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Hello,

My regular group is 3 players. We love to play tabletop miniature wargames. However we typically have to resort to making up broken scenarios to try and play three player games, or we split one team into two players. I am hoping there is some collective wisdom here that can show me into the light and find a great miniatures game that works well with 3 players. I love the hobby portion, and will continue to buy and paint games that are 2 player only, but am looking to expand into something that works well for me and my core group. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

We currently play -

3 player friendly:
Gaslands
Zombicide
X-wing (with Epic Battles)

"forced" 3 player friendly:
Marvel Crisis Protocol (i so wish there were good rules for more than 2 players, currently by far our favorite)
Armada
Guild Ball
Malifaux
WarMachine
BattleTech

** would love to get into GW games again, but don't think there is a good way to force that to 3 people.

Moonstone! https://moonstonethegame.com/

Plays great with 3 or even 4 players. Also, the models are amazing, and the game is fun with some pretty innovative things.

Fistfull of Lead reloaded.
A booklet of rules for skirmish gunfights in the wild west. ment for 28mm, but can used with models from 15-54mm whitout modifying the rules, and as many as 8 players can be part of it. The more players the fewer humans they controll. A 2p game would have about 6 humans per player.
It is primarely designed around scenario play, but one off matches are perfectly viable. cant remeber if the publisher sells any models, but should not be hard to find anyone that sells wild west minis. (aka buy some wild west exodus minis and you have models for two games )

Wings of Glory.
WW1 or WW2 skirmish airplane game.
An old game and using a bit expensive but prepainted models. Can be a bit hard to find in shops. dont reccomend more then max 3 planes per human, else you can get lost if you controll more.

Hi there,

We have been working on a game that might meet your criterium. One of the things we wanted to achieve was a reasonable game time, which we managed to get under an hour, so that more than one game can be played when you meet with your friends. Another is immersive gameplay for all participants and the option to play competitively or cooperative vs AI. The latter option will be expanded even more with a campaign map making the game feel like an RPG where you choose your characters and develop them through the story.

I have been caught in the exact same problem as you, so we made sure the co-op version is also playable for 3 (one of the players may also manually play instead of the AI – which is really fun). We even implemented a few scenarios where players could play 2v1 pvp.


Apologies for a bit of shameless promotion. We intend to launch the game early next year on Kickstarter.
The game is called Eldfall Chronicles and you can learn more on..
https://eldfall-chronicles.com/

Does coop work? What about Blackstone fortress, or Gloomhaven?

Kingdom Death. Dark Souls the Board game.

Check out the various Osprey titles. Many of them are designed for multi-player. Games like Frostgrave, Dracula's America, Zona Alfa, Outremer, Ronin/En Garde, Ragnarok, etc.

 Easy E wrote:
Check out the various Osprey titles. Many of them are designed for multi-player. Games like Frostgrave, Dracula's America, Zona Alfa, Outremer, Ronin/En Garde, Ragnarok, etc.

Oh yeah! Frostgrave is heaps of fun!

Along the same lines as Wings of War/Glory and X-Wing, you could try World of Tanks by Gale Force 9. Unlike WoW/G and X-Wing, each player in WoT can control a ton of tanks with no problem because movement is straightforward without any hidden information mechanic. The play sequence is similar to X-Wing, with initiative-based activation so it can handle 3-player free-for-alls no problem.

Elder Scrolls: Call to Arms. It works better at co-op vs AI (which is pretty decent) for 3 players but there are in vs games NPC adversaries that can spawn in and attack using AI as well. It's very trivial to have a player, instead of the AI, control them. Just have to cut down on the point total used to determine the amount as it's boosted to adjust for AI. They work different as all the NPC force isn't out at once, a random amount spawn in each turn, and some when they die go back to the respawn pool.

You can get the Core box pretty cheaply and just use whatever minis you want.

You might try Burrows and Badgers. Play is alternate activation of individual minis so there's no waiting around for the two other players to move their entire force before you can respond. It's a little skirmish game a bit like Moreheim but with anthro animals and a fun opposed dice mechanic too with larger animals getting bigger dice to roll with.

Urban Manhunt is a fun game where each player controls a Hunter, hunting criminals for sport. It requires a lot of terrain and miniatures for criminals.

There are actually cardboard standees for the criminals.

Pulp Alley also works well for Multi-player games.

Song of Blades and Heroes. Very fast play and minis agnostic. I like the original but the "Advanced" edition does provide a bit of crunch for those who prefer it.

The SBH activation system always involved a bit of gambling which keeps the game interesting and provides more meaningful choices even within a very streamlined system.

Also, "Mech Attack!" Provides a rules light generic Mech combat system that feelslike BT but makes multi player games possible in a fairly short time.

Lance vs lance battles even with more than 2 players can resolve in less than 2 hours. And you've already got the figures. I've taught 6-8 players and ref'd a full game in less than 3 hours at conventions with each player controlling 4 units.

Relicblade is a small scale scenario driven skirmish game. Each warband usually has 4-5 miniatures altough a "horde" warband might have 8-10 minis. Play area is a tight 2' x 2', so doesn't take much table space.

Currently, there are 9 factions: 4 "good guy" factions (Elves, Gnomes, Rangers, Temple), 4 "bad guy" factions (Bonemancers, Battle Pigs, Fishmen, Lizardmen) and 1 neutral faction (Dwarves). (when the newest kickstarter delivers, a second neutral faction is added to the mix (Goblins) as well as more figures for each faction)

You can mix and match figures from different factions, with the only rule being that you cannot mix good guys and bad guys together (neutrals can work for either side, but a neutral force cannot have both good and bad figures in it.)
So the army building is flexible.

You can have 2-4 players. Each player fights against all the other players. But I guess you could also just form 2 teams of 2 people each if you want.