Curious what people's opinion of this is, (and maybe this should be in the battle reports subforum) but just got back from a regional tournament where the eventual winner piloted his TIEs by, fairly often, premeasuring manuevers with his finger. Apparently he had messed around with the manuever templates enough to know how far it was from this knuckle to that one or w/e and would hold his finger out over the ships in a "bank turn" angle or w/e. He was a good player, but this just seemed to go over the line to me while watching a game he was playing. Does it really have to be put in the floor rules that you can't pre measure manuevers with ANY means? Do you see people use non template means of planning manuevers who think this is legit? I'm really surprised that people there didn't find this more offensive, and if the kid does travel allllllll the way up to GenCon, I wonder if he's in for a rude awakening when he tries this.

Well the rule book does say:

During the Planning phase, players cannot use maneuver templates in order to “test” where ships will end up. Instead, they must plan their maneuvers by estimating their ships’ movement in their heads.

I would argue that using ANY type of physical estimator is no longer estimating the movement in their head. I think the spirit of the rule would be to not use anything but your own eyes and spacial recognition in your own head. Using fingers, or a pencil, or anything, to me, would violate this section of the rulebook.

rowdyoctopus said:

Yeah, exactly my thoughts. This guy was EXTREMELY literral with anything fro mthe floor rules etc, so it's not even like he was just kind of learning to do this on his own at his kitchen table and not really thinking about the rule you know? It's like he was implying "well its not a MANUEVER TEMPLATE" , because again, he was EXTREMELY anal about everything else (which as long as you are following the floor rules or w/e I'm ok with). It seems blatanly obvious to me that the spirit of the rule is the important part, especially since the base rulebook is written in a much more casual tone (empire wins initiative and only play rebels vs empire? obstacles optional? lol). So it's basically something that unlike some of these examples wasn't thought to be in the earlier drafts of the tournament rules, and hopefully it will be at some point in the near future :/

I personally think that's cheating. I would have had a tournament official come make a ruling on it for sure. " estimating their ships’ movement in their heads" pretty much says it all if you ask me. No fingers allowed!

bobbywhiskey said:

The kid was cheating. Someone should have pulled him up on it. No other way to look at it.

hes gaining an unfair advantage. someone should have called the judge over, if they didnt then hes getting away with it.

From Page 1 of the tournament rules:

He was clearly cheating, and should have been called out for it.

bobbywhiskey said:

Why did not a single player call a judge over? I almost can't believe this.

He wasn't technically cheating, but what he was doing is definitely unsporting and against the spirit of the rules. A judge should have been notified and he should have been warned not to repeat the behavior.

paradox23 said:

I'm sorry but it IS a form of cheating if you measure distances with your limbs - for this is as good as to use the maneuver templates if you are trained. As an official I would have throw this guy out.

godofcheese said:

The guy was cheating, the max we allow when playing is to look at the template lying beside the gaming table and look at your ships and obstacles, but not touching anything…

But what does the part about "abusing an infinite combo" mean?

So what is meant by that. Can't you use the same tactics all over, or spam list? I don't get it!

Rince said:

I'm enjoying this topic. It providing a good view of how players are interpreting the rules. I'm usually an agreeable player, and probably in a casual game, would've thought nothing of it. However, in the case given, I probably would've either talked to the player about it, and then after, called over a judge to get an verdict. To me, this falls in somewhat of a grey category for me. The individual might argue the part about that he's not "pre-measuring, because he's not using the templates", while I might argue the part about "estimating the ships movement solely in their head"

So I guess this brings to the question "what is considered pre-measuring?" and what is considered "estimating their ships movement in their heads?"

I've played players who have as mentioned before, looked at the manuver template on the table, then back at the ship, then try to estimate that way. Sometimes it works, sometimes it ends horribly for them. In theory, they're using the tool, though not picking it up, to get the measurement of where their ships are gonna be.

Lemme push it a little further. I've had players who pick up the template their looking at and think estimate with their heads where the ship goes. The template goes nowhere near the model to measure, but it does provide the mind a guide to where he might place his ships.

This isn't breaking the "Spirit" of the rules at all… It is plain cheating. He is just pre-measuring with a different medium than the game templates. With a little practice you can be accurate within several millimeters. Using his logic you should be able to place strips of paper, a cellphone, a comb or any other non-measuring tool that could be "substituted" for a template. Cutting out white paper duplicates of templates and using them would be fine too as they aren't "technically" FFG templates… You can see his line of logic has a pretty slippery slope.

I'm also very surprised that no one else called him out on this, and can't imagine many other TOs allowing it. Out of curiosity were gamers scoring each other for sportsmanship? If noticed that when this happens competent players often willingly overlook their opponents questionable or even obvious wrong rule interpretations to avoid receiving a low sportsmanship score from the cheater.

ForceM said:

While infinite combos are unlikely in a tabletop game, several have been accidentally created by the geniuses as WoTC for M:TG, and the possibility remains that the same will happen for other CCG's (and while unliekly, any game that uses card combos), they put this rule in as a stop gap incase one is ever created.

Delta Echo said:

No, players were not scoring each other. I did not play against this player, and only heard about it after the fact from someone who played him in the last round. I was very VERY surprised someone did not say something. I'm pretty sure I did hear one mention of it besides that one (meaning it wasn't just that one game) but i could be wrong. I seriously doubt that he would only do it in one game if he did have it down to an exact science. Even so, it was the game that essentially acted as the "finals" since it was the last swiss round and they were the only two undefeated players.