Thursday, October 17, 2013

CHEATER!

Ho!
In the not-too-distant past, I was playing a game of Warhammer 40k. All of the names, dates and armies have been changed in the interest of protecting the identities of those involved.

I will set the table: Warhammer event. Medium of size, medium in competitiveness. I was playing Chaos as I usually do, playing against a player playing Space Wolves. The game had begun but things had quickly taken a turn for the worse for my opponent. This was a critical turn (the bottom of turn 3) and my Great Unclean One was locked in combat with some Wolf Guard. I had slew a few on my turn 3, and a few more on his turn 3. It was time for his leadership check for losing combat with a minus two modifier. And he failed it. The combat was situated near his long table edge and it became very clear that if he broke and made it, he would run off of the board before ATSKNF kicked in and turned him around. Three inches isn't very far. No worries about not falling back though because I am Slow and Purposeful, so I couldn't sweep anyhow. He rolled a five.
Five inches is clearly off of the board. Clearly. My opponent looked carefully at the situation, look at his models, and chose to start to move his models 5 inches towards the short table edge on the left. I took note and corrected him.
"Oh!" he said, feigning surprise.
 He put his models back in roughly the same place... then moved everyone quickly to the long table edge. He clearly should have run off of the board.
I stopped him again and asked him why he's not moving off of the board.
"And they shall know no fear doesn't let them run off of the board." That, my friends, is also incorrect. I pulled out *his* book and showed him.
"Oh!" he said, feigning surprise.
Again, he put his models roughly back in their original position. It doesn't end here. Then began to measure from the model furthest from the long table edge, wrapped his tape around my Great Unclean One and stopped right at the table edge, which looked right about 5" give or take a hair. Then he began to snake his OTHER models AROUND my Great Unclean One to follow that original guy so they all stopped short. I stopped him again and explained that he could not do that, as he clearly had closer models to the board edge than the guy he started with and that he could not double back to go AROUND my guy to increase the chances they won't fall off of the board.
"Oh!" he said, feigning surprise.
As you can tell, I had an absolute blast playing this game. It was just a romp and so much fun was had by both parties.
...
I caught that guy trying to cheat THREE different times during the SAME event in the game. What were his motivations?
1. He knew he was losing the game and needed every advantage he could get.
2. He didn't want to lose the tournament.
3. He figured he knew the rules better than I did and thought he could get away with it.
4. He figured I wouldn't care if he bended the rules a bit to keep the game a little more competitive.
5. He is a truly evil individual.
6. Some combination of some or all of these things.

Of course, it's most likely #6. I can't get inside my opponent's head (any more than I usually do while playing) and figure out his exact motivation, but I can take a stab at it based on what I know about the circumstances concerning the situation.

All of us are motivated in different ways but for the most part, we are guided by our conscience to determine if we should act on those motivations. Lawrence Kohlberg, a psychologist, studied and wrote about the stages of moral development and boiled it down to three simple phases of reasoning:
(man, I love lists today!)
1. Pre-conventional reasoning. This stage is based on obedience and punishment. It is very self centered and self serving. Think young children. They behave in such a way to avoid punishment and obtain their desires. This type of reasoning allows for some seriously terrible things to occur, like lying, cheating, stealing and generally being a dick.
2. Conventional reasoning. This stage is based on social norms and peer to peer regulation. Most reasoning at this stage involved understanding what society/friends/family expect of you and you acting accordingly. Laws and authority regulate the behaviors that are deemed acceptable and not acceptable and it becomes the guiding light for the conventional thinker.
3. Post-conventional reasoning. Simply put, this is the self guided principle that there is a right and a wrong. That idea was developed through experience and there is an understanding that there are universal truths that transcend social norms, laws and authority. Slavery was a law, right?

There is a general understanding that we evolve through these stages throughout our lives. In theory, we are in pre-conventional as kids, conventional as teens/young adults and post-conventional as middle and late adults. The sad fact is, and I'm sure you can agree, that I know plenty of "adults" still stuck in pre-conventional reasoning. And sadly, I know quite a few tabletop gamers stuck here also.
Have you played a board game with a young child recently? Like Candy Land? Did you notice that all children expect to win? Like it never dawned on them that they won't win every game.

So what happened in my above example? Since we don't have a fully developed background on the day, or his previous games, or his family make up, or his mental prowess, or his stage in reasoning... etc., etc., etc., we have to make some assumptions based on what TYPE of cheating he was doing. Oh, another list! But this one isn't some hoity-toity list written by a psychologist. It's written by ME!

1. The Mechanical Cheat or PRE-Cheat. Example: Weighting dice, writing false army lists, modeling for advantage, changing your tape measure (haven't thought of this until I just typed it!). This type of cheating is done before hand and is pre-planned. It involves changing things that have a direct effect on the game but wouldn't be apparent in game. During the game, you'd still be civil and play within the rules, so an accusation of cheating wouldn't come up unless someone found the evidence of such during the game.
2. Cheating by Omission. Example: Your IC is SMOTE by a piece of wargear that causes instant death... nice to know, right? Cheating by omission is probably the most common form of cheating and is even done by players who generally have no intention of cheating. This is where you purposely allow your opponents to play outside of the rules, as long as it is harming them and not you. Additionally, it is purposely concealing important aspects of your army/list/game that are difficult/impossible to know unless YOU tell your opponent. Lastly, it is purposely not bringing up the rules that harm you from your own book/army, hiding behind the idea that your opponent is supposed to hold you accountable.
3. Cheating by Force of Will. Example: "These guys are move 12." "They don't get cover." "That's two dice." "They have Runes of Warding." Those statements don't make much sense out of context but illustrate just that. Force of will is a concept that applies to games like Warhammer. If you want your games to take 32 hours, then you should look up every rule every time you need to use it (how far can I move? Check the book! How do I shoot a bolter? Check the book!). Since we don't check the book for EVERY rule, we fall back on previous knowledge. If there is a player with a little more experience than the other, he will become the "rules" for the game. Instead of checking the book over and over, the other player will differ to the "rules" player during the game. This puts the "rules" player in a highly advantageous spot that he, if he was so inclined, could abuse easily. When both players are about equal, there will be a Force of Will battle where each will jockey to be this player... leading to some sort of argument and repeated shouts of "Judge!!!" When the "rules" player decides to intentionally quote incorrect rules for advantage, we have a CHEATER!
4. Cheating by Sleight of Hand. Example: the player rolls dice and picks them up and begins moving models, not stating what he was doing or why. Measuring quickly and moving models a little further for advantage. This is an easy cheat to catch and will demolish the credibility of the person doing it. It is my personal pet peeve in playing Warhammer and will ensure that I never play you again. I played against a player over the years that would routinely pick up and roll dice during all phases of the game. Two dice, three dice, one die, just pick em up and roll em. Low and behold when something was about to happen, he was still rolling dice. And suddenly he says "Two hits, two wounds." What? Who was shooting? At whom? When? I am disoriented!
5. I'm sure there are more but these seem to cover the basic concepts. Other examples could probably be jammed into one of those four categories.

My opponent was surely trying the Force of Will on me. He was attempting to use the thought that he was more well read in the rules than I was to effect the outcome of that combat in his favor. Unfortunately, he mistook my friendly and casual nature for aloofness.
I handled the situation appropriately I do believe. I was handily winning the game and this combat was going to solidify that point further. Perhaps he was motivated to cheat because he wanted to keep a sliver of hope alive but from my further interactions, it seemed that his cheating was done because he thought he could get away with it and have a better chance of winning if that interaction went his way.
We play a cooperative game, even though we love to pretend its competitive. The translation of Warhammer 40k into the competitive realm is often difficult. Instead of a fluent and smooth read, we get stuck with a Google-Translation rife with misspellings and nonsensical word pairings. Local FAQs, GW FAQs, addendums and supplements make for a tough me versus you game without clear cut rules and ways to implement those rules. There aren't judges umping your game like in baseball. You and your opponent need to AGREE to make things occur in the game. But cheating happens even in 'friendly' games.
And this is the big crux. If your opponent is cheating, simply don't agree with them. Continue to disagree until one of two things happens: The cheating stops or the game ends... and when left with a choice like that, I hope most people would choose to stop cheating and keep playing. Or you know, just RAGE QUIT!

What's the worst way someone has tried to cheat against you? How did you handle it?

35 comments:

  1. Just to add my 2 cents: Players quote rules incorrectly all the time. Let's not all be so quick to shout CHEATER every time someone plays incorrectly. This is referring to number 3, mostly. Especially because in Warhammer Fantasy, I am the rules guy. But I get them wrong every now and then... which doesn't make me a cheater.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I do try to make the distinction there about intention. When someone is intentionally misquoting the rules when in that position, then yeah, I would call it as such.
      We all learned from Peter Parker, 'with great power comes great responsibility.' Great power is being the 'rules player' for the game :) Sadly, you can't shoot web out of your wrists though.

      Delete
    2. I agree with Rhellion on this one. Force of will is usually an unintentional cheat. I have caught myself giving the rules out willfully because I knew them, only to find out I was wrong and not only that, I had been wrong for a while, but I didn't realize it, nor was I intentionally cheating. I was pretty embarrassed by it, but it happens to everybody. In fact, because of things like this I tell people to keep their rule book in the bathroom, so they are inclined to read it more often.

      Delete
  2. Interesting article. I've only ever had to deal with two cheaters before, and they both fit into your list above (a number 3 and both fit into number 4). I hate cheaters, but as Rhellion said above, not everyone who misreads a rule is a cheater (everyone screws up sometimes, especially when relying on memory). Continuously "forgetting" that your character doesn't have eternal warrior even though you've been reminded every game is definitely cheating though.

    40k is definitely more fun to play with close friends as a cooperative game instead of a competitive game, at least in my experience.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I can honestly day that I, sadly have seen more cheating in pick up games with strangers or people I am not close to, than I have in tourneys with strangers.

      Delete
    2. I've never played in a tournament or with strangers. These cheaters were friends! Keyword there being 'were' as they had some other particularly nasty habits outside of the game that led to me getting away from them.

      Kinda makes sense that you would see less cheating in tournaments though as the punishment for getting caught is a bit higher I imagine.

      Delete
  3. The last part of Cheating by Omission is interesting. There's been quite a few times I've been in a position where my opponent has not done something with their own force that would be to my detriment, I like ot think that in those cases I've pointed out their advantage but at what point in our 'cooperative game' does it become your responsibility to educate your opponent? In a casual game yes, but in a competition? I've done it, I pointed out to one guy that you can put the Relic in a vehicle, which he didn't know. So he had the entire game to then think of a way to make that happen which would have left my nids stuffed as his Tau skimmed off with the prize on board. Quite often I can hear that little voice telling me 'full disclosure' but I still wish I'd kept my mouth shut, it's not like you end up 'best game' votes at the end of it because of your honest ;)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I believe ommission is on the player who owns the codex in question. If a player is purposely holding back information, he is cheating. I do think (specifically in a competitive setting) that you are not obligated to tell your opponent he is screwing up though. It isn't your fault you know his codex and he doesn't, if I didn't know whatever it was, it wouldn't be an issue.

      In a pick up setting or casual setting, I would help coach them so we can make a game out of it and both develop as players.

      Delete
    2. I agree with TJ on this as well. Its a player's responsibility to know the core rules and their own army book. A player needs to provide information about their book to their opponent. More then that can't really be expected in a major GT. There are some players that like to point more out but ultimately this is to their own detriment since not everyone follows the same rules. 11th company had an interesting article on this

      Delete
  4. Great read! I have not been playing that long at all, about six games actually, and I find people trying to get over on me all the time. I do not know the rules that well but I can tell when someone is doing something shady and I always ask them,"Is that legal to do that and can you show me?" They even look it up and nine times out of ten I get the same,"Oh, I guess that is not legal, sorry." The biggest thing I see almost every game I play though is moving just that extra bit when they measure movement. Like I don't see them moving that extra half inch? I hate it because, it's disrepectful and demeaning to me. It makes me feel like they think I am an idiot. Pretty soon I will start calling out everyone on everything, but then I fear I will have very few people to play with afterward. So, do I keep my mouth shut and take it with a grain of salt? or do I speak up and possibly loose people to play with? It's a hard choice. Love the blog and now I follow you. Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Man, I would play with a different group of people. That's rough. It should not be socially acceptable in a group of adults to cheat at a game. I wouldn't put up with it.

      Delete
    2. I would speak up. Hopefully they realize they might lose someone they like playing with as well. I think if you bring it up the right way and just explain that it makes it no fun for you, hopefully they will take it well. Hopefully

      Delete
  5. My worst is a GT back in the Games Workshop GT days. I had a player with an incredibly loose tape measure. Like moving rhinos 16" instead of 12". I politely asked him to remeasure, he adjusted his movement. He did it again, and I again asked him to remeasure. I was then told if I wanted to play something competitively I should play basketball.

    Needless to say, I got a 1 on my sportsmanship score for asking the guy to play by the rules. I was not an a-hole about it, just asked if we could play by the rules. I missed out on winning the GT by a couple of points.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's pretty bad. I'm pissed just reading that.

      Delete
    2. "Loose tape measures" are something I have learned to keep an eye out for. I have also taken up the practice of making sure to measure assault distance BEFORE the dice are rolled. Too many opponents have tried to wiggle in/out an extra inch if it was close.

      Delete
    3. It's this kind of behavior why I don't play in tournaments. If I play a casual game against someone like this, you lose nothing in the grand scheme of things and I learn to never play against them again. I'm not judging those who do play in tournaments. I just cannot abide by such behavior and as such you will never see me at one. (Playing anyhow.)

      Delete
    4. Deus,
      Thankfully, this kind of thing is not the norm. Just bad games (and gamers) get alot more time in the spotlight than their amazing counterparts. I think you just hear it about tournaments more because of the sheer number of games that are happening in a day. But tournaments aren't everyone's cup of tea. My personal favorite part about them is getting to play new people with wildly different play styles than what I generally encounter locally in pick up games.

      Delete
  6. Hornblower, someone actually told me the story behind that a couple weeks ago. I feel for you.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I should probably clarify a little bit: We all make rules mistakes. That is not cheating.
    Some people misquote rules or use the lack of knowledge by the other player to gain advantages or outright lie. That is cheating.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It is a slippery accusation though. Some people are just consistently confident about rules, regardless of their track record with accuracy.

      Delete
  8. The latest was in a 40k league game. I was playing Chaos against Necrons. I went to assault a Annhilation barge and he told me I couldn't because the Quantum shields gave him armor 13 and since I couldn't hurt armor 13, I couldn't assault it. I wanted to see that in the rule book but he couldn't show me, Then a spectator reminded me that you assault rear armor anyway and the rule states that the shields don't cover the rear at anytime. Cheat number one. Then his next turn he was shooting up my troops and using str 5 to wound when the spectator asks how many immortals were in his army, he responded "None" that all his necrons were warriors. This was turn five and he had shot at me all game using str 5 for his warriors. Cheat number two. I didn't know the Necron book and once these two things were pointed out I went from almost conceeding the game to pulling out a draw on turn 7. The guy has played Necrons for at least a year or more, so he knew his rules and just cheated for advantage because I didn't know his book. He had a argument after the game with a couple of the spectators who informed me of his use of incorrect rules and stats. He later went onto a couple different facebook groups to rant about people interfering in games. A different guy in the same league about came unglued when he tried to tell me since my daemon prince in area terrain wasn't 25% obscured I didn't get a cover save. Four of the people have dropped out of the league so far. Once the league is finished I don't plan to participate in any organized play or event a couple of those ass hats are in.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Wow, that guy was hanging on to that cheat like a terrier. really awkward to be on the receiving end of that.

    Worst ever for me was long ago, in Warhammer Fantasy 4th ed. That was when the magic system used a deck of cards for magic generation: power cards, dispel, drain & total power. I was playing a guy who I'd had bad experienced with in the past, let's just say a real manipulator.

    This falls into the 'planning to cheat' I'm sure of it. He took an army with no magic users, which I thought was unusual, maybe even odd. First turn of magic came and went, he drew his basic cards for dispell chance, I drew mine, by the end of turn 2 the deck was spent and I start to shuffle it because we need more cards and he says "no no, put the deck down, it's done'. confused I say 'what?' he says "yeah, that's how it is. when magic is out, it's out, you used it up, so no magic anymore." I said he had the rules wrong, that wasn't how it worked, he had this huge 'I gotcha' grin and said 'oh no.. it's not written, I looked, no where does it say you reshuffle, that's all you get." I said I was sure he was wrong, he tried to end the turn and start moving for his next turn movement or roll combat dice, whatever the next phase was- dont recall, just remember he tried to bulldoze past it. I said no, looked in the rules, he accused me of calling him a cheater, said 'well that wouldn't be fair, I didn't take any magic users, it's just how it is".. I called the TO over, he listened to it and said "that's stupid, of course you reshuffle the deck" guys says with same evil grin 'no.. it's not in there' like he'd found an exploit by default. TO just shuffles the deck and says 'go on with the magic phase'.

    The next time I had to play him in a tourney I just told the organizer to give the guy a win bc I wasn't about to waste my life playing him. I'd done my time with his nonsense twice before.

    the first time btw was 'modeling for advantage' where he had all his wood elf archers were the same Ral Partha elf with a spear model. the fact that it didnt have a bow wasn't the worst part, it was that of the three identical looking units one of them as all level 10 heroes with hail of doom arrows. which he of course didn't reveal until they opened fire. fine about concealing the magic arrows but not that they were heroes. later in that game a small lump of lead that appeared to be a jester from 1976 split off from a unit and headed toward my lines, I asked 'what is that?" his answer? 'it's what it represents'. I said really? it's a 5 foot jester with scoliosis? "It's what it represents" is all he would say.

    bad enough when people cheat, worse when they do so gleefully.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm sorry, that really sucks. Unfortunately, you encountered a terrible person. Props for refusing to play him in the tournament, but I doubt it did much to change his behavior. I just hate those kinds of situations.

      Delete
  10. Magic CCG Pre-release tournament a couple of weeks ago. My second opponent mana weaved himself to victory. He literally had the right creatures and spells at the right time. He won both rounds in like 5 game rounds. I wasn't aware that he was mana weaving; other players told me after the fact and could not do anything about it. Needless to say, I was mad I was cheated out of the top eight.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That reminds me of a funny story. Flash back 15 years ago, playing with my brother when we both used 300+ card decks. We had such big decks, we usually had them split in two piles to makes the stack easier. My brother, being two years wiser, had cheated by putting all his land in one pile and all of his spells/creatures in the other. I, of course, had not. We played ante back then and I lost my beloved Shivan Dragon to his cheating ways.
      I haven't spoken to him since.

      Delete
  11. I'm pretty sure some people cheat intentionally in small ways hoping they get caught. If you catch them doing something sketchy, they can apologize, feign ignorance, and then feel resolute that you are spending their turn watching them like a hawk instead of pre-planning your next turn.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Heh at the GT, a guy was using a razorback to fire his quad-gun. Inadvertent cheating, I think.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Could be. But a Razorback firing a quadgun? Doesn't that not pass the eye test?

      Delete
    2. Technically, I'm pretty sure you could do that when 6th ed first came out. It got FAQ'd in the first round, but maybe your opponent never read the FAQ. That's why it is so important to know the rules so you can put the kibosh on stuff like that, because good luck finding the non-existent rule in the rulebook.

      Delete
  13. "Force of Will" could include what I call; "I'm the Alpha Nerd Here!" I have had players or observed a few players just try to intimidate/bully their opponent so that they can basically establish dominance and have their way with the game.

    I find this particularly annoying.

    On the loose tape measure one in the day of rhino rush/over charged engines I used to carry a few pennies for whenever I ran into a rhino rush guy ('cough' BA's) and place it in their original position and then let them do whatever then measure Point A to Point B and "Say, wow how did that happen? Measures 22" and math says 16". What do you suggest we do?"

    Usually handled it....of course, it took time to develop this PC approach after a few dozen attempts at "What the (*&^^)$#!! dude!" Which did not go over well and cost me sportsmanship points.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ha! Alpha Nerd. I've seen that particular version of Force of Will played out all too often. It infuriates me. It's like the other person cheating is thinking "I'm not losing to this scrub" and asserts his dominance, even clearly cheating sometimes. Irks me something fierce.

      Delete
  14. Also, I should be clear that I've cheated plenty of times unintentionally. That's not so much the point, but its not who I am aiming at.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Unintentionally cheating is just being wrong. Everyone is wrong from time to time. Cheating is a more willful phenomenon.

      Delete
  15. I find it rather amazing how this article is SO accurate in pointing out and justifying these "cheaters". I don't know about the rest of you, but I do give benefit of the doubt to my opponents when they unintentionally cheap cos hey, we're all humans and we make mistake don't we? But sometimes these people seem to conveniently forget the rules and it does get on my nerves.

    I played against a marine player a couple months back when the space marine codex wasn't updated. He was using a thunderfire cannon where both the gun and the gunner had to be able to see the target before shooting (this does not apply to the current TFC cos it has the barrage special rule). I had pointed out to this player that both models had to be able to see and we even confirmed it with the tournament organizer at that time. Just after that game, he played against someone else and tried the exact same thing. I'm pretty sure that he didn't just forget a rule that we took 10 minutes of our tournament game to clarify.

    And yes I agree how players try to "steal" inches during movement. For example, a realm of battle is sectored nicely where each board is 2 feet by 2 feet. Thus, if you are playing dawn of war deployment and you don't have scout or infiltrate, things like thunderwolf calvs can only ever move to that line which is 12" away from any of my things assuming I had deployed them at the exact 12" mark. So somehow an opponent tells me its 9" to charge me on the first turn, and I let his declare his charges and ask him how he is able to do so. (I am aware of bikes being able to deploy sideways and the pivoting for a free 1'')

    I would also like to give this piece of advise to players about scatter dice. I'm guessing that most of you already know this, but on the off chance that you don't this is could be helpful (somewhat). When you or your opponent is rolling their scatter dice, I suggest asking them (nicely first of course) to roll as close to where the deep strike of blast templates are located. I say this for 2 reasons.

    1. If he rolls too far away getting the right directions becomes rather problematic due the parallax error, and I've seen players try to use this to their advantage.

    2. Some players roll and quickly pick up the dice before you get good look at it. I feel that that's just cheating.


    I'm not the best player out there, but I have won my fair share of games. I do unintentionally cheat at times but I learn from them and try my best to not repeat them again. I've seen people get angry over the game stop being friends cos of it, and I don't like it. It affects the local community. I do understand that it's somewhat worse cos these people are out friends, and to think that our friends would do this to us in a game can lead some of us to think about how they really are to us, and if they really are friends. I hope this random rant helps some people.

    Have a good one!!

    ReplyDelete