>balance
>LoS
>neutral terrain
When I used to play 40k as a teen and young adult with my brothers and mates, not a single one of us thought about any of these things.
FIRST we build a kick ass thematic board, and THEN we rolled off to see who gets to pick their side first. If one guy gets the "better side" that was just part of the fun, no real battle is perfectly even and it was always fun to adapt your strategy to whatever setup you found yourself in.
A lot of fake grogs pretend 40k has always been like it is today, with tourneyfag balance queens, but really I think that's very untrue. It really was different back then, some call is "sovl," and really I think new post-8th/COVID players genuinely don't get it