I play Epic with premeasuring. I find it a refreshing change most of the time compared with the other GW games I play.

That said, I'll lay out the case for "no premeasuring":

1) I'm rather astounded at the number of people who dislike guessing ranges because it "requires skill" ... yes it does! But then so does knowing where to move your troops. The game hardly devolves into a game of guessing ranges anyway - most of the time it's obvious one way or the other - but when it gets really tight, being good at guessing ranges is part of being good at the game.

2) It encourages caution in positioning and decisive moves. Rather than KNOWING if you double you'll be 0.5cm in range of the enemy, you might not take that risk. Equally, it discourages clipping because it runs the risk of leaving yourself out altogether.

3) It discourages "gamey" tactics. For example, in a game recently I was in an assault where all but one of my troops were a hair's width out of combat but all of his were in. Flak can often be avoided with certainty, etc. All of this doesn't really lend any realism to the game. Such tactics aren't eliminated by needing to guess, but it makes it much harder.

Exactly that's why I dislike premeasuring.

EDIT:
Yes it "requires skill", as you say. But it's not a skill unrelated to gaming, especially tabletop gaming. There are a lot of things your have to learn, why not this one?

I don't get it why people complain about that.

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"Your limbs are mighty. Let them smite the foes of our Emperor."

QFT.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

All I get from the quote is "other games". But of course a bad game can't be saved by not allowing pre-measuring. Yet it still adds another dimension to a good game.

Btw the quote still says nothing about Lord Inquisitor's arguments.

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"Your limbs are mighty. Let them smite the foes of our Emperor."

Each to his own, but I prefer to win or lose a game because I tactical outfought and out-thought my opponent with my movements and decisions, not because he or I misjudged 1cm by eye.

Open vs Closed lists is another such situation; Epic has open lists, with all counts-as explained etc, but a game like warhammer fantasy has many closed elements, especially when it comes to the magic items each character may or may not be carrying. This again can add another "tactical" level to the game, but it again comes down to good guessing rather than tactical skill, so Epic is again better off without it.

Allowing premeasuring and having open listsmeans it's a level playing field, where you and your opponent both have total knowledge of both armies and the relevant distances, meaning it comes down to tactical prowess.

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

Yesterday I had a game and I talked with my opponent about premeasuring or not because of this thread. Until now we played without premeasuring, but I dont like it. It's just frustrating and tiresome for me. Even without the aspect of a sci fi game with technology, not allowing me to know how far away a unit is.

Since he is open to both options we played with premeasuring. And I like it alot more. I actually knew what I could do and estimate what might be the best option to take for the unit.

One example that comes to my mind: I needed my Hammerheads at one exact position to screen my Broadsides from an assault of CC lictors. It didnt matter as much, if I could get them shooting as well, which would've been a bonus more or less.
Without premeasuring I could get savely in with a march order just to realize a double order would've been enough. Well,okay, acceptable considering I mentioned what was more important. But isnt it more realistic, that my primary objective is to get where I need to and if there is still "time" (abstract rules considering rounds) I could shoot as well?

Well, its possible to think about it, that those HH do not shoot, because they got a march order and they are not supposed to shoot, even moving only 50 cm.

To cut it short, I prefer premeasuring without this annoying guessing and looking for opportunities of indirect measuring getting near to cheating...

I don't see any similarities between pre-measuring and "closed lists". It is one thing to learn guessing ranges through gaming and the other one to spend a fortune on codices/army books and then learn the items like the vocabulary of a language. And I'm not even talking about illegal downloads. Pre-measuring does not encourage illegal downloads.

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"Your limbs are mighty. Let them smite the foes of our Emperor."

You know what would be an interesting "take" on pre-measuring?  

Limiting it, perhaps to 30cm or 45cm, to reflect targetting/sensor equipment.  So, it combines the "best" of both worlds... might have to try that out some time.

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?

Interesting idea.

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"Your limbs are mighty. Let them smite the foes of our Emperor."

Somewhat true, but to me it seems to be more of an inherent ability. Some people just have terrible depth perception and will never be able to correctly match the scatter off of a scatter die, much less guess ranges. Imagine if you had to guess a tone in order to fire on a unit! Some people just have a tin ear and would be completely left out. It's very similar to that in my mind.

You could argue that tactical acumen is an inherent ability - even if you have to reducto ad absurdum compare the intelligence of the two players. Really depth perception has very little to do with it, nor to do with figuring out scatter - that just comes from not understanding parallax error (honestly, I'm about ready to bring a small powerpoint lecture to tournaments to try and explain that when making a correct scatter measurement it matters which side of the table they stand on... or a handout or something...). Even with zero depth perception, you can move around the table so both points are equidistant from you and then estimate their horizontal distance. Lastly, most of the time, even in Epic, the vast majority of REALLY IMPORTANT distances to estimate range from 5cm to 15cm (maybe 30cm). Beyond 30cm it is very rare to have critical range guesses.

I grant you that it comes easier to some people than others, but really guessing distances is very much a matter of practice not inherent ability. I'm not that great at guessing distances right off (although I used to be when I played warhammer with war machines). These days I use tricks of mentally partitioning the board up into quarters to estimate distances. It's a skill, and it involves mental arithmetic more than anything else. I've not pulled out a calculator to make trigonometric calculations (yet!) but a basic understanding of common trigonometric ratios can help.

There is one additional advantage of avoiding pre-measuring. As ePilgrim discovered last weekend, give me a tape measure and free reign to measure, I waste a lot of time trying to get things JUST RIGHT, while really it doesn't matter that much. If you have to guess, you put your models down and just get on with things. With pre-measuring, you can make sure you get the exact number of models in assault range that you want - but it takes time better spent on rolling dice and waging war!

There is one additional advantage of avoiding pre-measuring. As ePilgrim discovered last weekend, give me a tape measure and free reign to measure, I waste a lot of time trying to get things JUST RIGHT

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

Jervis says this very thing in the rulebook when discussing pre-measuring.

To paraphrase, Jervis says that pre-measuring is more tactical, while guessing makes the game go faster.

I agree with him, for the record.

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http://hordesofthings.blogspot.co.nz/

No pre-measure.  It's HEAPS quicker in my experience.

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Fire bad, tree pretty - Buffy