Is this a cheat?

[brian00]

Hello! I have a question, if you ban all good players in a game without a reason more than avoiding them at the arena and you win the season, is that legal? Thx!

[Meeplelowda]

Hello! I have a question, if you ban all good players in a game without a reason more than avoiding them at the arena and you win the season, is that legal? Thx!

There is no rule or policy against it, and it is a recurring source of complaints from people who play in Arena.

If you think about it, private red thumbs can be given for any reason at all. So in order to make a rule that you can't red thumb to avoid strong players in Arena yet still allow some red thumb you'd have to discard the policy of being able to give private red thumbs for any reason, then come up with a list of "illegitimate" reasons for giving red thumbs, and then police the doling out of red thumbs which would involve making judgment calls about whether suspiciously many top players were red thumbed in Arena. It would be administratively infeasible.

That said, in a recent post BGA has hinted at a possible change to how red thumbs in Arena will work:

→ Red Thumbs for competitive play
One last thing that is going to be changed in a few weeks will be the impact of the Red Thumbs.
You can currently give a Red Thumb to any player with which you had a bad game experience. This prevents you from competing against them in ranked games or the Arena, but not in Tournaments.
This system can, and unfortunately is, used to prevent some players from competing against the best players. Considering that the Red Thumb system is being abused this way, on purpose or not, we will update the way Red Thumbs are impacting the matchmaking for the next season.

As far as I know, no further details have been provided. Perhaps we won't know before the next Arena season exactly what the change is. If it is simply removing the effect of red thumbs in Arena, then you'd think they'd just say that, so maybe it's something more nuanced.

[brian00]

I see, thank you for the answer, will be harder to win arena then.

[Dannerz]

I don't know what the published rules say but in my opinion it is clearly exploiting the arena match making system and in my opinion any player caught doing it should forfeit their arena win, and possibly receive a temporary ban, or at least public shaming.

I believe * is doing this in Russian Railroads. If possible I ask a moderator to look into this cheating and take appropriate action. If a mod considers it "legal" I think all Russian Railroad players should shame * for this sort of behavior.

*Moderation Edit: please do not use the Forums to call players out by name, this is what the Moderation Reports are for. The Forums should remain a general discussion.

[Meeplelowda]

I believe * is doing this in Russian Railroads. If possible I ask a moderator to look into this cheating and take appropriate action. If a mod considers it "legal" I think all Russian Railroad players should shame * for this sort of behavior.

This accusation should be made by reporting the player from their profile page, not making the accusation by naming them in the forum.

[Dannerz]

ok, i did not know that i will use that avenue instead. thank you