"What is the most players you have had in one game?" Topic

I read have read what it says in the rule book about more players and bigger games and it is not very encouraging. I find this very limiting. Particularly for gaming historical scenarios instead of points.

I am just curious to see if anyone managed to have four to eight players or more players in one battle? What modifications to the rules did you need to make? How did you make it work?

We played with 8 players on Friday.

I was a player with 7-8 players. To my mind it failed miserably. My future limit will be 4 and ideally no more than two.

We had a game once with 12 players total and it was a great game, lots of fun.

We played the Wagram campaign using Shako as the rules set. Our final battle just to the north of Vienna had 13 players around a table that was 12 feet long. It was a huge battle and took two days of gaming before it was pretty apparent that the Austrians were going to lose.

We often play Flames of War with 6 to 8 guys and there was a recent War of the Roses campaign where there were at least 12 players for each of the battles using the Flower of Chivalry rules and those games went well.

6-8 is common for us. The games are fun, we did have to play with the activation dice some to speed up play. We usually pull a dice and them everyone on that side gets to move a unit.

Hi

I had 12 players but they just had 1 squad each.

8 players. We drew three dice at a time to speed it up.

@ 12 for a miniatures game, had a few DnD sessions with 10

For a minis game….approx 11-12…

For a RPG game, (D&D)….16 players in one sitting.

I took part in a Napoleonic game some years ago with 15 players where each player represented commanders at various points in the chain of command. It was quite fun.

I have run games of Gut Shot and All Things Zombie that had in excess of 20 players but those probably don't count for the OPs purpose.

Biggest convention game I organized was 18 official player slots (all filled) with several "double up father /son" spots back in 2007 plus two GM's. The scenario game was a FOW Russian vs. German using 20mm miniatures across a 20x6 table. The interesting part…. the game player draw outnumbered the FOW tournament running at the same Saturday evening time slot.

For Napoleonics, the largest game was 15 players in my garage 16x6 table with 25/28mm miniatures. Team games are a common experience for us… the napoleonic group has been together since 1976 and commonly have 6-10 players for a monthly game meeting in the Los Angeles (CA) area. If interested, see Wargamerabbit blog contact information: link

Generally the scenarios are well designed and play tested. Keep to the basic units and formations with only a few for each player. For the FOW game each player had his small group of platoons to play, a picture of the miniatures (platoons) involved, their organization, and the game stats on one clear plastic sleeve printed sheet (large font). A "picture roster " of sorts. Any special characteristics for the units printed, side victory conditions, basic game info etc.. printed on reverse side. Each side had one or two seasoned GM players as "head side player" or captain and they ran a side conference pre-game. Then…. before the game start. I ran a ten minute question and answers session with all the players, mostly covering game mechanics. Lastly, I had a narrow beam flashlight to attract attention of a player during play by shining the table area before his eyes. That made them look up and avoided shouting across the table. If possible, that player could come to my end of the table to confer quickly if I wasn't already heading their way. Plenty of dice, and charts as needed. At table end, have a "visible to all players" display for the current game turn, run a play or phase display clock to control time (generally only to keep the players actively moving their units and avoid static down time moments), identify the current phase in play, and game stats (victory conditions).

As Head GM…. walk around the table… never stand still. Watch the flow of the game, listen to the "tabletop roar"…. and have "quiet phase pauses" in the action to keep the players in common tempo. The flashlight is a great method to have all the player stop their actions when the quiet moment is needed. During the first moments (turns) of the scenario… Identify a movement actions and have all the players watch a seasoned player conduct the actual miniature / unit movement for a turn… measuring etc. On a good example of shooting… pause play for all to watch and follow along the basic required steps… again draw attention to the charts, lastly, the close combat or shock combat… run a example from the actual tabletop. Once these phases are covered… the players have a opportunity to have seen the actions, the sub player groups common to a group team based game take over. If something is done wrong… explain the error in basic terms, and continue play. For the FOW game mentioned above… a German player played his infantry as "trained" vs. veteran rated… just like his Soviet opposite. No big deal in my eyes… I just slipped in a small German recon platoon of Sd Kfz 250 HT to his forces from "reserves".

For the napoleonic game…. all the players knew the rules so play was namely as turn control function. But all the above thoughts can be applied. Charts for that scenario hung from the tabletop center ceiling, thus clearing the tabletop.

Supply a separate side table to dry food munches and water drinks. Keeps the players near the tabletop. For a large game… schedule a 30 minute break for lunch if needed…. Only 30 minutes.

Good thought to add… keep all drinks and food well off the tabletop for quick photos and avoid accidents. Only required charts, dice, and camouflaged measuring tapes allowed. My measuring tapes are painted and ground flocked to blend into the tabletop…. especially for photos. Nothing worse than a bright yellow tape measure or red Coke can in the photos.

Michael aka wR

Back in summer of 73', doing audience participation games at Aldershot. We had 54mm Gladiators with 2 gamers and 15 passers by plus an umpire. We never had more than that.

Heck of a game everybody slashing and hacking. Father and son joining together until all nearby had been killed and then they turn of each other… Still got photographs somewhere.

Borodino 92 had 60 plus participants

I assume you are limiting this discussion to Bolt Action games?

Two.

I ran a Falklands 82 one day campaign at the Mortimer NWS groups that had 36 players. And I took part in a couple of Mark Campbell's "Close Action" games in the US that had over 50

Guys, I am talking about Bolt Action. That's why I posted it on the Bolt Action board.

Did the bug attack and posted on some other boards?

No bug issue that I could tell. This is why I do not support rules specific boards. Won't be posting on this board again.

It appears on the front page, and "what is the biggest game" threads always attract a lot of responses, as people like to reminisce.

The biggest game I've ever run had fifty players, which was a little like herding cats at times. WW1 though.

The 8 player bolt action game went well. I have done 6 easily before with almost no rules mods. Table set up and scenario design is critical with larger numbers of players. I try to set it up with nodes of action. One time it was a Market Garden style scenario where the allies were trying to seize both ends of a bridge at the same time. The bridge was long enough (24") so that the two sides did not really interact.

Another vote for max 4, preferably 2.

While the random unit activation process promotes a very chaotic feel that I rather like, if you only have one player active, the more players you have the more there are twiddling their thumbs…

Random unit activation is a great mechanic, but my own opinion is that it is best played in small (ie. one or two player) games.

I think I had 10 in one of my Napoleonic games years ago. Now it is not unusual to have six. Eight happens occasionally.

Six or more works best if all the players can get through the mechanics of the game.

It will work pretty well if at least one of the two players who are opposite each other knows the rules.

My table is 15 feet long, so that helps with larger games.

Tom

We have 2 large CLS games a year in my garage. The last game was Bautzen with 16 players on a 24'x5' table. The game started at 10 AM, broke for lunch and ended around 5 PM. Great fun for the group which has been playing since the 70s.

Most ever was 9 – 4 per side and a games master

Played an ACW game with 32 players. Actually played pretty well using Fire & Fury rules. My preference is 2 to 4 players as a GM and or participate.

I didn't put it together but I was a table judge on a large Battle of Arras game run in Madison, WI. It was put together by a couple of my friends. We had overall 5 judges (3 Table judges, Allied Advocate and German Advocate). and somewhere around 30 players. (2 Overall commanders, 2 Air Marshals, and the rest battalion commanders).

It was a weekend long event with 3 tables (6 x 28 foot each) running independently with off board troop movements handled by the advocates. It was a great time.

Edit: Ooops didn't catch the board it was posted to. I generally read from the from page and rarely bother to look at the board before reading and sometimes replying.

For Bolt Action my answer is 0.

Re Bolt Action:

We found even four player games slowed down a lot (waiting for die to be drawn). Prefer to stick to 1-1 for Bolt and use other systems for multi-player games.

(Ps sure wish they had used the Conflict 47 version of the Close Assault rule in Bolt2.)

Thomas J. Thomas
Fame and Glory Games

Any recommendations on how to modify the dice drawing for larger games to speed it up?

I run scenarios for multiple players by having a commander on each side and players controlling subsections of troops, and the commander will give the order dice to a player who needs to activate something next. Works fairly well!

For points match games, 1 to 1 is best.

We've had loads of games with 6-8 players (and once with 10 IIRC) and they've worked fine. The players have responsibility for their own dice and the umpire or a designated player has a deck of cards; usually 8 for each side, but that depends on the scenario. Each time a black card is turned over every Axis player deploys an activation dice and every time a red card is turned over the Allied players each deploy a dice. Once the deck is exhausted everybody picks up their dice and the new turn begins.
We find it works best if players have more units than dice – 8 dice and ten units works pretty well.
It's rare for a player to be kept waiting around unless they've lost an awful lot of units, but even then, since they know there's 'x' cards to be turned they can choose to sit out a chance to activate and wait for a more propitious moment. OTH if a player dithers too much they may find that the next phase of activation has started and they've missed their chance…that generally only happens to a player once; after that they pay more attention.
It's quick, effective and – most importantly – easy to grasp. SWMBO and I staged a big Arnhem game (in Arnhem no less) with 9 players who did not all know each other and we played all day without an angry word; to me that says something very positive about Bolt Action and of course the players involved, who mostly came from the sixshooters club in Amsterdam. There's a report on TMP somewhere which I think is under the heading 'Arnhem in July'.
Adam, mail me if you need more detail… thathistorybloke@outlook.com