Pretty much concur. Beyond a certain point you have to make an assumption of good faith to not lose your mind if you want to play infinity competitively.
That's the goal you have as a TO, keep bullshit at a minimum and let people just play. All the wipcracking is just to get the few guys in line who actually do it on purpose so everyone else can stop worrying about it. You don't want your players to assume their opponents are going to cheat, forget where their HD stuff is or one player taking 90 minutes while the other one only gets 30 minutes out of a games 2 hour budget. But it will happen to someone if you don't take measures against it. It's a tournament people, some people will put their game face on. Removing all distractions you can is the best you can do. You're not being strict so people don't fuck up your precious tournament and play like robots. On the contrary, you do so the guy working on his 5th beer having a blast still remembers to keep track of things (and to prevent bad blood at the aftershowparty).
Which sometimes might backfire as if the said guy is Holo your opponent might be bitter that "you told him this guy is your Lt!" ;/
Telling your opponent that someone on the table is definitely your only Lt. option while leaving out the fact that you have Holo in your army is a pretty d*ck move IMO. That's worse than not saying anything at all.
Well dont have Holo in Ariadna. But I agree this would be a dick move. Like having a single gulam that can be you and say this is my lt while you have camo or Holo lt ... Not faire play.
We have multiple camo lieutenant so a similar dick move could be done in Ariadna Correct telling would be : "this is my only visible lieutenant option (and I won't say anything about the non-visible one)"
Yeah but in this example if vassily is FO he HAS to be the lt. There is no way around it. I mean you know the difference between providing information and missleading your opponent. If there is a doubt in your mind then you are probably missleading him.
Just going to say that any tournament that requires me to have Facebook to participate is one I'm not going to attend.
Or, again, don't say anything. There is literally no reason to list which profiles in your list are valid LT options
For a lot of people winning is fun. That's because it is still pretty small. Nothing about Infinity invites only the better people. get more people and get more assholes. Good for you, but some of us are a "trust, but verify" kind of player. Cool. My opinion is if my opponent is willing to cheat I want him gone so I can play other people who mean to properly play.
I think the complicated and sometimes obtuse rule set of Infinity basically forces a gaming group to make a herd-decision whether to be hostile to assholes or to be the assholes.
I really think that this should be the starting point for any discussion on fair play. Probably the best way to approach this topic as a TO is not to "try to prevent cheating" but rather to create a setting, in which players find it easy to trust their opponents...which helps the overall atmosphere a lot. I allow people to use any tools at hand, as long as this doesn't interfere with their opponents gaming time. So if they want to recreate lists in Army, that's fine with me...and since I insist on chess clocks, this can be done on a player's own time frame. PLEASE, no chess clock debate here! I also insist on player's filling out a "tournament sheet"...each player only recieves a single one for the tourney. This sheet and the lists are the only viable way to proove any private information or deployment...no photos, no nothing. If your list is ambiguous about something, better write it down. If the opponent has any doubts, a judge can easily verify the info without sharing it to the opponent. It's on the player to provide sufficient information to solve any questions. In any doubt (or no infos on the sheet at all), the opponent (or judge) decides on the issue. Same goes for markers and LoS markings: if there is any doubt on what they indicate, the opponent decides. So it's not about punishing the player, but rather giving them the most exact guidelines possible about how to have a fair game. The thing is: ITS and the rules in general leave a whole lot of leeway. As soon as these "empty spaces" are closed and people know how to "behave", things mostly turn out to be smooth, even if this can only be done for individual events. Still so far most people I met honestly wanted to play a nice and fair game. Over the years I've only had two (!!!) instances as a TO in which there have been intentional dick moves...which is a pretty damn good ratio for (semi-) competitive settings and maybe the best thing about Infinity...alright, maybe some cheats went undetected ;)
If you assume that Infinity players and other wargamers have the same random distribution of assholes, you will encounter just as many here as you would elsewhere. The overall numbers may be lower, but the chances of you running into an asshole while playing should be just as high as any other game. Or were you trying to make a different connection between small group size and number of assholes?
I imagine if you looked at the motivations of people the least pleasant to game against (ie: The most Asshole-ish) you would find that the majority of them are looking for Recognition/Superiority in a popular field. Ie: Their Selfworth is tied up into the concept of being a winner at ____ could be a video game or a table top game or a whatever. Many of them will naturally gravitate towards the most well known games available because they're generally easier to access and offer more opportunity for 'recognition'. Conversely the more niche a game is the more likely a player is to be a very big fan of some specific element of the game. Theres little to no incentive to just play some random off game cause its there, you play it because you love something about it. So basically yes the ratios of players, to fanatics, to assholes would likely change as any game/whatever grows and shrinks. Disclaimer/Edit: I have absolutely 0 concrete evidence to back my suspicions up. Take with a liberal dosing of salt.
I agree, actually. Andre's point (which I quoted) does not consider this... at least not explicitly. Which is why I added the last statement (which you quoted).
Alternatively, enumerating the list of possible LTs in the list and that you possible camo or holo options can also be a dick move as you can do it to just confuse your opponent with a barrage of information and target saturation.
That feels like a stretch, my dude. Something as simple as: "The following model(s) are valid Lt options...[list models here], however please note that my faction/sectorial also has access to Holoprojector and Camo Lts." is: An accurate representation of the game-state. Provides your opponent with all of the information they could glean from spending 5-10 minutes in the Army Builder recreating your list. Doesn't drown your opponent in useless data or otherwise lead them into making incorrect assumptions. Doesn't compromise your own Private Information. I feel like it's really easy to meet these standards, so am struggling to understand why this thread has gone for 10 pages. :)