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So, I'm leaving for home (Tokyo) tomorrow, and have decided to bring my army back with me. As such, I downloaded the Japanese codex that they have up on the Japanese GW website, and took a quick read to help me get familiar with the Japanese terms for various things.

One thing I noticed though, is all the ranges are dealt with in centimeter terms. Not inches. Obviously this means I'll need to relearn the ranges of weapons etc. However, I'm just wondering if anyone has played in both "systems (CM and Inches,) and could inform me of things changes that I should be aware of and/or use to my advantage?

Thanks!

All measurements are shorter, because when converting to CM, to make sure they never ended up with a fraction of a unit in measurements, they just doubled the numbers instead of converting them.

For example, you move 12cm, charge 12cm, rapid-fire weapons can shoot twice up to 24cm, and you can't get within 2cm of an enemy model while moving. A straight inch - cm conversion would've given you 15cm move, 15cm charge, 30cm rf, and 2.5cm keepaway zone (or 15.24, 15.24cm, 30.48cm, and 2.54cm if you want to be really anal about your conversions).

I went in the opposite direction you did, and my problem was I kept underestimating distances, which really sucked when I kept misjudging how far enemy demolisher cannons could reach, so at first you're probably going to be overestimating distances at first.

Is that seriously how they handled it? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard GW do, and I've spent 14 years (good lord, that's half my life ) hearing about GW doing dumb things.

Why didn't they just include an imperial ruler? Is it really worth breaking any sort of international cross-playability?

Is this a common thing? I've never stopped to think about it, but are measurements in all non-Commonwealth metric countries done like this?

How does that affect the metagame or unit worth in other countries?

It could be worse. Appearantly for some of the European language versions, they round the conversions instead. So 1" = 3cm, 2" = 5cm, etc, for Pavane of Slaanesh's D6".

What I really want to know is what they suggest for the board size in the Japanese rulebook. Do they suggest 96cm x 144cm...

Like I said, they just double all the measurements used in the English. Anyways, it's not stupid at all if you actually take the time to think about it.

1: Most Japanese players have probably never had to use imperial measurements before, and dual system measuring devices are less common than cm only ones.

2: It actually makes international cross-playability MORE feasible, not less. I knew that when using my English language codices, all I had to do was double the range of any distance given to get the proper result. No need to quibble about a conversion being done correctly.

3: It has zero effect on the meta game or unit worth. How could it possibly be otherwise?

Solkan, you might want to recheck your math, since with the example you gave, the measurements come out exactly the same.

Bookwrack wrote:Like I said, they just double all the measurements used in the English. Anyways, it's not stupid at all if you actually take the time to think about it.

1: Most Japanese players have probably never had to use imperial measurements before, and dual system measuring devices are less common than cm only ones.

2: It actually makes international cross-playability MORE feasible, not less. I knew that when using my English language codices, all I had to do was double the range of any distance given to get the proper result. No need to quibble about a conversion being done correctly.

3: It has zero effect on the meta game or unit worth. How could it possibly be otherwise?

Solkan, you might want to recheck your math, since with the example you gave, the measurements come out exactly the same.

But an inch is 2.54 cm, not 2 cm. If I'm playing a Japanese player and I say "My shootas have an 18" range" he'll think "ok, that's 36 cm" and play accordingly but when I actually measure 18 inches it's going to be 45.7 cm. How couldn't that have an effect?

This can't be true, this has to be like that urban legend about the Indiana assembly legislating the value of pi to be 3. No company (especially in a country that has undergone imperial to metric conversion in living memory) would be that idiotic. I demand proof.

I told you so. That is all the proof you need.

You obviously don't understand what I'm saying. If you're playing in cm, you're playing in cm. You don't mix and match with one side using cm and the other inches. If my book says shootas have an 18" range, then when I measure, I measure 36cm.

The weird thing is that I could swear that Space Marine (at least the 1991-era second edition box that we played) was all done in cm.

Honestly, GW.

If you play BFG, they basically converted at 2.5 cm per inch. It's fine, either way.

That's why the only problem with using the 2xcm conversion has is that it will slightly skew your estimations when you switch from one style to the other.

A universally applied change to the measuring system will have 0 effect on the game.

Bookwrack wrote:A universally applied change to the measuring system will have 0 effect on the game.

You're right, of course, the size of the unit doesn't really matter as long as the unit is universal. But my god, what a lazy, slipshod move, even for GW.

You will have to explain why.

Bookwrack wrote:You will have to explain why.

Because 1 inch = 2.54 cm?

When I say "1 inch" I mean "a unit of measurement exactly equal to 2.54 cm."

They could have so easily added a conversion chart for common distances (6/12/18/24/36) or even left it in inches and included a "how to multiply by 2.54" section.

Saying "2 cm" when they actually mean "2.54 cm" is lazy and de-things the words "centimeter" and "inch".

You're right in that this is a linguistic not a gameplay problem though.

Oh, yeah, for the pseudo-pedants, 1 inch == 2.541 cm, NOT 2.54 cm.

JohnHwangDD wrote:Oh, yeah, for the pseudo-pedants, 1 inch == 2.541 cm, NOT 2.54 cm.

Yeah yeah yeah. And apparently everything is 27.05% shorter in Japan.

EDIT: Corrected my math. If I can do it, why can't GW?

By and by, the scale of models, or how much space they take up on the board, is not adjusted by a global change in the measuring unit. If the unit of all movements, ranges, radii, or other abstracted events changes to become smaller, that does have an effect on the game.

For instance, Imperial Guard Commissars will not be able to affect as many guardsmen with their rally bubble because the guardsmen are still the same size, but the bubble is smaller.

.001 out of 2.54 isn't 20%.

It's way less than 1 percent!

Well, I won't call x2.5, or even x2.54 a particularly hard conversion to make, but saying double all distances used in the English rules lets you use either language's codex and instantly have the correct distances. It's about as foolproof a mathematical operation as you can get.

Anyways, look at it this way - if you kept the distances perfectly accurate, unit coherency would be be measured at 5.08cm. Make sure you don't get closer than 2.54 cm to an enemy base. For ease of playability you have to round _somewhere_ and this way ensures that you always have a nice, whole number, instead of fiddling with millimeters.

JohnHwangDD wrote:.001 out of 2.54 isn't 20%.

It's way less than 1 percent!

2.541 = 127.05% of 2 though.

So 27.05% shorter.

wow =___=... ok, uhh.

redstripe wrote:By and by, the scale of models, or how much space they take up on the board, is not adjusted by a global change in the measuring unit. If the unit of all movements, ranges, radii, or other abstracted events changes to become smaller, that does have an effect on the game.

For instance, Imperial Guard Commissars will not be able to affect as many guardsmen with their rally bubble because the guardsmen are still the same size, but the bubble is smaller.

This is a rather good point.

At another forum I posted a similar topic on, the subject of Unit coherency came up.

in inches, modes need to be within 2" of each other. However, in the CM system, they should be within 4CM of each other. This is quite an obvious 1 CM difference.

Another thing was that of templates. I'm just wondering for those who've played in a CM-system, are the templates the exact same size as those used in say, the UK? If so, template weapons would probably hit about 20% more models... hmmm...

Yes, templates are the same size. It still doesn't make that much of a difference to the game though.

redstripe wrote:For instance, Imperial Guard Commissars will not be able to affect as many guardsmen with their rally bubble because the guardsmen are still the same size, but the bubble is smaller.

Good point, although in practice I never saw any radical change to the way I had to keep tyranids in synapse or guardsmen with the officer's command bubble.

Ok, one more question Bookwrack (sorry to bother you > <.)

In the UK, "standard" table sizes were 6x4 foot. How does this translate to those used at (I assume) Japanese GW hobby centers? Are they still 6x4 foot? or are they now 1.44mx96cm?

(Trying to think about how these changes will affect my gameplay > <.)

It would seem that GW could have saved a lot of trouble in Japan (and other metric-only countries) by simply including a "British Imperial to Metric" conversion table in the rulebook with some basic conversion of the common 2", 6", 12", 18", 24", 48", and 72" values for 1" = 2.5cm.

Bookwrack wrote:
Solkan, you might want to recheck your math, since with the example you gave, the measurements come out exactly the same.

I just meant to observe that suggesting a 96cm by 144 cm table just seems like it would be really odd and arbitrary, as opposed to suggesting something like 100cm by 150 cm or somethin as opposed to the approximately 122cm x 183cm actual size for 48" by 72". I mean, that makes the plastic battle boards completely the wrong size.

Sure, though 120cm x 180cm would be the nearest round size for a 4x6' board.

yeah... as I play Mech Eldar (RAAAAAGGGEEEE) things like total board size etc are quite important to me...

Oh well, I guess I'll find out when I head over to one of the hobby centers~.

Don't French and Spanish 40k rules use metric?

I know it used to be 4d6 cm for fallback distances (random distances were more dice), but movement was 15cm for infantry.
Ranges were 30/60cm for rapid fire (30/75cm for tau).

I could be wrong, though. It's been a while since I talked about it with anyone who didn't play in English.

Oh and old epic (titanicus through to epic) was in cm.

It sounds better when describing your member on Craigslist.

Heh. all i know is if i were to play someone from japan, id be measuring in inches .... i'm not punishing myself because GW thinks they're math challenged ... lol.

Doctor Optimal wrote:

Bookwrack wrote:A universally applied change to the measuring system will have 0 effect on the game.

You're right, of course, the size of the unit doesn't really matter as long as the unit is universal. But my god, what a lazy, slipshod move, even for GW.

Actually, a universal change will still have an effect, because the change isn't *truly* universal. Tank, base, and template dimensions are identical to the true conversion, not following the standardized wrong one.

So, while you must maintain a 4 cm unit cohesion distance instead of a 5 cm one, the template is the same size -- and a spread out unit will be forced to take more casualties. Likewise, a long gunline of spaced-out units will be longer relative to the weapon ranges because while the cohesion distances were reduced by the 2:1 conversion, the bases of the models weren't. So if you're rolling up a flank and trying to shoot past the gunline unit, you're weapon will run out of range more easily because the unit is proportionately longer than your weapon's range.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

JohnHwangDD wrote:It would seem that GW could have saved a lot of trouble in Japan (and other metric-only countries) by simply including a "British Imperial to Metric" conversion table in the rulebook with some basic conversion of the common 2", 6", 12", 18", 24", 48", and 72" values for 1" = 2.5cm.

This is what would make the most sense to me. Losing the four tenths of a millimeter per inch is pretty trivial over most of the ranges used in a game. I mean, it takes 12" to generate half a centimeter of difference between 2.5 and 2.541 cm/inch. That's low enough that it's not going to mess with most people's distance estimation too badly (I'd be impressed if your eye is precise enough for it to do so!), and it makes the compromise of retaining internal consistency (thus, two six inch moves of 15cm is equal to one twelve inch move of 30cm, rather than a twelve inch move of 30.5cm) while never having to measure any finer than a half-unit; and any measuring tool will be sufficiently gradated that half-units aren't a problem.