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Full disclosure(s):
1. I played at this event.
2. I did not play nor do I know this player.
3. I am not posting this to insult or shame the player. That is 100% not my intent. If you want to trash a player, post elsewhere. I am posting this to spark discussion about what we, the community of organized tournament players, should expect from organizers like FLG when this happens. What should happen to this player?
4. While this incident left a sour taste in my mouth, I do intend to play in next year's LSO with my gaming group. I played 6 excellent opponents for the second year in a row.

Summary: The person that came in 3rd place at the Lone Star Open 40k Championship played with a helbrute that was not on his list for all 6 games. He apologized after the event on facebook on the Front Line Gaming page. A FLG representative posted that they would adjust the 4th-whatever places. However, no mention of player accountability (punishment) was discussed or disclosed.

Here is the post from the player. Name redacted:

I cant apologize enough. I found out that I cheated EVERY single one of my opponents at LSO. I played the entire event with a helbrute that was NOT in my list, all 6 rounds. Im not making any excuses, this is completely my fault. I am so embarrassed and it kills me to know that both my opponents, and all of the other attendees,bwere affected by my inability to put models on the table that matched my list. It goes without question that I'm dropping from the event standings and I submit myself to the scrutiny of both FLG and the community as a whole. Im disgusted with myself and I understand if you feel the same way.

Here is the FLG rep's reply. Name redacted:

Following the public apology from XXX, who originally placed 3rd in 40K Champs Best General, regarding an army list oversight reported well after the event concluded on Sunday, we have reviewed the matter carefully with Head Judge Adam and the TCC admins.
We appreciate XXX’s honesty and promptness in coming forward. The resolution here is thankfully straightforward, with the final placings moving up by one position. Our corrected 3rd place Best General winner is Justin Moore.
It is unfortunate that the list inaccuracy was not noticed throughout any of the six games. This serves as an important reminder for everyone to check lists before and during their events to help ensure a fair play experience for all. It takes a tremendous effort to host and judge tournaments of this size, and it is simply not realistic for our staff to validate and physically verify every single model and points value in every army. We are all human and mistakes happen, and errors like these do happen. Identifying them as early as possible is the best way to minimize their impact.
For those interested in the details, adjusting event scores manually would create large-scale hypothetical changes based on a scenario where James had not played all six rounds. Final standings in Best General are determined by Wins, OGW%, Points, and Extended OGW%, and James’s completed games significantly influenced opponent scores. We also ran the scenario in BCP with XXX’s score zeroed out, and the outcome for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place remained exactly the same as our solution.
We are grateful to XXX for his sportsmanship, to our judging team for their careful review, and to our community for supporting each other and the event. Many thanks to the hard-working judges who this year were, with just one exception, all part of the local Texas community. We are also incredibly thankful to be part of the TCC this year and look forward to continuing to work together in the years ahead! LSO is what it is because of the people who show up year after year not just to compete, but to create the kind of environment we are proud to stand behind.

My take is that the FLG Rep is 100% missing the point and magnitude of this "mistake".
"We are grateful to XXX for his sportsmanship"
You don't thank someone for his sportsmanship when he cheated. Intentional or accidental. Further, he potentially cost the person he played in the final round the championship (1st place). Dominic could have placed in the top 3 and dropped down to 7th place because of his loss.

"The resolution here is thankfully straightforward..."
I agree that the resolution is straightforward; however, the rep and I disagree completely on what "straightforward" means. The "resolution" from FLG is lacking accountability. There was zero punishment rendered for this incident.

I don't know the guy from Adam, but he came in third at a major GT. No scrub with a Net-List comes in 3rd at such a large tournament, even with an extra hellbrute. I say that to point out that this dude is a "pro". He's played hundreds and hundreds of games. Not necessarily with that exact list, but enough to know that his list is wrong. You have to be a pro at deployment, staging for your "go" turn, doing math-hammer in your head, and a hundred little micro-strategies that a scrub like me wouldn't even know that I didn't know.

Even if this is an egregious mistake, the player should have known better and caught it before playing 6 games. Such a "mistake" needs a 1-year ban from all tournaments. Minimum. Any and all FLG events, whether 40k, Heresy, Star Wars, or Monopoly. FLG needs to step up and do the right thing.

Finally:
"This serves as an important reminder for everyone to check lists before and during their events to help ensure a fair play experience for all."
No. This is not and should not be the take away. Absolutely not. You cannot pass this off on the community to prevent. You cannot pass this off on his opponents. I read each list prior to the beginning of each game, and each opponent went over their list with varying degrees of detail, but there is no chance in hell that I would be able to remember any differences other than "Wait, Magnus the Red wasn't on your list".
Further, while I do expect FLG to inspect everyone submitted lists for accuracy before the tournament, I don't expect the FLG to walk around each table and compare all 600 people's lists to what's on the table. That's also not a reasonable ask.

So what do we do? We enact punishment when it's warranted as a reminder to the players to check their own lists and to not intentionally try to pull some stunt. In this case, I'd say it's warranted and expected for their to be a player ban.

First, I'd say that cheating requires intent.

Second, your talking about banning someone just makes me think you regard all of this as more important than it really is. I would suggest that a suspended sanction is absolutely appropriate, but the fella reported himself and an over-the-top sanction just discourages other from doing the same. Give him a one year ban, suspended for one year. It sends the right message, but doesn't disincentivise honesty.

The thing that does need fixing is whether his final opponent could have done better in the overall standings, and that player deserves some sort of victory to be awarded to see how it would have affected his outcomes.

First off, you do need to give credit to the player for coming forward. It sounds like no one would've noticed the error without his confession.

Mistakes happen. I've played in games where I've asked my opponent halfway through, "Which one is your Warlord?"

Only to have the look of surprise, when they realize their Warlord is still sitting in their case.

And the issue with checking other people's lists... I cannot tell one tyranid from another 80% of the time. So if someone swapped one gaunt for another, I would have no idea.

So the TOs do bear some of the responsibility. One local tournament required us to set up our army before hand, with our list next to the army so our opponents could review them.

We had zero issues with extra units. While this might not be a realistic example when dealing with hundreds of players, it can work at smaller scenes.

As for punishment? Maybe simply end his tournament season. Everything else seems harsh.

But...

Had someone else noticed this before he confessed? I'll be the first to hand out the pitchforks and torches.

Did none of his opponents look at his list..?

I have no experience with the ins and outs of tournament scoring but how does zeroing out his scores give the same result when the person they beat dropped down to 7th?

He noticed his mistake. He felt bad for it and said it. Feels quite embarrassed about it. Is going to be ribbed and made fun of by people that know him for a long time. The TO's will have to invalidate his games and work out how to record what his oppo's should get (most have systems in place for by's) and recalculate the standings. But for me, no one noticed it, it was hardly the model you would pick if trying to do that, so I would leave it at that.

I have done loads of dumb things in tournies because I am tired, on automatic or whatever (painting until the small hours of Saturday morning never helped). One game I managed to forget to move my gargant making up a 1/3 of my points for half the game, each time my bemused opponent asking if I was really done when I said I had finished.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
it was hardly the model you would pick if trying to do that, so I would leave it at that..

In its detachment, (and I'm parotting what others have said) the model gives a 6" aura of 5+ critical hits and sustained hits. That's not nothing.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
First off, you do need to give credit to the player for coming forward. It sounds like no one would've noticed the error without his confession.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
He noticed his mistake.

 Fifty wrote:
but the fella reported himself

He came forward after someone else pointed it out. Apparently someone wanted to make his list because it did so well and spotted the error BEFORE he posted. But I'm repeating a 2nd hand account from someone that claims to be in their play group (so 3rd hand) and am willing to be corrected.

But back to my questions. Banned or suspended from play for a year is semantics IMHO.

 Fifty wrote:
Give him a one year ban, suspended for one year.

So, if he does something else in the next year, the 1 year ban kicks in? I'm OK with that as it still sends a message that FLG cares about this sort of infraction.

 Fifty wrote:
The thing that does need fixing is whether his final opponent could have done better in the overall standings, and that player deserves some sort of victory to be awarded to see how it would have affected his outcomes.

100% agreement.

 kronk wrote:

He came forward after someone else pointed it out. Apparently someone wanted to make his list because it did so well and spotted the error BEFORE he posted. But I'm repeating a 2nd hand account from someone that claims to be in their play group (so 3rd hand) and am willing to be corrected.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

But...

Had someone else noticed this before he confessed? I'll be the first to hand out the pitchforks and torches.

Well, now that I know that he was ousted for his shenanigans, before he confessed, it's a different story.

Maybe he should be banned from that event. Being known as the guy who can't play at a tourney done to cheating should have a lasting effect.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:


Well, now that I know that he was ousted for his shenanigans, before he confessed, it's a different story.

And again, I don't know the guy. I'm just repeating what I heard.

If that's wrong, and dude came forward voluntarily without someone else pointing this out, he could score sympathy points for me.

But what about all of his opponents. And should he be punished? If so, how?

If I brought an extra 5 terminators with my Black Templars, I'd expect to be punished, for sure.

I don't think punishing the opponents is the way to go.

You are typically focused on your own army that you pay very little attention to what your opponent's list says.

And to be honest, If it's an army I don't play regularly, I probably don't know how many grots are in a unit, or what all the models in an Inquisitor's unit do.

So, I rely on my opponent to be open and honest. If I can't trust my opponent to play fairly. I don't want to play them.

That's why my belief is that if you are found to be cheating at an event, the TOs of that event should say, "Sorry, friend, but you're not playing here."

Other events can choose to allow the player to be apart of their games its up to them.

Oh, I worded that poorly. That was two separate thoughts.

What about his opponents? How does FLG make it up to them.

Even if it was an honest mistake, how should XXX be punished. I might be fine with the proposed suspended ban should a second infraction occur.

OK. Gotcha.

Since the tournament is over, the TOs could refund his opponents' entry fees.

I'm not sure what other benefits the TOs could give.

As for punishment. I believe that if it was an honest mistake, confessed to, the public scrutiny alone, and the internet title of 'That Guy' should be enough.

If he was caught cheating, the TOs should say, "enjoy playing the game, just not here."

If it were my tournament I'd simply delete the offending player from the standings, move everyone up a spot and if anyone had anything to say to me about it along the lines of what the OP has posted I would ban that person for being a poor sport and taking things entirely too seriously.

For real, bad form.

Edit: I'll add that as someone who has created and maintained a tournament for a number of years, I've never had to expel anyone nor encountered anything like the attitude displayed.

 Hairesy wrote:
if anyone had anything to say to me about it along the lines of what the OP has posted I would ban that person for being a poor sport and taking things entirely too seriously.

Wow. It's a good thing someone with your poor social skills and off-the-scale knee jerk reaction doesn't run such a large event like LSO.
So, you're obviously a friend of this guy. Just lead with that next time.

Let me show you the economics of why you are wrong.

There are 300 people playing in this event. Many of them, like me, stayed at the hotel where it was played. Many also flew in. Those people also need to buy tickets to the event and eat locally.

People spent upwards of $1000 to play at this event. They expect things to be played and adjudicated above board. This dude is a friend of the tournament organizers (FLG). This person was called out by someone else BEFORE he posted his "apology" and FLG, the people running the event, responded with "Whelp, no harm, no foul. We'll adjust points and move on." How many customers did they piss off with this? How many people are going to say "F that noise" to FLG after this, and not only stop going to their events but also stop buying from them? 1? 10? 500? That's the economics of running a large event and not responding when something this egregious happens.

Their reply was not good enough in my book, but maybe I just have higher standards than you.

This is always tough, because in truth, its very easy to give players the benefit of the doubt and let malicious players abuse your trust, but its also incredibly easy to lose the fun and excitement that should be the focus of events in an effort to remove any suspicion of the results.

Honestly, despite being very competitive myself, I've found the focus on results is really detrimental to the competitive environment because it ignores the vast majority of the participants that make the event worth attending. While a problem player can ruin the experience of a handful of opponents, you can also find yourself ruining the experience as a whole trying to hunt them out.

What's really needed is a more organized feedback and suspension system. Mistakes like this are absolutely worthy of a yellow card that if repeated lead to more concrete removals from future events. Giving players a way to provide feedback on their opponent can also help alert TOs and can be used to provide similar warnings or bans if sufficient feedback is received.

Ultimately though, I think it really helps to focus on your personal experience at events and not get caught up too much in the results. I'm increasingly not fond of prize support for this reason as it puts a demand on things like tie-breakers that really never provide a meaningful distinction of players that didn't play against one another.

Just, focus on your day, your results, and your experience. If you went 5-1 or 4-2 and lost to the player in question; great job. I'd hope you had 5 great games out of it, maybe even 6. It doesn't take a loss to ruin an event. I've had plenty of players ruin them for me despite still getting a win. Go to do your best and have fun. The overall results are kind of meaningless.

Nah, dude could have kept quiet about the whole thing, but chose to come forward.
Mistakes get made, and given that this seems to be a fairly major event, the organisers should share blame.

Banning this person from events for a year wouldn't encourage me to participate in them.
There's no denial from the player that they made the mistake, and they issued a public apology after the mistake was brought to their attention.
They put themselves in the firing line of public opinion, and that takes a lot of guts.

The player has been punished, they've lost their results, and lost their podium position.
He didn't consciously cheat and didn't abuse players or staff. He doesn't need to be exiled from the scene for a year.

 Gert wrote:
Nah, dude could have kept quiet about the whole thing, but chose to come forward.
Mistakes get made, and given that this seems to be a fairly major event, the organisers should share blame.

Banning this person from events for a year wouldn't encourage me to participate in them.
There's no denial from the player that they made the mistake, and they issued a public apology after the mistake was brought to their attention.
They put themselves in the firing line of public opinion, and that takes a lot of guts.

The player has been punished, they've lost their results, and lost their podium position.
He didn't consciously cheat and didn't abuse players or staff. He doesn't need to be exiled from the scene for a year.

Came forward only after it was noticed, apparently.

I'm sorry, but no. You don't accidentally plonk a whole extra model down on the table for every game, especially when said model just so happens to get extra rules in the detachment you chose and is effectively a lynchpin model as a result. He was running a detachment where hellbrutes give out a buff aura around them, and his paper list had 0 hellbrutes. It isn't a mistake, it is intentional cheating.

Should be a lifetime ban. Got no time for cheaters. But apparently he is friends with the organisers and has prior behaviour issues they have overlooked, including threatening violence to other players.

Sometimes that lynchpin element is exactly why its missed. I've had players submit lists to me lacking auto-includes entirely because its such a core module to the list design they forget they need to add it back every time they rewrite the list.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:


Should be a lifetime ban.

From this event? That's doable, but from other events, I don't see how that would be enforceable.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
But apparently he is friends with the organisers and has prior behaviour issues they have overlooked, including threatening violence to other players.

Completely different situation than has been presented by the OP then.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:


Should be a lifetime ban.

From this event? That's doable, but from other events, I don't see how that would be enforceable.

All events by the organisers, and there is no reason other organisations cannot follow their lead proactively.

 kronk wrote:

 Hairesy wrote:
if anyone had anything to say to me about it along the lines of what the OP has posted I would ban that person for being a poor sport and taking things entirely too seriously.

Wow. It's a good thing someone with your poor social skills and off-the-scale knee jerk reaction doesn't run such a large event like LSO.
So, you're obviously a friend of this guy. Just lead with that next time.

Let me show you the economics of why you are wrong.

There are 300 people playing in this event. Many of them, like me, stayed at the hotel where it was played. Many also flew in. Those people also need to buy tickets to the event and eat locally.

People spent upwards of $1000 to play at this event. They expect things to be played and adjudicated above board. This dude is a friend of the tournament organizers (FLG). This person was called out by someone else BEFORE he posted his "apology" and FLG, the people running the event, responded with "Whelp, no harm, no foul. We'll adjust points and move on." How many customers did they piss off with this? How many people are going to say "F that noise" to FLG after this, and not only stop going to their events but also stop buying from them? 1? 10? 500? That's the economics of running a large event and not responding when something this egregious happens.

Their reply was not good enough in my book, but maybe I just have higher standards than you.

That's a lotta words I'm not gonna read.

If someone is a jerk, in my opinion, they have no place at tournaments. This is pretty simple. Someone made a mistake, owned up to it and forfeited their prize and reputation while the TO made an appropriate call. What we have now is someone pretending that this has any bearing on their life after the fact and acting indignant to generate undeserved sympathy. The world owes you nothing, and tournament organizers even less. OP paid his fare, got his ride and now it's time to gracefully exit the cab. Not go complain on the internet about their hurt feelings.

In the past, I've played in local tournaments that had their share of cheating, which caused me to now avoid tournament play.
Though I don't have a clear understanding of the system that was used in the tournament in question, if they turned the perpetrator games into "bye"
Games, how much would it change the standings? If someone had an upset stomach and had to miss the remaining games, I would think they would
just give the games a bye, like the person wasn't there.
The reports sound like he ended up in third, and they just gave his spot to the fourth-place person. But what about the ranking of the players that he played against?

It should also be known that this player has had....problems, before, Has threatened people during games, and is an FLG team member.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
It should also be known that this player has had....problems, before, Has threatened people during games, and is an FLG team member.

This changes things, and not for the better.

 Hairesy wrote:

 kronk wrote:

 Hairesy wrote:
if anyone had anything to say to me about it along the lines of what the OP has posted I would ban that person for being a poor sport and taking things entirely too seriously.

Wow. It's a good thing someone with your poor social skills and off-the-scale knee jerk reaction doesn't run such a large event like LSO.
So, you're obviously a friend of this guy. Just lead with that next time.

Let me show you the economics of why you are wrong.

There are 300 people playing in this event. Many of them, like me, stayed at the hotel where it was played. Many also flew in. Those people also need to buy tickets to the event and eat locally.

People spent upwards of $1000 to play at this event. They expect things to be played and adjudicated above board. This dude is a friend of the tournament organizers (FLG). This person was called out by someone else BEFORE he posted his "apology" and FLG, the people running the event, responded with "Whelp, no harm, no foul. We'll adjust points and move on." How many customers did they piss off with this? How many people are going to say "F that noise" to FLG after this, and not only stop going to their events but also stop buying from them? 1? 10? 500? That's the economics of running a large event and not responding when something this egregious happens.

Their reply was not good enough in my book, but maybe I just have higher standards than you.

That's a lotta words I'm not gonna read.

If someone is a jerk, in my opinion, they have no place at tournaments. This is pretty simple. Someone made a mistake, owned up to it and forfeited their prize and reputation while the TO made an appropriate call. What we have now is someone pretending that this has any bearing on their life after the fact and acting indignant to generate undeserved sympathy. The world owes you nothing, and tournament organizers even less. OP paid his fare, got his ride and now it's time to gracefully exit the cab. Not go complain on the internet about their hurt feelings.

That is about four paragraphs worth of text. You’re on a forum-reading is the primary thing one does here.

Even if the player who cheated could’ve gotten away without being caught (which, according to others in this thread, he would not have-someone else came forward with his cheating first) the fact is he cheated. I find it unlikely to be an honest mistake, but even if it was, there should be something in place to make it right.

I don’t think a lifetime ban is appropriate, but I definitely think a minimum of a month would be reasonable.

I also don’t see someone venting and wanting accountability to be anywhere near the issue an actual cheater is.

 Hairesy wrote:

That's a lotta words I'm not gonna read.

I took a moment to review your post history. That was my mistake for bothering to reply, but I won't be making it again. You're just a troll that throws crap at a wall to see how it sticks. There could be any number of reasons why you behave this way, but it's best not to speculate. Good luck out there.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
It should also be known that this player has had....problems, before, Has threatened people during games, and is an FLG team member.

I wasn't 100% sure on that, and still am not, so I didn't want to bring that into it. I was more interested in what we expect from major tournament organizers in general than I was about calling out this particular person.


Thanks for the discussion, all. I think, to me, a suspension from the organizers would be the right call, but not a life-time ban. As someone that has played more than a few tournaments with this particular organization, I am still disappointed in their handling of this. I guess that's all I have to say about it.

I was at the event too. And basically based on opponent win percentage if Dom wins that last game he takes first place. I said this in the FLG reply on Facebook and I'll say it here.

Dom deserves his golden ticket. FLG should request an extra if they feel they won't take away the person who jumped Dom for first because of the loss. They're big boys, and partially owned by GW now anyway so I don't see why they can't do this. I also didn't mention it there but everyone one of his opponents should either get a refund or a free entry to a FLG run event of their choice. And I mean ANY event they run of their choice.

This isn't a hard fix. They're just choosing to not bother doing it.

 Hulksmash wrote:

1. Dom deserves his golden ticket.
2. everyone one of his opponents should either get a refund or a free entry to a FLG run event of their choice. And I mean ANY event they run of their choice.

You know, I had mentioned Dom getting screwed out of a top 3 placing, but I got caught up focusing on punishment. There's also the restitution part when something this significant happens.

Yeah. I have to agree on your points 1 and 2 above. I think that's perfectly reasonable.

Don't think you necessarily need punishment if there was no "real" damage done in this case. Seems like an honest mistake to me. As for the rest, that guy seems like he sucks in other ways — punish him for that.