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So just played in a local GT. Fifty people, 5 games over two days, good times. However an incident came up that caused some questions to arise.

A younger player was caught blatantly cheating. He is actually a known cheater in the store, however the last incident was over a year ago. At that time he was playing me in a different tournament and he was trying to claim higher BS for his IG, different stats for his tanks, different tanks in his list, and finally when I beat him, tried to add an objective to the table. At that event the TO talked to his father, who actually called his son out on the cheating midgame with me, and it looked like there was a small ban on tournament play for the kid.

So today he got caught again, doctoring his list midgame andwith changing rules/stats/wargear. He got immediately placed in last place for the final game and once again his father was talked to by the TO. Here is the main issue with me, he was 2-1playing coming into today and if he was true to form he pretty much screwed the brackets yesterday and was improperly placed today based on those screwed brackets.

How much could this have screwed the brackets? I am not looking at a revison but looking at writing the TO and store owner an email to express that this kid needs a full ban from tournament play at this store. Considering not only my past with him, but also what is now obviously a habitual habit, I don't even want this guy in any tournament I play. The kid is 13yrs old btw which I think should be old enough to know better then to pull this crap anymore.

Did you have fun? If so, leave it alone. Sounds like the TO is well-aware of the problem, and probably doesn't need any more attention brought to it.

If he was 2-1, and it was a win/loss format, he was already out of the money.

So as long as you are out of the money, it is ok to cheat? I just want to get your point clear.

Janthkin wrote:Did you have fun? If so, leave it alone. Sounds like the TO is well-aware of the problem, and probably doesn't need any more attention brought to it.

If he was 2-1, and it was a win/loss format, he was already out of the money.

To win a GT level event you need to be near perfect every round. The fields are so big and like all GT level events they are only going to pay out the Overall, best general, and painting, Since winning games has no impact on the painting winner, only the top two spots are going to win prizes and they are going to the person who went undefeated, and the other player who went 4-1 with the most victory points (nearly all of your games have to be massacres).

So going to a GT level event you do not go for the prizes, but to play against armies that you normally don't get to play, meet new people, and have 5 fun games.

I know what you mean about cheating though, but I just chalk it up to him being a kid. I have had him misremember some unit stats before and I will either correct him or not care enough to, but I am more laid back in my approach to the game than most players.

Blackmoor wrote:

Janthkin wrote:Did you have fun? If so, leave it alone. Sounds like the TO is well-aware of the problem, and probably doesn't need any more attention brought to it.

If he was 2-1, and it was a win/loss format, he was already out of the money.

To win a GT level event you need to be near perfect every round. The fields are so big and like all GT level events they are only going to pay out the Overall, best general, and painting, Since winning games has no impact on the painting winner, only the top two spots are going to win prizes and they are going to the person who went undefeated, and the other player who went 4-1 with the most victory points (nearly all of your games have to be massacres).

So going to a GT level event you do not go for the prizes, but to play against armies that you normally don't get to play, meet new people, and have 5 fun games.

I know what you mean about cheating though, but I just chalk it up to him being a kid. I have had him misremember some unit stats before and I will either correct him or not care enough to, but I am more laid back in my approach to the game than most players.

I can't chalk it up to him being a kid because it is beyond just not remembering units or being new to the game. At the last tournament that I got matched with it was way more then misremembering units. When dice down got called he tried to place an additional objective marker on the table to get a draw. He didn't notice the spectator standing right behind him that witnessed it and said out loud to everyone around including me,

"He just put that there!"

To which his response was then to accuse me of stalling for time and of cheating. So I have zero sympathy for this kid with whatever happens to him.

So Blackmoor, we going to see you fielding a Dark Eldar army next tourney? Hahahahaha! Grats!

Brother Ramses wrote:So as long as you are out of the money, it is ok to cheat? I just want to get your point clear.

I'm going to assume you're not trying to troll me....

You asked "How much could this have screwed the brackets?" The answer:

Janthkin wrote:If he was 2-1, and it was a win/loss format, he was already out of the money.

So, it wasn't going to "screw the brackets" in a meaningful way.

As far as your prospective course of action, I don't think you need to do anything else. Sounds like the TO is aware of the problem, and your further input, unless carefully phrased, is only likely to discourage them from the effort involved in organizing a large-scale event. Given your phrasing in the original post, and your subsequent response to Blackmoor, I don't think you are disinterested enough to phrase any comment about this situation in a manner that the TO won't take as unnecessarily "piling on."

Brother Ramses wrote:
I can't chalk it up to him being a kid because it is beyond just not remembering units or being new to the game. At the last tournament that I got matched with it was way more then misremembering units. When dice down got called he tried to place an additional objective marker on the table to get a draw. He didn't notice the spectator standing right behind him that witnessed it and said out loud to everyone around including me,

"He just put that there!"

To which his response was then to accuse me of stalling for time and of cheating. So I have zero sympathy for this kid with whatever happens to him.

I have never had that level of problem with him before, but that level of chicanery (If true) would be concern. Note: I said if true because I have no first hand knowledge of it so I have to take your word for it.

So Blackmoor, we going to see you fielding a Dark Eldar army next tourney? Hahahahaha! Grats!

Thanks!

I had a lot of fun and met a lot of new players. I wish the area stores would post their RTTs more and I would come out to them, spend money, and even take a nice list and not play to hard

Well, for my next army I was going to do an all metal Tzeentch demon army. I normally do not like to take armies that everyone else is playing and a lot of people are jumping on the Grey Knight band wagon, so after the 'Ard Boyz mine are going into semi-retirement.

I have a DE army that I played at the Sprue Posse GT in LA back in January that I never got back to. In the last couple of months I have won at the Bay Area Open a Razorwing, and at the "Ard Boys I got a box of Scourges. That win at the GT was certainly a nice haul of DE so now I am rolling in them. I think I will give them a try since I wanted to play them anyways. The funny thing is that I wanted to go in a different way than everyone else and try a mostly non-mech army and now I am rolling in ravagers and raiders, but no Scourges or Talos.

Maybe I can exchange them.

Oh, and the young lad that you are talking about came up to me on my last games telling me how he could easily beat my army with his.

Janthkin wrote:As far as your prospective course of action, I don't think you need to do anything else. Sounds like the TO is aware of the problem, and your further input, unless carefully phrased, is only likely to discourage them from the effort involved in organizing a large-scale event.

Being aware of the problem isn't good enough, you need to actually do something about it. I say the best thing to do is to put a little more pressure on the TO to ban him from future events, because if he keeps coming back and being disruptive it's going to cause more problems for everyone involved, and maybe even have people thinking twice about attending the next one.

I don't see how encouraging the TO to ban a problem player is any more likely to discourage him from running events than having the same problem player come back and cause trouble every single time.

How old is this younger player? If he is say, 11 or 12, a different approach should be taken than if he is 15 or 16.

OP says he's 13.

Sidstyler wrote:OP says he's 13.

bah, missed it.

Janthkin wrote:

Brother Ramses wrote:So as long as you are out of the money, it is ok to cheat? I just want to get your point clear.

I'm going to assume you're not trying to troll me....

You asked "How much could this have screwed the brackets?" The answer:

Janthkin wrote:If he was 2-1, and it was a win/loss format, he was already out of the money.

So, it wasn't going to "screw the brackets" in a meaningful way.

As far as your prospective course of action, I don't think you need to do anything else. Sounds like the TO is aware of the problem, and your further input, unless carefully phrased, is only likely to discourage them from the effort involved in organizing a large-scale event. Given your phrasing in the original post, and your subsequent response to Blackmoor, I don't think you are disinterested enough to phrase any comment about this situation in a manner that the TO won't take as unnecessarily "piling on."

I have to say I agree with Janthkin. If you aren't exceptionally careful with your wording, either in person or by e-mail, you could actually discourage the TO from having more events and change their attitude towards you. It could, and I mean could not will, be construed by them as you simply complaining because you feel his being 2-1 got you a worse bracket position and changed the outcome of your tournament. Even if you are mostly concerned with the cheating it could look to the TO as if you are whining because you didn't do as well as you'd have liked and want to blame someone who cheated.

I would just ask the TO's to watch him and maybe talk to him and his dad about how cheating is lame. The threat of banning will probably inspire him to play a fairer game than just getting banned.

Question: Did the event allow 'secrecy'? Or did you guys exchange full lists before game?

How did he change wargear midgame when he gave you a list pre-game and fully disclosed everything in his list and on the table?

I am unsure how this cheat could happen in tourney events with static lists.

To the OP:
I sounds as if the TO dealt with things the day of the event. If you feel you need to get some things off your chest, or just offer constructive feedback, it does not hurt to write a letter or email to a TO. Minor suggestions, write it today, re-read it next monday. My reasoning in waiting a week is a lot can change in a week. You may remember additional facts, or simply be able to read your letter and re-craft it in a more constructive way.

Cheatings going to happen whether it is from a 13 year old, or a 31 year old. The important thing is how to handle it in the moment, and what to do after. Exchanging lists is a nice option. That way there is a pre-printed list, which decreases the likelihood of concerns. The TO having a copy of preprinted lists from RD1, helps a lot. Most armies are pretty standard, if something does sound right, asking to see the army book helps. Realistically, banning the 13 year old will likely mean nothing to him as they are a kid. Having the TO or store owner talk to the father is the best route. Having them say something like "hey this is the 2nd time, can we talk about this, we may have to ask him to sit out for a while if he cannot play the game as he should."

Blackmoor wrote:

Janthkin wrote:Did you have fun? If so, leave it alone. Sounds like the TO is well-aware of the problem, and probably doesn't need any more attention brought to it.

If he was 2-1, and it was a win/loss format, he was already out of the money.

To win a GT level event you need to be near perfect every round. The fields are so big and like all GT level events they are only going to pay out the Overall, best general, and painting, Since winning games has no impact on the painting winner, only the top two spots are going to win prizes and they are going to the person who went undefeated, and the other player who went 4-1 with the most victory points (nearly all of your games have to be massacres).

So going to a GT level event you do not go for the prizes, but to play against armies that you normally don't get to play, meet new people, and have 5 fun games.

I know what you mean about cheating though, but I just chalk it up to him being a kid. I have had him misremember some unit stats before and I will either correct him or not care enough to, but I am more laid back in my approach to the game than most players.

So what if the guy that went 4-1 only loss was to the kid that cheated? If he should of won that game, then the kid cheating did mess up the brackets. And possibly keep a guy from winning.

Janthkin wrote:Did you have fun? If so, leave it alone. Sounds like the TO is well-aware of the problem, and probably doesn't need any more attention brought to it.

From the sound of the OP sounds pretty spot on. TO keeps speaking to the father, the father isnt making excuses for the kid from what seems to be said.

Kid should be banned from the next event. Then he may participate in the following event. If caught cheating again permanent ban until he is more mature. Regardless of age cheating should not be acceptable.

Those of us that have had to deal with this kid before were thinking that a flat ban on tournament play at the store for a time period would be fair with any further cheating resulting in a permanent ban from the store.

His dad was playing in the same tournament and I was sitting there when the TO spoke to his father about the cheating. We know that at lunch, he laid into his kid. Nothing new there as that happened at the last tournament that the kid was caught cheating. That makes some people think how much more the store will leave the consequences for cheating in the father's hands versus taking matters into their own hands as the kid has now increased his reputation for cheating.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
I guess the real question goes to as how far as a player should cheating in a tournament be addressed.

Of course if you are the direct subject of someone across from you cheating, you call it out right then and there and bring the TO over to address it. But as a player in a tournament, do you just accept it because it didn't happen to you or do you view it as sullying the entire tournament experience and you need to let the TO know that despite otherwise a completely awesome tournament, that crap can't go without consequences.

I have heard of TO's paying extra attention to known cheats. Extra attention being judges hovering near the table the player is on and submitting a list to the judge after every game (that is why no hand written lists anymore) are some of things I have seen and heard done.

I think the kid deserves a ban. And I will not go into the rant of what the heck is this kids Dad doing not wearing his butt out of this crap. Does it screw the bracketts? Some but not enough to I think to matter. I would think you would need a collective group to go to the store organizer and discuss it. If not a ban then what can you do to fix the problem.

The issue is, the only thing that draws the line between most cheating and mistakes is intent. The result is the same if you misplay a rule by accident or on purpose.

Every tourney has mistakes. 40k is impossible to play without mistakes. Every player has every right to stop the game and deal with mistakes or cheating... but once you have passed by the event and proceeded forward, nothing can be done. If the challenge flag was not thrown against a rule played wrong... there isn't anything you can do about it.

You don't have any right to go back and have the status of his other games before you changed. You wern't there, you didn't know what happened, his opponents didn't fix the behavhior. Are the results valid? Hell yes they are. You can't monday-morning quarterback 40k as no tourney will ever have official results ever because someone somewhere always could have played a rule wrong which 'invalidates' the entire tourney (to the sore loser who didn't win).

Rules played wrong due to mistakes or cheating happen. If two players agree to play something wrong out of ignorance or other motivation, it becomes part of the ruleset for that game if no one does anything about it.

That's pretty much how I go about rulings at my events also. I am the judge and I will fix things that I am AWARE of, however, it is up to every player to monitor their own games

If someone is cheating or making mistakes you need to call me over. If the game ends and you didn't even try to get my attention then that's tough luck. You gotta throw the challenge flag before the next play starts!

Due to my time being limited you gotta let players play rules wrong, if they both dont know any better then I cant police every facet of every game. Again, it's up to players to pass it along

Bikeninja wrote:I have heard of TO's paying extra attention to known cheats. Extra attention being judges hovering near the table the player is on and submitting a list to the judge after every game (that is why no hand written lists anymore) are some of things I have seen and heard done.

We had to have 5 copies of our list that we exchanged with our opponent.

Does it screw the bracketts? Some but not enough to I think to matter.

I am almost certain that he had no impact on who won the tournament. I was the lone 5-0 and the players that finished in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, and went 4-1 (Michael, John and Dave) the common denominator was I was their only loss.

nkelsch wrote:Question: Did the event allow 'secrecy'? Or did you guys exchange full lists before game?

How did he change wargear midgame when he gave you a list pre-game and fully disclosed everything in his list and on the table?

I am unsure how this cheat could happen in tourney events with static lists.

Generally I scan my opponent's list when I see it pre-game, memorise anything particularly important and then go from there with the expectation that neither of us is enough of a dick to try cheating. If something comes up then I'll ask to see the list again but I'm sure there's plenty of occasions where a subtle upgrade here or there could have slipped through - a sergeant conveniently having meltabombs, searchlights on GK vehicles, any codex like Eldar or Tau where my ability to visually identify upgrades is limited or where a lot of upgrades (like holofields) go unmodelled - without me catching it. If you know there's a guy playing who you're unable to trust to deal fairly with his opponent then banning him is a better option than expecting all five of his opponents to memorise his list each time and then check up every time he tries to pull a fast one.

The excuse he gave to his dad and TO when confronted about his midgame list doctoring was,

"Well I put it in there with Army Builder, I don't know why it didn't list them!"

To which his dad completely shut him down on because he had worked on the list using Army Builder with him or some crap like that.

And as Corrode pointed out above, almost all people scan a list pre-game to check any notable units and then game on. I have absolutely never seen someone holding an opponents list during gameplay to ensure every movement, shooting, and assault matches what is on the list. In this case, the kid's opponent did a doublecheck and noticed that the Russes had not paid for heavy bolter sponsons and that there were no heavy weapon teams with lascannons among other discrepencies.

Look this isn't about being careless with rules. I point out the adding an objective to the table as one example that he tried with me. That same game he tried swapping out one of his heavy support big guns for another at which time his dad yelled from another table in the same tournament,

"It is not a that! I told you last game it wasn't and it isn't now!"

He is actively trying to cheat which then even calls into those things that could be construed as rule or stat line mistakes. Suddenly him thinking that his normal IG have BS 4 is not an oops, but him trying to pull a fast one on people that do not know the IG codex.

"2-1 is out of the money."
True, but you also have the potential for 2 other people sitting at 2-1 (and out of the money) when they should be at 3-0 and in the money.

Yeah, the dad was talked to and apparently jacked up his boy...but if the kid insists on cheating AND dad insists on continuing to bring the kid to events, perhaps a ban on both would be in order.
Afterall, if your juvenile delinquent kid is caught tagging (painting graffiti) the parents are sent the bill for the cleanup.

honestly... i don't think anyone that failed to notice cheating would have been the top finisher

Non issue

TO handled it appropriately

I would rather keep expanding the hobby to new kids and deal with this kind of thing then to be militant about it and ban someone for life.

As a parent who plays with his kids, I have one that doesn't cheat, he is just a rotten sport about it. I know way more folks like that. Some of them grown ass men.

Its just something that we have to deal with in the tournament scene.

Given the age I would of issued a 1 year ban.

As for brackets, I would have issued maximum points to the opponent and sent the little bugger home for the day.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

dkellyj wrote:"2-1 is out of the money."
True, but you also have the potential for 2 other people sitting at 2-1 (and out of the money) when they should be at 3-0 and in the money.

Yeah, the dad was talked to and apparently jacked up his boy...but if the kid insists on cheating AND dad insists on continuing to bring the kid to events, perhaps a ban on both would be in order.
Afterall, if your juvenile delinquent kid is caught tagging (painting graffiti) the parents are sent the bill for the cleanup.

Wow, maybe you should start paying reparations too...

Given the history, I think a ban is more then appropriate.

Here is one of the main issues that come up with dealing with cheating;

I am there to game and hopefully win as many as I can. I am not there to babysit a list and/or a player that cannot play by the rules. Being aware is part of the game, but having to micromanage a player is not my idea of fun.