As much as I think it to be a time consuming issue, I just think if you're using range rulers that much in placement, you have too strict a guide for this game.. eyeball it, just to ease the placement of the thing. And then make sure you set your ships where its more advantageous for you..

I think using 2 range sticks to place an asteroid is just something that my opponent will hear a big sigh of impatience from me.. and then I'm going to reconsider my starting placement to make sure I screw up his perfectly planned out first move... I may even come across the top of that asteroid just to piss him off

Funny thing, I'd think that using two range sticks while placing asteroids would make them MUCH faster to place. After all, that way you can check two of those minimum spacing requirements at the same time instead of checking one then the other before making adjustments which then require two more checks.

Trying set up a "triangle of doom?" Using two sticks would make that go so much faster when you're trying to place that third asteroid on the point.

The imperfect placement and movement of components used to bother me...then I started thinking about it and realized that it's a human based system. Hands shake, surfaces can be slick, and accidents happen.

The imperfect placement and movement of components used to bother me...then I started thinking about it and realized that it's a human based system. Hands shake, surfaces can be slick, and accidents happen.

Yeah, seen some the paper / felt tables and there's a good amount of non purpose movement. I myself would add thin weight on bottom, but thats me.

The imperfect placement and movement of components used to bother me...then I started thinking about it and realized that it's a human based system. Hands shake, surfaces can be slick, and accidents happen.

All non-grid miniature games suffer from this, X-wing at least has specific movement templates as opposed to just measuring in inches for movement. This eliminates a lot of the possible issues with fudging movement that you get in other games.

For gamers coming from other wargames, any form of unapproved measuring is outright cheating. For example, if you have too much measuring tape out, or you're using a ruler, it's expected that you leave the extra behind your model. If I'm moving 4" but my ruler measures 12", and I happen to put the full 12" ahead of my model, that's cheating.

Not in any war game I've ever played or seen played. About 10 years of 40k.

Really? That's odd. I learned that particular rule in Warhammer Fantasy, and you should have seen the flame wars over on the Warmachine forums when PP decided to allow unlimited measuring from your warcaster. GW games were always the most restrictive on measuring, and some of the last to convert to allow premeasuring.

I won't guarantee that your experience is necessarily the minority, but here's at least one nice big citation for "It's cheating":

I won't guarantee that it's in the majority either, but it does seem ridiculously retentive to me. It should be noted that the BoLS article generated, shall we say, a lot of discussion on the topic. I suspect it is more how exactly you are using it. If you have an extra 3-4 inches of measurement and are clearly moving things quickly and not looking past your move distance it would be fine, if you have 24" of tape measure out and are spending 2 minutes moving each guy, which just happens to be directly in line with a likely target, then yeah problem. Basically, yeah, premeasuring improves most war games (but not, I think, x-wing).

Not sure if this has been awnsered or not. But as far as i can tell post 6 ED 40k u can premesure when ever and what ever u want.. Premesure shots, move, psychic powers, everything. But hey this isnt 40K.

Here is a FFG article written by X-Wing champion Paul Heaver discussing systematic asteroid placement: http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4709 In this article there are diagrams that show asteroid placement strategies that go beyond determining range 1 to another asteroid. It also references placing asteroids at range 3-4 of an edge. While none of these examples discuss using the range ruler, isn't it implied?

Click link then read.

Debate is over.

Saying it is OK though implies doing it deliberately, which the rules text you quoted explicitly says it isn't. What it does say is that bumping things accidentally is unavoidable and players should chill about it.

I thought it was clear I was talking about accidentally bumping ships..

We are all talking on a forum where we routinely talk about tournament rules. I assumed since that was the case people would know I was talking about it being OK to accidentally bump the pieces (as per the rule book 90% of the people here have read).

Kinda shocked people actually thought I was talking about purposely bumping pieces..

Evil Sith Lord, The range Ruler is in fact a way to premeasure during the Attack and activation phases. Knowing how far movement templates line up on the range ruler will in fact tell you how far straights will go. Using the lines from firing arches will tell you where hard turns will go and the line between the nubs will show where banks will go.

So by the rules I'm not measuring with movement templates but there are so many ways to measure your expected flight path!