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Ill start with the question. Does anyone know of a good game setup for three people to play (other than the one in the 5e book).

The problem is that whenever we play, there are three of us, and so no one wants to sit out and watch. So inevitably two people duke it out while the other 3rd takes little pop shots at the other two. Near turn 3 or 4 the first 2 players are too weak to fend off the main offensive of the guy that would sit back.

So again, does anyone know an easy way to fix this or at least offer an incentive to not simply sit back and bide his time. We tried VP, KP, Control, Annihilation, ect. game types and we always run into the same issue. I need some help. The games while fun, tend to end a whimper and not a bang.

We had the same problem back in RT era, 2nd ed and most of 3rd ed.

Eventually we ended up playing fun games with the central player defending the centre and the other 2 trying to take the objectives clustered there.

Sure the first guy gets smashed but he also weakens the other 2 and if you cycle through who has to be in the centre everyone gets a go.

Or if the guy holding the base or whatever (to expand on Mr. Nads's idea) has twice as many points to spend as each of the other guys. So you could have two allied players with 1000 each, and one guy with a 2000 point army. Or, if he's in an extra defensible position, the other two could each have two thirds of his army size.

I have heared one used where you get control of the other players army when you defeat his commander. that way the third party will have to fight the united remnants of the other armies.

How about Apocalypse? If one person has a large collection, the other two can take him on.

There is also a scenario for three players towards the back of the 5th ed hardback rulebook. At work, so don't have the page no...

psf3077 wrote: (other than the one in the 5e book).

Oops Sorry, I skim read what the original poster wrote. Regardless, surely the scenario in the rulebook can be adpated and changed to suit your needs?

We're a friendly group, and we generally just try to make it understood that sitting back and turtling just so you can win against the other 2 players duking it out isn't acceptable. That's a very "Im playing to sit here and do nothing, then WIN" strategy, not so fun in casual play.

Another way is a king of the hill game. Insert big central objective. Winner is the army who controlled it (having the unit standing on it) for the most number of turns during the game. Normal game length.

That way, everyone has to go forward. Want to wait back and smash everyone on turn 5? Congratulations, you controlled it for 1 turn, the other players win.

Ok here are my suggestions.

1) Stay away from KP - just turns into whoever can pick the other guy off.

2) if doing the 2v1 you could do standard missions @ even points

3) I like the idea of a glob of objectives closly together and the 2 other players trying to get them (large piece of terrain works here) either at even points but preferably the 2 non allied opponents at 1/2 or 2/3's the defenders points.

4) standard objective games should not pose a problem to 3 players, just do "take and hold" or whatever it is. Don't do the each person has 1 in his deployment zone.

You can also consider a "points killed" approach to determine the winner.

That way those 2 players that slam into each other and annihilate most of each other have tons of points racked up, while the guy leftover who just mops up the remnance doesn't have a lot of points left to get.

We play three-ways all the time. I have the little rulebook, but I hear the big rulebook actually has a section about specifically about 3 players.
We usually make a triangle, two players take corners on one long side, and the other takes the middle of the other long side. That player gets a more shallow but wider deployment zone. And the other two players have a more narrow but deeper deployment zone.
We have played all three missions and it works well. The middle player can sometimes feel sandwiched but it all depends on what your opponents do. DoW works as is, the Spearhead works as is, and for the Pitched battle, we kind of made a triangle with 24" on a side to keep us all 24" apart from each other.
Hope that helps.

Three way culmative objective. You use a set number of turns and each player gets 1 point per turn per objective they hold. the person who has the most points at the end of the turn limit wins. (Even if their army is wiped out, assume the held on long enough for re-inforcements, etc)

That way the aggressive player will win if he can hold another objective for more than two turns. Makes things into a nail biter.

You know, this is a really off-the-wall idea, but I tried it once with a couple of friends and it worked really well. I had the two buds write up 1000 point lists, and moderated a game for them double blind. Was the first time we'd tried anythgin like that, so it took some extra time, but it was a gas.

You set up 2 tables with the exact same terrain, and place them one player to a table, we did it with the guys back to back. they both had "opposite" sides of the same table setup, just on different physical tables. They couldn't see the other guys deployment, nor any units that weren't out in the open. As each of them would move their models, I would place models representing the squad in question into view on their opponents board. No take backs, you move it and its done. They got a real kick out of it. I played "forward scout" for each side, telling them what stand of trees bolter fire was coming from, where they were hearing engines coming from, etc. We just kinda winged it, and it worked great for a casual game.

grizgrin wrote:You know, this is a really off-the-wall idea, but I tried it once with a couple of friends and it worked really well. I had the two buds write up 1000 point lists, and moderated a game for them double blind. Was the first time we'd tried anythgin like that, so it took some extra time, but it was a gas.

You set up 2 tables with the exact same terrain, and place them one player to a table, we did it with the guys back to back. they both had "opposite" sides of the same table setup, just on different physical tables. They couldn't see the other guys deployment, nor any units that weren't out in the open. As each of them would move their models, I would place models representing the squad in question into view on their opponents board. No take backs, you move it and its done. They got a real kick out of it. I played "forward scout" for each side, telling them what stand of trees bolter fire was coming from, where they were hearing engines coming from, etc. We just kinda winged it, and it worked great for a casual game.

Wow, that's a pretty cool fog of war effect you've got going there.

For 3-player games the problem is usually that the deployment zones make it very easy for 2 players to be in range of each other earlier in the game. These then tend to be forced to fight it out while the other player sits back.

Short of building circular, triangular or hexagonal tables (which is impractical to say the least) go for the following layout on a standard 6' x 4' board:

Start at the middle of one short edge and draw a line to the centre of the table (3' long). Then measure 3' from the centre to each long edge to form a 'Y' shape. This gives each army a deployment zone of approximately equal size and with the same frontage against both your opponents.

The following changes need to be made to the missions:
Take and Hold: each player has one objective in their deployment zone.
Capture and Control: each player has one objective in their deployment zone and EITHER one central objective OR one objective each in neutral territory.
Annihilate: works as normal.

Roll to determine order of play as usual but no-one can try and 'sieze the initiative'.
You are not allowed to deploy within 12" of the boundary.

We've tried this out and it works pretty well, just make sure you have plenty of LOS-blocking cover!

Fafnir: we had a hell of a time with it, it was great. The guys seemd to really enjoy knowing where the fire was coming from, but not what the unit was until they sent someone out to go see, or it revealed itself.

Chimera_Calvin wrote:For 3-player games the problem is usually that the deployment zones make it very easy for 2 players to be in range of each other earlier in the game. These then tend to be forced to fight it out while the other player sits back.

Short of building circular, triangular or hexagonal tables (which is impractical to say the least) go for the following layout on a standard 6' x 4' board:

Start at the middle of one short edge and draw a line to the centre of the table (3' long). Then measure 3' from the centre to each long edge to form a 'Y' shape. This gives each army a deployment zone of approximately equal size and with the same frontage against both your opponents.

The following changes need to be made to the missions:
Take and Hold: each player has one objective in their deployment zone.
Capture and Control: each player has one objective in their deployment zone and EITHER one central objective OR one objective each in neutral territory.
Annihilate: works as normal.

Roll to determine order of play as usual but no-one can try and 'sieze the initiative'.
You are not allowed to deploy within 12" of the boundary.

We've tried this out and it works pretty well, just make sure you have plenty of LOS-blocking cover!

So set up some sort of table quarters type deployment and then roll for either DOW or Pitched Battle?

Do you recomend random turn generation or not?

This sound really good, I think I might try it out soon, however what occurs with outflanking units?

We didn't bother with DOW but you could certainly do that.

Random turn generation we played as normal.

Outflanking we had to do slightly differently - If player 'a' has an outflanking unit, then roll a dice:
1-2 it appears on any edge of player b's deployment zone.
3-4 it appears on any edge of player c's deployment zone.
5-6 you choose who you outflank.

If you are playing take and hold you may want to add a rule that says you can't outflank within 12" of the enemy base.

Hope this helps - have fun!!

Doesn't the Deamon's codex have a 3-player scenario? That could be easily tailored for your armies.

The best way I've found is to simply to have 2 people team up against the third and play like normal. Just make sure that the combined total points of the 2 people equals the combined total of the other player. In addition, you would make sure that both sides have an equal number of force organization slots open to them. So either the team with 2 people has to fit into one force org chart or the player by himself gets to use 2 full charts (so 2 required hq and 4 troops) on the other side. Keeps things balanced and works out fairly well.

If you are hell bent on having 3 seperate armies you can deploy in a setup like this...

**********
*1----O----2*
*-------------*
*O----3----O*
**********

Where the 1,2,and 3 are the various players and the "O"'s are objectives. This puts player 3 in position to get to the most objectives but also puts him in the middle of the other 2 players. From a bit of play testing, this generally requires that player 3 have about 50% more points than the other two, but tends to play out reasonably well. It also helps to play scenerios where it's important to hold things for a longer durration over the course of the game rather than just at the end of the game. This means everyone heads for the objectives and doesn't just sit back waiting for the other 2 players to soften eachother up.

Just make sure that when you do hand to hand, you make sure to keep things in line. For example, if it's player 1's turn, there should be no way player 2 could do hand to hand damage to player 3's units.

Thanks everyone, there are some great ideas here ill try out with my next games.

Multiplayer games require differently proportioned tables. A circle table is perfect for any number of people as long as it's large enough. Centralized objectives make it easy to balance. A square table with table quarters deployment and mirrored objective placement also helps considerably.

The most important thing is to remember to keep points values low if there are more than two sides. Things can get chaotic and cluttered quick, and certain armies suffer badly if they are surrounded by too much.

I love two on one games. In casual play giving the 2 person team a few extra points won't really unbalance things. A good 2000pt player is far better than 2 decent 1000pt players.

One idea I just had would be to take three armies of similar size (say 1500pts). Pick one guy to be in the middle. Measure 2 feet from each short table edge, that 4x2' middle area is the center deployment zone. Place three objectives in the middle zone. The other two players, going first and second, each move on the board on turn one ( no reserves rolls necessary). There is night fight on turn one.

Use good old victory points for determine a winner. Each enemy (and both other players are your enemy) unit reduced below half, or each vehicle immobilized is worth half points. Destroying a unit is worth the other half. Each objective held is worth 1/2 of the point size of the armies (so 750pts with 1500pt armies), but if the defender has a scoring unit on an objective, he gets the points even if there is an enemy unit contesting. Most total points wins. The key here is that if one of the attackers turtles, the defending player will probably win. It will take both attackers to really dislodge the defender, but both need to advance faster than the other.

I like the idea of having the objective's only in the middle that does take away from the 3rd person just sitting back and picking units off. The fog of war idea is also really cool but I would think that you would need alot of space and extra units to pull it off.

I'll agree with captain.gordino on this one.

Try having one player field twice as many points as either of the other two, and have the other two players allied against him. Works basically the same way as a 2-on-2.

There is one way that works, but it takes a much larger board to begin with.

You need to draw a 24x24x24 inch triangle, and the points are the deployment borders. If they deploy behind the dots in triangles, everything is standard length (nothing closer than 24 inches to each other) and you can then implement whatever mission you require. At that point, you can infiltrate, scout or outflank as normal as long as the bulk of the forces are still following "standard" deployment. 1v1v1 becomes an issue when one person is down another person's throat from the beginning.

For the psychology aspect of a 1v1v1, you need some sort of objective or else it turns into two people slagging on the most aggressive person, or one person hanging back and mopping up the results of the other two. This is more a player issue than anything else, as some gamers will resort to this less fun tactic to take the game.

Another way to implement active participation is a capture the hill type setup. You gain a victory point every turn you start and end your turn holding an objective (preferably a central location) and that keeps people constantly moving against each other and diffuses the allure of unfair alliances.

Hope some of these suggestions help.

I think the victory point idea would work great I am looking forward to trying it next time I play a three person game. The problem I have with one person gettin twice the points is this allows them to take much bigger guns and lots more wargear. However this is the only drawback and I guess if you work out a good strategy one person would take the small guys and the other would just load up on heavy stuff.

Central objective is the way to go IMO. I remember a 4-way WD Batrep from way back that did that... Kelly was fielding Ulthwe, Sawyer toted his White Scars, and there was definitely a Bloodthirster involved.
Grombrindral didn't stick his stupid head in all of the time and it was written properly. Those were the days...