My son and his friend love the game so we came up with a multi-player variant that works surprisingly well. Most importantly it is fun. Basically we use a dice or dice app to randomize which player will receive the damage. Anything with melee/range dice damage get dealt with this way.

Specials-events-support are players choice. Discards and disrupts the same. This keep the game moving along. It is not perfect but we have fun and it feels fair with-out being too fair.

Cool! Sounds really fun! I know page 22 of the rules reference also has multiplayer rules that I've been meaning to try out, but the dice seems like a good way to balance out the game and make sure nobody gets ganged up on!

We just played multiplayer so you could choose who to attack. It works well because if anyone gets too far ahead, they get turned on very quickly.

3 minutes ago, The Penguin UK said:

We just played multiplayer so you could choose who to attack. It works well because if anyone gets too far ahead, they get turned on very quickly.

Sexy. People in your playgroup must really like winning. Might I suggest thinking about baseball?

Just now, WonderWAAAGH said:

Sexy.

I like the random target idea. Otherwise, it would be really easy for one player to just get sniped off the field early.

Trust me it works well. You just randomize range and melee damage to keep things flowing. There is some targeting with specials, claiming, and cards to keep things interesting. And discards and disrupts are free game. It feels fair and games are usually close, often ending a round or two after the first player goes down. Our games have still been about 45 minutes if people play briskly. It is fun to re-think your deck and play style for the longer slower game. I try and mitigate or control either the immediate threat or the best deck. If you see 9 damage in the pool you have to step up because it may hit you.

I've played three and four way games using the rules from the rulebook and I think it works pretty well. Gang-ups do happen (my Emperor got blown off the board in two turns last night by my wife and daughter). I love the idea of a random roll to decide who is the target of any damage.

Random roll works sooo much better. Getting ganged up on in a three for all takes away the fun.

Once the player who's getting the damage is chosen, does the attacker get to choose which of their characters take the harm?

11 hours ago, pheylorn said:

Once the player who's getting the damage is chosen, does the attacker get to choose which of their characters take the harm?

Yes. It works really well.

Cool! Also, could someone (or has someone in your experience) opted to resolve only some of their damage at a time? ie. I have 4 dice all showing 1 Melee sides and I really want to hit player B, so I resolve two of my dice hoping to hit them; if I don't then on my next turn I resolve the next two melee damage. I know it's fringe, just curious.

I like this variant a lot and will see if my group wants to try it out next time.

Sounds like a fun variant!

An idea off the top of my head for an optional rule:

"Instead of rolling to see who the target player is, spend 1 resource to choose who receives the damage."

I think this is the cool thing about multi-player. House rules are what ever the group likes.