thoughts on Play by intent

I strongly suggest playing movement by the book - we also played it wrong in Poland in most places, until we made a conscious decision as a community to fix that.

It changes the game drastically. For the better.

 

The movement rule helps tremendously with ARO declaration and range measuring, it also helps in the rare occasions were the second short skill needs to change on the fly.

 

Well you are not alone in thinking it is better and I am trying not to sound rude here but could you explain how it makes the game better?
Do you guys just play super laidback and not sweat pie slicing or something?
Can you give me an example of what makes this better play?

 

Using the declare your movement path and location prior to a tape measure coming out.

Not being lax just following the actual movement rules in the book.

 

Ok I was hoping for a more in-depth example. Also that looks like intent to me still

 

Well, I think the comparison is to people who get out their tape measure and move a model up using that (as usually seen on youtube videos of play), which is wrong... but also seems to be popular here because it's faster. As for why playing it by the rules would be better (aside from playing by the rules) - well, paths tend to change, even slightly, when that ruler hits the table playing the former way, and once they do, you have essentially pre-measured to make a particular movement possible (say, for example: heading diagonally towards a wall and then moving along that wall to a box on the corner to stay in partial cover. You may find that once you put your ruler down that the only way to make it to the box is to head straight for it and be in the open for part of that move. Since the player, generally, doesn't voice their intent with this style of play, they are able to then decide if they want to head straight for the box and take a shot, or hug the wall and wait for another order.)

I think this is the kind of thing @psychoticstorm is talking about with intent as written in the rules. That is, you must show your intended path and end-point prior to getting your tape measure out.

The debate, as I see it, with the pie-slicing side of this is that while pre-measuring is not allowed, the LoF of every position on the table is open information. When you add in funky model poses, actually placing a model where you actually intended it to be can be impossible. Therefore, to speed up play, but also "play by the rules" as it were, play-by-intent simply seems to assume that since that place exists, you will place your model as close to that position as possible and agree that the pie can be sliced.

Here is how I see that style of play being played out on the table: Random troop with protruding weapons spends an order, first skill move. The active player gets out a silly marker for the troop in question and places it near the corner. Then both players take turns micro adjusting the silly marker until it is in a place where they can both agree that only one ARO will result (this shouldn't really take to long). The active player states they want to move their model to that position defining a path to that position (assume that the position in question is within the troops MOV value), but due to Protruding Elements can't actually stop there. Therefore, the active player simply places their model as close to that position as possible.

 

Yeah, to an extent I do think that's a large part of it. I think a lot of us (including myself and my regular opponents) play far too slowly, and get far too concerned about the lifespan of individual models.

I mean, the game belongs to a bunch of Spaniards who's idea of weekend fun is dressing up in real suits of armour and whacking each other with heavy steel swords - their idea of a tabletop war game isn't particularly safe either!

(We used to say 'Infinity - it's not your army; it's you', but I kinda think it should be 'Infinity: everything's going to die'.)

There's always a lot of argument that the regular game is slow, and that 'play by intent' speeds it up, but that's only true if we feel we have to do a lot of checking to avoid things like multiple AROs in the regular game. Maybe we could be playing faster and looser?

The top players in Spain last year didn't just impress me with how good their strategy and tactics were, but also because of how quickly they made their decisions and played their moves out; and in particular, how little they worried themselves about tight situations in that important event.

I didn't see people playing slowly or walking around the table to better eyeball positions particularly - sure, they sometimes asked for their opponent's opinion on positions, but mostly they just played their tactics, took one good look and trusted their judgement. I might wish to be that good myself.

 

How little they worried about tight situations?
How quickly they made there decisions?
You did not see people walking around the table to eyeball positions?
Hehe
So you know what this sounds like right?

I guess there are only three possibilities here.
1)Pie slicing almost never came up.
2) Those players are taking unintended and avoidable ARO's... aka sloppy play?.
3) Those players have a simple unspoken gentlemen's agreement that the active player knows what he is doing and they don't feel the need to waste a lot of time verifying.

 

I think that's common because most (nearly all?) other wargames allow you to do that. It's really common here in Stockholm because nearly everyone learned Wargames either through Warhammer or Warmachine so you whip out your measuring stick, angle it around, and put the model down when satisfied. It's sloppy and distracts a lot from checking LOF, but it's fast because it reduces the amount of talking, bookkeeping and helps alleviate some of the decision paralysis that I've found to be a bit more common in Infinity than any other game I know of.

 

4) They're experienced enough to be able to judge the situation on the table without investing too much into over-analysing it.

Btw, I find it laughable that you're calling the most-by-the-book way to play "sloppy-play". Mistakes are part of the game. Don't be afraid of them, learn from them.

 

Thought you said it wasnt clear.....

But seriously no

 

See I thought about that already. If there was hardly ever a close call then it would fall into the #1 category.
Otherwise if they are just quickly eyeballing it and not even bothering to check the other table sides view and never disagreeing... that is going to be intent play, they might not call it that...but it is.

Well if you take an unwanted ARO because you moved carelessly and did not bother really checking that LoF before you moved... Yah

slop·py [ˈsläpē]
ADJECTIVE 1.careless and unsystematic; excessively casual:

As for not being afraid of learning from them... what exactly is the lesion if you make a mistake by being sloppy?

 

I do not think this conversation can go anywhere nice.

 

I don't know, I think it has been pretty enlightening. For example I thought this was a pedantic rules issue at first but now I think it is more of a philosophical opposition to the idea as opposed to actual play.
There are still some sacred cows in need of being slaughtered and that is always going to be provocative, My use of the word sloppy for example no doubt ruffled a feather or two but it was done with purpose.
The use of the word sloppy forces something of a logic chain of thought.
1: A good player is not going to be sloppy.
2: Taking unwanted ARO's because you did not take the time to check LoF correctly is sloppy.
3: So it stands logically that a good player will not take unwanted ARO's because he/she did not bother checking LoF.

Now the pro intent crowd argues that precisely checking line of fire is a waste of time because you have to check different perspectives and angles , you might as well just agree and speed things up because the outcome is going to be the same anyway.

Wolf addressed this criticism by claiming that good players where playing without wasting time checking those angles or perspectives.
This however creates something of a logic paradox. Alkasyn attempts to solve this paradox by suggesting that maybe everyone is just really good at measuring Lof, so good in fact that they don't need to verify Lof by checking other perspectives or tablesides.
I however argue that with how important perspective is that if they are not checking multiple sides of the table on close calls then they are most likely just taking each others word for it.

Player 1) I am going to move myself along the wall so I can see the first guy but not the second.
Player 2) I believe you are correct in your movement and I have no desire to time trying to super verify so I am just going to take your word for it and announce ARO's.

 

"Player 1) I am going to move myself along the wall so I can see the first guy but not the second.
Player 2) I believe you are correct in your movement and I have no desire to time trying to super verify so I am just going to take your word for it and announce ARO's."

Spot bloody on!

 

It hasn't since page 3, AFAIK.

 

I would usually intervene here with "If that was your intent you've moved too far. Scooch your dude back a bit and we're good."

 

You all know really well what I meant, it was in context of the latest conversation.

Please to not expect universal logic and do not expect people to interpret what you say they way you think they will, be specific on your definitions from the start.

And yes, really good, or prolific players can from experience and repetition eyeball the situation and speed up things tremendously, especially if they are in the same meta and have a particular play style that helps that.

 

nerds

 

Yeah the whole pure intention thing isn' very fun imo. One of my first games ever I was playing a guy who was doing his pie slicing stuff telling me that geometrically it's possible to do this so he can stick and see my guys 1 at a time. What I thought was a well covered corner turned out to be a slaughter for my guys since the active model has such an advantage. That guy really doesn't play anymore in our area and I'm fine with that. The people who play that way are definitely the minority in my area. The way we play is where the model is placed is where it's placed. We also don't take 30 minutes trying to find out the best exact geometrical spot. We know that it's a game and that people die. We will ask who has lof to that spot and try to position our best on that spot to get the least amount of aros. If it worked out for us awesome if not then we learn for next time. I look at it as the soldier exposed himself too much and paid for the mistake. We all have a great attitude about it even in tournaments.

In my experience the intention people seem very much the gamey win at all costs types who take the game too seriously and care waaay too much on if a model dies.