Like Texas school boards, there is an effort afoot to rewrite history to show Blood of Kittens and not Tim Schmidt as the bully and douche behind cheating at Adepticon. Because my sole purpose was to bring down not only Adepticon, but all GT events around the world by showing bad behavior for the everyone to see. Well you know what…YOU ARE WRONG. How does the person that simply puts up videos for everyone to comment on become the person most vilified for the whole episode? I think I know why whistle-blowers often keep their identity secret now. Still even with all the threats thrown my way I will not stop. To stop is to give the potential cheater solace; knowing that he can douche his way to victory without any consequences.
This article is not only a defense of what I do, it is defense for all those players that are afraid or nervous to stand up and call out bullies and cheats. My luck in exposing cheating was never an attempt to bash Adepticon, it was about one player and his actions. Adepticon was the best and smoothest 40k related event I have ever been to and I plan to bring more friends next time. The players involved also gave consent and never raised peep; even in one of my videos Tim played along and seemed to have fun with the whole videotaping.
To make things even clearer, my intent when I go to events is not to find cheaters. My intent is to cover the event. As you will notice my earlier coverage of GTs for the most part has focused on pictures, results, and promotion. It just so happens that cheaters/douches cannot help themselves, that is not my fault. Like I said in my previous posts that I should have waited before getting the pot stirred and I apologize. If that is all you want to be mad at me about, I can live with it.
What I did after that I do not and will not apologize.
My behavior while maybe “sensational” is no different from your local news reports exposing corrupt and negligent behavior by members of society. While I pretty much made my feelings clear about how I felt about the videos, I still held back and let the community weigh in. Hence the title of my article Rate this cheating which implied “open for interpretation”.
Another important fact that bears repeating is, I was told about possible cheating by folks that had watched the game in progress and asked me to looked into it. Adepticon knew of possible cheating before I even posted anything. Even then, if it was not for the whole missile launcher thing I might not of posted anything because I felt while many things were incriminating, the video was not up to snuff to do camera angles and poor video quality leaving it open to interpretation (I would have simply gone with an April Fools post instead).
I had a hunch, after watching the video Tim seemed like a bully and knowing 40k bullies I had a feeling the community would show this as not an isolated event, I am sorry for being right. So instead of me raving about just how nice a player Tim was lets see what others had to say…
–Adonis
This is a rough topic.
I HATE all the drama around the tournaments now in regards to cheating. I think it’s gotten way out of hand.
In this case, I played against the team last year that this same person was a part of – that miraculously had melta guns appear in an army list that only showed Plasma’s – when we were conveniently running Land Raiders and had advanced them forward due to no melta’s. After arguing about it, he point blank refused to change the weapon no matter what we said and we played on to a loss – primarily due to short range melta’s hitting our LR’s point blank and dropping them. Everyone can and probably has made a list mistake – but if that happens you should go with what you have in your list if there is an issue. Then our sportsmanship score got tanked. Quite honestly it was probably the worst 40K major tournament game I’ve ever had (and I’ve had around 100 by now). The saddest part was the guy played with his kids….and was a teacher if memory serves.
So…in this case – maybe this is poetic justice that he’s getting public questions raised – seems to be a trend here.
But if all we do at tournaments is look for cheating – and start filming games looking for the news story – that just seems wrong. Nick made the same mistake we did last year – just got tired of the argument and wasting the time. For me personally in the future – I’ll not argue – just call over the TO and let them make the call and abide by it.
—rejek2317
Hmm. I had to go check the Adepticon site after watching the videos. As soon as the accused said something I recognized that voice.
He plays at the shop I used to go to until I moved. He is a douche. He cheats at pickup games as well as the tiny little tourneys at the shop. The prizes there were usually $50 to $90 boxes and a certificate. I even remember that during my first tourney he wound up playing a friend of mine that was new to the game. Yes, he helped him out…by telling him the wrong rules.
While I don’t expect this to change the outcome of this year’s Adepticon, I would hope that crew next year watches out for him. He’s from “up north” so I can guaranty he’ll be there next year.
Just $.02 from someone who’s seen his behavior outside tourneys. 🙂
–sabot
No plausible explanation. Especially if you had been reading any of the above paragraphs where my team from last year stated he pulled a similar type of trick on us except instead of a ML it was meltas which were not listed on his army list. If the cases were not so similar than I would lean your direction but this is a pattern.
— from dakkadakka post was moderated before player could say more.
For what it’s worth.
He played in 2008 and 2009 Ard Boyz 1st rd at one of the stores I work at. He won 2008 1st round. He also, played at the 2009 2nd rd. that I went to.
I asked several people if they remember him. They did and they said “questionable” things went on during games. So presidence is there.
I will get specific examples of what went down. My friend played him in 2008 1st round final. We briefly discussed and never finished conversation, as we were in tournament the past Saturday.
Should I go on?
If Tim was such an upstanding guy why didn’t he apologize to Nick about the missile launcher thing? If he was so honorable why didn’t he forfeit his previous games? Why did Tim get the 3rd lowest sports score even when Nick didn’t ding him as much as he could have?
If this sounds cruel I am sorry, but in a world where we let professional athletes cheat and we still cheer them on, our small community should stand up and have ZERO tolerance for cheating. Especially when this reeks of “but your honor I did not know I was taking steroids”.
Does this hurt the community? How does bringing to light cheaters and douches make the community worse? How does talking about what behavior is cool and not cool hurt the community? How does giving the power to players to call over TOs hurt the community?
You know what hurts the community? Pretending that cheating does not happen. Pretending that the WAAC player do not get away with murder. Showing potential tournament goers that bullies and cheats get away with such bad behavior. Keeping cheating in house because you don’t want the cheater’s feelings hurt too much. Blaming the whistle-blower for exposing bad players, that is what hurts the community. Just because I did not do it to your “standards” doesn’t mean it hurts the community.
I take great care in what I post.
If you are against my methods I say stand up against cheating and assholes. If you feel this is a witch hunt, then burn me when I am actually wrong. If you think video taping games is so horrible, wake up because it is the 21st century and how many video batreps have you watched or been a part of? So you say I was in it for the page views and attention? Well at the same time don’t blame the audience that reads and posts here it is just demeaning– simply calling “Internet” or “Kangaroo Court” does not cut it. Blood of Kittens posters and readers are intelligent and for the (most part) thoughtful people so please do not hide behind the ” angry mob” just when they tell you what don’t want to hear. Especially when the “mob” is responsible for attending your events, clicking your ad-sense, commenting on your forums, and driving up your traffic. I do not get money from this and pay the out-of-pocket expenses for travel and what not; my purpose is to showcase the larger 40k community to people who don’t get the chance.
So please stop with the threats towards me, when our focus should be policing cheaters and WAAC players. If you want to ban my camcorder from your events, I have no problem with that. Don’t try to completely ban me from events because I show just how ugly some players are. Especially if you never even watch or read what I have to say.
Let this be the final chapter to this whole sad episode.