rogerg wrote:The serious side of this issue is that we do not want to be overburdened with clarifications to the extent that we struggle to locate what we are looking to clarify. Your contribution to tracking down the precise wording is very welcome. If I recall correctly, you have made other useful contributions of this type.
This particular item had the whiff of someone trying to pull a fast one and get an overlap where the majority of us would not have tried it on. Maybe it was a fair interpretation and my suspicions have no foundation. However, occasionally one meets players who try this sort of thing. It would be a pity to have lots of legislation to deal with it. Usually the 'common law' of the majority decision is sufficient to solve the problem. This keeps the written clarifications limited to more common misinterpretations. That said, it is only by this sort of discussion we can sort out one from the other.
In this case it's a correction to a publisher's copy-editing error, not a clarification.
There are complete beginners who have to work things out from what the rules actually say, there are people who try it on by deliberately postulating unusual interpretations, and there are cases where people "try it on without knowing that they are trying it on". By this I mean when the pressure is starting to mount, and they strongly anticipate generally being able to do something useful with their troops, they interpret rules in such a way that they are consistent with their anticipated optimistic outcome. If they are expecting the game to follow a particular course, and it doesn't follow that course, the internal, unconscious thought process is along the lines of "this can't be right, the correct interpretation of the rules must allow me to make it right". I think my opponent fell into the last category - they had moved up reserves just before I charged into a very complicated geometrical situation (non conformed). They anticipated that the reserves must be able to intervene somehow, checked the rules and "
of course, I can move into this overlap position", which in practice brought them into "counting as if in frontal contact" with what would have been my overlapping base. However, I couldn't fault his interpretation because the text in the book was not as the authors intended. If we had inserted the errata I would have been able to argue the case. If the errata had been as explicit as I suggested it would have been clear that the move was not allowed.
IMO text has to say obviously exactly what the author means so that someone with no prior knowlege, a marginal pass of GCSE English and a degree of self-doubt will "get it" and as a side-effect a semi-experienced player skim-reading in the heat of battle and a rules lawyer should get it too. The team has done a good job of this on the whole. It is only now with large numbers of players playing socially and in tournaments that a few imperfections are coming to light and this one at least was due to over-zealous copy-editing by the publisher.
Another example is the evade from combat thread. The rules said "can choose to evade unless already in close combat...". What they meant was "can evade unless already in close combat... Evading is optional ..."
It is very difficult to get this right all the time as an author because you always know what you meant, especially when you have been over it 20 times.
