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 cuda1179 wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
Once at a Magic tourney there was an "interesting" tactic I saw. In a room of 32 people there were maybe 3 women. Two of these women looked "normal" to slightly nerdy. ( I say this as a nerd myself). The third woman was attractive, somewhat "top heavy",wore short-shorts, flip flops, and a size too small white tank top, sans bra.

The nerd distraction was noticeable. While I have no proof this was intentional, I bet it was.

Ah yes, the true crime of being an attractive woman in a room full of neckbeards. How were they supposed to finish a match of 40k between all the hat tipping and bows

I'm not saying she shouldn't be able to wear what she wants. She should. But on the other hand, I do suspect she did it on purpose for attention and distraction. I mean really, in the right lite that tank top was translucent.

sounds perfectly legit to me, if you (neckbeard) are easily distracted by a little skin and then can't function after being exposed to said stimuli you don't deserve to win anyway. but right on for her, she understands cause and effect and knows how to execute her plan.

hobojebus wrote:
Nobody is immune to psychological warfare, everyone has a weak spot you can exploit to throw them off their stride.

Nonsense. Good players don't fall for these tricks. Putting a decoy unit out in front in the hope that your opponent makes a mistake and shoots it instead of the real threat only works if you assume that your opponent knows much less about the game than you do and will make that mistake. A player of equal or better skill is going to correctly evaluate the threat, and at best you've wasted your time. At worst you've failed in your pointless gimmick and put a unit in a bad position to attempt it. And if you're playing against an opponent who struggles to correctly evaluate the threat level of your units why do you need the gimmick?

It could be a sound they find irritating, endlessly telling them about rules they already know, humming off key.

That isn't psychological warfare, it's being an annoying that nobody wants to play against and hoping that your opponent will make mistakes rushing through the game so they can be done with you. You might as well talk about your successful strategy for punching your opponent in the face every turn until they pack up and leave.

 Humble Guardsman wrote:
If you're playing horde and your opponent looks out at your army and thinks "There's no way I can kill all of that!" then you're doing something right.

When playing with my Imperial Guard I tend to move my infantry squads forward aggressively unless my opponent is a dedicated CC force. Ignoring my expensive guns for piddling 40~ point infantry squads is what I want most of the time. And if they do manage kill all of my brave soldiers? I always have reserves.

If you're playing in a way that confuses, unnerves or deceives your intentions from your opponent then you're a good player. If you're sledging, insulting or verbally goading them into doing what you want then you're just a bully or worse.

EDIT: Example

Committing a throwaway unit to go for an objective where your opponent ends up over committing = Good psychological tactic.

"My carnifex is going to destroy your guys, you better hurry up and shoot her instead of those genestealers in charge range" = Pathetic and unsporting.

Ah yes, works even better with 20 man militia throw away tarpits.
Meanwhile your disciples are using whatever guns they got to actually damage stuff.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

hobojebus wrote:
Nobody is immune to psychological warfare, everyone has a weak spot you can exploit to throw them off their stride.

Nonsense. Good players don't fall for these tricks. Putting a decoy unit out in front in the hope that your opponent makes a mistake and shoots it instead of the real threat only works if you assume that your opponent knows much less about the game than you do and will make that mistake. A player of equal or better skill is going to correctly evaluate the threat, and at best you've wasted your time. At worst you've failed in your pointless gimmick and put a unit in a bad position to attempt it. And if you're playing against an opponent who struggles to correctly evaluate the threat level of your units why do you need the gimmick?

It could be a sound they find irritating, endlessly telling them about rules they already know, humming off key.

That isn't psychological warfare, it's being an annoying that nobody wants to play against and hoping that your opponent will make mistakes rushing through the game so they can be done with you. You might as well talk about your successful strategy for punching your opponent in the face every turn until they pack up and leave.

Are you telling me, that in a tournament format, where time is of the essence and pressures high you calculate everything through and do it properly?
Because if so then you would be the pinacle of evolution regarding the human race and brain.

Also psychological warfare is on the very base annoyment or suggestion. There's also still a vast difference between punching someone in the face and annoying someone sligthly.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Are you telling me, that in a tournament format, where time is of the essence and pressures high you calculate everything through and do it properly?
Because if so then you would be the pinacle of evolution regarding the human race and brain.

These are not complicated tricks being suggested here. Bluffing and misdirection are legitimate strategies, presenting the appearance of one threat while intending a different one. For example, making a move in the direction of objective #1 while knowing that really you're more concerned with #3 can be a legitimate bluff. Your opponent might be able to figure out the answer if you gave them infinite time, but they don't have infinite time and they don't have access to the hidden information about your long-term intent. But that's not the same as "tell your opponent they should charge you and maybe they'll be dumb enough to do it" or "put a decoy in front and hope your opponent doesn't have any idea how to evaluate threats and just shoots the closest thing". Those are stupid gimmicks that depend on your opponent making blatant mistakes.

Also psychological warfare is on the very base annoyment or suggestion. There's also still a vast difference between punching someone in the face and annoying someone sligthly.

Psychological warfare in this context is about actions taken within the game, not about making yourself so unpleasant to be around that your opponent would rather take a loss than have to spend any more time near you.

 Peregrine wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Are you telling me, that in a tournament format, where time is of the essence and pressures high you calculate everything through and do it properly?
Because if so then you would be the pinacle of evolution regarding the human race and brain.

These are not complicated tricks being suggested here. Bluffing and misdirection are legitimate strategies, presenting the appearance of one threat while intending a different one. For example, making a move in the direction of objective #1 while knowing that really you're more concerned with #3 can be a legitimate bluff. Your opponent might be able to figure out the answer if you gave them infinite time, but they don't have infinite time and they don't have access to the hidden information about your long-term intent. But that's not the same as "tell your opponent they should charge you and maybe they'll be dumb enough to do it" or "put a decoy in front and hope your opponent doesn't have any idea how to evaluate threats and just shoots the closest thing". Those are stupid gimmicks that depend on your opponent making blatant mistakes.

Also psychological warfare is on the very base annoyment or suggestion. There's also still a vast difference between punching someone in the face and annoying someone sligthly.

Psychological warfare in this context is about actions taken within the game, not about making yourself so unpleasant to be around that your opponent would rather take a loss than have to spend any more time near you.

So in essence you say now that psychological warfare works...
What is it?

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Are you telling me, that in a tournament format, where time is of the essence and pressures high you calculate everything through and do it properly?
Because if so then you would be the pinacle of evolution regarding the human race and brain.

These are not complicated tricks being suggested here. Bluffing and misdirection are legitimate strategies, presenting the appearance of one threat while intending a different one. For example, making a move in the direction of objective #1 while knowing that really you're more concerned with #3 can be a legitimate bluff. Your opponent might be able to figure out the answer if you gave them infinite time, but they don't have infinite time and they don't have access to the hidden information about your long-term intent. But that's not the same as "tell your opponent they should charge you and maybe they'll be dumb enough to do it" or "put a decoy in front and hope your opponent doesn't have any idea how to evaluate threats and just shoots the closest thing". Those are stupid gimmicks that depend on your opponent making blatant mistakes.

Also psychological warfare is on the very base annoyment or suggestion. There's also still a vast difference between punching someone in the face and annoying someone sligthly.

Psychological warfare in this context is about actions taken within the game, not about making yourself so unpleasant to be around that your opponent would rather take a loss than have to spend any more time near you.

So in essence you say now that psychological warfare works...
What is it?

Perigrine is assuming you mean within the context of the game, not "Hi I haven't played a game out side of a tourny in 10 years because no one will play vs me by choice!"

Not Online!!! wrote:
So in essence you say now that psychological warfare works...
What is it?

The thing that works is not "psychological warfare" as people here are discussing it. TBH it's hard to come up with an idea of what I'm talking about in 40k because 40k is such a shallow game with no hidden information, but let's pretend you're playing a variant of maelstrom objectives where the cards are drawn face-down. You move units to threaten objective #1, bluffing that you have cards related to it, because when your opponent moves to counter and keep objective #1 from you they'll be weakening their presence around objective #4. And you have the card for #4, not #1. This works because of hidden information. Your opponent has to guess what the answer is, bluff or real threat, because they can't see all of the information that you have and it's 100% plausible that you do in fact have the card for #1 and every move you have made is a legitimate step towards scoring card #1. Making the incorrect decision is still incorrect, but it's one that experienced and skilled players can make because of that hidden information.

What people are talking about here is just stupid. Painting your models a particular way is not going to do anything against a good player. There is no ambiguity in decision-making, only some weird hope that if your opponent sees bright pink marines they'll somehow magically forget about the rules and make a stupid play.

That sounds plain salty, atleast about 8th edition, which i agree is shallow.
To say however that those stuff have no effect on your enemy is lying though.

Not Online!!! wrote:
To say however that those stuff have no effect on your enemy is lying though.

Only against bad players who don't know how basic strategy or threat evaluation. Obviously stupid gimmicks work against bad players that can't even remember what space marines have to roll to hit and select targets essentially at random, but you shouldn't need stupid gimmicks to beat players like that.

Again then you must be the pinacle of the human evolution to just ignore such things.
Frankly if you even have base knowledge about psychology you would know that this is not how it works.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Again then you must be the pinacle of the human evolution to just ignore such things.

Or just minimally competent at the games I play. You don't have to be the pinnacle of evolution to evaluate the threat of units based on their stats instead of reflexively shooting the closest unit, or to see your opponent declare a move with a model that takes it into a ruin near an objective and remember that you should kill that model instead of forgetting about it.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Again then you must be the pinacle of the human evolution to just ignore such things.
Frankly if you even have base knowledge about psychology you would know that this is not how it works.

It's easy to say it's easy to ignore when you don't play and thus don't get subjected to it

Yeah I never got tactics that rely on your opponent making the mistake of shooting a big fat defensive thing in their face so that you can just hammer them with glass cannons. I feel like that works once at best, against opponents unfamiliar with the army, or multiple times against people who are just bad at the game. Although people who are bad at the game can still be a legitimate threat with the right copy pasted list for the right race, so maybe it has some merit in games like this.

 Peregrine wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
So in essence you say now that psychological warfare works...
What is it?

The thing that works is not "psychological warfare" as people here are discussing it. TBH it's hard to come up with an idea of what I'm talking about in 40k because 40k is such a shallow game with no hidden information, but let's pretend you're playing a variant of maelstrom objectives where the cards are drawn face-down. You move units to threaten objective #1, bluffing that you have cards related to it, because when your opponent moves to counter and keep objective #1 from you they'll be weakening their presence around objective #4. And you have the card for #4, not #1. This works because of hidden information. Your opponent has to guess what the answer is, bluff or real threat, because they can't see all of the information that you have and it's 100% plausible that you do in fact have the card for #1 and every move you have made is a legitimate step towards scoring card #1. Making the incorrect decision is still incorrect, but it's one that experienced and skilled players can make because of that hidden information.

What people are talking about here is just stupid. Painting your models a particular way is not going to do anything against a good player. There is no ambiguity in decision-making, only some weird hope that if your opponent sees bright pink marines they'll somehow magically forget about the rules and make a stupid play.

This, basically

Not Online!!! wrote:
Again then you must be the pinacle of the human evolution to just ignore such things.
Frankly if you even have base knowledge about psychology you would know that this is not how it works.

Your first statement would be correct, provided the game had sufficient tactical depth. The point Peregrine and others are making, is that in a game with basically all information known and very little in the way of meaningful tactical choices (due to poor terrain rules, 360-degree LoS, very long-range weapons etc) it's almost impossible to successfully pull some sort of psychological trick against a competent player. The best analogy is probably noughts and crosses (tic-tac-toe if you're American). It's such a simple game that any psychological tricks you try are bound to fail against anyone with a modicum of intelligence. 40k is more complicated than that, but the principle still holds. If a player can't evaluate a threat properly when they have all the information they need, you don't need tricks to beat them.

Your second point is more about defining what we mean when we say "psychological warfare". I think some, such as Peregrine, are taking it to mean things done within the context of the game and its rules to try to disrupt a player's concentration or decision-making abilities. Others are using it to mean anything up to an including being an anti-social donkey-cave or criminal damage. In a tournament, such behaviour would have little effect in-game, but it would mark you down as a douche. In a more relaxed environment it just leaves you without people to play against. That's not because your superior grasp of the human psyche makes everyone resent your amazing ability to win games, it's because you're behaving like an anti-social jerk.

See this is the problem there's zero way to use misdirection in 8th it's far too simple a game.

So annoying people or distracting them with too tight clothing is your only option for waging psychological warfare

I have seen something like that a lot in small local tournaments. We have a website in germany that almost 90% of tournament organisers use. It will track your own scores and rank you, too. Which means on small tournaments you have 1 or 2 players ranked at 1-50 and all the other players see them as some kind of god or get extremly discouraged when they have to play against them. They will follow every rule they say their units have and will make stupid mistakes because the game was of course lost from the start.... I hate that bs especially as I have noticed that many top players do some kind of "errors" which will affect the game a lot. And their opponent is only standing there drooling over the great presence of a "top" Player.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Spoiler:

The Allfather wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

The Allfather wrote:

 Aaranis wrote:
Hi all, I was wondering if any of you guys had any story to tell about using psychology against your opponent in 40k, be it successfully or not. I was wondering if this could work against some people, purely for scientific reasons of course. I don't have any example where this has happened in my games, so I don't really know what kind of tricks could be used to deceive your opponent, without cheating, so I'd like to hear some examples.

Why yes sir I do use phycollogical warfare. Mostly through my paint scheme. You can arrange the colors of your army to distract or disturb your enemies.

As well as tactical acumen. In combination you can Cowtown your enemies easily.

This demands pics!

imageupload

Haha! What the hell?!

You asked for pics.

To explain further the colors were borrowed from looking at fighter squadrons of German ME 109 fighters during WW2

The colors themselves are inherently intimidating. Yellow for caution etc..

The color coordinated squads are to further distract my openent, and to help identify my own squads.

A crap ton of thought went into the theme. Including the 8th company colours. Grey white red yellow blue.. all of it designed to invoke a different emotion. All of which will distract you from the flow of the game.

Hopefully that makes sense to you.

It did get over 70k views on Imgur to solidify the point. And something like plus 300 upvotes.

If you like the work you can check out more here. . It's my paint blog.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/756769.page

The Allfather wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Spoiler:

The Allfather wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

The Allfather wrote:

 Aaranis wrote:
Hi all, I was wondering if any of you guys had any story to tell about using psychology against your opponent in 40k, be it successfully or not. I was wondering if this could work against some people, purely for scientific reasons of course. I don't have any example where this has happened in my games, so I don't really know what kind of tricks could be used to deceive your opponent, without cheating, so I'd like to hear some examples.

Why yes sir I do use phycollogical warfare. Mostly through my paint scheme. You can arrange the colors of your army to distract or disturb your enemies.

As well as tactical acumen. In combination you can Cowtown your enemies easily.

This demands pics!

imageupload

Haha! What the hell?!

You asked for pics.

To explain further the colors were borrowed from looking at fighter squadrons of German ME 109 fighters during WW2

The colors themselves are inherently intimidating. Yellow for caution etc..

The color coordinated squads are to further distract my openent, and to help identify my own squads.

A crap ton of thought went into the theme. Including the 8th company colours. Grey white red yellow blue.. all of it designed to invoke a different emotion. All of which will distract you from the flow of the game.

Hopefully that makes sense to you.

It did get over 70k views on Imgur to solidify the point. And something like plus 300 upvotes.

If you like the work you can check out more here. . It's my paint blog.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/756769.page

Do you have any background for those guys?
Its like looking at the starwars logo, but it reads star trek.

The Allfather wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Spoiler:

The Allfather wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

The Allfather wrote:

 Aaranis wrote:
Hi all, I was wondering if any of you guys had any story to tell about using psychology against your opponent in 40k, be it successfully or not. I was wondering if this could work against some people, purely for scientific reasons of course. I don't have any example where this has happened in my games, so I don't really know what kind of tricks could be used to deceive your opponent, without cheating, so I'd like to hear some examples.

Why yes sir I do use phycollogical warfare. Mostly through my paint scheme. You can arrange the colors of your army to distract or disturb your enemies.

As well as tactical acumen. In combination you can Cowtown your enemies easily.

This demands pics!

imageupload

Haha! What the hell?!

You asked for pics.

To explain further the colors were borrowed from looking at fighter squadrons of German ME 109 fighters during WW2

The colors themselves are inherently intimidating. Yellow for caution etc..

The color coordinated squads are to further distract my openent, and to help identify my own squads.

A crap ton of thought went into the theme. Including the 8th company colours. Grey white red yellow blue.. all of it designed to invoke a different emotion. All of which will distract you from the flow of the game.

Hopefully that makes sense to you.

It did get over 70k views on Imgur to solidify the point. And something like plus 300 upvotes.

If you like the work you can check out more here. . It's my paint blog.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/756769.page

Iho is bad for you, brother.

 =Angel= wrote:

The Allfather wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Spoiler:

The Allfather wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

The Allfather wrote:

 Aaranis wrote:
Hi all, I was wondering if any of you guys had any story to tell about using psychology against your opponent in 40k, be it successfully or not. I was wondering if this could work against some people, purely for scientific reasons of course. I don't have any example where this has happened in my games, so I don't really know what kind of tricks could be used to deceive your opponent, without cheating, so I'd like to hear some examples.

Why yes sir I do use phycollogical warfare. Mostly through my paint scheme. You can arrange the colors of your army to distract or disturb your enemies.

As well as tactical acumen. In combination you can Cowtown your enemies easily.

This demands pics!

imageupload

Haha! What the hell?!

You asked for pics.

To explain further the colors were borrowed from looking at fighter squadrons of German ME 109 fighters during WW2

The colors themselves are inherently intimidating. Yellow for caution etc..

The color coordinated squads are to further distract my openent, and to help identify my own squads.

A crap ton of thought went into the theme. Including the 8th company colours. Grey white red yellow blue.. all of it designed to invoke a different emotion. All of which will distract you from the flow of the game.

Hopefully that makes sense to you.

It did get over 70k views on Imgur to solidify the point. And something like plus 300 upvotes.

If you like the work you can check out more here. . It's my paint blog.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/756769.page

Do you have any background for those guys?
Its like looking at the starwars logo, but it reads star trek.

Beyond being historically inspired.. not much.

I personally imagine the 8th company as the most badass of all space marines. The reserve assualt company. They get sent in when it's to intense. This particular 8th company is backed up by the captain's personal retinue, and some first company vets. With some tactical squad support.

Hope that helps.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Larks wrote:

The Allfather wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

Spoiler:

The Allfather wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

The Allfather wrote:

 Aaranis wrote:
Hi all, I was wondering if any of you guys had any story to tell about using psychology against your opponent in 40k, be it successfully or not. I was wondering if this could work against some people, purely for scientific reasons of course. I don't have any example where this has happened in my games, so I don't really know what kind of tricks could be used to deceive your opponent, without cheating, so I'd like to hear some examples.

Why yes sir I do use phycollogical warfare. Mostly through my paint scheme. You can arrange the colors of your army to distract or disturb your enemies.

As well as tactical acumen. In combination you can Cowtown your enemies easily.

This demands pics!

imageupload

Haha! What the hell?!

You asked for pics.

To explain further the colors were borrowed from looking at fighter squadrons of German ME 109 fighters during WW2

The colors themselves are inherently intimidating. Yellow for caution etc..

The color coordinated squads are to further distract my openent, and to help identify my own squads.

A crap ton of thought went into the theme. Including the 8th company colours. Grey white red yellow blue.. all of it designed to invoke a different emotion. All of which will distract you from the flow of the game.

Hopefully that makes sense to you.

It did get over 70k views on Imgur to solidify the point. And something like plus 300 upvotes.

If you like the work you can check out more here. . It's my paint blog.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/756769.page

Iho is bad for you, brother.

I don't follow?

 SHUPPET wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
Once at a Magic tourney there was an "interesting" tactic I saw. In a room of 32 people there were maybe 3 women. Two of these women looked "normal" to slightly nerdy. ( I say this as a nerd myself). The third woman was attractive, somewhat "top heavy",wore short-shorts, flip flops, and a size too small white tank top, sans bra.

The nerd distraction was noticeable. While I have no proof this was intentional, I bet it was.

Ah yes, the true crime of being an attractive woman in a room full of neckbeards. How were they supposed to finish a match of 40k between all the hat tipping and bows

That has to be a lie, pro tour has strickt rules for players and judges. My uncle had to remove all his earings and wear long sleaves to every tournament, because the rules said he couldn't show them.

But my uncle did tell me that once in a MtG tour in Prag he saw a guy ask his opponent, if he is done after he shuffled, dude wasn't a good english language user and said he was done, thinking that the question was about shuffling. What he did not notice was that the timer has already started, so it was considered a pass. So his first turn was doing nothing, no land play, no muligan, nono thing. He called a judge, and the judge asked what words he used, he used the word "done" in slovenian.

In general my uncle has a lot of stories like that about multiple ccgs.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
To say however that those stuff have no effect on your enemy is lying though.

Only against bad players who don't know how basic strategy or threat evaluation. Obviously stupid gimmicks work against bad players that can't even remember what space marines have to roll to hit and select targets essentially at random, but you shouldn't need stupid gimmicks to beat players like that.

I don't know, I have seen a guy who is one of the top players here, play against the top player from another district. They have a history and our guy, beat the other guy in multiple games in different systems. Our guy often bumped the guy out of top 8 to place 9 or lower which is the no more prizes for you place. Durning the game I saw, our dude was non stop talking about the times he beat him, and how well the prizes sold, but the game breaking moment was when he mentioned some limited edition infinity model the other dude really wanted, but our dude got instead. Once he started talking about wanting to use it for some conversions the dude went so angry he forgot to roll his "at the start of the turn" stuff, which ment he didn't have enough CP to pull of his full combo, and what cost him the game. So psychological stuff may not always work, may not even work often, but sometimes it does work.

From stuff that happened to me 1 week ago my opponent had a group of 7-8 friends standing behind me and cheer everytime, I failed a roll. Around turn two I was so focused on trying to hear them, that I didn't mvoe my rhino and strike squads on to an objective.

Karol wrote:
<Snip - a bunch of fairly worrying anecdotes>

Unfortunately the MtG situation sounds plausible, though a little unlikely if a judge got involved. However, given your second anecdote and your other stories in this thread (assuming they're true), your gaming group/area sounds like one of the most toxic I've ever heard of. This is not normal behaviour.

Himself included.

I can alwas play misschief, as Dark Angel, 1CP and my objetive cards are secret.

 Aaranis wrote:
Hi all, I was wondering if any of you guys had any story to tell about using psychology against your opponent in 40k, be it successfully or not. I was wondering if this could work against some people, purely for scientific reasons of course. I don't have any example where this has happened in my games, so I don't really know what kind of tricks could be used to deceive your opponent, without cheating, so I'd like to hear some examples.

My wife use to where low cut blouses when we would play...

It works. Just wear a corset to a tournament and horrify your opponents so much that they don’t want to look at you, and by extent your army.

It's always nice to hear about some of the most toxic playing groups ever.

Karol wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
Once at a Magic tourney there was an "interesting" tactic I saw. In a room of 32 people there were maybe 3 women. Two of these women looked "normal" to slightly nerdy. ( I say this as a nerd myself). The third woman was attractive, somewhat "top heavy",wore short-shorts, flip flops, and a size too small white tank top, sans bra.

The nerd distraction was noticeable. While I have no proof this was intentional, I bet it was.

Ah yes, the true crime of being an attractive woman in a room full of neckbeards. How were they supposed to finish a match of 40k between all the hat tipping and bows

That has to be a lie, pro tour has strickt rules for players and judges. My uncle had to remove all his earings and wear long sleaves to every tournament, because the rules said he couldn't show them...

This is either false or the tattoos (implied by how you mentioned the sleeves) were banned by the location or, if sufficiently obscene, local law. MTG has no explicit rules on attire beyond those required by law, the venue, or common decency. Unless he himself was a judge, in which case he may have had to wear a (generally short-sleeved) uniform.

Karol wrote:
But my uncle did tell me that once in a MtG tour in Prag he saw a guy ask his opponent, if he is done after he shuffled, dude wasn't a good english language user and said he was done, thinking that the question was about shuffling. What he did not notice was that the timer has already started, so it was considered a pass. So his first turn was doing nothing, no land play, no muligan, nono thing. He called a judge, and the judge asked what words he used, he used the word "done" in slovenian.

This is also false, or at least significantly overstated. The first pro tour in Prague was 2006, and all the really unsporting angle-shoots like that were explicitly against the rules by around 2002 (when I started judging), if not ignificantly earlier. There were some extremely unsporting edge plays that were legal for a short periodthe first six months of competitive play, but quickly would have been sufficient cause for the player trying that kind of angle-shoot to be given a warning for unsportsmanlike conduct, if not (depending on what he said to the judge) an outright ban for cheating.

Karol wrote:
In general my uncle has a lot of stories like that about multiple ccgs.

Lots of anecdotes like that get slung around about CCGs (and tabletop wargames, for that matter), but they are almost all either grossly exaggerated or outright lies. Sorry to call you out on this in such a stark way, but it irks me as it's often used as an excuse to say one group of nerds is somehow "better" than another or to justify bad behaviour as acceptable when it clearly shouldn't be.

psychological plays, even basic ones, only stop working at the very highest levels of play.

It helps if your distraction is also a credible threat in its own right. It may be smarter to unload your fire at Sonic Dreadnaughts as opposed to the Defiler with smoke popped and Delightful Agonies that was warp timed directly into your front lines, but that doesn't mean it is going to hurt any less when the Defiler does in fact hit your lines and uses Daemon forge to re-roll all of its hits and wounds. You can say the same thing about a Gallant. Even if your opponent doesn't mind your distraction, they still get a knight slamming into their lines- which will hurt.

Ultimately, the most basic psychological weapon you see all the time is pressure. When you apply pressure to your opponent they are more likely to make a mistake, or make a bad decision. Taking an offensive stance and forcing your opponent to react to you as opposed to vice versa can do a lot to make your onslaught feel overwhelming. Indeed many players- including those you may find at tournaments- can mentally break when things don't go their way early on. Even where the game is far from over- a strong initial push will often times unnerve an opponent all on its own. Some may even prematurely forfeit a game to avoid what they believe will be a lost cause.

Aggressive play is a strong default stance in any war game for this reason. I have a pretty good track record in terms of winning even in games I have never played before in my life. The reason for this is pure aggression. Push hard, push fast, and don't hold anything back. Pure aggression with your entire list from the word go is one of the most effective ways to win most games- 40K included. The reason it works is purely psychological, and it plays on people's basic fears and instincts. Generally from an instinctual perspective people are naturally defensive and risk averse unless they perceive an advantage. When you take the initiative against them, people will often automatically assume that you have some sort of advantage, even if there is no other supporting evidence and you in fact do not have any such advantage.