I played almost all of the last edition with the intersessor aux grenade launchers I think I can count the amount of times I remembered to use it on one hand.
Man, i play with my friends and we routinely give each other legitimately good advice when playing against each other. Id hate to play with an intentional cheater.
Yeah, I do the same. But only with people I know, and I know that they do not mind it. Because some people absolutely take it the wrong way. Especially, as I saw people being quite mean-spirited or insensitive about it. It really irked me when a guy walked up to me and a guy I was playing with, commenting on how *both* of the armies were kinda bad, and how we should have X unit or more of Y unit etc. Now *that* is super not fun.
@labancz8038 oh no, we don't do anything like that. Mostly just optimal play strategies, order of shooting units, stuff like that. Building each other up ya know? He doesn't have to tell me my army is trash, I play what I want knowing it's trash, lol.
When playing with friends, I will always inform them of things they’ve missed. Rule interactions, tactical decisions, pretty much anything that went my way that they could’ve prevented I inform them of. I would hate to win because somebody forgot they got +1 to wounds or something. Tournament play is different. I hold my tongue and let you continue making mistakes. We’re being competitive. Afterwards though if I’ve won I’ll let them know whatever I feel they could have done better.
The classic one for me is eating pieces when they aren't looking. Good way to shave off some danger from the field though unit type mattes. You could probably eat most of a mob of grots and not worry too much. Eating a Primarch or a stompa might be pushing it though but probably not impossible. Always be a good sport though and cough them up and wash them end game. Tell em you "found" them on the floor.
People rightly criticize Death Guard in 10nth but also forget just how much poison damage each model does upon consumption. Furthermore the Fleshmower in particular is very hard to swallow whole (obviously possible if done correctly)
I had coached baseball for almost two decades and I have seen grown adults cheat to try and win a youth baseball game, which is sad. I've seen coaches lie about their roster, have a kid play down into a younger age bracket, lie on a pitching card so they could throw a kid more, have players untie their cleats so they would have to retie them at the plate to eat time during a times game, lie to an umpire about what happened to get a favorable call, and many other things I forget. While not technically cheating I have seen grown adults yell at and threaten kid (teenagers) umpires to get calls and coaches yell at their players so much that they start to cry during a game. People can be despicable, sociopathic monsters just to win a game that is, in the end, meaningless. 99% of the time the kids are great, it's the parents that should be banned from the arena.
Agreed. The worst 2 players I've ever encountered in any competitive scene, 40k or otherwise, were both in their 50s. Foul, abusive, insecure and desperate to do anything to win, acting extremely aggressive and intimidating towards anyone who challenged them on anything.
I had a dad of one of my teammates on my high school hockey team that got into as many fights with parents as I did players, probably more, and I led the league in penalty minutes by a long shot. I would keep my shit together for the playoffs or tournaments but otherwise if I saw something I didn’t approve of happening to our star player I’d go after them. Ironically our biggest star was his son lol, so often times I would be fighting the kid that did it and the dad would be fighting the kids dad. He was also one of the more wholesome parents on the team surprisingly.
I cheat in my friend group by saying "I will definitely have my army painted by the next game, it would be a cheap win if you only won because you got the bonus points for having a painted army"
I mean it doesn’t bother me when my opponent has an unpainted army but I do appreciate when it is painted and if someone wants count the bonus I think it’s perfectly fine
Movement cheating is prevalent in all miniatures games. People just wave the tape measure wildly over the table and then just put their models wherever they please.
@@Bonesawisready926 Yeah, I do stuff like that to make sure that I don't accidentally cheat. But there are lots of people who are very generous with themselves, shall we say.
I've started placing tokens underneath the front row of infantry. when I move that unit I measure from those tokens, place a new token and then the models atop of the new tokens. Some people hated the idea but when they actually use it a few times, they like it. I also bring seamstress measuring tape. I stretch it around table edges. Combine that with the place holder tokens and it's nearly impossible to get away with move cheating. 😊
Everyone moves more then they should, I play with a lot of younger people and it's less cheating and more they are just derpy and always kinda just set models down about a half a base further. Sun Tzu say, "Say you are in aura range, even when you are not." :)
This. As a new player I get called out a lot but I have no intention to cheat, I just find it very annoying and cumbersome to move and I just kinda wing it a lot of the time
I will unfortunately admit to this (accidentally!!). Especially as I prefer to play army styles with lots of infantry. I try to not take an ungodly amount of time in the movement phase and this sometimes leads me to be sloppy with my distance. I always feel bad when we determine I've done it, but at least I usually warn new opponents beforehand to call me out if they think I'm fudging the distance. People seem to appreciate that at least.
I'd like to confess my recent f**k up. Technically, yes, cheating. I played a game yesterday at my FLGS with a friend. Eldar vs Nids. I threw my models into my carry bag and off I went. We shook hands and got underway. Turn two I'm firing with my Falcon and I double check the AP on the pulse laser, I open the app to check the stats and wheres my Falcon?? It's not in my list! I'd dropped it but convinced myself it was still part of the plan....I was too embarrassed to rewind the game and admit the model shouldn't be on the table. I decided to say there's 1 ap and he gets cover, then promptly ran the tank out into mid board and 'forgot' to shoot next round. Andy, mate, if you're reading this, I hope the tank was a tasty snack for the fexxes and even though you won, I still feel super embarrassed!!
Yeah, mistakes aren't cheating, don't be too hard on yourself. I went' through 18 games in 9th thinking that Great Knarlocs could get the 6" exploding 6's aura in addition to a weapon option, when they have to take it instead of a weapon option. It took me mentioning it in the Kroot forums for someone to point out that I'd misread the datasheet dozens of times. 😓
I did a similar thing my last game and didn't have the list I thought I did. I just went with my list instead of what I was hoping to have but a simple mistake to make.
This. Almost got into a fight because this guy got mad that I called him out on it everytime at a tournament. Like dude quit giving yourself extra movement, don't be a loser.
We should remember Heinlein's Razor: "Never ascribe to malice what can equally parsimoniously be ascribed to stupidity or incompetence." Given how complex 40k is, being incompetent is quite easy. I've certainly got rules completely wrong just because trying to understand a new rule on the fly can be very hard when it interacts with other slightly obscure rules. In my last game it was "how exactly is 'The Ritual' mission supposed to work?".
@@kaptinbadrukk2668 I think that's where "equally parsimoniously" comes in. If it's just as likely to be incompetence, it probably is. That would mean we're not talking about routine "mistakes". If you only ever saw the person make one mistake, it's probably just a lapse in judgement, and you're not likely to harm yourself by assuming so. But catching enough such moments is the challenge.
@@jwhippet8313 I disagree - his point is that malice requires effort. Running loaded dice (e.g. from the infamous eldar toilet dice incident) requires thinking about it, planning, premeditated action, and justifying blatant cheating to yourself. Stupidity and incompetence merely require laziness. All of us, if we are truly honest, carry out acts of stupidity and/or incompetence every day. Usually it's because we can't put in the effort not to or are so busy that we just miss things that we really should have seen. Heinlein is explaining what humans do normally. If you're hoping to play against people who aren't like that then you might be waiting a while. If either of us ends up playing a Farseer then we will have a whole other level of apparent cheating to worry about!
There’s plenty of rules I’ve read over dozens of times, failed to understand it, put it into practice and had 6 different people with 6 different opinions about the same rule before someone that actually understands it lays out the reality.
I used to have a regular casual opponent in WHFB, 6th edition. He always used to seem to be able to get charges off, even though I was certain I had manoeuvred my troops out of charge range. I got suspicious, and decided to try something. He was playing Dark Elves, and I was playing Wood Elves. As per the rules of a standard engagement, there was a “no man’s land” of 24” between us, or one March move of 12”, and one Charge move of 12”, to engage in combat (assuming you were moving straight ahead, and had a unit directly in front of you to charge). I deliberately set my troops up one inch shy of maximum deployment, so our models were 25” apart, at the closest points. My “substantial” ranged weapons fired on the first turn. He responded by marching his troops forward, for the most part. I fired again on the second turn. He declared his charges, and EVERY SINGLE UNIT THAT HAD DECLARED A CHARGE was somehow miraculously in range, even though they should still have been a minimum of 13” apart, and therefore a minimum of 1” beyond charge range. I called him out on this, and he simply said I must have set up too far forward. We were playing at his place. On his table. Which I had been playing on for years, at this point… I knew it as well as my own table. He had a few failed charges that game, but still managed to get several off that I would swear were out of range. We gave wargaming a break after that…
'Technically' I cheated in almost every game in the last tournament I played in. - "Bumping" models so they're in range of my opponent's shooting. - Letting my opponent have free re-rolls. - Counting a hit as a miss. - etc. I prefer my games to be casual and fun and somewhat cinematic. After the tournament the TO did say that while I was technically cheating, it was always for my opponents benefit. I was awarded the 'Best Sportsman' award for the tournament.
The person i have seen cheat the most in my life claimed to be the most casual player ever. While stakes puch ppl to cheat. Some ppl just have a ego that can not handel loseing
The worst case of cheating I've ever seen was in a tournament run by my local GW shop, so there was an incentive to cheat to win as there was some GW plastic on offer as prizes. This was under 3rd or 4ed rules, the same game was played throughout the tournament and one of the scores at game end was contested table quarters. The cheater was an IG player who before the game had set up in two table quarters along his table edge. The game rule was that you set up in one table quarter. The scoring at game end was each quarter was 'Contested' - both armies in quarter, 'Uncontested' - no armies in quarter, and 'controlled' - one army in quarter. What was particularly sad about this cheater was that he was "a more mature player", whereas all of the people he was playing against were kids in the 12-16 age group. I took great pleasure in reporting him to the organisers who let him play on and only penalised him when toting up the tournament results. The last I saw of him as we were leaving was him having a "frank and open discussion" with the staff of the shop. 😁
My friendly group get around a lot of problems with dice cheating by saying 1. you must use the dice provided, 2. putting a open dice tray next to the table and any rolls that do not happen in that tray do not count and 3. your opponent removes the dice for your rolls, IE if i roll to hit my opponent removes the misses. this has actually helped us out a lot especially as before we had 4 people that would constantly roll their dice out of sight or pick up dice that didn't hit and say that they did.
they could but it makes sense to me cos in that example both players would be looking at the dice tray closely, you because you just rolled it and them because they need to pick out the dice, in the case of the roller removing the dice not the opponent the opponent isnt forced to look as closely at the dice, so the roller can sort of sneak a cheat roll in easier, plus its harder to roll then just immediatly snatch up the dice and call it before the other person sees what it was, which can be done if you both roll and pick it up but cant be if you roll and they pick it up @@whichDude
One of the problems with cheating in a competitive setting is that it only takes one or two deliberate cheaters to sort of spoil the enjoyment of the games.
Many years ago, I saw a dragon in warhammer fantasy that was literally just 2 little eyes poking up out of a pond like a crocodile, on a base. It was like 6mm tall
In the Olde Days (5th edition) we had a small local league, around a dozen players playing their games when it was possible and racking up points. Mostly it was good and fun, but we had one person who was absolutely terrible to play with. You had to be really careful him cheating and playing against him was a total buzzkill. Against me he used over 1½ hours deploying his units, making me groan. Then in the game he shot with an Exorcist from behind cover and when I tried to fire at it he declared that I can't shoot it since I can't see its hull. I was baffled how it is possible him to see me but me not see him. He stated that because his weapon was higher he could shoot but since I had to see the hull of his vehicle I was shooting at I couldn't shoot him. Another fast one he tried to pull was he declared he would shoot my unit with his unit with bolters. After seeing how many casualties I took he declared he would also shoot his units plasma weapons. Here I sternly said he did not declare them and he can't first see how many gets killed and then add more shooting. Everyone else were rather clear what they were shooting saying something like "everything on that unit" or "plasmaguns are NOT shooting". Also he used really small dices that were bright yellow with white pips and some glitter on it. Really hard to see what was rolled and he was quick to scoop his dice back and declare the results. After the game I reported his behaviour to our "comissar" and he got a stern warning. Since then I declined playing against him and rather took the point losses than losing my fun.
I keep track of the CP now with my own dice. I have caught almost half of the people I play with in the past forget they used CP and think they have more.
I worry a lot about accidentally cheating, and I just got into the habit of: a) At a tournament/new person, to say that if I fuck something up, please call me out, I am not intentionally being an idiot. b) Roll my dice out in the open, so I do not mess up the rolls (even with 2+-s, yes I can get very sloppy). This I try to supplement with a pause after rolls, to make sure the oppoennt sees the dice. Preferably always let them see the dice, because otherwise it can lead to bad feelings on my end, if I end up rolling well. If they tell me to do my movement while they take a leak, I will aim to leave the dice (if I advanced) by the units, so they can see it. c) Furiously checking every interaction which I wasn't 100% sure about afterwards, and messaging the opponennt post game. Even if I fucked something up, I can at least tell them, apologise and then try not to be an idiot next time. I must admit tho, playing since around half a year now, and this game might be hav some negative synergy with the fact that I do tend to get anxious about this stuff. Especially, that even despite this, I *do* mess up sometimes. The worst I did was a 2 inch mismeasure with a 14 move unit once...was really embarassed and stressed for the rest of the game. That being said, I only encountered a single instance so far where my opponent was doing some grey area stuff, and even that was moreso being unpleasant, no actual cheating at all. And once someone was drunk. Still beat my ass (with ease), and overall was a nice person really, but it put me off that they were drunk during a tournament (had pin-point rules accuracy, tho...).
I always check ground rules with my opponent beforehand. Reroll any dice that aren't *flat*, or just when the result is uncertain? That kind of thing. Plus, in our group when something is uncertain we go with consensus. Line of sight unsure? It's clear if everyone agrees, otherwise it's blocked. Rule interaction weird? We quickly work out a common solution we can agree on, and if we can't figure out which interpretation is better in a timely manner, we roll off, winner decides, and we agree to check it later.
Get used to seeing drunk people in tournaments. It's quite common as many people go just to drink and socialize. Most are still very well behaved. Still recall one event about 15 years ago down here in Australia where a guy in our club took out 1st place at Australia's biggest annual event whilst being completely drunk the entire weekend. At the end it he was so far gone his name got announced for the trophy and it took him a good 30 seconds to even register he was being called up, went to stand up and did a full face plant. He had hangover symptoms for a good 4 days afterwards.
@@_SpiritDan_ a friend of mine goes to tournaments especialy to drink and have fun. ... out of all my play group that participates in GT'S, he's always the one with the highest sportsmanship score haha!
The only way to truly combat cheating in 40K tournaments is a dedicated referee for every game. People are much less likely to try something unethical if they know someone is watching them closely.
I play with a very small group of friends. We'll regularly do something and then say "Oh shoot, I shouldn't have done that, you can now shoot me here" or "oh no, you could ruin my day over here" because we play for the fun of it, not for "the wins." So it doesn't matter if we point out when we made a tactical mistake, or give each other good advice. Because of that we play a little bit looser with the rules. We don't waste time measuring every single model for a move, we measure for one and then just kind of move everyone else up by it. This probably leads to inadvertent movement cheating, especially when we WANT to be closer to something, but we don't care. Because we know that no one in the group is doing it on purpose to get a quarter inch closer so that they're in range or any other crap like that. If you play with someone so determined to beat you in a friendly game that they cheat, don't play games with them because they'll treat the relationship like that too.
I've been using the table top battles app to track my scoring and I have got to say, it has saved me so many debates at the end of a game for who has what score
I had an opponent try to pull out some BS during a combat patrol game. He claimed in battle round 4(!) if his Ethereal survived the battle he would earn 20VP. I didn't bother questioning it at the time, I just deleted his model asap. Went home and scoured through rules for T'au CP and their full army rules, looked everywhere. I have no clue where he would have gotten that from.
I'm a Leagues of Votann player and my friend mains Eldars. We often play together... Needless to say that, currently, it feels like he's cheating all the time when I play against him even though he doesn't RELLY cheat. It's just how it feel with how trash loV are and how broken Eldars are xD
Some general rules within my group that keep people honest. -both parties send eachother their lists ahead of time so it can be verified -everyone always uses clear dice rolled in a communal dice tray while both parties are present -all objectives are written down at the beginning on a white board. -while rolling the party that's rolling always has an on-going narrative about what they're doing, what each roll needs to be be successful and how many of rolls are successful etc. -the data sheet for the model being used is open next to the dice tray to verify information. This simple stuff makes the game far more amicable and it takes out a lot of the ambiguity.
I was at a local tournament in small city, not far away from mine and there was their local champion/judge. He was using trust that people gave to him to cheat in his games, like proclaiming that he premeasured everything without even picking up the tape, that his opponent didn't have enough movement or range or that he has some weird stuff in his army. Also, when asked about his unit's rules, he didn't want to tell his opponent about abilities and things like this, unless he was hard pressured to do so. But observing his games, people were trusting him so much, they didn't even think about their champion cheating. After the tournament I was absolutely disgusted and I never visited that city again and I never consider playing with any people from that city.
Way back in the day we had a cheater at the store I frequented. He did everything you'd expect him to do. Get measurements wrong, roll dice out of sight, move things when you're not looking, get rules wrong, etc. At some point, I just started to forfeit the game as soon as he finished setting up his models and the rest of the players started doing the same. When he asked why we simply replied "We realized that winning this game means a lot to you." He stopped going to that store soon after. But it's a small community, so people caught wind of him wherever he went.
Man I found out I was accidentally cheating at a tournament because nobody, including myself knew that you couldn’t use Rapid Ingress turn 1. Six rounds I did it, without a single comment from any of my opponents. Then a guy at my LGS told me you can’t do it turn 1… and I still don’t know if you can do it with a Terminator homer. There are just so many rules and interactions that overlap and contradict each other that it’s almost impossible to have a game where everyone plays by all the rules. I commend GW for simplifying them down, but they still aren’t CLEAR a lot of the time, which is the big issue, IMO.
With Homer you can’t, nothing let’s you go in turn 1 unless it specifically states turn 1 or wil always be a turn in which it normally can do this Notable exception is a 10th Ed grey knights character enhancement that does state you can deepstrike this model and it’s unit in turn 1
Had the same problem with deep strike. Looking up "deep strike" and "arriving from reinforcements" in the app didn't say anything about turn 2. I just vaguely remembered reading about this somewhere else and played it safe (I'm a new player ).
@@ralfsstuff That's because the rules limiting deep strike are in the competitive stuff. Core rules wise, you can technically deep strike turn one. They just always add "hey actually no you can't" too tournament packs because god help you if we'd actually put relevant rules in the rules book
No turn 1 teleporting for terminators, they follow normal rules for rapid ingress, which is turn 2 onwards. IIRC. i think only drop pods can come on turn 1 for regular marines.
Back in 2000 when I was introduced to the game through a high school club the teacher and main players with experience taught everyone that cheating was a core principle of the game, whether that be through understanding codex rules better and abusing them with less experienced players or cheating on measurements. It was down to the other player to get better at the game and be observant during your turns to limit your opportunities. I found even going to the nearby 2 Games workshops that this was the common practise with people playing games there also as there was a lot of jovial banter when people got caught. Because of this I've only ever played 2 games and just stuck to painting models before it got to costly to do so.
@@rileybender3655 There really wasn't any of that about here when I was actively into 40k. Last models I bought were a whole bunch of (at the time) new plastic Necrons and a Monolith when they came out.
On the movement situation, some other wargames (Legion comes to mind) explicitly allow you to move your distance plus the base (so measuring back to front effectively). It's pretty obvious if the person just doesn't fully grasp the rules versus an experienced player trying to eke out a few extra inches of movement.
@@vitev009 I got a little set of magnetic sticks off etsy that have most of my common movements on them, so its rather easy to measure out all my stuff cleanly
The only cheating me and my best friend do when playing against each other is forgetting rules that would benefit OUR SELVES, we constantly have to remind each other of rules that help each other (as opponents)
I haven’t really faced direct cheating but instead just sort of misleading moves just to win. Like once a friend of mine wanted to play his grey knights in 9th, and whoever he organized the game against decided to go full sisters of silence just to direct counter(in what was supposed to be a friendly game) or I had another friend who was introduced to orks, and was mislead into buying a combat patrol so that their death guard friend could blow them off the board every time with a plague burst. Not technically cheating but both times the opponent was overly concerned with winning in a friendly game
Meta gaming is cheating imo Picking your list after seeing your opponents list so you can counter them is cheating. Functionally they knew the opponents list was and decided to pick a list that counters it even if that isn't directly what happened
Man, i feel like i have the perfect story here to talk about. During May i went to my first big event for 40k in my country, also being my first 2k points tournament. It was also a team game and it was 6v6 teams. I can honestly say that in 4 out of the 5 matches we had, there was at least one of us reporting that their opponent was cheating and often it was something mayor. For example, in my first game i had necrons vs necrons, and my opponent was being "that guy" so i had to call the referee multiple times during the match but he was almost always in a grey area. In the end he managed to shoot with his monolith out of combat, which in 9th edition wasnt possible. And it costed me the game as i lost a couple objectives during the rounds. I had others apply buffs/stratagems on stuff they couldnt, move more, etc etc. When, after the tournament, i realized all of this i felt so bad. Yes some of them could have been honest mistakes, but when you play with someone that has clearly lots of experience with their army and tells about how much they play with it, and they make so many sloppy mistakes, it kinda adds up. Just felt like sharing, even tho i also met great opponents and great players during that tournament, so don't be discouraged. Just be very careful
Cheating is always dumb in a game like this. Not only is it inconsequential, sometimes your models will just do impossible feats on their own heart of the dice. In my last game my daemon prince managed to hang on with 1 wound against around 20 dark Lance shots and ultimately won me the game
I've played a casual game vs a well known tournament player. He was practicing fast rolling. Like practicing in casual games so they can cheat well in the tournaments. Couldn't be more disappointed in that person.
I use a cheat that will secure the win every time. I tell my mate that we’ll play on tuesday. Unbeknowst to him, I rescheduele the game to wednesday. When he doesn’t show up on wednesday, I win on a walkover. Just as planned.
Unfortunately I have seen cheating at most competitive tournaments that I have attended. Mostly gaining movement by repositioning models with take back moves, picking up misses as hits and other sleight of hand shananigans, and command points tracking. Last season, there were two 40K coaches that played for a group at a small tourney with about 24 players and it wound up they were going to play each other in the final round so one of them tried to cheat by removing 10 points from their previous game claiming they were not fully painted so they could both finish unbeaten and place top 2 for the prestige and prize money. They were caught because the TO called out the guy as he was in the top 3 for the fully painted prize. Douche bags and they all should be called out and exposed on the internet.
The army list part definitely happens i had a friend at a tournament that was 2 tables away from me facing effectively 3,500 points of 8th edition dark angels at the end of 9th with 2,000 points of deathguard we were all really upset about the whole thing and he has sense been banned from all the local tournaments and the tournament now requires you to turn in your lists prior to entry into the tournament
@@alexrowson-brown6568not sure if this guy is actually playing in VN, but the TOs here tend to be of the chocolate fireguard type. Recent 9th tournament ran with all terrain giving true Los irrespective of type for example. One player who had been booted from the qualifier for the GT for cheating was allowed to enter the GT, etc, etc
this was in the eastern US and he didn't realize it until after because he doesn't play dark angels so he wouldn't know their points and jsut wanted to get it over with we'd also been playing for 9 hours on top of a 4 hour car ride so we were running on energy drinks to keep it together
@@northvietnam5218 that sounds rough. Here in VN, the scene is at least small enough the more outrageous cheaters get found out fairly quickly by the community, so it doesn't matter how good/bad the TOs are half the time :D
@MrAndy365 I'm sorry but I don't understand what VN is however here the cheater was banned from future tournaments and the TO put in rules requiring you to have 2 lists 1 for your opponents and 1 for the TO
i think the biggest accidental cheat was building an army and not altering the default 5 man assault intra squad to a 10 man squad so I had 10 for the price of 5. luckily this didn't actually affect the game as before any attacks were delt or taken we realised my blunder and as a sorry we agreed my opponent would get an extra 1cp.
Played against an older man yesterday. He wasn’t so on top of his rules that he made mistakes but it was not intentional and he was happy to take my advice on the rules
I played from 1988-89 until about 2004-ish I loved the game, I miss the game. I do not miss GW's pricing policies or the snail's pace with the Codex releases. It might not have been perfect but I enjoyed 2nd edition the most. I left the game in 4th edition. I quit because of rules lawyers who objected to everything and people who always slowed the game to a crawl. The only real "cheating" I saw was inaccurate movement and sometimes people adding more dice to their rolls (like an extra die) Also, a major factor in leaving the game was the ages of the players. I was facing more and more younger opponents in games while the people I had been playing against in my age group faded away. One of the last times I played, I was on South Street in Philly and the only people over 20 in the store were the manager, the cashier, and myself. Every other player was 18 or less. My fave game modes were Space Hulk and Cities of Death.
There are a lot of movement issues that are technically cheating in 40k, without players meaning to cheat. Players often rush sloppy movement because they are playing in a tournament and 3 hours is just not enough- even for only 5 battle rounds. When you rush moving models, sometimes you start a movement phase out with a blob of models in a unit, and by the end the phase, that same unit has condensed into a formation where the front line models didn't move more than they were allowed, but the back models are now crushed up, base-to-base against the leading models. The unit's player moved the lead models accurately, and then just slid the rest forward behind them without measuring. This isn't intentionally cheating, but RAW, you should move every model so that none of them net illegal movement. This can definitely affect the number of models that can reach close combat, in addition to other advantages. Also, many people (especially in a lot of the battle reports here on youtube) like to measure a unit's movement with a measuring device, and then remove it- placing the model to be moved in "about the same place" as where they think the end of the tape was. That is definitely not careful or accurate model movement. Whenever I bring these sort of unintentional movement shenanigans up to my opponent in competitive games, it surprises me how often that I am rebuked, as if accurate movement habits are not required in tournament play. How much of a stickler are you about this sort of thing, in a tournament game? Do you only point out this sort of thing when you can predict it having a negative impact on your chances of winning? Do you point it out at all? Friendly games are one thing, but I hate being called a "rules-lawyer" in a tournament game over things like this. Isn't it a basic game skill to follow movement rules to the letter?
I play with my friends who are not as good at the game as I am, so sometimes I say that I failed an armor save or missed an important shot so their character model that they are very proud of will get a chance to live and do something fun for them. I guess that is technically cheating but I don’t feel bad about it.
I think the single most used method in 10th will be with Tactical Objectives. Not shuffling properly, "damaged" marked cards, "missing" cards. Already seen it with the damage deck in X-wing.
How often have you “cheated” against yourself? Me: 100% of games. I’ve yet to finish a game without forgetting to use Miracle Dice at least once, and I’ve lost several games where it was obvious to everyone that I’d have won had I used them, though I think I’ve won even more games because my opponent called me out for not using them and asked if it was on purpose or if I’d benefit from help. Note: I usually play narratively at extremely small scale games - usually smaller than boarding actions, so a squad+hero is pretty much my norm, or just one of the mega set pieces.
Even if they wanted to play special snowflake with it and have height matter somewhat, just have x base = x height. 25mm base equals an inch of height and 170mm equals 10" or the like.
@@MDMDMDMDMDMDMDMDMD like someone suggested. You can easily say if X base, u automatically has X height above it. So then again u measure to base, if x terrain is x high, it is able to be seen or not.
usually no one of my friends cheats inn casual private games. they do mistakes or wrong rule usage with no bad intention. but in tournaments with strangers some people dont have manners. A friend got an issue by "the opponent questioning every of his move". that means you go 6 inch with this unit. prove it and show me the rule. and so on. every move he does he must show and prove him in the rule book or codex. that cost him time and stress a fluent play.
I live in a kinda rednecky area in the USA and several people come play with their sidearm in a hip holster.... Suffice it to say don't see much cheating in these here parts.
Ive once played a guy who lied about the dice. It was the most surreal feeling catching the guy and then thinking "eh Ill let it slide mistakes happen", then he did it repeatedly and started acting agressively when me and the group playing at the next table called him out. Never saw him in the store again after that.
In regards to stratagems, i liked having the physical cards so i could read it first and hand it to my opponent and let them read it. Me having a difficult time reading helps around that
One time my 10 man termie squad basically got wiped in one round of combat by some BT sword bros. I failed 9 saves, my bro said they were damage 3 so one dead termie per failed save. Turns out their weapons were damage 2, but I didn't even check the datasheet. My bro told me later he had mistaken the damage characteristic or maybe it was changed idk, but that would've made a difference 😮💨
My personal issue is when people “forget” to use abilities, stratagems and so forth to benefit them retroactively. This tends to weaponise my ignorance of EVERY army’s specific abilities. I ask at the start of the game for gotchas, and don’t get told anything major, then get a slew of gotcha moments later in the game too. It’s not really cheating, but IS irritating.
Think dice towers should be manditory. Some people sure do lay dice down like Quigon Jinn. In such a way you can't really call it out there just seems to be a knack for rolling.
I have a pretty consistent method that keeps most cheating to a minimum I think. I always roll in view of my opponent, and ask they do as well. I will also give a friendly reminder to let the dice sit a moment so I have time to see them. I will repeatedly ask what you are rolling for if it isn't called out, I always call my rolls out, and I always read rules I think are done wrong.
I try to lay out everything upfront about my army but because many of my armies rely on subterfuge and mind games, I won't remind my opponent of anything outside of the rules. For example, I have a Raven Guard army with two "Twin Raven" Phobos Librarians. One is the warlord and the other isn't. I tell them which is which and will tell them which is which at any time if they ask, but otherwise I say nothing unless it's relevant. I never actually had any issues with it. But that's as scummy as I go. I also do plenty of things for shits and giggles because I'd rather gain friends than wins.
Lol when I was playing my first game with a friend and I didn’t quite understand the game, I command re-rolled HIS invulnerable save😂. It was very funny tbh.
I always will remember when i wasyoung and played against an adult at my local game store... This guy comboed me with fake rules, wrong movements, basics rules errors, suspicious dices rolls... But what hurt me the most was the way how he touched and manipulated MY minis with no consideration... I can handle a cheater, not an opponent who crush on purpose my beloved minis...
This is why its important to meet people and be friendly in your local games. That way you can warn each other when someone is playing a bit odd and the other person can watch out for the behavior.
Loaded dices are pretty hard to identify in the wild, most of the dumb cheaters use a loaded dice over and over again,that's why you can identify them , but a smart cheater using a loaded here and there is almost invisible to other people
a good general rule of thumb is that if it doesn't sound right, physically look at the book to see what it is. if it's still a question, get a third opinion. at a tourny, obviously the third opinion has to be a judge. but at a tourny, literally the judges of the event are the answer to the question
I played in a club a few years ago where a player was found to have doctored some of his die - he had changed some of the 1s to 3s and some of the 3s to 5s. He was asked to leave and never come back.
By far the most common is mismeasurement when moving units with a large number of models. If I'm moving a 20 strong unit of Necron Warriors with 2 Leaders and Crypothralls, I'm not measuring each model individually. I usually move the closest and farthest models first and them move the rest somewhere in between those (while trying to keep the general formation the same).
As someone who investigates cheating in another context for a living, the research at this stage points to about 9% of people cheating any time they have an opportunity to do so. So people DEFININTELY cheat. People who are in that high-cheating category really only respond to a high probability of detection, so you just need to be vigilant in competitive settings.
There was a guy with loaded dice on the last torunament run by Frontline Gaming. He was playing Tau. He also rolled the dice so the opponent would not see the result etc.
Oh look you are using your special dice with symbols instead if numbers? So this set of squiggles is a 6? You sure because last turn the linked triangles was a 6...
You can't even have a discussion about cheating without cleaning up the rules. I've played way better games then 40k rule wise that have easier to access rules, like cards apps, digitally updated pdf rulebook with search engines. Yes those games had cheaters but you literally had to ghost move models, rig your dice, or flat out lie about stats knowing your open is 3 clicks away from looking up the card with all the info on that unit. Its really easy to catch cheating at that point and ban them from the community
For goodbye 9th I played in a 3 round tournament. My first game was against World Eaters which took Angron. He managed to pull off at 29 inch first turn charge and basically won the game. He moved the front of his base 16 inches and then put the back of his base against the measure. I didn't pick up on it at the time but he got called out for it in the next game and then did it again in his final game. My next opponent took an armoured company and didn't pay any points for vehicle upgrades because he'd definitely seen them listed on the datasheet, and was over by about 50 points, which at 1k is pretty huge. Needless to say I didn't get to the top table but in the 3rd round one of the two top table players was called out for fielding 1250 points in a 1k tourney. He claimed it was an honest mistake and he'd just packed the wrong list. There were only 6 people in this tourney. 3 of them cheated.
Movement fudging is the biggest one I see all the time. I've also caught opponents fast rolling "to help save time" and retaining more hits and wounds than they rolled, hoping the speed of their actions would keep me from noticing the cheating.
I think not marking command points properly after use is the biggest example I've seen. Some armies use them so much and so often, that its hard to notice until you sit and think "Hey, that was the bottom of 2, how did they manage to use 5-6 strats?"
Mordian Glory has a video talking about one guy he played against who went full cheating at a tournament and the guy afterwards admitted it saying that it’s a “game tactic” claiming no real army would tell their enemy the truth. It’s a pretty crazy video
I spoke last time about someone COMPLETELY lying about their dice results in a tournament. In that same tournament, there were high profile 40K personalities who were at the higher tables. They have websites and UA-cam channels. They were cheating pretty bad. It was the days of 6th edition and 6th had these Byzantine Allies rules where you could ally foes but they they had severe restrictions. The personalities conveniently forgot to follow those rules, thereby being able to min-max between armies. They would play beginners who didn’t know better because the rules were super complex. I don’t want to make them because I’m the States, it’s easy to sue.
I have a friend that likes melee armies and does the movement thing a lot, from adding the length of the base to his movement to getting extra movement from measuring the first model and just moving the rest of the models up. It is easy to catch on the first turn, it just takes some math, the armies start 24 inches apart, you can subtract both units movement from 24 and compare that to what they measure for charge range or shooting range, if the range is less there is a movement issue. I've mostly seen this with people that play melee armies as they really need to charge as soon as they can.
Hey AT, would you like to care about making a video on the whole movement debate? How to move big vehicles correctly for example? It seems like poeple are getting in an argument about this pretty often. Especially when turning a vehicle or something like that.
Last tournament I went to, I inadvertently played an old version of pathogenic slime, playing it as +1D on my exocrine as opposed to whatever the heck it was in the 9th book. I corrected for the last game, but didn't bother reporting myself, as I was dead last.
Had a cheater at my LGS that was big on movement cheats (he would literally hold the measuring tape above the table and against his chest, then would lean his whole body forward while placing models, thus relocating the tape measure). I decided to play him against my 'nids (for context, this was when their rending rules were WILD), and let him movement cheat all he wanted. He stopped movement cheating against me after that.
Often, just making the opponent aware that you're paying attention can be enough to make them consciously think about what they're doing, and hopefully stop. If you think there's some dodgy rolling going on, but aren't sure, "Wow, your luck is crazy today!" If you think there's dodgy movement or rolling behind terrain, but aren't sure, walk over to their side, or to the side of the board, and watch things from a different angle. "I do like getting a look at all sides of the battlefield." When you're looking at some models, also watch them rolling the dice a few times.
Cheating is just low and ignorant, our group, rightnow 8 players, are always trying to look out for each other's mistakes. Those mistakes are usually something we're doing that will cost us points or units. It may sound dumb but we always end up helping each other by asking if they really want to use that strategy or make that charge on a "fights first" unit. We enjoy each other's company and really try to help each other especially when someone brings a new player along and then they have a blast. Our local game shop also does a great job overseeing store games. Gentle reminders about fudging moves or rolls are usually well received.
My favorite tale of cheating, wasa dude who had 1 weighted die. And he only used it on the roll too determine who went first. Then set it aside. I have mad respect for him too only use it for that, and not be tempted too use it in other places.
I've had a few interesting stories, 1 hard cheating and the others I'm leaning more towards intent to cheat but can be passed off as a mistake, 1) I had a player who was known to switch how they would track wounds, would start by saying they are counting up the number of wounds taken, then once they get to 5 or 6 they would switch to they were counting down the wounds remaining, 2) this next one I would have thought that it was a mistake but the player argued heavily that they were right, 9th edition game, charged me with Morven Vahl, fought and killed their first target, consolidated into another squad, then declared Vahl's fight again, I told them and showed them the core rule reference that chargers can only fight targets that they declared a charge against or who heroically intervened into, still wouldn't accept it, packed up their stuff and left without talking to me, 3) again, would have thought that it was an honest mistake but argued heavily even after being shown the core rule reference, and explained how it worked by myself, another player, and the store owner, another 9th edition game and it was a dispute about line of sight and obscuring terrain, they were arguing that obscuring meant that if neither squad was in the terrain that you couldn't see but if either squad was in the terrain that you could see, but they were trying to target a squad of mine by moving into a building and saying they had line of sight when the building had completely intact walls, they finally accepted that they didn't have line of sight once the store owner got involved, 4) Not sure if honest or deliberate mistakes, but giving too much movement, it's extremely easy to spot when it's top of turn 1, their unit moves 12 inches, and they say they have a 10 inch charge when the mission has a standard 24 inch no man's land
When I was new to the game I accidentally cheated when I missed a word in a rule that gave one model auto wounds and accidentally gave the whole unit auto wounds. I played multiple games before someone asked to read the rule for themselves and I felt so bad. I actually messaged my previous opponents and apologized for it.
As a house rule, measuring is fast and loose. A cm or 2 off is fine if it works with the terrain better. it also speeds the game up without having to maesure every mm for every miniture. For auras - i tend to use the guy on the model verses the base. Some models have crazy bases, others need big bases such as a flyer to stay stable (use the model or the stem). I also have a bunch on the old 28mm, but not caring about 4mm makes this irrelivant.
My first game of 40k was in a store. A younger patron (mid to late teens) was happy to play with me. It went horribly for me, I couldn't believe the things his army was able to do. Later on I was talking to some other patrons of the shop and we were talking about my first game. When they heard about the amazing army I just played against they asked if I played X person, and I was like "yeah, how did you know?". Turns out he's a blatant and horrible cheater and no one would play with him. I decided I'd do the same lol. Great experience for my first game haha
Had someone say they had Hunter killer missiles on all his veichles. I never asked to see his list, I just trusted it. Turns out that only 1 of 4 actually had them when I checked his list afterward.
I have never encountered cheating, and am still learning. I play at my local game store, and get a lot of help and advice from the other players there. I appreciate this video, and will use the information given here to be aware when I start trying to play in tournaments.
I have a lot of models on the original bases they came with. The majority of my terminators (a bunch from multiple copies of the 2nd edition Space Hulk), most of my space marines, virtually all of my sisters, and all of my chaos marines and obliterartors are therefore on 25mm bases. Don't really consider it modeling for advantage as that is the base size they all came with but I do try to leave some room around them if piling in to kind of make up for it.
This is why I like TTS. You can quite literally see and have a record of the movement as your opponent moves their models. The worst Ive been cheated was when someone had around 400 extra points of models. I didn’t realize it until after I added up all the points values of their models from the pictures I took of the board state xD
If I ever kitbash dudes to be prone or crouched, I always put debris on the base roughly as tall as the model should've been that is used so my opponent can actually get sight on them. It's honestly a great way to get dynamic posing on your dudes without modeling for advantage.
I witnessed ignoring damage brackets, healing models by forgeting the dice that denoted their wounds, picking up dice too quickly and sneaking in two or three more hits than there should be, measuring in the air and adding a couple inches that way to the move and intentionally using wrong rules like using stratagems for Dreadnoughts on an Invictor baby walker which isn't one.
The only cheating I’ve seen is how many rules and abilities I forget each game that would have helped me. I’m cheating myself into the L.
Or forgetting the cp reroll like me 🤣
Story of my life
I played almost all of the last edition with the intersessor aux grenade launchers I think I can count the amount of times I remembered to use it on one hand.
think a lot does this :D
also myself, then a little after i remember and thinking crap i could have :D
Haha we’ve all been there
Man, i play with my friends and we routinely give each other legitimately good advice when playing against each other. Id hate to play with an intentional cheater.
See my comment above. I wish I had friends to play against. Specially having two ready to go armies.
Yeah, I do the same. But only with people I know, and I know that they do not mind it. Because some people absolutely take it the wrong way.
Especially, as I saw people being quite mean-spirited or insensitive about it.
It really irked me when a guy walked up to me and a guy I was playing with, commenting on how *both* of the armies were kinda bad, and how we should have X unit or more of Y unit etc. Now *that* is super not fun.
@labancz8038 oh no, we don't do anything like that. Mostly just optimal play strategies, order of shooting units, stuff like that. Building each other up ya know? He doesn't have to tell me my army is trash, I play what I want knowing it's trash, lol.
When playing with friends, I will always inform them of things they’ve missed. Rule interactions, tactical decisions, pretty much anything that went my way that they could’ve prevented I inform them of. I would hate to win because somebody forgot they got +1 to wounds or something.
Tournament play is different. I hold my tongue and let you continue making mistakes. We’re being competitive. Afterwards though if I’ve won I’ll let them know whatever I feel they could have done better.
same here its a game people should have fun
The classic one for me is eating pieces when they aren't looking. Good way to shave off some danger from the field though unit type mattes. You could probably eat most of a mob of grots and not worry too much. Eating a Primarch or a stompa might be pushing it though but probably not impossible.
Always be a good sport though and cough them up and wash them end game. Tell em you "found" them on the floor.
Sneaky Tyranid player keeps feeding the Hivemind directly
It's a good idea until you wreck your FLGS's toilet and get banned.
People rightly criticize Death Guard in 10nth but also forget just how much poison damage each model does upon consumption. Furthermore the Fleshmower in particular is very hard to swallow whole (obviously possible if done correctly)
Found the tyranid player
It's all fun and games until you eat the resin model that has pockets of uncured resin in it.
I had coached baseball for almost two decades and I have seen grown adults cheat to try and win a youth baseball game, which is sad. I've seen coaches lie about their roster, have a kid play down into a younger age bracket, lie on a pitching card so they could throw a kid more, have players untie their cleats so they would have to retie them at the plate to eat time during a times game, lie to an umpire about what happened to get a favorable call, and many other things I forget. While not technically cheating I have seen grown adults yell at and threaten kid (teenagers) umpires to get calls and coaches yell at their players so much that they start to cry during a game.
People can be despicable, sociopathic monsters just to win a game that is, in the end, meaningless. 99% of the time the kids are great, it's the parents that should be banned from the arena.
Agreed.
The worst 2 players I've ever encountered in any competitive scene, 40k or otherwise, were both in their 50s. Foul, abusive, insecure and desperate to do anything to win, acting extremely aggressive and intimidating towards anyone who challenged them on anything.
Soccer ref here yeah kids are fine parents are horrible
I had a dad of one of my teammates on my high school hockey team that got into as many fights with parents as I did players, probably more, and I led the league in penalty minutes by a long shot.
I would keep my shit together for the playoffs or tournaments but otherwise if I saw something I didn’t approve of happening to our star player I’d go after them. Ironically our biggest star was his son lol, so often times I would be fighting the kid that did it and the dad would be fighting the kids dad.
He was also one of the more wholesome parents on the team surprisingly.
I cheat in my friend group by saying "I will definitely have my army painted by the next game, it would be a cheap win if you only won because you got the bonus points for having a painted army"
yeah the painted army rule thing seems like a fun "Flavor" thing but in practice it seems kind of like a dick move to have a game be determined by it.
I mean it doesn’t bother me when my opponent has an unpainted army but I do appreciate when it is painted and if someone wants count the bonus I think it’s perfectly fine
I just give the paint bonus regardless in casual games.
@@lelandmartin3970 Nothing stopping you from just applying it to a non-painted army in casual games.
@@Trinine9 it shouldn't be a thing in competitive games.
They should keep doing the best painted models thing though.
Movement cheating is prevalent in all miniatures games. People just wave the tape measure wildly over the table and then just put their models wherever they please.
Seems like those laser measuring tools would be popular
That's why I like using dice markers and then just make sure all my models are behind that.
@@Bonesawisready926 Yeah, I do stuff like that to make sure that I don't accidentally cheat. But there are lots of people who are very generous with themselves, shall we say.
I've started placing tokens underneath the front row of infantry. when I move that unit I measure from those tokens, place a new token and then the models atop of the new tokens. Some people hated the idea but when they actually use it a few times, they like it.
I also bring seamstress measuring tape. I stretch it around table edges.
Combine that with the place holder tokens and it's nearly impossible to get away with move cheating. 😊
I measure, put my finger down on the appropriate inch measurement, and move the models base up to my finger. Its crazy no one else does this
Everyone moves more then they should, I play with a lot of younger people and it's less cheating and more they are just derpy and always kinda just set models down about a half a base further.
Sun Tzu say, "Say you are in aura range, even when you are not." :)
And Sun Tzu never lied!
One of the things I like about star wars legions is just how easy and accurate movement is.
This. As a new player I get called out a lot but I have no intention to cheat, I just find it very annoying and cumbersome to move and I just kinda wing it a lot of the time
I'm a little guilty of that aura range in my casual games. I'm very conscious about it in RTTs and GTs though.
I will unfortunately admit to this (accidentally!!). Especially as I prefer to play army styles with lots of infantry. I try to not take an ungodly amount of time in the movement phase and this sometimes leads me to be sloppy with my distance.
I always feel bad when we determine I've done it, but at least I usually warn new opponents beforehand to call me out if they think I'm fudging the distance. People seem to appreciate that at least.
I'd like to confess my recent f**k up. Technically, yes, cheating. I played a game yesterday at my FLGS with a friend. Eldar vs Nids. I threw my models into my carry bag and off I went. We shook hands and got underway. Turn two I'm firing with my Falcon and I double check the AP on the pulse laser, I open the app to check the stats and wheres my Falcon?? It's not in my list! I'd dropped it but convinced myself it was still part of the plan....I was too embarrassed to rewind the game and admit the model shouldn't be on the table. I decided to say there's 1 ap and he gets cover, then promptly ran the tank out into mid board and 'forgot' to shoot next round.
Andy, mate, if you're reading this, I hope the tank was a tasty snack for the fexxes and even though you won, I still feel super embarrassed!!
That's not too bad, easy mistake to make tbh
mistakes aren't cheating, friend.
Cheating is deliberate, we all make mistakes sometimes.
Yeah, mistakes aren't cheating, don't be too hard on yourself. I went' through 18 games in 9th thinking that Great Knarlocs could get the 6" exploding 6's aura in addition to a weapon option, when they have to take it instead of a weapon option. It took me mentioning it in the Kroot forums for someone to point out that I'd misread the datasheet dozens of times. 😓
I did a similar thing my last game and didn't have the list I thought I did. I just went with my list instead of what I was hoping to have but a simple mistake to make.
The amount of people who claim 5 inch movements on models then move like 8 drives me nuts.
This. Almost got into a fight because this guy got mad that I called him out on it everytime at a tournament. Like dude quit giving yourself extra movement, don't be a loser.
I tend to say to them how far away their unit is from mine, after Ive moved.
Then if they somehow get closer call them on it.
Ever go the other way? Sometimes I realize I shaved like an inch off my movement just to make sure I didn't push past my ruler
Play them at their own game, move 15".
Yep, it's amazing how casual people are on movement, especially when they're running an assault army.
We should remember Heinlein's Razor: "Never ascribe to malice what can equally parsimoniously be ascribed to stupidity or incompetence." Given how complex 40k is, being incompetent is quite easy. I've certainly got rules completely wrong just because trying to understand a new rule on the fly can be very hard when it interacts with other slightly obscure rules. In my last game it was "how exactly is 'The Ritual' mission supposed to work?".
the problem with hanlon's razor is that the malicious will always pretend to be incompetent when they get caught
@@kaptinbadrukk2668 I think that's where "equally parsimoniously" comes in. If it's just as likely to be incompetence, it probably is. That would mean we're not talking about routine "mistakes". If you only ever saw the person make one mistake, it's probably just a lapse in judgement, and you're not likely to harm yourself by assuming so. But catching enough such moments is the challenge.
Heinlein was either trying to cover up something or was in a position to insulate himself from malicious people.
@@jwhippet8313 I disagree - his point is that malice requires effort. Running loaded dice (e.g. from the infamous eldar toilet dice incident) requires thinking about it, planning, premeditated action, and justifying blatant cheating to yourself.
Stupidity and incompetence merely require laziness. All of us, if we are truly honest, carry out acts of stupidity and/or incompetence every day. Usually it's because we can't put in the effort not to or are so busy that we just miss things that we really should have seen.
Heinlein is explaining what humans do normally. If you're hoping to play against people who aren't like that then you might be waiting a while. If either of us ends up playing a Farseer then we will have a whole other level of apparent cheating to worry about!
There’s plenty of rules I’ve read over dozens of times, failed to understand it, put it into practice and had 6 different people with 6 different opinions about the same rule before someone that actually understands it lays out the reality.
I used to have a regular casual opponent in WHFB, 6th edition. He always used to seem to be able to get charges off, even though I was certain I had manoeuvred my troops out of charge range.
I got suspicious, and decided to try something. He was playing Dark Elves, and I was playing Wood Elves. As per the rules of a standard engagement, there was a “no man’s land” of 24” between us, or one March move of 12”, and one Charge move of 12”, to engage in combat (assuming you were moving straight ahead, and had a unit directly in front of you to charge).
I deliberately set my troops up one inch shy of maximum deployment, so our models were 25” apart, at the closest points. My “substantial” ranged weapons fired on the first turn. He responded by marching his troops forward, for the most part. I fired again on the second turn. He declared his charges, and EVERY SINGLE UNIT THAT HAD DECLARED A CHARGE was somehow miraculously in range, even though they should still have been a minimum of 13” apart, and therefore a minimum of 1” beyond charge range.
I called him out on this, and he simply said I must have set up too far forward. We were playing at his place. On his table. Which I had been playing on for years, at this point… I knew it as well as my own table.
He had a few failed charges that game, but still managed to get several off that I would swear were out of range.
We gave wargaming a break after that…
'Technically' I cheated in almost every game in the last tournament I played in.
- "Bumping" models so they're in range of my opponent's shooting.
- Letting my opponent have free re-rolls.
- Counting a hit as a miss.
- etc.
I prefer my games to be casual and fun and somewhat cinematic.
After the tournament the TO did say that while I was technically cheating, it was always for my opponents benefit. I was awarded the 'Best Sportsman' award for the tournament.
The push for competitive 40k being the standard has made cheating more common place. But that's just like my opinion.
The person i have seen cheat the most in my life claimed to be the most casual player ever. While stakes puch ppl to cheat. Some ppl just have a ego that can not handel loseing
Also the bad balancing
Man!
The worst case of cheating I've ever seen was in a tournament run by my local GW shop, so there was an incentive to cheat to win as there was some GW plastic on offer as prizes. This was under 3rd or 4ed rules, the same game was played throughout the tournament and one of the scores at game end was contested table quarters.
The cheater was an IG player who before the game had set up in two table quarters along his table edge. The game rule was that you set up in one table quarter. The scoring at game end was each quarter was 'Contested' - both armies in quarter, 'Uncontested' - no armies in quarter, and 'controlled' - one army in quarter. What was particularly sad about this cheater was that he was "a more mature player", whereas all of the people he was playing against were kids in the 12-16 age group.
I took great pleasure in reporting him to the organisers who let him play on and only penalised him when toting up the tournament results. The last I saw of him as we were leaving was him having a "frank and open discussion" with the staff of the shop. 😁
My friendly group get around a lot of problems with dice cheating by saying 1. you must use the dice provided, 2. putting a open dice tray next to the table and any rolls that do not happen in that tray do not count and 3. your opponent removes the dice for your rolls, IE if i roll to hit my opponent removes the misses. this has actually helped us out a lot especially as before we had 4 people that would constantly roll their dice out of sight or pick up dice that didn't hit and say that they did.
3 seems like your oppent could remove hit rolls if they wanted to
they could but it makes sense to me cos in that example both players would be looking at the dice tray closely, you because you just rolled it and them because they need to pick out the dice, in the case of the roller removing the dice not the opponent the opponent isnt forced to look as closely at the dice, so the roller can sort of sneak a cheat roll in easier, plus its harder to roll then just immediatly snatch up the dice and call it before the other person sees what it was, which can be done if you both roll and pick it up but cant be if you roll and they pick it up @@whichDude
One of the problems with cheating in a competitive setting is that it only takes one or two deliberate cheaters to sort of spoil the enjoyment of the games.
Many years ago, I saw a dragon in warhammer fantasy that was literally just 2 little eyes poking up out of a pond like a crocodile, on a base. It was like 6mm tall
In the Olde Days (5th edition) we had a small local league, around a dozen players playing their games when it was possible and racking up points. Mostly it was good and fun, but we had one person who was absolutely terrible to play with. You had to be really careful him cheating and playing against him was a total buzzkill.
Against me he used over 1½ hours deploying his units, making me groan. Then in the game he shot with an Exorcist from behind cover and when I tried to fire at it he declared that I can't shoot it since I can't see its hull. I was baffled how it is possible him to see me but me not see him. He stated that because his weapon was higher he could shoot but since I had to see the hull of his vehicle I was shooting at I couldn't shoot him.
Another fast one he tried to pull was he declared he would shoot my unit with his unit with bolters. After seeing how many casualties I took he declared he would also shoot his units plasma weapons. Here I sternly said he did not declare them and he can't first see how many gets killed and then add more shooting. Everyone else were rather clear what they were shooting saying something like "everything on that unit" or "plasmaguns are NOT shooting".
Also he used really small dices that were bright yellow with white pips and some glitter on it. Really hard to see what was rolled and he was quick to scoop his dice back and declare the results.
After the game I reported his behaviour to our "comissar" and he got a stern warning. Since then I declined playing against him and rather took the point losses than losing my fun.
Claiming they have more CP than they really do is a big one I’ve experienced once. That one is easier to spot tho.
I keep track of the CP now with my own dice. I have caught almost half of the people I play with in the past forget they used CP and think they have more.
Without context, the letters “CP” and stating how people have more CP than they really do. Is oddly concerning.
@@Duckbusinessman nah, you're just dirty minded
@@Duckbusinessman yeah mate, best not to abbreviate that one
@@Duckbusinessman oh ffs. They need to change the name of command point lol. Maybe tactical points or something.
I worry a lot about accidentally cheating, and I just got into the habit of:
a) At a tournament/new person, to say that if I fuck something up, please call me out, I am not intentionally being an idiot.
b) Roll my dice out in the open, so I do not mess up the rolls (even with 2+-s, yes I can get very sloppy). This I try to supplement with a pause after rolls, to make sure the oppoennt sees the dice. Preferably always let them see the dice, because otherwise it can lead to bad feelings on my end, if I end up rolling well. If they tell me to do my movement while they take a leak, I will aim to leave the dice (if I advanced) by the units, so they can see it.
c) Furiously checking every interaction which I wasn't 100% sure about afterwards, and messaging the opponennt post game. Even if I fucked something up, I can at least tell them, apologise and then try not to be an idiot next time.
I must admit tho, playing since around half a year now, and this game might be hav some negative synergy with the fact that I do tend to get anxious about this stuff. Especially, that even despite this, I *do* mess up sometimes. The worst I did was a 2 inch mismeasure with a 14 move unit once...was really embarassed and stressed for the rest of the game.
That being said, I only encountered a single instance so far where my opponent was doing some grey area stuff, and even that was moreso being unpleasant, no actual cheating at all. And once someone was drunk. Still beat my ass (with ease), and overall was a nice person really, but it put me off that they were drunk during a tournament (had pin-point rules accuracy, tho...).
I always check ground rules with my opponent beforehand. Reroll any dice that aren't *flat*, or just when the result is uncertain? That kind of thing.
Plus, in our group when something is uncertain we go with consensus. Line of sight unsure? It's clear if everyone agrees, otherwise it's blocked. Rule interaction weird? We quickly work out a common solution we can agree on, and if we can't figure out which interpretation is better in a timely manner, we roll off, winner decides, and we agree to check it later.
Get used to seeing drunk people in tournaments. It's quite common as many people go just to drink and socialize.
Most are still very well behaved.
Still recall one event about 15 years ago down here in Australia where a guy in our club took out 1st place at Australia's biggest annual event whilst being completely drunk the entire weekend.
At the end it he was so far gone his name got announced for the trophy and it took him a good 30 seconds to even register he was being called up, went to stand up and did a full face plant. He had hangover symptoms for a good 4 days afterwards.
@@_SpiritDan_ a friend of mine goes to tournaments especialy to drink and have fun. ... out of all my play group that participates in GT'S, he's always the one with the highest sportsmanship score haha!
The only way to truly combat cheating in 40K tournaments is a dedicated referee for every game. People are much less likely to try something unethical if they know someone is watching them closely.
I play with a very small group of friends. We'll regularly do something and then say "Oh shoot, I shouldn't have done that, you can now shoot me here" or "oh no, you could ruin my day over here" because we play for the fun of it, not for "the wins." So it doesn't matter if we point out when we made a tactical mistake, or give each other good advice.
Because of that we play a little bit looser with the rules. We don't waste time measuring every single model for a move, we measure for one and then just kind of move everyone else up by it. This probably leads to inadvertent movement cheating, especially when we WANT to be closer to something, but we don't care. Because we know that no one in the group is doing it on purpose to get a quarter inch closer so that they're in range or any other crap like that.
If you play with someone so determined to beat you in a friendly game that they cheat, don't play games with them because they'll treat the relationship like that too.
I've been using the table top battles app to track my scoring and I have got to say, it has saved me so many debates at the end of a game for who has what score
It doesn’t make sense to me that people trust loose dice to keep track of that.
I prefer a pen and paper myself.
I had a feeling movement was a top one. It's reasons like this why I prefer TTS these days.
how you liking the enormous virus scandal lmao
@@ElvenSonic that got fixed like a month ago
TTS?
I had an opponent try to pull out some BS during a combat patrol game. He claimed in battle round 4(!) if his Ethereal survived the battle he would earn 20VP. I didn't bother questioning it at the time, I just deleted his model asap. Went home and scoured through rules for T'au CP and their full army rules, looked everywhere. I have no clue where he would have gotten that from.
I'm a Leagues of Votann player and my friend mains Eldars. We often play together...
Needless to say that, currently, it feels like he's cheating all the time when I play against him even though he doesn't RELLY cheat. It's just how it feel with how trash loV are and how broken Eldars are xD
As a eldar player I can concur sometimes feels like im cheating especially when rules as written can be a bit ridiculous XD
Would feel bad but then remember LoV release in 9th
You can cheat all you want and never win that matchup 😂
I play deathguard and still feel bad when my buddy plays his LOV 😂
Some general rules within my group that keep people honest.
-both parties send eachother their lists ahead of time so it can be verified
-everyone always uses clear dice rolled in a communal dice tray while both parties are present
-all objectives are written down at the beginning on a white board.
-while rolling the party that's rolling always has an on-going narrative about what they're doing, what each roll needs to be be successful and how many of rolls are successful etc.
-the data sheet for the model being used is open next to the dice tray to verify information.
This simple stuff makes the game far more amicable and it takes out a lot of the ambiguity.
I was at a local tournament in small city, not far away from mine and there was their local champion/judge. He was using trust that people gave to him to cheat in his games, like proclaiming that he premeasured everything without even picking up the tape, that his opponent didn't have enough movement or range or that he has some weird stuff in his army. Also, when asked about his unit's rules, he didn't want to tell his opponent about abilities and things like this, unless he was hard pressured to do so. But observing his games, people were trusting him so much, they didn't even think about their champion cheating. After the tournament I was absolutely disgusted and I never visited that city again and I never consider playing with any people from that city.
Way back in the day we had a cheater at the store I frequented. He did everything you'd expect him to do. Get measurements wrong, roll dice out of sight, move things when you're not looking, get rules wrong, etc. At some point, I just started to forfeit the game as soon as he finished setting up his models and the rest of the players started doing the same. When he asked why we simply replied "We realized that winning this game means a lot to you."
He stopped going to that store soon after. But it's a small community, so people caught wind of him wherever he went.
Man I found out I was accidentally cheating at a tournament because nobody, including myself knew that you couldn’t use Rapid Ingress turn 1. Six rounds I did it, without a single comment from any of my opponents. Then a guy at my LGS told me you can’t do it turn 1… and I still don’t know if you can do it with a Terminator homer. There are just so many rules and interactions that overlap and contradict each other that it’s almost impossible to have a game where everyone plays by all the rules. I commend GW for simplifying them down, but they still aren’t CLEAR a lot of the time, which is the big issue, IMO.
Calling one "Reserves" and the other "Strategic Reserves" and having different rules for each is SUCH poor rules writing.
With Homer you can’t, nothing let’s you go in turn 1 unless it specifically states turn 1 or wil always be a turn in which it normally can do this
Notable exception is a 10th Ed grey knights character enhancement that does state you can deepstrike this model and it’s unit in turn 1
Had the same problem with deep strike. Looking up "deep strike" and "arriving from reinforcements" in the app didn't say anything about turn 2. I just vaguely remembered reading about this somewhere else and played it safe (I'm a new player ).
@@ralfsstuff That's because the rules limiting deep strike are in the competitive stuff. Core rules wise, you can technically deep strike turn one. They just always add "hey actually no you can't" too tournament packs because god help you if we'd actually put relevant rules in the rules book
No turn 1 teleporting for terminators, they follow normal rules for rapid ingress, which is turn 2 onwards. IIRC. i think only drop pods can come on turn 1 for regular marines.
Back in 2000 when I was introduced to the game through a high school club the teacher and main players with experience taught everyone that cheating was a core principle of the game, whether that be through understanding codex rules better and abusing them with less experienced players or cheating on measurements. It was down to the other player to get better at the game and be observant during your turns to limit your opportunities. I found even going to the nearby 2 Games workshops that this was the common practise with people playing games there also as there was a lot of jovial banter when people got caught. Because of this I've only ever played 2 games and just stuck to painting models before it got to costly to do so.
That’s disgusting behavior tbh. I’m sorry to hear that. Do local LGSs have any better environments?
@@rileybender3655 There really wasn't any of that about here when I was actively into 40k. Last models I bought were a whole bunch of (at the time) new plastic Necrons and a Monolith when they came out.
Granted this was before smartphones, so these kinds of people may have shyed away from it once they could be called out more easily.
1:00 if you can pull a Warhound Titan out of your sleeve without your opponent noticing, you deserve the win tbh
On the movement situation, some other wargames (Legion comes to mind) explicitly allow you to move your distance plus the base (so measuring back to front effectively). It's pretty obvious if the person just doesn't fully grasp the rules versus an experienced player trying to eke out a few extra inches of movement.
Legion also has the specialty movement sticks which make it pretty much impossible to mess up distance
Same for Shatterpoint and Marvel Crisis Protocol.
@@vitev009 I got a little set of magnetic sticks off etsy that have most of my common movements on them, so its rather easy to measure out all my stuff cleanly
@@vitev009 I managed to, multiple times because I was trying to measure front to front. I got it down eventually.
Me and my brother pnce had a game where we could cheat so long as it was fluffy, it was genuinely the most fun 3rd edition game I ever had
The only cheating me and my best friend do when playing against each other is forgetting rules that would benefit OUR SELVES, we constantly have to remind each other of rules that help each other (as opponents)
I haven’t really faced direct cheating but instead just sort of misleading moves just to win. Like once a friend of mine wanted to play his grey knights in 9th, and whoever he organized the game against decided to go full sisters of silence just to direct counter(in what was supposed to be a friendly game) or I had another friend who was introduced to orks, and was mislead into buying a combat patrol so that their death guard friend could blow them off the board every time with a plague burst. Not technically cheating but both times the opponent was overly concerned with winning in a friendly game
Meta gaming is cheating imo
Picking your list after seeing your opponents list so you can counter them is cheating.
Functionally they knew the opponents list was and decided to pick a list that counters it even if that isn't directly what happened
@@jacob-2271 It was just army so it wasn’t a whole list but still meta you have a point
Man, i feel like i have the perfect story here to talk about. During May i went to my first big event for 40k in my country, also being my first 2k points tournament. It was also a team game and it was 6v6 teams. I can honestly say that in 4 out of the 5 matches we had, there was at least one of us reporting that their opponent was cheating and often it was something mayor. For example, in my first game i had necrons vs necrons, and my opponent was being "that guy" so i had to call the referee multiple times during the match but he was almost always in a grey area. In the end he managed to shoot with his monolith out of combat, which in 9th edition wasnt possible. And it costed me the game as i lost a couple objectives during the rounds. I had others apply buffs/stratagems on stuff they couldnt, move more, etc etc. When, after the tournament, i realized all of this i felt so bad. Yes some of them could have been honest mistakes, but when you play with someone that has clearly lots of experience with their army and tells about how much they play with it, and they make so many sloppy mistakes, it kinda adds up. Just felt like sharing, even tho i also met great opponents and great players during that tournament, so don't be discouraged. Just be very careful
Cheating is always dumb in a game like this. Not only is it inconsequential, sometimes your models will just do impossible feats on their own heart of the dice. In my last game my daemon prince managed to hang on with 1 wound against around 20 dark Lance shots and ultimately won me the game
I've played a casual game vs a well known tournament player. He was practicing fast rolling. Like practicing in casual games so they can cheat well in the tournaments. Couldn't be more disappointed in that person.
Fast rolling is not cheating its just what you do when you play with slow idiots
I use a cheat that will secure the win every time.
I tell my mate that we’ll play on tuesday. Unbeknowst to him, I rescheduele the game to wednesday. When he doesn’t show up on wednesday, I win on a walkover.
Just as planned.
Unfortunately I have seen cheating at most competitive tournaments that I have attended. Mostly gaining movement by repositioning models with take back moves, picking up misses as hits and other sleight of hand shananigans, and command points tracking. Last season, there were two 40K coaches that played for a group at a small tourney with about 24 players and it wound up they were going to play each other in the final round so one of them tried to cheat by removing 10 points from their previous game claiming they were not fully painted so they could both finish unbeaten and place top 2 for the prestige and prize money. They were caught because the TO called out the guy as he was in the top 3 for the fully painted prize. Douche bags and they all should be called out and exposed on the internet.
The army list part definitely happens i had a friend at a tournament that was 2 tables away from me facing effectively 3,500 points of 8th edition dark angels at the end of 9th with 2,000 points of deathguard we were all really upset about the whole thing and he has sense been banned from all the local tournaments and the tournament now requires you to turn in your lists prior to entry into the tournament
And nobody checked his list for the total points?
@@alexrowson-brown6568not sure if this guy is actually playing in VN, but the TOs here tend to be of the chocolate fireguard type. Recent 9th tournament ran with all terrain giving true Los irrespective of type for example. One player who had been booted from the qualifier for the GT for cheating was allowed to enter the GT, etc, etc
this was in the eastern US and he didn't realize it until after because he doesn't play dark angels so he wouldn't know their points and jsut wanted to get it over with we'd also been playing for 9 hours on top of a 4 hour car ride so we were running on energy drinks to keep it together
@@northvietnam5218 that sounds rough. Here in VN, the scene is at least small enough the more outrageous cheaters get found out fairly quickly by the community, so it doesn't matter how good/bad the TOs are half the time :D
@MrAndy365 I'm sorry but I don't understand what VN is however here the cheater was banned from future tournaments and the TO put in rules requiring you to have 2 lists 1 for your opponents and 1 for the TO
i think the biggest accidental cheat was building an army and not altering the default 5 man assault intra squad to a 10 man squad so I had 10 for the price of 5. luckily this didn't actually affect the game as before any attacks were delt or taken we realised my blunder and as a sorry we agreed my opponent would get an extra 1cp.
Played against an older man yesterday. He wasn’t so on top of his rules that he made mistakes but it was not intentional and he was happy to take my advice on the rules
I played from 1988-89 until about 2004-ish
I loved the game, I miss the game. I do not miss GW's pricing policies or the snail's pace with the Codex releases.
It might not have been perfect but I enjoyed 2nd edition the most. I left the game in 4th edition.
I quit because of rules lawyers who objected to everything and people who always slowed the game to a crawl.
The only real "cheating" I saw was inaccurate movement and sometimes people adding more dice to their rolls (like an extra die)
Also, a major factor in leaving the game was the ages of the players. I was facing more and more younger opponents in games while the
people I had been playing against in my age group faded away. One of the last times I played, I was on South Street in Philly and the only people over 20 in the store were the manager, the cashier, and myself. Every other player was 18 or less.
My fave game modes were Space Hulk and Cities of Death.
Makes my hair crazy: "Toilet Dice."
There are a lot of movement issues that are technically cheating in 40k, without players meaning to cheat. Players often rush sloppy movement because they are playing in a tournament and 3 hours is just not enough- even for only 5 battle rounds.
When you rush moving models, sometimes you start a movement phase out with a blob of models in a unit, and by the end the phase, that same unit has condensed into a formation where the front line models didn't move more than they were allowed, but the back models are now crushed up, base-to-base against the leading models. The unit's player moved the lead models accurately, and then just slid the rest forward behind them without measuring. This isn't intentionally cheating, but RAW, you should move every model so that none of them net illegal movement. This can definitely affect the number of models that can reach close combat, in addition to other advantages.
Also, many people (especially in a lot of the battle reports here on youtube) like to measure a unit's movement with a measuring device, and then remove it- placing the model to be moved in "about the same place" as where they think the end of the tape was. That is definitely not careful or accurate model movement.
Whenever I bring these sort of unintentional movement shenanigans up to my opponent in competitive games, it surprises me how often that I am rebuked, as if accurate movement habits are not required in tournament play.
How much of a stickler are you about this sort of thing, in a tournament game? Do you only point out this sort of thing when you can predict it having a negative impact on your chances of winning?
Do you point it out at all?
Friendly games are one thing, but I hate being called a "rules-lawyer" in a tournament game over things like this. Isn't it a basic game skill to follow movement rules to the letter?
"If you live without dishonor you don't have to die ashamed" -Lemmy Kilmister
I play with my friends who are not as good at the game as I am, so sometimes I say that I failed an armor save or missed an important shot so their character model that they are very proud of will get a chance to live and do something fun for them. I guess that is technically cheating but I don’t feel bad about it.
I feel like cheating would be doing something for an advantage.
Never feel bad making the game more fun for someone else
I think the single most used method in 10th will be with Tactical Objectives. Not shuffling properly, "damaged" marked cards, "missing" cards. Already seen it with the damage deck in X-wing.
I have cheated by accident so many times. And usually I am cheating FOR my opponent 🤣
How often have you “cheated” against yourself?
Me: 100% of games. I’ve yet to finish a game without forgetting to use Miracle Dice at least once, and I’ve lost several games where it was obvious to everyone that I’d have won had I used them, though I think I’ve won even more games because my opponent called me out for not using them and asked if it was on purpose or if I’d benefit from help.
Note: I usually play narratively at extremely small scale games - usually smaller than boarding actions, so a squad+hero is pretty much my norm, or just one of the mega set pieces.
You asked 40 THOUSAND cheaters?!?! Wow! That’s a lot!
You can easily fix modeling for advantage to make all models have "base" and measure to base only, not to model. This would instantly fix it.
Even if they wanted to play special snowflake with it and have height matter somewhat, just have x base = x height. 25mm base equals an inch of height and 170mm equals 10" or the like.
That wouldn't do anything for modeling for concealment
Except the game uses true line of sight. That would change the game massively.
@@MDMDMDMDMDMDMDMDMD like someone suggested. You can easily say if X base, u automatically has X height above it. So then again u measure to base, if x terrain is x high, it is able to be seen or not.
usually no one of my friends cheats inn casual private games. they do mistakes or wrong rule usage with no bad intention. but in tournaments with strangers some people dont have manners.
A friend got an issue by "the opponent questioning every of his move". that means you go 6 inch with this unit. prove it and show me the rule. and so on. every move he does he must show and prove him in the rule book or codex. that cost him time and stress a fluent play.
I live in a kinda rednecky area in the USA and several people come play with their sidearm in a hip holster.... Suffice it to say don't see much cheating in these here parts.
Ive once played a guy who lied about the dice. It was the most surreal feeling catching the guy and then thinking "eh Ill let it slide mistakes happen", then he did it repeatedly and started acting agressively when me and the group playing at the next table called him out.
Never saw him in the store again after that.
In regards to stratagems, i liked having the physical cards so i could read it first and hand it to my opponent and let them read it. Me having a difficult time reading helps around that
One time my 10 man termie squad basically got wiped in one round of combat by some BT sword bros. I failed 9 saves, my bro said they were damage 3 so one dead termie per failed save. Turns out their weapons were damage 2, but I didn't even check the datasheet. My bro told me later he had mistaken the damage characteristic or maybe it was changed idk, but that would've made a difference 😮💨
My personal issue is when people “forget” to use abilities, stratagems and so forth to benefit them retroactively. This tends to weaponise my ignorance of EVERY army’s specific abilities.
I ask at the start of the game for gotchas, and don’t get told anything major, then get a slew of gotcha moments later in the game too.
It’s not really cheating, but IS irritating.
Think dice towers should be manditory. Some people sure do lay dice down like Quigon Jinn.
In such a way you can't really call it out there just seems to be a knack for rolling.
I have a pretty consistent method that keeps most cheating to a minimum I think. I always roll in view of my opponent, and ask they do as well. I will also give a friendly reminder to let the dice sit a moment so I have time to see them.
I will repeatedly ask what you are rolling for if it isn't called out, I always call my rolls out, and I always read rules I think are done wrong.
I try to lay out everything upfront about my army but because many of my armies rely on subterfuge and mind games, I won't remind my opponent of anything outside of the rules. For example, I have a Raven Guard army with two "Twin Raven" Phobos Librarians. One is the warlord and the other isn't. I tell them which is which and will tell them which is which at any time if they ask, but otherwise I say nothing unless it's relevant. I never actually had any issues with it. But that's as scummy as I go. I also do plenty of things for shits and giggles because I'd rather gain friends than wins.
Lol when I was playing my first game with a friend and I didn’t quite understand the game, I command re-rolled HIS invulnerable save😂. It was very funny tbh.
I always will remember when i wasyoung and played against an adult at my local game store... This guy comboed me with fake rules, wrong movements, basics rules errors, suspicious dices rolls... But what hurt me the most was the way how he touched and manipulated MY minis with no consideration... I can handle a cheater, not an opponent who crush on purpose my beloved minis...
This is why its important to meet people and be friendly in your local games. That way you can warn each other when someone is playing a bit odd and the other person can watch out for the behavior.
Pre game gatchas is such a good method to smooth and experience over. I definitely notice players that sheath those types of play styles.
Loaded dices are pretty hard to identify in the wild, most of the dumb cheaters use a loaded dice over and over again,that's why you can identify them , but a smart cheater using a loaded here and there is almost invisible to other people
a good general rule of thumb is that if it doesn't sound right, physically look at the book to see what it is. if it's still a question, get a third opinion. at a tourny, obviously the third opinion has to be a judge. but at a tourny, literally the judges of the event are the answer to the question
I played in a club a few years ago where a player was found to have doctored some of his die - he had changed some of the 1s to 3s and some of the 3s to 5s. He was asked to leave and never come back.
By far the most common is mismeasurement when moving units with a large number of models. If I'm moving a 20 strong unit of Necron Warriors with 2 Leaders and Crypothralls, I'm not measuring each model individually. I usually move the closest and farthest models first and them move the rest somewhere in between those (while trying to keep the general formation the same).
"picking up more dice than you hit with"
Avoiding the appearance of this particular impropriety is why I was taught to pick up your misses.
As someone who investigates cheating in another context for a living, the research at this stage points to about 9% of people cheating any time they have an opportunity to do so. So people DEFININTELY cheat. People who are in that high-cheating category really only respond to a high probability of detection, so you just need to be vigilant in competitive settings.
There was a guy with loaded dice on the last torunament run by Frontline Gaming. He was playing Tau. He also rolled the dice so the opponent would not see the result etc.
Oh look you are using your special dice with symbols instead if numbers? So this set of squiggles is a 6? You sure because last turn the linked triangles was a 6...
You can't even have a discussion about cheating without cleaning up the rules. I've played way better games then 40k rule wise that have easier to access rules, like cards apps, digitally updated pdf rulebook with search engines.
Yes those games had cheaters but you literally had to ghost move models, rig your dice, or flat out lie about stats knowing your open is 3 clicks away from looking up the card with all the info on that unit. Its really easy to catch cheating at that point and ban them from the community
For goodbye 9th I played in a 3 round tournament. My first game was against World Eaters which took Angron. He managed to pull off at 29 inch first turn charge and basically won the game. He moved the front of his base 16 inches and then put the back of his base against the measure. I didn't pick up on it at the time but he got called out for it in the next game and then did it again in his final game. My next opponent took an armoured company and didn't pay any points for vehicle upgrades because he'd definitely seen them listed on the datasheet, and was over by about 50 points, which at 1k is pretty huge. Needless to say I didn't get to the top table but in the 3rd round one of the two top table players was called out for fielding 1250 points in a 1k tourney. He claimed it was an honest mistake and he'd just packed the wrong list.
There were only 6 people in this tourney. 3 of them cheated.
I see you've been to my local shop to poll the live in players.
Movement fudging is the biggest one I see all the time. I've also caught opponents fast rolling "to help save time" and retaining more hits and wounds than they rolled, hoping the speed of their actions would keep me from noticing the cheating.
I think not marking command points properly after use is the biggest example I've seen. Some armies use them so much and so often, that its hard to notice until you sit and think "Hey, that was the bottom of 2, how did they manage to use 5-6 strats?"
Mordian Glory has a video talking about one guy he played against who went full cheating at a tournament and the guy afterwards admitted it saying that it’s a “game tactic” claiming no real army would tell their enemy the truth.
It’s a pretty crazy video
I spoke last time about someone COMPLETELY lying about their dice results in a tournament.
In that same tournament, there were high profile 40K personalities who were at the higher tables. They have websites and UA-cam channels.
They were cheating pretty bad. It was the days of 6th edition and 6th had these Byzantine Allies rules where you could ally foes but they they had severe restrictions. The personalities conveniently forgot to follow those rules, thereby being able to min-max between armies. They would play beginners who didn’t know better because the rules were super complex.
I don’t want to make them because I’m the States, it’s easy to sue.
I have a friend that likes melee armies and does the movement thing a lot, from adding the length of the base to his movement to getting extra movement from measuring the first model and just moving the rest of the models up. It is easy to catch on the first turn, it just takes some math, the armies start 24 inches apart, you can subtract both units movement from 24 and compare that to what they measure for charge range or shooting range, if the range is less there is a movement issue.
I've mostly seen this with people that play melee armies as they really need to charge as soon as they can.
Hey AT, would you like to care about making a video on the whole movement debate? How to move big vehicles correctly for example? It seems like poeple are getting in an argument about this pretty often. Especially when turning a vehicle or something like that.
Last tournament I went to, I inadvertently played an old version of pathogenic slime, playing it as +1D on my exocrine as opposed to whatever the heck it was in the 9th book. I corrected for the last game, but didn't bother reporting myself, as I was dead last.
Had a cheater at my LGS that was big on movement cheats (he would literally hold the measuring tape above the table and against his chest, then would lean his whole body forward while placing models, thus relocating the tape measure). I decided to play him against my 'nids (for context, this was when their rending rules were WILD), and let him movement cheat all he wanted.
He stopped movement cheating against me after that.
Often, just making the opponent aware that you're paying attention can be enough to make them consciously think about what they're doing, and hopefully stop.
If you think there's some dodgy rolling going on, but aren't sure, "Wow, your luck is crazy today!"
If you think there's dodgy movement or rolling behind terrain, but aren't sure, walk over to their side, or to the side of the board, and watch things from a different angle. "I do like getting a look at all sides of the battlefield." When you're looking at some models, also watch them rolling the dice a few times.
The worst I’ve done is letting my opponent make a mistake knowing that it’s wrong/ letting them walk into something they shouldn’t
Cheating is just low and ignorant, our group, rightnow 8 players, are always trying to look out for each other's mistakes. Those mistakes are usually something we're doing that will cost us points or units. It may sound dumb but we always end up helping each other by asking if they really want to use that strategy or make that charge on a "fights first" unit.
We enjoy each other's company and really try to help each other especially when someone brings a new player along and then they have a blast. Our local game shop also does a great job overseeing store games. Gentle reminders about fudging moves or rolls are usually well received.
My favorite tale of cheating, wasa dude who had 1 weighted die. And he only used it on the roll too determine who went first. Then set it aside. I have mad respect for him too only use it for that, and not be tempted too use it in other places.
I've had a few interesting stories, 1 hard cheating and the others I'm leaning more towards intent to cheat but can be passed off as a mistake,
1) I had a player who was known to switch how they would track wounds, would start by saying they are counting up the number of wounds taken, then once they get to 5 or 6 they would switch to they were counting down the wounds remaining,
2) this next one I would have thought that it was a mistake but the player argued heavily that they were right, 9th edition game, charged me with Morven Vahl, fought and killed their first target, consolidated into another squad, then declared Vahl's fight again, I told them and showed them the core rule reference that chargers can only fight targets that they declared a charge against or who heroically intervened into, still wouldn't accept it, packed up their stuff and left without talking to me,
3) again, would have thought that it was an honest mistake but argued heavily even after being shown the core rule reference, and explained how it worked by myself, another player, and the store owner, another 9th edition game and it was a dispute about line of sight and obscuring terrain, they were arguing that obscuring meant that if neither squad was in the terrain that you couldn't see but if either squad was in the terrain that you could see, but they were trying to target a squad of mine by moving into a building and saying they had line of sight when the building had completely intact walls, they finally accepted that they didn't have line of sight once the store owner got involved,
4) Not sure if honest or deliberate mistakes, but giving too much movement, it's extremely easy to spot when it's top of turn 1, their unit moves 12 inches, and they say they have a 10 inch charge when the mission has a standard 24 inch no man's land
When I was new to the game I accidentally cheated when I missed a word in a rule that gave one model auto wounds and accidentally gave the whole unit auto wounds. I played multiple games before someone asked to read the rule for themselves and I felt so bad. I actually messaged my previous opponents and apologized for it.
As a house rule, measuring is fast and loose. A cm or 2 off is fine if it works with the terrain better. it also speeds the game up without having to maesure every mm for every miniture.
For auras - i tend to use the guy on the model verses the base. Some models have crazy bases, others need big bases such as a flyer to stay stable (use the model or the stem). I also have a bunch on the old 28mm, but not caring about 4mm makes this irrelivant.
My first game of 40k was in a store. A younger patron (mid to late teens) was happy to play with me. It went horribly for me, I couldn't believe the things his army was able to do. Later on I was talking to some other patrons of the shop and we were talking about my first game. When they heard about the amazing army I just played against they asked if I played X person, and I was like "yeah, how did you know?". Turns out he's a blatant and horrible cheater and no one would play with him. I decided I'd do the same lol. Great experience for my first game haha
Had someone say they had Hunter killer missiles on all his veichles. I never asked to see his list, I just trusted it.
Turns out that only 1 of 4 actually had them when I checked his list afterward.
I have never encountered cheating, and am still learning. I play at my local game store, and get a lot of help and advice from the other players there. I appreciate this video, and will use the information given here to be aware when I start trying to play in tournaments.
I have a lot of models on the original bases they came with. The majority of my terminators (a bunch from multiple copies of the 2nd edition Space Hulk), most of my space marines, virtually all of my sisters, and all of my chaos marines and obliterartors are therefore on 25mm bases.
Don't really consider it modeling for advantage as that is the base size they all came with but I do try to leave some room around them if piling in to kind of make up for it.
This is why I like TTS. You can quite literally see and have a record of the movement as your opponent moves their models. The worst Ive been cheated was when someone had around 400 extra points of models. I didn’t realize it until after I added up all the points values of their models from the pictures I took of the board state xD
If I ever kitbash dudes to be prone or crouched, I always put debris on the base roughly as tall as the model should've been that is used so my opponent can actually get sight on them. It's honestly a great way to get dynamic posing on your dudes without modeling for advantage.
I witnessed ignoring damage brackets, healing models by forgeting the dice that denoted their wounds, picking up dice too quickly and sneaking in two or three more hits than there should be, measuring in the air and adding a couple inches that way to the move and intentionally using wrong rules like using stratagems for Dreadnoughts on an Invictor baby walker which isn't one.