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Hello Dakka,

I attended a 40k ITC ranked tournament this weekend. It was a lot of fun however, one of my opponents cheated me quite badly.

The player in question was my round 4 Tau Opponent.

He cheated me on 7 separate things and I asked him to check his codex each time. I was able to catch him on 3 of them:

1) Neuroweb Jammer - Said it gave 1 of his units -1 to hit. It actually picks 1 of my units and makes it minus 1 to hit and that unit has to be within 18". This obs made killing longstrike much harder.
2) Said orbital ion beam hits all units on 4s - actually it hits characters on 5s and he used it to target 2 of my characters.
3) Claimed seeker missiles were AP-4 - they are ap-2, I asked him to check, he looked in a borrowed codex (he did not have any of his own books) and said they were AP-4, he shot them all and was able to kill 2 of my russes. I checked whilst about 2 mins after for myself and said they were AP-2. It was ruled to late to go back but this was a big deal (not arguing with TO decision, I respect the ruling of TO always, just pointing it out)
4) Claimed heavy burst cannons (on his tigersharks, he had no riptides) were AP-2 which made my steel legion trait useless (ignore ap -1), they are AP-1. Again he checked the codex and still said they were AP -2. This was HUGE! I would say this lost me the game. He was struggling to kill my tanks when I had a 5+ save with the heavy burst cannon, if I had had my 3+ it would have made a massive difference.
5) He said longstrike has 14 wounds - he actuallyhas 13 wounds. I did 13 wounds to him turn 1.
6) I asked him if I controlled an objective, he said yes. At the end of the turn he revealed a firewarrior hidden out of LOS which meant i didn't claim it. This lost me the mission bonus point.
​7) Also, he tried to claim fire warriors have a 7" movemenent. This was really imporant as it tried to surround a chimera to stop the guys getting out when he killed it. But fortunately I was able to call him out on that and stop him.

​I would also like to point out that he did not have any of his books, he had to borrow a codex when I called him out.

I contacted the TO with my issues.

As for my own lessons learned , I should have been more vigilant and asked him to show his rules more often, benefit of hindsight. Also I have no issues with the TOs and the event. I feel like they have dealt with issue quite well.
I still think this issue needs to be brought into the public eye I have been contacted by several people who have also had issues with (Fixing his own events to farm ITC points, blatantly cheating nearly every game, poor sportsmen ship).

​Thank you, and may the Emperor Protect!

I saw your post on reddit, and I'll say here what I said there.

Instead of whining, why not just ask your opponent to show you the rules next time? It's your own fault you got cheated. To kick up a fuss after the fact just comes across as petty, especially since you're the one at fault.

Putting aside the issues with this specific person for a moment, I can't understand how anyone who attends a tournament without their rules can be allowed to play in that tournament. If you don't have your own rules, and can't borrow a copy for your sole use during the event you shouldn't be allowed to play. The above incident shows why - every single one of the issues above except point 6 could be cleared up by looking at the Codex. Having said that, yes, you should have asked him to show you the rules, not just tell you, though this is also a question of gamer etiquette. If a rule query comes up and the answer favours me I will always show my opponent the relevant rule. It's just good practice to do so.

Specifics of this individual aside this highlights why tournaments should have a rule that all players attending bring the full rules for their army at the very least. It's not out of the question to expect players to bring the Battletome/Codex for their army and any related FAQ printouts from GW and one would expect all of them to own access to such material if they are at a stage where they can afford to field a tournament capable army (ergo several thousand points of models).

At the very least this prevents casual cheating by mistaken values being stated as it puts on the table all the values for both sides from the official information source. IT also escalates situations where people overtly change what is written to suit them on the hope that the other player doesn't check the codex themselves. And by escalates I mean makes cheating far more apparent.



And if its not cheating it shows significant learning difficulties in an individual who as such might not be well suited to the tournament gaming environment.

Slipspace wrote:
Putting aside the issues with this specific person for a moment, I can't understand how anyone who attends a tournament without their rules can be allowed to play in that tournament. If you don't have your own rules, and can't borrow a copy for your sole use during the event you shouldn't be allowed to play. The above incident shows why - every single one of the issues above except point 6 could be cleared up by looking at the Codex. Having said that, yes, you should have asked him to show you the rules, not just tell you, though this is also a question of gamer etiquette. If a rule query comes up and the answer favours me I will always show my opponent the relevant rule. It's just good practice to do so.

Problem though is that if you ask every single rule and stat every time good luck getting more than 2 turns.

Games(not just 40k) tends to work on basic assumption of trust.

tneva82 wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
Putting aside the issues with this specific person for a moment, I can't understand how anyone who attends a tournament without their rules can be allowed to play in that tournament. If you don't have your own rules, and can't borrow a copy for your sole use during the event you shouldn't be allowed to play. The above incident shows why - every single one of the issues above except point 6 could be cleared up by looking at the Codex. Having said that, yes, you should have asked him to show you the rules, not just tell you, though this is also a question of gamer etiquette. If a rule query comes up and the answer favours me I will always show my opponent the relevant rule. It's just good practice to do so.

Problem though is that if you ask every single rule and stat every time good luck getting more than 2 turns.

Games(not just 40k) tends to work on basic assumption of trust.

This is very true, asking someone to check in their codex normally goes with the assumption that the person will check and be honest with what they report from the codex; thus allowing the game to continue without adding in the extra step of showing the information. It helps speed things up just a little and does run on the general assumption that most players are honest - and generally they are and that's why it works.

This is where tournament policies can come into play; you can make it a policy/rule to require all players bring all rule material for their army to the event; you can also make it that any challenge to a rule must not only be met with checking the codex/rules but also showing your opponent the relevant segment of the rules. Sure not everyone would do the latter, but it would at least set it as a formal rule for the event - that in itself can be a good fallback in a game where many are not highly socially gifted* and where challenging their opponent to "prove" in the book might be more than they feel confident to do; having it in the tournament rules adds a layer of formal protection


*and even the socially competent can feel out of water when at an event that they might have travelled outside of their normal gaming circle to attend. And as such are playing total strangers.

No but really. A player muddies the perceptions of 40k tournament players and you blame the guy who was decent enough to take another person's word for it while looking him directly in the eye. As a fellow decent human if someone looks me directly in the eye and says they're not lying and I'm not sure either way I have to go with it because 1. They're just scum and they'll be punished in some way later on. 2. If i did check every time and turned out to be wrong I'd look like a jerk who was slow playing.

tneva82 wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
Putting aside the issues with this specific person for a moment, I can't understand how anyone who attends a tournament without their rules can be allowed to play in that tournament. If you don't have your own rules, and can't borrow a copy for your sole use during the event you shouldn't be allowed to play. The above incident shows why - every single one of the issues above except point 6 could be cleared up by looking at the Codex. Having said that, yes, you should have asked him to show you the rules, not just tell you, though this is also a question of gamer etiquette. If a rule query comes up and the answer favours me I will always show my opponent the relevant rule. It's just good practice to do so.

Problem though is that if you ask every single rule and stat every time good luck getting more than 2 turns.

Games(not just 40k) tends to work on basic assumption of trust.

Agreed, you can't stop and ask about every single rule or stat. But the OP mentioned asking the opponent to check a couple of things and not then verifying it themselves which seems odd. I assume they were at least suspicious of the facts in order to ask the question. Might just be hindsight though. Difficult to say without being there at the time and seeing how the conversations went.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
I saw your post on reddit, and I'll say here what I said there.

Instead of whining, why not just ask your opponent to show you the rules next time? It's your own fault you got cheated. To kick up a fuss after the fact just comes across as petty, especially since you're the one at fault.

LOLWUT?

I... I have no words. I've heard of blaming the victim but this is ridiculous.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
I saw your post on reddit, and I'll say here what I said there.

Instead of whining, why not just ask your opponent to show you the rules next time? It's your own fault you got cheated. To kick up a fuss after the fact just comes across as petty, especially since you're the one at fault.

LOLWUT?

I... I have no words. I've heard of blaming the victim but this is ridiculous.

This is hardly victim blaming. If I went to light a barbecue, poured 30 litres of kerosene on it, lit it, got burned, then blamed the person who sold me the kerosene, who is at fault? At some point there needs to be some personal responsibility. Not asking for your opponent to show you the rules he is claiming is true, then finding out you are being cheated, is one of those instances where, yes it is the "victims" fault.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Not asking for your opponent to show you the rules he is claiming is true, then finding out you are being cheated, is one of those instances where, yes it is the "victims" fault.

Except it isn't at all.
It's a basic expectation of trust in a complex game where most of us are used to looking up a stat or checking the values for an attack or unit. We do it all time, heck some people play with cards on the table or a cheat sheet with their unit stats written out because its not memorized. And most of the time the opponent doesn't need to look at that sheet for the match. If your opponent says their model has 5 wounds and just checked their codex for the fact most people would accept it as true.

The way you word it people would have to bring two codex for their army to every game; one for them and one for their opponent ot reference for the entire match.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
I saw your post on reddit, and I'll say here what I said there.

Instead of whining, why not just ask your opponent to show you the rules next time? It's your own fault you got cheated. To kick up a fuss after the fact just comes across as petty, especially since you're the one at fault.

LOLWUT?

I... I have no words. I've heard of blaming the victim but this is ridiculous.

This is hardly victim blaming. If I went to light a barbecue, poured 30 litres of kerosene on it, lit it, got burned, then blamed the person who sold me the kerosene, who is at fault? At some point there needs to be some personal responsibility. Not asking for your opponent to show you the rules he is claiming is true, then finding out you are being cheated, is one of those instances where, yes it is the "victims" fault.

Now I see why you're so bitter, your BBQs suck.

Also on the packet of thr kerosene there is a bunch of kegal stuff and warnings to stop you from doing this. There isn't any signs or training guides at a 40k tournament telling you you must be at inquisitor level suspicion with every player. Everyone lies all thentime, be bad humans!

Baconcatbug, I'm not gonna be a dork like the others and sass you into the ground, but I don't agree with your statement.

That being said, it's ridiculous that this Tau player was even allowed to play without bringing his codex or at least the PDF on a tablet. After the first rules breaking, i'd be busting that PDF out MYSELF every time he did an attack just to make sure.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
I saw your post on reddit, and I'll say here what I said there.

Instead of whining, why not just ask your opponent to show you the rules next time? It's your own fault you got cheated. To kick up a fuss after the fact just comes across as petty, especially since you're the one at fault.

LOLWUT?

I... I have no words. I've heard of blaming the victim but this is ridiculous.

This is hardly victim blaming. If I went to light a barbecue, poured 30 litres of kerosene on it, lit it, got burned, then blamed the person who sold me the kerosene, who is at fault? At some point there needs to be some personal responsibility. Not asking for your opponent to show you the rules he is claiming is true, then finding out you are being cheated, is one of those instances where, yes it is the "victims" fault.

Sure, the guy who got cheated could have been more forceful and asked to see the rules himself. That doesn't stop the cheater being the one at fault. You can tell he's at fault because he's cheating. It's not difficult to figure out.

Also "this is hardly victim blaming". Really? You literally say "It's your own fault you got cheated".

Did I say the cheater was blameless? No, because he isn't. However, it's trivial to not be cheated, and the fact the OP didn't do so is HIS fault, not the cheaters. Every single one of his points would have been avoided if he had taken on the tiniest shred of personal responsibility.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
I saw your post on reddit, and I'll say here what I said there.

Instead of whining, why not just ask your opponent to show you the rules next time? It's your own fault you got cheated. To kick up a fuss after the fact just comes across as petty, especially since you're the one at fault.

LOLWUT?

I... I have no words. I've heard of blaming the victim but this is ridiculous.

This is hardly victim blaming. If I went to light a barbecue, poured 30 litres of kerosene on it, lit it, got burned, then blamed the person who sold me the kerosene, who is at fault? At some point there needs to be some personal responsibility. Not asking for your opponent to show you the rules he is claiming is true, then finding out you are being cheated, is one of those instances where, yes it is the "victims" fault.

That... isn't very similar to asking an opponent if they're sure of a rule and them lying to you. Your comparison would be better as someone asks for someone to light their barbecue but the person uses 30 litres on purpose and the victim gets burned. Technically their fault but not to the level where as they're being wheeled into hospital you go "Tut tut, you should've checked."

 vaklor4 wrote:
Baconcatbug, I'm not gonna be a dork like the others and sass you into the ground, but I don't agree with your statement.

That being said, it's ridiculous that this Tau player was even allowed to play without bringing his codex or at least the PDF on a tablet. After the first rules breaking, i'd be busting that PDF out MYSELF every time he did an attack just to make sure.

Dude, you're on dakkadakka. You're way past being a dork.

I guess it's been a while since Доверяй, но проверяй was in the public eye. "Trust, but verify" is something everyone should take to heart in all walks of life.

I always look over the submitted lists at a tourney and if i don't know roughly what a unit has/does i'll read up on it.

mind you i only go to smaller 20-40 person events.

Not bringing your books to an event imo is instant disqualification.

This is one of the reason I hope that they make Datasheets a la Age of Sigmar. Playing Age of Sigmar and using my own units it is very handy to just hand your opponent the datasheet for the army while you roll for the unit. As good as a codex it is a bit of a timesink to leaf through the codex finding the right unit, especially since most armies are perhaps only using about 20-30% of the listed units.

I'll also echo some of the other posters' sentiment. This guy should not have been allowed to play codex less.

 lolman1c wrote:

 vaklor4 wrote:
Baconcatbug, I'm not gonna be a dork like the others and sass you into the ground, but I don't agree with your statement.

That being said, it's ridiculous that this Tau player was even allowed to play without bringing his codex or at least the PDF on a tablet. After the first rules breaking, i'd be busting that PDF out MYSELF every time he did an attack just to make sure.

Dude, you're on dakkadakka. You're way past being a dork.

Nah, we're all /nerds/. But some of the people around here are total dorks.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
I guess it's been a while since Доверяй, но проверяй was in the public eye. "Trust, but verify" is something everyone should take to heart in all walks of life.

Not the best idea to quote russia for reasonable ideologies
That's not trusting actually trusting them though, it's close but is just on the level where you check everything including things that for all you know could be extremely reasonable (14 wound longstrike instead of 13)

 BaconCatBug wrote:
I guess it's been a while since Доверяй, но проверяй was in the public eye. "Trust, but verify" is something everyone should take to heart in all walks of life.

But where does that end? If I'm not too familiar with an army I can't ask about every weapon without slowing the game down. With Tau especially, a player who hasn't played against them before will be confronted with a whole range of weird weapons with wide-ranging stats that don't follow much of a pattern. Then you have the various ways Tau can buff their weapons, from suit systems to markerlights. At some point you have to take what your opponent says at face value and hope they aren't a douche. The Seeker Missile thing is a good example. Plenty of one-shot weapons have good AP so if you're not familiar with the weapon and your opponent tells you it's AP-4 that doesn't come across as unbelievable.

Just watched the video. It seems that the fact he had to borrow the codex (but only when he needed it as it seems (i might be wrong) he was boring fro m another table also playing) makes the checking worse. On some of the stuff he would have had to have not only disrupted his game but may have also have had to disrupt another game. Don't know about you guys but the majority of 40k players are unlikely to be confrontational (we paint and play with plastic toys). The majority of us, I hope, are good people in real life. If I had that much pressure on me and on a time limit I'd have likely made the decision to acdept what he said (especially because I do not play tau) and move on. Right now we need to focus on the justice for the cheater then we can use this event as an example for what needs to be done at later dates.

Slipspace wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
I guess it's been a while since Доверяй, но проверяй was in the public eye. "Trust, but verify" is something everyone should take to heart in all walks of life.

But where does that end? If I'm not too familiar with an army I can't ask about every weapon without slowing the game down. With Tau especially, a player who hasn't played against them before will be confronted with a whole range of weird weapons with wide-ranging stats that don't follow much of a pattern. Then you have the various ways Tau can buff their weapons, from suit systems to markerlights. At some point you have to take what your opponent says at face value and hope they aren't a douche. The Seeker Missile thing is a good example. Plenty of one-shot weapons have good AP so if you're not familiar with the weapon and your opponent tells you it's AP-4 that doesn't come across as unbelievable.

You only have to ask once per game? If he was asking every single time he fired a Pulse Rifle what the stats were, then I could see the problem. Asking once what a Seeker Missile stats are, and verifying that it's true does not slow down the game.

Just had a quick read through and while I fully believe you should be completly up-to-date and competent with what your army does, the examples you've given do give the impression that it may not have been deliberate.

Claimed seeker missiles were AP-4 - they are ap-2, I asked him to check, he looked in a borrowed codex (he did not have any of his own books) and said they were AP-4

He may have got mixed up with Destroyer Missiles.

Claimed heavy burst cannons (on his tigersharks, he had no riptides) were AP-2 which made my steel legion trait useless (ignore ap -1), they are AP-1.

Would the Advanced Targeting System possibly be affecting this?

Also, he tried to claim fire warriors have a 7" movemenent.

Pathfinders actually do have a 7" movement, there may have been confusion there.


Now I'm not making up excuses for him; like I said you should be fully aware of what your army does or have a Codex/Index on hand in case you're unsure, but the point I do make is that perhaps this is less deliberate cheating and more the mistakes of someone who needs to learn the rules more.

The important thing here is that from how OP presented it he was suspicious of the stats his opponent was giving him. If a bunch of things keep seeming off you should check for yourself. Once you've checked and they're right, probably give them the benefit of the doubt for the rest of the game. If they were wrong, don't straight up assume they're doing it maliciously to intentionally cheat but check next time something else seems off. If they get several things wrong then there's a real problem. "Trust but verify" doesn't mean be polite but assume every word that comes out of their mouth is a lie. It means giving them the benefit of the doubt that they're not cheating, but maybe they remembered something wrong, so check. That way you catch cheating but you also know for the future what the book says. If someone says the turned the gas off it doesn't hurt to take two seconds to check. If it's still on it doesn't mean they're trying to burn down your house, they probably genuinely thought they did turn it off.

On the matter of showing up a tournament without your rules that is unacceptable. It should be a requirement of entry to have the relevant rules for your models on hand when you sign up. Expecting the average person to have all their units stats and rules memorised verbatim is insanity. If you show up without your rules in either hardcopy or digital you should be denied entry and have any fees paid in advance refunded.

Okay Bacon, let's analyse your orginal comment in detail to see where I think you went wrong:
You typed:

I saw your post on reddit, and I'll say here what I said there.

Instead of whining, why not just ask your opponent to show you the rules next time? It's your own fault you got cheated. To kick up a fuss after the fact just comes across as petty, especially since you're the one at fault.

Now, you must really believe in this comment as you put in the effort to say 'I saw your post on reddit, and I'll say here what I said there'. This shows you are doubling down on the belief that everything you said is, in your opinion, 100% true.

Moreover, let's get to the heart of the comment:
1. 'Instead of whining': I don't see him as whining like you say. I see him as suspecting a man of cheating, going away to research/gather evidence for the cheating, reportingthe guy as a cheater to the tournament boards and calling the guy out so others can be aware thathe might cheat.

2.'It's your own fault you got cheated': this is factually wrong. Firstly, he didn't mind control the man into cheating. Secondly, even if he did call him out earlier he still got cheated so it dtill wouldn't be his fault. Finally, Mordian did make a mistake (he even says this in his video) but it is not his fault he got cheated, it is the cheaters fault.


3. 'to kick up a fuss after the fact just comes across as petty': going over what already was said. Mordian admits it's a mistake he didn't call him out. But he goes over how he saw him physically check the codex and reassure him that there was no cheating so he believed them (those are his rules, he asks for a double check then moves on and wouldn't expeft someone to just blatantly lie to his face). But he appears to be making this video not to kick up a fuss or drama, he stays emotionless throughout the video, but to highlight the cheater to others so they do not make a similar mistake and just don't ven play him. Nobody but you sees him as petty, maybe he is upset someone in the community would be such a douche, but we see him as a hero for cleaning up the community.

4.'you're the one at fault'. Again, no... no he is not the one at fault. The only way he could be at fault is if he put a gun to the other guys head and told him to cheat. The only way he could ever avoid cheating is if he just didn't play 40k.

When I worked as a sales man we had a policy. Never confront a potential thief or liar. If they're desperate or evil enough to steal valuable jewellery then they're likely to have a plan if it goes wrong and that plan always end up with you losing more than just a ring. The best thing to do is let them leave the shop and deal with the event afterwards. I remember people would take things behind my back so obviously and struggle to keep a straight face... they're bad people. I was not at blame for them stealing and lying. One time one of my colleagues tried to stop the guy and ended up with a slash across his for arm and a night in A&E. It's honestly not worth all the effort and discomfort. Mordian did the right thing and called this guy out after the fact so multiple people can avoid him.

To the OP, you may want to remove the guys name your shaming. By all means explain what happened but I think naming and shaming goes against forum rules.

 Huron black heart wrote:
To the OP, you may want to remove the guys name your shaming. By all means explain what happened but I think naming and shaming goes against forum rules.

If the mods request I remove it, I will do without any issue.