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Hi all,

I have been in discussion with a few good mates (and a few hangers on ) about the possibility of hosting a large game of 40k. Now armies and terrain are not a problem (neither is space), although there is a serious lack of big stuff, but that's not the end of the world.

What I am curious to ask the community about though is how to make it a little more interesting than simply set up and start shooting, without adding reams of additional rules that will get forgotten.

What I was thinking is by having a main table and then off shoot tables that can affect the main table. Armies potentially could move from table to table if a player wished with a turn delay etc. Perhaps each table could have a different scenario (like destroying a power generator or ambushing reinforcements etc.) that then have a flow on affect to the main table. I did play in a similar game many, many years ago that even allowed artillery with a suitable range to bombard other tables which was very cool.

Has anyone given this a go and how successful was it?

I am happy to discuss ideas if anyone wanted to help brainstorm.

The closest I ever got to anything like this was hosting a battle on four 6x4 Zone Mortalis tables that represented different levels of a space hulk.

Units within a certain distance of a stairwell could forfeit their movement for a turn and move up or down a level. It was pretty fun, but probably more work (for me) than it was ultimately worth.

8th edition really isn't conducive to multiplayer games, unless you've got a dungeon master kind of dictating the action.

Another fun way to play with multiple people, is to have one giant army and a few smaller armies working together to try and stay alive. The attacker / defender missions are good for that. If you had one person with 10,000 points of Tyranids across 3 tables, and the players were trying to stay alive and hold specific objectives, that might be interesting. Give them redeployment stratagems, etc, to move from table to table, but instantly, because waiting is no fun.

Best large multiplayer game I've done is with WHFB triumph and treachery game (it works with any system). Its nice because each player does one phase at a time. You also have cards that you can use in opponents turns and if you are truly playing to win it won't benefit you to gang up on someone and blow them off the table unless they are already way ahead of you. Its actually quite simple and i highly recommend it. We pull it out for 40k about 1-2 times a year and to me its always the highlight game of the year

We ran one as an all-day club game once.

On table 1 (roughly square; 6' x 8, I think) were Ultramarines surrounded by various alien armies (Tau and Necrons, IIRC).


On table 2, Imperial Guard and Dark Angels armoured formations rushing to relieve the Ultramarines, but needing to break through the intervening Ork army.

The plan was simple; any Imperial units getting off the Ork table edge could come on as reserves on table 1. In the end we underestimated the time needed, so hardly any reinforcements turned up, but it was fun nevertheless. IIRC Marneus Calgar took out a C'tan with a vortex grenade. We also allowed units to fire from one table to the other if they had the range; it hardly happened, as there was usually something more pressing to target on your own table, but my Baneblade did shoot some Necrons in the back.

We didn't try to synchronise the turns on one table with those on the other; just let them go at their own pace.

You could also link a game of 40k with Kill Team or Stormcloud Assault if you have a copy of that.

A good one can be a main battle table, and a side table with a Guard artillery company on it. The artillery is getting attacked, but every turn you can fire at the other table. So you are trying to hold the line whilst trying to tip the balance on the main table.

Cool ideas, I appreciate the thoughts.

The Large Tyranid swarm attacking a group of defenders sounds like a great idea. Have lots of fortifications and the like and maybe a rear artillery table or the like with the supreme command (who can hand out command point and artillery fire).

Then the tyranids can keep recycling units and its simply a battle for suvival. Maybe primarily Imperial armies and perhaps an eldar appearance on a side table trying to stop the defenders being flanked?

Wonder how many Tyranids we can muster?

Flyers could also transport models from table to table. Might be cool to have a bridge between two of the tables instead- maybe assign it stats that would allow it to be destroyed.

You can do other split tables, there are loads of things you could do. An airfield that lets fliers rearm, a claustrophobic space ship that is providing lance strikes, a whole subterranean table with trygons fighting tunnelling engineers etc.

Or just put them all on one big battlemap.

We use 6x 4 tables side by side. so 6x8 6x12 and room for 6x18. At most you have to be able to reach 3'...pretty easy and very often not needed.

But the size of the armies will bog the game down.

So in those massive skirmish games we bring armies in piecemeal.

start with 500 points of scout units (patrol detachment)
turn 2 bring in 1000 points (Patrol or Battalion/Outrider)
Turn 3 bring in 1000+ points (Battallion/Vanguard)
Turn 4 bring in 1000+ points (Spearhead/Brigade/Airwing
Turn 5 bring in 2000+ LoW units

You get the idea. By the time you bring on your 3 or 4 detachment.....the other forces are scattered across the field....most are dead. You rarely are playing with more than 2k of points at a time...so the game flows near the pace of a normal game.

Try it ....you will like it. (we also add in chances your units wont show up on time)

We've had 3 players set up with two in neighboring corners and one on the opposite edge. We haven't had a problem, and it's been reasonably entertaining. Don't go too many points.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
In the end we underestimated the time needed, so hardly any reinforcements turned up, but it was fun nevertheless.

This highlights the key thing to be careful with in this kind of complex scenario. It's very easy to get bogged down in trying to resolve all the stuff going on, and next thing you know it's several hours in and you've barely made it out of the first turn. Unless you have a long weekend committed to the game you probably want to keep it simple and small in scope so you can finish it within a reasonable amount of time.

Thanks all a lot of good input.

The escalation on a large table is a good idea.

I am really liking the idea of an imperial defends line under siege from a horde of Orks or a swarm of Tyranids. Kind of very thematic and has an inbuilt story with little effort.

We were thinking of definitely having a games master to oversee things to try and make it smooth as we will have players of different experience.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
We ran one as an all-day club game once.

On table 1 (roughly square; 6' x 8, I think) were Ultramarines surrounded by various alien armies (Tau and Necrons, IIRC).


On table 2, Imperial Guard and Dark Angels armoured formations rushing to relieve the Ultramarines, but needing to break through the intervening Ork army.

The plan was simple; any Imperial units getting off the Ork table edge could come on as reserves on table 1. In the end we underestimated the time needed, so hardly any reinforcements turned up, but it was fun nevertheless. IIRC Marneus Calgar took out a C'tan with a vortex grenade. We also allowed units to fire from one table to the other if they had the range; it hardly happened, as there was usually something more pressing to target on your own table, but my Baneblade did shoot some Necrons in the back.

We didn't try to synchronise the turns on one table with those on the other; just let them go at their own pace.

You could also link a game of 40k with Kill Team or Stormcloud Assault if you have a copy of that.

One issue with this is that 8th ed is soooooo deadly that if xenos are noticably larger than the ultramarines they can win game in 1-2 turns. If they are even that STILL can as 8th ed is generally decided in first few turns and issue goes bigger the bigger the game is as offensive power comes big issue.

If the reserves starts to come on turn 3-4 game is basically wrapped up...So if you sync turns you would need to let relief forces couple turn headstart so they start to get forces in sensible time. If not then the relief force game needs to play lot faster to get stuff out in meaningfull turns.

We've done up to 6 players, but we managed it by keeping armies small (up to 750 points, or old 6th edition kill team), with the scenario setup consisting of very heavy terrain, with a large blast marker in the centre of the table. The only way to score was to have units in the blast- If a unit was in the blast at the start of its activation you scored 1 VP. We randomised player order each turn, and played alternating activations-activate one unit, next player. You could pass if at least one player had more unactivated units than you did.

It forced you to move to the centre, and made the game very dynamic. We also had a stack of secret objectives that each player picked two of, worth small VP each.

Very different to what you seem to be planning, though.

Was part of a WH40K- 4000pts a side- 4 v 4 game last week. What we did was.

- One 8x4 table.
- 8 objective markers that score a point a turn if you hold.
- Each army had 6cps and thats it. You could only use your own cps.
- Your warlord either had a warlord trait or a relic.
- Team who set everything up first went first.
- CA2018 FB, StW, BEL.

The game was very dynamic with everyone trying to clear, grab and hold objectives. All the members of one side would all play at once with a member of the opposite spotting them.
Game went well, was fun and ended in a very bloody draw

Hi all,

Resurrecting my thread again to ask a fairly silly question......

How many points would keep around six people going for a day?

Keeping in mind I still like the idea of a couple of separate tables representing different battlefield locations.

My favourite is a 3 table battle.

Main table where 2 players are fighting one another

Table 2 is either a force attacking an artillery position (which can fire on main table until silenced) or a terminator raid on a ship to silence orbital bombardment batteries, preferably using a zone mortalis type board.

table 3 is two fast moving armies trying to escape off the end of each other's table edge to then appear on the main table.

I saw a batrep on youtube where they had 2 big tables and used (from what I remember) Necron portals to jump units from table to table. Seemed like a very interesting concept although I believe it still only featured 2 players.

I really like the idea of armies working together to defeat a different threat like IG or different chapters of SM teamed up against different chapters of chaos.... For me it doesnt even need to make sense lore wise as half the fun for me is creating a scenario and storyline for why these armies are combined.

Some years ago (I think during 4th Ed.) GW had a huge multi-table battle with several game designers. The main event was on the biggest table, but several other tables could influence the main event. One table was an orbital platform that could blast the main table depending on how successful the battle raged over some great weapon. Another table had long range Guard artillery that the enemy was trying to disrupt, and another table had reinforcements trying to break through and join the main table. Great stuff when well planned, but things like that are usually worth the effort.