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As it says on the tin, what's the best way that you know of playing a 3 person every man for himself game?

The rules don't cover it, you're gonna have to make up your own system basically. The simplest would be just to roll off the turns and then go in that order. Inevitably though, 2 players will gang up on another. Honestly, 3-way battles aren't really worth it.

If you only have 3 people it's far - FAR - better to have 2v1 with equal points on both sides. (the 2 team each gets 1k points, the other guy gets 2k points)

It can work decently well with something along the lines of a BAO scenario whereby there is a primary adn secondary set of missions.

a really big factor in making it work is setting up the deployment zones. Every player MUST be equidistant from the other, otherwise you will inevitably get a 2v1 scenario. So getting the table balance right is critical.

Might want to remove FB as a VP, or have like a first and second blood. Similarly you have to consider stuff like interceptor shots too.

Finally like 10 white dwarfs back (maybe even januaray of last year? it was an issue or 2 before the stormtalon released or along those lines) there were rules for "death worlds" whereby each turn each player rolled on the deathworld table and bad stuff happened to everyone. This made 1v1v1 at lot more fun because in some scenariors it was more about survival than shooting each other. It's important to have world based events going on because that can become somewhat of a virtual "fourth" player which then starts to balance things out again.

Use the rules in the 5th ed rulebook (the hardback version). Sans the "HQs start at the central objective" and "LD or bust in the first turn" rules. And keep the game at lower points (like 1000 or 1250). Use all the secondary objectives of 6th edition (First Blood, Slay the Warlord, Linebreaker) and apply them to all players (so, for example one player can take two First Bloods).

1v1v1 games are awesome. We play lots of these, and they are always super-duper cool, no matter what happens!

Best way: don't. It will inevitably turn into 2v1 with the 1 having very little fun as they get wiped off the table. Just play a 2v1 with two smaller armies against a large army so the points on each side are equal.

 Peregrine wrote:
Best way: don't. It will inevitably turn into 2v1 with the 1 having very little fun as they get wiped off the table. Just play a 2v1 with two smaller armies against a large army so the points on each side are equal.

^this

better to play 2 on 1 with the 1 playing a doubled army.

just did this with 2 friends over the weekend, do king of the hill style with maybe a large blast template being the hill, we did only 500 points with one friend being all terminators and the other going necrons (I was DE) and the only requirement was taking a HQ. Necrons ended up taking out half my stuff on the first turn but i did get my wyches into combat with a block of warriors, succubus wrecked them hard but it did end up being me and termies against 'crons. At that point we stopped going for the hill and just killing each other, it would have been much funnier if we made the game end on the roll of a 6 at the start of each new round, causing hits on models outside of the template or something,

I'd say it'd be best to go 2V1 but it was a pretty funny match

Yeah, I'd either do the doubling, or, if you can set it up properly, a triangular board with actual enforcement (so, impassable terrain in the middle).

Another one is to do a scenario, like one person gets points just for having units left on the table at the end of the game and the other two players win if they kill more units than each other, and the third player doesn't have more units on the board than either of them.

In this case, the first player gets a defensive position and holds on while the other players attack, but they have to divide their focus between beating up their rival and actually working together enough so that they both don't lose.

You need a mission in which each player has to kill the player on his right (or left) but all the same anyway. This forces players to attack one direction and defend from another.

The main objective for each player is on the nearside border of the targets deployment zone, so each player has an objective on their defending half

This works best if each player has specific objectives to hold and to take, but gain no VP for going the other way.
So you gain nothing for attacking the other way around.

You gain VP for holding your starter objective, and for taking your designated objective. Beyond that you have a central objective that anyone can take. No KP in this mission. players gain one point for every turn they hold one of those three objectives, if they hold all three for a full turn they auto-win.

The result is a multiplayer mash, works for 3+ players.

 Orlanth wrote:
You need a mission in which each player has to kill the player on his right (or left) but all the same anyway.

That works in MTG (where I suspect you got the idea from), but not in 40k. There is no defense in 40k, only killing the enemy before they can kill you. An aggressive attack in one direction and 'defense' in the other direction will look exactly the same.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
You need a mission in which each player has to kill the player on his right (or left) but all the same anyway.

That works in MTG (where I suspect you got the idea from), but not in 40k. There is no defense in 40k, only killing the enemy before they can kill you. An aggressive attack in one direction and 'defense' in the other direction will look exactly the same.

Of course they look the same, but there is defence, just ask any IG player.

The system works better than you think, say you have thre players, that means four objerctives, one of those objectives is of no use to you., one you must hold, one you must take and the third is everyones.

If any one player goes against the scenario and attacks the opposite direction then the player they should be attacking will win the next turn but holding (easy) pressing the attack to the correct direction and sneaking in to the central objective. If this doesnt happen the wrong way offensive will cripple the third player and leave the wrong way player behind on points so the third player wins again.

Most three way games fail because two players can gang on a third then duke it out between them. With this scenario that doesnt work, the player going the wrong way will be out of position and will have lost, as there is no second place in this scenario he will have lost as surely as thep layer who was ganked.

I also find that setting up in a triangular table makes this far easier, as it prevents the regular "two close players and one far player" issue created by squares.

Hex table also works wonders.

Bigger tables in general also help migrate the problem, as it allows more room for maneuvers, setting up defensive lines or just shift in balance of zone control. also longer game length will allow people to play less "kill now", and allow multiplayer long-term strategies to emerge.


Also, with the "gang up" problem you mention-the only one getting ganged is the one -currently- in the lead, once the balance of power shifts, the weakest player will naturally turn his guns against the now strongest, because if he keeps battering the now second, he will be forced to fight from a position of disadvantage against the strongest.
Simple decision making-you hurt the one that threatens you the most. the strongest always targets the second, as he poses the most threat, the second must retaliate by targeting the strongest or be decimated, and the third has a free run to hurt the one he does not want to be left alone against, the strongest. as the positions of power shift, so does the optimal targeting choices of each player.

Another idea you can implement is random turn order. At the beginning of each game turn you can roll for turn order. This can lead to a player getting 2 turns in a row and if that player is getting double teamed he can effectively get a turn of shooting against each of his attackers or get 2 turns of shooting against one. Also if one of the players doing the double teaming gets 2 turns back to back then it could be too good an opportunity to pass up stabbing their "ally" in the back.

This thread has given me an idea for a 1v1v1 scenario and let me know what you guys think!

IT's modelled after the BAO scenarios which i think are pretyt balanced by having the primary and secondary main objectives. So Since 2 work fors 1v1 I figured on 3 for 1v1v1

Deployment: an equiliateral triangle with everyone 4 feet apart, and instead of deploying per side you just get a bubble of deployment. This also means there will be a foot of no mans land on either side of the board whiiich im okay

with, leaves some maneuvering room.

Primary Mission (4 points): the relic, in the center of the triangle.

Secondary Mission (3 points): 3 objectives, 1 in the center of each "edge" of the triangle, this means that NO player starts holding an objective (so no just sitting back and twiddling your thumbs waiting for your opponents to kill each

other), and furthermore your 2 nearest objectvies are also nearest your respective opponents, should help double teaming!

Tertiary Mission (3 points): Secret objectives! One thing im pulling from the kill team rules, d6 secret objectives and you roll on the table at the beginning of the game. Some of them include
1. Getting a scoring unit to the highest point on the map
2. Killing a specific model in an enemy unit
3. protecting an enemy unit?
4. Captuyring some sort of radio/something on the board
5. have a unit on all 4 quarters at the end of the game

The goal of the tertiary mission is to add some randomness to the table and potentially force people to move across the board to get what they need (or even into no-mans land). Now there is a thing in kill team where if you announce your secret objectrive you get a point for that. Could be interesting....

Finally there is still linebreaker and warlord, but NO FB

Total amount of points in the game 4 + 3 + (3x3) + 2 for 18 points total. Total any one person can claim though is 4+3+3+2 for 11.


Also these will all be using deathworld rules too (aka: the world can hurt you each player turn!) just cause they are fun

Now as for some rules addendums:

No you cant TARGET into a CC that doesnt involve you. Buttt if blasts happen to hit there or whatnot that's all still hunky dorey
Yes you can join CC that doesnt involve you (just use rules for CC with multiple units)

You CAN however tank shock into a CC that doesnt involve you, because it doesnt specifically target, you just give a distance. And tank shocking is hilarious.
1. Both units make morale
2. If one fails they break, no sweeping advance can be made by the other (cause, well, they're also avoiding the tank) and combat is broken
3. If they both pass then CC continues and the tank goes through them as if they werent there.
4. BOTH sides are allowed a chance to make a guts and glory charge, but you still go a-squishy if you fail

What others would there be?

Largo39 wrote:
No you cant TARGET into a CC that doesnt involve you. Buttt if blasts happen to hit there or whatnot that's all still hunky dorey

That's just silly. Why can't I target a fight that none of my troops are involved in? Why should my artillery gunners refuse to fire and risk hitting the wrong target when I want to kill both sides, and the perfect time to do it is when they're nice and blobbed up and not paying any attention to incoming shells?

 Peregrine wrote:

Largo39 wrote:
No you cant TARGET into a CC that doesnt involve you. Buttt if blasts happen to hit there or whatnot that's all still hunky dorey

That's just silly. Why can't I target a fight that none of my troops are involved in? Why should my artillery gunners refuse to fire and risk hitting the wrong target when I want to kill both sides, and the perfect time to do it is when they're nice and blobbed up and not paying any attention to incoming shells?

I agree with Peregrine, there is a way to make it so you can shooting into a combat with enemy troops, two ways actually (that I have found to be not horrible)

1. The 'Large Squad' Solution - When firing at two or more enemy units in combat, treat the entire combat as all models in the combat counted as a single unit (ie, allocating wounds closest to furthest, using majority toughness, etc.). Firing into a combat may cause the enemy to fall back, and if they do so, the other unit in the combat may attempt a sweeping advance if able. Weapons with pinning that fire into a close combat don't cause a pinning test.

2. The 'Two squads rule' - When firing into a combat, declare which enemy unit is your primary target. After rolling to hit but before rolling to wound, roll a D6 for each hit. On a 3+, the primary target is hit, allocate that hit to the primary target, resolving as normal for a shooting attack. Otherwise, the hit is allocated to the nearest other enemy unit in the combat (measured from the firing unit). This unit is referred to as the secondary target. From this point on, allocate wounds as normal for shooting (closest to farthest, majority toughness, etc). Note that should the primary or secondary target be wiped out before all wounds in that pool have been allocated, any remaining wounds are lost, as the firing squad either overkilled their target or the poor sods who got in their way. Shooting can cause a morale check, and if an enemy unit attempts to fall back, their opponent may attempt to make a sweeping advance if they could normally do so AND they have not themselves failed a morale check. Weapons with pinning can never force a pinning test when firing into an enemy combat.

EDIT: Also, a multi-player scenario I have been thinking about:

3-Way Relic
Deployment - Use either a circular, triangular, or hexagonal board. Each player's deployment zone should be equidistant to each other and to the center of the board.
Objectives: 1 Objective. This objective is placed at the the center of the board. It may be moved in the movement phase by the player who controls the objective, which they gain control of if they move within 2" of it when no other player has a unit within 2" of the relic. It moves as if it is an infantry model. The Relic may not enter a transport or leave the board for any reason.
Victory Points - Players gain 1 victory point for each of their turns which ends with them in sole control of the relic. Additionally, there are the following secondary objectives:
Slay the Warlord
Linebreaker
Domination
Preemptive Strike

Domination - If the game ends with you in control of the relic, you gain 2 additional victory points.
Preemptive Strike - If you cause an opponent to loose their first unit, you gain 1 additional victory point.
Note that all secondary objectives stack, so if you slay both of your opponent's warlords, or cause both of your opponents to lose their first unit, you gain victory points for both.

The reason why I dont like targeting into CC is because it promotes the playstyle of one player hanging back and letting the other 2 attack each other.

Although logically sure no it doesnt make sense (though you could think of it as the command not wanted to potentailly have both of those targets suddenly go after him), it's a type of WAAC move that we're trying to minimize

Furthermore it sort of slows the flow of the game a LOT because the 2 players in CC would naturally want to very carfully manage their 3 inch move ins so that the enemy cc guys were the closest to the shooters.
What about LOS? what about challenges? what about 25% morale checks? If one side breaks due to the shooting does the other CC get to sweeping advance?

Edit: your 2 group ruling does allow for sweeping advances.. which is REALLY punishing to that poor unit. Having a blob is overall better because it at least somewhat mitigates ganging up one someone, since you always do nearest first, but it's still kinda just mean. Just think of it as our commanders are like eldar and thus conservative in order to not tick off 2 enemies at once and always look for an ally advantage.

All in all i just feel it's something which would unduly punish CC armies and promote static gunline combat in a 1v1v1 situation.

Seriously don't. I played one. I won simply because I had more ranged units. It was horribly boring and the person in the middle inevitably gets ganged up on.
Play a mini-tournament or play 2v1. FFA doesn't work. Although in death watch it might...

You get a fourth player if you want free for all. You also get a group that you know won't team up. And because you're already doing silly thing, find some sort of weird objectives.

The only way to play a 3+ player game is to use house rules. The Core Rulebook simply does not cover this type of setup.

Seems like a majority of folks here think that playing a FFA style game is basically impossible, and that I will always devolve into a 2v1 sceanario. And while that is probably rue in most cases, a little planning and care ahead of time can prevent this.

Create your own rules:

If the goal is simply to kill the other players (VP) than yes, it will always break down to a 2v1 scenario where the player viewed as the biggest threat is targeted first by the other two players. The remedy is to set completely different victory conditions.

A good example would be to create a sort of "Capture the Flag" setup, were there are between 6-9 objectives placed in a very central / neutral location on the table. These objectives can be carried ONLY but scoring units, who cannot shoot/assault once they have an objective. Then the troops have to carry the objective back to their deployment zone (or some other predefined location) and survive.

At the end of the game the player with the most objectives wins.

Just an example

If you're playing a 1 v 1 v 1 there's going to be politics- no matter what. You have to come up with a scenario to mitigate politics. I've found that randomness is the best mitigator in these circumstances- a changing battlefield is one where the politics of last turn no longer work.

For 1 v 1 v 1, the best point level on a regular board is about 500 to 1000 (or so I've found). We keep the FOC for army creation, but that may not be best.

This is how we did our last game

Divide a 4 x 6 board up into 1 x 1 squares so that you have about 15 objectives, each a foot away from the board edge and a foot away from each other.

Put terrain on as usual, if an objective winds up under a piece of terrain, just move the objective onto the piece.

Divide up the board into three sections, and choose starting area according to turn order.

You use the 5th rules for Dawn of War Deployment, but the 6th rules for reserves and losing if you have no models on the board- So, everyone can and should start off the board, and on the first turn, everyone's army comes onto the board, save for the reserves. We also used nightfighting rules for the first turn.

When a model comes into base contact with an objective, roll 2d6. On doubles, the objective becomes a relic worth one point at the end of the game for the army that holds it. Use the relic rules. If no doubles, remove the objective from the board- you've revealed it to be nothing.

The battlefield changes every turn, and there's a bit of a race at the end for the last few objectives.

It's a bit random, but it mitigates the politics as one player gets ahead early if they find a relic, but then another player may find two on his turn and now he's the target of everyone's wrath.

Fluff wise, it's a scouting missing.

I wouldn't use kill points in the above mission, maybe line breaker though.

My friends and i use a Triangle shaped table set up (We set up on the floor as we dont have a table in the required triangle shape) 60x60x60. Each person sets up in a corner with 18" deployment. Best missions we found are a combination of Capture the Relic and Emperors will each with 1 objective in our deployment. Reserves can come on from any board edge but not within another players deployment leaving 34" on each table edge for reserves.
Turns go in order of the roll off. It works well but inst a flawless way of doing it, still fun tho. Politics are limited as each is equal distance from the other, everyone is heading for the relic and still trying to defend their home objective, ganging up still happens but we dont really see a way to stop that.

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