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Alright, I play most of my games versus 2 of my friends. So we do a 3 way fight with objectives (we try different styles and invent them too, just for fun). I play ork, they both play sm (one of them started space wolves not long ago). We play 1200 points (thats gonna go up to 1500 since I received my order).

Now my ork army is mostly an horde army. My FAs are a mix of warbuggies with flamers and suicide deff koptas (my friends really likes vehicles). I sometime put some nobz that too.

My question is, how do you fight a 3 way fight to capture objectives. Sure there is most of the time one that is near my deployment zone that is easy to grab, but I most not be the first to grab them since I excel in melee and the marines are just gonna out gun me in range fights. I tried three different tactics b4 and 2 of them totally failed and one almost worked (ended up losing cause one of the player that had no chance of winning went suicidal against me on the last turn and contested 2 of my points :S)

1st tactic: Wait and React
That one did not work well because of my type of army. To stay out of range and wait for one of the two to make a move, I could not put enough space between my guys and I was vulnerable to templates which the player if Orb bombardment and a whirlwind abused. I only ended up being a pain in the ass and contesting points at the end of the game. That did not work also because the sm could just force me to make a move by out ranging my guys and killing them slowly but surely.

2nd tactic: Split forces
That one totally did not work once and almost worked on a special type of game the 2nd time. The problem with that tactic is that both players are going to feel threatened by me moving towards them, so they both are gonna team up for a round or two and annihilate me (since they got twice as many points firing on me).

The 2nd time, it worked 'cause we made a mission type game when all the units were deep striking except one hq and one troop, so the sm were not in good position to do any good dmg and I got over half my army on the field in the deep strike while my opponents only got 1 or 2 units. I ended losing that game due to one of my opponents decided that he could not win and went ahead and contested most of my points. And again, that only worked because all of our forces were scattered so there was not a wall of bolt rounds welcoming me when I was charging.

3rd tactic: all in versus one guy.
IN that game, we did a hold and capture type of game where we all had one objective in our deployment zone and that was it. So the only way to win was to get the objective of some one else. So I went all in against the guy I had most chances to kill. It went well in the 2 or 3 three first rounds (I made a mistake of over extending my HQ and my 12 man 'ard boyz mob, but apart from that it went well). So the 3rd player was never in the fight, he was shooting me and the otehr guy with his LR, pred and devastators, but that was it. So I managed to mostly destroy my 1st opponent and that is when the flank from the 2nd opponent came in and destroyed most of my army. I managed to annihilate my 1st opponent nevertheless but I had loss my objective while taking his.

As you can see, that tactic does not work either because I leave myself open to flank from an opponent that has pretty much no unit loss and I am lucky if I don,t get anihilated.

So how do you guys play a 3 way fight?? Don't forget that I play ork and that my army is pretty much only able to do real damage in melee.

Unfortunately the problem you are in is not really specific to 40 k. This is indicative of most 3 player free for alls in any game. The most reliable strategy to winning a 3 player game is to wait until the other two players fight and expend there resources then come in and clean up the rest. Your army will have a hard time with this. If you establish your self as a threat early you will be blown into oblivion. There is one other tactic you may try. You rapidly destroy one player and you do it well. This would involve a lot of mech and getting into cc as soon as possible. Then sit on those objectives in cover. If you are head then the other player will have to come close eventually.

I generally stay back and remove any threats.
Granted this tends to draw more fire my way, but atleast i know where i stand then.

Also depends who you play.
Chances are it will be 2 v 1 most of the time.
In which care, bring a cookie cutter list and make sure you have no holes in your units.
Seems not too nice, but when its 2 v 1 you have a chance still.


Also, have a backup plan.
Reserves, DS, anything you can to keep a unit or 2 off of the table.
I only ever take Ymgarl stealers in 3 player games since they can pop up in terrain, which gives me some time to pick where im going (usually an objective)
Just make sure you clear it 1st.


However, we house rule shooting into combat.
It is allowed, but all shots are randomised accordingly (you still cant shoot into combat if your own units are in there)

We came up with a way to make 3-way games playable. Like you said, when we would play, someone gets ganged up on - leaving that person no chance.

We would have a small npc force that had specific rules. For one mission, it would be capture the center point - maybe a eldar farseer body. The body would be defended by some eldar that could never go more than 3 inches from the body and would shoot/assault the nearest unit. Or deep striking terminators protecting a space marine relic.

The other force needs to be small but large enough to not be ignored. That way all parties have to watch out for another force that they can't ally with to take another player out.

thats a good Idea vrakk,

we had an idea when I'll have more orks and since they are both sm.

We would do a meatgrinder scenario where I would put my whole army and they would only have the total point of my army divided by two minus 100 or 200 points. Then would start the meatgrinder scenario. They would have a position to defend and I would try to kill them. Reinforcment would come in with the outflank rule.


Also if you want a nice 3 way game where it is hard to gang on someone. Divide the table in 12 or 16 sectors. Then only allow 1 hq and one troop to be deployed on the 1st turn. After that you can only deepstrike the rest of your army according to the normal deepstrike rule. The one with the most sectors in the end win. To make that game easier to play, we use a house rule for holding sectors where all infantry can hold and vehicle can contest instead of only troops.

That way a termie heavy army can still hold and the deep strike adds some action because you do not want to go too close to terrain or units because of the mishaps table, nor do you want to be too close to your opponents army. The beginning is a little slow because of all the deep strikes, but it prevents you from really ganking on someone since everyone army is scaterred everywehre. We also roll to see in which sector we start. Tactically speaking, it is a pretty good challenge

I think it's already been said, but 2 v 1 is really the best way of involving three people.

Otherwise you need to invent some rules or mission conditions that reward fast and indiscriminant action. But that will unfairly hurt certain armies, so there isn't really a good way of doing it.

Maybe you should use Turns Held objectives.

Place a bunch of objectives in the middle of the table.

At the End of Every Player turn you get 1 point for every uncontested objective you hold.

This means that you want to get to the Objectives early and hold them to rack up points. Unless you are massacred you could still win by taking points early and holding them for a few turns, even if you are beaten up by both players at the end of the game.

I think this would work better than the "Last turn Objective Grab" game type you have been playing.

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Here is another way to play a "FUN" (ie. not competitive) 3 way game.

Pitched deployment
Start with a regular 1v1 game (players A and B)

Player C is forced to put everything in Reserves. For player C, everything in Normal reserves Outflanks, and everything outflanking does so on the long table edges. Also, his units come in Turn 1 on a 4+, turn 2 4+, ect... Player C always goes Last.

Basically you have a battle, then your rowdy orks show up to mess up what is going on.

I would recommend Kill Points for a Victory condition.

Maybe have a bag of random objectives and is drawn (with no replacement). Each player draws three objective types. The first drawn one is primary, second is secondary, and third is tertiary. Make them unique with the people you play with:

1) Assassinate an ork HQ. (if your an Ork player, redraw)
2) Assassinate a SM HQ. (if your a SM player, redraw)
3) Assassinate a SW HQ. (if your a SW player, redraw)
4) Hold at least 50% of the objectives on the board.
5) Hold an objective that is not in your deployment.
6) Hold an objective that is in your deployment.
7) Receive the most VPs/KPs in the game.
8) Hold 2 quarters of the map.
9) Hold your table quarter.

If two or more players have done their primary objective, go to the secondary objective, and to the tertiary if tied in the secondary. That would make each game unique and therefore would need to worry about their random objectives instead of just "let the others blow each other up then swoop in for the kill".

EDIT: You can either keep the objectives secret or annouce them, it doesnt matter.