Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I’ve encountered a few cheats in 40k, some on them intentional, some of them not.

1: Dice Cheater - had a guy in my gaming group change some of his dice to have 6’s on multiple sides. He got kicked out and never came back.

2: Army List Cheater - had a guy at a tournament refuse to give me an army list because ‘he only had one copy and he gave it to the TO’. He then proceeded to stack a ton of extra models on his sideboard that he didn’t have in his army list to fake me out.

3: The Protractor - hated having to bring a protractor to measure the angle of scatter die, glad this is gone.

4: Rules Lawyers/Staller - had someone purposefully make ridiculous rules claims then ask for a judge to stall the game. They would win turn 4/5 but lose turn 6/7 so they stalled.

5: Modelling for Advantage - when all your models are prone or kneeling you know something is wrong.

Have you ever encountered any cheaters??

Yeah, but infrequently. I have a limited crowd I play with, but one of our players has let me just say...a creative... way of moving his models. He always seems to get an extra inch or so when he needs it.

One time he fell short of a charge even after already getting an extra 4 inches or so from deployment (after remeasuring) and movement. He asked if I'd give that to him. Seriously? Another player said he noticed him misstating his die rolls on occasion as well. He's gotten better, mainly due to others keeping a sharper eye on him.

 amanita wrote:
Yeah, but infrequently. I have a limited crowd I play with, but one of our players has let me just say...a creative... way of moving his models. He always seems to get an extra inch or so when he needs it.

One time he fell short of a charge even after already getting an extra 4 inches or so from deployment (after remeasuring) and movement. He asked if I'd give that to him. Seriously? Another player said he noticed him misstating his die rolls on occasion as well. He's gotten better, mainly due to others keeping a sharper eye on him.

I’ve had this as well! I ended up putting my finger down at the end of the measuring tape and leaving it there every time they moved.

One cheater, just in one game. I was new to the FLGS. I discovered why other people didn't play against this person, just from one game.

Dice Cheating. Would roll dice obscured behind terrain pieces and quickly scoop them.

Army List cheating? We were playing 8th edition Warhammer 40k. He was using the 7th Edition rules for his army... However, I didn't notice until afterwards when I thought some of the rules were strange, and I didn't think to check his book.

I took pity, because I noticed nobody played against them, and I very quickly found out why.

Yes, myself for example. For the longest time in 8th ed, I was running a rhino in a full terminator+dreadnought army, to fill out the points. I was doing that without a power armoured unit in the army. On top of that I was using it the way the thing was modeled, so with two hull mounted stormbolters and a dozerblade. No one corrected me on the fact that GK rhinos can only have 1 storm bolter.

Once in 8th I mentioned I had a Knight in my list to an eldar player but could switch it out just to be friendly to which the eldar player said "yeah thats too much for my list to handle" then proceeded to drop plenty of anti tank on the field.

Then in 9th there was the Death Guard player who cried about the terrain we were using, after he set it up, and demanded we re keyword it so my shooty imperial fist army got no cover after deployment.

And more recently there was a nid player who just happened to always get +3 mortal wounds for every psykic power he cast regardless of how far away units were.

I don't have time to argue rules all game so I just let things play out how they will, generally uninvested, as I consider those games null and void anyway. Needless to say I don't play those people again and they generally disappear slowly after anyway. Funny how that works huh.

in tournaments yes, don't really count casual games

1st: 40k, flat out illegal list due to some "creative" interpretations and depending on knowing the TO didn't have the forgeworld books and TFG had a "summary". he got kicked out the day after I went out in an elimination round - wasn't that fussed to be honest as was never going to win anyway

2nd: flames of War, "creative" measurement so a unit that had a flat maximum assault range of 24" by the second turn mysteriously managed to move closer to 28" (I had deployed back from the front) - significant whinging to the TO when I called them over after he flat out refused to back down, accused me of cheating by not deploying as far forward as I could - was awarded the game as a win

have had various TFG moments but those are the most outright direct cheating

Last year I was at a tournament at a friendly LGS. Just a 3 game, one day tourney. I brought orks and this was during the height of Tau/Nids/Harlies power. I got first turn on the Tau player, WAAAGH'd, got 2 trukk boy Meganobz into his lines (this was when you could take more than 1). First, he tried to say that his suits had a 5+++ from Sense of Stone, but I reminded him that it was done on his turn, not mine. Then he used the Grav Inhibitor Field relic to kill some of my nobz with his Onager Gauntlet. I had some familiarity with Tau at that point, but I didn't know that relic was a specific Sept relic and he was Farsight Enclaves. I actually specifically asked him to check in his book to read the rules of the relic to confirm that it did what he said it did and he put on a show of opening it and reading it outloud, excluding the fact it was from another sept. I accept that I should have read the book myself alongside him, but I don't want to outright call the guy a liar and I had already corrected him on the Sense of Stone, so I felt like I was already being a rules lawyer.

It killed a few of my models and ruined my plans a bit. I lost the game in the end. The game wasn't even close. I was getting walloped the whole time and there were other things he did like give his Kroot hounds a 5+ save from ork pistols and stuff.

My buddy was the TO and an avid Tau player and when I told him what happened, he was like "Wait, that guy used THAT relic? He can't use that relic, it isn't even part of the same sept." He was banned from playing in future tournaments by my buddy.

leopard wrote:
in tournaments yes, don't really count casual games

1st: 40k, flat out illegal list due to some "creative" interpretations and depending on knowing the TO didn't have the forgeworld books and TFG had a "summary". he got kicked out the day after I went out in an elimination round - wasn't that fussed to be honest as was never going to win anyway

2nd: flames of War, "creative" measurement so a unit that had a flat maximum assault range of 24" by the second turn mysteriously managed to move closer to 28" (I had deployed back from the front) - significant whinging to the TO when I called them over after he flat out refused to back down, accused me of cheating by not deploying as far forward as I could - was awarded the game as a win

have had various TFG moments but those are the most outright direct cheating

I’m really glad they got rid of FW army lists for the most part. I swear 80% of people who took those lists were creatively interpreting things.

Yes, many times. Locally, there was one notorious cheater, named Russell* who made it a habit to measure his movement front-to-back (i.e. he'd put his tape measure/measuring stick in contact with the front of the models base, and then move his model so that the rear of the base was in contact with the measure (rather than measuring his movement to the front of the base like you're supposed to), thus increasing his movement ranges by the size of the models base. This was especially pronounced with vehicles, you could easily pick up an extra 4-6" of movement on a Rhinos and landraiders, etc. by doing it that way. He was very well aware that it was against the rules and we reminded him regularly about it, but he'd continue doing it anyway and then insist he did no such thing when he was caught doing it and that we were lying, etc. Needless to say he wasn't very popular. Even now, 20 or so years later, we still refer to this phenomena as "Russellportation". Even people who have never met Russell refer to the act of moving your models in that manner as such.

That was just the tip of the iceberg with this guy, but also his most consistent and common cheat. He would regularly engage in various dice shenanigans, claim hits were misses, claim dice were cocked and pick them up and re-roll them before you could even see to make sure it actually was cocked, would claim that your models had no line of sight to his model right after he made attacks with his model against your model (or would attempt to attack with his model against your model right after telling you there was no line of sight between them on your turn), making up stats (ie his units have a higher toughness than they should, or their guns have a better strength/ap than they actually do), making up rules (his basilisks had a magic rule that made them completely untargetable unless you were within 12" of them when they fired their guns) and just general shenanians.

*names unchanged to implicate the guilty.

 Top5King wrote:

leopard wrote:
in tournaments yes, don't really count casual games

1st: 40k, flat out illegal list due to some "creative" interpretations and depending on knowing the TO didn't have the forgeworld books and TFG had a "summary". he got kicked out the day after I went out in an elimination round - wasn't that fussed to be honest as was never going to win anyway

2nd: flames of War, "creative" measurement so a unit that had a flat maximum assault range of 24" by the second turn mysteriously managed to move closer to 28" (I had deployed back from the front) - significant whinging to the TO when I called them over after he flat out refused to back down, accused me of cheating by not deploying as far forward as I could - was awarded the game as a win

have had various TFG moments but those are the most outright direct cheating

I’m really glad they got rid of FW army lists for the most part. I swear 80% of people who took those lists were creatively interpreting things.

Why are you blaming the army lists for people being pieces of gak?

Of course, this is why tournaments should require you to bring first party rules resources (inc. FAQ/errata) with you to an event, so things can be verified on-site.

Karol wrote:
Yes, myself for example. For the longest time in 8th ed, I was running a rhino in a full terminator+dreadnought army, to fill out the points. I was doing that without a power armoured unit in the army. On top of that I was using it the way the thing was modeled, so with two hull mounted stormbolters and a dozerblade. No one corrected me on the fact that GK rhinos can only have 1 storm bolter.

There's a difference between genuinely not knowing that you mistook a rule and actively cheating.

I find a lot of people are really bad at measuring movement distances. I dunno if they're cheating or just super casual about measuring, but a bunch of times I've had to insist guys move their minis back because they're pulling off mathematically impossible charges. Like, no, you don't get to move and charge 28" on turn one, thank you very much.

But who am I kidding, they're cheating. You don't build an uber melee list and then suddenly become super casual about measuring movement, the thing that wins you your games.

People who mix dice so some have logos on the 1 and others the 6 is a pet peeve of mine...

 Dysartes wrote:
Of course, this is why tournaments should require you to bring first party rules resources (inc. FAQ/errata) with you to an event, so things can be verified on-site.

There are reasons we check lists in advance! (Decurion style lists were a right PITA - AdMech War Convocation especially!)

I've yet to have a knock down drag out fight about someone cheating.

I've observed plenty of cheating.

In both casual and tournament games if I'm winning I tend to allow the cheating as it makes the final few turns more of a challenge.

In casual games I tend to always let it slide. The most I will do is try to warn them that they might have a problem if they go to a tournament and try to pull that kind of thing.

In tournament games I have a few "method"s that prevent a lot of rules based cheating. But, I still have an issue with some kinds of cheating, such as rolling behind scenery. I actually kind of think of preventing cheating as a 40k skill that I can work on myself to improve at.

Have seen plenty of cheating occur in other games, but it's at the level where it could legitimately be a mistake on their part. The main case I've been cheated against was in a small 1-day tournament at the FLGS. Guy turns up with the typical Loyal 32 + Raven Castellans, proceeds to annihilate everyone in terms of kills and points.

He played me in the last game and I notice a bit of a discrepancy in his movements. He seemed to be using BCB-levels of rules-lawyering to ensure his Guardsmen have a huge movement every turn, or something like that. The TO agreed in my case and docked him that game's points, but he still won as he knocked up so many points in the previous games.

In my mind, he fit into two categories:

1. The Swamper: He tried to swamp you with so many rules and interactions; "It says in this book, and if you compare it with the main rulebook and backed up by the 'Nid FAQ here...and here...this datasheet would prevent this but this other FAQ says this...
2. The Foreigner: His English was excellent...except when I tried to put my argument forward, suddenly he's a stranger in another country.

Now I don't remember the details 100%, it was years ago (maybe even in 7th), but the thing that pissed me off was a few weeks later while I'm at work, he randomly adds me as a friend on Facebook and sent a good couple of paragraphs of "I did some more reading and these other tidbits prove I was right and you were wrong...". Didn't even bother replying.

Multiple times over the years, both myself and others.

In 4th edition I'd frequently try to declare charges after units had fired rapid fire / heavy weapons. I started playing early 3rd edition, and would always forget that rule had changed.

I had one guy tell me my SM captain died in a Death or Glory attempt where I'd rolled a Crew Stunned result. I was skeptical but didn't look it up until after the game, where it clearly said he should've survived. The guy wasn't trying to cheat; he genuinely thought stunned was still a death.

I remember running something like six individual Land Speeder Storms back in 3rd edition. It's a bit fuzzy, but IIRC the Master of the Ravenwing in Landspeeder (one of the HQ's I'd take) altered the way you could take various units. I believe it allowed you to take Landspeeders (of various types) in your HS & FA slots, but I also think it required you to run a very specific Ravenwing Army (so all your troops had to be bikes, no strandard infantry, which I definitely wasn't doing). I didn't realize that last part until well after 3rd edition had ended and the 4th ed Dark Angels codex came out, when I was looking through it and comparing it vs the old supplement.

As far as I know I've never played against someone who was intentionally cheating, and while I've never intentionally misrepresented rules, I've absolutely played them wrong without realizing it.

 JNAProductions wrote:

Karol wrote:
Yes, myself for example. For the longest time in 8th ed, I was running a rhino in a full terminator+dreadnought army, to fill out the points. I was doing that without a power armoured unit in the army. On top of that I was using it the way the thing was modeled, so with two hull mounted stormbolters and a dozerblade. No one corrected me on the fact that GK rhinos can only have 1 storm bolter.

There's a difference between genuinely not knowing that you mistook a rule and actively cheating.

Yep. Rule mistake accidentally isn't cheating. Cheating is playing against the rules intentionally.

This is why while i have played against many guys who i realized later made mistake i don't consider cheaters. I have no proof they were intentional. Hell i know i make mistakes. I just recently with newest aos army had thought ability worked vs infantry and forgot it was keyed to wound characteristic instead. Luckily don't think it mattered due to my bad dice rolling and his good ones.

Next game made double sure to check those infantry models i wasn't sure of weren't 3w or more

Too many rules(especially if you play 16 armies) to keep always straight. Reason i often reread warscrolls during opponent turn.

This is why i'm cautious with cheating accusations.

I have even managed to cheat with army list by accident(and gw app not being clearest). Luckily i cheated by spending points to gain nothing. Lol. (i gave upgrade that this character can't take that changes ws and attacks to set value. Which happens to match stats of character i gave it in first place. Not +1 ws and a. Ws2+ and a5).

Well, caught, no, I barely have a grasp on the rules so I generally just accept what I'm told (looking forward to the reset of 10th to get in on the ground floor along with everyone else). But this was this one guy who, let me put it this way, left me very confused when I went and looked up the relevant rules later, and they didn't seem to have much bearing on what he'd told me I had to roll to hit his squads in cover. I mean I'll generally think the best of folks, and ruinous gods know there's enough special case rules floating around that I could easily have missed one (I forget special rules on my own army - even after I've coloured them in with highlighter on the Battlescribe printout to remind myself), but same game we had to go to the Codex to convince him that Let The Galaxy Burn applied to all Chaos legions, not just his Black Legion, so...

That said I've royally screwed over opponents a couple of times through sheer ignorance - this one time I tried having a daemon detachment in my EC army I warp-striked them in at the beginning of the movement phase, then moved them, then charged them. I don't feel too bad about that since I still lost on VPs (I always lose on VPs). but it was pretty egregious having my Keeper of Secrets cover like 20" in one go to assault the poor guy's Grey Knight power loader.

 Top5King wrote:
1: Dice Cheater - had a guy in my gaming group change some of his dice to have 6’s on multiple sides. He got kicked out and never came back.

That's pretty ballsy.

Was it a 6 on every side, or was it sixes on half the sides with other numbers to make things look more legit?

beast_gts wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
Of course, this is why tournaments should require you to bring first party rules resources (inc. FAQ/errata) with you to an event, so things can be verified on-site.

There are reasons we check lists in advance! (Decurion style lists were a right PITA - AdMech War Convocation especially!)

Not arguing against pre-event verification to make sure a list is legal - though, as we've seen reported during 8th and 9th, that isn't infallible - but at least if the first party sources are there while the game is going on, you can ask to check what is actually in there if it is an army you're less familiar with (which FW-based armies likely are/were for a lot of people).

 JNAProductions wrote:

Karol wrote:
Yes, myself for example. For the longest time in 8th ed, I was running a rhino in a full terminator+dreadnought army, to fill out the points. I was doing that without a power armoured unit in the army. On top of that I was using it the way the thing was modeled, so with two hull mounted stormbolters and a dozerblade. No one corrected me on the fact that GK rhinos can only have 1 storm bolter.

There's a difference between genuinely not knowing that you mistook a rule and actively cheating.

I would say for the firt 3-6 months yes. After that it is cheating. It is like finding out in, this did not happen to me as the doer, after at least 3 years of sports school and in deed you can not jab someone in the eye in a sanction match without repercussions, and the lack of knowladge about it , true or pretended, doesn't really matter to your opponent or judges. Same with not being caught doing it the previous few years.

Although I do agree that intent , even if it shouldn't have too big of an impact on cheating judgment, does matter. There is a difference between shaking hands with a dude while wearing cream with paracetamol you know he is allergic too and lets say using smoke launchers on a primaris vehicles that doesn't have them, when every other one has. I think the worse stuff is not the cheating per se, but a combination of not calling it out , for what ever reasons, and the cheating not being made public. This creates those situations when X cheats in a big event, and suddenly 50 people pop out and start saying that in the last X years he has been doing similar stuff on the local level or in other places, but because it is "just a game" no one reacted.

Having played 3rd Ed? Yes of course I have. The most common being my opponent, who’d insisted I’d been outside of my 12” rapid fire range, suddenly being comfortably within assault range in his own turn, when his movement have been Move 6” + Assault 6”.

And I don’t mean “just in”. I mean comfortably, inch or two to spare in.

And as a former GW Till Monkey it becomes kind of inevitable that you’ll find folk cheating. Not simply getting rule wrong. Just outright cheating.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Top5King wrote:
1: Dice Cheater - had a guy in my gaming group change some of his dice to have 6’s on multiple sides. He got kicked out and never came back.

That's pretty ballsy.

Was it a 6 on every side, or was it sixes on half the sides with other numbers to make things look more legit?

I remember hearing a story where a company made a first batch of dice with a symbol on the 6, then made a second (identical) batch with the symbol on the 1. Of course these dice were sold out incredibly fast by the unscrupulous. both dice types would be mixed in to the same 'pool of dice' and the symbol read as a 6...

Quite cheeky. And very very difficult to spot or police.

 Dysartes wrote:

beast_gts wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:
Of course, this is why tournaments should require you to bring first party rules resources (inc. FAQ/errata) with you to an event, so things can be verified on-site.

There are reasons we check lists in advance! (Decurion style lists were a right PITA - AdMech War Convocation especially!)

Not arguing against pre-event verification to make sure a list is legal - though, as we've seen reported during 8th and 9th, that isn't infallible - but at least if the first party sources are there while the game is going on, you can ask to check what is actually in there if it is an army you're less familiar with (which FW-based armies likely are/were for a lot of people).

Also not every tournament that is really feasible. Big ones with multiple guys running? Sure that can work. Smaller ones with 1 guy doing everything? Unreasonable to even expect him to own every book(especially 40k. At least in aos its "just" 23 battletomes to own).

Luckily smaller ones people are less interested in cheating.

What i do is lists get published ahead. Others can pick up errors i miss out(especially on armies i don't play. I only play 2/3 of aos armies ).

Luckily smaller ones people are less interested in cheating.

The idea of cheating and implementation of it, are , from my perspective separate from the size or level of the event. There are dudes who will try to cheat in a +100 men event with video coverge and there is going to be dudes who deploy an extra squad of boys/vehicle in 12 men event, hoping no one knows enough about ork point cost to at a glance now that the army is one unit/vehicle too big. Smaller events make it easier to cheat too. Stuff which results in a judge call at a bigger event, will be smoothered by the whole social/"try to be nice"/etc thing. That is how a lot of people learn to cheat. They do it localy first and then they move to bigger events.

Never caught anyone cheating outright in terms of lousy measurements or made-up faction rules, but had people insisting on interpreting rules interactions wildly in their favour, both in 40K and other systems. Probably one case from one skirmish game could be interpreted as an attempt at cheating, because my opponent was arguing that an effect from a unit is not a unit, and thus if his models die due to being put on fire by my units, then it doesn't count as my units actually killing them, and I get no victory points. This is obviously rule bending of the highest degree, and the game's rulebook obviously never specified if you get points for killing enemy because they burned to death because the conclusion is evident UNLESS you really, really don't want to lose this game.

Also, had two instances of opponents having somewhat questionable dice rolls and then behaving weird about that. Exceptionally good or bad luck with the dice is nothing worth writing about if it happens a couple of times, but in one game (we were playing D10-based system) my opponent was constantly having incredibly great rolls every single time, and after 10th or so ideal 5% chance of this exact roll happening I became very suspicous. The game was obviously lost by me, and after some time I had a chat with another comrade from our group, and he told me that there was definitely something wrong with this guy's dice, because he was having absolutely insane rolls every bloody time they played. While there is no clear evidence, I'd say it's very telling when multiple opponents notice that you successfully roll only 9s and 10s several games in a row.

Another instance was me playing D6-based game against a new opponent, who had absolutely HUGE Genestealer-styled D6s, like those things are easily 2x the size of any of my dice. And every time he rolled them, he got results like 70% of fives and sixes. When I asked him what the hell those dice even are, he immediately started hastily telling me in rapid succession that they are totally fine, these are just new GW Genestealer-themed premium dice, just look them up on Google dude. I haven't played 40K for a long time, I'm not familiar with its products right now, and it's hard to tell from quick search, does GW really produce ridiculously oversized dark purple dice covered in Genestealer markings?

 Dysartes wrote:

 Top5King wrote:

leopard wrote:
in tournaments yes, don't really count casual games

1st: 40k, flat out illegal list due to some "creative" interpretations and depending on knowing the TO didn't have the forgeworld books and TFG had a "summary". he got kicked out the day after I went out in an elimination round - wasn't that fussed to be honest as was never going to win anyway

2nd: flames of War, "creative" measurement so a unit that had a flat maximum assault range of 24" by the second turn mysteriously managed to move closer to 28" (I had deployed back from the front) - significant whinging to the TO when I called them over after he flat out refused to back down, accused me of cheating by not deploying as far forward as I could - was awarded the game as a win

have had various TFG moments but those are the most outright direct cheating

I’m really glad they got rid of FW army lists for the most part. I swear 80% of people who took those lists were creatively interpreting things.

Why are you blaming the army lists for people being pieces of gak?

Of course, this is why tournaments should require you to bring first party rules resources (inc. FAQ/errata) with you to an event, so things can be verified on-site.

this is a point I did raise with the TO, it was a small club level event and I was told this was "being petty"

I did note with wry amusement however that after this that was added to the club rules, "bring the book or you cannot use the model", ref sheets, tablets etc allowed, but the book would be with you (or on the club shelf), you bring anything exotic its up to you to have the rules

When I first started playing warhammer40k twi of my three "friends" who played were the most toxic, cheating, whining, power gamers I have ever witnessed in anything to this day.
They couldn't even play eachother cause they were both so toxic. I played them both about 3 games and them refused to play them ever again.

During tournaments it's not uncommon to get your dice mixed with your opponents if they're the same colour, and you're packing them away into a dice cube.
What's a bit troubling is if after the event you notice a couple of the dice you've collected have a divot drilled into the middle of the 2 face, so it looks like a 3. Someone I faced at that event apparently didn't like missing with their bolters. But this was about 5 or 6 years ago, and I never quite figured out who it was.