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This is one of those topics that I've only seen come up, in limited occasions. It's mostly going to pertain to some form of player either using their newer opponent's lack of knowledge to an obvious degree, for their sheer advantage. Or it could also pertain to someone just blatantly lying about their unit's abilities, a simple rule, or possibly just making crap up on the spot.

I think the best story I have for this, happens to contain mentions of a specific That Guy, for the shop that I was frequenting at the time in Georgia. Let's call him Dave for the time being.

Well, Dave was your standard power gamer. He owned about 38k points in Ultra Marines and literally played nothing else. As a critique, his painting skills were good and his choice of modeling, even his own conversions were rather spot on. The man had 8 rhinos that he'd magnetized to easily switch between almost all of their variants.

What also bothered me about the man was that he had one setting. Win at all cost and that was it. He did not play friendly games, he did not play to test out other peoples builds. All he did was go for the throat and he would snidely gloat about it, even before the match was halfway through. Not to mention that it was a open secret that anyone who frequented the shop, including the owner, knew to keep an eye on him when he was playing anyone that was new. So that we could "moderate" his actions.

This man would drop knights in 1k point games and would bring full tack squads rolling grav guns.

Worst part however is when I was there for a specially made escalation game that the owner and his buddies had thought up. Basically you start the game with a single squad, almost reminiscent of Necromunda in point levels. If you win, you roll on an advancement chart and your primary model sergeants, justicars, exodites..etc. Would gain a stat increase, or even a new rule tacked on. It was a really nice game mode all things considered and I really do miss playing stuff like that.

But Dave had his own plans. I see him starting to lay down his model for his second game.. that's right. His second game and only one model.

It was basically an emperors champion, loaded down with a relic axe, artificer armor and a jump pack. Glancing at his papers, everything was apparently on the up and up for what the games rules allowed and when I watched the match play out. I realized that this simply was not the case.

Dave's model was loaded down with just one relic on his paper. But in the match he was calling out rules to his opponent, who must have been around 15-17 yrs old and I realized that Dave's model was basically a chapter master. Who also apparently raided all of the best relics from not only his chapter (Ultarmarines), but also from the Iron Hands as well.

He apparently had all of the mentioned relics equipped: *I'm going through my old books and online information to put down what all of these do and this was 7th edition.*
Sanctic Halo: Get Adamantium Will and Feel No Pain
Tarentian Cloak: Get Eternal Warrior and It Will Not Die
Betrayers Bane: Basically a master crafted Combi-Melta, and back in 7th combi weapons had only one shot from their combi-weapon... except this one. It had unlimited melta charges.
Axe of Medusa: A master crafted power axe, but on rolls of a 6 the strength was increased to +4. Making him instant death most infantry models. For reference, this guy could swing 5 times due to the axe not being a specialist weapon.
The Armour Indomitus : This was basically artificer armor with a 2+ save, and a 6+invuln. Which you could jack up to a 2+invuln once per game for any phase that you choose... yeah.. dick. It also still game the special rule Relentless around this time if that really matters.
Teeth of Terra: An already iconic chain sword to some space marine players. +2 strength with AP -3 at the time of this codex's releases and it also gave the owner Rampage & Concussive, alone with being a specialist weapon. Yet Dave did not feel the need to inform his opponent that this cancled the rule for his Power axe. Instead choosing to just count his model for having +6 attacks...

I observed the first two rounds before Dave finally realized that I was watching him and I knew that if I spoke up, he was going to lose his gak. Which he knew would most likely get himself banned from the store.. because "most shockingly" he'd been warned about this before.

But it was hard watching that kid with his full squad of Necrons and their lord. Just getting mulched by one guy with a jump pack.
Dave laughed it off as a joke and let the kid take a win, even though he was thoroughly demoralized by the match and we didn't see Dave again for about two months until the new Admech release.

feth PEOPLE LIKE THAT!!!!!!!!!


They need to take a long walk off a short pier, walk into a cladera, choke on their own vomit, etc.....

I remember once the first time I went to play KT in a new store my opponent tried to play Death Denied for 2 CP (It had been errataed to cost 3). I told him it had been errataed and he didn't ask to see the errata, or hem and haw or anything, just moved the game along. I had caught him, and he just moved it along. I ended up winning the game but he refused to play with me after that for some reason; guess he was looking for easy marks.

wellp, that seems like a dick move to pull.

Hecaton wrote:
I remember once the first time I went to play KT in a new store my opponent tried to play Death Denied for 2 CP (It had been errataed to cost 3). I told him it had been errataed and he didn't ask to see the errata, or hem and haw or anything, just moved the game along. I had caught him, and he just moved it along. I ended up winning the game but he refused to play with me after that for some reason; guess he was looking for easy marks.

It could be he didn't believe you, didn't want to "fight" about it, and didn't bother checking either - which isn't good either - but there's usually a couple different ways to explain things with the benefit of the doubt.

Sounds more like he didn't know that it got updated and accepted the correction on the actual CP cost.

There are a lot of other reasons why people might not want to play again with you.

Calling this guy a cheater without further evidence is inaccurate in my opinion.

Yes.

One of the top US players of Middle Earth SBG cheats fairly regularly when he looks to be losing, "forgetting" score tallies and disadvantageous rules and such.

I never played against someone that was intentionally cheating, nor I did hear about someone that did that in my area.

Tons of mistakes during years of gaming of course, on both sides, but never with malicious attitude.

I rarely play games with people outside the Circle of Homies™ but I'll still play with people at the FLGS if I don't have another game planned. Most people I've played with haven't deliberately cheated; at worst they were poorly read on their own rules. Not sure if it's technically cheating, but the most a-holeish player I've seen started a pickup game with another member of the Circle of Homies™, and said he wanted to practice his Dark Eldar list for an upcoming local tournament. Here's where he gets brown and smelly: he was bringing a forgeworld model (Tantalus I think) , but refused to let the Homie bring his own FW model because "he wanted to practice against units he knew the rules for". Homie accepted because he's too nice to say no to someone who's clearly alone and looking for a game, despite being a casual player knowingly going up against a tourney list. The game was utter gak; the smelly DE player tabled our homie, was a smug jerkwad, and basically wasted both of their evenings. For the record, I think he played Death Guard against the guy, but it's been quite a while and the Circle of Homies™ has unanimously decreed "f*** that guy."

Interesting, the Tantalus is normally pretty terrible for it's points.

I had a game where a guy deployed 5 wave serpents and 5 flyers. And didn't really add up in my brain, because I did play vs armies with 5 of each, but the never in the same list. And to make it stranger, we were playing 2000pts and not 2250. So I called for a list check, before the game, which is not the usual here. And the classic followed of him being sorry for being to used to play 2250pts. What is strange was, that the list was taken from the store event book, and was 100% legal for 2000, he just deployed more stuff.

My run ins with TFG tend to be more poor sportsmanship rather than outright cheating.

Quibbling over rules, dodgy measurement etc

A common one in 3rd to 7th Ed 40k was of course the stretchy 12” - the situation where in my turn, I’d be “just outside” of rapid fire range - only for my opponent to mysteriously be comfortably within charge distance in his turn (based on 6” movement and 6” charge.....)

Rules quibbles being inherently one sided, solely of benefit to my opponent. Sure, the rules aren’t always crystal clear, and oddities can and will pop up. That’s fine, that’s expected. But when your opponent demands their interpretation be gospel, and refuses to simply dice for it and get on with the game? Too much.

Other examples? Setting up for a game, only for your opponent to insist it be “tournament practice”, and therefore I must follow a set of house rules I’ve never seen before. If you want a tournament practice game, let me know beforehand - and FFS provide me with a copy of the rules pack. Otherwise, what’s the point?

 harlokin wrote:
Interesting, the Tantalus is normally pretty terrible for it's points.

Considering what you could embark on the thing. That could be a total of 24 dark lance shots and being able to use stratagems on the thing made it pretty damn difficult to pen down.

Still, you have a point. The cost to field the thing was a bit steep and I think it hasn't changed since 7th.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
My run ins with TFG tend to be more poor sportsmanship rather than outright cheating.

Quibbling over rules, dodgy measurement etc

A common one in 3rd to 7th Ed 40k was of course the stretchy 12” - the situation where in my turn, I’d be “just outside” of rapid fire range - only for my opponent to mysteriously be comfortably within charge distance in his turn (based on 6” movement and 6” charge.....)

Rules quibbles being inherently one sided, solely of benefit to my opponent. Sure, the rules aren’t always crystal clear, and oddities can and will pop up. That’s fine, that’s expected. But when your opponent demands their interpretation be gospel, and refuses to simply dice for it and get on with the game? Too much.

Other examples? Setting up for a game, only for your opponent to insist it be “tournament practice”, and therefore I must follow a set of house rules I’ve never seen before. If you want a tournament practice game, let me know beforehand - and FFS provide me with a copy of the rules pack. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Yeah that tournament rules shtick is really something that I'm starting to get tired of here. One of the only shops that I'm able to play at now, has about three dudes, who're all in the same circle of friends. That do that kind of think on a regular basis. I know one of them professionally, seeing as we've contracted on a few jobs together before and he can't shift the rules to his favor. He'll bury you under FW models. These are the same guys who always band together on 2v2s and 3v3s. And their list always play into one another. In some of the most cheesy, overpowered crap you've ever seen.

One ran a list that netted him 26 CPs from the start and he had the ability to regenerate CP though the entire match. Even having a full turn of not having to actually spend CP to use his stratagems.

Yeah, usually when people allege cheating in my local area I'm in charge of looking into it.

Honestly, it's not generally as feel-good or satisfying as you'd like the majority of the time. The most common example of someone who is actually a cheater, as in, actually bringing more points to the table, or making up rules, or faking die rolls, is someone who's doing so to correct what they perceive as 'unfairness' from GW because their army is underpowered. And generally they're some kind of neurodivergent, which makes it more difficult to correct the behavior with social pressure. Because if you cared/could pick up on social expectations in the first place, you wouldn't be cheating at a game that requires you to stand there face to face making eye contact with your opponent across a table for 3-4 hours.

None of that is an excuse for making someone else miserable, but the majority of the time I don't feel great at the end of the day when I've talked to someone enough times to have to tell them not to come back to what is obviously a fun social event they look forward to.

For clarity. I don’t mind being your tournament practice opponent. Just.....keep me as informed as you are as to what the additional rules and limitations are.

Have I caught someone cheating? You bet I have!! No-good woman left me for my best friend, after everything I gave her.
And to think that I trusted Fido as w-

...ohhhh, you mean gaming. *Ahem.*

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
For clarity. I don’t mind being your tournament practice opponent. Just.....keep me as informed as you are as to what the additional rules and limitations are.

I was going to say this. I wouldn't have any problems running a game where my opponent could use FW stuff and I couldn't, if that was clear from the beginning of the game (which it would have to be).
It just sounds like you weren't expecting a WAAC game, but if it's practice for a tournament, I would have been expecting that by default and gone all out myself too to suit.

I believe I have seen cheating a couple of times - it was many years ago now, so the memory is hazy. Basically the guy was playing the rules wrong for his advantage, and I pointed it out, so he "checked" the rulebook, but was so flustered that he somehow found the right page, read the entire paragraph and accepted the difference in about 4 seconds. Literally book flopped open, "oh yeah!", and then back to he game. He knew what he was doing.

Other than that I'm fairly certain my friend cheated somewhat when we first started, but we hadn't read the rules properly so we had the same number of units (both had 1 HQ, 2 troops, 1 elites) and I had 3 necron immortals to his 10 chaos terminators. That was more mutual ignorance than cheating - though he did charge a unit of bloodletters through my entire army, killing everything one after the other and charging again after each kill. Pretty sure that was against the rules

I guess it depends how you clarify cheating. I see lots of errors that work to someone's advantage, (sometimes to their disadvantage), dice rolls that are misread, models that are moved a bit too far etc etc. But I like to think they are just errors.
I know of one or two people within my gaming group who are labelled by others as cheats and tend to be found to be doing this sort of thing more often than others, but those people I just avoid playing against as much as possible.

Actually, dice rolling is a good shout for a common cheat.

Now, etiquette wise? I like to roll uniform dice, rather than a hodgepodge of colours and styles. That is purely a me thing, and those who feel otherwise I am not accusing of cheating. I could probably be extra squeaky ADHD clean, and use different coloured dice for each part of the attack sequence (say, black To Hit, Red to Wound, then White for Damage), so there’s as little room for confusion as possible.

But when someone is seriously speed rolling, one has to wonder. After all, many units can generate a veritable bucket of attacks. And having geet big stranglers hands, I too enjoy rolling them all at the same time.

But when a mass rolling has taken place, and my opponent sweeps in to grab as many as he can, claiming them as successes? Uh uh. Nope. Just let the dust settle. And remove your failed rolls first.

Even better? Clearly count out your dice before rolling. My habit is groups of five, as I find it easiest that way. But however you do it, be open and clear.

Even bettererer? Just sodding communicate with your opponent. Be as clear as you can be about what you’re rolling for before reaching out for the dice.

To long, did not read. But yes, I yave been cheated. This one person was quite shady. Changed list before he played you etc.

However his landraider was not in range. And then he considered some othet moves, atemted moving the landraider this way and that. And in the end he could not deside. He atemted the original move again, and behold it was in range.

Mind you, cheating also needs intention, it is different then a mistake. But the person was dodgy, unpleasant and very powergamy. I did not play him again.

I've only once played against someone that I know was knowingly cheating, and it was many, many editions ago back when we were kids. Every other time someone was "cheating" it was either an honest mistake, or something they thought they could get away with that I politely told them was an error (like measuring moves front-to-back to gain inches).

Number one thing I've seen a handful of times in pick-up-games is people scooping/plucking up "successful rolls" and nabbing obvious fails while hoping their opponent doesn't notice.

It's always correct to individually pick out fails, then do a look and count the number of hits, THEN scoop the remaining.

IME it's rare to find someone who outright cheats (300 points extra in their list, completely made-up rules etc). What's much more common is loads of generally shady behaviour that toes the line between cheating and not. Things like the bendy/stretchy tape measure, the "accidental" nudging of a model, the convenient forgetting of a rule when it doesn't benefit of them are all very common tools in the cheater's arsenal.

As an example, back in my WH tournament days I had a guy playing a Horde of Chaos (the 8th edition End Times Chaos list) that combined all the Chaos stuff. he was a very knowledgeable, competent player but he got a few rules a little too conveniently wrong, always in his favour. The worst was ignoring the different way Daemon morale worked in that list (it made them quite a bit worse) until someone else pointed out his error towards the end of the game, right after he'd conveniently just used the more powerful regular Daemon morale rules to survive a huge brawl in the middle of the table. When his mistake was pointed out you could have filled the whole gaming hall with the salt he generated. It did turn a game he was losing with a marginal chance of winning into a complete blowout, but even so, his attitude was dodgy as hell.

Not sure if it was intentional cheating or not but saw a guy with a bit of a reputation for bringing crazy forgeworld stuff bring a Tau'nar Supremacy Suit to a 2v2 against a first game new guy. Furthermore he tried to argue that even though it was locked in combat with the new guys flyrant and genestealers (think he was running Kraken and got a bunch of lucky first turn charges) he could still fall back and shoot with it. Managed to talk him down from that at least.

Same guy brought the forgeworld Tau commander with a 3++ invulnerable save outside 12 inches to a 500 pt game (destroyed it by parking an icarus onager with tech priest rerolls 8 inches away and taking out his 7 remaining wounds in a single turn of good rolls)

I can't recall any times I've had an opponent intentionally cheat me. Plenty of rules goofs, but a reasonably even mixture of advantage and disadvantage. So I guess I've been pretty lucky!

All y'all that have had to deal with these asshats, you've got my sympathy.

I generally only play with the same group of friends so cheating tends to be wrong interpretation of rules or unfamiliarity with new rules. From what I've heard though before I joined there were a couple of dodgy players that used to "misremember" the correct rules for their units to their own advantage, measure from the back for extra inches, dubious fastrolling that kind of thing. Funnily enough no one plays with them anymore.

WAAAAY back in the day of 4th edition a former childhood friend also started 40k. So my friends and myself took him along one time to a FLGS for a friendly match. My Black Templars went against his Guard.
FIrst things first, I was quite astonished just how much stuff he put on the table as well as how well-equipped his models were. Next up, just inventing rules (combining the last few models of a squad in a new squad to overcome morale tests, fearless rules for kasrkin, giving a regular infantry squad 3 plasma guns) so I kind of knew what was going on rather quickly. I decided to play along as he was a REALLY sore loser who becomes incredibly unpleasant when he loses.
But, I decided it was enough when he claimed that hunter-killer missiles could hit anything because "they have infinite range, so they can curve around obstacles and hit your tank behind 2 bulidings". I called him out, the started shouting at me, the store owner came and threw us out. It was pretty much the last time I saw him and I am not unhappy about that.

Breton wrote:

Hecaton wrote:
I remember once the first time I went to play KT in a new store my opponent tried to play Death Denied for 2 CP (It had been errataed to cost 3). I told him it had been errataed and he didn't ask to see the errata, or hem and haw or anything, just moved the game along. I had caught him, and he just moved it along. I ended up winning the game but he refused to play with me after that for some reason; guess he was looking for easy marks.

It could be he didn't believe you, didn't want to "fight" about it, and didn't bother checking either - which isn't good either - but there's usually a couple different ways to explain things with the benefit of the doubt.

It's the fact that he refused to play against me from then on and instead tried to get eady wins against kids and new players that sealed the deal for me on that one.

I have a friend that *regularly* and honestly does not read the rules clearly and overpowers his units as a result. Usually a case of, "Can I see that?" and then... "Yes, you re-roll, but only on a 1." or "Yes, those rules are correct but they are two separate Dynasties so you don't get both..." sort of thing.

He's really just a bit of a dope, but I'm used to checking his rules for him and correcting things. He's just careless with his rules readings. Definitely a case of do not ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

 greatbigtree wrote:
I have a friend that *regularly* and honestly does not read the rules clearly and overpowers his units as a result. Usually a case of, "Can I see that?" and then... "Yes, you re-roll, but only on a 1." or "Yes, those rules are correct but they are two separate Dynasties so you don't get both..." sort of thing.

He's really just a bit of a dope, but I'm used to checking his rules for him and correcting things. He's just careless with his rules readings. Definitely a case of do not ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

I can sympathize, I'm bad about getting rules wrong on regular basis, though more often to my own detriment rather than advantage.