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Hi,
I would like to hear what's your experience in more than two player games.
Last weekend I had few friends over to come and test 40k for the first time. First game was four players with two new players. I had made a custom mission with some alterations from the BR's 4-player game. It was fun and had tactical depth so I want to share the basics with you. On the following day we played a three player game throwing stuff on the table more to speak and while still fun dice rolling, it didn't feel 40k as I like it. I'll share this experience with you as well after the initial four player game.
Four player game, table size 4"8 feet, several buildings and hills. Every player had their own deployment zone 24" away from enemy deployment corners. In the middle there was cathedral with main objective marker. Every player had their own objective marker to be placed in their respective deployment zones as a base.
Armies were 1000 points of WE, AL, BA and DA.
We had a roll of and the winner got to choose an army, deployment zone and deployed the first unit. Then we had another roll of to see who get's to choose and deploy the first unit of that army. We deployed in that order the rest of the units. We had the 50% must start on the table rule in use. DA player had scouts which two of them he deployed on the main objective in the center.
Scoring was; slay the warlord gives you one. Own base objective is 1 point at the end of the game for the owning player, but 2 points for the enemy. Main objective in the middle scores you 1 point if you control it in the end of your turn. If you still control it in the start of your next turn you scored 2 points. If your still in control when the third turn starts you would have scored 4 points. This didn't happen, because like I anticipated the middle sector of the board, "the top of the hill" was getting crowded and noone wanted the DA player to score on the third turn.
Every start of a new turn, we had a roll of to see the order who gets to start. After the player had made his turn, we had a second roll of to see who gets to go second that turn etc. I think this is a good rule.
We had a custom rule that you can shoot at a ongoing melee fight, if you don't have any of your own models involved. We rolled for every shot to see which unit a bullet hits. Example twin assault cannon from the razorback shot berzerkers, dark apostle and a unit of scouts. 12 dice, 1-2 zerkers, 3-4 apostle, 5-6 scouts.. Then we got three pools of to hit rolls and so on.. Didn't slow the game, well I could say at all. Good rule and we all liked it.
Second custom rule was on the fighting, On your turn you could only activate fights where you were involved. So as a BA player, a fight between zerkers (WE) and scouts (DA) needed to wait for either DA or WE player to get their own turns. Multiple fighting was brutal, especially with two 9man zerkers blobs in game, so this rule gave a bit of balance to that. Another I would recommend.
How the game evolved was that three of the players were certainly going to win at certain point of the game. In the end AL was totally destroyed, BA had only one predator, DA had their gunline mostly intact (only AL players daemon prince's crazy roll with smite destroyed a 5man devastator squad in one go). WE had only four units to deploy, two sets of chaos rhino's, one with Kharn and second with dark apostle riding with these crazies and group of havocs and a hellbrute. Everyone played to their army strengths like we had explained the basics of each army in the prologue (my monologue) before we rolled who takes what army.
Game was fixed to stop on turn five. WE won with one point over DA. Was fun and I got some new friends to throw dice with me. We had bunch of beer and a bottle of whiskey while we played, but it didn't affect the game, maybe a bit of banter with bad dice rolling, but it was a blast.
The following day with hands shaking we made a quick 3"6 game with ~850 point armies. We deployed where-ever, atleast 18" of the enemy. There were 6 objective markers all over the board and we had three tactical objectives each which you could discard at the end of your turn. Even now with the tactical objectives this game was more of a deathmatch. BA had a pure DS/JP force which over run the enemies with their mobility and plasma spam. Have to say a unit of sniper scouts withstand total of THREE turns of combat against my hammernators with one pair of LC's. This kinda "scattered" mission deployment took a lot of tactical depth from the game, but in a one way we wanted to have a quick game with easy dice rolling and atleast that we got. Carnage straight from T1. DA player was winning until T5, when BA player outmaneuvered the DA player with jump pack mobility and multi-shooting & charging at Azrael with almost everything, including the hammernators who finally had killed the resilient sniper scouts. Azrael was a beast in both shooting and melee, but you can't save all 3 damage hammer hits eventually.
So, these are my two experiences with over two player 40k games of 8th edition. Have to say it's quite fast to explain and teach the 8th ed rules, we had battlescribe army rosters to give every player, which helped to check for stats in the first game. I don't think that 7th ed. would have been nearly as easy, now I could throw each player a decent sized force to play with and not just a HQ and unit of tacticals to teach the basics of the game.
For me four player games of 40k if I have enough friends over is here to stay. Although I think we will play two games between two players on a 4x4 board the next time we meet with this same group. winners against winners etc.. This became a lot longer post that was supposed to, but it is what it is. What are your thoughts, experiences?
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