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meleti wrote:
“I borrowed this army therefore I’m using wargear I didn’t pay for” isn’t a very good excuse. In fact, there isn’t a single good excuse for using an illegal list like that. What you should do is apologize, accept the penalty whatever it is, and try your hardest to not end up with a list issue like that again

I'd have to agree with that. Thats pretty basic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

meleti wrote:
“I borrowed this army therefore I’m using wargear I didn’t pay for” isn’t a very good excuse. In fact, there isn’t a single good excuse for using an illegal list like that. What you should do is apologize, accept the penalty whatever it is, and try your hardest to not end up with a list issue like that again

I'd have to agree with that. Thats pretty basic. You have to bring legal legal gear to whatever competition/sport you are playing.

Slipspace wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Oh, so now I'm responsible for the accuracy of my opponent's understanding of the rules? If I make a mistake and it causes someone to break the rules, now I go on a blacklist?

There is a tremendous difference between not knowing your opponent's rules and deliberately making a false statement about the rules to bait your opponent into playing something incorrectly while you film it, and then promptly calling a judge to impose a penalty. In that situation you clearly know the correct rule (as you are calling a judge as soon as your opponent breaks it), and you are making false statements about the game state and/or rules to persuade your opponent to play incorrectly. IOW, you are cheating. Let's not pretend that everyone is too stupid to recognize this and apply the correct penalty to you instead of your opponent.

Well, fortunately for the community, tournaments do not appeal to me. But planting a number in an opponent's head is not hard. There's a British comedian, Derren Brown, who's made a career of doing something similar.

As a thought experiment, try this sometime during a game. When someone is getting ready to roll for a unit but before they throw any dice, ask someone, "what do those, hit on 3s?" More often than not, that person is at least going to do a double take and agree with you before correcting to the right value. If you're any good at it, that opponent simply accepts that number and measures the outcome of the dice roll accordingly.

First of all, he's not really a comedian, he's a...whatever the hell he's decided to call himself nowadays. He usually describes himself as an illusionist/mentalist/showman. The reason he's famous and rich is because he's incredibly good at combining persuasion/mentalism with illusion and magic. It's not something the average tournament goer will be proficient in. I'd wager it's not something any tournament player would be able to pull off (unless Derren Brown is secretly a gamer). I'm willing to bet you can't get a tournament player to go along with your suggestion that their Space Marines hit on 4+, not 3+, through your amazing power of suggestion. To think you can is delusional.

Thank you for correcting me. I'm not as familiar with Darren Brown as an entertainer as I am with him as an NLP practitioner. You are absolutely right to say his technique is very advanced, few people in the world are on his level. So maybe I need to qualify that comment a bit to eliminate confusion.

I don't think anyone is going to watch a Derren Brown video and suddenly start goading other players into breaking the rules, and I'm not trying to make any extraordinary claims about my own powers of suggestion. The one thing I described in this thread is suggesting a value during a dice roll. You may wish to try that yourself, I've found interrupting someone's train of thought works the way I described more often than not. And there are circumstances where it works better than others, tournament settings being one of them.

Something I don't want to do is stigmatize NLP in this thread. Peregrine has already said he considers this cheating and that might be a common reaction. I've never seen a rule that prohibits talking to your opponent, and am curious how that would be considered cheating, but that's not the point.

NLP is not new for me, I've had some training in it for facilitation and mediation. It helps me when talking to groups, there are techniques I use to get people to understand where their interests lie and to reduce conflict between stakeholders. The way people behave is somewhat predictable, and there's ways to understand who you are talking to and the best way to interact with them.

Various personalities in the wargaming community use similar techniques, I notice what they're doing from time to time. Not always sure if it's being done consciously or if people are modelling their behavior on that of others, but it would be inaccurate to say the community is free from people possessing talent in this area. When I hear phrases like "Shootsting Phase," "Guns O'Clock," "That's Mathematics," etc, my ears perk up because I'm hearing a meta-language. There's a lot of ways to move with someone once you get them to buy into your way of describing the events occurring on the table. And some of the personalities in the wargaming community are very good at it, not Derren Brown good, but better than people I've seen in other settings.

Instead of assembling a list of call-outs, here's a picture of Miniwargamer Dave at a Tony Robbins seminar:

https://www.facebook.com/miniwargaming/posts/10155359072897322

Watch some of his Banter Batreps. See if you pick up on the meta language he's using and the way opponents buy into it. Watch for those times in videos where an "adjustment" happens, where progress in the game is altered because someone didn't get the rules right. If you go back from that point, you will often hear a suggestion about a value that proved to be incorrect. While I'm certain what's happening is often just an honest mistake, I'm not always sure where the mistake is coming from - not reading the rules or a function of the interaction between the players.

There's nothing malevolent about this, Dave's an entertainer and he's trying to project confidence during a performance. Some of it has to do with his personality. And I really respect the talent he brings to his videos, they are always fun to watch. But there are times it feels like I'm watching a seminar on behavioral conditioning through verbal and physical cues. I see the differences in his interaction with different personality types and sometimes wish I could see the interaction that happened before the game. I've shared clips of his videos - along with those produced by others - with people who are not wargamers as an example of what you can do with language. He's very good at what he does and there are a lot of other people who treat him as a model (didn't he start the whole shootsting phase thing?)

Is that cheating? No, there are no rules being broken. If someone wants to put the effort in to better understand human psychology and use it to become a better player, there's nothing wrong with that. It's a technique, not very different from learning a new way to paint models. And it can be learned by most people, it takes practice to make suggestion work with different situations and personalities.

Would someone try to use psychological techniques at a zero-tolerance tournament to get someone DQed? I can't speak for the ethics of everyone who attends tournaments but I have noticed there are some people who's sense of ethics / enjoyment takes a back seat to winning. Maybe people should just consider the answer to that for themselves. I do think, if you're watching for it, the way certain people act during battle reports, tournament videos, etc. demonstrates some very interesting behavior that could used in a lot of advantageous ways.

Slipspace wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:
But I can think of a dozen other ways to push a player toward DQing themselves and believe, given an incentive via a zero-tolerance policy, players will gravitate towards this kind of skullduggery. That's why people pay money for NLP programs, it works and it's not very hard.

I'd be interested in hearing those dozen methods because I think you're talking rubbish. Stop and think about what you're saying and how ridiculous it sounds. You're talking about using pseudo-hypnotism to get people to cheat in order to have them disqualified. Even if that was possible (which it isn't) that's Batman villain levels of convoluted and crazy. All this to win a game at a 40k tournament. I think the level of risk you're talking about here is sufficiently low to be dismissed out of hand.

I actually agree with you that an immediate DQ for breaking the rules is too harsh in a lot of cases but this line of "reasoning" is really not helping your case.

That's an interesting question. Not sure that's the sort of thing I can actually write down as a list, but I can share a situation I caught myself in during a game recently and explain what I think is going on.

During my opponent's turn, I burped and said I had a personal pizza for lunch. I told him I didn't really like it, it was good but something's wrong with how it comes out. 4 pieces doesn't feel right, you know how a real pizza is cut into 8 slices? Yeah, 4 is definitely not the right number. And how hard would it be to cut a smaller circle into 8 slices? 8 is the proper number.

My opponent was playing Eldar and rolled for Conceal. I asked him what the warp charge value is and he said 8. I told him to look it up.

I don't really know how I'm perceived when I come to a table, but I do think people pick up on my confidence and try to mirror what I am doing. I usually bring a skew list that includes Abaddon and a lot of lascannons that makes people nervous at the start of a game. So conversation is frequent, there's a lot of talk about what's going to happen, and there's usually a lot of chuckling during deployment since I play a very unorthodox game. I tend to make some jokes while talking about the majesty of the Black Legion, which is just me being charming. There are also distractions that happen as part of playing at a FLGS which break people's concentration, especially early-game when there's a lot of models on the board.

Maybe I'm being pessimistic about opponents or overly confident about my ability to influence others, but my personal experience has been that these conditions are favorable to exerting influence. Screwing with people isn't something I particularly enjoy, I'm more a problem solver and risk gets me excited. So I do make a conscious effort to tailor my language in a way that keeps me from telling anyone how to play against me. But there's always those moments that come up where we're talking about what happens next in the game. I have noticed - more often than not - if I offer a direction, it gets followed. Sometimes it's the obvious choice, sometimes it's the high-risk maneuver that can turn a game.

What I think happens is called an interruption, something I do acts as a stimulus to throw off another's train of thought. It's not necessarily deliberate, it's just that my "confidence" or the way I'm telling a story might seem better than my opponent's confusion, so they go with that. It doesn't matter if it's a good idea, or if it's a correct interpretation of the rules, or even if it's legal - what seems to matter most is that I seem confident about it while they are trying to decide what to do. Also, I don't need to actually be talking, it could be a facial expression or a change in posture or reaching for a bottle of water or something else. I realize timing and setting has something to do with it, and it's not something that always works. But I can do a lot with it when it does.

Take from that what you will. I apologize for giving you the impression of a Batman-level villain mind control scenario. I'm really just trying to talk about the ordinary, mundane circumstances of playing a tabletop game most people find themselves in. A lot of behavior is predictable and can be influenced. My observations are mostly based on personal experience, but I do think the techniques I'm discussing could be used to abuse any policy that leads to DQ based on a strict interpretation of the rules. I also think it's likely there are some people who would gravitate in that direction. Who knows whether or not it would work across a series of tournaments.

At the same time, I'm concerned about people like Peregrine, who consider this cheating even though there's no rule about talking with your opponent. I'm aware of other people using NLP techniques in the community and don't want to cause some kind of moral panic over their conduct. In the grand scheme of things, NLP is a good thing.

 Kirasu wrote:
All to get that sweet tens of dollars in prizes that 40k tournaments are known for. I just don't get it, spending a ton of money on models, on travel, time off work in many cases.. all to cheat on a game when 40k has never been very competitive in all honesty (dubious rules, slow playing, arbitrary stuff like painting scores).

This is how I feel about it. I've been to LVO twice now, and outside of having a lot of fun with my friends, and in Vegas, the gaming part of the trip was actually pretty mediocre. Now it is true that I'm not a very competitive person in general, and it would seem that this is true for this game too. But I just don't understand it. From what I've seen over the past 4-5 big events, it looks like a massive unfun nightmare of a time to be anywhere near the top 100 players.

My personal opinion is that a combination of problems make these situations even worse, namely the ridiculously large point pools for armies, the lack of decent pairing support, and the stupidly large number of people allowed to enter the tournament all cause problems. Then, you throw the cheating or manipulation issues into the mix it just gets worse and worse. This is just my opinion, but I really think events need to limit the number of players, and the points or things like the above mentioned issues are just going to get worse, cheating included.

 Kirasu wrote:
All to get that sweet tens of dollars in prizes that 40k tournaments are known for. I just don't get it, spending a ton of money on models, on travel, time off work in many cases.. all to cheat on a game when 40k has never been very competitive in all honesty (dubious rules, slow playing, arbitrary stuff like painting scores).

That's kinda the point of turning a casual toy-thing into "serious competitive sport" (doubly so if most of the time you're only "competing" against people there to have fun and roll dice more often than not and when the playing field isn't fair to begin with, as 40K isn't balanced or intended to be for this kind of exercise).

It's the thing people do who wouldn't in a million years be able to actually compete in anything actually competitive. And thus it hurts those types of egos all the more if they're then not actually dominating this smallest of all imaginable ponds.

Slipspace wrote:
So now we have a bit more information. Assuming the Long War account of events is true, that paints things in a different light and also explains how the issue of a mob mentality might have come about. We've had DJ3 claim that the TO decision that one more issue would see the team kicked out was communicated to the other teams by the TO and we have another team captain and the TO themselves claiming that wasn't communicated.

This is something that gets me: the response from the ATC said that Team Happy came up with the idea that, should one more issue arise, they would voluntarily leave the tournament. One more issue ended up arising (the model conversion issue). Yet the response from Team Happy didn't address that at all, and I feel like if that agreement had not been in place, they would have called out ATC for telling lies. Instead, it really feels to me like a lot of rationalization of the bad stuff while ignoring everything else and blaming a convenient target: the "mob."

So did this not happen? Is Team Happy conveniently forgetting about it? Is TH going back on their agreement? Something smells off.

 Togusa wrote:

 Kirasu wrote:
All to get that sweet tens of dollars in prizes that 40k tournaments are known for. I just don't get it, spending a ton of money on models, on travel, time off work in many cases.. all to cheat on a game when 40k has never been very competitive in all honesty (dubious rules, slow playing, arbitrary stuff like painting scores).

This is how I feel about it. I've been to LVO twice now, and outside of having a lot of fun with my friends, and in Vegas, the gaming part of the trip was actually pretty mediocre. Now it is true that I'm not a very competitive person in general, and it would seem that this is true for this game too. But I just don't understand it. From what I've seen over the past 4-5 big events, it looks like a massive unfun nightmare of a time to be anywhere near the top 100 players.

My personal opinion is that a combination of problems make these situations even worse, namely the ridiculously large point pools for armies, the lack of decent pairing support, and the stupidly large number of people allowed to enter the tournament all cause problems. Then, you throw the cheating or manipulation issues into the mix it just gets worse and worse. This is just my opinion, but I really think events need to limit the number of players, and the points or things like the above mentioned issues are just going to get worse, cheating included.

Yea the size of the events is getting insane. I should clarify, the venue as a whole growing and growing is nothing but a net positive, but that doesn't mean things shouldn't be trying to improve and the particular tournaments at the events seem to be getting to the point where you would think they would just host multiple smaller sized tournaments on separate days, and then the winners of each of those days can play for all the marbles. I get the excitement and appeal of being one player in sea of competitors, but logistically it just seems silly, your never going to play all 500 players, just 5-8 depending on how you progress. Doing it that way would mean the event space needed could be smaller, the staff wouldn't be stretched so thin and the tables and terrain surely would be better too. It's also easier on player, I only need to sign on for a single day tournament unless I end up winning my event, means more time to see other things hang out etc.

This, in my opinion, is the main disconnect between the actual tournament community and the online community that has sprung up around it--and is also a fair explanation of why the online community is so gung-ho over "zero tolerance" policies. They don't see how badly this would affect everyone in the community, because they don't see how frequently these sorts of mistakes occur.

I don't think anyone in this thread is advocating zero tolerance for every little mistake.

We've arrived at a situation where a meaningful number of people are willing to believe that 3 out of 5 of the top teams at ATC knowingly brought illegal lists. As in, five people got together, cooked up lists, decided "I bet we can get away with this under strict scrutiny, and will almost certainly lose the tournament if caught" and decided an extra piece of <10 point war gear was worth it.

Knowingly? No. Intentionally yes. You either intentionally brought an illegal list or you intentionally did not put in enough effort to insure that you didn't, and I don't want to hear how hard it is to write a legal list, that is just bull. Second, your player did not have an illegal list, he used a piece of war gear he did not have at all, and that my friend is straight up cheating.

That seems outrageous to me, but again, people are currently willing to believe it. I don't know if that's just the usual lack of empathy on the internet speaking, a general dislike of tournament players right now, or people just being so absolutely confident that list building is "simple" and therefore mistakes will never be made.

I have a significant amount of empathy, for the people getting screwed and having a bad experience at the event, not for the people causing the issues. You can decide which category your team falls into but the lack of any apology makes me think you will pick the wrong one.

I'm not attempting to be entirely dismissive; I'm just asking Peregrine (and the group of people who share his opinions) to explain that viewpoint further--you genuinely see no wiggle room at all when it comes to illegal lists, every case was intentional, and every player should be banned?

I don't think that an illegal list should, in and of itself, be a ban able offence. what ever needs to be removed to make the list legal should be removed and the person should be removed from being able to place and receive any prize support.

P.S. continually using the argument that you should have gotten away with it because other teams did is not a good look.

 Red Corsair wrote:

 Togusa wrote:

 Kirasu wrote:
All to get that sweet tens of dollars in prizes that 40k tournaments are known for. I just don't get it, spending a ton of money on models, on travel, time off work in many cases.. all to cheat on a game when 40k has never been very competitive in all honesty (dubious rules, slow playing, arbitrary stuff like painting scores).

This is how I feel about it. I've been to LVO twice now, and outside of having a lot of fun with my friends, and in Vegas, the gaming part of the trip was actually pretty mediocre. Now it is true that I'm not a very competitive person in general, and it would seem that this is true for this game too. But I just don't understand it. From what I've seen over the past 4-5 big events, it looks like a massive unfun nightmare of a time to be anywhere near the top 100 players.

My personal opinion is that a combination of problems make these situations even worse, namely the ridiculously large point pools for armies, the lack of decent pairing support, and the stupidly large number of people allowed to enter the tournament all cause problems. Then, you throw the cheating or manipulation issues into the mix it just gets worse and worse. This is just my opinion, but I really think events need to limit the number of players, and the points or things like the above mentioned issues are just going to get worse, cheating included.

Yea the size of the events is getting insane. I should clarify, the venue as a whole growing and growing is nothing but a net positive, but that doesn't mean things shouldn't be trying to improve and the particular tournaments at the events seem to be getting to the point where you would think they would just host multiple smaller sized tournaments on separate days, and then the winners of each of those days can play for all the marbles. I get the excitement and appeal of being one player in sea of competitors, but logistically it just seems silly, your never going to play all 500 players, just 5-8 depending on how you progress. Doing it that way would mean the event space needed could be smaller, the staff wouldn't be stretched so thin and the tables and terrain surely would be better too. It's also easier on player, I only need to sign on for a single day tournament unless I end up winning my event, means more time to see other things hang out etc.

On a positive note, I am hoping that Specialist games can help with this problem.

If the big events have lots of AoS/40K events running over a 3-4 day period, people can pick and choose.

Look what we have:

Shadespire
Killteam
40K
40K: Apoc
30K
AoS
Titanicus

The GT doesn't need 500+ players. Team tournaments, knight jousts, etc. Lots of ways to cut down entry and still have the same number of people at the event!

After listening to the long war podcast it's even more evident that this was straight up cheating. One of the reasons I'm willing to say this is that the long war guys have a good reputation and the reason why is how they started their podcast. One of the members had an illegal list in the AOS event.... He didn't make a post blaming this or that and making every excuse under the sun. Nope, he apologized DQed himself and is putting a self-imposed suspension onto himself. The members of Team Happy should take note that this is how you handle a mistake. Instead, members of this team have made these "mistakes" over and over without fully accepting responsibility. You add this lack of accountability with the number of times it has occurred and I think anyone willing to "take your word" on what happened is being a fool. The members of team happy have done such damage to their reputations that if they want to continue in the competitive scene they should just admit to the cheating and make sure for years to come they are model opponents at every event they attend.

That could have easily been a publicity stunt. Spikey Bits has quite a shady reputation.

 Primark G wrote:
That could have easily been a publicity stunt. Spikey Bits has quite a shady reputation.

While I generally agree with you, it still shows a bit of character. Knowing that the lists will get out on the interwebz eventually, and if there are problems with them they will be found and reported, it's better to admit it and make an apology and do something to try to mitigate. In this case returning the trophy was, I think, appropriate. The self-ban is definitely more of a statement, but that's his to make if he wants.

 Primark G wrote:
That could have easily been a publicity stunt. Spikey Bits has quite a shady reputation.

Played Wobbly Modelers at ATC. Great opponents, no shenanigans of any kind. Believe what you want, but I've been witness to flat out disreputable behavior by members of Team Happy.

 Primark G wrote:
That could have easily been a publicity stunt. Spikey Bits has quite a shady reputation.

"publicity stunt" or not that's how you handle it. I'm going to take the word of someone that owns up to a mistake before those that blame everyone under the sun for what they did wrong. This has also now become a pattern for the members of team happy.

Believe me if it had been almost anyone else I would say yeah.

 Primark G wrote:
That could have easily been a publicity stunt. Spikey Bits has quite a shady reputation.

Holy crap Primark. I normally think pretty highly of you, but let's examine this scenario.

[1 Week before ATC, in the evil lair of Spikeybits]

Rob Baer: I think Team Happy will play a couple illegal lists and almost win the ATC

Spikey Bits Employee: That's suprsiingly specific. How do we stop them? The cabal will never stand for a Team Happy victory.

Rob Baer: I have a plan. I join the AoS tournament. I place first. Then I reveal that my list is 10 points over instead of 10 points under and ban myself.

Spikey Bits: Brillant! It'll almost have an effect on the conversation afterwards. Won't that mean you write fewer post-trournament writeups?

Rob Baer: Yep. It'll cost us both some money I suspect.

Spikey Bits: But It'll hurt Team Happy?

Rob Baer: It'll make their supporters....uncomfortable...

[Evil Laughter in Lizard People]

 ChargerIIC wrote:

 Primark G wrote:
That could have easily been a publicity stunt. Spikey Bits has quite a shady reputation.

Holy crap Primark. I normally think pretty highly of you, but let's examine this scenario.

[1 Week before ATC, in the evil lair of Spikeybits]

Rob Baer: I think Team Happy will play a couple illegal lists and almost win the ATC

Spikey Bits Employee: That's suprsiingly specific. How do we stop them? The cabal will never stand for a Team Happy victory.

Rob Baer: I have a plan. I join the AoS tournament. I place first. Then I reveal that my list is 10 points over instead of 10 points under and ban myself.

Spikey Bits: Brillant! It'll almost have an effect on the conversation afterwards. Won't that mean you write fewer post-trournament writeups?

Rob Baer: Yep. It'll cost us both some money I suspect.

Spikey Bits: But It'll hurt Team Happy?

Rob Baer: It'll make their supporters....uncomfortable...

[Evil Laughter in Lizard People]

^
Exactly this

 ChargerIIC wrote:

 Primark G wrote:
That could have easily been a publicity stunt. Spikey Bits has quite a shady reputation.

Holy crap Primark. I normally think pretty highly of you, but let's examine this scenario.

[1 Week before ATC, in the evil lair of Spikeybits]

Rob Baer: I think Team Happy will play a couple illegal lists and almost win the ATC

Spikey Bits Employee: That's suprsiingly specific. How do we stop them? The cabal will never stand for a Team Happy victory.

Rob Baer: I have a plan. I join the AoS tournament. I place first. Then I reveal that my list is 10 points over instead of 10 points under and ban myself.

Spikey Bits: Brillant! It'll almost have an effect on the conversation afterwards. Won't that mean you write fewer post-trournament writeups?

Rob Baer: Yep. It'll cost us both some money I suspect.

Spikey Bits: But It'll hurt Team Happy?

Rob Baer: It'll make their supporters....uncomfortable...

[Evil Laughter in Lizard People]

Counterpoint - Rob Baer was the one who publicized and to a degree legitimized Florida Man's ludicrous law suit against GW. He displayed no credibility in his coverage of the subject and effectively was rooting for a crazy person because he was (and likely still is) upset that GW has never reached out to him for any play testing or signing him up as an official reviewer. Rob Baer isn't above a good ole fashioned publicity stunt to say the least.

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 ChargerIIC wrote:

 Primark G wrote:
That could have easily been a publicity stunt. Spikey Bits has quite a shady reputation.

Holy crap Primark. I normally think pretty highly of you, but let's examine this scenario.

[1 Week before ATC, in the evil lair of Spikeybits]

Rob Baer: I think Team Happy will play a couple illegal lists and almost win the ATC

Spikey Bits Employee: That's suprsiingly specific. How do we stop them? The cabal will never stand for a Team Happy victory.

Rob Baer: I have a plan. I join the AoS tournament. I place first. Then I reveal that my list is 10 points over instead of 10 points under and ban myself.

Spikey Bits: Brillant! It'll almost have an effect on the conversation afterwards. Won't that mean you write fewer post-trournament writeups?

Rob Baer: Yep. It'll cost us both some money I suspect.

Spikey Bits: But It'll hurt Team Happy?

Rob Baer: It'll make their supporters....uncomfortable...

[Evil Laughter in Lizard People]

Counterpoint - Rob Baer was the one who publicized and to a degree legitimized Florida Man's ludicrous law suit against GW. He displayed no credibility in his coverage of the subject and effectively was rooting for a crazy person because he was (and likely still is) upset that GW has never reached out to him for any play testing or signing him up as an official reviewer. Rob Baer isn't above a good ole fashioned publicity stunt to say the least.

His business relies on his popularity. Ofcourse he isn't above a PR stunt.
That doesnt change the fact that it was the right move to forfeit his price upon discovering the error.

 Ordana wrote:
His business relies on his popularity. Ofcourse he isn't above a PR stunt.
That doesnt change the fact that it was the right move to forfeit his price upon discovering the error.

Yeah but the self flagellation of 'self imposed tournament ban' is fanfare at its finest.

DJ3 wrote:

This, in my opinion, is the main disconnect between the actual tournament community and the online community that has sprung up around it--and is also a fair explanation of why the online community is so gung-ho over "zero tolerance" policies. They don't see how badly this would affect everyone in the community, because they don't see how frequently these sorts of mistakes occur.

Being tolerant of these "mistakes" is what allows them to perpetuate.

If zero tolerance is what it takes for people to take some personal accountability for their "mistakes", then that's what it takes.

Don't make illegal lists. Anyone playing this game has no excuse not to be able to add to 2000 or to 3.

Don't make up new wargear. It's not in your list, why would you use it?

Don't make up new rules. If you don't know, check. If you do know, stop cheating.

"Cheating is easy, so it should be ignored when I do it" is probably the most terrible position you could have taken here.

Rob Baer sold Spikey Bitz a while back, didn't he?

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
His business relies on his popularity. Ofcourse he isn't above a PR stunt.
That doesnt change the fact that it was the right move to forfeit his price upon discovering the error.

Yeah but the self flagellation of 'self imposed tournament ban' is fanfare at its finest.

The dude feels bad and embarrassed. It makes sense he wants to own up to it and make it right. You could hear the emotion in his voice when he talked about it in the podcast.

He also probably doesn't want to feel or sound like a hypocrite for calling for penalties but then being guilty of breaking rules himself.

 rollawaythestone wrote:

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

 Ordana wrote:
His business relies on his popularity. Ofcourse he isn't above a PR stunt.
That doesnt change the fact that it was the right move to forfeit his price upon discovering the error.

Yeah but the self flagellation of 'self imposed tournament ban' is fanfare at its finest.

The dude feels bad and embarrassed. It makes sense he wants to own up to it and make it right. You could hear the emotion in his voice when he talked about it in the podcast.

It's also a hard thing to talk about wanting harder penalties for cheaters, but be like "except me, that was an honest mistake." Is it a bit sensationalist? Maybe. But showing that he's willing to take the penalties he's suggesting (afaik, I haven't followed that closely) is pretty much something he'd have to do at this point or look like a hypocrite.

Like I said, there's other things I don't like about Spkey Bits, but this particular thing isn't one of those.

 Nurglitch wrote:
Rob Baer sold Spikey Bitz a while back, didn't he?

bombshell motherfethers!

Okfortyk wrote:

 Nurglitch wrote:
Rob Baer sold Spikey Bitz a while back, didn't he?

bombshell motherfethers!

Perhaps if it were verifiable?

 Farseer_V2 wrote:

Okfortyk wrote:

 Nurglitch wrote:
Rob Baer sold Spikey Bitz a while back, didn't he?

bombshell motherfethers!

Perhaps if it were verifiable?

Even if it were not true, this would be worth a
This post literally provoked me to sign up and post after lurking these forums for years.

 techsoldaten wrote:
At the same time, I'm concerned about people like Peregrine, who consider this cheating even though there's no rule about talking with your opponent.

There is no rule about talking with your opponent. There is a rule about making false statements about the rules and/or game state. Talk all you want about your favorite pizza choices, or how much you're going to kill those pathetic space marines next turn or whatever. But if you say "3+ to hit" to manipulate your opponent when it's really 4+ to hit then that is cheating, just like if your opponent asks you how many wounds your model has remaining and you answer "4" when the answer is actually 3. I am amazed that we have to have this conversation.

 ChargerIIC wrote:

 Primark G wrote:
That could have easily been a publicity stunt. Spikey Bits has quite a shady reputation.

Holy crap Primark. I normally think pretty highly of you, but let's examine this scenario.

[1 Week before ATC, in the evil lair of Spikeybits]

Rob Baer: I think Team Happy will play a couple illegal lists and almost win the ATC

Spikey Bits Employee: That's suprsiingly specific. How do we stop them? The cabal will never stand for a Team Happy victory.

Rob Baer: I have a plan. I join the AoS tournament. I place first. Then I reveal that my list is 10 points over instead of 10 points under and ban myself.

Spikey Bits: Brillant! It'll almost have an effect on the conversation afterwards. Won't that mean you write fewer post-trournament writeups?

Rob Baer: Yep. It'll cost us both some money I suspect.

Spikey Bits: But It'll hurt Team Happy?

Rob Baer: It'll make their supporters....uncomfortable...

[Evil Laughter in Lizard People]

HA ha, I read this & picture Golem talking to his reflection in the water.

 ChargerIIC wrote:

 Primark G wrote:
That could have easily been a publicity stunt. Spikey Bits has quite a shady reputation.

Holy crap Primark. I normally think pretty highly of you, but let's examine this scenario.

[1 Week before ATC, in the evil lair of Spikeybits]

Rob Baer: I think Team Happy will play a couple illegal lists and almost win the ATC

Spikey Bits Employee: That's suprsiingly specific. How do we stop them? The cabal will never stand for a Team Happy victory.

Rob Baer: I have a plan. I join the AoS tournament. I place first. Then I reveal that my list is 10 points over instead of 10 points under and ban myself.

Spikey Bits: Brillant! It'll almost have an effect on the conversation afterwards. Won't that mean you write fewer post-trournament writeups?

Rob Baer: Yep. It'll cost us both some money I suspect.

Spikey Bits: But It'll hurt Team Happy?

Rob Baer: It'll make their supporters....uncomfortable...

[Evil Laughter in Lizard People]

Sorry to let you down - it is just me being pragmatic. I just don't trust that guy... especially the way he laughs (sounds so fake to me).

DJ3 wrote:
Unfortunately wasn't able to check in on the thread today for personal reasons, but wanted to provide updates on a couple things (as this has mostly devolved into a discussion of how to handle tournament penalties):

I saw somebody asked about the "mixed regiment benefits" issue on a prior page while skimming through. This is absolutely untrue, and we're not even sure where it came from, as we never even heard that rumor on-site mixed in with the other absolutely untrue stuff. This allegation materialized out of thin air in the BoLS article, as far as we can tell.
...

As the person who asked the question I feel a need to clarify. My reading of the BoLS article did not indicate it was your team with the regiment issue. I thought it was another team, having said that I was hoping that some light could be put on that issue as I am curious what (if anything) happened. I know I have made mistakes a few times (adding 6" to a pistol)