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if this happens. go tell a organizer. or better yet. make a scene. make it well known to all the people with in a few meters this guy is triing to cheat.

thehod wrote:If you concede a game and give up all possible points to your opponent, is that considered the same thing?

I think a player is always allowed to concede. It's not like you're gaining anything by doing so. Nor would this be considered as collusion, particularly at the top level, as you basically remove yourself from contention by taking a ZERO on battle.

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I don't think conceding is the same, unless some sort of collusion is involved as well.

For example:
At Adepticon this year, my ork horde ended up playing against CaptKaruthors's elite Templars. We played through 3 or 4 turns, he was just swamped, and ended up conceding. We went and got an early lunch, rather than playing through the remaining turns. No problem.

In the championship, I played my mech-eldar against AppletonCop's destroyer-crons. Again, we played through the first 4 turns, while I watched as my skimmers were slowly glanced to death, and I conceded. The outcome was already obvious - no problem.

But, I can see a case where two friends end up matched up against each other in either the last, or 2nd to last round, on a top table, might agree that even if it's a close game, rather than knock each other out, one would concede to the other. That's a problem, not because of the concession, but because it's collusion.

Deadshane1 wrote:People voting that "it's not so bad" or "perfectly acceptable" need to man up and tell us all why they think so.


....filthy cheaters.

LOL

Now, I could be wrong but....

Maybe it's because you keep calling them filthy cheaters?

FWIW, though, I agree that it's cheating. It's not cheating in the GAME, but it IS cheating in the tournament.

Eric

thehod wrote:If you concede a game and give up all possible points to your opponent, is that considered the same thing?

That is definitely collusion which is cheating.

biztheclown wrote:
I do see thehod's scenario as being a little different. This has happened to me. I had pretty much won a game in a tournament, having taken the primary and secondary objectives and the bonus points. I of course wanted to keep playing and try to get the tertiary, and I had a clear plan to do so. My opponent did not want to sit through this, and preferred to get a little longer break before the next round, so he just conceded that I got the tertiary, and we wnet on our way. I don't really see this as cheating.

That is not cheating unless the conceding player has reason to believe the points were unobtainable. Your opponent has an obligation to determine whether or not the objective/point was likely to be claimable. If their is much reasonable doubt then they should mention it to the judge and let him decide.

JohnHwangDD wrote:

thehod wrote:If you concede a game and give up all possible points to your opponent, is that considered the same thing?

I think a player is always allowed to concede. It's not like you're gaining anything by doing so. Nor would this be considered as collusion, particularly at the top level, as you basically remove yourself from contention by taking a ZERO on battle.

You can also king make a friend.

If the point is to collude as kingmaker, then it's easy enough to manipulate the scores without concession.

Cheaters always win... it seems.

G

Ok, here's one for you...

I'm playing at the Chicago Games Day tournament yesterday. Final round, my opponent, Greg Swanson, and I are both at max points so far. We've played a few times in tournaments in the past, and have always had good games.

I'm playing skimmer-eldar to say goodbye to 4th ed, he's running Chaos marines, and he gets 1st turn and drops three of my ships by turn 2 as well as taking out a prism cannon. So, things are not going well for me.

One of the objectives is to kill your opponent's highest point unit. Mine is a Dire Avenger squad w/ Serpent. On my turn 5, he hasn't killed the serpent yet. I'm not going to get any points for the mission regardless of what I do, however, I can hide the serpent to deny him the opportunity to kill it, or I can leave it in a place where he'll be able to try and take it down.

I opted to give him the chance at it. It seemed like it would be a real dick move to deny him the opportunity. But, I could possibly see how some people might also consider this 'king-making' - not trying my hardest to prevent him from scoring those last points. Anyone got opinions on this one?

I have no problem with that. As long as Greg did not coerce you to put your serpent in harms way.

No, of course not.

Nine times out of ten you have a camera with you. It might be best to take a few pics like your doing a battle report. Then after the match is over and you have walked away for about 10 mins. Then return to the judge and inform him and then show him the photos. We did not get get these five points and here is the proof. As you can see these are the photos of turn X. That person would learn very quickly as to why you dont cheat. Could you image that persons face when a judge walked over and said out loud we have a cheater amoungs us. Just think the horror that this person would face as they looked around watching people look at them. Granted you would be the rat, at least your have removed a cheater.

I myself have had to face cheaters a fair amount. What really great is when you are kicking the crap out of them when they are doing it. Watching them complain to a judge because your killing 25 DC and the chaplin.

I did ask the guy serval times to stop doing the roll pick up trick. Roll the dice and pick them up real fast and say you got X amount of hits. Needless to say he finally just gave up after I had removed the majority of his army.

I voted perfectly acceptible after reading through this thread. Mainly in response to the challengingly offensive manner in which these other two options were responded to by the OP and others.

I believe that having this sort of thing go on is a great way to encourage a much better tournament scene. The more it happens the better systems will be created to simply not allow it to happen.

Being able to hold the trophy high as part of a shemozzle kind of tournament scene doesn't holda candle to (for example) winning the national wrestling competition with a clear set of rules and adjudication.

Sure underhanded tactics can occur (striking, headbutting, eye-gouging) but competitors fully understand the penalty and disqualification mechanic.

I'm not saying that 40k can ever be a "serious" competative environment. I'm just saying that the way to go about it should be the same as for these other events as not everybody comes into it with the same (right) attitude.

A true sportsman that concedes knows the penalty for doing so. Zero battle points. As Redbeard can varify, when I conceded, I knew I would be surrendering all points to him, but if I stuck it out for 3 more turns, the same result would have happened. So might as well call the game there and spare each other any unpleasantness. I knew from turn 1 I was going to lose and lose badly. Both of our armies were polar opposites.

Whether clowns are funny or not.

Whether fools are really stupid or just being "funny"

Whether a-holes are really anuses, or just dirty players.

Many of the tournament conventions are pretty daft.

Like having army list scoring. Why? We have codexes that spell out legitimate armies! Why is it bad form to take three Wraithlords? Having meta-rules that define legal armies as "bad" is intellectually inconsistant and implies that the rules (codexes) are unbalanced. in this case the convention is wrong not the idiot who fails to comply. All legal armies should have equal valuation, and no measuring of army list goodness should be considered beyond a single criteria of codex legality, or else a tournament list that legally limits the unacceptable.

And why have armies painting score at all! That is like determining who wins wimbelton based on what they are wearing or their hairstyle. Total bs basically. The artistic merits of an army are in a totally different category and should have no bearing on tournament prizes for a gaming competition. Army beauty should be judged as an entirely seperate category from the gaming side of the tournament. Unpainted models should be as legitimate as masterpieces when it comes to gaming, since we paid for the F$#%ing models, that is fair!

As for cheating as cited in this post. Well the answer to that is easy enough. Tournaments need objective criteria for scoring that cannot be rorted. Objectives need numerical value and squads should be given numerical valuee that match their army list point cost. All subjective, "I like it" bs should be dumped. In a hobby that has regional clubs and numerous individuals who know each other collusion can never be excluded so the rules should make any possible game fixing IMPOSSIBLE.

In addition judges should be available to resolve conflicts and rules should be straightforward so that anyone caught cheating or being an a-hole according to clearly established protocol; is immediately warned then disqualifed and kicked rigtht out of the tournament, and the building! You can have tough rules and its ok as long as everyone gets verbally reminded when the event begins so that breaches are clear. People comply when the rule of law is clear from the outset.

I think its wrong to critisize a-holes for trying to rort the system while the system itself has ambiguity and rortability within it.

It is also far-fetched to create a criteria for everyone to be "nice guys" in a competitive situation. There should be clear rules and sanctions. And these should be adjudicated by competent judges when there is any dispute.

Beyond that the tournament should be "fight to the end" competitive so that the winner needs a good army, good luck and serious competitiveness to prevail. The final rounds should also be multiple battles, best of three or five....with extremely tough scenarios, played Dawn of War, with most of the armies starting in reserve. To hell with time limits. Let it take an extra day if that is what it takes. Play on to victory!

With very tough finales no tournament will be won by anyone not deserving of the title of champion......

Orc Town Grot wrote:
Like having army list scoring. Why? We have codexes that spell out legitimate armies! Why is it bad form to take three Wraithlords? Having meta-rules that define legal armies as "bad" is intellectually inconsistant and implies that the rules (codexes) are unbalanced. in this case the convention is wrong not the idiot who fails to comply. All legal armies should have equal valuation, and no measuring of army list goodness should be considered beyond a single criteria of codex legality, or else a tournament list that legally limits the unacceptable.

I agree 100%. Well said. Comp/fluff/"theme" should not be a judging criterion in a tournament, or at least not one that goes toward the overall score. If an army wasn't meant to have Nurgle and Khorne cult troops being led by two Slaaneshi sorcerers, it wouldn't be possible to do it. But it is. Some codices' best options just do not fit into the accepted levels of fluff as much as others, but they absolutely shouldn't be penalized for that. I've seen an Ork army with 2 units of Lootas, Commandos with Snikrot, a ton of Boyz squads, a Warboss on a bike with a Klaw, and a Big Mek with SAG get max theme points simply on the basis that, being an Ork army, about the only thing you need to be "fluffy" is to have a bunch of Orks. On the flip side, there are so many totally different Eldar armies I've seen called "cheesy" that it just defies logic. The only thing comp systems accomplish is to essentially handicap some armies and codices relative to others, for absolutely no reason.

Orc Town Grot wrote:
And why have armies painting score at all! That is like determining who wins wimbelton based on what they are wearing or their hairstyle. Total bs basically. The artistic merits of an army are in a totally different category and should have no bearing on tournament prizes for a gaming competition. Army beauty should be judged as an entirely seperate category from the gaming side of the tournament. Unpainted models should be as legitimate as masterpieces when it comes to gaming, since we paid for the F$#%ing models, that is fair!

Now I don't mind at all that part of the Best Overall score has some incorporation of painting in it. However, I feel that the painting points that go toward overall should just be the basics, the requirements to be able to consider an army "painted." 3 colors, no primer showing, no unpainted models, painted/based/flocked models, and some manner of squad designation when running multiple units (even if it's just a colored dot somewhere). I very much disagree with the type of painting scoring that's done in some tournaments I've seen recently, where all of the elaborate painting criteria (including one criterion which is simply "is this one of the 3 best armies present?") go toward the Overall score, as do player voting for best painted. Some people just don't have much painting ability, and don't have the money to pay someone to paint their army. Having basic painting requirements as part of Overall is perfectly fine, but I disagree strongly with having the painting points that are earned by being a skilled painter also go toward overall.

The ideal tournament scoring system (imho):
1) Multiple objectives to better differentiate scores (as opposed to just win or lose)
2) A fixed number of battle points available to the mission, to be distributed based on objectives. Essentially I get all the points if I get the objective, you get all the points if you do, we split the points if neither does. There are only X total battle points in each mission.
3) Only the basic painting requirements count toward scoring overall.
4) I really liked the idea of the poor/normal/good sportsmanship scoring, with specific reasons to score someone as better than normal in addition to worse.
5) No comp/theme/fluff scoring period, or else done as a completely separate thing that doesn't influence overall.
6) All extra/fancy painting points and player votes go toward best painted only, not best Overall. Ditto with player voting for Sportsman.

You make some good points in regard to any legal army list shouldn't be penalized, but most people (in my opinion) want to face painted armies. The goal of the tournament, according to GW is to have some competitive fun against people who like the hobby-not to determine in absolute terms who the best tabletop general is (gladiator style tournaments are for this) Dave Taylor and other GW employees have explained this mindset again and again (that's why painting, sportmanship, etc. are taken into account). 40K and fantasy are part of a hobby, they are not a sport. Trying to make playing with toy soldiers into a sport is kind of silly in my opinion.

Orc Town Grot wrote:
And why have armies painting score at all! That is like determining who wins wimbelton based on what they are wearing or their hairstyle.

OT: I still remember who Anna Kourkinova was. I have no idea who won Wimbleton any of the years that she played in it. Who is really the winner?

All I got to say is WOW.

I have not encountered any of the BS that you have been posting. Lucky me or I just have not noticed it yet.

I have heard rumours of friend voting for one person for best sportsman or best painted but that is it.

But then again the good players I encounter on a regular basis we all give max points on the soft scores anyway. Unless something is obviously not deserving of it.

But here is a new twist I have seen. Entering a tournament with an unpainted army? Opinion on that?

Glue model together and enter tournament. No Paint. No Primer. No basing. Just Grey Plastic and Metal on a Black slotta base.

I had a guy beg me not to shoot a squad off an objective. Leaving it there gave him the tiertary objective but wouldnt deny me any points.

The question that goes hand in hand with the one the OP asked is what do you do when you say NO and he tanks your sportsmanship score because of it?

Tazok wrote:You make some good points in regard to any legal army list shouldn't be penalized, but most people (in my opinion) want to face painted armies. The goal of the tournament, according to GW is to have some competitive fun against people who like the hobby-not to determine in absolute terms who the best tabletop general is (gladiator style tournaments are for this) Dave Taylor and other GW employees have explained this mindset again and again (that's why painting, sportmanship, etc. are taken into account). 40K and fantasy are part of a hobby, they are not a sport. Trying to make playing with toy soldiers into a sport is kind of silly in my opinion.

And the tournaments keep getting smaller and smaller.

You can bury your head in the sand forever, if you really want to.

Still won't stop mistakes from being made.

Sport? Silly? http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/events/protour

Yeah, silly. Don't even get me started on how much money goes to kids for playing video games.

@Cypher, I needed the points, I wasn't begging. (kidding)

sirisaacnuton wrote: Having basic painting requirements as part of Overall is perfectly fine, but I disagree strongly with having the painting points that are earned by being a skilled painter also go toward overall.

It was my understanding that a tournament's Best Overall went to the player that could paint the best (and somewhat theme) and play the best (and make an enjoyable game). Why lessen this because some people can't paint very well? Some people can't command their forces as well as others, should there be a handicap for those people?

No, there shouldn't.

It's a tournament competition. Let the best player AND painter win.

But GrimTeef, what about those players who pay for someone else to paint/customize their models by professional services? Should they be scored higher because they have the disposable income and/or lack of talent?

By no means would I consider my own skills professional quality, but against the other guys in my area I'd say I stack up pretty good. Does my army get the second place because some chump paid more than I did to outsource his models to India or Kenya or Indonesia?

Who is more dedicated to the hobby overall? He who takes credit for someone else's effort or the one who dedicates his own blood, sweat, and tears (quite literally in many cases!)?

I agree that painting should have a bearing, and as for allowing unpainted armies, there's no way I'd pay to play against unpainted armies, no chance. I spend hours on each figure in my army to make it look great, and I love the cinema of the game. Why should I have that ruined for me? Everyone can drybrush, that's all I'm asking for, some basic colours and a drybrush/wash at least. It's not unreasonable.

GrimTeef wrote:

sirisaacnuton wrote: Having basic painting requirements as part of Overall is perfectly fine, but I disagree strongly with having the painting points that are earned by being a skilled painter also go toward overall.

It was my understanding that a tournament's Best Overall went to the player that could paint the best (and somewhat theme) and play the best (and make an enjoyable game). Why lessen this because some people can't paint very well? Some people can't command their forces as well as others, should there be a handicap for those people?

No, there shouldn't.

It's a tournament competition. Let the best player AND painter win.

It's my understanding that the person who can paint the best wins Best Painted. Best Overall should be the person with the best combination of Battle Points, painting score, sportsmanship score, and whatever other soft scores you want to tack on. I don't think painting should be ignored, but I also don't think that the best painter in the tournament (or the person who paid the best painter) should have a distinctive leg up on the competition. After all, the game I came to play is WARhammer, not Painthammer.

Hahaha,

I just realized the similarities between drug cheats in the sporting world and people who pay for a magnificently painted army in the sweat shops around the world (and take the credit for it when asked).

Does the system take this into account? Why should someone be penalised for being honest and saying they don't have the time or the skill to paint to a sufficient standard but really enjoy the wargaming part?

What I think we need to define clearly here is the difference between "Tournament" and "Large Social Gathering". If groups (such as GW) want to promote their "tournament" then they do themselves grave misjustice by expressing themeselves as running "Large Social Gatherings".

I agree that the best part of the hobby is the "Large Social Gatherings" part (with people you know and enjoy playing) but to bastardize the concept of "Tournament" down to the pitiful standards that I can see at present is a disservice to the hobby.

This clear balls up is the cause of a vast majority of the angst in the hobby.

If the "Gladiator Style Events" were promoted as the real tourneys (and hell, maybe some decent feedback and play testing would happen for the developers there)and the rest of the social events were left just as that: social events "just for fun"...then we wouldn't have these issues.

I see what you mean, and we aren't really saying anything all that different from each other, sirisaac. But the 'Ard Boyz Tournament is all about playing the game itself, 'soft scores' notwithstanding, as far as I know. The Grand Tournaments are about the whole package, 'soft scores' and all. Are those tournaments not two different things, with two different outcomes, for two different kinds of game players?

One for best 'Ard Core Gamer.

One for best all around Hobbyist.

I can only guess that is one reason why the two different styles of tournaments exist. The 'Ard Boyz may not be as large or as recognized as the Grand Tournament, but they both should be their own entity. I think that the exceptional painter SHOULD have the leg up at the Grand Tournament because it is not just about playing the game. Playing the game is the Best General award and what the 'Ard Boyz are about.

Gavin, as far as how can we control who the rightful winners of the painting competitions should be if they painted their armies or not, I don't really have an answer. There may not be one. Guess the only thing that can possibly be done is the painting companies should all post pics of what they've had commissioned, so interested parties could see and the non-skilled army owner couldn't hide for very long. Not likely, but...

I think it's pretty sad that someone wants to get the credit for something they had next to nothing to do with (sounds kinda like people at my job), and didn't have the skill to sit down and create themselves. Sadly, some people can't discern real praise from stolen or misgiven praise. Personally, I say you don't have the skill, you can't win the award. Painting awards aren't like our current children's T-Ball games - not everyone can be a winner.