Hi, I was thinking of picking up invasion but was turned off by the fact that there were four races and sheets for all of them but the game only says 1 vs. 1,

can you play a fair and balanced game with 3+ players, could you try a game for me with set teams/ non set teams and see if it's possible.

also do lots of cards assume you have one opponent.

Most of the cards had multiple opponents in mind when they were designed, however FFG hasn't put forth the multiplayer rules. Hopefully they will be coming soon. I played a 4 player game of AGOT last night and it was a blast. Hopefully W:I can do the same.

2 of my friends and myself play 3 player games we have another friend that plays with us as well and we have done 4 player games also. The 3 player games work PRETTY well except for a few things. The first being the "decking" rule some times this becomes troublesome in a multiplayer game, we ran into many instances when 2 people would beat eachother up while the 3rd player kind of sat back and once one of the 2 other players were removed from the game the 3rd player only needed to turtle until the other player ran out of cards. Somewhere on these forums someone mentioned they use a recycling rule to counter this in multiplayer by shuffling their "graveyard" back into their libraries after they ran out of cards. While this is a possible solution I don't really think it's the right one because you do need some sort of punishment for running out of cards or else there really isn't a HUGE reason to not draw your whole deck within the first 5 turns of a game outside of not developing properly and getting blown out by a fast deck. For me ,though it is not perfect, I would suggest not ending the game upon running out of cards rather simply continuing the game but not being able to "re-use" any of the cards used previously in the game by the "recycling method".

As far as 4 player games are concerned they seemed relatively balanced. This was of course until we had the great idea of trying a team game. Using the single player plays team games got pretty retardedly imbalanced. It was simply to easy to rush down one opposing teamate if another team were both using orc decks and than cleaning up the other opponent. However a possible way to fix this would be to allow your teamate to "block" for you if they had a unit in a corresponding area. I have not personally tried this and it is all speculation but it seems like it could be a solid solution to what is currently a very defective "team" format. In the most basic of thought processes it seems to make sense since 2 players are allowed to attack the same players capital the game would balance out a little more if 2 players could defend. This would definetly seem to promote working together as a team better as well promoting interesting gamestates.

As it stands 3-4 player ffa games work fine minus the decking rule but if your interested in team play you should definetly adjust something to make it more balanced. Also when playing multiplayer to start the games only the last player is allowed to attack on their first turn.

Maybe you could try sharing a kingdom card and give it like 6 more hitpoint so it can endure the extra punishment of an extra player

Why not use a single capital in team battles? make a Invasion equivalent of the popular "two-headed giant" format from Magic. As for allegiance symbols, you could count your capital as 2 symbols too. one for each race the allies use... or then just keep it as one symbol and the team has to choose which one it is going to be.

The capital points could be doubled as well so that each areas requires double as much damage before it goes burning (but development still add +1 point, not +2, only the basic points are doubled)

volkmar said:

If you use 2 boards (one per player) and allow your teammate to block with you if they have units in a corresponding zone than you are still achieving this same effect while reducing the clutter on the playing field. The one difference that would occur however would be if someone was attacking a zone in someones capital and had a huge overkill swing like say swonging for 32 dmg or something than it would hurt the opposing team as much as if they had been sharing a capital board where the "overkill" damage would be completely relavent. Sharing one capital board strays further from the base rules than you need to rather than just simply adding "You can block with your opponent if you have a unit in the same zone your opponent is being attacked at."

We played some w:i multiplayergames with our own gamevariant. This variant of mulitplayergame seems to be fair and makes a lot of fun. Here come the instructions:

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variant: everybody vs. everybody - attack by rolling the dice

number of players: 3 or more

1. Round: In the first round each player takes his Kingdom Phase, Quest Phase and Capital. Everyone skips his Battlefield Phase during the first round. To determine the first player roll the dice. When the first player ends his turn, the player on his left starts his turn ... and so on. After the first round everybody takes all phases.

Attack: Whenever a player wants to attack during his Battlefield Phase, he has to roll the dice to find out which opponent he may attack. The other opponents could not be attacked in that turn. After rolling the dice the player can decide if he wants to attack or not. He can decide which zone he wants to attack. Example: Game with 4 players. Player 1 wants to attack. Before rolling the dice the active player has to define the numbers to the corresponding player: player 2 gets 1-2, player 3 get 3-4, player 4 gets 5-6. Now player 1 rolls the dice and the number is 4. Player 1 decides to attack player 3 in his Battlefield.

Actions and effects: Actions and effects may be played to every player or every card without rolling the dice.

End of game: When a player has two burning zones or no cards in his deck, he loses the game and has to leave it with all his cards. The rest of the players go on until just one player is in the game. He wins the game.

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Thats it. Questions? Suggestions for improvements?

In my store we play that you can only attack the player to your left. First person to burn 2 zones wins.

Noisy_Marine said:

I like it! Nice and simple, and you can still play tactics on any player to slow them from burning two capitals first.

For 3 player games an alternating target system might be usable, it's what my group does for Magic. This is how it could work for Invasion:

If you deal combat damage to a player's capital, you cannot attack them again until you've dealt combat damage to the other player's capital. It gives players a little bit of breathing room. This method would probably work for more players as well.

I haven't tried it with Invasion yet, so I could be missing something.

I can't stand attacking the player to my left restriction, especially with the way this game is designed and the IP it involves. I'd rather have restricted zones I can attack, As in I can attack the Quest Zone to the Player to my left, the Kingdom zone to the player to my right, and anyone's battlefield zone. This is supposed to be war, being attacked by someone I cannot actively and aggressively attack back just puts mechanics between me and the theme.

That said I still prefer free for all play best with achieving a winning condition rather than knocking players out, as originally outlined by Wytefang and then refined with other player suggestions... the important thing of course is that each group of players enjoys whatever format they choose.