Be careful what you wish for
Posted: Fri Dec 13, 2013 12:48 pm
There have been a few observations of late along the lines of "I wish the authors would clarify what they meant/what the rules mean exactly".
I was reminded sharply of this whilst observing a game between Simon Hall and Terry Shaw last night. Some snippets for your amusement:
"can I contract these bases? I'm sure we fiddled around with what you can do when ZOCd"
"errr" [picks up book. random tuning of pages]
" oh. It says the ones not in the restricted area. What does that mean exactly?"
"umm" [finally finds right page] "oh here it is. Yeah I think you can. It sort of says that"
In conversation afterwards they felt that authors are not necessarily well placed to give a clear ruling (though perhaps better than anyone else). The can remember usually what the problem was with v1 (some pinning stopped units doing historically sensible things). They often remember the various mechanisms they considered to fix it, and usually the one they settled on. But more than that usually not. Plus there's the fact that since they've written other rules and they clutter the mind.
Still it was a game filled with comedy. My favourite was Simon's impact foot catching Terry's light foot in the rear and swiftly becoming fragmented. Fragmented and pursuing the light foot into the enemy main line is seldom pretty.
I was reminded sharply of this whilst observing a game between Simon Hall and Terry Shaw last night. Some snippets for your amusement:
"can I contract these bases? I'm sure we fiddled around with what you can do when ZOCd"
"errr" [picks up book. random tuning of pages]
" oh. It says the ones not in the restricted area. What does that mean exactly?"
"umm" [finally finds right page] "oh here it is. Yeah I think you can. It sort of says that"
In conversation afterwards they felt that authors are not necessarily well placed to give a clear ruling (though perhaps better than anyone else). The can remember usually what the problem was with v1 (some pinning stopped units doing historically sensible things). They often remember the various mechanisms they considered to fix it, and usually the one they settled on. But more than that usually not. Plus there's the fact that since they've written other rules and they clutter the mind.
Still it was a game filled with comedy. My favourite was Simon's impact foot catching Terry's light foot in the rear and swiftly becoming fragmented. Fragmented and pursuing the light foot into the enemy main line is seldom pretty.
