Note: a prior version of this article incorrectly referenced the “ITC Code of Conduct” instead of the “FLG Code of Conduct. This has been corrected.
After seeing a recent Facebook poll over at the Frontline Gaming page asking how yellow cards and point deductions should be handled. It was a good and relevant question, but ultimately it struck me that the fundamental premise of the question was flawed. Our entire approach to misplay, cheating, and penalization places the emphasis on the wrong subject and fails to facilitate active judging at a level of nuance that this game requires competitively. To understand, we’ll look at the current card system, its benefits and limitations, and then explore what an alternative can look like and why it might better fit the nature of our game.
The Card System
what is important to understand is that the system didn’t and doesn’t replace the fundamental rules
As with much of our competitive 40k culture, the standards and practices of play has been largely lifted or adapted from already established concepts in other competitive environments. In this case, the card system is well-established in the sporting world but is a relatively recent innovation. In a since archived article from FIFA that provides the story of Ken Aston, an English teacher, referee, and key contributor the development of football (non-American). In his time, Aston had reffed several volatile, international matches including remarkable moments in World Cup history with high emotion, outright brawling, and national antagonism in way that is frankly alien to most American sports fans.
His experience in these matches, where language and culture can create challenges for referees, led him to introduce that yellow/red card system that then became an official component of FIFA at the 1970 World Cup and thereafter became a standard in association football worldwide. The idea was a stroke of genius, yellow being “caution” and red being “stop” had increasingly become a universal standard as traffic lights became more common worldwide – something that was easily understood and communicated for referees, players, and spectators alike.
The hallmark of the system is its simplicity in message and the ease of understanding across language barriers. As a result, many sporting federations have adopted the FIFA card system directly or built upon the original system as it suited their needs. Track & Field, Polo, Rugby, Volleyball, and many others have picked up the system or adopted it to meet their needs in various ways. However, what is important to understand is that the system didn’t and doesn’t replace the fundamental rules or technical aspects of refereeing/umpiring the games it had been implemented in – rather it supplemented the governing structure. And this is where the limitations of the card system become evident.
In competitive Warhammer 40,000, the card system was implemented to serve a similar purpose for judges to clearly communicate their intentions as it relates to player misconduct at the table. In the most recent FLG Code of Conduct that includes additional subcomponents that once a yellow is received, additional penalties that impact a player’s VP may be levied at various levels based on the nature of the offense. However, the core of one yellow card = warning, two yellow cards = red card and disqualification still applies. The FLG Code of Conduct cites an example of a list error resulting in a yellow card with an ensuing player poor sportsmanship resulting in a second and an automatic disqualification. Two yellows are not required for disqualification, judges always reserve the right to issue a red card.
Limitations of the Card System
As the FIFA article noted, the system was targeted at players and their conduct, rather than as a method of managing technical infractions. It is important to recognize, that football/soccer officials maintain control over lower level penalties (fouls) that are applied for minor conduct violations or technical rule faults that are then penalized without cards. Most often this takes the form of awarding the other team an advantage such as a free kick – having this level of resolution available allows the official to quickly address the issue and provide a solution without holding up play or requiring more severe consequences that may not fit the underlying fault.
To use the card system as the basis of a judging toolbox is the equivalent of taking an MLB umpire’s warning of a pitcher/bench or their ultimate ejection call as the core of how they manage a game. This results in a problematic approach that allows little in the way of nuance. To illustrate, how would such an umpire handle a pitcher’s balk? A catcher blocking the plate? Pitch clock violation? In the MLB, warnings and ejections would clearly be an absurd tool to address technical faults, and indeed MLB umpires do have multiple tools at their disposal to handle these situations that includes the awarding or penalizing a team that represents the severity of the infraction. What is important to understand here is that the system implemented in FIFA didn’t replace the fundamental rules or technical aspects of refereeing/umpiring the matches in which it had been implemented – rather it supplemented the already in place structure.
So when we consider its application to competitive 40k, the best you can really say for the card system is that it’s strained in its current application. The FLG Code of Conduct does list point deduction penalties, but the application is backwards in that it necessitates a yellow card. Any two yellow cards result in a disqualification. To put it bluntly, this is an absurd way to handle misplay and misconduct and completely confuses the underlying systems. Moreover, this system is one that takes the idea of judging and both handcuffs the judge’s ability to assess the situation and adjudicate an issue with action that is relevant to the underlying fault. It provides no nuance in its repercussions – as in the MLB umpire example, any penalty leveled for even small, technical errors become a full-throated yellow-card warning. A player with multiple such errors is disqualified which frankly makes no sense in most situations. Because of this, judges are heavily disincentivized from issuing a first or even second card knowing that the consequences of such are so severe. Perhaps worse, judges may feel that they are forced to deviate from the system entirely in order to provide more nuance. A system that is not followed by the people meant to implement it is not a functional one.
Another ramification is that the original card system, as noted, was meant to punish players specifically for their flagrant misconduct. The implication then, is that receiving a card is an indictment against the player themselves, a black eye, rather than the recognition of a technical mistake regardless of the underlying intent. Moreover, cards in FIFA often result in restrictions that extend beyond the current game such as when a player is disqualified from ensuing games after receiving one or more cards in a match. However, the card system’s use as a focus on a player feeds into the worst type of community engagement, the extremely online arm-chair players that both misunderstand the term “cheating” and lob it effortlessly and often against anything that doesn’t fit their preconceived notions of how the game is played. The cards are visible and the implication is of ill intent. If there’s one thing these types of online observers who feed on the bottom level of toxic engagement don’t need, it’s a system that hides the nuance while implying ill intent. This might make sense in the competitive community if cards were solely restricted to player conduct or misplay faults, but the wide application for all sorts of technical faults puts a target on a player that receives one for the poorly informed commentors and some content creators who feed on the drama and create a generally toxic atmosphere within the wider community.
Take for example the FLG Code of Conduct example of a yellow card issued for a list submission error, perhaps a deadline or a change requested following the deadline. It’s not a conduct issue, purely administrative, but the result is that said player is at real risk of disqualification for even simple, honest mistakes over the course of the event. That player and any judge reviewing the situation are strong disincentivized to stand up for themselves or acknowledge a mistake they made but realized afterwards, or even correct for a mistake (judge) because of the severe consequences that outweigh the offenses.
The system is built to handle cheating, a relatively rare occurrence and is not equipped to handle the much more frequent innocent misplay. In short, as implemented, it’s a bad system.
A Better Way Forward
We can be creative here, as a community, and we should be – creativity is the heart of this community. Moreover, the system should be adaptable
Before we continue, we should first understand that no matter what system of judging we develop players should have the capability and right to understand and correct for situations between themselves without the need for a judge. Changing our system of judging shouldn’t necessitate additional judges or time from judges. Moreover, those who would seek to weaponize judge calls to instigate judging penalties should also be held liable under the system. That said…
What then is the role of such a system in competitive 40k? What are the alternatives available? The reality is that there is no perfect solution here. It’s nearly impossible to write a system so bulletproof that it can account for every situation lest it be so overbearing and impenetrable that it completely forgets the purpose – allow judges to enforce the standard of play. We can be creative here, as a community, and we should be – creativity is the heart of this community. Moreover, the system should be adaptable and when things need addressing they should be addressed, when changes are required, they should be implemented. That is to say that I’d offer here a baseline as a leaping off point, but the exact nature of any such system should be subject to debate and revision as necessary.
Any system should seek to give judges more tools in handling a situation, but not require more of their time or require them to make more rulings than necessary. As stated, players are still expected to handle minor disputes between themselves and these rules should only come into effect when a judge is called to settle a dispute that the player’s themselves cannot adjudicate. This is usually the case when the game has moved past a point where something can be easily corrected. The judge is then left to their own judgement on the application of these proposed structures – they are not mandatory but rather guidelines. The goal is to free the judges to make decisions that fit the unique situations they are thrust into while giving players a baseline of expectations for tournament judging. There are no mandates, and players who are seeking to weaponize a judging system might themselves be subject to the penalty structure if a judge determines that to be the case. We might also consider an alternative structure that only applies to undefeated matches or after a certain number of tournament rounds so as to impact only the top-x of a given field (this is sometimes seen in clock requirements presently). We aren’t limited in creating structures that improve the tournament experience while addressing the concerns of various types of players.
When we look for or create those alternatives to improve on our current system we don’t need to go very far. We could start by understanding what the card system means and how it’s used in other competitive endeavors. It’s a supplement but not the core of a judging structure. In that fashion, we could simply decouple the yellow/red cards from a point penalty structure. That does a few key things:
- Maintains the card system’s original intent as a player-specific penalty regarding their specific misconduct
- Allows judges to assess the difference between technical fouls and malicious intent and correct or penalize accordingly
- Allows for simple and quick redress of a technical or gameplay fault without seriously impacting the ongoing game or tournament flow
What this might look like in practice is as follows, penalties delivered upon identification:
- Technical fault (list error, late submission, etc): -5 victory points per instance
- Misplay fault (inappropriate rule use, illegal move or action, etc): -10 victory points per instance
- Players may be able to acknowledge and correct this for themselves without penalty
- This may be something that could even be downgraded to a warning at judge discretion
- Player misconduct (poor sportsmanship, angle shooting/clock manipulation): Yellow card and -20 victory points per instance
- Deliberate play fault (misrepresenting rules, cheating by other means): Yellow Card and automatic game loss
- Flagrant misconduct (organizer/judge determined fault, repeat yellow cards): Red card and tournament disqualification
Another option is to forgo the card system entirely and simply layer in effects for reaching a certain penalty threshold – akin to fouling out in basketball. While the card system was simple and effective for Its use in soccer and other sports, it’s not clear that the same need exists in games which are typically one-on-one, with no standing spectators, and where the judge(s) will be necessarily actively engaged in the nuanced conversation with both players – this isn’t a game where we can avoid a common language in discussing a given situation. Such a system may look similar to the current card system or the one illustrated above but forgoes the need for a card component and keeps all penalties on a VP basis – maintaining a strict point system that judges/TOs can track over the course of an event up to and including a disqualification. It serves to remove the ‘second layer’ that the cards represent and simplifies penalization structures to a single dimension. That might look like the below:
- Technical fault (list error, late submission, etc): -5 victory points per instance
- Misplay fault (inappropriate rule use, illegal move or action, etc): -10 victory points per instance
- Player misconduct (poor sportsmanship, angle shooting/clock manipulation): -20 victory points per instance
- Deliberate play fault (misrepresenting rules, cheating by other means): -20 points and Automatic game loss per instance
- Flagrant misconduct (organizer/judge determined fault): Disqualification
- Any game cumulative penalty (a fault or multiple faults) of 25+ during a round: Game Loss
- Any tournament cumulative penalty (a fault or multiple faults) of 40+ during an event: Disqualification
We could debate and quibble over the exact penalty breakouts or structure (and we should – these are just illustrative examples), but the big change here is that you put the onus of a penalty on the play rather than the player in most cases. It takes the idea of malicious intent and minimizes it to cases in which a judge can use their judgment rather than broad brushing with a limited toolset. The additional effect of this is to improve some of the online, toxic discourse that people love to engage in by applying a level of nuance to a penalty that is often missing in such discussions. Cheating requires malicious intent to meet the definition – that is often glossed over or willfully ignored. The current yellow card system just cannot account for that because the precedent for its meaning has long been set in the sporting world, it implies a player knew or should have known they were committing a fault.
Final Thoughts
This is once again an area that other game systems have long figured out, but the competitive Warhammer 40,000 perplexingly remains behind. The key to any successful system will not be that it is a perfect system, but that it adequately achieves the expected game outcome considering a measured fault by a player. Regardless of the route we end up taking on a new judging structure, one thing remains clear – we shouldn’t stay wrong just because we have been wrong. The card system application in 40k is a clear misunderstanding of how it works and what it means, and it is not sufficient to enable our organizers and judges to handle the nuanced situations that they commonly face. A change is necessary, and regardless of how that change is enacted, it should account for both the type of error, extent of the error, and impact. It should also shift the focus onto the error itself, rather than to continue to place the focus on the player. I have offered some initial suggestions, but how we arrive at a new system will be subject to debate, discussion, trial, and error – there will be growing pains in altering our structure as a community, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. We owe ourselves a better way to ensure fairness and accountability in this game.
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