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.

because 28mm basically amounts to an inch
See that?
Not only that but saying I'm 193cm seems so much stupider than saying I'm 6'2.

Yeah, I mean wouldn't it make more sense to say "I'm 1.93 meters"?

That would be like someone saying they were 63 inches. Nobody would say that. They'd say there were 5 foot 3 inches.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Yeah, I mean wouldn't it make more sense to say "I'm 1.93 meters"?

Not really, no. Most people who use metric give their height in cm. Down here, that's how it is entered on driver's licenses and suchlike as well.

Hull83 wrote:
Something I just realised is that 40K measurements are based on the Imperial an not the Metric system. This is interesting considering that 40K was created and based in England. Spelling is predominantly English not American in the rulebooks and novels. So why Imperial? E.g. A 6' x 4' battlefield etc. Only 3 countries in the entire world use Imperial.

England is one of those countries that uses the imperial system (not entirely, but it still uses it for many items). Everyone of my people could tell you how many lbs they weighed and how many inches tall they were, but couldn't tell you what a pound or an inch was...

The UK still uses Miles and MPH, pints, stone (how can you complain about Imperial without complaining about that crazy $$$ system?), inches, and more.

Well, and you think about it, let's say that they had used D6s with centimeters anyways. The problem would be that in the movement phase a model would only move slightly longer than its own height.

Put another way, short movement like that would work fine for smaller scale miniatures being played on a smaller game board, but then they'd have a rule book that didn't fit the scale of the miniatures they were producing.

And it would have worked in battletech, where you were only moving a few inches, and you had minis of roughly the same size, but, of course, a battlemech was in an entirely different scale than a space marine, despite being the same size.

 Ailaros wrote:
Well, and you think about it, let's say that they had used D6s with centimeters anyways. The problem would be that in the movement phase a model would only move slightly longer than its own height.

How does using metric restrict a model to shorter movement? Movement doesn't have to be in multiples of 6 to work with a D6. They could as easily make basic movement 15cm, with random movement being 2D6, or 2D6+3, or D6x3...

But then you'd have even more variability than you have now. I mean, random charge ranges in this hypothetical would be 4D6cm. That's a lot of variation.

Of course, you could always do something like 2D6 x2, but then you lose resolution, so you might as well just use inches in the first place.

 Ailaros wrote:
... I mean, random charge ranges in this hypothetical would be 4D6cm. .

Or 2D6+15, or double movement with some sort of random modifier, or something else entirely.

There is no particular reason that the game rules under a metric system would all have to work the same as they do in the current system, since a lot of the time those rules are the way they are precisely because of the imperial system and the way distances work out.

Right, they don't HAVE to. GW could have made up their own units of measure, or resuscitated some ancient Sumerian way of judging distance.

That doesn't change that inches are the most obvious and intuitive way of doing it for the scale that they're running on the size game board they want the game to be played on, with the random game mechanic they're using.

Just because people use the metric system outside of 40k doesn't make it the best system for 40k.

Where did I suggest that metric would be better for 40k? I merely questioned your odd assumption that metric would result in shorter movement.

I have a feeling that a metric measuring system would be awkward if the game retained the current scale.

 Ailaros wrote:
No, I beat dead horses regularly as a commentary on people who disparage others for beating dead horses. Actaually, wait, no, I don't beat dead horses because people who beat dead horses as a commentary on people who disapprove of people who beat dead horses are just being contrarian.

Boy, I wish it were still the good old days. Back then I used to beat dead horses because it was the right thing to do. I beat dead horses back when beating dead horses had integrity.

But, then, I do like mainstream because hating mainstream has become too mainstream.


... I'm sorry, what were we talking about?

Horses (presumably including dead horses) are measured in a non-SI unit. What about converting 40k to use hands?