Tits for Tournaments: BeakyCon Results, Cheating, and Public Service Announcement

Last weekend, in the heart of Florida was BeakyCon home of the infamous/famous 40k Wrecking Crew.

The tournament organizer of the event was kind enough to send me his report and from his description it looks like a smashing success.

That is only one part of the story that was BeakyCon.

Another year has gone by and the results are finally in again…

Warmaster – Teddy Woody, Necrons (Best General)
Emperor’s Champion – Alex Simon, Grey Knights w. Imperial Guard allies (2nd Best General)
Honorable Mention – Remy Colins, Necrons (3rd Best General)

Player’s Choice – Gabe Dobkins, Blood Angels
Best Army – Scott Hutchens, Necrons w. Chaos Space Marine allies

The Grand Tournament was held again at the Marriott in the Tampa international airport here in sunny Florida. Some flew into the airport and never had to step outside which I think is pretty cool. We had 64 players originally signed up with six rounds over the course of two days (three rounds per day) but had a couple drop right before the weekend. As fate would have it there was one undefeated player going into the final round but he lost his last game so we ended up with six players accumulating 5W-1L records. Bonus points were used to determine the final ranking (total aggregate of kill points, objectives held, First Blood, Slay the Warlord and Line Breaker summed from all six rounds).

Next year we are planning to increase the player base up to 96 with two final brackets to ensure we end up with one undefeated player. It’s ironic how it ended as so often there is a lot of heated debate on the Internet regarding whether a pure win-loss system or margin of victory (MoV) is the better system to determine who is actually the best general. We had planned on using total bonus points as a tie breaker to cover the case of such a contingency so in the end everything worked out quite smoothly. The irony is that it turned MoV was used to determine the top player… Advocates of MoV so often claim that this system allows any player to lose one game while still having a shot at grabbing the top spot which turned out to be the case.It’s obvious from the results that Necron flyer spam is one of the top (if not the top) armies in the current meta. Necron flyer based armies are highly mobile and can pour out a lot of high strength (S7+) fire power. They also have excellent dedicated melee units in the form of Canoptek Wraiths and Scarabs coupled with either Overlords or Destroyer Lords sweeping through the field. The two Necron armies that finished in the top three to eventually climb their way back to the top both featured lots of flyers and obviously racked up lots and lots of bonus points. Also note that the top Necron army suffered its one loss to another Necron flyer based army and that game came down to a very close hard fought tie breaker on the tertiary win condition.

There was only one Grey Knight army in the top three (taking second best general) and it was quite an interesting list featuring lots of Grey Knight fire power coupled with Imperial Guard as its ally. Note that this army did not feature any flyers. This player suffered its one loss to one of our youngest players (John Lennon) fielding Tyranids which eventually ended up knocking the Grey Knight player out of contention for the top spot which was also quite ironic in its own way.

There were some other exotic lists such as Marc Parker’s ork horde army which did quite well along the way until finally losing to the same Tyranid player mentioned above. Another army I think worth mentioning that did well was Kenny Boucher’s (Next Level Painting) daemon army that only had one one flying monstrous creature (Fateweaver of course) and lots of Flamers and Screamers. This army also did quite well until finally losing to the Grey Knight army mentioned above.

Top 2 Army Lists
Here are the top two army lists:

Necrons (1994)
Imotekh the Stormlord
Harbinger of Eternity – Chronometron
7x Warrior – Nightscythe
7x Warrior – Nightscythe
7x Warrior – Nightscythe
6x Warrior – Nightscythe
Doomscythe
6x Canoptek Wraith – 3x Whip Coil
6x Canoptek Wraith – 3x Whip Coil
3x Canoptek Scarab
3x Canoptek Spyder – Gloom Prism
3x Canoptek Spyder – Gloom Prism

Note – I played a pick up game during the Friday evening preceding the GT versus this army with the professionally painted dark eldar army (by Next Level Painting) we gave away as the top prize playing an objective based mission and was crushed. It really brought home to me just how powerful are Necron flyer based armies as I could do nothing but play run and hide most of the game while the Stormlord’s lighting continued to rock my puny xenos world over the course of the majority of the game. I was playing a fun raider based army with two Voidravens, Reaver jetbikes plus Vect and Drazhar leading a small squad of Incubi mounted in a Venom. Necrons in general are very resilient and their flyers can easily match the speed of dark eldar… It proved to be too tough of a match up for my dark eldar and I don’t think I would fared any better in a kill point or table quarters based mission. Drazhar and his Incubi did manage to shred one squad of Canoptek Wraiths (in melee obviously) – that was the one highlight of the game for me. Oh well you can’t win ’em all. I’m happy to see the dark eldar go to someone who will enjoy playing the army. I’d be hard pressed to think of any major event that handed out a better prize – this one came with two carrying cases from Sabol along with the codex. : )

Grey Knights Allied Imperial Guard Fusion (1999)

– Primary Detachment –
Coteaz
4x Jokaero – Chimera w/Searchlight
3x Acolyte Henchmen – 2x plasmagun – Chimera w. Searchlight
10x Grey Knight – 2x Psycannons, Daemonhammer – Psyback
Vindicare Assassin
Psyfleman
Psyfleman
Nemesis Dreadknight – Heavy Incinerator

– Allies –
Company Command Squad – 3x plasmagun, Officer of the Fleet – Chimera
Infantry Platoon:
– Platoon Command
– 2x Infantry Squad (naked)
– 4x Heavy Weapon Squads -3x autocannons each
Manticore

This was another interesting army as well and generates lots of fire power. I didn’t get to watch its demise to the Hive Mind and I’m sure that must have been a very intense game.

So there you have it… Another year has gone by and I’m already looking forward to the next one!

As you can see more Necron Flyers for the win! One problem and this could totally be TO copy error, but that Necron list is over points, but that isn’t the biggest story.

I want to mention something that happened early in the event.

I got reports from a few people and a thread showed up on Dakkadakka  (quickly closed) about a player using loaded dice in his games, but more importantly was caught. After I found out about this I contacted the person that caught the cheater to get the scoop.

Here is what he wanted to report…

The holy grail of cheating – Weighted dice.

Everyone has thought about it, or maybe even heard about someone who heard about a friend who knew a guy who saw someone using weighted dice back in the 80s. It’s one of those legends, a street rumor that goes around gaming clubs with no real tangible evidence.

Well I got to witness it first-hand.

Let me go back to September of this year, when I was at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle Washington. Chessex has a booth there with all of their dice. Tens of thousands of colored cubes and geometric shapes. As I was standing in line to purchase some more dice, I noticed they had a tray sitting aside. “character rolling dice” they called them. They were D6s that rolled either a 1 or a 6 almost continuously. They are EXTREMELY obvious. But only once you know what to look for. They are larger than a 16mm dice, they have no divots on the pips and they have a very silver looking pip color. They look oddly wobbly when you throw them, like some odd magnetic force is grabbing them. Oh, and they roll a six (or a one), almost EVERY time.

Back to reality. It’s round 3 of Beaky Con. I’m happily setting up my deployment area and I’ve looked over my opponent’s army list, he’s a nice enough fellow. “Ok” I say. “Let’s roll for who goes first”.

I rolled something dismal. A 2 I think.

He tosses out his roll. A 6.

There it is. The character die.

At this point I’m almost amused. It can’t be can it?! Weighted diced?!

I snatched the die up and exclaimed “This is a weighted die!” I rolled it 3-4 times. 6, 6, 6.

I call the judge over. “Roll this 5 times, tell me if you don’t get a 6 every time.”

Sixes. All of them.

At this point, I have stated clearly that I am refusing to play this player. I’m pretty livid. He’s going off about how he has never seen that die before. It’s not his. He got it out of a bin of dice. A friend gave it to him. He’s never used it before. Things are heated. I’m pretty fucking pissed.

The judge asks if he used it to roll in the game. Yes.

“Well then the only choice is a full DQ”.

That’s good I guess. Right? I ask what I will be getting. Full points for the mission. I’m not really happy either way. I mean, I didn’t earn those points. I miss a game.

My opponent asks if I want to play anyway. I laughingly refuse and leave the room to get some air.

In retrospect there are several things that are upsetting about the entire ordeal.

First, it doesn’t matter that there was only one die. You only need one die. Roll a 6, go second, deploy reactively then seize the initiative with a 6. Boom.

Need that penetrating hit on a landrader? 6. Need that vehicle damage result to be guaranteed? 6.

The rest of the dice don’t even matter at that point. It only takes one die to ruin the game.

Secondly, I feel that the player should have been ejected from the tournament. I will not go into specifics but I feel that if this player had been a no-name player, instead of someone who the TO and judges new by name, that he would have been ejected. I don’t know, but that’s just my stance.

I know the judge, he’s a really nice guy who I play regularly. But I wasn’t happy with how the player was treated. It was like “well, he only used it once so, he’s DQed from prizes and you get full points but yeah that’s a little crazy.”

No, it’s not crazy. It’s cheating. IT’s not even funny and it should be dealt with to the harshest extreme possible. Ejection, and denial to future events. What would the result have been at NOVA or Adepticon?

My opponent was allowed to play on day 2. If weighted dice is a measure of one’s willingness to cheat, what else is he doing? Did the first 2 people he played on day one have their game ruined by seemingly amazing rolling?

Later, the player came to me to ask me not to tell anyone. That he was embarrassed and nothing like this had ever happened and that his weekend was ruined as well as mine. He was crying now. I shook my head and walked away.

I’m not a very sympathetic person to players who cheat or use a “oh, I didn’t know that rule” to gain advantages against less knowledgeable players. I play this game to have fun, and most of my opponents were stand up guys who I would happily play against any day.

So where does that leave me? I guess I have a choice. I can name this player, and he can be shamed or whatever. But he knows who he is. The players at Beakycon know who he is. If his name is on the list at any tournament, I know I will not be attending.

There it is. Myth busted. The old weighted dice tale given life and in the end at least I have a good story to tell right?

–Altmann

I am amazed anyone would try to pull this off, but I guess anything is possible. Now the cheater in question never admitted to anything and claimed he never seen the dice before, but that seems very unlikely.

The bigger question: what should a TO do in this situation?

Well for me I would kick the guy out right away, but since he claimed to be a victim of circumstance it does make things a “little” more complicated. If he wanted to stay and play then shouldn’t you have the exciting duty of telling his next opponents what happened, right?

As for more  info here is the closed Dakkadakka thread if anyone cares…

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/480973.page

As for the name of the culprit well let me just say he goes by BeerCzar on the Wrecking Crew forums and his signature has this at the bottom…

“They call me Loaded”

Most importantly is getting the word out on these Loaded dice. So I got a link to the product that website for the dice.

http://www.awesomedice.com/KPL01703

They are pretty distinctive and if you read the blurb below even the makers know exactly what they are doing =/

As for BeakyCon itself, I would have been much harder on the cheater, but it is there event and it looks like from everything else a well run and fun event.

To receive all the latest Tournament news, results, and reports join Blood of Kittens Tournament Group.
Tournament Email List