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Do wargamers outside of North America and the UK use inches or centimeters in their games?

And do major games companies go through all the trouble to localize units of measurement for international sale?

Pretty much every tape measure has both, so I suppose it's maybe not a huge deal, but something I was wondering about.

Most games use the same measurements everywhere. Although I believe there were a couple of countries (Japan?) that had 40K and WHFB converted to metric in their translated version.

Spain also uses centimetres for their localized version of WH40K.

ComTrav wrote:
Pretty much every tape measure has both, so I suppose it's maybe not a huge deal, but something I was wondering about.

Maybe this is true for the States, but over here it can be a real pain finding a tape measure that has inches on it.

Aye, I can say that too. Having lived in Finland, France and Belgium, I can say that finding a non-GW tape measure with inches on it is a pain in all 3 countries

I use inches for wargaming (if the ruleset uses inches that is). Flames of War has both inches and centimeters, and still I use inches. Even when I make measurements for terrain building I often find myself using inches for some reason.

Otherwise I think the imperial system is a BS-system.

Was there an American version of Epic that used inches?

 Alkasyn wrote:
Spain also uses centimetres for their localized version of WH40K.

Always hilarious when one of the cm artillery dice found its way into the dice pool and you we're firing an Organ Gun/Helblaster.

Good times.

 Frank&Stein wrote:

ComTrav wrote:
Pretty much every tape measure has both, so I suppose it's maybe not a huge deal, but something I was wondering about.

Maybe this is true for the States, but over here it can be a real pain finding a tape measure that has inches on it.

What I do is I look for a shop with Chinese products. They usually sell those cheap-as-chips, for like 0,5$ equivalent.

 Frank&Stein wrote:

ComTrav wrote:
Pretty much every tape measure has both, so I suppose it's maybe not a huge deal, but something I was wondering about.

Maybe this is true for the States, but over here it can be a real pain finding a tape measure that has inches on it.

Amazon (.co.uk, .de, .it, .fr) ?

Latest Flames of War has measurements in both CM and inches. Infinity is the same (they have localised the system for US/UK into inches, which was nice of them).

..Now just off to order my weekly collection of pork skin from local butcher in pounds and ounces

 Riquende wrote:
Was there an American version of Epic that used inches?

IIRC, Battlefleet Gothic was strictly metric.

 Ghaz wrote:

 Riquende wrote:
Was there an American version of Epic that used inches?

IIRC, Battlefleet Gothic was strictly metric.

As a general rule, it came down to the scale of the game with GW. Their 28mm games always use inches, while their smaller games use metric. I believe this is just down to which 'feels' better for the scale.

I've used inches outside of wargaming plenty in Australia. The industry I work in it's not uncommon at all to get measuremenats in inches as well as centimeters (and in points just for fun).

It only gets bizarre when, instead of going with a "reasonable approximation" like using 2.5:1 for the conversion ratio, someone decides that whole numbers look nicer and decides to use 2:1.

The free Japanese versions of the GW army books and codices are/were all done using the 2:1 conversion initially. Then they redid the rules with "movement points" or something that happened to coincide with the unit of measurement everyone else calls the "inch".

 Frank&Stein wrote:

ComTrav wrote:
Pretty much every tape measure has both, so I suppose it's maybe not a huge deal, but something I was wondering about.

Maybe this is true for the States, but over here it can be a real pain finding a tape measure that has inches on it.

Just check http://www.gerritse.nl/Gereedschappen/Handgereedschappen/Rolmaten_en_meetgereedschappen/Rolmaten_en_duimstokken/190367/rolmaat_powerlock_3m__mm_inch__bandbreedte_12_7mm_staal/

Ordered one in the morning and when I got home, it was already delivered