What is considered cheating in Disney Lorcana?
Nobody likes to talk about cheating, but it's something we have to address in every game we care about - and Disney Lorcana is no exception. If someone cheats, it not only skews the results of the tournament, it also spoils the fun for everyone trying to play fairly and honestly.
So what exactly counts as "cheating" when you're sitting across from someone with your Lorcana deck or assessing a situation as a Judge? It's not always as black and white as you might think. Let's take a look at what the rules actually say about cheating, how you can recognise it when it happens, and go through some real-life examples so we're all on the same side.
What Is Cheating?
Cheating occurs when a player breaks the rules of the game or tournament to gain an advantage. This can range from lying to a judge to intentionally playing very slowly to lower the time.
The PCG has it in this way :
4.4 Cheating Definition: A player intentionally breaks a game rule or tournament rule in order to gain an advantage. (…)
Let's break it down :
This means, in its core definition, that for cheating to occur, three things must happen :
It has to be deliberate.
This is huge - we're talking about what's going on in the player's head. Cheating means you're aware that you're breaking the rules and you choose to do it anyway. Making a mistake because you didn't understand something isn't cheating. There's a big difference between "oops, I didn't realize" and "I know this is wrong, but I'm doing it anyway."
A rule is actually broken.
You can't cheat without breaking a rule that's written down somewhere. Even if someone has questionable intentions or something feels off, if they haven't technically violated a rule, it's not cheating. After all, it's the game publisher who defines the act of cheating: so it must violate their own rules, and more broadly since we're casting a wider net, the rules of the tournament you're participating in. This is what keeps things clear and objective - humans are biased in their thinking by nature, so we must judge based on what actually happened, not only on a bad impression.
There's some kind of advantage.
The motivation for acting this way is important. A player who breaks the rules does so in order to gain an advantage, whether this is to win a match, avoid a penalty or even to obtain a benefit that is less tangible for a spectator or another player (and a fortiori the judges) but which may be tangible for the player themselves. Without this intention to gain an advantage, the action, although possibly unsportsmanlike or negligent towards the rules of the game, is not considered cheating.
Shall we go in depths now?
