three way mayhem

[Burningblood]

I started a thread about the lists I'm working on for an upcoming game between myself and two other players: a "deathmatch" free for all, if you will, between the Blood Angels, some vanilla marines, and some Ork boyz.

The list post is here: http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.p...howtopic=205992

Ok, so, firstly, how do we even set this up? Does anyone have any experience with this?

Secondly, as a blood angel strike force player, what should my focus be? Should I devide my forces and attempt to take on both players or concentrate on one over the other?

The last time i played this type of game I creamed one of the players with my wonderful 2nd edition blood angels and their amazing free death company- that was fun- but that was a loooooooooong time ago.

Thoughts?

[Kapitalist-Pig]

I have played a couple 3 ways. In my experience I would suggest trying not to be the guy in the middle. As so many wonderfully inept leaders have shown us in the past, NEVER fight a two front war. I would also say try to focus on one guy. I think depending on where you and each other player is deployed you could effectively leave the battle unscathed. With BA' s mobility you could, if you are stuck in the middle, make the ork player chase you across the table into the other marines. This of coarse will cost you heavily, but you could end up watching them destroy each other in the end.

 

Setting up, that is a tricky thing. You could do table quarters, or you can modify it, cut the table into 4 triangles. You could do one where two people start on the table and the third rolls on the first turn of deployment, something like a suprise attack.

 

Thats all I got, how many points BTW?

[Burningblood]

Its a 1,000 point game and honestly, I don't think i could force the two lovebirds I'll be playing to annihlate each other. I think they'll both focus on me. That might be egotistical but its also pretty basic psychology. Never get involved in a lovers' quarell, they say.

[Zeller]

The rulebook has rules for a 3-way fight.

 

Wipe one guy out or sit back and wait.

[Renik]

ill see if i can find it but you got in the old white dwarfs the carnage battle reports and those were 4 way best advice i can give if you suspect you will be ganged up on go hell for leather for one guy. Also just remembered there was good three way battle involving orcs if i get chance ill see if i can find the battle report but might take me a while.

[Burningblood]

cool thanks!

[Daedalus Templarius]

Its a 1,000 point game and honestly, I don't think i could force the two lovebirds I'll be playing to annihlate each other. I think they'll both focus on me. That might be egotistical but its also pretty basic psychology. Never get involved in a lovers' quarell, they say.

 

If my wife played, and we were doing a 3 way battle, I'd never go after her either.

 

3 way battle, heh.

[Chaplain Admetus]

I played a 3 way battle just last week. We had it set up that one player took a corner of one long board edge, player 2 was in the other corner of the same board edge, and player 3 was in the middle of the opposite. That should work reasonably well for deployment zones. As far as turns go, we tried to make it fair by mixing the order up a bit ( best way I can put this: turn one was player 1, then player 2, then player 3; turn 2 was player 2, then player 3, then player 1; turn 3 was player 3, then player 1, then player 2), but that really didn't work and would need streamlined heavily. A fluffy thing you may want to introduce is a modification of the no shooting into combat rule - we played it that you could shoot into any combat that didn't involve any of your units, if the other players are up for it. Hope that's of some use :D. Ours was absolute carnage and really good fun - the advantage was continually shifting, by the end of turn 2 I was getting my face smashed, but at the end of turn 6 my Blood Angels stood victorious with very few models left standing on all 3 sides!

[Brother Nathan]

another idea would be to put a centeral objectiveso that everyone has to go for the same area and force eveyone to get to the same place.

[Priest33]

I did a 3 way about a month ago with those exact armies. Its basically all going to come down to the roll off and where you get stuck. Pray that you can chose a location that will put you in good stead for the game and put someone else in between you and the other player. Easiest way to force them to fight as well is a central objective and random game length, aka after 2 turns roll a dice on the roll of a 1 the game ends, closet to the objective wins, then either increase the number or have random numbers for each turn.

[hazardousZERO]

Not me if my wife played I would concentrate on her first. You have to show her who's boss. :P

[Mattsama]

Not me if my wife played I would concentrate on her first. You have to show her who's boss. :D

 

QFT ;) ;) It's okay, mine doesn't read this forum. :D

 

But as for advice, outflank a Flamestorm Baal (no sponsons, extra armor a must) and move fast and burn hard! You'll torch at least a few good targets that way. Sit back and let them work towards you. For the most part when dealing with being the sword between the hammer and anvil, I've found one way to really beat them, is to let them get close to each other and then pie plate them. Granted... this will be rough unless you field Vindys. The other option is to abuse your speed and make them chase you. Eventually one will get bored and bite into the other.

[Malus the Destroyer]

Most of the games I've ever played are 3 way slugfests.....you don't wanna be the middle player to say the least. The way to insulate the game a little bit, is a king of the hill objective in the middle. Highest model count at the end wins. If you get center position, keep as much in reserve as possible. Fighting on 2 fronts is ugly, as it takes a small percent of your army vs ALL of the enemy, so you lose. I'd play the reserve game, make a few snipe shots here and there, and try to come in hard late game, after forcing them to beat on each other a bit.

 

As for the King of the Hill objective. Be happy one isn't necrons. Knocking a fat ass monolith off the hill is a superb pain. 3 way games are still my all time favorites, because of the randomness and mess they end up in.

As long as yer not as hot headed as me, you should be ok. I suffer from whoever draws first blood on me, I make lose, at my armies expense. To quote myself after some guard shot outta a building and killed 2 marines the previous turn. "Ok, who the F(censored) shot me over here?!?! I want F(censored)in names and I mean NOW!"

 

These were all friendly games in the backyard.

[thundrchickn]

do an all jump pack army and put everything in reserves. Then you pray nothing comes in til turn 3. by then they should be fighting with each other a little bit and you can try to snag objectives or come up behind their armor and pop them with meltas.

 

The other idea is to have an all armor army and turtle. Wait for them to either commit to your deployment zone or see if one of them is ballsy enough to take a pot shot at the other. If you can hang back until they either over commit to one army, you can wipe them out. If you go in aggressive, your gonna be in range of both and they'll team up on you.

 

If you turtle in your corner and both opponents decide to team up from the get go and come after you... sorry but you are SOL.

[WarpWhisper]

As far as turns go, we tried to make it fair by mixing the order up a bit ( best way I can put this: turn one was player 1, then player 2, then player 3; turn 2 was player 2, then player 3, then player 1; turn 3 was player 3, then player 1, then player 2), but that really didn't work and would need streamlined heavily.

 

The problem with this kind of turn sequence is that, in the example above, although player 1 goes first, he then has to wait four enemy turns before he gets to go again. This is exacerbated if using the rules for the Broken Alliance scenario in the book.

 

I've used this method of the turn sequence before with some sucess:

 

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Multi-Player Turn Sequence

 

Take a pack of cards and shuffle well.

 

Each Game Turn, deal out a single, face down card to each player.

 

Then call out the list of card values from two up to king. If a player holds a card that corresponds to the called out number, they reveal their card and it is their player turn for the game turn.

 

If a player holds an Ace, they may choose whether to reveal their card either first or last, i.e. have their turn ahead of anyone who has a two, or after anyone who has a king.

 

If two players have identical valued cards, then the suit that starts alphabetically sooner goes first; i.e. Clubs, then Diamonds, Hearts then finally Spades.

 

To mix things up a little more, if you include Jokers, these can be played at any time (as long as another player isn't in the midst of their turn) and will automatically 'trump' any other card, including another joker that has just been played!

 

If a player 'misses their window', i.e. forgets/neglects to declare their card at the right time, then they forfeit their player turn this game turn. Stay sharp people!

 

Once everyone has had their player turn, discard the used cards, deal each player another, and start the next game turn.

 

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I've found that these rules keep everyone on their toes, and make the multi-sided game a little more edgey and enjoyable; you can plan your strategy a little, but you sometimes have to be a lot more reactive, and even players who have thought they were out of the game suddenly find they've been given a lifeline!

[Chaplain Admetus]

@ WarpWhisper: Yeah, we figured this out once we started playing. It helps to lessen the advantage of going first/disadvantage of going last, but it gets boring for whoever has to skip several turns. The way you've been doing it with random turn order does sound interesting - next time I get a 3 player game I might give it a try!

 

@Burningblood: Remik mentioned one of the old 4-way carnage battle reports - I know I have one of them kicking around in an old WD, I'll have a poke and see if it has anything that might help

[Valerian]

Ultimately it comes down to the fact that 3-way games are bad. You get the exact same results when you play any game with 3 players - have you ever done Starcraft online with two of your buddies? It almost always ends up with the predictable outcome that the two closest focus on each other, attriting both forces, while the 3rd guy sweeps the table in the end with his intact army.

 

Instead of playing 3-way, just play two against one with equal points on each side - these guys always work out to be better, balanced, and more fun.

 

Valerian

[Burningblood]

Actually, Valerian, the game was a lot of fun.

 

We decided to go 1250 points each and it turned out that Jared was able to put enough of his Space Wolves together to make the game more interesting than it would have been otherwise.

Here's my list. I went fully mech for the first time ever:

HQ- Reclusiarch, ip- 145

Elite: Sanguinary priest: ip-65

Troops:

Death Company: x9 dc marines, x3 bolters, x2 pw, pf, ip, rhino- 315

RAS1-x5 marines, ip pf, melta, razorback tlac-205

RAS2-x5 marines, ip pf, melta, razorback tlac-205

Death Company Dread- heavy flamer, drop pod-170

Fast attack:

Baal predator- hb sponsoons- 145

 

Ok some cool stuff happened. We deployed in table "L"s, giving each of us a third of the table to deploy upon, which Hanah very much needed playin infantry orks, and set up a static turn order. We set up a King of the Hill objective in the center, which no one My fears of being ganged up on were unfounded, and we all spent most of every turn dividing out angry attentions. Actually, even better, none of us reached the objective until turn 5 due to all of the crazy mobility of my units, and Hanah's waaagh!!!!.

 

Jared's list was Grey Hunter heavy with a dakka pred supporting. He turned on his brother marines first turn by infilitrating his scouts behind my razorback and meltaing it down! He payed for his treachery when the former passangers of this razorback slaughtered the scouts in a single assault sweep, just after my DC Dreadnought scattered 9 inches and nearly landed on top of their heads. I had meant for the DC Dread to land within threat range of Hanah's rearmost Boyz squad but it ended up taking out almost half of Jared's Troops! At the end of the third turn, Jared had lost all of his troops. On one side of the board, Hanah's Nob and Warboss mob began sacking Canis Wolfborn and some grey hunters after they had wiped out all of her foremost boyz; on the other side, my DC dread with blood tallons lightsabered his way through his other grey hunters squad, killing all of them at INITIATIVE 5!!!!

That was fun.

The game ended after turn five, and I actually had some DC on the table! Serriously- they're made to die. I always attack the most hardcore unit with them, and in this case, that was a DeffDread and a mob of 20 boyz, then they started going after immobalized killa kans. Hannah's bloodied but still hardcore Nob squad sat facing my untouched razorback squad with the attached sanguinary priest in the center. Three inches from the objective were my 8 dc members and the Reclusiarch, ready to go in for the bloodbath, but alas, the game ended.

So I managed to Draw in a three way game.

Weird huh?

[Malus the Destroyer]

And that is why I love 3 way games! Such random carnage and destruction!

[Drachnon]

Last 3 way battle I was up against 2 shooty armies, IG and Tau I made the mistake of splitting up my forces but still managed to deal a nice amount of damage. Being the only assault army both players aimed everything they had at my army, even their squads that could circumvent cover saves by shooting at each other went for my forces. So my tip for those playing 3 way battles play shooting armies since they are less of a priority.

[Brother Nathan]

great that it went well for you. think the last 3 way i had was versus smurfs and nids with the old dex. my vindi killed some gaunts and i think that wa my highlight, the smurfs shot us to ribbons....

[Burningblood]

Yeah it was a lot of fun - a three way assault slugfest. If Jared had been playing his smurfs I would have definately dropped Mephiston on his head... That would have been funny. :P