It’s Time for an Honest Conversation About Cheating in 40K: How Common It Is, What Causes It, and What Can Be Done About It

Let’s get our hands dirty at Warphammer today and talk about my least favorite part of competitive 40K: Cheating.

We are going to get into the dark corners of competitive 40K that most other content creators avoid. Cheating is a part of competitive 40K. That’s just a fact. Refusing to talk about it and bury any discussion about it helps no one besides the cheaters. So let’s bring it out into the open and talk about it!

Before we start, I want to make one thing very clear: This article comes entirely from my own experiences and what I’ve personally heard. Ask 10 different tournament players, and you might get 10 very different answers about how common cheating is. These takes are not the indisputable gospel on cheating.

But given that I’m one of the few (kind of) well-known players with a (kind of) big platform in Warhammer that is willing to have an open discussion about cheating like this, this is about as good as we have. I don’t know how many tournament games I’ve played over my ~5 years in competitive 40K, but I know it’s easily over 200, and these games have been played in over a dozen different tournament locations in the United States. You’ll see a lot of takes online that take positions at either end like “40K Tournament Players Are All WAAC cheaters!!!!111111!!!!!”, or “Tournament 40K is a gentleman’s game, and you don’t have to worry about cheating”. I lean much more towards the latter viewpoint than the former, but either extreme doesn’t do the truth justice.

I want to make 100% clear before I share these stories: No player in any of these cheating stories will be named. I am 100% against anyone trying to “read between the lines” and try to figure out who anyone involved is. You will get the wrong person and attack some great member of the hobby because you feel the need to be involved in drama. Some of these situations are from several editions ago and they might be a much better sport by now, or left the hobby entirely for all I know. Just enjoy the stories for what they are.

What is Cheating in 40K?

Let’s list all the different ways I’ve seen or heard about players cheat in 40K tournaments. This list is not all-inclusive, and I’m sure you can think of some that I missed.

Examples of Cheating

• Lying about unit stats, stratagems, or any other rule
  • This includes forgetting restrictions on your units or rules
• Giving evasive answers to direction questions
  • Opponent: “Can your unit advance and charge?”
  • Cheater: “No”
  • Opponent sets up their key unit Movement Distance + 12.1″ away from the enemy unit so it can’t be charged.
  • The following turn, they use a stratagem to advance and charge that unit.
• Using weighted/rigged dice
• Lying about dice rolls
• Rolling where your opponent can’t see it
• Picking up too few or too many dice when rolling saves or attacks
• Changing your CP counter or wound counters when your opponent isn’t looking
• Nudging units to get them closer or further
• Moving too far and tape-measure laziness
  • I try to be very precise with my own movement, but this is a grey area. I don’t think someone is cheating because one time they moved a unit 8.5″ instead of 8″, that would be a standard everyone would fail. But if the movement cheating is very consistent and continues even after called out by the opponent, that is where I draw the line at intentional movement cheating.
  • PSA: If you hold your tape measure 2 feet over the table when moving your units, you are moving your units way too far. Parallax is a thing. I don’t make the rules.
• Quickly rolling a charge and then moving the unit before the opponent can confirm how far apart the units were
• Sequencing or timing things wrong to gain an advantage
  • For example, someone has a stratagem in the Command Phase to give a unit advance and charge (like the stratagem to put a unit into a Doctrine in Gladius Task Force). They wait to roll their advance roll in the movement phase and see if it is high enough before choosing to use the stratagem.
• Clock/time manipulation.
  • If you knowingly leave the clock on your opponent because they forgot to clock it back to you, that is cheating.
  • If you know your opponent will score a lot of points on turn 5 and you start slowing down the game so your game doesn’t reach turn 5, that is cheating.
  • Placing the clock in a spot where your opponent can’t easily reach it? This is, you guessed it, cheating.
• Cheating on Secondary draws
  • An example of this is looking into your deck to see what upcoming cards are when the opponent isn’t looking, or “drawing” secondaries in your deck in the Tabletop App when your opponent isn’t looking.

What is “Angle Shooting” vs “Cheating”?

Some people like to make a distinction between “angle shooting” and “cheating”. I think that line is arbitrary and doesn’t really exist. Basically any activity that someone would consider angling is just cheating. But I understand why people draw the distinction.

If I had to make a definition, I would say “angling” is anything that abuses the social conventions of 40K, while cheating is actually altering the game mechanics itself. Hiding the fact that your unit can advance and charge when asked is angling because it’s abusing the fact 40K is an open information game and people trust their opponents to give accurate answers. Bringing a loaded dice is cheating because you’re altering how a game mechanic (the randomness of a d6) works.

Both angling and cheating are bad, just in case anyone was curious.

Some Cheating Is Worse Than Others

I could grandstand about how all cheating is unacceptable, and that’s true. But the reality is some types of cheating are worse than others, and some of these cheating activities should be resolved in different ways. Someone moving their models too far needs to be given a talking to by the TO and a chance to improve. Someone bringing weighted dice needs to be kicked out immediately.

Accidental Mistakes Are (Mostly) Not Cheating

I don’t want dads coming back from 7th Edition because their kids got into Warhammer to be worried they’ll be called a cheater if they make a mistake at a tournament. It is extremely important to draw the distinction between mistakes and cheating.

People are going to give a lot of grace when most of the listed cheating mistakes happen, because you can make most of them without intending to do them.

In all of my time in 40K, I have literally only 1 time seen someone get a penalty I thought they didn’t deserve. I have seen many times when someone deserved a penalty and got nothing. If your intentions are good, I promise you that you’ll be fine.

We have all been new players struggling to understand every rule before. It’s totally okay!

Mistakes Happen, But Continuing to Make Them Is Not Okay

This is the key point I want to make. If you tell your opponent the wrong range for one of your guns, that by itself is going to be okay. If that had a huge impact on the game, you should try to undo it as much as you can or even concede if that mistake flipped the result of the game. But remembering the range for one of your guns wrong happens, and if an opponent calls it out, you’ll learn your lesson.

Where “mistakes” bleed into cheating is if they’re repeated. In a Chaos mirror one time, an opponent made a massive rules mistake in their favor. They were apologetic and I’m glad I caught it before it affected the game. I had 0 belief this opponent was cheating.

I talked to their opponent after the next round and asked if they tried the same thing. That opponent said no. That’s exactly what I want to hear. That person made a mistake, but they apologized when it was called out and stopped doing it.

That’s all we can ask for in a game as complicated as 40K.

Top Table Players Should Know Better

I don’t know where to draw the line, but there should be some discretion used based on how a much player should know better.

I played a player at NOVA who drew his secondaries round 1 on his phone while I had no chance to see it. This player had also said it was his first GT. I told him the etiquette on drawing secondaries on your phone is to show your opponent your screen as you’re hitting the button to draw them. That opponent understood. He did the same thing round 2, I gave him a reminder, and he offered to redraw. I told him it was fine. The secondary draws for the remaining turns were all clean. I’m always happy to work with new players on etiquette, and we had an awesome game.

If that an opponent was a big name player and we were playing for the win at a GT and just happened to get Extend/Secure when they have infiltrated units on two objectives? I’m tell them to redraw them while I’m watching, and calling a judge if it happens again next round. Someone who has been playing at a high level for a long time should know better.

How Common Is Cheating?

Let’s be honest: This is a truly impossible question to answer. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try.

The amount of cheating varies greatly by region and tournament and team. There are areas people have said not to attend events because so many of the “top players” there cheat and get supported by the TO’s. On the flipside, there are probably many events and smaller communities that literally don’t have a single cheater there. So if I say 5% of players are cheaters or whatever the number is, that doesn’t mean I’ll look at 20 players and say one of them is likely cheating. There are events where I can look at 20 players and think I’d be happy to play with any of them, and there are events where you can grab a sample of random players and find a ton of cheaters.

Just Answer the Damn Question, Mike

First let’s start with blatant cheating. Blatant cheating is extremely rare. I think almost no one comes into a game planning to cheat. The number of players who will come into a game planning to lie about something is not literally zero, but unless you’re in a particularly unlucky area, you will almost never encounter this particular type of cheater. The issue with this type of cheating is that you’ll often be able to dominate a local group of unknowing players by lying about all of your rules. But once you move out of that pool to facing more experienced players, this type of behavior comes with an expiration date in the tournament scene.

FFS Mike, Give Me a Number

Okay, fine. If I absolutely had to give a number: 1 out of 50 competitive 40K players are cheaters, so 2% of the field. The number gets slightly higher among “high level” players, going up to about 4-5%. The number of anglers/soft cheaters/people that will forget a restriction to get over the line in a really tight game is probably a few percentage points higher.

What do you think the number is? This is not an “engagement bait” question because I make basically 0 money off of Warphammer, this isn’t Youtube. I genuinely really want to hear what you think the number is.

You know who I don’t want to hear guesses from? The guys who last played a decade ago, never played a big tournament, and just lurk around competitive 40K pages saying how awful competitive 40K is and how all tournament players are WAAC jerks. These guys are totally clueless about what the modern tournament scene is like, and are likely to drastically overestimate the amount of cheating in the game.

There Is Less Cheating at Tournaments Than in 40K Overall

I often see comments online like “I don’t play tournaments to avoid the cheaters”. I think that is absolute nonsense. If you want clean games, the best place to get clean games is at tournaments.

You’re much less likely to get cheated at a 40K tournament than in a random pickup game. Playing with TO’s and versus experienced players is exactly what most cheaters looking for ego-boosting wins want to avoid.

The amount of times I’ve seen comments like, “I’ve got a small group of friends and there is 1 guy that won’t stop cheating, what should I do?” is way too high. Same goes for stories of absurdly blatant cheating at LGS game nights.

I don’t want this article to deter anyone from playing competitive 40K. Calling it a “gentleman’s game” isn’t always true, but it’s way more true than not.

1% of Players Are Responsible for 90% of Cheating

I’m confident I could pick 10 people to permanently ban from the tournament scene and that would reduce cheating controversy stories by 90%. The frustrating thing is that the names I hear that cheated the previous weekend are almost the same pool of names over and over.

The most common reaction when one person says someone was caught cheating? “Oh yeah, that guy cheats”. It’s almost never shock like “Wow that guy had such a perfect reputation, I don’t know what came over him that day”.

Why do we allow these few turds to keep swirling around the toilet bowl? Why not flush them out?

Most Players Are AMAZING Opponents

I can think back to so many games I’ve played that were super technical, we knew the game would be super close and could swing at any moment, but were played with the vibes of two friends learning the game on their kitchen table.

Please don’t get the wrong impression from the fact Warphammer is talking about cheating. I’ve had almost uniformly amazing opponents, and encourage you go try out 40K tournaments yourself sometime if you haven’t already. Whether at small RTTs or the biggest events in the world, almost everyone is there for a great time and you’ll meet many amazing people.

How Accepted Are Cheaters?

Way too accepted.

I’m going to the big Champion’s Cup team event next week. I assumed teams events would be pretty free from cheating because no one would invite the players with bad reputations onto their teams.

I was unfortunately wrong. There are a few teams with players known for angling and cheating on them. The TO team and organizers are very experienced, and I’m sure have knowledge of any problem players and will make sure games are clean. But why do we have to travel to events to play against consistent cheaters in the first place? There is one player in particular that I’m literally shocked isn’t banned yet and was allowed to attend. I’m not going to give any indication who this is. I would love nothing more than for this player to show up and have awesome, clean games and prove everyone wrong. But we have years of evidence otherwise at this point, so I’m doubtful.

Anyway, I’m really hyped for the event! The Champion’s Cup is going to be a gathering of many of the best people in the entire hobby, and we’re going to have such a great time. But if I face one of the teams with a known cheater, I’m going to assume that every single player on that team is okay with cheating and give them a lot less leeway than I normally do. That’s just the reality of things.

Are All Cheaters Assholes?

The tricky part about cheating is that it’s not as simple as “good people don’t cheat, bad people cheat”. The reality is that there are many people that are really friendly and great to have on your team, but are miserable to play Warhammer with. This applies to some sore losers too. I know a few guys that I’ll try to avoid plaing with, but I can’t wait to grab a beer with after the round. I can also think of a player that has consistently cheated that has put on some really great events as a TO. Life is complicated.

Are All Cheaters Miserable?

People say stuff like “people cheat because their lives are so sad that they desperately need a win at toy soldiers”. That is just not true, and a really childlike way of looking at the world. People want there to be an intrinsic fairness to the world, where everyone that does them wrong is actually miserable. Some of the people responsible for the greatest suffering on the planet are living happy lives. Life is not fair.

When people say “all cheaters must be miserable”, that also comes with a certain pity for their actions that they don’t deserve. This comment is just trash and needs to be removed from the discourse.

Cheaters Can Give Opponents “Great Games” Because That Opponent Isn’t a Threat

I’ve talked a few times about people I’ve seen blatantly cheat. A common reply is “Well I played that player and we had a great game. They beat me 100-10 without cheating and were really friendly.”

First of all, a lot of cheating is really subtle or requires knowing what to look for. You can easily cheat 100’s of new players and never get caught.

There’s also the reality that many cheaters are very experienced players that will beat less experienced players without cheating. They might have a dirty trick that they never have to pull because the game is never in question. You don’t have to cheat on your secondary draws when you’re already on pace to score 100, for example. I’ll talk more about this in the Causes of Cheating section later.

You’ll Never Hear About Most Cheating

I can’t get into details obviously, but any big 40K chat has stories on many weekends with stories of cheating from the previous weekend.

It’s frustrating to see situations where player A will tell everyone privately that player B is an angler and you have to watch out for a way they try to cheat, and then go on a podcast and talk about what a nice guy player B is publicly. But this is the reality of the situation, and it’s unlikely to change. The only cheating most people hear about is when its hilariously blatant and when its on a streamed game. That is only a small percentage of the cheating that occurs.

My Personal Experiences with Being Cheated

One thing I’ve intentionally avoided whenever I’ve done my tournament writeups is talking about rules mistakes my opponents made. There are two main reasons for that. One, I want to keep playing me a positive, stress-free experience. I don’t want an opponent to face me and feel stressed that because I have a platform and they don’t, that they’re going to get blasted. If you ever face me and make a rules mistake (or 10), don’t worry. I focus on being complimentary to my opponents as much as possible and leaving out anything that makes anyone look bad. I love when people come up to me the following tournament and are like, “Hey Mike, saw you talked about our game, that was really fun to see!”

The Worst Intentional Cheating I’ve Faced

This game was from a few years ago, so some of the specific references might be forgotten by readers. Don’t worry, I’ll provide plenty of context for you to understand every bit of bullshit that went down. This is literally the funniest game of 40K I’ve ever played in hindsight.

At a big tournament a few years ago, I was about to face one of the coolest armies I’d ever faced. It was a pure Nurgle Daemons army with 2 Great Unclean Ones and an allied Knight Tyrant (the Chaos version of the Knight Castellan). His list seemed mediocre to me but we were both 5-1, so I was really interested in playing him and seeing how he was piloting it.

It turns that the secret ingredient was crime.

This player was lying about absolutely everything. He had been lucky enough to play into a bunch of opponents that didn’t know his niche army so he could get away with it. Unfortunately for him, I had literally written the guide to playing his army.

I remember being disappointed as soon as the game started. We deployed 24″ apart on a horizontal deployment, so we were each 12″ away from the midfield line. He goes to move his 10″ moving Plague Drone unit, and when he ends their movement, they’re significantly past the halfway line, so they have to have moved 13 or 14 inches. I remember my first emotion being disappointment, like “Oh no, no, no, please don’t be like this”. I point out the issue with the Plague Drone movement, and he acts apologetic and moves them back a few inches. He goes to move his Great Unclean One next. It again goes way past where it should be. The entire movement phase is like this.

He starts his psychic phase by casting -1 to Hit from his Great Unclean One onto his Knight. I tell him the Knight doesn’t have the right keywords to receive -1 to Hit from the Daemon spell. He just nods his head and moves on to the next spell. This is an actually hilarious reaction. If your opponent had just told you that the strongest synergy in your army didn’t work, wouldn’t you be surprised and double check to see if your opponent is wrong? He was just like, “Bummer, Mike knows it doesn’t work” and moved right on. This was the movement I became convinced he was intentionally cheating.

All game, basically every stat I was told was better than it was. His Plague Drones had more wounds than they actually had. His Great Unclean Ones hit harder in melee than they should. I can’t prove it, but I’m also 99% convinced that he was swapping some key defensive relic or trait between his 2 Great Unclean Ones so whichever one was taking more damage that turn was the one with the defensive buff.

Here’s the part that to this day I still can’t figure out. I did 1 mortal wound from an explosion or Smite to his Plaguebearer unit. He said he was placing that 1 wound on the Plaguebearer champion with 2 wounds so he didn’t have to remove a model. I had been playing the 8th Edition Daemons codex for years at that point and knew the Plaguebearer champ didn’t have 2 wounds. I sarcastically asked him if he could show me where on the datasheet it says the Plaguebearer champ has 2 wounds. To my actual shock, he pulls up Battlescribe and shows me that the Plaguebearer champ has 2 wounds. I was really surprised I had never noticed that before, but conceded that he was right on that one point and moved on.

I’m talking with friends afterwards and am joking that he cheated his ass off all game, but at least I finally learned that the Plaguebearer champ has 2 wounds right as we were going to transition to the 9th Edition codex. My friend tells me that’s ridiculous, so I pull up the datasheet for myself and see that the Plaguebearer champ indeed has only 1 wound. So… what the hell happened when he showed me the datasheet with 2 wounds for the champ? Did he have an edited version of his Battlescribe datasheets to show opponents? Did he just use sleight of hand to show me a similar datasheet with 2 wounds and I didn’t notice? Either option seems like more effort than its worth to get 1 extra wound, but I guess that’s light work for a habitual cheater.

Most Impactful Unintentional Cheating I’ve Faced

There’s a few examples I can think of where games I played were swung in key moments by opponents misplaying rules in their favor. The biggest one that comes to mind in 10th Edition was a game I played versus Guard with a big unit of Scions with a Command Squad that got full hit rerolls versus units on objectives. They used their rule to get Lethal Hits when their unit Remained Stationary to get Lethal Hits in overwatch, and combined with full hit rerolls they almost one-shot a full health Be’lakor in overwatch. Not only did Be’lakor almost die, I had to burn a CP to reroll the final save roll to keep him alive on 2 wounds. It was a game-changer in what ended up being an extremely tight game.

It turns out that the old Guard rule for Lethal Hits could never trigger in your opponent’s turn. I’m confident this was an honest mistake because I saw a bunch of Guard players online talk about this exact same combo and argue with anyone who said it didn’t work. No hard feelings at all!

Most Blatant Cheating Story That Happened to a Friend

This story still pisses me off more than any cheating that has happened to me personally.

My friend was playing a widely known player of a certain army (intentionally keeping it as vague as possible, because I know a lot of faction experts like Colin Kay with Sisters or John Lennon with Marines or Cody Jiru with Drukhari or Anthony Vanella with World Eaters are some of the cleanest technical players you’ll ever meet). My friend comes across as a goofy goober, but he’s one of the best players in the country when he’s locked in. The big name player starts off playing clean, assuming he’ll have an easy win over my goofy friend with his goofy list. Turns out that my friend is playing really well, and is actually winning as they enter the final turns. My friend bends over to grab some models underneath the table. The big name player literally just reaches over to his CP counter and adds 3 extra CP to his counter so he can turn the tide. My friend notices what happened, and immediately calls it out. The big name player denies it at first, but sheepishly fixes his CP total once my friend threatens to call a judge.

Most Impactful Unintentional Cheating I’ve Ever Done

Let’s get spicy! While I’m extremely clean with my rules and most of the mistakes I catch are against me (I only realized Fiends are T5 not T4 after my GT with them), I’m not perfect.

The main thing I can think of is when I used the Changeling’s 12″ ability to make a unit of Wraithguard unable to shoot in a key shooting phase versus early 10th Edition Eldar. I didn’t realize the Changeling’s ability only worked on a visible unit, and I had him on the opposite side of a wall from the Wraithguard. I could have put him on the other side of that wall if I realized that, since him turning off my Wraithguard was my only out to win. But I had him on the wrong side of the wall, and his ability shouldn’t have worked. The opponent was running early 10th Edition Eldar, so who was really cheating here?

What Causes Cheating

This is something I’ve thought a lot about, and touched on in various articles over the years. Let’s summarize it all in one place.

At this point in time, I believe the #1 cause of cheating in 40K is someone trying to make sure their results align with their expectations, regardless of variance or what their skill level actually is.

This can be further broken down into two main causes: Someone having higher expectations than is reasonable for their skill level, or someone who believes their skill level is high enough that they should be immune to the variance of 40K like awful dice or awful matchups.

The reality is that 40K is a game with a ton of variance, and the skill gaps between high level players are much smaller than the skill gaps between a high level player and an average player. If someone is a good player and wants to make sure they always make the top tables, cheating is the easiest path forward. Improving your skill from playing 95% perfect to 99% perfect is extremely difficult. Rolling your dice where your opponent can’t see them to gain a few percentage increase to your chance of winning is very easy.

So when people plateau in their growth as a player, cheating is sitting right there as a path to improve their results. Most people know better than to take it, but that path is there for some people.

This is also why you’ll almost never see people just going to events to hang with friends cheating. If you have no expectations for your results, you don’t have a reason to cheat.

Cheating Doesn’t Only Happen At Top Tables

I’ve heard way too many stories of people being 0-4 and then being shocked to run into someone making the game miserable.

Remember, the cause of cheating is not failing to reach a result that’s the same for everyone. Maybe someone is 0-4 and will be too embarassed to tell their team they went winless if they go 0-5, so they really need to win that last game. That can lead to cheating just as much as someone starting 4-0 that really wants to go 5-0.

You’ll find amazing players at all levels of play. You’ll find cheaters at all levels of play.

Cheaters Often Feel Justified

Let’s say you’re an experienced player that expects to win the event. Round 1, you’re having a really tight game. It’s against a worse player than you (or at least that’s how you view them), and they’re only getting carried by some lucky dice rolls and perfect secondary draws. You’ve got the win locked up as long as you don’t roll below a 5 on your final charge to reach an objective and win the game. It would be completely unfair to lose round 1 to some random player just because of dice luck.

Do you not deserve to guarantee yourself that easy charge? Its not that bad to roll behind a building and just say you made the charge. They’ve been getting so lucky all game, so why not even it out? It’s not even unfair. You’re a better player than this scrub and deserve the win.

This is all totally wrong! But if you come in feeling you’re the best player your main focus is on getting the win you feel you deserve, cheating doesn’t seem as awful anymore.

The same applies to the 0-4 player who wants to make sure he doesn’t go 0-5. Come on, you’re a better player than your record. You don’t belong among the bottom table scrubs. Just make sure you get the win and don’t lose to these worse players.

People have justified much worse behaviors to themselves than anything that could happen during a game of toy soldiers. Don’t be shocked that cheaters don’t view themselves as cheaters.

Can Cheaters Be Reformed?

I’m going to provide a hot take: Cheaters absolutely deserve second chances. It’s easy to discard people that do bad things, but I don’t think that’s always the right way to do things.

I would happily play someone who cheated in the past but was committed to turning things around.

That requires certain conditions to be met. First, the player has to be very open and admit they cheated and what they cheated about. There’s no accountability if they’re not honest with themselves and others about what they did. Next, they have to take a long break away from the game as a penalty. But if someone is genuinely committed to turning their reputation around from their previous cheating, I’m open to that.

I think TJ Lanigan is a great example of this. He admitted what he did and took some time away from the game and held himself accountable for his behavior once he returned. I’ve heard great stories from opponents of his since then, and I’d happily play him at a top table without a judge if we’re at a tournament together. Anyone still attacking him these days is completely disconnected from the competitive scene, because there are a lot of active cheaters these days. TJ isn’t one of them.

I admit, I’m also a bit biased. When I went to my first GT in 8th Edition, TJ was there. I came up to talk to him because he was doing some interesting stuff with Chaos. I was already developing into the player I am today, and all I wanted to do was cool janky stuff with Chaos (I was running a Daemonette horde with 2 Contorted Epitomes to trap enemies in combat and prevent my girls from being shot). He sat with me for like 10 minutes and answered questions about Death Guard, and gave me some advice when I messaged him after the tournament.

I Believe in Second Chances. I Do Not Believe in Third Chances.

If you’ve gone through the ban-time away-return cycle and then continue cheating, you’re done. I wish you happiness and success in any non-40K related hobbies pursue. There is a wide world out there beyond playing 40K tournaments. But if it were up to me, you’d be permanently banned at that point from playing 40K tournaments again.

There was a big controversy with a player at a big event misplaying some key rules in their favor. That same player had made some key mistakes in other events they won, including having an opponent question a secondary they were using and then leaving out some key words to their opponent and the judge. After those previous mistakes, that player had talked about wanting to turn their image around. I had some mutual friends and heard really great stuff about his new mindset. When we got the chance to play on a team together, I was happy to take it. Once the news about their latest controversy came out, I realized my instincts were wrong and we had to remove the player from the team.

I have heard from friends that this person is a really nice person outside of 40K, and I totally believe it. I want them to have happiness in whatever hobbies they pursue, and anyone harassing them is way out of line. But once you’ve continued this pattern of behavior even after trying to stop, I think it’s time to step away from tournament 40K for good.

Approach Cheating as a Public Health Issue, Not a Personal Responsibility Issue

This is by far the most important section in my mind, but I can’t think of a great way to word the title. Please let me know if you get what I’m saying here!

I think one of the biggest mistakes people commonly make is attributing a certain behavior or flaw in someone as a result of their innate being instead of a result of their environment. People do this for cheating in Warhammer, and it solves basically nothing. If we create an environment where cheating is identified and corrected and people are given a path to cleaning up their behavior, fewer people will cheat. If we create an environment where cheating is allowed to fester, more people will cheat.

Let’s Use Physical Health As An Example

I’m just going to pick an example and discuss addiction. I have worked before for an organization that focused on helping people suffering from addiction. Certain communities in certain areas have way higher rates of addiction than others. I’ve seen people attribute that to those people being “lazy” or “bad people” or such. I often see people say some very cruel things about people that are addicts, and act like they’re much better people because they don’t have that issue. I think that is literally displaying childlike levels of critical thinking, and an embarrassing way to view the world.

Are people in environments where addiction is normalized?

Do people have enough affordable access to healthcare?

Do people have access to housing?

Are there underlying medical issues that people can’t afford the money and time to diagnose and address?

Do people with traumas have affordable access to quality mental health care?

Do we live in a culture where people are able to seek help without shame?

That’s not to say individual choices have 0 impact on situations like that, but there is way too much similarity between way too many situations to ascribe addiction to a moral failing. It’s a cultural issue that puts some people at risk much more than others.

When addiction is treated as a public health issue, with specific steps people go through to seek help and easy access to medical care to help them recover, the results are infinitely better than when its treated as a moral issue and people with addictions are treated like failures. It’s a health issue that they’re suffering from, and it’s a health issue that many people have successfully recovered from when given the right treatment and conditions.

Cheating is a Cultural Issue

Why is cheating so much more prevalent in some 40K areas than others? Is it because some areas are full of morally upright human beings while other areas are full of assholes? I don’t really think that’s it.

Just like saying someone is suffering from addiction because they are lazy is almost always untrue (not to mention fucking rude), saying people cheat at Warhammer because they are assholes is largely untrue.

Have we created a culture where being good at 40K is way more important than being a good opponent?

(Yes, broadly speaking)

Are cheaters rewarded financially?

(Yes)

Have we created a culture where repeated cheaters get punished?

(No really)

Do we have tools in place to give TO’s a tool to hand out punishments equal to the infraction?

(No, It’s either bans or nothing. For more discussion about this, see this great article https://www.goonhammer.com/stop-competing-our-broken-approach-to-misplay-cheating-in-competitive-40k/)

Do people feel they can talk openly about cheaters?

(No)

Do we work to reform cheaters?

(No)

Cheaters Don’t Create Bad Gaming Cultures. Bad Gaming Cultures Create Cheaters.

This is the final point I want to leave you with. The culture in competitive 40K is really great on the whole, but there is still more work to be done. I’ve seen new players get started in areas where the experienced players all play the right way and those new players have become some of the best people in the hobby. I’ve seen new players get started in areas more concerned with winning than playing the right way, and those players become very difficult opponents.

We all have to take responsibility for our individual actions, but there is also a responsibility from everyone to create a culture where cheating is not given a chance to grow.

Final Thoughts

I have no idea what kind of reception this article is going to get. Please share your thoughts. Disagreement with anything I said is not only allowed, it is highly encouraged!

Interested in joining a community of players focused on both playing at a high level and playing the right way? Then jump into the Warphammer discord here! I’m amazed at how much the community has grown while staying an amazing place. I look forward to seeing you there.

As always, have fun, stay safe, and may the Dark Gods bless your rolls!