I really think that every player should have to mark their command dials either 1-2-3 or color coded. It is way to easy to do the old switch-er-roo if the command dial you have set is not a good option at that moment. FFG needs to put this rule in the first FAQ update.

Or better yet, people could just not cheat. That's always fun

Fly casual, friends.

I was accused of this once, at which point I had a friend stand by me and verify my dials....at which point my opponent accused me of witchcraft, seeming I always had the correct dial available. I just told him I use the Force....

Look the older I get, the more things in life that matter are worth putting energy into, after that I just don't care. I sit here looking at my 8 month old and my wife, and I think about how I am going to provide for them. I just had major surgery to fix my shoulder as muscles separated from the bones, I worry about if my arm will be able to pick up my son or dance with my wife. After that I don't have much engery to care at all about people acting stupid and cheating. If I am playing with a cheater then I just count the game as pratice and even better if I win then I start riding the pony around the table.

Is this really a problem? Why would someone do that?

I was accused of this once, at which point I had a friend stand by me and verify my dials....at which point my opponent accused me of witchcraft, seeming I always had the correct dial available. I just told him I use the Force....

Instead of switching the dials you could always nudge it too the command that you need while they move a ship or roll dice.

Or use Leia. She is the best at cheating. Maybe that's supposed to say something about her?

Cheaters will reap what the sow, in this life or the next. If you suspect you are playing with a shady person, don't play again. Making commands visable to all players would also nullify cheating but, how is that fun?

Every game is relatively easy to cheat at if you try to. That doesn't mean superfluous rules need to be installed to prevent it. Just diligence as players in being aware of it and not accepting duplicitous behavior.

Meh, I just go direct fire after the first turn anyways so who cares?

Someone who is going through the trouble to actually cheat at Armada, you know, to maximized the glory of having their little plastic spaceships beat your little plastic spaceships is generally one to be avoided. Someone like that, I want them to cheat. The sooner they do, the sooner I catch them and know not to game with them. Or, for that matter, do much of anything with them.

Conversely, the person that spends their time worrying about how other players are trying to screw them over in the contest of little plastic spaceships Is generally someone to be avoided as well.

Seriously, there's enough backstabbing in real life. Let's keep Armada fun folks.

Well, I don't think that's the thing OP wanted to discuss.

The answer is, yes, it is way too easy to cheat in this game. For example - fighters. You can remove them, bump around, fly them however you want... of course you may say that it doesn't matter, that it's all about the big ships, but then you can see someone manage to move a B-wing a few milimeters closer to your badly damaged VSD, suddenly putting it in range while it may or may not have been in range before. Or place some ace squadron in range to intercept your precious bombers that would otherwise wreak havoc upon his capital ship, but now they're likely to just be shot down.

I have watched a couple batreps, even more 'professional' ones and that movement tool, while a cool idea on paper, is terribly uncomfortable to use when there are fighters and other ships cluttering the table, the tool very often forced people to remove their fighters for the sake of movement and then put them back where they were, and I am sure that 99% of the time they didn't exploit it and they just didn't know EXACTLY where they were before, but the final position differed about half an inch, which in wargaming can mean a lot, especially with a range band based game. And they didn't even want to cheat! Or at least I believe so.

A good idea would be getting another tool and reducing it's size to 3 or even 2 if you're an imperial player for the ease of short distance movement without hitting everything on the table with it.

Dials are another thing - as mentioned, it's easy to swap them when you know how. Is it lowly? Sure. Would I despise someone doing that? Of course. Can it change the game giving him an unfair advantage? Absolutely.

Of course "don't cheat" or "don't play with cheaters" is a sound advice, but I don't want to have to look at opponent's hands, nor do I want to shuffle through a couple cheaters, because I value my time enough to waste it on people I don't have fun playing with. It's FFG's job to make it as hard to cheat in it as possible, especially if they want Armada to be even half as sucessful as X-Wing, which got very popular because it's suited for competitive play. To be honest I don't think I can say that about Armada.

Let them cheat soon they will be caught and have a reputation of being a cheat and no one will play them

Creating rules to stop cheats most likely would not work because the will always find a way to cheat by another method

Well, I don't think that's the thing OP wanted to discuss.

The answer is, yes, it is way too easy to cheat in this game. For example - fighters. You can remove them, bump around, fly them however you want... of course you may say that it doesn't matter, that it's all about the big ships, but then you can see someone manage to move a B-wing a few milimeters closer to your badly damaged VSD, suddenly putting it in range while it may or may not have been in range before. Or place some ace squadron in range to intercept your precious bombers that would otherwise wreak havoc upon his capital ship, but now they're likely to just be shot down.

I have watched a couple batreps, even more 'professional' ones and that movement tool, while a cool idea on paper, is terribly uncomfortable to use when there are fighters and other ships cluttering the table, the tool very often forced people to remove their fighters for the sake of movement and then put them back where they were, and I am sure that 99% of the time they didn't exploit it and they just didn't know EXACTLY where they were before, but the final position differed about half an inch, which in wargaming can mean a lot, especially with a range band based game. And they didn't even want to cheat! Or at least I believe so.

A good idea would be getting another tool and reducing it's size to 3 or even 2 if you're an imperial player for the ease of short distance movement without hitting everything on the table with it.

Dials are another thing - as mentioned, it's easy to swap them when you know how. Is it lowly? Sure. Would I despise someone doing that? Of course. Can it change the game giving him an unfair advantage? Absolutely.

Of course "don't cheat" or "don't play with cheaters" is a sound advice, but I don't want to have to look at opponent's hands, nor do I want to shuffle through a couple cheaters, because I value my time enough to waste it on people I don't have fun playing with. It's FFG's job to make it as hard to cheat in it as possible, especially if they want Armada to be even half as sucessful as X-Wing, which got very popular because it's suited for competitive play. To be honest I don't think I can say that about Armada.

The dial thing doesn't worry me too much. If they can pull off a slight of hand stunt like that, then like Corellian Corvette said, they could just nudge the actual dial to whatever they wanted on the pretext of 'aligning the command stack' or what not. If someone has a WAAC mentality that goes as far as cheating, then they'll find an opportunity. They've probably already worn out the plastic movement tool's 'clicks' anyway.

... that movement tool, while a cool idea on paper, is terribly uncomfortable to use when there are fighters and other ships cluttering the table, the tool very often forced people to remove their fighters for the sake of movement and then put them back where they were...

I never got how this was much of an issue. Not because I didn't trust anyone, but because I was fairly certain when I first opened the box, that the 'deployment zone' bits were right angles for marking ship that had to be removed for the movement tool. It turns out I was wrong, but they still work terrific for that purpose. Then the starfighters... well, It seemed like common sense to make a simple marker chit (or 4). As long as you can cutch a V notch in something other than your hand, then you can cut a triangle or square base with that V and the squadron base will fit into it. Facing doesn't matter, and the space will be marked.

Post Scriptum edit: Or you can do what Ninja Sensei Lyraeus said and buy a set like that. I don't have the patience to wait for shipping, but yeah, that!

I'm not worried about cheaters either, but the 3 different color command dials is still a slick idea.

Vykes, the markers for deployment actually also fit around a squadron base. So you can keep it there and move the squadron. I am working on an idea (likely use the acrylic ones) for weighing them down so that the markers don't move

Vykes, the markers for deployment actually also fit around a squadron base. So you can keep it there and move the squadron. I am working on an idea (likely use the acrylic ones) for weighing them down so that the markers don't move

-laughs- Aye, that they do, Lyraeus (V shaped notches are basically a universal fighter chit.) But token wise, I can vary them in colour to differentiate Rebel and Imperial squadrons (as well as types if need be, though it hasn't been a problem yet). It saved me from mucking up those capital ship mar-err, deployment zone markers. Good idea about weighing them down, rather interested to see how that'd work.

Vykes, the markers for deployment actually also fit around a squadron base. So you can keep it there and move the squadron. I am working on an idea (likely use the acrylic ones) for weighing them down so that the markers don't move

-laughs- Aye, that they do, Lyraeus (V shaped notches are basically a universal fighter chit.) But token wise, I can vary them in colour do differentiate Rebel and Imperial squadrons (as well as types if need be). It saved me from mucking up those capital ship mar-err, deployment zone markers. Good idea about weighing them down, rather interested to see how that'd work.

Yep, double replacement (ship and squadron) is exactly why, especially with a capital ship moving out from a fighter scrum and past one or more capital ships.. I don't want to make it weird or questionable for opponents, so taking the guesswork out of it helps build some trust. And quite right, sharpie on one side, then a layer of masking/painters tape, and season to taste on the other side .

Man, if I need to worry about this I think I need to move to Tibet and pray for society. It is a game of.pushing plastic around. If you need to cheat, you have major problems. Major problems.

Man, if I need to worry about this I think I need to move to Tibet and pray for society. It is a game of.pushing plastic around. If you need to cheat, you have major problems. Major problems.

You get a lot of those in any competitive game.

My regular opponent makes a mess of his command stacks, its not that he is cheeting he is just a klutz and gets worse when he gets flustered. So his Assault Frigate ends up with command dials here, and here and there!! I mostly know he isn't cheeting, he will show me a squadron command and has no squadrons in range to activate. I think sometimes he put the new dial on top of the existing stack and therefore has to correct himself.

Fine for when it is just the two of us, but if you muck up your command stack what is the penalty as per the tournament rules? I should start hurting him a bit then he'll learn to take more care.

If you want to address the dial switcheroo, there's at least a cheap way to do this using you what we already have in abundance. Get your unused numbered tokens for denoting duplicate ships and glue/tape them to the backs or sides of the dials. Assign different numbers for each dial in ascending order. You can now track whether the dials are being resolved in correct sequence.

Again, you guys seem to be missing the point. It's all sweet and dandy that you don't worry about cheaters or that it can be overriden by buying additional, non-FFG tools, but FFG shouldn't have let it happen in the first place and that's the gripe here. X-Wing doesn't have such design flaws and because of that it's much harder to cheat there and, by extension, it's more suited for competitive, fair play.

My point is - having to find a work-around, buy additional accessories or give up on your hopes for fair play SLASH lower your expectations is a big mistake on game developer's part. Now don't get me wrong - I am not trying to bash your precious game and ruin your fun - I am just as hyped for the game as you are (and I still have to wait for Wave 1 to reach Poland!) and I can't wait to spend a lot of my expendable income on the miniatures, but I believe I am allowed to make constructive criticism which, in this case, seems to be right, because when compared to X-Wing Armada is noticably much more vulnerable to exploits and that's what OP was talking about, that's all.

P.s. - I know cheaters will always find a way and no game is cheat-proof, but they should try as much as possible to make it as hard as it gets for cheaters to discourage them. Some games are harder to cheat in, others are easier - a good product should be in the first category.