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For what it's worth, the old versions of the Japanese language editions of the 40k codexes I have are all done with the "International Wargaming Inch" style 2.5cm = 1 inch approximation (I forget what it was called, I forget where I put the legal codex PDFs...). And I know if you compare the English and Spanish versions of Corvus Belli's Infinity, they use the same approximation when dealing with distances between the two versions (if I remember right, the distances all end up multiples of 5cm/2" as well).

That 0.04cm difference between "actual" inch and "Wargaming" inch doesn't have to be important, and probably isn't, as long as everyone uses the same units. You just get slightly different geometric situations on each side.

The use of inches probably came about as GW developed from a miniature manufacturer for D&D to creating its own games. D&D used inches so Warhammer did.

 Ghaz wrote:

Veldrain wrote:
Because +D6 movement and 2D6 charge range is a lot easier then breaking out the D10s.

Battlefleet Gothic used centimeters for measurement and still used D6s. For example, the 'All Ahead Full' special order could add 4D6 cm to a ship's move distance if it passed a Command check.

And was a significantly smaller scale game.

Inches means less things to count. That simple.

Yet it's still an example of using D6s in a game that measures in centimeters which is all it was meant to be. Measuring in centimeters does not automatically mean that you must use D10s for some reason.

D10s are kind of ugly compared to D6s and D12s, but they are base-10.

I'm pretty sure its just simply the fact that GW and a lot of the wargame studios of the 80s/90s were based in the UK where the Imperial system ruled, and at this point it just hasn't changed because most wargamers are just used to it by now.

Would actually be interesting to see some of the stuff translated over to metric - you could add a bit more granularity by using cm since its easy to measure 1cm, 2cm, etc, but measuring 1/2 of an inch or other such subsets of an inch is more tedious.

lord_blackfang wrote:I honestly think because inches are less fiddly and it's impossible to be really accurate with a tape measure anyway. If your move stat can differ by 1 cm and that's supposed to be a meaningful difference in ability, you gonna have a bad time when people regularly move a whole inch extra because they are crosseyed morons. And if your stats differ in increments of 2 or more cm... just use inches.

I agree with this sentiment.

I think that there is an element of flaovur too though.
An inch is a bit of distance and sounds less clinical; in the same way that I expect characters in fantasy to talk about leagues and miles rather than kilometres.
I am a historical (ancient and medieval) and fanstasy wargamer though.
I recall (as mentioned above) from the odd translation error that the Spanish rules for infinity had distances in cm and I liked that for SciFi.

kodos wrote:for a historical point, Miniatures being 1" high, on a 1" base and a minimum movement of 1"

More recent ancient and medieval historical wargames have been using base widths as a base unit rather than inches.
Ancient and medieval historical wargames are generally expected to accommodate a range of scales and each scale usually has a bigger base to accommodate bigger models/figures. That makes the base width a measurement unit that scales with the figures too.
"Bases" are typically a rectangle with several figures on it.

Don't forget, with miniatures inches sounds smaller.

Even as a filthy American, I always liked how Rackham games' AT-43 and Confrontation: Age of Ragnorok used centimetres for all their movement measurements, but with ranged combat being measured using "range bands" of decimetres. So range 3 was 30cm.