"How good are you at guessing distances on the gaming table" Topic

Assuming the game table is 6x4 feet and you know that.
How easy do you find it to guess distances of say 3"(small), 18"(medium) and 30"(big)?
I assume there is no handy piece of scenery nearby that is exactly 3, 18 or 30".
Of course you would not place your hand, box, gun on the table surreptitiously/sneakily to help?

martin

Not all that good in the micro but better in the macro. One of our departed gamers had a very good sense for distances.

Jim

Not good. One of our club members, on the other hand, was a quantity surveyor.

Practice makes perfect. Range estimation from playing boat games

Lousy.

Real world, decent.

I also had a situation where mathematically two units would have been out of range based on starting positions and full move rates, and yet measuring, my opponent claimed first shot (something that I had been using strategy to achieve). The referee sided with them since my unit's base was 1/4" inside a 48" range.

I guess eyeballing has a value …

very, and good at estimating how many turns it takes to cover it

I am fair/decent; my brother is horrible.

Years ago, my gaming group played a lot of WWI naval battles which required a lot of room & guestimating where you placed your salvos. I was average at it. In one game, our foes were doing very well. We took a break & one of our side pointed out that the floor tiles we were playing on were 12" square. Our accuracy improved a good deal the next turn.

I always underestimate how many moves it will take to get my unit to a specific spot so I just cheat and start my move from measuring from the front of the base and then end the measuring at the backof the base.

Russ Dunaway

Terrible. I have had some epically bad games of Fletcher Pratt.

I am horrible, but my opponents are always pretty good.

23 feet 6 inches, 2" spread on salvo. its good to be a former Fletcher Platt naval gamer. As for the shorter measurements given.. no problem. Know your unit frontage or formation depth of based miniatures…. helps every time.

I don't play games which disallow pre-measurement.

I'm surprised they still exist – they remind me of creaky games from the 70s.

I remember playing against 'veterans' in those days – people who would casually leave a ruler on one side of the table for a mental note and future reference for something on the other side of the table.

Or players who remembered or noted the size of all their terrain pieces to help with range estimation.

Why would all the officers in an army be limited to advantaged by the hand-eye skills of a player – what does it represent?

(And then you get dummy moves where a second-line unit attempts to shoot or move, but is clearly way out of range – but in checking the range the ruler just happens to go near the real units you want to work with).

In any case, historical troops were good at knowing the range of their weapons and capacity for movement – excluding indirect fire from modern long-range weapons which might need correction.

One of my now-deceased gaming buddies was legally blind, but could see things well enough at 10cm from his face – he could never play without pre-measuring.

Another of my buddies could just make out cavalry from infantry across the table (with his glasses firmly on) but sometimes got it wrong.

These days my vision is also moving toward terrible.

My brother and I are both pretty good at it, both real-world and table top.

I think we inherited from our father. He was never a wargamer, but he was a sailor and he was in a war.

"I don't play games which disallow pre-measurement."

So you only play games which allows pre-measuring?

I am really bad at it. I usually play against a draftsman and an engineer. Love games that allow pre-measuring.

I used to be quite good, as the WWII rules we used at the time required estimation of ranges for artillery and tank guns.

God forgive me, I practiced to get better at it. Usually got to within about 5mm.

But then, real artillery of the period would use fixed markers to help with the range estimation – even more so with guns in fortifications when they would go out and measure distances and even place markers.

I was and am OK for land but exclled at naval due
to many early gaming career Fletcher Pratt rules naval
games.

I never understood why any rules would disallow premeasuring.

When i played warhammer i became pretty good. I have played people could get within half an inch every time.
It's a bad mechanism.

Supposedly a trained human gunner can estimate ranges with the naked eye to within +/-20% of the range, experienced are better. WWI and WWII naval range finders can get within 10% or less depending on environmental conditions, range finder type and training.

You roll a die to determine the % range estimation error. If it is less than or equal to the salvo length you've got a straddle, determine the number of hits. The next salvo should have a pretty high chance of straddling unless the target takes evasive action.

Wolfhag

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
"I don't play games which disallow pre-measurement."

So you only play games which allows pre-measuring?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Yep