Deployment distances for the charge model (T-592)

What the charge model (T-590) can take as known about where armies start: 11th edition's six deployment maps and the 45 event layouts, measured in inches, and the gaps, objective distances and Deep Strike, Infiltrators and Scouts distances worked out from them. Numbers: tools/deployments.json, written by node tools/deployments.js --write (about 8 s). Read on 3 Oct 2026 from Wahapedia's 11th-edition pages (the Mission Deck 2026-27, the Warhammer Event Companion and the core rules). Everything here is our own measurement and arithmetic: no rules text, no images.

What was measured

• The six maps (the Chapter Approved 2026-27 Deployment deck): Tipping Point, Sweeping Engagement, Search and Destroy, Hammer and Anvil, Dawn of War, Crucible of Battle. Battlefield 44" x 60". Each map's two zones are polygons from the dimensions printed on the card (strip depths, the 9" circle about the centre, objective offsets) and, where a corner has no printed number (Tipping Point's step at the middle, Crucible of Battle's 30" leg), from the card's 1" grid, with the five objective points (two homes, the centre, two expansions). Every map is point-symmetric: the defender's zone is the attacker's turned half a turn about the centre.
• The 45 event layouts. The Event Companion says GW events don't use the Deployment deck: each pair of Force Dispositions has three recommended layouts (A, B, C), 15 pairs and 45 layouts. Each layout uses one of the six maps' zones exactly, in the card's orientation (checked on a 1" grid of every layout: no zone cell disagrees within an inch of an edge). The layouts move the objectives onto terrain, so their objective points were measured separately, to the nearest half inch.
• How the cards' numbers were read. The maps exist only as images on Wahapedia; their dimensions are printed on them. We viewed the images in a scratch folder outside the repository, read the dimensions off, and kept only our polygons. For the event layouts the objective markers have no printed dimensions, so their positions were measured from the image (pixel positions scaled to the board), which is reading a position, not copying the picture. No map was skipped; if the design session thinks the layout objective points go too far, the layouts block can be dropped and the cards' points used instead (the averages move by about 2", below).

Inches. Mean along the front: for each point on a zone's front, the distance to the nearest point of the enemy's zone, averaged by length. From anywhere in the zone: a random point in one zone to the nearest point of the other. Middle line: the length of the line from the middle of the attacker's edge to the middle of the defender's that is outside both zones; on Tipping Point and Sweeping Engagement that line runs along the zones' steps, so the value half an inch either side is given too.

The averages

The field's weighting takes each player's Force Disposition card independently from the 77 lists that name one (July to September, reports/tiers/2026-10-02-dispositions.md: Reconnaissance 30%, Priority Assets 23%, Take and Hold 21%, Purge the Foe 14%, Disruption 12%), so a pair weighs the product of the two shares, and a pair's three layouts equally. The three weightings agree within half an inch: the gap a charge model needs is about 19.5" at the closest point and 22.5" along the front, whichever way it is weighted.

Objectives, from the zone (nearest point of the zone; 0 when inside), both sides averaged:

From a random point in the zone the same are about 14, 23, 24 to 25, 33 to 35 and 40 to 43. The home objective sits inside its zone on every map and layout. The layouts' central objectives sit a little nearer the zones than the cards' (8.6" against 10.2"), partly because 21 of the 45 layouts (all three of seven pairs: every Purge the Foe pair, Disruption with Reconnaissance, Take and Hold with Priority Assets) have two central objectives, each off the centre.

For the charge model

11th edition, read on Wahapedia and in our words: a unit may only pick charge targets within its 2D6 charge roll, so a unit d" from the enemy needs a roll of at least d; engagement range is 2". Deep Strike sets a unit up more than 8" from every enemy unit, anywhere on the battlefield (reserves arrive from the second battle round). Infiltrators set up during deployment more than 8" from the enemy's deployment zone and every enemy unit. Scouts X" lets a unit wholly in its zone move up to X" before the battle, ending more than 8" from every enemy unit.

The Scouts chances are per map then averaged, so they are not the chance at the average distance: most of them come from Search and Destroy (12.7" at its closest, where every Scouts move reaches the 8" limit and a 9 charges) and Sweeping Engagement (16"). On Hammer and Anvil and Crucible of Battle no Scouts move brings a turn-one charge into reach. Per-map values, the deck and the unweighted-layout versions are in charge in the JSON.

Caveats

• Fronts, not armies. The front-to-front numbers assume both units stand on their zone's front; real deployment sits a few inches back (a random point is 7.3" from its own front on average) and the enemy can screen or hold back. The model should start from these and move, not treat them as a game's distances.
• Straight lines. Every distance is as the crow flies; terrain, other models and the layouts' footprints are ignored (T-593).
• Objectives are terrain. In 11th edition an objective is the terrain area over the objective point, and a unit is in range anywhere in that area. The cards' points are exact; the layouts' are where each marker sits on its terrain, about ±1.5", and a unit reaches the area a few inches before the point.
• The deck has other uses. Twists, and a D6 of 6 for two central objectives 6" either side of the centre, change the cards' objectives in pick-up games; neither changes the zones.
• Field weighting is thin: 77 lists name a disposition. It barely moves anything here.

Terrain and sight lines (for T-593)

GW publishes its 45 event layouts only as images (in the Warhammer 40,000 app and, through Wahapedia, the mission generator): each shows the 16 footprints (four 7" x 11.5" and two 8" x 11.5" polygons, four 6" x 4", two 10" x 2.5", four 6" x 2"), the Battlefields: Armageddon features on them marked dense or light, and printed measurements to some footprint corners; GW's footprint templates are a printable PDF, but there is no coordinate file. A community measuring tool (40kmaps.netlify.app) works on the same images and holds no geometry of its own. We found no 11th-edition WTC layout pack in a web search (their site wasn't reachable from here; their earlier packs, as far as we know, were images in PDFs too). A ray-casting estimate of the share of sight lines blocked between the zones looks feasible: the footprints are a fixed set of 16 shapes, each layout's can be placed from its printed corner measurements and checked against the image as the zones were here, and storing our own coordinates copies nothing. The limit is the rules, not the data: 11th edition's sight depends on the features (dense or light, the Hidden rule, heights), not just the footprints, so a footprint-only cast would be an upper bound on blocking, to be refined per feature type. Not attempted.