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Played FFA so 1vs1vs1 |500 points| Alpha legion, space wolves, ultramarine| last night with friends and we rolled for Purge the alien.

So for five turns we play hide and seek no one wants to commit to a attack and we all just set up firing lines and prepare for a "cold war" then when we roll to see if the game keeps going my friends (inexperienced players) say it should keep going till all units are dead! I think well this is gonna be a long game. So finally on turn 6 go by my wolves score first blood by killing a weak helbrute and then my terminators kill a rhino where a firing line of smurfs (who moved a grand total of 24 inches this game.) kill off my terminators. Its turn 7 I roll to show the game ends but like like I said my friends want the cold war to continue.

I was bored so I hid my greyhunters for the rest of the game not wanting to give anymore victory points to the smurfs who waited patiently for the chaos to do a charge against the firing line and die. Which they did by turn 8. So chaos is ripped apart and smurfs get slay the warlord. I then with my wolves jump out and melta the other dread just to keep my VP high. So turn 10 I explain the game is over there is no point in this smurfs kill my squad of grey hunters in assault (Honestly he got charge and really didn't want to roll considering how my guys were outnumbered and it was late and the smurfs brought Cato was with the squad so i said they died)

so end of turn 11 SW:4 (would of had line breaker but sense we were playing with three deployments we decided not to count it) Smurfs:3 Alpha:0

The whole point of this thread is to find out if there is a way to play "free for all" I think relic is the only way or king of the hill because it forces armies to actually MOVE!!

Let me know how this would work cause i do like the idea of FFA but I think there is no balanced way of doing it the problem is
1)wait till the other two kill each other then strike in for a VP. (like what I did with the wolves i jumped out to kill dreads because the smurfs already took away 2 HP)

2) cold war (literally no one wanted to attack or commit in fear of getting attack in the rear so literally sitting and waiting)

My main issues but i would like to see rules for being able to fire at guys in assault for example the alpha legion and chaos are in melee I want to shoot them how would it work?

Please let me know your ideas Thanks!

FFAs especially 3 way aren't balanced due to ganging up as you say. But what is in 40k anyway?

When you learn to play beer and pretzles or however they're spelt, you will find ways to be annoying and just have a laugh with your enemies. Playing 2 faced and stabbing them in the back, or taunting them, whatever really.

Each new turn, roll off, whoever gets heighest goes first. This can create some shenanigans.

Try using a random moving relic with the scatter dice. A relic who shoots randomly..

Try having kill points where the current winning player points wise is worth more points to kill. Talk about an incentive!

This is one of the biggest problems with "FFA" style games.

My suggestion would be to use maelstrom missions, rather than just straight VP for killing units. This would help encourage players to get across the board to achieve their objectives.

 eskimo wrote:
FFAs especially 3 way aren't balanced due to ganging up as you say. But what is in 40k anyway?

When you learn to play beer and pretzles or however they're spelt, you will find ways to be annoying and just have a laugh with your enemies. Playing 2 faced and stabbing them in the back, or taunting them, whatever really.

Each new turn, roll off, whoever gets heighest goes first. This can create some shenanigans.

Try using a random moving relic with the scatter dice. A relic who shoots randomly..

Try having kill points where the current winning player points wise is worth more points to kill. Talk about an incentive!

Like your ideas thanks! I also agree with you Cheexsta but my of my friends *cough* smurfs *cough* hates maelstrom mission and refuses to play with tac objectives. But I totally agree with maelstrom would be great.

Another way (if you can convince your friend to play objectives) is to have one objective within each deployment zone. Allocate a few VPs to getting the objective in the correct zone (ie player A needs objective in Zone B, Player B needs objective in Zone C, player C needs objective in Zone A). That way everyone is simultaneously trying to defend the objective in their zone and trying to fight their way through another zone.

The few 3 for alls I've played in usually involved a king of the hill style victory, or capturing a relic. Alternately, if you have the terrain to do it with, a 2 v 1 can be very interesting. Set up a fortified bunker in the center, raised above the map, with clear firing lines. Then start the other two players in narrow deployment zones on opposite ends of the board. The defender wins if they still hold the center, and the other two players compete via kill points (on the defender, or the opposing attacker) and gets a point or more if they hold the center at the end (we do 3 points).

 zombiekila707 wrote:
Like your ideas thanks! I also agree with you Cheexsta but my of my friends *cough* smurfs *cough* hates maelstrom mission and refuses to play with tac objectives. But I totally agree with maelstrom would be great.

That's a shame - Maelstrom is some of the most fun I have ever had in this game! It keeps everyone on their toes, and really forces you to get out and take control of the game rather than playing a "cold war" style battle, like you describe. One of the biggest issues I've seen with Maelstrom is when you draw cards that could never be achieved in that game (kill a flyer when the opponent doesn't have one, for example), so just house rule that those cards can be immediately discarded and redrawn when you get them.

Another thought I had was to have normal objective markers, but make each yield +1VP to the first player that controls it, and have them worth more at the end of the game when they are further from your deployment zone. An objective is worth a number of VPs at the end of the game equal to the distance between it and your deployment zone in inches and divided by 3 (rounding down).

For example, an objective 28" away is worth 9VPs at the end of the game to that player, but is worth nothing to the player whose deployment zone it is in. But that player can still get 1VP for being the first player to capture it.

It would still require some tweaking so people don't just turtle up until the end of the game and pounce on faraway objectives (I'm looking at you, Eldar players), but it could be interesting.

the last FFA I had was 4 players and we'd all done enough games to realize that a cold war is not something that is fun in a tabletop though it does pay for bankrupting countries.

What we did was that each turn you don't kill something or advance towards an enemy, you lose a VP per unit that isn't shooting or walking/running forwards. Every kill is worth 2 VP's if scored against a player with the highest points left on the board. You can go into negative VP's as well. To prevent some folks that go last of having all the luck/fun/no-fun, it was random who got to start each turn (roll off order).

Most games lasted 3hrs at 1000 points each (4000 points went pretty fast actually as people got alot more points picking on the strong so things tended to move quickly as no one had alot of units after a few rounds.)

This however was still much less fun than just doing a straight up 2 v2 or 2v1 with the one guy having double points or just playing 2 seperate armies.

Fantasy's triumph and treachery rules work quite well in fantasy and can quite easily be altered to work for 40k (use psychic phase as magic, vehicles are warmachines). It uses a card system to randomise player turn each game turn, vps are gained by completely destroying a unit, and there are many ways to disrupt your opponents plans with the treachery cards.

Some more cool ideas in here, so thanks for those.

I like the negative points for not killing. Also like the King of the Hill idea.

Also thought of another one. 5 or 6 objectives all numbered, placed symmetrically around the board. Each new turn roll a D6, that is the objective you must hold at the end of the turn to get points. If 5 objectives, a roll of 6 means the previous objective blows up, is removed from the table, and every model within 12" of it suffers a str4 hit. Reroll the dice until objectives stop blowing up.

We play some 1vs1vs1 sometimes, and often do a 'king of the hill' setup.

A 12' square is marked (usually with ruins) in the middle of the board. For each unit you have inside the hill at the end of your turn you gain VPs.

VPs are also gained for slay the warlord (Separate points for each one), and controlling the 1 objective in the hill at the end of the game.

The winner is the player with the most VPs after 6 turns.

The idea is that the game forces players into the middle of the board, and hopefully prevents players from ganging up on each other, or sitting back and castling.

I've played a LOT of 3 way games. I guess my group is a little more blood thirsty because we've never had the situation where no one wanted to commit. That said, playing maelstrom missions with the objective cards would help you guys out quite a bit. It essentially forces you to hop around the table.

Now as far as how to handle shooting into a close combat that only contains models from you opponents, we decided to treat it like shooting a regular enemy unit. Use the average toughness of the group, then start allocating wounds as normal. If two (or more) models are tied for closeness then you roll off to see which one is assigned the wound. This has worked out pretty well.

----

Last thing though: 3 way games tend to take FAR longer than normal games. Lately we've been shifting towards a regular 2 sided game, where two players are on one side. This moves faster.

We use random allocation when determining 'shooting into an assault'.

I guess 'closest model' would be a fine way of playing aswell.


However, Me and my friends have taking a liking to a certain game mode which plays quite well with 3 players.

1 player sets up in the middle, the other 2 deploy on opposite table sides. The goal of the game is for the 2 players on the sides to kill the player in the middle as quickly as possible.

Keep track of the number of turns you survived and the models you've slain. When the player in the middle is tabled, rinse and repeat for the other players. The player who lasts the longest wins.