Without some psychic ability to read your mind I can't know what you, or Richard, or Terry, indend. I can only go by what you actually write, thus if you use the word contracting I assume that you intend that a contraction is involved.
Any time I have argued it is because I believed I was supporting progress.
Fair enough Alan and glad to hear tha last bit at least. And the whole point is that this forum is here preciselty so you don't need to read anyones mind, more than any authors have ever done we are sharing what was in mind openly.
I can only go by what you actually write, thus if you use the word contracting I assume that you intend that a contraction is involved.
This is where you are going a little awry I'm afraid. And in any case if you want to be literal we don't say you have to contract during the formation move do we, actually as written it plausibly covers doing it in the CMT or previously to be in that formation already. I can argue about words in such detail as well as the next man ...... but its a waste of all our time really and missing the point. The whole point of the FOG rules is to
make them accessible. Writing in legalise doesn't do that. Hence the competition rules consist of
a combination of:
- The RAW
The FAQ
This Forum
Umpires in comps being sensible using the above as info
If we use all four in a constructive way we get a great result and have a good time. Surely a good result for us all.
Clearly some of the RAW could be reworded/improved but what you are not understanding is the process by which one gets a book in Waterstones selling to a mass audience. It is a huge task. We could of course have spent weeks refining the wording on Orbs but a) the book would be 200 pages and boring, b) the rules would have been delayed 9 months when the hobby needed revitalising and c0 all of you woudls till find issues which we miss to fix in vs 2.0 one day. So where a set of words clearly do not mean to be taken literally, we all need to adapt back to common sense and intent, and use the combined tools above.
At times your comments - on 4 streams now - come across as the following type of sequence .... if I may by analogy ..
Sadji : The rules say the color is a mix of blue and yellow.
SAH : actually yes we meant green, and could have said green, and in fact we really meant dark green.
Everyone else : makes reasonable sense.
Sadji : but the rules say a mix of blue and yellow .. aha got you .. get out of that one.
So please let us not get hung up too much on words and use the 4 components to debate and sort out intent and sensible interps. And also let us remember also that comp wargamers who love such debate represent a small % of the total FOG player base, most people figured out shade of green that they were happy with in the spirit of the rules.
I hope that the above provides some food for thought, and lets try to restart some more positive dialogues in other areas ... as someone said above its hard to believe we have managed to get to page 3 on Orbs.
No hard feelings on my part and all things rapidly forgiven with me, but we do need to get back onto the right mindset so wecan all have fun here, me included. But this whole thing needs to enjoyable as its a vast amount of effort ....
Happy of course to debate which "fighting formations" reasonably should be allowed to form them and if needs be a short FAQ to that effect, or just guidance for umpires on here.
Simon
