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The logic was discussed somewhere at one point think in the beginning of the 4th edition rulebook for 40k.

The state reason for inch based measurements was for things like range tables and movements to be easily remembered 6 12 18 24 etc using multiples of six and for things like random distance for scatter etc inch based measurement meant that small numbers of dice were needed to get the effect that envisioned.

So 2d6-BS in inches even with BS5 can still scatter a 2.5" template completely off target whereas to get the same sort of distances for the same small blast template in CN it would have to be 4D6-BS.

If building a linear scaled ranging system where 'better weapons' get incremental increases and movement speeds aim to be comparable easily in a world that is trying to be a real world at a smaller scale using something based on Feet kind of makes sense as we know that one foot is pretty much one pace pretty instinctively rather than having to go ok a move is 10cm which is about there to there kind of estimation. (so the player in your head goes a dwarf takes 6 paces to cover a distance a human would take 4) inches make sense because it allows the reader to make instant visual comparisons.

You can see this logic discussed in more detail in the Inquisitor Rulebook where rather than simply giving movement speeds and ranges for the 54mm scale they give the ratio of measurement to real world distance they use. 1 inch on the table top = 1 yard in real terms which means the book doesnt restrict you to only using 54mm and and sort of emphasises that the game is used to tell real world stories using visual hooks that grab the players.


One of the more practical reasons is probably that since Games Workshop was started in 1977 many of the players of their first edition of fantasy (which was sometime in 78-80) would have been born and educated pre decimalisation which was I think 73.

i know from my dads experience even those who were in school after decimalisation (dad was born in 66) the teaching tended to focus on imperial (in terms of memorisation, sped of conversion from one to annother etc) due to the fact of Imperial measurements being fairly integral to life in the UK when working on british infrastructure and british manufactured vehicles and the majority of the population were much more comfortable with imperial measures so being educated in a working class Comprehensive in the north you were being prepared for industry jobs where feet and inches were the norm rather than for jobs in the technical industry that rely on metric measures (chemical engineering m, research chemists etc) and so GW reflected the background of its staff and its customer base.

I know metric is great for some stuff like really fine detail work and use it allot but honestly I think both systems have their merits. For games like BFG Epic and Dystopian Wars where the battle takes place over vast distances across the seas or stars. Where the Bases of infantry symbolise full platoons noving across the battle field abd tanks are fielded in blocks of 10 or twenty and Ships launch hails of torpedos across the vast emptiness of space CM makes sense because it's really easy to see/visualise a movement of a squad (base) or platoon (full unit of 5 bases) as a forced march of a kilometre or a aggressive charge to contact that tense sprint of 500m across rough ground desperate to avoid enemy fire the only way to storm their position is bravery and dam luck. Or a ship of the line launching great bombardments. 10 pounder cannons and 5" guns barking. propelling their deadly payload 10 to 15 km at a time (imperial used due to the conventions of large bore measurements) and bombers flying 10000km to engage an enemy ship beside a dying star. CM is amazing to similate Massive distances and show the enormity of the battle so 6mm games like epic, 1/285 or whatever the scale is for Dystopians naval battles or BFG where distances are measured in thousands of km rather than metres. Its easy to visualise that huge power for me

Skirmish games and company level battle games, necromunda, warmahordes, 40k or bolt action. Games that either are small bands of fighters in tense shootouts lasting five or ten minutes or small snippets of a larger battle (40k, a 2k a side battle to take a contested objective or assassinate an enemy warlord for me is only one part of a larger push, the viewer zoomed in on one small section of the battle lines, this is the justification for us to see chapter masters or titans in 40k, they are there at this spearhead because in this clash of thousands THIS is where their powers are needed to bolster the line) where the focus is not on Platoons or squads moving, in these games a single man/beast/alien/horrific gribbly thing may make or break an assault or capture or concede a vital objective. For me because these games focus on the efforts of each individual Inches make more sense because I can put myself on that battlefield I can see that the inch of movement that put my sniper in the perfect position to tear Calgar's helmet from his hands is one stride across a room, his frantic6 inch eetreat and 6 inch run once his position is discovered is a frantic sprint for safety. CM for the forced marches and hard won pushes of platoons, inches for the frantic dashes and heroic leaps of that single man.

In terms of day to day use I use a mix for different jobs, in terms of machinery things made with the lathe I like fractions of an inch because their easy to visualise and precise mainly admittedly because all my tooling is imperial because its old tools from an era where they were built to last not cheap china money metal that warps before the screw strips.

For mixing cocktails I work based off ML, because it scales so nicely and easily plus its the legal measure where I was taught.means making a black russian as a glass or a pitcher it doesnt matter I can just take my ratio and go so one glass is 1k:1v:3c so 25ml 25ml 75ml a 4 glass pitcher is 10ml, 100ml and 300ml simple

For cooking, liquids ideally ml but il work in pints as well because a proper 20oz pint is easy for me to visualise. For weights... I like oz weight because most of my cookbooks are in oz but I do like the finer detail offered by grams so it dependd really on where the recipe is from.

Distance/height measurements owt longer than 7" I use metres for But anything more than half a mile goes to miles. Just because its what I can visualise. FEet and inches im used to wargaming, DIY stuff is measured based on it being 2x4 etc so i work in what's most common

distances because road distances and speeds are in miles it just makes more sense than using KM. Anything smaller than 1" i use mm for as ii like the fine detail accuracy.


As for beer, the americans are WRONG a pint is 20oz not thwur stupid 1lb pint thing and honestly a pint is the perfect drinkers measure, a half litre isnt quite enough and a full litre gets warm too quickly before its finished and the weight and size of the glasses make it less practical. I can hold a pint pot all day and drink from it but the local germanesque beerkeller 1littre steins I find awkward because my disability messes with my grip strength.

So yeah just my random views and rationale for using both happily

 Bookwrack wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
There is only one English-language version of the rules, using Imperial measurement.

The Japanese version apparently was converted to Metric, but (IIRC) everyone else is using inches like the English version.

The Japanese books use metric, but all the measurements are simply the imperial ones doubled, instead of the full x2.54. It certainly made using English books when Japanese ones hadn't been released yet easy t convert.

You know that might actually be good idea to begin with! Effectively increasing your board size in a way. 40k boards are now as it is way too small compared to number of models...Was crowded even in 2nd ed and with increasing model count and model size just gets more and more ridiculous.

The spanish versions of (iirc) all GW games used to be converted to metric some years ago. I think they stopped doing it with 8th ed. Fantasy and 6th ed. 40k respectively. It's in inches now.

If I were tasked with designing a wargame, I would certainly use the metric system, but as far as 40k goes, I think it makes no difference.

The logic was discussed somewhere at one point think in the beginning of the 4th edition rulebook for 40k.

The state reason for inch based measurements was for things like range tables and movements to be easily remembered 6 12 18 24 etc using multiples of six and for things like random distance for scatter etc inch based measurement meant that small numbers of dice were needed to get the effect that envisioned.

So 2d6-BS in inches even with BS5 can still scatter a 2.5" template completely off target whereas to get the same sort of distances for the same small blast template in CN it would have to be 4D6-BS.

If building a linear scaled ranging system where 'better weapons' get incremental increases and movement speeds aim to be comparable easily in a world that is trying to be a real world at a smaller scale using something based on Feet kind of makes sense as we know that one foot is pretty much one pace pretty instinctively rather than having to go ok a move is 10cm which is about there to there kind of estimation. (so the player in your head goes a dwarf takes 6 paces to cover a distance a human would take 4) inches make sense because it allows the reader to make instant visual comparisons.

You can see this logic discussed in more detail in the Inquisitor Rulebook where rather than simply giving movement speeds and ranges for the 54mm scale they give the ratio of measurement to real world distance they use. 1 inch on the table top = 1 yard in real terms which means the book doesnt restrict you to only using 54mm and and sort of emphasises that the game is used to tell real world stories using visual hooks that grab the players.


One of the more practical reasons is probably that since Games Workshop was started in 1977 many of the players of their first edition of fantasy (which was sometime in 78-80) would have been born and educated pre decimalisation which was I think 73.

i know from my dads experience even those who were in school after decimalisation (dad was born in 66) the teaching tended to focus on imperial (in terms of memorisation, sped of conversion from one to annother etc) due to the fact of Imperial measurements being fairly integral to life in the UK when working on british infrastructure and british manufactured vehicles and the majority of the population were much more comfortable with imperial measures so being educated in a working class Comprehensive in the north you were being prepared for industry jobs where feet and inches were the norm rather than for jobs in the technical industry that rely on metric measures (chemical engineering m, research chemists etc) and so GW reflected the background of its staff and its customer base.

I know metric is great for some stuff like really fine detail work and use it allot but honestly I think both systems have their merits. For games like BFG Epic and Dystopian Wars where the battle takes place over vast distances across the seas or stars. Where the Bases of infantry symbolise full platoons noving across the battle field abd tanks are fielded in blocks of 10 or twenty and Ships launch hails of torpedos across the vast emptiness of space CM makes sense because it's really easy to see/visualise a movement of a squad (base) or platoon (full unit of 5 bases) as a forced march of a kilometre or a aggressive charge to contact that tense sprint of 500m across rough ground desperate to avoid enemy fire the only way to storm their position is bravery and dam luck. Or a ship of the line launching great bombardments. 10 pounder cannons and 5" guns barking. propelling their deadly payload 10 to 15 km at a time (imperial used due to the conventions of large bore measurements) and bombers flying 10000km to engage an enemy ship beside a dying star. CM is amazing to similate Massive distances and show the enormity of the battle so 6mm games like epic, 1/285 or whatever the scale is for Dystopians naval battles or BFG where distances are measured in thousands of km rather than metres. Its easy to visualise that huge power for me

Skirmish games and company level battle games, necromunda, warmahordes, 40k or bolt action. Games that either are small bands of fighters in tense shootouts lasting five or ten minutes or small snippets of a larger battle (40k, a 2k a side battle to take a contested objective or assassinate an enemy warlord for me is only one part of a larger push, the viewer zoomed in on one small section of the battle lines, this is the justification for us to see chapter masters or titans in 40k, they are there at this spearhead because in this clash of thousands THIS is where their powers are needed to bolster the line) where the focus is not on Platoons or squads moving, in these games a single man/beast/alien/horrific gribbly thing may make or break an assault or capture or concede a vital objective. For me because these games focus on the efforts of each individual Inches make more sense because I can put myself on that battlefield I can see that the inch of movement that put my sniper in the perfect position to tear Calgar's helmet from his hands is one stride across a room, his frantic6 inch eetreat and 6 inch run once his position is discovered is a frantic sprint for safety. CM for the forced marches and hard won pushes of platoons, inches for the frantic dashes and heroic leaps of that single man.

In terms of day to day use I use a mix for different jobs, in terms of machinery things made with the lathe I like fractions of an inch because their easy to visualise and precise mainly admittedly because all my tooling is imperial because its old tools from an era where they were built to last not cheap china money metal that warps before the screw strips.

For mixing cocktails I work based off ML, because it scales so nicely and easily plus its the legal measure where I was taught.means making a black russian as a glass or a pitcher it doesnt matter I can just take my ratio and go so one glass is 1k:1v:3c so 25ml 25ml 75ml a 4 glass pitcher is 10ml, 100ml and 300ml simple

For cooking, liquids ideally ml but il work in pints as well because a proper 20oz pint is easy for me to visualise. For weights... I like oz weight because most of my cookbooks are in oz but I do like the finer detail offered by grams so it dependd really on where the recipe is from.

Distance/height measurements owt longer than 7" I use metres for But anything more than half a mile goes to miles. Just because its what I can visualise. FEet and inches im used to wargaming, DIY stuff is measured based on it being 2x4 etc so i work in what's most common

distances because road distances and speeds are in miles it just makes more sense than using KM. Anything smaller than 1" i use mm for as ii like the fine detail accuracy.


As for beer, the americans are WRONG a pint is 20oz not thwur stupid 1lb pint thing and honestly a pint is the perfect drinkers measure, a half litre isnt quite enough and a full litre gets warm too quickly before its finished and the weight and size of the glasses make it less practical. I can hold a pint pot all day and drink from it but the local germanesque beerkeller 1littre steins I find awkward because my disability messes with my grip strength.

So yeah just my random views and rationale for using both happily

Inches are far more easy to remember, and easier to estimate too.

Its worked this long. Why change it?