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Basically I started a thread where I point out the dangers of GW flooding the market with dataslates and formations, and not having them all centrally located makes it hard to verify validity, if forgery is involved. And if they continue to add these at the pace they are, eventually there will be no way of knowing every in and out, much less being able to look at someones submitted army list for a tournament, and not catching that obscure dataslate #87 does in fact NOT grant +1 to all the units initiative value. People are convinced that TO's are infalable and nothing can go wrong at the highest level of events. I disagree, we are all human and fallible and would like your opinions on if this kind of thing is a worry for you in a years time or two.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/627132.page


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And to clarify, I know they are all at black library, but you still have to pay for them, so just seeing their name may not reveal the cheating, I assume GW does not in fact out of professional courtesy provide you with free copies of all of these for your use, thus making it too expensive to keep up on every single one.

This was actually one of the primary arguments against Forge World inclusion. People liked to shout and complain about balance, cost, etc etc etc but the real practical problem from an organizational standpoint was opening up the scope of the game to such a huge backlog of units, many of which hadn't been updated in a decade. For any tournament that tries to maintain its own FAQ, you're also opening yourself up to easily double or triple--given the quality of Forge World's rules writing--the number of potential issues you'd have to cover.

All of this stuff has become a lot more common as of late, partially due to things like Dataslates and Formations acting as a wedge that slowly flooded us with new non-Codex content, at which point it was like "well if we've got all this crazy stuff, why can't we have Forge World too?"

Now, I'll say that I think the concept of outright creating a forgery of a rules document is pretty absurd--as much as some people like to think the guy across the table is a supervillain, it's not the sort of thing that happens. Even attempting such a thing would be absurd--wargaming is a pretty tightknit community on the whole, and you'd be more or less blacklisted from ever playing at an event ever again if you tried something like that. Now, what does happen is somebody forgetting how exactly a rule works (and not always by accident), particularly if they think it's a slightly more obscure rule that their opponent will not call them on, and Dataslates and Formations and Supplements have definitely increased the threshold of "obscure rules" by an incredible amount.

However, at this point it's far too late to start disallowing Dataslates and Formations, at least at the level of a large GT. If you want to be the event that says nobody can bring their toys, you'll also be the event that nobody pays to show up for. At some level, running a large-scale tournament has to submit to what are essentially business decisions, and that means making sure people actually show up for your event so that the guys involved running it don't lose metric tons of money. You can tweak rules and change formats and whatever else, but you can absolutely drive players away by trying to "fix" too much.

So at that point, it's mostly a discussion of whose responsibility it is to keep track of all this nonsense. I only deal with tournament organizing at the level of some smaller regional GTs, but I judge at larger events and play competitively as well, so I feel I have some experience from all sides.

As a TO, the first responsibility lies with the owning player. You will see this reflected in every rules packet for every major GT. You are to have all of the rules for every unit in your entire army, and those rules are to be available to every opponent (or a judge) by request.

As a judge, the first responsibility always lies with the opposing player. It is every player's responsibility to know (or ask questions if they don't know) the rules. That will always be true, as there will never be enough judges to have one standing at each table making sure the game is played correctly. The fact is, you are the only one with an actual stake in making sure your opponent does not cheat, and are therefore the only one qualified to make sure that it doesn't happen. If you come to me after a game and tell me that Bobby convinced you Tactical Marines can move 30" and they all have Meltaguns, that's not my fault, and it's not Bobby's fault--it's your fault for believing him. That is the truth of how judging a large event works--you cannot go back and change outcomes after the game has progressed beyond them (outside of literal, physical cheating--such as cheat dice or something similar) because doing so would up a whole Pandora's Box of other problems.

As a player, I play with that exact mindset, but that's likely because I'm also a judge. If I let my opponent play a rule wrong and it costs me the game, I don't end up mad at him, I end up mad at myself for letting him get away with it. But again, the overwhelming majority (which can be learned by standing around a hallway during a GT and listening to people complain about how they got cheated) would likely have the opposite opinion.

Now an important distinction has to be made--saying it is your responsibility to "know the rules" does not mean you are expected to memorize every rule in all of 40k. That has obviously long-since gone completely out the window, with the huge scope of rules that currently exist. As a judge I can tell you even the top-tier competitive players never know "all of the rules" (or anywhere close to that) even going back to the comparatively tame days of 5th. It is probably more accurate to say it is your responsibility to ensure the game is played correctly. That consists of three concepts, in descending order:

1). Try to know the rules
2). If you don't know the rules, ask your opponent to show you the rules
3). If you aren't satisfied, ask a judge

If you get cheated without performing all three of these steps, then it is your fault. You can try to blame whoever you want, but the resources were available to you to avoid it, and you did not make use of them. Again--these are unchangeable facts, until you find yourself a tournament that can assign a top-level judge (of which I know about four or five in the whole country) to every single table.

So the question is, where is there an opportunity for change to occur?

And I can tell you pretty easily: change needs to happen at the level of the player.

Currently, players are practically terrified of asking their opponent to see rules. It's like some weird combination of admitting you don't know and accusing them of cheating; some people view it as both shameful and aggressive. People will gladly stand by with just a cursory "are you sure?" and then let things happen, regardless of how absurd--and trust me, as a judge, you hear all the absurd things that happened (in past tense, when people are expecting you to go back and fix it for them) because people just took someone else's word for it without checking.

That is, above all else, what really needs to change--it's also the primary flaw in the argument you seemed to be making, as you seemed to imply that every player would need to own every piece of rules documentation. No--you need to own your rules documentation, and you need to sack up and ask the guy to see his, as necessary. You cannot fathom how many problems that would solve.

Again, every tournament builds that fact into their core rules. As a TO/judge, if some guy shows up with some weird unit that was published in an Imperial Armour that came out in 1982 and his opponent asks to see the rules for it and he cannot produce them? I would gladly throw that unit out of the game immediately, and ensure he does not use it in later rounds. Showing up with a unit and expecting someone to just take your word for how it works is outright disrespectful to your opponents and would not be tolerated by any serious event.

Is the TO a referee or a judge? if you are a judge then by definition you only there to settle dispute and not to referee all the games in your event.

As for forgery, just like in real life, judges sometime about to detect it, sometime not. irl, Judges don't read all case laws either. it is responsibility on both side to point out which cases they are using.

For the money part. well, is part of the expense being in this hobby and for TO that cost is higher. GW might place some event in the red with more releases but well.... should not be part of GW consideration. sad but true nature of a free market. some events might not able to stay afloat.

 Orock wrote:
Basically I started a thread where I point out the dangers of GW flooding the market with dataslates and formations, and not having them all centrally located makes it hard to verify validity, if forgery is involved. And if they continue to add these at the pace they are, eventually there will be no way of knowing every in and out, much less being able to look at someones submitted army list for a tournament, and not catching that obscure dataslate #87 does in fact NOT grant +1 to all the units initiative value. People are convinced that TO's are infalable and nothing can go wrong at the highest level of events. I disagree, we are all human and fallible and would like your opinions on if this kind of thing is a worry for you in a years time or two.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/627132.page


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And to clarify, I know they are all at black library, but you still have to pay for them, so just seeing their name may not reveal the cheating, I assume GW does not in fact out of professional courtesy provide you with free copies of all of these for your use, thus making it too expensive to keep up on every single one.

Should TO's also provide dice and check all lists prior to the event? Do you actually expect TO's to do something about this, in the event that someone might theoretically possibly one day cheat in a game of war barbies?

Virtually every large GT checks all lists. That's why they have submission deadlines. Not sure why you'd think that is uncommon.

Also, while they're almost never used, "stunt dice" are generally available. If some loudmouth ever even thinks to accuse someone of having loaded dice, you just swap in those so they'll shut up. Only ever seen it happen once or twice out of thousands of games.

Basically I started a thread where I point out the dangers of GW flooding the market with dataslates and formations, and not having them all centrally located makes it hard to verify validity, if forgery is involved. And if they continue to add these at the pace they are, eventually there will be no way of knowing every in and out, much less being able to look at someones submitted army list for a tournament, and not catching that obscure dataslate #87 does in fact NOT grant +1 to all the units initiative value. People are convinced that TO's are infalable and nothing can go wrong at the highest level of events. I disagree, we are all human and fallible and would like your opinions on if this kind of thing is a worry for you in a years time or two

As a TO its not something that keeps me up at night. Most TOs are providing the means for a bunch of folks to have a set of organized games over the course of a day or two. If you want more, like a professional sporting event or similar, then you better expect an extensive rise in the cost of events for an army of referees.

This isn't e-sports. Its not even as organized and professional as chess or scrabble championships. There's no qualifications you need to be a judge or TO like for MtG or the like. Its just not that type of event. Even the most hardcore 40k event is actually an extremely casual affair in comparison to those things I mentioned.

If you are worried about someone screwing up a rule at a tournament game of 40k then I think you will be wringing your hands a lot. I bet you have gotten a ton of things wrong at one time or other. I guarantee even the top players had a rule wrong at a recent event they attended. It happens. And in most cases it's more the fault of both people at the table then anyone else. End of the day you are responsible for the correct play at your table. You want to make sure everyone you play is playing the game on the level and correctly? Better start aquiring all the rules and reading up. Better be ready to call an opponent on his mistakes. Cause its ultimately your responsibility as much as anyones.

Or you can do what most folks do and know as much as you can and just have a good time despite the mistakes and rules you've never seen before.

DJ3 wrote:
Virtually every large GT checks all lists. That's why they have submission deadlines. Not sure why you'd think that is uncommon.

Not one of the big three GTs (LVO, NoVa, Adepticon champs) have list submission deadlines. A few mid-major events do have submission dates but usually its due to comp. More often then not lists are due at sign in the day of event and by then checking every list thoroughly just does not happen

I have seen events that had dice blocks (whatever they are I think 20 dice?) in the swag bag and those were the only dice you were allowed to use for the event.

 winterman wrote:

DJ3 wrote:
Virtually every large GT checks all lists. That's why they have submission deadlines. Not sure why you'd think that is uncommon.

Not one of the big three GTs (LVO, NoVa, Adepticon champs) have list submission deadlines. A few mid-major events do have submission dates but usually its due to comp. More often then not lists are due at sign in the day of event and by then checking every list thoroughly just does not happen

You've got this one entirely backwards. Those "big three" (or at least, Adepticon and NOVA--I cannot speak for LVO) don't have list submission deadlines; but it is not because they just don't check lists. It's because they're the only events that have the organizational manpower to actually check hundreds of lists on the day of the event.

A 64-man regional GT is likely to have 1-2 "real" judges, and maybe 2-3 more volunteers. It's not reasonable to expect a crew like that to hand-check 64 lists on the day of an event. Smaller events that don't have a list submission deadline run a pretty enormous risk in doing so--all you've got to do to see proof of that is check into the Feast of Blades thread that's floating around here, where an illegal list ended up playing on their final table.

At Adepticon, during Round 1, there's ~5 people sitting behind the judge's table manually checking all the lists. That is their only responsibility during that time period, because if someone has an illegal list, you want it caught as early as possible so they can remedy it. This is (often) the same crew of people that grade the Rules Quiz scores at the team tournament and/or bored paint judges.

I'm sure NOVA has a similar setup (I know they check lists), but I can't say for sure how or when it's done, as I've never judged at NOVA but I do know of people having judges come by and ask questions about lists during the early rounds.