As the subject line states, I've come up with what I feel is a great solution for multiplayer Warhammer:Invasion. I've playtested this a bit already and it seems to work very, very well. Basically I got to thinking why most CCGs flop at multiplayer and came up with these reasons:

1. Most MP rules for CCGs only usually focus on adding more players they don't really address adding true multiplayer aspects and the reason for that is simply that many CCGs are 1v1 contests where a player wins the game by defeating his opponent, which then causes that opponent to lose the game and be knocked out of contention. Thus most MP rules are really nothing more than 1v1 duels with multiple opponents in the mix. Gamers are quick to realize that it's not real multiplayer.

2. The other chief reason MP flops is due to the ganging-up issue - frequently in CCG MP, gamers can too easily wipe out a foe - leading to imbalanced matches.

The solution that came to me came courtesy of the long-dead Spellfire CCG which by most fans' accounts had an awesome multiplayer aspect (whether the SP was good is another story). In Spellfire MP, players didn't win by knocking out opponents directly - players won by being the 1st to build 6 realms. So in a multiplayer game of Spellfire, someone would get in the lead only to be attacked and beaten down by their foes BUT (and this is the key aspect), they weren't out of the game, by any means. They would just start rebuilding their realms and champions for another shot at victory all the while attacking and slowing down the new leader. Despite being ganged up on, they couldn't ever really be wiped out and given even a little bit of time, they were able to build back up since no one would waste time attacking them while they were down and out as that would waste an attack that could better be used on the current leader. It worked superbly well and if Spellfire would have just focused on that aspect of its gameplay, it could've survive a bit longer..but I digress.

Here's what I think is the best solution for MP (I say "best" because I truly believe that it is the most viable, simple solution NOT because I'm postulating this idea):

1. In Warhammer:Invasion MP, a player wins by Burning 2 Zones from 2 DIFFERENT players. That way, no one is ever knocked out of the game AND players can slow down the leaders without really wiping them out AND while focusing on their own victories, much like in Spellfire. It doesn't matter if you didn't do the majority of the damage to a Zone, only that you scored the final damage that pushed a Zone into being Burned. This will also have an anticipated fun effect as people worry about doing too much damage but not enough, thus letting an opponent sneak in to nab the victory AND there are a lot of cool cards that people can play to mess with the damage and so forth. It'll really lead to some exciting and fun multiplayer matches.

2. "Ah, but what about the other way to win the game? By running your opponent out of cards?", you might ask? Got it covered - you can ALSO win the game by either: Running 1 opponent out of cards and burning 1 other player's Zone OR by Running 2 opponents out of cards (very difficult, I would imagine). The only tweak this requires is that a player is NOT knocked out of the game if they run out of cards, they can keep playing for the win but they cannot draw any more cards. This also has a cool effect because players will be faced with a sincere dilemma. Do you try to run someone out of cards thus giving them their entire deck at some point, which they can then use against you??

I've already play-tested this to some extent and it seems to really, really work well. Give it a try folks, please, and let me know what you think.

How does any one player run another player out of cards?

If one player has an infiltrate as does another player... who ran that player out of cards?

Check out VTES' MP rules. The only MP CCG designed from the beginning to be ONLY MP, IIRC. Caps make it more true.

Something similar to "you only get a point towards victory for when your assigned foe dies' kinda thing might be the better route to take with this game...

I was going to try it out with simply increasing the win condition to 3 of an opponent's zones. Likewise, last man standing seems to function well enough.

I'm not a fan of VTES' system. There are enough differences between this game and the other TCG's that most of the things that make Free-For-Alls undesirable are kind of neutered. I like Wytefang's idea in general. I think another method may be burning a total of 3 zones. I'd just eliminate the decking loss condition, as long as you have cards on the table, in hand, or in your deck you are in the game.

I'll have to give it a try.

Vampire's MP was clunky at best. Spellfire was the first and imho best at MP though its 2-player wasn't great.

Anyway, how you determine if you run someone out of cards is simply by being the person who made them lose their last few cards. OR as Dormouse said, just eliminate the decking-out rule for Multiplayer.

Last man standing is by no means a fun or terribly suitable solution, in my experience with card MP.

I think you guys are right, 3 Zones burned would seem just the right length.

I think the rule should be one burned zone for every player in the game and you can't burn more than two zones for anyone player. In a 3 player game that is three burned zone over two players. In a five player game that is 5 burned zones still spread between at least two players... but when one player has two zones burning they will be able to devout all their defense to a single zone as well as developments... that zone will be so highly fortified it would be much easier to attack someone with no burning zones who is having to spread their defense across three zones.

I really like the design idea that Wytefang zeroed in on: the counting up aspect of the multiplayer rules for Spellfire CCG. I guess that's why AGoT currently has such a strong multiplayer rules because it is a race for conquest without true player elimination.

I hope Mr. Lang focuses on that aspect of multiplayer when he cooks up the official multiplayer rules for Invasion.

I like the first point but I find the second one about running out of cards to be.... inelegant. It also fiddles with the basic rules, that you lose if you run out of cards.

Why not just play with the first point and, if one opponent loses due to running out of cards (essentially knocking himself out of the game):

1) If he was one of the players you had previously burned, it still counts towards your victory condition.

2) If he was not, then you can burn a second zone in another player (or the only player left, it if it 3 player... meaning you burn two zones of the same player as per normal 1 vs 1 game)

That's another potentially workable idea - though I think my suggestion (that he just keeps playing) could work pretty well without ruining the original rule. Or it'd be pretty simple to just remove that rule for Multiplayer since it's a weird rule anyway.

Counting up is the way to go for multiplayer.

Hecatomb CCG had a very nice multiplayer simply because a player won when he accumulated 20 souls and others could take them from him if they attacked him so that the game stayed balanced for a long time. Also a player couldnt lose, he may get robed of all acquired souls but that just meant he had to start anew.

So i definitely think that basing the win condition on the number of burned zone is the right thing. Just need to think of a way how to easily distinguish who burnt which zone...

When you damage a zone you add damage counters that are unique to you. When a zone burns, the player with the most total damage counters that are theirs is considered the 'burner' (lol) of that zone.

So that's all. We just need player specific burning counters. Which is fine as it gives me a reason to break out fancy tokens!

Interesting... this applies an artificial mechanic rewards the player who attacks last or has direct capital damage as actions (think orc lobbers)...stealing a kill. I attack first and kill the defenders and the next player can attack the the now undefended area at will. Have fun!

Vampire MP is CLUNKY -Wytefang

First of all why is it clunky? VTES is the longest running MP ccg on the market and not spellfire. There as the be a reason for that. As a seasoned VTES player, I believe there W:I can implement elements from VTES. VTES is successful in that it rewards the players with good table talk/player interactions(ie convincing others to work with you), players that build that decks to handle a wide varity of deck archtypes, and avoids that King of Hill mentality of many mp ccg/Lcgs in most cases.

Prey/Predator mechanic is artificial...but so are all the other proposed MP rules. The MP rules must be fun above all else. I don't like free-for-all, steal kills, or king of the hill type of games, but if it works for your group...GAME ON. Just don't say something is clunky or bad without listing your opinions.

My friend had an interesting idea last night when we were playing. It doesn't make any sense from a logical viewpoint, but it would possibly make for a slightly faster variant than some of the others you guys are talking about.

Instead of doing damage to your opponent's capitols areas, you would just keep track of the damage dealt on your own capitol, using the highest of your opponents developements in that region. It would allow you to keep track of how much damage you do and prevent people from stealing the kill of the capitol zone you had worked on. Everyone's cards would just work toward their own totals.

Because of the ability to draw as many cards as you want, I still think that runing out of cards should be a loss, or you could abuse it too easily.

apkenned said:

Okay, let's start by proving you wrong - when did Spellfire launch? 1994...VTES came around much later. No contest there. VTES was okay, not great - that's going by most reviews I've read. I'm sorry if that's upsetting to you, just going by what I saw and read about the game.

No multiplayer solution is going to be perfect, particularly with a card-game that's based on 1v1 action, but in this case or solution, that I've offered here - it's the least crappy while offering a great amount of fun.

I'll copy your remarks - if you're fearful of playing a game that might offer a frantic, exciting situation where no one is certain who will ****** victory, will then GAME ON. I'd like have a fun MP system in place and in this case, it really works well - playtesting (at least with our group) has proven it very enjoyable and it just feels right (at least so far). Hate it if you'd like but in the absence of a better suggestion, I'm comfortable with it so far.

Largely irrelevant to this otherwise fascinating discussion of MP rules, but just had to point out that Jyhad (the original version of V:TES) launched in 1994. (And Inquest Gamer called it the best all-time multi-player ccg in 2004, so some people dig it for multi-player.)

Just to make my post relevant, I'd like to say that I'd like MP rules that, to the best of their ability, avoided kingmaker situations where one player can't win, but can decide who else could win.

Berc

Bercilak said:

In fact the rules didn't change (Jyhad cards still worked in V:TES decks and still looked the same on the back except for a different title), only the name. You can probably guess why they changed it to V:TES.

Unfortunately it still didn't release before Spellfire - the 1st three CCGs on the market (leaving out Cosmic Encounter, the spiritual successor to ALL CCGs) were Magic, Wyvern, followed immediately by Spellfire. Jyhad may have come out that year but as I recall it was late in the year. Furthermore, basing ANYTHING on InQuest (that POS now defunct magazine, YAY!) is laughable. Considering that they didn't even KNOW how to play Spellfire (their Editor-in-Chief was pressed on the game's rules at GenCon by myself and many other SF fans back in the day and finally admitted that he didn't even know how to play the game despite their near incessant SF-bashing), I'd take a LOT of what they say with a huge grain of salt.

I've played them all, practically (save Dune, it looked cool but never got a chance to try it out) - V:TES wasn't horrible, it was just nowhere near as good as Spellfire's multiplayer.

Again, that's hardly germane to the topic when it comes down to it. Anyway, for those who feel the need to get an attitude, like the original poster who got snarky, just feel free to leave my thread and gripe somewhere else. I really don't care if you dislike this idea or not - it's hardly official, after all. ::: shrugs :::

And Bercilak, I'm not attacking you by ripping on InQuest - that's been a sensitive area for me for a long time. It was a GREAT day when they folded...a bunch of my friends and some other gamers we know actually had a bonfire after buying up a ton of cheap copies of InQuest to celebrate the news! Many glasses were raised in celebratory huzzahs that night! It was one less crappy, ill-informed piece of drivel to sponge-feed the masses.

What's ironic is that I've always liked Wizard, which came from the same publishing company. Go figure.

Back to the topic at hand...

My first game of Invasion was a multiplayer game. We just sat down and played 2v2 to learn the game together - Orcs and Chaos vs Empire and Dwarves. We didn't really put much thought into it, just picked up and went with it.

1 player on one team went first, then we went round robin - so it went Orcs, Empire, Dwarves, Chaos. A player could declare their attack against either opposing player. We only really had to make one ruling along the way - an action played by the non-active player could not target the active player's teammate (unless it was targetting something that had become involved through it's own actions).

A player was knocked out if 2 areas of their capital were burning. The objective was to eliminate the opposing team.

It worked out fairly well for us - I (Orcs) was knocked out first, followed fairly quickly by the Dwarves as my wife got her Bloodthirster into the action, which also helped empty out the Battlefield. Down to Empire vs Chaos, both with 1 section burning and another severely damaged, it was nearly a mutual kill due to a 1 point damage reflect (as the Bloodthirster rampaged across the Empire's Kingdom), except that before going in for the killing blow my wife had played a Development down (which the Empire player had failed to notice)

Worked out very well in the end, and we all had a fun time. My wife says she will play it again (we used to play WoW CCG together, until buying and collecting the cards became a hassle)

Down to the very wire!
Invasion has a bright multiplayer future if this post is any indication.

I this game.

Wytefang said:

I a brief google search i didn't find WHEN spellfire was MP implimented, but I do not recall them being designed that way from the get go... the rules, as I remember then when i was... 15? ... were single player... I'm probably wrong as you seem very passionate about this game. Please, if you can acquire some sort of reference to SF's MP from its initial release that would be good. This way I can stop saying VES is first MP.

Jyhad/VTES was designed and written with MP in mind, NAY NECCESITATING MP. that;s all ame on.

I don't know what would convince you, Vermillian. The rules allowed for MP and from the day it was released it was just a far better MP game than anyone had anticipated.

Anyway, in reference to Maine's 2v2 game - I'm glad it worked out for you guys but knock-out MP would be simply awful. That's the LAST way they should go with MP. ::: shudders :::

Wow....You should try vtes mp before you block it out. Anyways, back to orginal post. I do enjoy exciting action in my games. I only have one small point that I think you should consider tweaking. The eventual stealing kills or buring zones. Will you allow me to use an analogy? Thanks.

Imagine you just asked this girl (or boy your preferance) out on an romantic date. You buy her favorite flowers( dozen red roses). You take her to a fine french restaurant(Chez Gerard - Fine French Restaurant ). After then dinner, you take her on horse-drawn carriage ride around downtown. She tells you that she is really enjoying this date. (You're feeling you might get lucky!). Outside on the her porch, you get geared up to for the good night kiss or "come up for coffee " moment.

THEN ALL OF SUDDEN, SOME GUY THROWS A HERSEY KISS AT HER FACE. SHE PICKS IT UP AND GOES HOME WITH THAT OTHER DUDE! - End of story

My point is why up all the effort to get something or someone when you can let someone do all the work and sweep in at the end with minimum effort and get the win or the girl. I believe that play will degrade to where everyone is trying to be that dude with the Hersey kiss(direct capital damage or waiting until all defenders are dead)...sure he put in some effort, but should he get the girl?

Maine said:

I'm glad you had fun! Please allow me to ask some questions. Did you use any thing to keep the two order races from teaming up on one destruction race? Did teaming up one race occur?

You could easily solve the kill-stealing, if that's such a huge concern (I wouldn't care, that's the fun of the MP aspect) by just taking someone else's suggestion in here to use your own colored damage-tokens and once a realm is Burned, you'd just count the tokens to see who did the most damage. That was a GREAT suggestion, btw, but I forget who suggested it.