"Threesomes?" Topic

Wargaming is easy with 2 opposing forces of equal strength & 2 players/teams of players.

Equally, even numbers of opposing armies, say 4 armies, simply means you can have two sets of allies. These may be reluctant & you can differentiate between victory conditions for allies but still – simple.

But how about 3 armies of equal strength? All hostile to one another? Sure, but experience has shown 2 will gang up – unofficially – on the third and create a lop-sided and not necessarily enjoyable game.

I have a couple of periods were I've collected 3 equal-sized armies eg Bronze Age has NKE, Hittites & Mycenaeans. For large games, I'd like them all on the table.

Does anyone have an idea of a mechanism were this would work?

2 v 1 in an unbalanced scenario so victory conditions are very difficult for the 2.

Setting up objectives so you can't trust each other or gang up and all flanks are exposed to start. Did that for a game of Macedonians v Indians v Romans. Worked well.

My first thought is still two against one, but effectively, separate commanders and victory conditions. Bill and Sam both have "defeat Tom" as a victory condition, but Bill's also says "take fewer losses than Sam" and Sam's says "take fewer losses than Bill."

But 2:1 in combat power might be too much, and I'd be more inclined toward, say 1.5:1 for the first attempt at balance. Would you settle for "three quarters" rather than strictly "all?"

I have played that as a role playing game. You have victory conditions for your side and additional victory conditions for yourself. Like defeat the enemy for your side, but capture the princess / gold / other thingy for your self.

Creates some competition when your allies want what you want.

Mike

I have tried three player games. They never work.
Two gang up on one and then fight it out between themselves.

We have never done a three player game but have done a few six or eight player games – usually set in Colonial era/Interwar China or Mexican Revolution – the key is setting victory conditions such that the players don't have much incentive to gang up on anyone

When we have a 3 person game, we generally play 2 on 1 but will balanced forces. This works well when you have a someone who has not played the rules.

When we do 1x1x1 it does end up being that 2 on 1 and then the fight between the 2.

I had this problem and came up with a fun solution, Chit Games. I've posted a piece on how they work and an AAR on my blog: cabinettewars.blogspot.com (sorry on my iPad which doesn't seem to allow me to post a direct link). The post in question is entitled "Chit Games – or how to equalise the inequitable" if you select the tag for WotR it will bring up both posts.

De Ruyter and Napoleon did it. It must be possible to make a fun game out of 2 to 1 odds.

2 to 1 (or more) is fine if you have two opposing sides. The problem is three opposing sides.

Tbh you can only really do this with scenario victory conditions, and I'm struggling to think what that would even look like in classical chariot warfare.

I'm on my PC now, so here's the direct link:

link

First find a triangular table …

Two friends and I had a three way war based on Sicily in the 3rd century BC. We were Epiriotes/Greeks, Roman and Carthaginian with fleets as well as armies. We played a number
of interesting battles for 6 months before life started getting in the way and it gradually ran out of steam. I still have the maps, my fleet and army.

I saw an AAR of a 3 way 40K game. It was a civil war scenario so once you wiped out the one of opposing HQ's you gained all their surviving troops. This meant that careless ganging up may hand your ally enough extra troops to totally destroy you. I believe it did a lot to prevent the 2 on 1 issue.

Robert

Did a 3way Napoleonic. Had each side start on the point of a triangle, the winner would control a central terrain feature by a certain number of turns.
Worked out well.

@korsun0

That was an idea that did *not* work for me. One participant sat back,let the other two slug it out & swept in for the easy victory.

Thanks, everyone, for the ideas provided. I'll try to work up some scenarios but I'm not sanguine.

Play them as 2 commanders on one side vs 1 commander. The 1 commander gets the same number of troops as the other two combined. So 'balanced' armies, just split command on one side, say Romans and auxilia vs anybody.

From a systems perspective the answer is to make each player's victory condition 'Defeat the player on your left'. If two try to gang up the one on the right risks giving the player on his left an easy and big victory which he can't overcoem in 'round 2.

It has happen, here are some historical and period correct examples:

1. Battle of the Three Kings (1578) – Morocco
Fought between the Portuguese, the Saadi Sultanate of Morocco, and a rival Moroccan claimant to the throne.
King Sebastian of Portugal sought to install Abu Abdallah Mohammed II as Sultan of Morocco against the reigning Sultan, Abd al-Malik. The battle resulted in a Moroccan victory, with both Portuguese and Moroccan claimants killed.

2. Battle of Muret (1213) – Albigensian Crusade
Three sides: The French royal forces, the Crown of Aragon, and the Cathars of Languedoc. The battle was part of the crusade against the Cathars, a Christian sect declared heretical by the Catholic Church. King Peter II of Aragon fought against Simon de Montfort's crusaders but was defeated, strengthening the French crown's control over Languedoc.

3. Battle of Gaugamela (331 BC) – Alexander the Great
While primarily a battle between Alexander the Great and the Persian King Darius III, there was a third element: local satraps and mercenaries, including some who were not fully committed to Darius.
Some Persian vassals were hesitant, leading to fragmented alliances.

4. The Chinese Warlord Battles (1920s) – Warlord Era
Many battles in China's Warlord Era featured multiple factions vying for control, with shifting alliances.
The Zhili–Anhui War (1920) and the Zhili–Fengtian War (1922 & 1924) are good examples where three or more sides fought each other.

5. Battle of Clontarf (1014) – Ireland
Involved the forces of High King Brian Boru, the Viking forces of Dublin, and the Kingdom of Leinster.
The Vikings and Leinster initially allied but had different goals, and infighting weakened them.
Brian Boru's forces won, but he was killed in the aftermath.

6. The Russian Civil War (1917–1922)
While not a single battle, many engagements featured three (or more) major factions:
The Red Army (Bolsheviks)
The White Army (Tsarists and anti-Bolsheviks)
The Green Army (Peasant rebels)
At various points, local nationalist movements, foreign interventions, and anarchist forces also played roles.

7. A hypothetical Battle set in 1066 between Harold's Anglo-Saxons, William the Conqueror's Normans and Harald Hardrada's Vikings.

How to do these on the game table is another matter.

Personally I would go with the 1066 scenario. Don't know how to pull it off. I seem to remember a threesome during the ECW, TYW or WSS, but can't remember what battle. There must have been something like this during the Hundred Years War.

I guess the reason it is difficult to get this to work on the table is that it is vanishingly rare (did it ever happen) to have three combatants on the same battlefield at the same time, each genuinely equally interested in taking on both others at the same time. Strategically this is not so rare (Chinese Nationalists, Communists and the Japanese in WWII would be one obvious example, as would the Russian Civil War in the 1920s as mentioned above) but all three rocking up on the same day on what would be reflected by a war-games table and not picking a tactical advantage by fighting only one enemy, or waiting out the fight between the others, seems very unlikely.

Many years ago (40+) there was a group at my local club who would sometimes set up a game (typically if a 'proper' game had fallen through or finished early) where everyone who joined in started with an armoured car and a random entry point. Every time your vehicle was knocked out, you reappeared somewhere with a heavier vehicle – a light tank, a medium tank, then finally a heavy tank. It really didn't matter what vehicle you chose. The "winner", if there was one, was the player still using the lightest vehicle at the end of the game. Everyone usually got a few laughs, typically when someone's Panther got knocked out by a rear or flank shot from a 37mm gun from an armoured car or M3 light tank. Not the same thing as the OP was querying I know, but a fun diversion.

Cheers,
John