Peregrine wrote:
Mannahnin wrote:There used to be a couple of guys on the circuit notorious for trying to physically intimidate opponents, including offers to arm wrestle for first turn.
Sure, a couple people. But compare that to the
constant complaints of cheating/poor sportsmanship/etc in
40k and it sure seems like
MTG is doing a better job of handling the problem.
A) As the posted article excerpt makes pretty darn clear, attempts to deliberately cheat are reasonably common in large
MtG events. Some particular types of and techniques for cheating (attempting to attack with a creature which legally can't, and to support that cheat, semi-tapping all your creatures to create plausible deniability to a judge about the actual board state; even pretending one card is another card, or inserting a card into your deck which can't legally be present) are sufficiently common that experienced players learn not just to watch out for them, but specific techniques to counter them (the author asking his opponent to clarify his actions explicitly, then calling in judges who were, in practice, unable to do anything about it).
B) There are multiple instances of professional players getting year+ suspensions for repeated cheating. I was just reading about one who notorious for stalling who finally garnered an 18 month suspension, and another who apparently slipped an illegal card into his deck and earned a 15 month suspension.
C) The actual amount of cheating in big
40k events is vanishingly small, IME. The number of times I've had what were clearly shenanigans attempted against me over the past fourteen years of competitive play I can practically count on one hand. Bad sports are nearly as low a percentage. Most of the complaints you see online are clearly just whiny kids; reading the threads with a critical eye makes that pretty obvious.
Automatically Appended Next Post: 
Sigvatr wrote:What I do give you, though, is that
MTG tournaments work a lot better. The reason is easy: those are professional tournaments.
GW gives a flying crab about players. They stated they hate competitive players with a passion and do everything to get rid of them; thus every tournament lacks the funding
MTG tournaments get; barring the really major tournaments e.g. the
ETC where you got really a professional / competitive environment. Still: there's a huge different, also financial-wise.
I will say that
MtG events are normally more strictly organized. I can't say that they "work a lot better". Based on my experiences at both,
40k ones are certainly more conducive to relaxed, enjoyable gaming, and have a much higher percentage of players who make an active attempt to engage socially and be pleasant. Magic events also have a lot more documented cheating and misconduct, at least in absolute numbers, although of course they have a lot more people attending events, so that doesn't really tell us much.
GW has never said that they hate competitive players. That's an exaggeration and a distortion. They have not done anything to get rid of them. The independent event circuit does a better job than
GW did at running big events, at less cost to
GW.
GW does still provide some prize support. Magic is also getting to be substantially under-funded in terms of prizes for its big events, as the article I linked makes pretty clear. Your odds of winning something are much better at a big
40k event.
