"Having read your article, I wish to present my counter-argument. I'll begin with a simple question:
When measuring movement, when do you start measuring how far a model has moved? Before you touch it, or after?
Pretty much everyone would agree you measure before you start touching models. Except in your example, the tank gets touched (pivoted) and then you start measuring how far it has moved. And that, in my opinion, is where the problems begin.
p.57 "Pivoting on the spot alone does not count as moving so a vehicle that only pivots in the Movement phase counts as stationary."
"...that only pivots..." Is the critical part of that sentence for this debate. If you pivot, then continue to move - that isn't "only pivots", viewed from the RAW standpoint. That is pivoting and moving, which is covered by other text. But your movement of that model consists of BOTH the pivot AND the move. Which means you should measure from the original position of the tank, rather than after you've already started to move the tank.
Otherwise, you are moving the tank by pivoting it - and then moving it again by going forwards. The problem with that is the only time the original pivot doesn't count as movement is when that is the ONLY movement (pivot) you perform.
This problem does not occur in regular models because they're round, so any point you move it to is always easily measured. Since I've not used the newer oval bases much - I'm not sure what problems/issues they bring to the table, so people with Trygons could chime in. Do people let you get away with turning your Trygon, then measuring the movement from the newly rotated forward point? That would gain a couple inches of charge range out of it, so it would definately be worth it.
This entire debate would be solved if Games Workshop had movement for tanks measured from the centre point of the tank, but unfortunately they decided to measure from the hull.
-Mark Duffield"
Mark I agree with your grammatical assessment 100% (and your further statement that if Games Workshop were smart we wouldn't be having this debate). Whilst I agree the syntax of the quote in question supports what you are trying to say but I feel Games Workshop has rarely paid attention to this novel concept (grammar). Whilst I feel you are correct in terms of what the sentence is trying to say I think there are two things that indicate against this.
- pivoting stops assaults. This doesn't make any sense in relation to pivoting does not count as movement in either argument. We know Games Workshop is capable of complete rule failures and contradictions but it is something to note.
- We're still measuring from the hull. This means it's going to be difficult to keep track of movement. Sure if your vehicle is side-on just measure 12" from the hull and that's the end-point of movement, in whatever facing but this becomes needlessly complex as individuals need to ensure their tanks can pivot appropriately and make that 12" marker. What if they cannot pivot jolly on the spot and move the 12"? We then have a lot of little measurements to make to ensure we aren't gaining a small advantage from our pivots.
Again, it wouldn't surprise me if Games Workshop has intended it to be like point 2 and we need to make all those little measurements but with the advent of 5th being 'simple', I would be surprised. In the end the 'simple' solution under the current ruleset is to allow free pivoting whether you moved or not to stop all these silly measurements and the simple solution for the future is to simply measure vehicles from their centre. Free pivot away! As it stands though, you're still always moving the vehicle a set distance no matter how often you pivot. Part of your vehicle may end up moving greater than the vehicle can actually move, but this would be the same if you measure from the centre of the vehicle as well; not all vehicles are square.
Now to rotating vehicles legally. Here's another e-mail:
"Hey Kirby,
just read your explanation of why rotating the vehicle gets extra distance for longer models and was glad to see this explained to those who didn't understand.
Can I request you take this one step further and explain why putting Rhinos/Chimeras side-by-side locks up their ability to turn and that should never just slide vehicles sideways because "they can move that far."
Jason A Bentley
"Mycroft""
Sure can. I see this a lot as well *looks at Vince* but vehicles cannot move over each other and have to pivot to face the direction they want to go. This means if you are up against the board edge or another vehicle you cannot just pivot and move. Rather you have to move and then pivot and if you setup poorly, you can end up screwing your movement over. Let's take some look at pictorial examples.
Here we can see a setup of three Chimeras (no I don't know why you'd expose your side armor so). Notice the gaps between the Chimeras? This allows the central Chimera to rotate any which way and move forward. Let's look at the next picture.
Here we can see the Chimera at it's widest (whilst pivoting) isn't overlapping any of the other Chimeras. This means it's pretty to pivot jolly on the spot and...
move! This is pivoting done correctly.
Now we see a much more common setup, everything is jammed together with little space. This means the central Chimera cannot pivot whilst the other two Chimeras are there.
When the central Chimera tries to pivot, it overlaps the outer Chimeras making this illegal.
Therefore if you wish to move the central Chimera at all, both the out Chimeras need to move first.
This gives the central Chimera room to pivot on the spot.
And allows it to join its friends. Unfortunately when vehicles start getting stunned/immobilised, this is harder to do. If both of the outer Chimeras had been unable to move, the central Chimera was stuck whilst if only one had been unable to move, the central Chimera would have had to inch forward or backwards before it could pivot. This makes leaving gaps between your vehicles very important if going 2nd or setting up your tanks so they are capable of moving around each other if one or another vehicle is unable to move.
Don't pivot illegally!
