What happens if an impetuous unit has two paths (say, around the left and right sides of a building) that lead it to the enemy unit it's moving to? If it takes them the same amount of orders to reach the target either way, are they allowed to choose?
So I guess it could be interpreted as "Path that follows the shortest amount of orders, and in the case of the set of paths that use the shortest amount of orders, total distance of path traveled as a tiebreaker"?
Reasonable but flawed in the fact that it's only a stipulation for one order, but you'd have to plan out several more, burning time as you go... The simplest thing is to take the route that puts you closest to the enemy at the end of the impetuous order, if there are multiple options that all put you equally close, just choose one.
We can split hypothetical hairs infinitely down until there's always going to be two paths that are precisely the same in Orders/Distance traveled. At some point you just have to look at your opponent and say "I think this is the closest trooper and I would have to go this way, does that look right to you?" As far as a rule of thumb goes for figuring it out quickly, it is a reasonable statement to go by order count first, and if a tie check a quick measurement of distance traveled.
There's actually almost always going to be an infinite number of paths that use the shortest possible amount of orders. So you either need a tiebreaker or to let players choose between them.
I'm more or less agreeing. I think a lot of people take a... generous interpretation of what impetuous orders allow them to do, which tends to make them pretty powerful.
The restrictions on impetuous orders, when exploited properly by an opponent are already heavily punishing, but it should be up to the opponent to bait impetuous troops into a kill box rather than standing near to them and having them jump off a roof... That said there are a lot of situations where an impetuous order is basically doing exactly what you want the trooper to do, because people don't want to spend the orders setting up a trap for a 6 point chain rifle goon...
Making someone adjust their deployment because of concerns about a model that costs 13 points or less can definitely be worth it, yeah.
@cazboab impetuous troops definitely have to jump off roofs in some circumstances. If you deploy them poorly, they can just get themselves killed.
Exactly what I meant. If you deployed the impetuous trooper badly: splat. That's very simply to avoid by staying away from the edge, or just not going up high at all if you want to interpret the line on using jump or climb to shorten the route at it's most suicidal extreme (I kind of want to the more I think about it, but I can't see that being a unanimous opinion...) If your opponent sets up a crossfire :you can either roll the dice and send your guy into a trap, or you can cancel the order. It's about as easy as it is for the opponent to set up as it is to avoid, and remember impetuous troopers *never* get cover, even if they cancelled the order, so even without jumping from the highest level of the table there's a pretty good balance between the utility and the disadvantages.
And the "simplest thing" fails the moment you have a dead end or jog on the table (or a lot of situations with building interiors), so that the impetuous figure gets to just run back and forth forever without ever getting closer to the enemy. Because on real tables, the shortest path is very often goes AWAY from the closest enemy. For normative reference: http://infinitytheforums.com/forum/topic/41310-impetuous-ties/
Closest as the crow flies is the easiest to determine, yet its irrelevant, and wasn't what any of us here meant(at least I don't think anyone did), Closest by route and Closest by orders are mostly the same except in minutiae that I'd argue wouldn't ever really matter, since you'd never actually get to them due to only ever having to move that way for one order... Honestly @macfergusson 's suggestion of "does this look right?" is probably how its played most of the time anyway, and most of the time it'll be near-as-dammit correct...
This topic seems to come back more often than a Krakot Renegade with Regeneration! I agree. Or we could go a bit further and say that a lot of people want warbands whose cheap cost and extra Orders have no down-side! However, I think in fairness that the rules aren't as simple to apply in practice as they are to understand in theory. Sure, sometimes it's as simple as a running your dude or warband across at a single troop, but others can involve testing multiple move branches that are themselves branching. That adds up to less fun, and so I wouldn't be surprised if CB (eyeing X-Wing Fighter's simpler rules and massive market share) don't try to rework it in future editions. All of which musing brings me to point out that the answer to this particular thread might be answered well enough for most by @Cervantes3773 in the first few posts of this thread: “I'd still err towards the closest enemy (among those that tie for fewest orders). If those two are PRECISELY 3" away, then I'd have the controlling player choose between the two”
Impetuous models must go towards the model that is reachable with the fewest amount of orders, if you have a visible model in-front of it on the top floor a 5 storey building and a model that is further away but reachable in 4 orders, it will go to the 4 orders one. If there are two models that are reachable with 4 orders the closest is the one that is reachable with the shortest distance travelled.
