Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Incara,

Just a mild point, but when firing rapid fire weapons you must fire twice if with in 12, so you are required to measure in that situation.

Also I think it is important to point out that premeasuring will not make a unit .25" away be closer you will just know before the turn starts if they are within assault range.

That information takes away any risk, and there for tactics are made easy.

jbunny wrote:Incara,

Just a mild point, but when firing rapid fire weapons you must fire twice if with in 12, so you are required to measure in that situation.

Ah yes… I’m an Eldar player so I don’t often deal with this situation so sometimes I forget. The situation still holds true for squads with mixed weaponry through – say a squad of guardians with 12” Shuriken Catapults who are armed with a weapons platform with greater range or a squad of Havocs/Devastators armed with long-range weaponry accompanied by sergeants who have pistols.

jbunny wrote:Also I think it is important to point out that premeasuring will not make a unit .25" away be closer you will just know before the turn starts if they are within assault range.

Measuring at ANY time means you can measure after your movement phase to see if you’re within 6”. If you aren’t, you can run backward in your shooting phase in hopes of denying your opponent the charge, move to cover, moving to deny LOS, or run instead of shooting if you’re fleet (Eldar, Orks, Dark Eldar). If you are within 6” you can shoot as normal and charge.

jbunny wrote:That information takes away any risk, and there for tactics are made easy.

There’s always risk – the dice are the game’s risk factor. Your run move might not be sufficient or you could tank your to-hit’s or to-wounds in assault. Distance eye-balling is not an element that adds to the game tactically or strategically and I am therefore a supporter of pre-measuring in all instances.

incarna wrote: Distance eye-balling is not an element that adds to the game tactically or strategically and I am therefore a supporter of pre-measuring in all instances.

This we will agree to disagree on.

Its funny how all the people who say distance estimation isnt something that adds to the game, are all probably completely terrible at eyeballing distance ... lol

I always found it odd that in the 40k universe they figured out how to make lasers into devastating weapons, but range finders (which we have right now) are far too advanced for normal infantry to have standard on their weaponry.

As far as pre-measuring goes, I have been playing w/o it for years and am fine w/o it, but I wouldn't be upset if it came into 6th edition.

kds - I'm very good at distance estimatng and I dont think it adds anything of worth to the game. I'd much rather it came down to the decisions we make, not on how good we are at judging 5.9-6.1".

I get the feeling yuor entire statement was based on no real evidence though

As the rules stand it wouldnt add to much, however randomised elements to movement, aka variable charge in WHFB, would ho

kds - I'm very good at distance estimatng and I dont think it adds anything of worth to the game. I'd much rather it came down to the decisions we make, not on how good we are at judging 5.9-6.1".

I get the feeling yuor entire statement was based on no real evidence though

As the rules stand it wouldnt work, however randomised elements to movement, aka variable charge in WHFB, would however redress this so you have a more *tactical* decision to take, as opposed to a *strategic* one (like chess)

Premeasuring sucks. Learn how to read distances or suffer the consequences. Part of the thrill of playing is guesstimating the assault range of your unit for that crucial assault.

Wow, I never realised so many players looked upon guessing distances as a major skill part of the game.

But then I play Orks and I play in-character, meaning I just charge forward without care for the actual distance - if I can attack I attack, if I can't I can't, it's no big deal to me. Dakka Dakka!

kill dem stunties wrote:Its funny how all the people who say distance estimation isnt something that adds to the game, are all probably completely terrible at eyeballing distance ... lol

It could be said that players who rely upon their ability to estimate distances use that mechanism to compensate for their own poor tactical and strategic game play – of course, I’m basing that assumption on as much evidence as you’re basing yours.

NuggzTheNinja wrote:Premeasuring sucks. Learn how to read distances or suffer the consequences. Part of the thrill of playing is guesstimating the assault range of your unit for that crucial assault.

Guess you wont be playing 8th ed then.

the point is the "thrill" of being able to see the world in 6" increments will be replaced with *gasp* tactics.

I love how all these 'tactical and strategic' masterminds are incapable of incorporating just another element into the game. How much tactical genius does it really take to ram your ridiculously powerful assault unit into my weaker shooty unit? Let's see: some other genius tactical ideas that float around: save some troops for the endgame, hit the most dangerest thing first, tarpit the things you can't kill... um.. keep scouts in cover...

Sheesh it's not like we're planning D-day here guys, these are all no-brainers in my mind. Distance is a key element in what makes this a miniatures war game, and not just a board game. If your tactical genius cannot deal with the occasional uncertainty go play space hulk. 'flanking' is a joke in 40k compared to actual 'tactics' where it is used for one team member to distract while the other blindsides (on any scale). Yeah you are all such stragegic gods when your reserve roll comes in the turn you want it. How ever did you plan such a masterwork of sheer mind boggling strategy and I ran right into your trap?!

Remember the winner is always the best tactician and the loser is the one who made more mistakes according to the winner. According to the loser it's bad dice rolls. I kind of resent the implication that people who can eyeball distances (which is part of the game) are somehow tactically inferior, when assaulting in 40k is essentially just a matter of ramming your figures into mine. Wow, tactical genius you are!

Being able to eyeball distances doesnt make you tactically inferior, at all. that isnt what people are saying.

just that it doesnt actually *add* much in the way of "tactics" to the game.

Guitardian wrote:I love how all these 'tactical and strategic' masterminds are incapable of incorporating just another element into the game. How much tactical genius does it really take to ram your ridiculously powerful assault unit into my weaker shooty unit? Let's see: some other genius tactical ideas that float around: save some troops for the endgame, hit the most dangerest thing first, tarpit the things you can't kill... um.. keep scouts in cover...

Sheesh it's not like we're planning D-day here guys, these are all no-brainers in my mind. Distance is a key element in what makes this a miniatures war game, and not just a board game. If your tactical genius cannot deal with the occasional uncertainty go play space hulk. 'flanking' is a joke in 40k compared to actual 'tactics' where it is used for one team member to distract while the other blindsides (on any scale). Yeah you are all such stragegic gods when your reserve roll comes in the turn you want it. How ever did you plan such a masterwork of sheer mind boggling strategy and I ran right into your trap?!

Remember the winner is always the best tactician and the loser is the one who made more mistakes according to the winner. According to the loser it's bad dice rolls. I kind of resent the implication that people who can eyeball distances (which is part of the game) are somehow tactically inferior, when assaulting in 40k is essentially just a matter of ramming your figures into mine. Wow, tactical genius you are!

Guitardian my suggestion that players who rely on their ability to judge distances to compensate for poor tactical and strategic play was more of a jab at kill dem stunties unfounded assumption that players who advocate pre-measuring are doing so out of self interest due to being at a disadvantage in their inability to estimate. I don’t actually believe that players who don’t like the idea of pre measuring are poor players and I think most rationally minded players would agree.

I’m actually very very good at estimating distances; particularly the 12” to 18” Dire Avenger bladestorm sweet spot and I almost never have issue with coming up a fraction of an inch short. As a competitive tournament player I don’t believe distance eye-balling is a valuable component of the game and, more often than not, results in some extremely anti-climactic game outcomes – particularly when charges, shooting, and objective grabbing is a fraction of an inch short. I believe that pre-measuring will alleviate many of these issues and add strategic flexibility to the game. Some people disagree with me and that’s perfectly fine. I’ll argue my point, they can argue theirs.

My point was an indirect way to counter an attempt to undermine the validity of my position by assuming I was being motivated by self interest – which I am, but not in the way kill dem stunties implied.

In the meantime I’d suggest breathing into a paper bag for 60 seconds, double check to make sure Aunt Flow isn’t on her way, and cut back on the coffee. It’s been a while since I’ve seen that kind of nerd rage.

If you do a little bit of trig, you can estimate distances pretty close.

Guitardian wrote: I kind of resent the implication that people who can eyeball distances (which is part of the game) are somehow tactically inferior, when assaulting in 40k is essentially just a matter of ramming your figures into mine. Wow, tactical genius you are!

a) you don't seem to know the difference between tactics and strategy.

b) S'far as I can tell, no-one's claimed that 'people who can eyeball distances are somehow tactically inferior'.

What we have argued is that the ability to eyeball distances should not be necessary in a game which is ostensibly testing the player's tactical skill.


Moreover, if my assault phase is just a matter of ramming my my figures into yours then you have done something wrong. Particularly if it's a case of my 'ridiculously powerful assault unit' assaulting your 'weaker shooty unit'.

Were you a better tactician, you would never have given me the oppertunity to ram my assault unit into your shooty unit - and if you had, it would only be because you wanted me to destroy your shooty unit that turn, leaving me easy pickings for the other shooty unit seven inches away.

Which of course, brings us to pre-measuring. Tactics are about choice, and choices depend on information. The better the information, the better my choices are likely to be and the harder-fought the game becomes.

I don't think I can lay it out more clearly than that.

As a former infantryman, there is a lot of guess work, estimation, and gut checking in a tactical situation.

Alpha team is suppressing, bravo team is flanking. I'm leading Bravo team, and flanking through an environment that means I can't see the enemy unit, unlike a 40k gamer with their god like view of the battlefield (strange how enemy units drive directly towards those stealth suits none of them can actually see). I also can't travel in a convenient 90 degree series of turns, but have to run down angled, twisting streets. Have I gone far enough? Too far? And oh, by the way, Alpha team only has so much ammo to suppress with, so you better make your decisions quick.

To me, adding in pre-measuring removes the only true human element from the game. With a perfect, godlike knowledge of the battlefield dimensions at all times it makes list building, unit profiles, and dice the only thing that matters.

Your assault failed by .25" and it cost you the game? That's pretty epic, The enemy holding the line and the death stroke of the assault terminators strove to bring the conflict to resolution, but came up just short as reinforcements began to arrive along enemy lines. And even better, it wasn't because you rolled on your assault through cover check, it was because of a mistake you genuinely made as the general of your army.

On BoLS I made the comment that pre-measuring is like the pause function in an RTS. It helps you play the game, but defeats the real time nature of the conflict and mitigates the pressure and decision making speed that it is supposed to simulate.

IG Stormtroopers are supposedly allowed to premeasure ranges. That, we assume, is figured into their point cost. If everybody gets to do it, then stormies would have their advantage made obsolete and would ideally cost less. They just got their new codex though (relatively speaking) so they'll probably stay at the same price for a while, while everyone else can do what they had to pay to do? That's not cool. It's part of the rules. There are many parts of the rules I don't agree with and I believe give lopsided advantages to some units in whichever army, but I play by them anyway because they are the rules. If everybody rejects the ones they don't like, there wouldn't be any rules.

Regarding tactic = choice= imformation from the previous point I agree. However: Part of the fun is not having all the information and sometimes having to take a chance in my opinion. Real life war planning people don't have all the information either. Not that I'm suggesting real world warfare is fun, but a little 'fog-of-war' uncertainty certainly makes the game cooler in my opinion. That's why we're not playing chess.

I can only repeat that 40K and WHFB are rather unusual in prohibiting pre-measuring (in a couple of situations -- it's allowed in others).

The great majority of wargamers have been pre-measuring all their lives and didn't think they were missing the best part of the game.

Kroot Loops wrote:As a former infantryman, there is a lot of guess work, estimation, and gut checking in a tactical situation.

No doubt. All I said was that the better my information is, the better my choices are likely to be.

This is the reason why, if you ask me 'what's in that Rhino', I have to tell you. Not exactly realistic, but it makes for a better game.

The Human Element (and I only think I know what you mean by that) lies in understanding probabiity curves, and psychology.

'What are the odds that my Seraphim can bust up his Land Raider in one shooting phase?' (about 27%)

and 'If I fail, where is he going to park the Terminators within?'

I actually like uncertainty in the game - I'd be in favour of random charge distances for example. I don't think the game benefits from making an unrelated skill (spatial reasoning) critical to success though.

To put it ridiculously - how about we settle close combat results with a fencing match? My skill with a sabre seems about as relevent to the game as my skill at eyeballing distance.

I guess on that line of thinking we could also resolve assaults with a brawl in the alley behind the store.

I am myself not a particularly mathematically inclined person. I could whip out a calculator and figure out probability too, I just don't do it fast in my head. If I slowed the game down every time I wanted to take a shot by spending a half hour predicting outcomes, people would get kind of irritated. Some people have a natural ability to crunch numbers on the fly, while I just say "whoot! trust the dice gods!" because I want the game to keep moving. Exact measurement on everything slows the game down just as much as me whipping out my probability calculator does. Nobody has any fun in such a scenario. And yeah I could take you in a sword fight (My wakazashi beats your sabre) but I would rather we all just play the gentleman's game.

There was a scenario in 4th where we had a contested objective that was the all-or-nothing for the game. I had IG surrounding the place, which was kind of rough terrain, and hard for him to stand his crisis suits on all the angles of the actual board. He had to keep shifting them here or there so their bases would stay balanced. That extra 'adjust' move could have given him the win so we agreed on a push. A quarter inch does make a difference, but when the math guy keeps shuffling his miniatures to fit the base onto the terrain, while the instinct guy just puts them where he knows is right, it makes it kind of unfair.

Some people have an instinct for distance, some for probability. Some people have both (and probably are tournament winners) but my point is; strategy and tactics have nothing to do with flash math probability any more than they have anything to do with knowing what 18" looks like.

So you work in an office doing computer stuff, I bet you math skills are wonderful. I worked carpentry for years so yeah I know exactly what a foot looks like. You have your advantage, I have mine. Too bad if your perfectly calculated assault fails. That's just how it is.

That's exactly it, Azezel. Everything else in the game is handled with abstraction. Our little men shoot at the other little men, and we don't need to knock them over with rubber bands to know if we hit or wounded. We don't decide if our tanks can move through the terrain with pull-back-and-go engines. Player-skill in boxing, fencing, target shooting, or driving aren't relevant to the abstractions on the tabletop.

So why is the player-skill of judging distances relevant? It isn't.

It's still an open board, measured or not. Measuring distances doesn't suddenly turn it into a grid-based game. There is no less tactical or strategic element to measuring - or not measuring. All you do is add a player-skill to a game that really is about abstractions. It doesn't really belong.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Guitardian wrote: Exact measurement on everything slows the game down...

This is an erroneous argument. The debate isn't about measuring, it is about pre-measuring. I still have to measure in either case, the question is simply whether I do it before, or after, I commit to an action.

Guitardian wrote: And yeah I could take you in a sword fight (My wakazashi beats your sabre) but I would rather we all just play the gentleman's game.

Sword fight? Who said anything about a sword fight? I challenged you to a fencing match. (Well, I didn't actually, but if you're ever on this side of the pond...)

Redbeard wrote: We don't decide if our tanks can move through the terrain with pull-back-and-go engines.

Although that would be pretty cool.

I sneak them in anyway. Just remember that when you complain about my vindicators actually being in range

There are so many abstractions though. That is just another one of them. We used to have to call all of our shots before resolving any of them. That prediction skill of the likely outcome of what shoots at what was also a skill in the game. You tell all your little men to fire at one target, and the first hit pops the tank, you had an entire turn of wasted shooting. Rules change over years, but miniatures games traditionally have had ambiguous range as a variable in decision making. All the old school wargames like napoleonics or chainmail or armada had you estimate the range of your artillery and you just had to learn how to guestimate because it simulates (slightly) the actual difficulty of the commander sitting on top of the hill overseeing the way things unfold. Those are the games that Jervis and RIck and all those guys grew up on. I think they are just carrying the torch.

Fair 'nuff mate.

It's a matter of which player abilities we believe ought be necessary to play the game.

For what it's worth, I do get your point even if I don't agree.

Azezel wrote:


I actually like uncertainty in the game - I'd be in favour of random charge distances for example. I don't think the game benefits from making an unrelated skill (spatial reasoning) critical to success though.

.

So you would rather remove a skill however "unrelated" to the game and replace it with pure random chance? There is already enough luck in the game as is for me.

Ugh, no. I would I think I would hate random charge distance. It is already silly enough that a unit could decide to charge another and then if they are 0.5 inches short they just stand still and don't move at all. Adding a random element would be hugely frustrating.

On the other hand, I am open to hearing reports of how it works in fantasy. Maybe it does work afterall.

Kolath wrote:Ugh, no. I would I think I would hate random charge distance. It is already silly enough that a unit could decide to charge another and then if they are 0.5 inches short they just stand still and don't move at all. Adding a random element would be hugely frustrating.

On the other hand, I am open to hearing reports of how it works in fantasy. Maybe it does work afterall.

Same system is already used in War of the Ring. Makes for some interesting tactical choices during maneuver as you decide how close you're willing to be, knowing that your opponent's unit can charge up to 16", but most of the time will only get 11" or less.

The uncertainty factor has shifted from "Am I at least 12.5" away?" to "How much risk am I prepared to tolerate?" It's a good change.

Hmm... so in war of the ring, if they are out of range, does the charge just not happen, or do they move forward and stop X inches away?