If I understand it right, when having the option to pre-measure movement, intent just saves time. So why do they need to rule it? And it's not as if playing by intent is the same for all players, because in the end one can discuss limit situations as far as he wants, and this does not change in either case.
If I recall they said it'd be made in a few months. I always assumed non-intent was the way CB envisioned but not particularly strict but then the overwhelming support of intent play (especially in the US) made them reconsider. It always seemed like we were playing a different game than the company so I don't think that this issue would be much different.
I mean.... we have video Batreps with Bostria using PBI... soooo Also German here, everyone I know uses PBI. We had a forum vote, the majority of players on here use PBI. Pardon me if I'm gonna have to second guess you on your claim the US has anything to do with it.
Quite the contrary. Long before being a complex concept, pie slicing and players’ interactions will crop up naturally once you play a few games. You’d really expect your intro game to be quite clear on player communication and generally what can be expected from your opponent. And on the other hand, if you expect any sort of differences in that regard between C1 and N4, you’d really want that to be extra clear. It’s much easier to adapt to a new body of rules than to a new way of playing. Take a look at Magic’s different levels of competitive regulations: they are well written, they are clear, and still people find it difficult to move up a level. As was said before, we have been expecting CB to do some work on this. Personally, I’d say if it’s not in C1, that’s a very bad sign.
I would also wager CB would probably lean more towards the inclusive PBI rather than the alternative if they were to make a statement. It feels like with Code 1 they're trying to move away from the image that Infinity is exclusively for sweats.
This is really the big issue and why we have so much anger that it makes us want to grab the other side and shake them. It's also kind of funny how much they are alike. They are basically arguing for the same thing. Intent argues that it is possible but because of the time needed to pull it off and the obscene difficulty of proving you pulled it off that it is best if we just agree I pulled it off. The other side argues that yes it is possible but because of the time needed to pull it off and the obscene difficulty of proving you pulled it off that it is much more likely you would fail to successfully do it, so lets just assume you can't do it. I much prefer Intent for many reasons but one of the biggest (speed is the biggest) is that it solves the murky middle ground issue. There exists an example between those two posted that will have one side convinced it's easy and the other convinced it's to hard. With intent the answer is clear, without intent you have to have a friendly disagreement or call a judge who could come down on anyone's side because what he is measuring is a subjective difficulty.
For what it's worth, I've actually been enjoying games without intent play at all a lot more and that's a bit of a shift for me. I find it annoying when my opponent asks to go so that the only unit they can see is "that one" when it's really tight or when my opponent asks for what units have LOF if they were to go to "that" specific spot along "this" route (which may include several different orders) It feels like what those games become about is who able to most systematically make use of their opponent's awareness of instead of executing strategies of their own. It's all very... pre-measuring... and it changes the game a lot. I would actually prefer to play a game where LOF is checked after order declaration instead of prior and during.
The way I've seen no intent done was rather "stop asking me if the model can be seen in this position; place it as a final declaration and then we check". It's fishing for gotchas, a way more competitive approach, asking the opponent to risk making a mistake instead of playing it safe and assuming "since I feasibly can place the model on the corner in such a position it is seen by only one of your models, let's just agree I did for the sake of ease and expediency".
Agreed here. And before anyone says otherwise, I am an intent player. I feel like it's best just to consider the table an abstraction of the actual game state. I occasionally specify lines of sight for models in my DZ. "My intent of this placement is to see this corner, but not any further." If we get further in the game, and it turns out my model is a millimetre too far, should I be penalized because someone bumped the table or we have crappy cardstock buildings that don't stay in place? I think intent is designed to solve that problem. Because Infinity relies on much more precise placement than other minis games, intent reduces how much optimal play slows down the game. It might do more than you think over time. Major tournaments and satellites might opt to switch to it immediately, and groups close to those areas would follow suit over time -- after all, why practice for a tournament in conditions very different than the tournament will be played in? I also think you are underestimating how much of a clarification would be needed. If intent was to be codified, there are a ton of rules that would need to come with it, to specify where and when intent can be declared, as well as to what extent intent can be declared. It's a rules nightmare.
Play by intent does provide a fair degree of accessibility since it removes the need to physically move a small piece of pewter with millimeter precision and maintain full 360 awareness of lines of sight on often vertically complicated terrain layouts in cramped, busy stores. That said, I can see the other side's arguments hold a lot of water too; I've been involved in LoF disputes lasting 15 minutes. Code One seems to be cracking down on this element of the game a little by simplifying Partial Cover, but still leaves a lot open. Since it's really hard to create a situation where you can't slice the pie without including models stacked vertically at diferent elevations, it's probably just easiest to say that you can pick your targets whenever they aren't aligned vertically, and can't if they are. Would save a lot of arguments, fit with the Code One simplifed rules, and not playing by intent just leads to 15 minutes of careful nudging instead.
I don't mind playing by intent, most of my games are like that because there are more people that play like that, even if I think it shouldn't be done, or is not suported by rules for tournaments (in a friendly game with unlimited time is a completelly different topic). There are arguments in favour and against intent in tournaments. Most of them are time related, but not only that. Against intent thought, I think there are stronger ones: A. Intent gives the active player a bit of advantage, making reactive players good possitioning mostly irrelevant. Is of no use to put several aro pieces to support themselves, because "intent" can, without any player skill, force them aro one by one. There are only a few situations where that might be almost impossible, but there will be allways a way to. This has created the need of stronger aro pieces, because at the moment, is almost imposible to get support if there is not hidden ones. B. Intent "saving time" is just a kind of fallacy. It makes moving to the "perfect" possition faster, that's right, but the time is on the player. If they have a time limit, and the player respects it and is limited only to their own time, what intent saves his is failure chances, not "time". Again, it just gives him a safer active turn. He can move faster without intent, just has to assume possible misses, but they don't want and will look for excuses, and this is the real reason, not "time". C. Intent can create problems if the miniature is not correctly placed and players only "trust" intent. I have seen several games where a heavy killer dude goes, moves with intent, kills an aro without the second dude seeing him, and then the next turn, magically, he can aro the second one because how he was possitioned. That is obviously cheating, and you have to remind them "dude, you put it to not be seen by this dude, remember?" , but if you don't remember their "intent", you get cheated. Yes, sometimes you can forget, specially when you use a lot of intent, so the enemy might forget too, so finding if it was on purpose or not, if it was cheating or not might be imposible. But in my opinion, if you think you cannot remember that, you should not use it in the first place.
I think the important thing to remember when playing with or against intent is to always make sure that the moving miniature that used intent finishes with a small cordon sanitaire (so to speak) to potential AROs they were avoiding. Positioning a miniature for future intent ("I will place my miniature here so that when you round the corner both of my two miniatures will be perfectly aligned to get a double-ARO on you") is toxic in my opinion and should be avoided - with small allowances for when something gets nudged, of course.
This isn't really an advantage though. Mathematically speaking, the pie slice is always possible with one exception (two pieces vertically aligned, and in that case, it works only on a single straight line), so intent just provides a faster way to play in a position that is logically equivalent to that without needing to take the time to make the placement 100% perfect. The "player skill" required here also isn't particularly high. I don't play a miniatures game to test my ability to perfectly place a certain model -- Infinity isn't a dexterity game. All it does is penalize people with certain types of disabilities. And there are still situations in which positioning multiple pieces to ARO is ideal. Pinning a prone linked piece on a rooftop, for example. When I say faster, I mean that intent speeds up how quickly an optimal position can be found. For example, in the above case, allowing people to move by intent means they don't waste your time and their time finding the perfect pie slice -- you just both accept that since it's mathematically possible, you do your best job within reason to put the mini there, and play from that position. This isn't an intent play problem. Playing without intent probably makes this worse tbh -- minis get bumped, terrain gets shifted. Could you expound a bit? I don't think there's anything wrong with saying "the intent of this deployment is to see as far as that corner but no further" during your deployment phase, as long as its clear what you mean before there is any controversy. It's no different than making the same declaration during a move order, in my opinion.
"I will see this corner and not that corner" "These two troopers are positioned so that they will be aligned with that corner" "Those two corners I can see only when you round them" "I'm setting this up with the intent to prevent you from slicing using intent on that corner" "When your trooper on that roof stands up my intent is to be able to see and shoot it from this position" "Twisting my trooper so that all three corners are in LOF" Any of which may be completely impossible to manage because they are entirely hypothetical and creates a huge amount of over-head and bookkeeping, not to mention that some of them involves intent-slicing the intent-slicing. There is, of course, a vast difference between that and just setting up a single trooper whose most natural LOF will be to a single corner where the enemy is most likely to move through and then accidentally setting it up too far forward or leaving one of the passive Fireteam members facing completely weirdly - but those situations are usually obvious to the opponent without having to write them down like "Um, your Line Kazak seems to be facing so that he can't see anyone at all, isn't he meant to be guarding the other dudes' back?" or "Did you forget about the Ninja in Marker state that made it to your DZ last turn? All of your troopers are facing away from it"
The player skill required to do intent is none, zero. But to get the same results in a short time is another topic. Yes, matematically it is possible, but in a time-limit game, getting it fast is not so possible most of the times because is a 1 mm difference, or even less in some long range distances: mistakes can make that those 1-2 mm difference create a second aro, which makes dual deploying relevant again. Getting 2 models copletelly vertically alligned is almost imposible in most of the tables out there, and when that could be, that would be only true for 1 angle. that's the fallacy. The objective is to reduce time? ok, but what you are reducing are mistakes instead. It is not making game faster. An example of doing game faster is throwing dices at once instead of one by one, you change nothing of the outcome of it, just makes it faster (in this case, in a mechanically way). But intent is not necesarily faster (the fastest games I've seen have been allways non-intent) while it does change the outcome. That good/perfect positioning is something that could be aquired with time, I am ok with that, but in a tournament there is a time limit, so instead of bending options and reducing mistakes, people just have to play faster. Intent changes the outome, so is not only playing faster. No, intent just adds extra problems to those allready there. And it is an intent problem because that cannot be done as easilly without intent: I am talking about an active intention from a player to use that "pie slicing" to get an aro against a miniature that shouldn't, just because the position was not looked on, just "assumed" the previous intent, and forgoten
The bizarre thing here is that a lot of games which allow premeasuring as a matter of course specify that specifying intent is encouraged. Especially when models overhang their bases or the physics of the terrain impede proper model placement. “I’m placing this model six inches from that model” shouldn’t be controversial when you can premeasure. Neither is “I’m placing this model where it can see those models”, if it’s geometrically possible. I still think half the issues with pie slicing are due to trying to invoke reflexive line of sight off of infinitesimal slivers instead of requiring line of sight to be from a 3x3 block to a 3x3 block in either direction. (I can’t think of a line of fire diagram in the rulebook that draws line of fire from a point to a square, I think they’re all drawn symmetrically thick.) They really should have put that in the specification when they got rid of the centerline requirement.
It looks like you didn't read my comment at all. (Also, "fallacy" is spelled with an 'f', just so you know.) Since it appears you didn't read at all, I'm going to reproduce the relevant parts of my comment for you, and provide analysis of the point for you. When I say faster, I mean that intent speeds up how quickly an optimal position can be found. The point is not to decrease time, per se, but to speed up the amount of time in each game that is spent making decisions, and minimize the amount of time it takes to resolve those decisions. I would rather spend 2 hours playing a game that is 75% making decisions and 25% bookkeeping / resolving those decisions compared to a game where I spend 25% of the game making decisions and 75% bookkeeping / resolving those decisions -- wouldn't you? Intent allows players to quickly resolve the outcome of decisions, which in turn means they spend more time being able to focus on making those decisions. Intent increases the quality of decisions by allowing players to spend more time making them. The fact that the faster games you see are non-intent could just as easily be argued to show that non-intent play makes players more comfortable with sloppier decisions. This brings up the other line of argument you are making: Is Infinity a dexterity game? Player skill expands far beyond being able to place a model. So again, intent speeds up the time it takes for players to play from ideal positions. I would rather play in games that take the same amount of time but allow more time for decision-making. Infinity games, by default, are not timed. Timing is a necessity of the situation that tournaments are run in. With respect to positioning, the outcome of non-intent play, given enough time, will be exactly the same as intent play. And no one wants to play a game where the most ideal way to play is also the most cumbersome. The argument about how much time it takes is a fallacy because time limits are a limitation of the settings of tournaments, not a part of Infinity's design or ITS rules. And if you want to change an aspect of the game that is arguably one of the main rules in order to avoid problems with a peripheral element (not even in the rules!) added to tournaments strictly because of necessity, you should reconsider which of those you think is more important. Why add unnecessary dexterity elements to the game? If I wanted to play Tokyo Highway or Jenga, I would go play those instead.
yes, I read it (that argument is nasty, really), I just don't agree with it and explain why. Making a game faster shouldn't change the outcome, if it does, it is affecting something else too, and the same results can be achieved without using intent if the player is good enough to, so that's why I say its a fallacy (i've seen it written as fallacy, but thanks for the correction). you are telling that exactly. You are reducing the time to minimize bad decisions. The objective then is not reducing time itsself, but reducing the bad decisions. Then intent is not a time-reducing tool, but an error one. it is not a dexterity skill, is more relate to space and view, but also to assuming benefits loses view. If you know that "if I move here, I might be seen by 1, but maybe by 2 dudes", you have to evaluate the possibility of failing ant trying to get only 1 aro. I've done it (I am not a good player, so is not usual for me to get the better possitioning), so if I could do it some times, a better player should be able to do it more times. With intent, I can do it all the time I want, so that timing, positioning, evaluanting skill vanishes. There remain other skills, but with intent, one is completelly out of the game. And yes, infinity is not timed by default, that's why I say that is a tournament related thing (don't accuse of not reading if you don't do it yourself). So it is not adding unnecesary dexterity (not all skills are dexterity related, so why bring this?), is to not give undeserved benefits to the active player.
Howso? Telling what exactly? The reality is that PBI does do both of the things you describe, but the argument you are making skips a step. Who are you to judge what the objective of my, or anyone else's, intent play is? I play by intent because it gives me more time to make decisions. The consequence of that is that my decisions are better. But you confuse a direct effect with the consequences of that effect. Are you arguing that time limits, a limitation imposed by specific conditions of play that are not part of the game's rules, are more important than intent, which is fundamental to the game for almost all players? It is absolutely a dexterity skill. "Dexterity" means that more skillful physical abilities (in this case, being able to eye and place a model in a desired position) are rewarded. What is your grounds for saying it is not? I cannot understand what you mean by this. Your original comment was "The player skill required to do intent is none, zero." which is completely false. The dexterity elements you are describing are not in the rules of the game, and there are a variety of other skills required by players to play the game. I just want to nip this in the bud right here. I don't think this is a line of reasoning you're going to want to pursue. It seems to me like a result of the language barrier between us, and since I'm a native English speaker, frankly speaking it's much more likely that it's due to your lack of ability to express yourself clearly in English than my failure to read. The last sentence of your comment, for example, is almost completely incomprehensible.
We've been having a good conversation so far, but I think we might be spiraling. Let's try to de-escalate the arguments a bit, okay? P.s. Phallacy is a mispelled "fallacy" if going by the dictionary, but there are those who define it as being a word for "phallic fallacy" - a redirection of sexual frustration to the purchase of items. Just thought that definition was hilariously appropriate in the context of purchasing large amounts of tin soldiers, terrain, paints and then arguing about it on international forums
