Greetings Fellow Mathusellah,
A few weeks ago we had an online finals for a weekly tournament organized here in Brazil where a player clearly cheated. He did a impossible play where he had no younger vampires in his uncontrolled region and did a ADV govern the unaligned to influence the pool back. The players on the table had a hunch that he had no younger vampires and asked a judge to check and, as i stated before, he did an impossible move.
This is only one case for one player but since its a proven case i brought it to light the fact that cards that have restrictions and are widelly used, such as Govern and Enchant Kindred, dont have clarifications to show to the table that your play is a valid one, and, besides calling a judge, you cant be sure that its a vallid move. The worst part is that the call is based solely on a hunch that a player might be a cheater.
So based on this argument i would like to add a new Tournament rule:
"Any card that affect a uncontrolled card and has a restriction, i.e. be younger or be from a specific clan, if sucessfull, at the resolution step must reveal the card it is effecting"
This changes goes accordingly to the design most predominant in all games to prevent cheating and i dont think its a meaningful nerf to any of the most played cards.
Thank you for your time.
Was the event sanctioned? If so, I feel this could use some more cases in it's list then one 2019 ban from Brazil...
www.vekn.net/images/stories/downloads/VEKN_Code_of_Ethics.pdf
After all
Any action or behaviour that is inconsistent
with the principles of fair play, good sporting, honesty, or respect for the rights and
well-of others may be considered to fall within the scope of this code of ethics.
is quite clear statement.
If the event was not a sanctioned one, well, you could force such house rules already in addition to whatever measures your group feels is justified. Your event, if the group is fine with it, just apply and see what changes, report findings and perhaps have it become a official one. After all that's how the whole tournament thing got started in the 90's.
But changing original design intent because yet another cheater is caught is not really reasonable, after all, cheaters will cheat. For online play it's already been shown here how certain clients are quite vulnerable to a degree where everything hangs already on the thread of "hopefully nobody reads other players hands"
www.vekn.net/forum/lackeyccg/79125-lackey-vulnerabilities?start=0
If you move the goalpost away from low hanging fruits, you'll still be dealing with miscalculating counters, deck manipulation etc etc. Or for online play, omnividence.
If you're still not convinced, consider the fact that one should not treat the symptom but the cause, people do not cheat because cards enable them, they cheat because they are cheaters. Cards and mechanics are just a way for them to smokescreen to have greater success rate at achieving that. And as any rational community for fun to play games, we need to discourage such behavior, not by changing the terms of our game, but changing those players ability to affect it with their presence. It however won't happen unless people are willing to follow and use the tools provided.
There's also the matter of whether or not it was a sanctioned event, there were social contracts broken, and that needs to be addressed as such. Perhaps you've done this already, if so, isn't the matter at hand settled? If you've not addressed the issue, going for the suggested ruling alone won't return the trust of other players towards the games, after all they should be able to figure out what other ways there is to cheat in the game they play.
Proposed new tournament rules idea
Politics!
