'Cheating' not as obvious as you might think.....

A few of my friends are practising for a tournament in the near future and as usual my home became the 'training ground' for the test of these new armies. While we were 'helping' each other with the tweaking of these lists, the inevitable discussion about playing against cheating bastards occurred.....

However while relating these amusing tales to one another it became evident that what each person defines as 'cheating' can be radically different.

So how far can you go to win without becoming the guy that I often write about as being the bane of all war-gamers?

Here's a few situations (some from personal experience) that I'm going to put to you and we'll see what you all think.....

Situation One.
You know the rules for your opponents army better than your opponent does.....
I buy all the codices and though I don't always absorb them 'cover to cover' I do always make sure I'm familiar with the armies special rules as a whole and that I also have an understanding of the most commonly used units in addition to the currently 'fashionable' ones.....

We're popular again.....

In a recent game against a Grey Knight player, it had become evident that either,

a) There were no Daemon players locally for him to play against or
b) He'd missed the whole 'we're designed to kill Daemons' thing completely.

Having been concentrating primarily on my own army rather than his, it wasn't until turn 3 (maybe 4, I don't recall exactly) that I realised that he wasn't using his armies 'Preferred Enemy (Daemons)' special rule at all. Now I was winning quite conclusively at this point due to his army being less optimised than mine by quite a degree as well as the fact that my initial deployment hadn't resulted in too many large scatters which had meant I hadn't had to compensate for the piss poorly designed  'Daemonic Assault' rules. Now I could have just let him take the consequences of not knowing his codex very well...However, I'm not as big an arsehole as people sometimes thing so I 'reminded' him of the rule which (as it turned out) he didn't know about at all (???) as he'd never played against Daemons previous to our game. So I did the right thing in that particular game and can safely take the moral high ground with my victory.

Of course, the other question is.....If it had been going to be the difference between me winning and losing, would I have told him?

I'd like to think that I still would have.....but to be honest I most likely wouldn't.....

The situation should I suppose have a consistent answer. Either I tell my opponent the rule he's not using properly or I don't. Of course in the real world whether I would or not will often come down to how much difference it would make to the outcome of the game or even the more personal factor of whether (in my opinion) my opponent is a cunt or not...

Situation 2.
You know ALL the rules better than your opponent does.....
The term 'Rules Lawyer' is meant as an insult in most cases.

However is the fact that you know the rules to the game your playing a bad thing? The answer is 'Of course not'. If the players in a sporting event didn't know the rules then would you seriously consider them 'good' at the sport they were playing? Well, maybe you still would, but you definitely wouldn't allow the goal/touchdown/hole/try/score or whatever just because 'that's how he thought the rule worked'......

Should a game of toy soldiers be any different?

If I've relayed this tale of woe before then I apologise in advance.....

I was in a tournament a few years ago when I came up against an opponent with an all Nurgle army containing a 'Death-Star' unit of sorts which consisted of a large unit of Nurgle Bikers with a Nurgle marked Chaos Lord which amounted to over a 3rd of his armies points total.

He decided to charge one of my 'units' with it. The unit in question was a 105 point generic Marine Dreadnought with no upgrades whatsoever. It turned out that this ultimate unit of dooms method of dealing with vehicles was two Melta bombs (On the Lord and one on the unit Champion). This triggered rules debate number one over what he had to roll to hit me with the grenades. He maintained that as a vehicle that had moved less than 6" he should be hitting me on 4's and I pointed out that I was a fucking Dreadnought and he'd therefore be hitting me on 6's till I was in some way immobilised.....Out came the rule book.....I was right, then he missed with both and on we went (after his Krak grenades all missed as well).

The Dreadnought then crushed two Nurgle Bikers with his two attacks. My opponent then announced that due to his Lord being Fearless, then so was the unit he was with.....out came the rulebook again.....and a Leadership test was taken for the unit which rolled a 10. We then had to reach for the rulebook again when my opponent refused to accept that the test was at -2 due to the fact that I'd killed two of his guys and lost nothing in return.....To add insult to injury, I won the Initiative roll and my bargain priced Dreadnought promptly became 'man of the match' as he caught the unit and made it go away. At some point during this epic rules debate there was also an implication that Chaos Marines had ATSKNF which needed another rulebook referral....

Now, either my opponent was hoping I didn't know the rules myself or genuinely believed all the rules interpretations he was throwing at me and I suppose either answer is possible. However his tactic of making a definitive rules statement in a loud and confident voice could easily have convinced a less knowledgeable opponent that he was correct in his interpretation.....Fortunately I'm a 'Rules Lawyer' and proud of it ;-)

Knowing the rules is a good thing.

Is not knowing the rules 'cheating'? well no (if its genuine).....but it is fucking annoying.....

Situation 3.
Pre FAQ rules interpretations.
Some rules are freely open to debate. In many cases Games Workshop can use fairly ambiguous wording or even directly contradict itself in the same paragraph. However in many case what GW meant to say is fairly obvious....

Kharn the Betrayer's rules state quite clearly that 'Kharns close combat attacks always hit on a roll of 2+'. It was fairly obvious to me that this rule only applied to attacks against infantry, yet until the FAQ added 'against opponents with a WS' to his entry I happily used that rule to carve through vehicles that had moved over 6" and to chop Landspeeders out of the sky.....

Does that make me a cheat? From a purely rules point of view then no (till the FAQ came out) but taking into account the fact that I knew that it was going to be nerfed in the FAQ then perhaps the accusation may have some grounds in fact.

There were several things like this in the Grey Knight codex and a fair few in the Necron Codex as well and I'm sure a great many people are happily interpreting certain rules in order to create conga-lines of Scarabs and then Alpha-striking the hell out of somebodies mechanised gun-line without really thinking that the situation is going to last, but are doing it anyway ;-)

These are by no means the only examples of a poorly written rule being happily used by people right up until the hour the FAQ emerges with full knowledge that it's not going to last.....whether you consider that cheating or not is open to interpretation......

Situation 4.
Casual disregard for inconvenient rules.

There are a few times when it's easier just to ignore some rules than do everything 'by the book'. Some people are quite happy for a unit to do it's 'Run' or 'Fleet' move at the same time as movement whereas others may (correctly) interpret that as giving you the advantage of knowing just how far each unit has gone and then enabling the adjustment of your shooting and/or target priority accordingly.

I have often seen people take the 2" to rear of base when disembarking, add their 6" move and then plonk the unit 8" away with complete disregard for the fact that there isn't any way the unit could actually have all got out of the vehicle in the first place, units leapfrogging one another is also quite common and that's without mentioning the casual disregard many people have for unit coherency.....

Also in this broad category is the fact that most psychic powers specify the phase in which the test is taken for a good reason. The Chaos Space Marine power 'Warptime' needs to be taken at the beginning of the turn and if you end up not using it that's just hard luck but I still see it being taken just before combat because the using player is now 100% sure he's going to need it. The aforementioned psychic power is by no means the only one that can create advantages (albeit relatively minor ones) based on when the test is taken. Additionally there are some unit 'Special Rules' that can be abused in the same way.

If ignoring a rule gives you an advantage in any way then that has to be considered 'cheating' whether your opponent is 'okay' with it or not.

These are just a few examples and I'm sure you guys (and gals) all have more of your own.

So how far do you have to go before the 'cheater' label gets applied? It's not as clear cut as you might think.....

Thoughts and Comments are (as usual) most welcome.