Infinity Multiplayer?

[Myrddin]

Most battle reports I've read are focused around 2 players at a time, even scenarios are designed to be played by a pair. So I have some questions:

Can a game of Infinity be played by more than 2 people? If so have you ever played a game with 3+ players? How would you set it up if you could?

I ask because I have brothers, and they've taken an interest in the game (because I'm always talking about it) so I'd like to be able to play with the two of them.

[Taylor]

I haven't yet - but I'd like to at some point. Two vs. Two and Three vs. Three is always fun - the only concern I would have would be AROs.. but really, as long as everyone is reasonable and understands that multiplayer wasn't written into the rules, it should be fine.

[Myrddin]

My thoughts exactly, more players = more bullets flying your way. I think it could be fun though, having to put even more thought into movement and picking your targets carefully because you never know where the killing blow is going to come from.

[Mob of Blondes]

Bullets flying everyone's way. You could be 200 points against 400, but so will be the other two too.

And the biggest reason to play: hexagonal table.

[Locksmith]

we've tried this, and unless you keep the game around 300 points per team, it gets problematic. More points than that, and you suddenly have pairs and trios of TAGs running coordinated orders and it's easily possible for an entire player to get wiped with half the orders available to one team.

[Pierzasty]

Err, why? Each team gets its own order pool. You want TAG links, you support them yourself.

[Myrddin]

Wouldn't it be more balanced for each player in a team to maintain his own order pool instead of having a team pool? I think that's what you're saying, right Pierzasty?

[IJW Wartrader]

The main problem is that you're facing so many more AROs than normal, so a more crowded table than normal can be a good thing.

Locksmith - you can't do Coordinated Orders across Combat Groups, so that's no more likely to happen than in a normal game.

[kidterminal]

Adding more than 2 players will increase the time it takes to play a game. To counteract this you should play games smaller than 300 points. Try 150 to 200 points. I have brothers, I know what it like to play games with them. You want to keep the total play time down so you can get 2 games in in one day. That way the brother who did really poorly has a chance to do better in the next game. It helps keep them interested in the game.

[Magno]

Adding players is possible and it's awesome.

Parallel orders.
Each player activates their own model/link team and makes their order declaration at the same time. Reactions to activated models like normal. Then 2nd short skills.
This requires a little facilitation to ensure players don't start getting ahead of themselves with additional orders while previous orders are still being resolved.
If one player has fewer orders, he may pass on an order until they have equal amount of orders.

Infinity is one of the best multi-player games ever.
You don't have to brick up your models like other games and this allows you to intersperse models between team players. You also have to coordinate your orders; "Wait, let me activate my engineer first before you move forward." team games open up a whole new dynamic and tactical thinking that is extremely rewarding.

Teams may use each other's repeaters and they combine their total points for a single retreat threshold so players don't hang up on a single player.
If one player looses an Lt, he simply has two orders like normal.

We've done plenty of team games and it works just fine. We've even done 3vs3.
The concern of facing a ton more AROs is misplaced, you can, but it's not an issue since their are also multiple activating orders in parallel, so ARO decisions are just as strained.

Trust me, team infinity is fabulous.

[Pierzasty]

Adding players is possible and it's awesome.

Parallel orders.
Each player activates their own model/link team and makes their order declaration at the same time. Reactions to activated models like normal. Then 2nd short skills.
This requires a little facilitation to ensure players don't start getting ahead of themselves with additional orders while previous orders are still being resolved.
If one player has fewer orders, he may pass on an order until they have equal amount of orders.

Infinity is one of the best multi-player games ever.
You don't have to brick up your models like other games and this allows you to intersperse models between team players. You also have to coordinate your orders; "Wait, let me activate my engineer first before you move forward." team games open up a whole new dynamic and tactical thinking that is extremely rewarding.

Teams may use each other's repeaters and they combine their total points for a single retreat threshold so players don't hang up on a single player.
If one player looses an Lt, he simply has two orders like normal.

We've done plenty of team games and it works just fine. We've even done 3vs3.
The concern of facing a ton more AROs is misplaced, you can, but it's not an issue since their are also multiple activating orders in parallel, so ARO decisions are just as strained.

Trust me, team infinity is fabulous.

Quoting so you don't take it back.
That's awesome, I'll definitely have to try it sometime.

[Locksmith]

I like Magno's parallel orders idea. I suggested the same the last time we tried a multiplayer game, but my local group rejected it as too complicated.

[Magno]

Parallel orders are real simple. Almost like a coordinated order, but across different lists and don't require the same target or same skills.
The only thing about team games is stewarding the players orders to ensure parallel orders don't overlap to ensure the correct sequence of skills and reactions.

[kidterminal]

What about 3 way battles? How would you do them?

[Pacific]

I've had a great deal of fun with 3 player games - usually it just ends up with the player who doesn't get into the initial scrap winning, but you can mix things up by giving objectives that can serve to benefit the more adventurous player.

Recently I've also given a lot of thought to having games that include a '3rd man', or gamesmaster, to take control of 3rd party events that are taking place in a game. Essentially, if you imagine a fight taking place in a city with civilians, perhaps a police force coming into the fray when the 2 teams are fighting, some kind of nannite-zombie plague that 2 teams must take on (while trying to fulfil some other objective) - all of these would be serviceable with some kind of scripted routine for the NPCs, but I think you could move the experience to the next level with a gamesmaster, and you would be able to add that much more complexity.

Am hoping to start a rules feedback thread on Datasphere concerning it soon, will make sure I post a link!

[kidterminal]

Please do. It sounds promising.

[Spoonfunk]

my group has done a couple multi player games now...based off of the problems that arose I have come up with a list of things to try in the future when we try multiplayer Infinity.


1) Tons of LOS blocking terrain - this is a problem for my group right now but it is in the works for bieng remedied
2) lowering the order groups (fireteams?) to 5 and taking alternating active turn for each group. This is mostly so the player going last can use more of his models and won't get totally boned on the initiative order.
3) Capping the range for ARO's (48' inches)= with lots of LOS blocking terrain this isn't as bad as it sounds really. Active players can shoot as far as they want, but this hampers the situations where 1 player would step into a situation where he would recieve ARO's from all of his opponents.
4) Bigger board = Maybe extending the board length two 12x4 or 6x8? More space means more isolated firefights.


Again these are just idea's haven't actually tried them out....let me know what you think though.....

[Hybrid of Steel]

I think 3-way FFA is possible, but you'd want to have some sort of "non-aggression pact" rule between players, where player A treats player B as neutral, and so on, until player A "accidentally" (or otherwise hehheh) wounds one of player B's models, then all bets are off. Mines, templates, and deviations would treat player B's models as enemy models, so you might want to be careful with that kind of thing.

But it does sound fun to play multiplayer.

[VisOne]

We did a 4 way FFA ... it didn't end well.