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Mannahnin wrote:Knowing whether you're in range is a skill, like it or not. Being able to eyeball your unit's positioning to ensure that you're in range to assault unit X while being out of 12" double-tap range from unit Y, for example. Or position your Fast Skimmer so that a 24" move will get you within 3" of an objective without being any closer to enemy guns then you have to, etc.

You can have a perfectly good wargame allowing premeasuring of everything (Battlefleet Gothic, for one example), but not allowing premeasuring of certain things, like your weapon ranges, is traditional.

It isn't traditional in my experience. I've played a lot of different rulesets and found non-pre-measurement to be a significant exception. 40K is the only game I remember ATM which uses it. I presume non-pre-measurement was in WHFB ed. 1 and 2, but it's such a long time since I played them that I can't remember. Since I played them with other historical wargamers we may have made a house rule at the time to ignore non-pre-measurement.

I agree it's a skill to eyeball distances on the tabletop. I don't think it's a skill that's important for playing wargames. I think it's a holdover from the "toy soldiers" aspect of 40K. Guess weapons and the scatter dice are other holdovers. There are too many ways to measure distances within the rules to make non-pre-measurement of ranges very important.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
However I am dragging the thread off topic.

Mannahnin wrote:If you hand is close enough to serve as even a partial measurement and help you, that's premeasuring.

Okay, all fine and dandy so far, but what about when you measure purely with your eye? And what counts as "purely", surely at one point or another you will use something to help you (even if subconsciously) "pre"measure guesstimate a distance.

Sam__theRelentless wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:If you hand is close enough to serve as even a partial measurement and help you, that's premeasuring.

Okay, all fine and dandy so far, but what about when you measure purely with your eye? And what counts as "purely", surely at one point or another you will use something to help you (even if subconsciously) "pre"measure guesstimate a distance.

If you introduce another object to the table for the purposes of helping you measure the distance more accurately, then you're premeasuring. I may be able to subtly lay my hand or some other object on the table in such as way as to help me gauge a distance easier without my opponent noticing, but I should recognize that what I'm doing is not okay in any game which disallows premeasuring. I'm obtaining additional information to help me which I'm not entitled to.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:You can have a perfectly good wargame allowing premeasuring of everything (Battlefleet Gothic, for one example), but not allowing premeasuring of certain things, like your weapon ranges, is traditional.

It isn't traditional in my experience. I've played a lot of different rulesets and found non-pre-measurement to be a significant exception. 40K is the only game I remember ATM which uses it. I presume non-pre-measurement was in WHFB ed. 1 and 2, but it's such a long time since I played them that I can't remember. Since I played them with other historical wargamers we may have made a house rule at the time to ignore non-pre-measurement.

I said traditional because my understanding is that older "sandtable" (as opposed to hex-map based) rulesets commonly required range estimation/guessing. For example the other three such wargames (aside from WH, 40k, and BFG) I happen to have on my shelf are TSR's medieval wargame Chainmail (first published in 1975, though I have the 1979 printing), TSR's 1985 Battlesystem, and Frank Chadwick's WWII game Command Decision, first published in 1985 (though I have the 1998 third edition). All of these are games for miniatures figures on a tabletop, and all forbid premeasuring of movement or shooting.

Kilkrazy wrote:I agree it's a skill to eyeball distances on the tabletop. I don't think it's a skill that's important for playing wargames. I think it's a holdover from the "toy soldiers" aspect of 40K. Guess weapons and the scatter dice are other holdovers. There are too many ways to measure distances within the rules to make non-pre-measurement of ranges very important.

I don't think it's "important" as in necessary or essential. It's just one possible design choice. Forbidding premeasurement and requiring estimation is one possible way to introduce a little bit of "fog of war" and risk to the game. Some games (like BFG, Warmaster, and 8th edition Warhammer FB) explicitly permit it. Others (like 40k 3rd and 4th edition, and the ones I listed above) don't allow it. Still others (like 40k 5th) allow you to premeasure some things but not others (movement but not shooting for 5th). IME games allowing premeasuring are usually newer. Though I'm not an expert on wargames in general. I may be mistaken and the games I have may eb exceptions, not the rule.

From a game design point of view, making players estimate distance adds a random element to the game. As we certianly should all know, estimating distance is not the only way to add a random element to the game--but it is a random element that is modified by player skill.

I believe that removing guess range weapons from fantasy was a great idea. A cannon in the hands of a skilled guesser was signifigantly superior than a cannon in the hands of a terrible guesser, yet both players pay the same points for the weapon.

DevianID wrote:From a game design point of view, making players estimate distance adds a random element to the game. As we certianly should all know, estimating distance is not the only way to add a random element to the game--but it is a random element that is modified by player skill.

It can also speed up game-play, since players aren't able to waste half an hour measuring ranges to every enemy unit on the table before deciding which one to shoot or where to move.

That speed boost is a big thing in this game. A 2000 pt game can take 4 hours easily and doing anything to speed that up the game(so I can get 2 in during a night) is fantastic. More games is more fun.

-cgmckenzie

True, I do remember sitting across from a cannon line, where every cannon had a different target ang guess, and waiting, and waiting... you could almost see the geometry being slowly calculated in the opponents eyes.

In 40k, were you able to premeasure everything, then assault would need to be 2d6 instead of 6 inches, and perhaps either half distance or 1d6 when slowed by terrain.

Shooting I dont think needs a modification for 40k, as range really isnt much of an issue, and if premeasuring were really amazing in the shooting phase people would take WH INQ with targeters for pittance points. Seeing as armies dont bother with targeters, premeasured shooting cant be too game changing.

EDIT: Also, some vehicles have such absurd ranges as it is that measuring is a waste of time. Looking at the railgun and most IG heavy stuff in particular, where you need to try REALLY hard to be out of 72 inch range from mobile weapons platforms.

Not looking to shut down the on-going discussion on using other means to ascertain a distance (hmm, that wrecked Land Raider is a little over 6 inches, so I know the objective is too far away ), but I found my ruling on page 3, RH column, 3rd paragraph. Nothing allowed except when rules call for it ... as insaniak stated early on. The good ol' Permissive Rule Set.

So when measuring the objective, is it 6" radius from the objective or is it 6" diameter?

3" radius, unless you agree differently.

WRG 6th, 7th, Renaissance, Napoleonic, DBA, DBM and DBMM.
Empire
Stars ‘n Bars
Harpoon
Field of Glory
and others I can’t remember. I have played or owned a lot of rulesets, though I’ve never looked at Chainmail or Command Decision.

They are rulesets some of which date back to the 70s, which either specifically permit pre-measuring or at least do not forbid it.

In the latter case, since measurement is an essential part of playing the game, the assumption is that players will be measuring all the time anyway so there is no point forbidding them from measuring certain distances in certain contexts. As you said, in 5th edition 40K, you can measure for movement so anyone sensible will use that to help estimate weapon ranges.

One point about most of these games is that they are large battle games, and the armies are usually larger on the table than the distance to which they can shoot or charge. This makes non-pre-measurement a non-factor in most cases, since it’s easy to see when your units are close enough to be able to shoot.

OTOH I have various skirmish rulesets in which pre-measurement is allowed or not forbidden, in which weapon ranges are a real factor.

The other thing is that most of the rules I mentioned involve some other aspects of uncertainty such as command and control and morale mechanisms. For example, you have to roll for whether an attack order is received and acted upon. This is what gives the fog of war aspect.

I don’t remember if Kriegsspiel, the ultimate sandbox game, allows pre-measurement, however it is properly conducted through umpire mediation, so the map on which each team sees its view of the battlefield is an approximation of the real situation. This introduces uncertainty. A real general sitting in his command tent could measure his maps whenever he wanted, but he wouldn’t always know exactly where all the forces might be, unless he could see them.

As you say, it’s a design choice.

Even one of GWs games (LotR) allows pre-measuring, IIRC.

don_mondo wrote:Even one of GWs games (LotR) allows pre-measuring, IIRC.

So? I like the fact that the 3 GW games are all slightly different

the disk idea is great i like that but its true only at the end of the game