5 hours ago, Killerardvark said:

FYI, at no point did FFG officially judge on either call where this happened. I was a judge at both events.

At gencon when it happened to Paul, the players resolved the situation at the table and moved on. This was a mistake in my opinion. Always get the judge to make a call!

At worlds this happened with Jeremy Howard and Marcel. I have the ruling of Jeremy getting to set a dial. Frank was not in the immediate vicinity so a call had to be made and i stand by my call. While i was getting Frank from the break room, Jeremy and Marcel agreed to move on with my ruling instead of waiting for the Marshall appeal.

We've discussed it quite a bit, but no official ffg ruling has been set.

What is your opinion on this?

I find the argument that an immediate game loss penalty would incentivize false accusations interesting. It gives me pause, seems like something on Radiolab.

Likewise, you could still falsely accuse an opponent of looking at your dial and you'd get to look at one of theirs and change your own or whatever.

I feel like a codified set of rules in this type of situation is important. How come we don't have floor rules from FFG?

People are expecting judges to be perfect arbiters of truth in these situations. But if even Worlds judges will let you get away with it and they have no established procedure for a certain situation, this is a problem.

10 minutes ago, Turbo Toker said:

How come we don't have floor rules from FFG?

Because FFG apparently believes that it's best to leave things up to the TO/Judge/Marshall then to come up with a set of floor rules. You may not agree, but that's how it is.

5 hours ago, Shrike37 said:

I have accidentally looked at another player's dial before during the activation phase on a few occasions over the 3 or so years I have been playing. It is very embarrassing. I would suggest the following "punishment" to fit the crime:

The offending player cannot perform actions or card abilities (during the activation phase) on any ships that activate after the point in time in which the dial was accidentally looked at . However, free actions or abilities granted by cards that do not involve a choice may still be taken during the activation phase.

For example a Tie Defender with x/7 title could take a free evade after moving. A ship that was hypothetically given a free barrel roll during the activation phase could not barrel roll (because barrel rolling includes a choice about which side and how far forward/back).

Based on the above, the player who accidentally looked at the dial would not be able to beneficially impact his game state because of the error.

I'm not quite sure how to deal with accidentally looking at dials during the planning phase fairly.

This is the best attempt that I've seen so far to come up with a penalty short of game loss that's actually meaningful and can't be exploited.

I was playing a mirror Rebel mach and I wanted to look at my X-wings dial but ended up picking up my opponents dial by mistake. I felt horrible. It was the first and only time I had ever done that. Since none of our ships had repositioning, we left all dials as is and played as they were, even thought I was thinking of changing a dial I left it as is and played what I had set.

It can happen by mistake but it shouldn't be repeated. Also, a non-mirror match dial pick up is too bizarre and inconceivable to be accidental.

If it is during a mirror match the penalty should be no repositioning actions and dials go with what is set on them.

During a non-mirror match it should be a game loss for first offence and DQ for the second, barring extenuating circumstances.

20 hours ago, Shadow345 said:

If it's blatant then yes.

What do you define as "blatant"?

I know how the dictionary defines it. Basically, it means open and obvious. If I think a dial is mine, I'm not going to be sneaking a glance at it.

1 hour ago, Sergovan said:

It can happen by mistake but it shouldn't be repeated. Also, a non-mirror match dial pick up is too bizarre and inconceivable to be accidental.

No, I find it still very possible if very, very unlikely.

My old group was mainly a bunch of combat veterans. A lot of them played all the factions, and due to brain injuries one would sometimes forget what faction he was playing when he went to check his dial. Another was partially colorblind, and I was usually drunk like the rest of the boys. After a long night of gaming, we made mistakes.

Players at large events should be held to a higher standard than my rabble, but fatigue is very real. So are medical problems that can feel worse with fatigue after many hours of playing your heart out with plastic ships and distract you.

The OP's solution would make guys like myself and who I played with never want to attend even local store tournaments if that became the law of the land. I would want nothing to do with the cut throat attitude that could bring to the table. If I or my old group made a mistake, we would make sure to punish ourselves in game even if our opponent wasn't too fazed by it. There really doesn't seem to be a need for a punishment that harsh over something that really seems to be a non issue in 99% of games.

Plus, if somebody is cheating, there will be some pretty tell tale signs of a repeat offender. On the local level, don't play against that turd. On the bigger tournament circuit, a more harsh punishment can be fitting. Don't make it the standard though.

Or, everyone can just set their dials on their half of the table but in a position that makes it obvious as to which ship it represents. This way you are not reaching into a scrum of dials and ships where you could accidentally pick up the wrong dial. This solves the problem that has been discussed and helps to prevent bumping of ships while reaching for dials. See fixes everything. And if some one does pick up your dial its prety obvious they meant to do it as their dials are on their side of the board.

Easy

9 hours ago, Turbo Toker said:

People are expecting judges to be perfect arbiters of truth in these situations. But if even Worlds judges will let you get away with it and they have no established procedure for a certain situation, this is a problem.

You appear to be the only one seeing it as a huge problem.
Perhaps you should take a step back, breathe and find a more important issue to concider.

There are a lot of steps that can be taken to prevent this from happening. Most of them have been brought up in this forum already, so a "best practices" or "best suggestions" list would be:

-place your dials on your cards.

-mark the backs of your dials

-place your thumb over the maneuver before looking at the dial's face

I personally place my thumb over the maneuver on the dial and show my opponent the dial asking "is this yours or mine?" just so there's no confusion or possibility of giving the impression of cheating. Everyone on this forum has indicated that in the spirit of fair play, we all try our best to follow the rules and maintain a fair game state. Accidents do happen, but as a judge, I couldn't feel good about reaching straight for the death penalty when an honest mistake is made. I get Turbo Toker's point, in that we need to punish deliberate cheaters, or even make the notion of cheating so unattractive that people won't be driven to do so at competitive level tournaments, but that's what the warning system is designed for. To track mulitple-offenders, and to gently notify first-time offenders that what has happened isn't tolerated. If every speeding ticket put you in jail, I guarantee after enough incidents, nobody would drive anymore. If every accident at the table was punished to the fullest extent of the law, nobody would play competitive X-wing anymore. Punishing players of a hobby isn't what any judge wants to do, but if there's reasonable enough evidence to suspect cheating, then sure. Issue game losses. Not on the first offense though. No single action is enough to determine intent.

Please, all who are into the actual rules, ethics and morality of our wonderful game, please pass this comment politely, thanks.

I had this occur three weeks ago. Yes, beer on table casual game. Punishment for the perpetrator? He had to get up, go downstairs and let the dog out...I got to reset my dial, and secretly select one of his to reset. No, I didn't fly him off the board, but I pointed one of his ships that way.

Back to the intelligent and useful thread, carry on, these are not the droids you were looking for.

Do what I do, take along Cassian.

11 hours ago, Sergovan said:

If it is during a mirror match the penalty should be no repositioning actions and dials go with what is set on them.

Thing is though, even choices regarding non-repositioning actions are affected by knowledge of the opponent's dial. For example, you might know that your ship isn't going to be in your opponent's arc and so you take a target lock instead of the evade that you might have chosen.

I've a lot of experience of playing games for thousands of dollars (which nothing in X-Wing compares to).

The bottom line is that if you're going to throw around serious penalties like game loss/match loss then you need a judging staff who are equipped and able to determine with a very high level of confidence that the offence occurred and was intentional.

FFG do not have anything close to that. Introducing stern penalties for play infractions would create FAR more problems than it would solve. You've got to remember that the goal of a tournament is NOT to reward the best player, the goal is to be a positive marketing experience to sell more ships. If a cheater wins a tournament but the other 99% of players had a great time and went home happy then FFG did a great job. If a cheater got penalised but so did half a dozen other guys who made pure accidental mistakes then FFG did a bad job.

The situation of looking at an opponent's dial seems to be a bigger deal here than it is in real life.

Maybe we should resort to the tried and true method of the duel. If nothing else it cuts down on repeat offenders. The "wronged" player gets his or her choice of pistols or epees.

1 minute ago, Stoneface said:

The situation of looking at an opponent's dial seems to be a bigger deal here than it is in real life.

Maybe we should resort to the tried and true method of the duel. If nothing else it cuts down on repeat offenders. The "wronged" player gets his or her choice of pistols or epees.

This.

7 minutes ago, Stoneface said:

The situation of looking at an opponent's dial seems to be a bigger deal here than it is in real life.

Maybe we should resort to the tried and true method of the duel. If nothing else it cuts down on repeat offenders. The "wronged" player gets his or her choice of pistols or epees.

Naw. Snid Twitter comments at 5 paces!

1 hour ago, clanofwolves said:

Please, all who are into the actual rules, ethics and morality of our wonderful game, please pass this comment politely, thanks.

I had this occur three weeks ago. Yes, beer on table casual game. Punishment for the perpetrator? He had to get up, go downstairs and let the dog out...I got to reset my dial, and secretly select one of his to reset. No, I didn't fly him off the board, but I pointed one of his ships that way.

Back to the intelligent and useful thread, carry on, these are not the droids you were looking for.

I suggest a dog on a leash being present at every tournament.

42 minutes ago, Verlaine said:

I suggest a dog on a leash being present at every tournament.

Agreed! I will volunteer to bring my little pup to every tournament hehe. Well, once she is a service dog than she will be anyways.

3 hours ago, Juunon said:

There are a lot of steps that can be taken to prevent this from happening. Most of them have been brought up in this forum already, so a "best practices" or "best suggestions" list would be:

-place your dials on your cards.

That's a bad ideia acording to the faq:

If a player forgets to place a maneuver dial next to a ship, but tells his opponent he is ready to begin the round, once play has proceeded to the first ship (a dial has been revealed, a maneuver has been executed, etc.), he may no longer place a dial. Instead, when that ship activates, the player’s opponent chooses the maneuver that ship will perform. No actions may be taken before this maneuver, but play proceeds normally after the maneuver has been executed.

1 hour ago, SabineKey said:

Naw. Snid Twitter comments at 5 paces!

Nope, I don't twit or tweet or any of that other nonsense.

Just now, Stoneface said:

Nope, I don't twit or tweet or any of that other nonsense.

Oh, good point. The traditional dueling options are more a universal, so can be provided by tournament organizers, if needed.

1 hour ago, Stay On The Leader said:

FFG do not have anything close to that. Introducing stern penalties for play infractions would create FAR more problems than it would solve. You've got to remember that the goal of a tournament is NOT to reward the best player, the goal is to be a positive marketing experience to sell more ships. If a cheater wins a tournament but the other 99% of players had a great time and went home happy then FFG did a great job. If a cheater got penalised but so did half a dozen other guys who made pure accidental mistakes then FFG did a bad job.

If that's the goal, then yeah. If the goal is for X-Wing to be taken seriously as a competitive game, then I don't think so.

I played Magic before I played X-Wing. At my first tournament I made an error in putting my deck back together after round 1 (I forgot that I had cut a certain card down from four copies to three in my main deck and didn't take the fourth copy out and place it back in my sideboard). I noticed the problem when I sat down and began shuffling for the second round. I immediately told my opponent, who called a judge over. I got a warning even though the game hadn't even started yet. It upset me a bit because it was completely unintentional and hadn't had any effect on the game whatsoever, but I didn't complain - I was just really careful after that. So, I don't think that malicious intent has to be proven. The integrity of the tournament is more important than the feelings of the player who committed the infraction.

Just now, SabineKey said:

Oh, good point. The traditional dueling options are more a universal, so can be provided by tournament organizers, if needed.

Exactly! Players won't have to worry about packing pistols and epees and dealing with the TSA. They can just concentrate on the game. And wonder what the hell an epee is.

6 minutes ago, Helias de Nappo said:

If that's the goal, then yeah. If the goal is for X-Wing to be taken seriously as a competitive game, then I don't think so.

I played Magic before I played X-Wing. At my first tournament I made an error in putting my deck back together after round 1 (I forgot that I had cut a certain card down from four copies to three in my main deck and didn't take the fourth copy out and place it back in my sideboard). I noticed the problem when I sat down and began shuffling for the second round. I immediately told my opponent, who called a judge over. I got a warning even though the game hadn't even started yet. It upset me a bit because it was completely unintentional and hadn't had any effect on the game whatsoever, but I didn't complain - I was just really careful after that. So, I don't think that malicious intent has to be proven. The integrity of the tournament is more important than the feelings of the player who committed the infraction.

And Magic has the judging infrastructure to be like this. FFG doesn't and has zero interest in 'being taken seriously as a competitive game'.

8 minutes ago, Helias de Nappo said:

If that's the goal, then yeah. If the goal is for X-Wing to be taken seriously as a competitive game, then I don't think so.

I played Magic before I played X-Wing. At my first tournament I made an error in putting my deck back together after round 1 (I forgot that I had cut a certain card down from four copies to three in my main deck and didn't take the fourth copy out and place it back in my sideboard). I noticed the problem when I sat down and began shuffling for the second round. I immediately told my opponent, who called a judge over. I got a warning even though the game hadn't even started yet. It upset me a bit because it was completely unintentional and hadn't had any effect on the game whatsoever, but I didn't complain - I was just really careful after that. So, I don't think that malicious intent has to be proven. The integrity of the tournament is more important than the feelings of the player who committed the infraction.

You also only got a warning. That's more like bringing an illegal list (101 points or something). And either way, what's being suggested in this thread is to skip the warning and go straight to game loss.