Board Game Arena

It’s so sad to see that a significant number of players here play on the same table using multiple accounts. And of the 100 such accounts, maybe 10 get reported and of all those reported i doubt if even one barely gets banned for life


Just have a look at the all time leaderboard. Of the top 50, 40+ are king-making combos. Maybe more if you look closely.

And before anyone says, yes I’ve reported them and i am sure many others have too but to what avail? What’s the point of this elo system if it is designed to get exploited!

I’ve lost all hope of seeing any strong action by bga against the cheating system in CATAN.

I fully agree. It’s a game and it’s supposed to be fun. There are people who don’t even try to hide it where one account is t even attempting to win at all and then there are those that admit to team play openly and nothing ever seems to happen.

Unicornywingspan wrote: ↑01 February 2026, 15:16 I fully agree. It’s a game and it’s supposed to be fun. There are people who don’t even try to hide it where one account is t even attempting to win at all and then there are those that admit to team play openly and nothing ever seems to happen.

True. And where are all those regulars commenters who police the forum and moderate? Awfully quite now, aren’t we

Try playing four player games. It's way harder to cheat via 2 account kingmaking in four player games.

At the start of my last game a spectator came in to warn me that the other 2 players (we were in a 4 player game) were kingmakers. He just experienced the same in his last game.
Sure enough when i looked up their game history they had played 121 games together and very rarely didn't play at the same table.
Throughout the game they made moves that didn't make sense but did make sense if you knew they were clearly playing together as a team.
Yet there is no ability to report such behaviour which is clearly an issue that BGA needs to address. All you can do is give a red thumb. Presumably that means nothing since they are still doing it.
I'm assuming not allowed to name names here.
But i was at table #*******
Player that had come to our table to warn me was from table #********

You can see the common two players.

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

aloof-rabbit wrote: ↑02 February 2026, 13:08 I'm assuming not allowed to name names here.
But i was at table xxxxxx

You assumed right. But then why do you believe that you are allowed to "not name a name, but it's spelled with an X, followed by an X, and then an X, and then an X..."?

On the opposite side of this, my partner and I regularly play together on BGA, whether on 2 or 4-player games, and we play competitively. Like, we do not discuss the game until it's completely over, and have our own headphones in during play.

But we are regularly reported or accused of cheating during games, even when it's clear (to me) that if we wanted one of us to win, we would've made trades or moves that were less competitive. We end up caught in the infestation even though we aren't kingmaking.

Players below 150 ELO shouldn't be allowed to enter Arena. Kingmakers or noobs they ruin the game for those who play fairly. But guess nobody in BGA cares about it

CATAN is just a terrible game. It encourages revenge, stealing, anger, and depression. I really hate it.

The same happened to me twice, and it's frustrating not being able to do anything other than giving a red thumb and not play with them again. They completely ruin the game experience for everyone else involved, and what's worse, it's happening more and more in the arena too, where you lose points