The mission is no longer background noise
In 11th edition organised play, you choose one Force Disposition for the event. That locks in a predictable family of five primary missions. Each mission pairing then has three recommended layouts, A, B and C.
The official Event Companion is very clear about this. There are 15 mission pairings and three recommended layouts for each. That gives event organisers a lot of variety, but it also means the same 2,000 points can be asked very different questions from one round to the next.
You are not going to memorise 45 scripts, and you should not try. Turning up having practised none of the geometry, though, is the tabletop equivalent of learning your route to the airport after the gate has closed.
Practise decisions, not choreography
A useful map plan is not, “Unit A moves exactly 8 inches to this dot.” Your opponent exists, which is inconvenient but traditional.
Practise the decisions that repeat. Which objective is your durable unit supposed to threaten? Which terrain area lets your shooting package contribute without becoming the obvious first target? Where does your forward screen actually need to stand to stop an early charge turning into a second charge? Which side of the board can the army afford to give up for a turn?
Those questions remain useful when deployment flips, you go second or your opponent politely fills the landing zone you liked at home.
The board is part of the mission now
One of the biggest changes in 11th is that terrain and objectives are tied together far more directly. Games Workshop has designed terrain areas to create risk-and-reward decisions around each player’s objectives, and many objectives now sit within terrain areas rather than existing as an isolated marker in open space.
That changes the feel of holding ground. A unit can be protected while doing its job, but movement through and around those areas matters more. Large vehicles and monsters care about lanes. Infantry care about which side of the terrain they can reach while remaining useful. A seemingly tiny shift in where you stage turn one can decide whether turn two is a clean move or a traffic jam.
Every important map needs three plans
For tournament preparation I would write three versions of the opening rather than one.
First, the normal plan: what you do if the opponent gives you nothing strange. Second, the pressure plan: what changes when they can hit the midfield before you are established. Third, the refusal plan: what happens when they sit back and try to make you cross the board.
That is enough structure to stop the first movement phase becoming ten minutes of staring at ruins while your clock quietly eats your lunch.
Going second should change deployment before it changes your mood
A surprising number of practice games are really rehearsals for going first. Units sit on aggressive lines, transports point straight ahead and the plan quietly assumes nobody gets shot before moving.
A proper map drill asks the uglier question: if the opponent gets first turn, which unit can they actually remove, and what does losing it do to the rest of the formation? If the answer is “everything”, you have found a deployment problem, not bad luck.
The goal is not to hide the whole army. The goal is to know which piece you are prepared to expose, what it buys you by being there and what takes over its job if it dies.
Give expensive units expensive jobs
Map practice is where you catch premium units doing silly work. If your elite brick spends three turns wandering toward a safe side objective because nobody else can reach it, the list has a movement problem. If your main tank has to sit at home blocking a reserve lane every game, the list has a screening problem.
The board exposes those weaknesses faster than another hour in the army builder.
A good tournament plan makes the expensive pieces feel almost lazy. They threaten the areas that matter, punish commitments and survive. The cheap pieces run around doing the thankless little jobs that actually make the scoreboard move.
The ten-minute map drill
You do not need a full game to practise this. Put the official layout on the table and give yourself ten minutes.
Mark the home holder. Mark the first screen. Pick the objective your main bully wants. Pick the lane your fire support wants. Decide where the reserve threat reinforces if the centre collapses and where it goes if the side collapses. Then flip the deployment and do it again.
Do that twice before an event and you will already be more prepared than the version of yourself who knows every weapon profile but has never considered where the models are meant to stand.
If your entire tournament plan begins with “I win the roll-off”, that is not a plan. It is a prayer with dice.