Hey everyone.

With the german nationals dropping this weekend I am looking forward to a great weekend of games and am really looking forward to meeting some of you guys in person if possible.

What else came to my mind after my last tournament is the ease with which it is possible to cheat in Armada in my opinion.
In the command phase you dial in the commands and position them below the others. Some people take all commands in their hands and just dial the lowest one and put the "tower" down.
Fact is: While my opponent is dialing in his commands, I am doing the same. It is very hard to see if they manipulate more than just the current dial. In X-Wing it was way easier for me to have a look at my opponent while we both dial in manuevers.

So how do you solve this problem? Or do you not care?

It’s a game. If anyone really feels the need to cheat that’s just sad. I pity them.

18 minutes ago, ISD Avenger said:

It’s a game. If anyone really feels the need to cheat that’s just sad. I pity them.

You are absolutely right about that. Also I do not want to accuse all of my opponents of cheating or that they might cheat as this sets a rather unfriendly tone. Still I sometimes had the feeling my opponents were just so miraculously precise with their commands about things that could hardly be foreseen. Maybe thats just me not having this foresight of course. Or maybe it was luck. Or cheating.

P.S.: I am not being salty here, I still won those games. I still want to protect myself from cheating the best way possible.

You could call a loose manauver tool cheating too. Can only second whats been said already. This is a game, if they cheat, its on their soul.

48 minutes ago, Angroth said:

Still I sometimes had the feeling my opponents were just so miraculously precise with their commands about things that could hardly be foreseen. Maybe thats just me not having this foresight of course. Or maybe it was luck. Or cheating.

Skilled players usually have no problem to set up right commands for right turn. And to guess what's their opponents command. It's matter of experience, having a roles for your ships and giving them right commands to fulfil those roles.

I've only had one time that I felt like my opponent was possibly cheating his dials. He was acting very oddly while setting his dials, looking more at me than looking at his own with his whole stack in hand. When he did it twice in a row, I just waited for him to set his dials down before I started to set mine. Whether he was cheating or not, I don't know but was going to watch him at the next tournament I TO'd if he was in attendance. I tabled him for a 10-1 victory, so cheating didn't help him if that's what he was doing.

Maybe he thought you where cheating

Bring slicers. The ultimate anti-cheating tool.

It like cheating at Golf. You only cheat yourself.

While certain things are easy to "cheat" at in armada, they almost don't matter, generally a game is won or lost but a lot more then one or two perfectly timed/flopped commands. Things like damage deck manipulation or loaded dice and whatnot which would have more Impact are also much harder to do.

So I just don't worry about it

1 hour ago, c5alinas said:

Maybe he thought you where cheating

Dunno if you were replying to me, but that fleet used Squadron for every dial for every turn after the 1st turn in every match.

The only command I use is navigate, because Thrawn, plus SFO. ?

As far as my opponent cheating his command dials, it's irrelevant. If he's so unskilled as to need to cheat a dial, I've already won. I'm more concerned with correct damage assesment and correct maneuvering.

Damage deck manipulation has already been mentioned and presumably very easy to do in such a way it can benefit you.

In the tournament rules I think it says you can inspect an opponents deck before asking them to shuffle but I don't think I've ever seen anyone do this. Mind you I've only played store championships. What's the general practice here?

7 hours ago, Angroth said:

Hey everyone.

With the german nationals dropping this weekend I am looking forward to a great weekend of games and am really looking forward to meeting some of you guys in person if possible.

What else came to my mind after my last tournament is the ease with which it is possible to cheat in Armada in my opinion.
In the command phase you dial in the commands and position them below the others. Some people take all commands in their hands and just dial the lowest one and put the "tower" down.
Fact is: While my opponent is dialing in his commands, I am doing the same. It is very hard to see if they manipulate more than just the current dial. In X-Wing it was way easier for me to have a look at my opponent while we both dial in manuevers.

So how do you solve this problem? Or do you not care? 

If you suspect it , or see it and want to avoid confrontation get your TO/marshal/judge. Simple fact is, in a tournament setting there's no reason your eyes have to be the only ones on your opponents actions, if you suspect cheating, let the marshal know, and they can can stand by to keep your opponent honest. Even if you don't want to raise a scene nothing is stopping you from taking a moment to talk to a judge in private.


I pity the person who cheats at a competitive event. If there's ever been a declaration of weakness, it's trying to cheat to improve your chances.

1 hour ago, Zamalekite said:

Damage deck manipulation has already been mentioned and presumably very easy to do in such a way it can benefit you.

In the tournament rules I think it says you can inspect an opponents deck before asking them to shuffle but I don't think I've ever seen anyone do this. Mind you I've only played store championships. What's the general practice here?

I personally always give my opponents deck a quick shuffle and offer him the same for mine

We've got a cheater here in Orlando and he's notorious for doing it. I don't play him anymore and I called him out on it and even put him on blast on facebook over it - as a result he doesn't come to any of my stores anymore. But yeah it's very easy to cheat in Armada and it takes a special kind of evil to do it.

If you suspect it's happening you'll need to address it immediately. Don't look away.

Our dude would casually move ships to his advantage, while checking range, so many times I'd have double arc on one of his ships, then I"d get called to make a ruling, and look away and when I came back my ship no longer had double arc somehow.... but it wasn't until I caught him red-handed changing blank red dice to double hits that I put him on blast over it.

1 minute ago, Crabbok said:

We've got a cheater here in Orlando and he's notorious for doing it. I don't play him anymore and I called him out on it and even put him on blast on facebook over it - as a result he doesn't come to any of my stores anymore. But yeah it's very easy to cheat in Armada and it takes a special kind of evil to do it.

If you suspect it's happening you'll need to address it immediately. Don't look away.

Our dude would casually move ships to his advantage, while checking range, so many times I'd have double arc on one of his ships, then I"d get called to make a ruling, and look away and when I came back my ship no longer had double arc somehow.... but it wasn't until I caught him red-handed changing blank red dice to double hits that I put him on blast over it.

Yea that's pretty nasty cheating

Yup. As a result, whenever a measurement is CLOSE - I'll verbally ensure that both me and my opponent agree to it, just in case it gets "Bumped" later.

like, "Ok, this MC-30 here is JUST BARELY in close range, right? Do you agree?"

SO then later if he moved some squadrons and they bump it out of close range, I have grounds to move it back.

I play both poker and Armada. In poker, there are certain precautions you take (cutting the deck, burn one flip one, etc.) to ensure a fair game. And they should be there, because it's a very competitive game in which your money is on the line.

Armada isn't the same experience for me; it's competitive but also friendly. If I observe someone cheating, I will say something (and it is often accidental, I have accidentally cheated before). I don't think I have ever played a game against someone who was really trying to cheat by changing command dials out of order or stacking their damage deck.

21 minutes ago, Crabbok said:

We've got a cheater here in Orlando and he's notorious for doing it. I don't play him anymore and I called him out on it and even put him on blast on facebook over it - as a result he doesn't come to any of my stores anymore. But yeah it's very easy to cheat in Armada and it takes a special kind of evil to do it.

If you suspect it's happening you'll need to address it immediately. Don't look away.

Our dude would casually move ships to his advantage, while checking range, so many times I'd have double arc on one of his ships, then I"d get called to make a ruling, and look away and when I came back my ship no longer had double arc somehow.... but it wasn't until I caught him red-handed changing blank red dice to double hits that I put him on blast over it.

That's really terrible cheating.

Checking arc after a movement, that's a good idea.

3 hours ago, comatose said:

Dunno if you were replying to me, but that fleet used Squadron for every dial for every turn after the 1st turn in every match.

Yes I was refering to you. Not saying at all that you where cheating. Only that the reason he was looking at you intense was that he might think you where cheating.

Any time money is at stake, whether we are talking cash prizes or store credit or whatever, people will cheat if they think they can get away with it. Folks like this tend to assume you are cheating so why don't they, or it's an advantage that they have over lesser beings since they are foolishly following the rules...what rubes right?

The best thing you can do if you suspect cheating, in my opinion, is to take your time, watch them closely, and if you do catch shady behavior, call over the judge and have a talk with them. If he wasn't cheating, chances are he will apologize and change his behavior. If we was cheating, he will likely get indignant and protest and accuse you of some non-sense. That has been my experience anyway. Besides, if he was cheating, rattling him like this usually throws him off his game and you score psy op points. Perfectly justified in my book.

Wayyy back in W40K third edition, I used to run a fairly large league, some 26 players or so. Gaming at the store, one of our players told me he tought his opponent was using loaded dice... So, I go over, casually grab his dice, roll them a few times, and yep! Had a pair loaded for 1s and 2s for morale checks, and four loaded for 5s and 6s for shooting and wounding. Guy starts stammering, 'oh, it was just a joke, I was just testing if they were really loaded...'... Yeah, no. Threw him off the league, posted it all over the email group, told the store owner ( who banned him from the store). Funny part is, even with those dice, this guy LOST EVERY SINGLE GAME he had played up to that point, he was that bad a player. Lol.

Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you about Victorian Warhammer40Ks $5k “Dice Gate” saga

Isard for dials distance and whatever measure after and pre move