One of the big aspects of Warmachine and wargaming in general is the ability to accurately estimate ranges.  Whether you are trying to decide if you are in charge range or making sure you get Eiryss 12” from her prey it’s important not to have your plans fall apart due to mis-guessing the range.  If you are a long time wargamer you likely have a good eye for ranges but it is a common complaint of newer players so I decided to write up some tips and tricks on how to get better at estimating distances.

  1. Remember. Pay attention to your opponent's moving and measuring, sometimes simply remembering what the range was when those Widowmakers shot you last turn solves the issue of having to determine if you are in charge range or if you should just run into melee and engage. Even watching deviations of AoE’s can give you substantial insight into everything’s relative position on the board.

  2. Building Blocks. When I started playing Warhammer as a kid most troops moved 4” or 8” so that after moving models 4” every turn for years I got a really good feel for how long 4” is, nowadays a lot of my range estimation is based upon that. Rather than being able to estimate every range from 1 to 48 pick a number, I suggest 6”, and get used to how far that is, most of the time you can break a distance down into 6” increments and knowing something is just over 12” away is good enough when you want to make sure your long gunners are in range.

  3. Control Area. I don’t like the god given ability for a Warcaster to check their Control area at any time, but since it’s in the game don’t be afraid to use it, many times it can give you good insight on other distances.

  4. Battlefield Layout. If you know you setup 10” in and ran 10” forward last turn, using tip #1 you recall that your opponent setup right at the front of his deployment zone and advanced 6” in, you can quickly determine that your models would be:48”-10”-10”-10”-6” = 12” apart, accommodate a little for the angle if you aren’t directly across from one another and that should help determine what to do in your activation this turn. You can also use known terrain features, such as the Hill in KoTH, the points in Killing fields or even the centre line in Pendulum to help.

  5. All of the Above. Using a combination of all of the above is best as it allows you to double check your estimates and can allow you to guess more accurately, perhaps method 2 shows you that the model is closer than 12” and method 4 shows you that the model could not possibly be closer than 10” then you have narrowed the distance down to a small range. Some times you will also be using method 2 to estimate part of the distance and method 4 the rest such as when you know the distance from your model to a point, and can geometrically determine the distance from that point to another.

I hope these tips will be useful, and that even experienced players may have found something they can use – if on the other hand it was all Greek to you, take solace in the fact that Greeks were the creators of two dimensional geometry as we know it, so at least it is somewhat fitting.

Addition: A tool I had neglected to mention in my original draft was Base Sizes. Always be aware of the size of the 3 types of base, often these can be very useful in helping to determing if you are in charge range, especially in conjunction with your other tools, many thanks to Shavnir for bringing this oversight to my attention!!!

Let me know what tricks you use to try to better judge distances Here.