AoS at 1000 Points: Finding the Right Board Size Between Spearhead and Full Battle
We recently had one of those very relatable hobby discussions: if we want to play Age of Sigmar at around 1000 points, what table size actually makes sense?
At first glance it sounds simple, but once we started comparing Spearhead and full Battle sizes, it turned out there is a bit of confusion floating around online — and yes, Reddit may have contributed to that confusion.
The table size confusion
The starting point was a common assumption: some people play 1k battles on a 30” x 44” board, while others go straight to the full 44” x 60” battle table because there doesn’t seem to be anything in between.
Then we stopped and did the maths properly.
As Michał pointed out:
- Spearhead is played on 30” x 22”
- 30” x 44” is basically two Spearhead boards
- 44” x 60” is roughly four Spearhead boards
So the jump is a lot bigger than it first feels. What looked like a neat middle step actually turns out to be a meaningful in-between size after all.
Our own experience
The useful part of the discussion was that we could compare it with games we’ve actually played.
Michał reminded us that we already played on 30” x 44” and it worked well. More specifically, that was the game where two of us teamed up against him.
At first we remembered it as 2k vs 2k, but after checking the old list it turned out the numbers were a bit different:
- Michał had 1540 points
- the other side was split between two players with roughly 1000 each in memory, but in practice it was tied to Spearhead-based compositions
And that matters, because our memory of the board being “crowded” came from a game that was actually larger than a straightforward 1k battle.
So while that game did feel a bit packed, it doesn’t automatically mean 1000 points on 30” x 44” is too much. In fact, based on both the measurements and our experience, it looks like it’s a perfectly playable option.
Why this matters for army-building
From an army-building perspective, this is actually pretty encouraging.
A 1000-point game on 30” x 44” feels like a nice middle ground:
- bigger than Spearhead
- easier to set up than a full 44” x 60” table
- gives more room for list-building experiments without immediately jumping to 2000 points
That’s especially useful when we want to test:
- new units before committing to a bigger list
- trimmed-down versions of future 2k armies
- semi-casual lists that don’t fit neatly into Spearhead
In other words: there really is something between Spearhead and full Battle, and for us 1k on 30” x 44” looks like a sensible answer.
Final takeaway
The main conclusion from this little rules-and-measuring rabbit hole is simple:
if you want to play Age of Sigmar at 1000 points, 30” x 44” seems like a solid middle option.
Not too tiny, not full-size, and — importantly — it’s something we’ve already seen work at the table.
Sometimes the most useful hobby discoveries are just us realising that the internet was wrong and the tape measure was right.