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Sometime in the next couple weeks, my friend and I are planning on running a 1v1v1 game with my brother. We have 1K points of Blood Angels, 1K of Death Guard and 1K of World Eaters to play with, on a 6'X4' table with some LOS blocking terrain. Do people have experience with these kinds of games? What sort of objectives work well?

I did a similar one I think it was 1.3k and it was a 1v1v1. Dark eldar verses guard and smurfs verses smurfs. It too 8 hours but was fun. you just need a bigger table. we used an 8x4 so we could get an equal space between each while still having room to move. We used some massive polestyrene blocks as the walls of a hive city to split table zones up creating kill zones but leaving a few gaps so there was still tactics that were viable other than run. I'd say terrain wise you need a few wide open spaces, some really dense parts like a shipping facility and tall parts that can be climbed, those massive walls in my case.

My experience with 1vs1vs1 battles is that someone almost invariably winds up in the middle and getting ganged up on by the other 2 players. It's almost unavoidable, because a rectangular table doesn't lend itself to a placement where all 3 players are equidistant to each other.

My advice is don't play a 1vs1vs1 game, play a 2 vs 1 game, with the one player getting double the points, 2 detachments, and 2 warlords. That will work much better.

 Grand.Master.Raziel wrote:
My experience with 1vs1vs1 battles is that someone almost invariably winds up in the middle and getting ganged up on by the other 2 players. It's almost unavoidable, because a rectangular table doesn't lend itself to a placement where all 3 players are equidistant to each other.

I have found that you can somewhat avoid this by having a asymmetric mission objectives. My favorite is two of the players (Player 1 and Player 2) are set against each other as per normal with the third player (Player 3) setup between them. Player 1 and Player 2 play a mission pretty much as normal while Player 3 attempts to balance their aggression on both Player 1 and 2 to win. Player 1 and 2 can't directly affect Player 3 chances to win while Player 3 loses if they don't maintain a balancing act of attacking Player 1 and 2 equally.

So in a Kill Point game, Player 1 and Player 2 only get Kill Points from each other while Player 3 only gets Kill Points if they have equal kills on both Player 1 and 2. Conversely, Player 3's objective could be to ensure both Player 1 and Player 2 have equal Kill Points where they would be the winner instead by maintaining that balance. Same goes for objective capturing missions where Player 1 and Player 2 setup 3-5 objectives on their deployment half of the table. They get Victory Points for capturing the opposite objectives. Player 3 on the other hand has to capture an objective from both Player 1 and Player 2 to gain a Victory Point.

You could argue that is just a modified 2 v1 game, but I find in practice that since Player 1 and Player 2 don't really gain anything by attacking Player 3 other than clearing a path and preventing harassment they don't gang up on Player 3 as much as a typical game. At the same time, Player is incentivized to attack Player 1 and Player 2 equally (and even maintain that balance) as they lose otherwise. I haven't had an issue with Player 3 deployment in the No Man's Land yet either. They have the advantage to easily attacking both players while being in the way both and needing to split their force to not hammer on either Player 1 or Player 2 too much. Even though Player 1 and Player 2 are in prime positions to attack and wipe out Player 3, they usually don't since any shot on Player 3 is a shot not on their true opponent or at very lest stalling their army as to not complete the mission before the game ends.

That is not to say this method completely removes all the issues with a 1 vs. 1 vs. 1 game. Player 3 does have their work cut out for them as it can be twice as hard to win compared to the other players. You also have to make sure to balance the number of rounds to not allow enough time to table or near table Player 3 and then have Player 1 and Player 2 work on the mission objectives. I would try to keep the game at 4 rounds or under. It is already going to be longer with the addition of a third player and you don't want to give enough time for a player to focus completely on one player then have enough time to deal with the other.

A 1v1v1 game is very difficult to make work. It just doesn't go very well with the I Go You Go nature of 40k. So much can happen between your turns that it can not be very fun, especially if you become the one the other two players priorise taking down.

So my suggestion is to abandon the idea and instead do 2v1. One person brings their full 1k points, the other players each bring 500. It's simple and it'll still be fun!

As pointed out above the key is table and terrain. You must set up three deployment zones in a triangle, very hard to do on a rectangle. This results in a very irregular hexagon, with the three sides representing 24" between regular sides and the length of each deployment zone adjusted shorter to retain the 24" gap. Start cutting across one corner of the table about 15" or so, use those edges to measure 24" down each table edge and set that as one edge of each of the other deployment zones. Then simply decide how much farther you want the table to go, and use more diagonals to set the other edges, making sure they are 24" apart. Generally this results in your table losing a foot or two the long way. I'll try and attach a crude drawing below. We also make sure there is LOS blocking terrain within the 24" of the shortest distance between deployment zones. The roll off for first placement also includes pick your deployment zone. I do warn you, these games can last longer.
I also suggest at least one objective in the center of the table to fight over, but we generally place 3 about 12" directly in front of each deployment zone.
THis map is absolutely not to scale sadly. You really have to hedge the zones. Sorry it's a bit smaller than I meant.

 Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:
I have found that you can somewhat avoid this by having a asymmetric mission objectives.

This sounds pretty cool. I can already imagine a plot for it. Player 1 and 2 are Imperial and Chaos - their only objective is to murder each other. Player 3 is Eldar, who is only there to carry out some prophecy that requires both armies to be as weakened as possible. The Imperials and Chaos are only really there to kill each other, and neither really consider the Eldar any sort of priority next to defeating their archenemy, although that will not stop them from attacking the Eldar if they get in the way.

My friends and I often play 3-player missions. One of the best is one player takes a short edge, 12” on. The other two players get a triangular deployment zone, 18” up the short edge and 48” along the long edge, from the corner. The closest point to each other is 12”, though we seldom actually deploy into the sharp corner.

One objective in the middle, and each player places one objective at least 12” away from an existing objective.

I like multiplayer games as I find it helps to self-regulate balance issues. If one player is obviously stronger, their opponents will typically send 60% of their forces towards that opponent, and 40% towards each other, if they’re smart. And there’s the sub-game of manipulating your opponent’s into killing each other and leaving you alone.

Our games are usually pretty close.

One idea I've gotten has been to put an objective in each player's deployment zone, and another in the middle. Each player has one high-priority objective which is in another's DZ. Controllign that is worth 2 points/turn. Controllling your own objective is worth 0. Controlling other objectives is worth 1 point.

That way, player 1 is incentivized to invade player 2's DZ, player 2 to invade player 3's DZ, and player 3 to invade player 1's DZ, with minor rewards given to those who can get a few units into no-man's-land.

The best way to do this is to avoid playing IGOUGO standard turns in 40K. However, that's a substantial change and I won't suggest it if you're just getting together to play normal 40K.

We do a ton of 3-person games, but we play Tokenhammer, so it's not at all an issue as it is in normal 40K.

You either need something like kill teams random activation or need to play a mission that really makes sure there is no incentive to gang up on one side. How to craft that is for smarter folks than I, but I assume it could be done.

HoundsofDemos wrote:
You either need something like kill teams random activation or need to play a mission that really makes sure there is no incentive to gang up on one side. How to craft that is for smarter folks than I, but I assume it could be done.

I'm thinking of basically assigning one objective to each player as most valuable, and putting it in another player's DZ. That way each player gets the most victory points by attacking a specific other player, and ganging-up is always counterproductive because it feeds your enemy VPs.

The best 3-way game setup I've seen came from the Star Trek game based on the X-wing rules. Pretty much, set up three deployment zones with two players each starting in opposite corners of the same side of the battlefield, and one player starting in the middle of the opposite side of the battlefield. In this way, you form an equilateral triangle.

A................B
.....................
.........C..........


Each player is about equidistant from the other player's deployment zones.

Also, I'd recommend not leaving the turn order the same each turn. Instead, each turn players should roll off to see who goes first, second, and last during a battle round. It'll be possible, though somewhat unlikely, that a player will get back-to-back turns, but it will likely mean that you will be able to go twice before another player, or that another player will be able to go twice before you.

After that, make sure that the game is about controlling the middle of the board to increase conflict and encourage players to get engaged. I've heard of success in being able to "gift" Victory Points to other players to help encourage bribes, but I haven't done this, so I don't know.

Good luck!

I too agree on the asymmetrical objectives. I had success with a few small games.
While we did have objective, we also added Kill Points. Each player gained VPs = PL for destroying a unit of a particular player.
Player A got points for killing units of player B
B from C, and C from A

This discouraged "teaming" as any 2 player team-up would have 1 player that gained no benefit from the team up (so why do it). But at the same time, you cannot just ignore one player to gain point, since the play you are "ignoring" is trying to kill your units.

It also had a fun side effect in that Player A could destroy a unit from Player C, not to gain a VP, but to deny those VPs from Player B. This also discouraged teaming, because both players in any potential "team" have very different goals

-

Player 1 needs to kill Player 2.
Player 2 needs to kill Player 1.
Player 3 needs to achieve an objective based score to win.

Essentially Player 3 is trying to score points, and doesn't want either Player 1 or Player 2 to die. Players 1 and 2 want to kill each other, but also can't let Player 3 score enough points to win.

So there are situations where everyone needs to attack everyone else.

You could also simply play with Maelstrom of War cards. It becomes more a function of how you score as opposed to who you attack. If i have to kill a Psyker and only one of my 2 opponents has a Psyker, well, that means i've got a clear requirement and the person controlling the Psyker shouldn't feel picked on because the battle plan is dictated by the cards.

Another possibility is to approach it from a narrative perspective. Something like, the two chaos legions are fighting each other, and then the blood angels show up, and it becomes a 3 way fight. Of course, these kinds of things are really difficult in an edition where everything dies in 2 seconds.

Logistically multiplayer games with more than 2 sides to the fight are difficult because if you go third you're sitting there for quite some time without acting. Consider the first 5 turns. 1,2,3,1,2. If each turn takes 20 minutes, that means your player 3 is playing for 20 minutes, and taking saves/watching for the other 80 minutes. Yikes. You could play alternating activation by phase to alleviate that, but you'd need rules for the charge phase that accommodate more than 2 people.

Another option, by the way - if you're kinda stuck with the standard 40K gameplay is to have an NPC player with a larger force and some alternate rules.

Example:

Player 1: Chaos Space Marines
Player 2: Imperial Guard
Player 3: Tyranids

Players 1 and 2 could be set up as a normal game, with Player 3 coming in on Turn 2 on any board edge with reinforcement rules, etc. Players 1 and 2 still have their respective objectives and are playing the game, but the planet is overrun with the Tyranid threat.

Player 3's goal is just to consume everything, with no real bias. He could have the rule for unending tides of troop models, etc. Perhaps his models spawn from certain points on the board, or are rushing on from a table edge which borders both players 1 and 2, etc.

Basically create a narrative scenario which justifies the third party presence, but has enough control to avoid the gang-bang that inevitably happens.

see if you can get your hands on the old triumph and treachery rules for WHFB. They work with any gaming system and give great ways to interact in other players phases. We have done several free for all games using them and they have worked great

I used to do this all the time with my friends. It can be a lot of fun. We used deployment zones like this:


You'll need to do the math yourself to figure out the proper inches, I can't remember them. But basically, you roll off to see who gets to decide the first deployment zone. This auto locks the adjacent deployment zones. Then the other players roll off to see who gets to go in the two leftover zones. Basically, no player should be deploying in a zone next to any other player. The circle space in the middle should be a distance, I'm thinking about 18-20 inch diameter. A nice big chunk of terrain always works well (we called it the dreadnought graveyard, as we'd almost always have large machines of some sort battling it out in the middle).

Close combat consisting of all three armies were based on 1) the player who's turn it is, then 2) a roll off to see who went next.

It's not going to be perfect. But it is a lot of brutal fun.