General Play Suggestions
If you are browsing this website, you likely care about the correct application of rules. The Lawyer of Rules also believes that this is an important aspect of the game. Contrary to stereotypes and the occasional toxic sniping, insistence on a shared and fair interpretation of the ruleset actually makes for better games overall.
This is, of course, if you are polite about it.
Being a lawyer of rules is not inherently a bad thing, but some best practices are recommended to not be an annoyance in the pursuit of wargaming justice.
1. Be polite. If you don’t know how to do this, your time on the Lawyer of Rules would be better served in pursuit of this skill.
2. The organizer/judge’s pronouncements of what documents might be legal or not (and any rulings he makes) ALWAYS trump any individual decisions. Very, very frequently, however, the T.O. might not make an announcement of what commentaries are “legal” and this needs to be decided on a table-by-table basis.
3. If you expect a confusing or debated rule to pop up during the course of a game, your best bet is to discuss each and make final decisions prior to the start of dice-rolling. It can never catch all of the issues that might arise, but a tremendous number of problems can be avoided simply by establishing whether Vehicle X can go over a particular terrain feature, whether line of sight ignores a corner of a building, and so forth. It is also very good to establish ahead of time what ruling you want to use for a unit that ignores modifiers, farms CP, or other such things that might be significantly important later in the game.
4. Do not be surprised (or discouraged) to discover that many, many of your opponents (even at supermajors and “high-end play” settings) will not know how rules documents work, official or unofficial. See #1 above, but be ready to explain and educate your tablemates with patience if need arises. This having been said, being polite and empathetic does not mean that you should compromise on obvious gameplay issues. You should not, for instance, allow players to use Strategic Ploy stratagems for free with their Space Marine captains just to avoid conflict. Nobody learns if not corrected, and the next opponent who comes across the mistake might not be as polite in his corrections. (As a special note, however, when using a chess clock, if your opponent is misunderstanding basic and fundamental rules [e.g. the Battle Tactics example from above], that education and clarification of the rules needs to happen during the underinformed party’s time, not the one providing the lesson).
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