So, I have been wondering. Has anyone tried playing with more than 2 players? 3 or 4? I figure this can be pretty chaotic, but is it doable? would you consider it pointless?

Jegergryte said:

Yo, I have about 20 years' experience with tabletop/miniatures wargaming, and in my experience multi-player (more than 2) is best played as 2 teams. If you look to military history as a guide, you'll find it's extremely rare to see more than 2 sides to any fight. And I've tried it with Warhammer 40k, and it's nigh-impossible to have a fun game with more than two sides to a battle.

If you want to play with more than 2 players, set it up as a 2-team game with multiple players per team. This means you won't have to muck about changing order of activation or anything else (it won't break the game system) - and besides, there are only two factions at this stage anyway

Good luck, let us know how you go!

Team games can be surprisingly flexible. We used to induct newer 40k players at my old FLGS by having them bring whatever models they had and then a veteran would fill in the remaining points to balance out the side.

For example, say a new guy had 500 points of models painted. One of the vets would throw a squad or two and make the game a 750 or 1,000 point game as a third vet would assume the opposing side. This way, the new guy could talk some strategy with his partner, but it's more interactive than some dude standing behind him going, "Move your speeders up the right flank. Assault with those berzerkers.", know what I mean?

Obviously you can go the totally balanced route with each team having x amount of points and each player producing a list of x/2 points too.

I think multiplayer games depend a lot on the mission/ scenario/ whatever too. If you have a scenario where blowing up everything on the other side of the table is the most viable option, it'll probably get ugly fairly quickly as inevitably, two players are going to team up against one. With a little creative thought though, you can try and mitigate stuff like that.

Just off the top of my head here, maybe an old-school X-Wing style inspection mission where the players are tasked with inspecting a bunch of cargo containers. For every (different) container inspected, the player earns a point. Players must fly within range 1 to inspect a container and use an "inspect" action in their action phase. Set some kind of points limit, or maybe a ship limit, and you force the players to choose between completing the mission and just blowing each other apart.

We've had some team games so far. Including a pretty big one with 4 of us running 100 points each (200/side). It got chaotic but was very, very fun and that was a lot of ships on the table!

Jim

I have almost always played team games on at least 1 side. Either myself and my daughter vs. two boys, or just me vs. two boys.

It is easier to win if you can control ALL the ships on one team (in my opinion) since you know where all the ships are moving, so if you are looking to do team play, and balance is a consideration, I suggest sticking with even numbers of players.

Since Imp squads tend to be built with much more ships, a lot of times my boys play as imperials so they have more ships to control, and are less likely to be knocked out of the game entirely at a early stage.

If people are all bringing their own squads though, of course the sky's the limit for what you could do.

We did a 3 play 100 point game with 2 Imp players. Worked petty well, since the Imp side had more ships.

I just don't feel like most team games are as much cooperative as they are one person guiding or outright commanding their team mate. That is my experience, and maybe others don't feel this way. I think in larger games, if you develop a scenario and the players have different objectives, it seems to make there be a worthwhile purpose to it. I suppose I look at it as a 'third-wheel' scenario. I don't need another team member to accomplish my goals, in fact one of us is likely a liability. It's not like sports where you can't possibly be in two, four or twelve places at once. If you just want a team member for the social aspect? I guess that's fine, but for me, this is a two-player game.

I played with 5, 3vs2. Worked well, Rebels killed the Imps

We've done several 4-player games, 2 per side, 50pts each. We've even had a couple 6-player games, 3 per side, 50 pts each. Works just fine and gets exciting when you not only need to account for the unknown opponent moves, but also the unknown moves of your allies.

I have played 5 player matches, 3 imp, 2 reb. Each player got one ship.

It worked and was fun, sometimes your partner would do something unexpected, since table talk is allowed but only in public we tended to be very general and didn't coordinate movement. This resulted in some collisions etc but nothing major.

Obviously controlling your whole team would be a bit smoother and coordinated, I didn't find multiple players too frustrating (well except one friend who was dancing on the side of the map the whole time and pretty much shot only once the whole game).

It was fun enough that we hope to get a massive game going with a few people on each side each controlling 50pts or so.

pitsch said:

Were you a rebel?

pitsch said:

Interesting… we played 2 similar match up games and both times imps easily defeated rebels. Granted that could be because we were learning and didn't use any upgrade/ability cards outside of unique pilot abilities.

I am pretty sure the setup was… now keep in mind we knew there was a point advantage to imps.

2 x-wings, Luke and Wedge

vs

2 Ties: Beast and academy (basic tie)

1 adv tie: vader

1 match imp lost the academy tie and second imp was unscathed.

been doing 2 vs 2 teams with my group and while sometimes one guys crashing into his team mate its pretty fun.

My personal best is me and 6 other Army guys playing at 100 pts a side. 4 Imps, 3 Rebs. Everybody used one ship apiece. We figured it was better that way. You can focus better by using your one ship, and try harder to fight and stay alive. I'd love to play with up to maybe 10 people on a much larger table, everybody sticking to one ship.

We also discovered that the regular ole TIEs seem to have more potential than even the Advanceds, even with Vader.

We played a 4 player, 2 per side game, and it worked fine.

The Dust Warfare Zverograd book has 3 player scenarios for that game. They work pretty well. I might try using them (with some obvious changes since it's a skirmish WWII game) and see how they work out.

I played a 60 point match where each person controlled a ship: 2 X-wings for the Rebels, 2 TIE fighters and a TIE advanced for the Empire. It was pretty fun. Instead of showing maneuver dials to each other (which is apparently against the rules) we used the maneuver charts to discus some tactics. But mostly everybody made tactical decisions on their own.

It was fun introducing the game to my neighbor's family, but I think the Dad gunned for me both times because he knew I was the most experienced. We played two games, and I was the first fighter destroyed in both games, taking a torpedo shot in round two of the second game. Sitting around watching is fun, but it's not as fun as playing, so I am more of a fan of one-on-one games so far. Maybe with more ships per player I'd like it more, but I only had five at the time. Now I have 7, so It could be worth trying again. I'd love to try it with somebody else who has their own models.

pitsch said:

We did a 5 player game with each player controlling one ship. Opposite outcome though, Imps won. We had a blast!

i am wanting to try a larger scale battle with 10+ players, let u know how it goes