Re: Measuring things...

On Tue, 30 May 2000 17:23:16 +1000, Beth Fulton
<beth.fulton@marine.csiro.au>
wrote:

> >I fear I'm opening a can of worms again... take this as my opinion
only.
>
>We have wildly differing opinions it seems ;)

I happen to agree with Beth. The tournament rules prevent pre-measuring
but
only because we have a limited amount of time to get a limited number of
games
in. Some players will slow down the game checking EVERYTHING, even
something
that isn't in range.

This was thrashed out ages ago on rec.games.miniatures.historical. It's
pretty
close to a Holy War. Those who like pre-measuring point out that
estimating
distances is a skill that some players are better at than others but has
nothing to do with their tactical ability. Those who dislike
pre-measuring
point out the needless measuring for minimum/maximum effect that some
people
do. 

On one side, you have some people who will lose out in games because
they have
poor depth of field vision (it happens) or will win because they happen
to
wear check shirts with a 1" grid (seen it happen!). On the other side,
you
have people moving figures to JUST outside of someone's close range
band, or
JUST within a certain terrain type, or what not, and you have people
taking up
half the game measuring for no reason.

I find that FT isn't bad in this regard. You have to write down your
movement
orders. Once moved, I have no problem allowing pre-measuring before
firing. I
find it odd that sci-fi vessels wouldn't be able to judge if a target is
within optimum range of a certain weapon type.

Personally, I hope Jon keeps this vague. I like the idea that I can
choose
pre-measuring when a lot of people prefer NOT to allow pre-measuring.
But
there is no right way or wrong way of doing it, just the way that
players want
to play...

Allan Goodall		       agoodall@interlog.com
Goodall's Grotto: http://www.interlog.com/~agoodall/

"Surprisingly, when you throw two naked women with sex
toys into a living room full of drunken men, things 
always go bad." - Kyle Baker, "You Are Here"