Board sizes and squad size
How big a Messalith battlefield is, from the tutorial's small map to the big boards of the campaign, and how many exiles the squad takes onto each.
Battlefields come in two sizes. The classic board is the one the game started with. The big board is what the campaign plays now: more ground, with rivers, passes, ladders and ledges, more than one thing to do, and a squad of up to 6.
How big
| Mission | Tiles a side, before | Tiles a side, now |
|---|---|---|
| Attacks and defences | 48 | 72 |
| Sieges | 56 | 84 |
| Refuges and war camps | 48 | 84 |
| First Contact | 24 | 24 |
A tile is a metre. The map editor builds boards up to 96 tiles a side. First Contact, the tutorial, stays small on purpose. A camp made before the big boards came in keeps its own ground, which still plays.
What a big board has
Every big board is laid out in zones between the squad's edge and the far ground. A battle moves through them.
- A river across the approach, with fords over it.
- A pass: a ridge a level up, cut by one or two gaps.
- At least 3 routes from the deployment to the objective, so no board has one chokepoint to wait behind.
- Ruins and outposts, one in every zone that has none.
- A landmark, the only ground at the top height level.
- Ladders and ledges at cliff feet, where they open a shortcut.
- Extra objectives and reinforcement waves on the missions that carry them.
The pod the squad meets first stands within a couple of turns' walk of the deployment, so a bigger board doesn't mean a quiet first hour.
Squad size
A classic board takes a squad of 4. A big board takes 4 to 6, and its deployment edge has room for 6. The squad is picked at camp, and the last two slots are optional. The camp's staffing and the campaign's pace still plan for 4.
The enemy answers. A big attack or siege fields 2 more than the table on missions gives, a defence 3 more, and none is ever above 12 before its waves. They stand in smaller pods, spread over the board.
Cover that breaks
On a big board a hit on a unit behind half cover or a tree chips it. Half cover takes 2 hits and a tree 3. Half cover breaks down to open ground, and a tree to a fallen trunk that is half cover itself. A miss chips nothing, and a boulder, a wall or a raised stone never breaks this way.