Board Game Arena

There is an issue with kingmaking in KoT Arena. I can't name the accounts, due to BGA policy.

If something is happening in your games that doesn't look right, it probably isn't right. I'd urge anyone to use the red thumb system and report the issue to moderators. It won't go away otherwise, believe me, we've tried.

Have experienced this in normal games and the person even openly confessed from their burner. But in arena its a bit hard cos you don't pick your opponents, no?

When you have the same winner five seasons in a row in a very popular game with lots of players—and one where luck and chance play a role—of course there’s cheating. One day, during a game against him, he was losing, and—as if by chance—another player at the table suddenly stopped playing, which interrupted the game... All players should give him a red thumbs-down.

Same happens in one of my games: LIMIT. ***. I reported with all symptoms which are pretty obvious. The player not even try to hide it much, plays the same games casually on each account even in same order. After called out at least he removed his friendship between some of the accounts. Nothing really happened, he just ruined LIMIT arena for everyone by playing 2vs1 matches!

Now all 4 accounts start to play async Hegemony, the next arena he will start cheating.

Edited by moderator: even if the name isn't mentioned, giving clues so people know who you're talking about is not permitted.

chin up buttercup wrote: ↑21 September 2026, 10:09 Have experienced this in normal games and the person even openly confessed from their burner. But in arena its a bit hard cos you don't pick your opponents, no?

There was a change to the way Arena matchmaking is done, around a year ago now, maybe less. This change was an improvement overall, but also allowed players like this to more reliably play with colluding accounts.

When we analysed the kingmaker's games, it was obvious that after this change they had a far higher success rate of getting into an Arena game with one of their fake accounts.

I'm not going to post what the method is, because I don't want to encourage other people to start cheating in this way. It's fairly obvious if you think about it anyway.

Parsilos wrote: ↑23 September 2026, 11:21 When you have the same winner five seasons in a row in a very popular game with lots of players—and one where luck and chance play a role—of course there’s cheating. One day, during a game against him, he was losing, and—as if by chance—another player at the table suddenly stopped playing, which interrupted the game... All players should give him a red thumbs-down.

Exact same thing happened to me last night, with just hours to go until season's end. Player who was *clearly* going to win with a single click suddenly just ... stopped playing, let the time run down, so that the loser (who has finished first in Arena the past two seasons) not lose.

Kind of a big loser move.

So the Kingmaker waited until their existing bans had expired, and then waited until the last day of the season. They then played 15 Arena games on the trot, entering 3 of their accounts into every game.

How it works is the main account aims to win, usually by racing to 20 points, while the other 2 accounts are used to attack the honest players in the game and slow them down. If it looks like the main account is going to lose, one of the extras just quits the game to nullify the results. This is exactly what happened to Dahinda14.

The red thumb system is there people. You won't win many games of KoT if you have to overcome odds of 3 against 1.