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 Ghaz wrote:

 easysauce wrote:
well when you make incorrect statements like claiming the new FAQ that specifically disallows immobile skimmers to jink, actually allows them to jink, yes that is on you. the faq is quite clear, immobile skimmers cannot jink.

insaniak's statement is correct, as can be seen if you actually look at the sentence in question:

Skimmers that are not also Heavy vehicles or are immobilized have the Jink special rule.

Remove the yellow section and the 'or' and it becomes even clearer.

no again, you are using improper grammar and ignoring the proper sentence structure.


It reads like this, not as you indicate above.

Skimmers that are not also Heavy vehicles or are immobilized have the Jink special rule.

you cannot just group the "ARE NOT" bit only with the reference to tanks and not apply it to skimmers as it applies to the whole sentence which includes skimmers.
The yellow bit I made above applies to the whole sentence, not just to the parts you say it does.

Hence the correct reading of this is:
Skimmers that are not also Heavy vehicles have the Jink special rule.
or

Skimmers that are not also immobilized have the Jink special rule.


you and insaniak are incorrectly cutting out the main context of the sentence, and applying it to half the sentence and not the other. Easy mistake to make, but your mistake none the less.

Sorry, but my grammar is just fine. Yours would require the second section to say "... skimmers that are not also are immobilized have the Jink special rule..." Now does that make sense without leaving out a word like you're doing?

 insaniak wrote:

 easysauce wrote:
... adding "are" into there doesnt change a positive to a negative,.

No, it changes a negative to a positive.

'Are' and 'are not' do not mean the same thing.

notice the word NOT is what changed it... not the word are....

fact is, you are cutting the sentence apart wrongly.

as I indicated above, the proper way to break down the sentence is not as you claim it to be.

 easysauce wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 easysauce wrote:
... adding "are" into there doesnt change a positive to a negative,.

No, it changes a negative to a positive.

'Are' and 'are not' do not mean the same thing.

notice the word NOT is what changed it... not the word are....

fact is, you are cutting the sentence apart wrongly.

as I indicated above, the proper way to break down the sentence is not as you claim it to be.

Easysauce, you're wrong in this instance due to the second instance of the word "are". Recheck your primary books about sentences involving two different subject-verb agreements in a single sentence.

 easysauce wrote:
you cannot just group the "ARE NOT" bit only with the reference to tanks and not apply it to skimmers as it applies to the whole sentence which includes skimmers.

Nope. The 'are not' would apply to both sides of the 'or' without that second 'are'...

The statement 'You can have a cookie if you are not naked or ugly' can also be written as 'You can have a cookie if you are not naked or are not ugly'. In that situation, though, there's no particular need to actually write the second 'are not'... since there is no alternative qualifier after the 'or' the original one still applies. But that's not what the rule says. What the rule says is 'You can have a cookie if you are not naked or are ugly.'

What you're trying to argue is that 'You can have a cookie if you are not naked or are not ugly' is the same statement as 'You can have a cookie if you are not naked or are ugly'.

Which brings us back to the fact that 'are' and 'are not' do not mean the same thing.

Skimmers that are not Heavy vehicles, or are immobilized, have the Jink special rule.

Fixed.
That'll be £40 please GW.

Uh, no... That doesn't fix it.

 Flood wrote:

Skimmers that are not Heavy vehicles, or are not immobilized, have the Jink special rule.

Fixed.
That'll be £40 please GW.

"Skimmers have the Jink Special Rule, unless they are Heavy or Immobilised."

Now I'll take that money please.

 GoonBandito wrote:

 Flood wrote:

Skimmers that are not Heavy vehicles, or are not immobilized, have the Jink special rule.

Fixed.
That'll be £40 please GW.

"Skimmers have the Jink Special Rule, unless they are Heavy or Immobilised."

Now I'll take that money please.

*sucks in air*

I'd agree with that if the errata had said "or are not immobilised", but it doesn't say that. I'm stepping away from this table now, I can't take the tension.

the wording is so bizarre; in the BRB update about skimmers it says
"skimmers that are not also heavy vehicles or are immobilized have the jink special rule"

seriously, how was that supposed to 'clear things up'?!
i get that a statement to the effect that:
'immobilized skimmers or skimmers which are also heavy vehicles dont have jink'
was needed, but doesnt that little summation sound a bit better?

GW need a proof-reader!

ah, just noticed ive been beaten to the joke by several thousand others. dang.

"An Independent Character without the Infiltrate special rule cannot join a unit of Infiltrators during deployment, and vice versa"

Well, goodbye forever, Huron..

A skimmer loses the Jink rule if it is a heavy vehicle and/or is immobilized. Boo yah.

The fact we're on page 2 shows how unclear it is. We *know* what they mean, but I'm sure we always did. The problem is that we're paying a fortune for this stuff, it should at least be clear.

I really pity anyone trying to understand it when English isn't their native language (like Glaswegians or Spaniards)

Simple fact is that line can be read 2 different ways in English and be grammatically correct, in other words it's exactly the type of sentence you do not write in a rulebook/FAQ.

FAQ of a FAQ required !!!!

MaxT wrote:
Simple fact is that line can be read 2 different ways in English and be grammatically correct, in other words it's exactly the type of sentence you do not write in a rulebook/FAQ.

FAQ of a FAQ required !!!!

Or simply choose not to play against a rules lawyer.

It's got nothing to do with rules laywering or anything when a person plays, it's just a gak product. I'd not be happy with a novel that's full of spelling mistakes, and i'm not happy with a ruleset full of ambiguous wording.

And it's not like it's a difficult rule to write either !

The German version of the FAQ is pretty clear on "no jink for immobilized".
It also forbids characters without the Infiltrate special rule to join a unit during deployment with the Infiltrate special rule (not just inflitrating units).

 Hanskrampf wrote:

It also forbids characters without the Infiltrate special rule to join a unit during deployment with the Infiltrate special rule (not just inflitrating units).

Units with the infiltrate rule are the same thing as infiltrating units... You don't have an option to not infiltrate.

So heavy skimmers can only jink if they're immobilized? Glad they finally sorted that out.

 BrotherGecko wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 BrotherGecko wrote:
I mean call me stupid but my understanding of the in and out of written english (which isn't that amazing) I see zero significant difference between what they wrote and what you wrote.

Is the skimmer heavy or are immobilized (cumbersome to say yes) no then it has jink. Possible "or is" would of been prettier but still I understand what they wrote clearly.

'Or is' would have been grammatically worse, but had the same outcome as 'or are'... That second 'are' is the problem, as it separates the second statement from the original 'are not'.

"You can have a cookie if you are not naughty or naked" allows you to apply that original 'are not' to both states. If you are not naughty, you get a cookie. If you are not naked, you get a cookie.

If I instead say "You can have a cookie if you are not naughty or are naked" then I've completely changed the requirements. Now, it reads: If you are not naughty you get a cookie. If you are naked, you get a cookie.

I figure it was a grammar thing lol. As many of us do not have that level of understanding of grammar it says exactly what it was intended to say. For you it says something to the opposite.

Which means that GW might want to have better editors checking things or not have joe shmoe writing rules. As naturally rules will get picked apart and dissected.

Alternatively, easysauce has it spot-on and players could stop digging up obscure grammar rules that 99% of people don't know or care about in order to justify counter-intuitive nonsense for ingame advantage. But hey, who needs sportsmanship when you've got grammatical pedantry?

 Yodhrin wrote:


Alternatively, easysauce has it spot-on and players could stop digging up obscure grammar rules that 99% of people don't know or care about in order to justify counter-intuitive nonsense for ingame advantage. But hey, who needs sportsmanship when you've got grammatical pedantry?

What on earth are you talking about?

Nobody is trying to gain any sort of advantage, just pointing out that the rule is badly written.

And this is quite basic grammar. It's not 'obscure' in the slightest.

This IS basic grammar. The only reason some people interpret it the wrong way (which happens to be the intended way) is because they knew the intention before reading the sentence and didn't register the error. It doesn't make the sentence any more grammatically correct.

 insaniak wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:


Alternatively, easysauce has it spot-on and players could stop digging up obscure grammar rules that 99% of people don't know or care about in order to justify counter-intuitive nonsense for ingame advantage. But hey, who needs sportsmanship when you've got grammatical pedantry?

What on earth are you talking about?

Nobody is trying to gain any sort of advantage, just pointing out that the rule is badly written.

And this is quite basic grammar. It's not 'obscure' in the slightest.

You're already outnumbered just here in this thread by people essentially saying "they both look the same to me", I'd make a pretty hefty wager that if you asked any random sample of a country's English-speaking populace the difference in meaning you'd get the same answer. It's obscure, because English as a language is so full of this kind of needless pedantry, most of it counter-intuitive into the bargain, that normal people are capable of looking at a sentence and grasping the basic meaning; people learn this stuff in school and then promptly forget it all so they can function without tying themselves in knots over the construction of sentences. I know for a fact I overuse and sometimes likely misuse commas, for example, because it makes sense to me to use a comma to indicate the pause that would be there if I were speaking aloud, but somehow, against all odds, the vast majority of people manage to grasp my meaning even when my misuse of a comma might, in an extremely technical and pedantic analysis of my writing, be said to have changed the meaning of my words according to some obscure grammatical rule.

I'm a pretty vocal critic of GW, but even I'm not going to stoop to giving them hassle over this kind of minutiae, ascribing malice or incompetence in place of what is almost certainly just normal people writing normally, rather than in strict and unwavering accordance with the byzantine nonsense that is English grammar.

Finally, in what universe is arguing an interpretation of a rule which allows a model to take an armour save in a situation they wouldn't gain one by other interpretations not arguing for an ingame advantage? And if you do grasp the pretty evident meaning that immobilised skimmers don't get Jink and wouldn't try to argue otherwise yourself when playing the game, has it occurred to you that if yourself and everyone else who grasps the meaning but find the sentence construction personally offensive would simply choke back your annoyance at the sight of us plebs committing the heinous crime of making ourselves reasonably clear to each other without needing to abase ourselves at the feet of English majors, most of the annoying "debates" about rules that end up sounding more like a defense lawyer trying to obtain an acquittal for an obviously guilty client would likely mostly go away? Grammar is not serious enough an issue to be casting these kinds of arguments up on the principle of the thing.

Why are some of you fighting over grammar? The FAQ is fine and answers the question. [MOD EDIT - Language, please! - Alpharius] you boys need to calm down!

As Plataunth and insaniak pointed out, this is most certainly a subject-verb agreement error. It's not some obscure English rules, it's high school-grade English literacy. An easy mistake to make perhaps, but I'm surprised someone at GW didn't have some else check his clauses since this was certainly something they wanted to be clear about.

Are people going to rule-lawyer others to death about it? Probably not, but dismissing it as some sort of ye olde English interpretation is showing pre-determined bias over what you think the FAQ should have read as and not admitting that whoever wrote this flubbed up and should have been more careful-it kind of defeats the whole purpose of a FAQ.

The bottom line is this: 99.9% of the people that will read that rule understand what they mean. Full stop.

So stop over analyzing it and get on with it. JFC, it's stupid crap like this that completely turns me off to even want to continue to play the game. Great, you spotted the grammatical error...you're a hero. Do you still understand what they meant? Yes? Then shut up about it and move on.

 Yodhrin wrote:


You're already outnumbered just here in this thread by people essentially saying "they both look the same to me", I'd make a pretty hefty wager that if you asked any random sample of a country's English-speaking populace the difference in meaning you'd get the same answer. It's obscure, because English as a language is so full of this kind of needless pedantry, most of it counter-intuitive into the bargain, that normal people are capable of looking at a sentence and grasping the basic meaning; people learn this stuff in school and then promptly forget it all so they can function without tying themselves in knots over the construction of sentences.

Maybe, but what if you asked a non-native English speaker? There's a lot more out them out there than us, and these grammar quirks are much harder to parse. It's more significant now that they aren't producing stuff in as many languages as they used to.

Herzlos wrote:
The fact we're on page 2 shows how unclear it is. We *know* what they mean, but I'm sure we always did. The problem is that we're paying a fortune for this stuff, it should at least be clear.

I really pity anyone trying to understand it when English isn't their native language (like Glaswegians or Spaniards)

Dinny ken like.

 Yodhrin wrote:
[... but somehow, against all odds, the vast majority of people manage to grasp my meaning even when my misuse of a comma might, in an extremely technical and pedantic analysis of my writing, be said to have changed the meaning of my words according to some obscure grammatical rule.

It seems likely from reading this that a large part of the disconnect here is from you and I having very different ideas of what constitutes an obscure grammatical rule.

For what it's worth, I didn't read this FAQ and then bust out a dozen English texts to see if I could find anything that wasn't quite right. I read the entry in question. It was obviously wrong.

I'm a pretty vocal critic of GW, but even I'm not going to stoop to giving them hassle over this kind of minutiae, ascribing malice or incompetence in place of what is almost certainly just normal people writing normally, rather than in strict and unwavering accordance with the byzantine nonsense that is English grammar.

When you're talking about a piece of rules text, having that text wind up saying the exact opposite of what you wanted it to say is hardly 'minutiae', surely.

Finally, in what universe is arguing an interpretation of a rule which allows a model to take an armour save in a situation they wouldn't gain one by other interpretations not arguing for an ingame advantage?

The universe where people are pointing it out as merely a piece of bad writing and not actually suggesting that it be played that way?

And if you do grasp the pretty evident meaning that immobilised skimmers don't get Jink....

I don't.

What I grasp is that what they wrote is the complete opposite of what they meant. The pretty evident meaning of that piece of text is not what it was pretty evidently supposed to be.

Grammar is not serious enough an issue to be casting these kinds of arguments up on the principle of the thing.

And yet here we are, with you posting walls of text to refute the idea that a piece of a rule might be badly written (when it is), rather than just saying 'Huh, look at that...' and moving on.


But frankly, I would argue that when you're talking about a ruleset that relies on the written word, grammar is absolutely a serious enough issue to be having these kinds of arguments.

If your options are:
1- Write a piece of text that doesn't mean what you wanted it to mean, and assume that people will figure out what you intended
or
2- Change one word and have the text mean what it was supposed to mean
...then surely number 2 is a better option, no?

Leave it to GW to use more words then needed.

"Heavy vehicles and immobilized skimmers cannot jink."

Done.

Why they always have to be overly wordy is beyond me.