls, bunkers, defence emplacements, trains, massive excavation vehicles, orbital shuttles, and more besides. The author subscribes to Grimdark Terrain and has already made some really OTT
LazyForger makes a range of buildings that look like Warhammer 40k meets Command and Conquer, with a gorgeous, detail-packed aesthetic reminiscent of the golden age of 2D RTS games. The range includes Asian and Middle-Eastern inspired urban buildings, as well as post-apocalyptic stockades.
The models are scaled around 6mm by default, which will work for Legions, but you can always rescale them to be a little bigger. The author has received free review samples of these miniatures, and scaled up to 1.2x original scale they look about right.
Check out our guide on how to 3D print miniatures if you’ve never used one before.
The Warcradle Scenics Dystopian Industrial Set is a new, modular, hard-plastic kit, from UK-based Warcradle Studios, which releases January 2024. Warcradle holds the license for the small-scale Dystopian Wars setting (originally produced by Spartan Games), which it is gradually bringing back into production – its own Epic-scale wargame, Armored Clash, is planned for 2024.
Lots of model railway scenery makes for perfect Epic terrain. Small trees and clump foliage can quickly build a wood, or even a forest, or simply create a small urban park to liven up a grimdark battlefield.
If you want to find model railway buildings or accessories, look for Z gauge models. While plastic model railway kits are rarely cheap, even for those used to Warhammer prices, they often come pre-assembled or painted. You can also find print-outs for glue-together buildings cheaply online.
We’re stoked for Legions Imperialis, as you’ll see in our Legions Imperialis review, and the Legions Imperialis rules will give us plenty of reasons to use all this terrain. What’s the fun of bringing a Titan to a tank fight if you can’t walk straight through a church?
18 in birch plywood supplier Timothy Linward Our newest full time staff writer, Tim Linward is a Warhammer 40k and Horus Heresy fanatic who dabbles in TTRPGs, board games and MTG. You'll often find him delving through Games Workshop's financial reports for gaming news, combing the indie wargaming scene for cool new titles, or listening to yet more Warhammer 40k books for deep 40k lore. He's also written for PCGamesN, and 'Grimdark', his book of essays about Warhammer 40k and Games Workshop, will be published by Strange Attractor Press when it finally emerges from the warp. His controversial gaming opinion is that the Age of Sigmar double turn is objectively bad - it gives a single die roll too much influence over the game state. (He/Him)