Campaign with an unequal amount of players

So, I've started the Lustria Campaign I've made. Succesful so far, except perhaps that the first (and only) 1v1 ended in a masacre for my opponent (he had the chance to rout)!

We've only played two multiplayer games to start the campaign up, but with a visit from a Coatl, some weather interference, a lucky find and a curious bloom along with a Pathfinder joining my warband, we've had quite some fun so far! I was forced to play Dwarves, since another player took the Protectorate of Sigmar, so the usual Protectorate player wanted to steal my Lizardmen - fair enough, I hope that'll teach them that Lizardmen aren't overpowered, when somebody else wins the campaign! (I really do hope so, else we might have to make some changes ^_^)

Anyway, the issue here now is, that we're 5 players. Not excactly the best number, but that's the amount of players we can count with atm.

This leads to a problem concerning who's playing who. We started, as mentioned before, with two multiplayer games, just to get all warbands in play. But mostly because we were all together for once and might as well have all included. The third game was between me and another player playing Tilean Mercenaries. This leaves us with 3 players left. The Lizardman player has 4 Campaign Points so far, while the other two have 2 each. They're going to play against each other.

My formula for the 'who's-playing-who' is that the leading warband 'sits over'. If two are equal, the highest rated of the two sits over. They will then play against the warband with the 2nd most Campaign Points (or highest, depending on how much ahead they got). If two are equal in Campaign Points, they will play against the highest rated warband.

My concern is though, that this won't last in the end, and will result in mostly fixed 2v2's (or 3 players playing against each other, while the two lowest play against each other).

How do you solve this? Do you randomize who plays against who, do you start out with fixed battles, do you have some requirement that all will have to play all before a new round starts?

It might solve itself in the end, but I'd just like to be ahead of time.

We had a similar problem in our BTB campaign (a couple of years ago now ). We had 7 players. We would have two 1v1 games and then kept trying to organise a 2v1 or 1v1v1 game. For us this proved troublesome for two reasons:
1) it is harder to get 3 people together for game, and
2) multi-player games take longer which didn't work well when we played on weeknights with work the following day (we had players who were very TOO cautious and some games took forever).

In the end I decided that it was better to stick with as many 1v1 games as possible even if that resulted in a warband missing out on a 'round' of gaming or some warbands playing more games than others. This would then need to be balanced with multi-player games to ensure that the bottom warbands could gang up on more powerful warbands. I don't know how well this would work though if there is a very high focus in a group on winning the campaign over just having fun playing some Mordheim.

We have been suffering the odd number of players problem for so long Mordheim night is listed as Three Guys Playing Mordheim on the local game store's schedule. We solve it by playing lots of 3 player games. Occasionally this means that the two player game plays two games rather than go home after one. Or when we have seven players, four players get to play more than one game.

I hate campaigns where players do not play games, so I always try to have everyone who shows up involved in a game.

Von Kurst wrote:

We have been suffering the odd number of players problem for so long Mordheim night is listed as Three Guys Playing Mordheim on the local game store's schedule.

Sorry, but this cranked me up! Almost sad  

Thanks for letting me know, that I'm not the only one with this problem!
But how do you guys handle the 3-man games? We have quite a lot of those as well, and none of us are really fans of them, because it's always 1v1 with 1 player on the sideline. I think we've had ONE very good game, where everyone was in action. That was a tremendous game though, so it would be awesome if all of them were like that.

I agree, Benjamin, 1v1 is the way to go, even if it tips the balance a bit. It's faster and more fun usually. My campaign is designed for 1v1s as well, with the possibility of multiplayer games, but not as the main drive. We'll have some more, but I'll prepare them better. 5 players is just still not a good number. And I know how you feel, I'm a very cautious player myself and can see how my turns can take quite long. So it's probably a good thing I'm playing Dwarves - few units, not that much movement, no magic and you don't have to play overly cautious.

And yeah, you're right, mr. Kurst, having everyone play is definitely more fun!

Edit: I was just reminded of the awesome 3-man game by my roomie - it was Druchii (melee oriented), Undead and Beastmen. No one gave up, everyone was in melee, there was 14 peasants the Undeads were defending. I made 4 rout tests at Ld 7 with the Beastmen, but when the Druchii routed, I got the Vampire too close. Luckily I failed the rout test, else I wouldn't have had my 4 Heroes left ^_^ but that game was incredible. I think it has to do with so much melee, so we had to get in each other's faces. Also that he had the expendable peasants, so he could split his warband up. Almost like an additional warband.