Have any thoughts you would like to share? e-mail me 12/9/98 |Cheating| Back in October '98 I contributed a deck to the OverPower Alliance Deck of the Month competition. I included in the deck contribution a suggestion for a new rule that would effectively stop a few types of cheating in OverPower. I don't believe the idea ever reached many people and do not know if anyone liked it. Maybe this will help get the idea out.. One type of cheating, which I'm not going to detail , can be done by those specials (HQ,JA) which allow for extra cards to be drawn during a Battle. This rule will stop this type of cheating. The suggestion was that those cards drawn (lets call the drawn cards "card set B") during the Battle should not be added to the original hand (original hand = "card set A"), but set face down somewhere near the playing area. When the player who has drawn the cards wants to take a look at or decides to use a card from "card set B", he/she should then set "card set A" in an area also near the playing area and pick up B. No cards from A and B will be in a player's hands at the same time. The other type of cheating this counters is the type that can be done by specials (DS,CS,ER) which allow for cards to be selected from the deck. The type of cheating that can be accomplished by this type of card is more evident than that in the previous case. I will explain how it is done and how the suggestion can stop it. A DS special (i.e. Banshee's Luck 'o the Irish), allows a player to look through their draw pile and choose a special card of that character's (who's special it is). This special can be played and instead of choosing a special from the deck that corresponds with the character playing it, the player can take any card he/she desires...as long as he/she already has a special of that character's in their present hand. There is no way for the Opponent to tell whether or not the player has or has not in fact chosen the special present in the hand from the deck. Now, the new rule I am suggesting would very effectively stop this from happening. The chosen card, which is to be (lets say) a Banshee special, would be set off to the side (B) to be used sometime during the Battle. If the player uses the card and it is not a Banshee special the Opponent would instantly know the player had cheated. This rule being in effect...no one would be able to cheat using this type of special. Another case of this type of cheating would be to use Lex Luthor's ER (Unlimited Resources) to pick out any card you want. How could anyone prove their Opponent had abused the card? The reason I thought of this rule is because I have seen players cheat by the first method (with HQs and JAs). I have never seen cheating by use of the second method I described but I realize that it is very possible. You may have had the fortune (or misfortune) for never seeing players cheat, but it does happen. There are other types of cheating that are in no way related to the effects of Special cards. These other types include: -drawing extra cards in the draw phase -hiding cards so that the Opponent may think themselves to have a card advantage, resulting in a more confident venturing of mission cards -flipping cards out of hidden locations to add to hand ...and there are many other ways too... Players who when caught cheating in the ways mentioned above, by use of specials and some methods without the use of specials, can say "oh, oops picked out the wrong card," or, "oops, accidentally kept a dupe," or "heh, you're right, I accidentally drew too many cards...heh," and many other things to point out error as a cause of their apparent cheating, not their conscious decision to do so. I'm not saying that these mistakes cannot happen, they can, but when these things happen three times at one tournament, or rather at multiple tournaments/games, it is totally unacceptable. This suggestion may seem to be just a real bother but it is effective in stopping these particular types of cheating. In casual play it can be just a nuisance but is necessary (I believe) in tournament play. Try playing using this rule, you may get used to it...

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