In this post we will be exploring the questionable handling of issues affecting the Rebel Penguin Federation during, and in the wake of, the recent Legends Cup XII Semi Finals. This post aims to provide a coherent breakdown of the facts as we currently understand them.
On October 9th, the Rebel Penguin Federation went up against the Templars of CP in the LCXII Semi Final. The battle was deemed a TCP win with a 1-0-2 score.
We were dissatisfied with the verdict, which is to be expected of any army when they lose, but in this situation we felt there were a number of issues, inconsistencies, and confusing judgement choices made by the panel. We opted to request a review, submitting 2 videos of the battle, as well as a document explaining the inconsistencies we noticed in the summary provided by judges compared to the battle as it occured. Our request for review, and submission of all of our supporting evidence, occurred less than a day after the release of the battle results.
After being told that a review was going to take place, it became a waiting game. Nothing was heard until days later on Wednesday, when TCP published a post regarding the review, stating that it had come to their attention that the verdict was going to be overturned in favour of RPF and that if such thing were to occur, they would be leaving the CPA league.
We were still being met with silence from CPAJ and CPA admins, and were confused to hear via this channel about a verdict being reached. We were also concerned to hear that Templars had apparently not been informed a review was taking place. We were growing impatient and agitated, since the Finals were, at this point, only 2 days away, and we had no idea whether we would need to prepare for them. Finally, over 24 hours after news of the leak broke via TCP website, an announcement was posted declaring the verdict of that battle was not overturned. But that’s not all.
This announcement itself served to raise more issues and inconsistencies, which we will outline as follows.
Removing a Head Judge
First and foremost, the decision to remove Head Judge Paddy from the review. Paddy was removed from the review process citing indirect affiliation, as Water Vikings would be directly affected by the verdict of this review due to them battling the winning army in the finals. However, this same reasoning was not applied after the Qualifiers, when Popcorny – a Templars-affiliated Head Judge – was allowed to be part of the decision on whether or not the battle between SWAT and RPF would go into review, despite his supporting army – TCP being directly affected by the outcome of that review in the same manner as with Paddy. Not to mention the fact that there seemed to be no issue raised with the judges of the Semi Finals battle itself, one of them being an enlisted Water Vikings troop – something we figured was not direct enough of an affiliation to be an issue at the time.
The Change in Verdict
In the TCP post as seen above, it was mentioned that the Templars had been informed that the review had concluded in favour of RPF when no announcement had been made. Everyone was rightfully confused as to how TCP had gotten that information, especially given the context of the announcement. It was brought to our attention eventually in a group chat with relevant leaders pre-announcement, that the Head Judges and admins group chat had been leaked to the Templars.
The fact that a leak was confirmed, also confirms that what the Templars had written in their post was accurate. Otherwise, why would it have been considered a leak? This confirms that the verdict was, at the time of the Templars post, overturned in favour of RPF.
So why was the final announcement changed to a TCP win? What changed in the day-long period between the leak received by TCP and the verdict announcement?
An approximate timeline would suggest:
Wednesday night – TCP receive what is above confirmed to be an accurate leak that the battle is being overturned in favour of RPF.
Later, Wednesday night – Templars release a post, in which they threaten to leave the CPA league if the verdict overturn goes ahead.
Thursday night – CPAJ announcement that the battle verdict is not being overturned.
This begs the question – did CPAJ make the decision to alter their review verdict due to the threats made by TCP? And does this inspire trust in the fairness of their decision process?
Inconsistencies in the Now-Upheld Verdict
The decision for the verdict not to be overturned was made on the grounds that no CPAJ judging guidelines were breached.
Room 1 was deemed a tie because while TCP had a significant size advantage, they did not use that in their favour and therefore RPF would go on to cover them for the majority of the room. While size advantage is something that needs to be taken into consideration, according to the guidelines, it is not what decides the fate of a battle. According to the guidelines, in the event of an army having 11-15 more than their opponent, for them to lose would be because they “have slow tactics, poor formations and no creativity”. Throughout the duration of room 1, TCP relied heavily on just emotes, with the occasional single word big word bubbles, including @ word bubbles – something that the judges were unimpressed by. Not only that, but that is something that affects an army’s creativity points. Nonetheless, confusingly, the guidelines were deemed to not have been breached.
Room 3 results favoured TCP. The reasoning for that was that RPF was starting to rely more on BWBs and lost the creativity, while TCP started using more variety in their tactics. This is something that was never mentioned in the results for room 1, despite it occurring. According to the judge guidelines, there should be an appropriate balance between word-emote tactics, something that TCP lacked considerably in room 1.
Yet the summary never mentioned it. The summaries for rooms 1 and 3 almost directly contradict one another. Does that seem compliant with guidelines?
Please set your eyes on the table below, showing exactly how many and what kind of tactics each army had in each room. Note the inconsistencies between the actual tactic tally and how tactics are referenced in the judges’ summary.
We recommend that you read the full document here.
Multilogging?
A few days after the battle concluded, we were presented with evidence of a Templars account being used by multiple people. A CPAB account with the username SierraHawk has been linked to several Templars troops suggesting account sharing. Account sharing especially to this extent raises questions of exploitation, and usage to cover up multilogging.
In the interest of transparency, it would be interesting to see if admins are committing to investigating signs of multilogging and account inconsistencies in TCP. We would like to request that they do so, and inform the community of the findings to put any concerns about potential multilogging to rest.
Overall Approach
To us, we feel as if the entire situation was approached very poorly by both CPA and CPAJ. From the constant silence to the excessive leaking that has occurred. RPF was met with no information for days, waiting for a verdict that could have left us needing to prepare for Legends Cup finals in less than 2 days. The review had not started taking place until Wednesday when the video and evidence was submitted 2 days prior. The Templars army were not even informed that a review was going to be taken place until late Wednesday when the verdict was also leaked to them. There has been evidence of unfairness, a lack of integrity, and absence of a clear due process for situations like this throughout this entire tournament.
We know the usual suspects will respond to this post by saying RPF can’t handle a loss. We personally are happy to be seen coping, seething, and malding at a time like this when we have good reason to do so. The reality is that for the entire duration of the tournament RPF has been treated questionably at every single stage. From the Qualifiers to the Semi Finals, RPF has had to fight its way through every battle.
Admitting defeat has never been an issue for us. The loss of March Madness 2022 and the beginning of the Summer Sovereign War proves that when we are defeated fairly, we concede defeat. But we will not stand for unfairness towards us or our troops. All we ask, is that the questions raised in this post be satisfactorily answered. And if all is well, that shouldn’t pose an issue.
Link3000 ~ Rebel Commander
Elexonck ~ Rebel Commander