Quest and Cartridge

Living the Tabletop Daydream


Resources, brainstorming, and plenty of mad ideas for Warcry, Call of Cthulhu, Dungeons & Dragons, along with our own homebrew material and modules.



3-Player Warcry Scenario Ruleset – Desperate Defence

3-Player Warcry games are often frantic and nerve-wracking affairs – in other words, some of the best tabletop out there. However, there’s not a ton of scenarios for 3-player games as opposed to 2-player scenarios.

The following post details one of the free 3-player Warcry scenarios that we recently released in the Foetid Lands pack. You can read more about it in our release post, pick up your copy with the link below, or just grab the rules for the Desperate Defence 3-player scenario scenario below!

Desperate Defence – Setting

Harried throughout the ravaged fields and nightmarish swamps of these distant realms, a tired band of heroes finally discovers the promised land it was seeking all along. However, two opposing bands of challengers have arrived, seeking to contest this field and claim the spoils for their own. Will our desperate defenders be able to hold off their opponents from both sides? Maybe with a little luck, the attackers will turn on each other to even the odds.

Scenario Setup and Victory Conditions

Have the players roll off. The winner of the roll determines who will become the Defender (Red). The two remaining players then roll off to determine which Attacker they will be (Blue or Green).

Have the Defender place 4 objectives on the battlefield. Each objective must be at least 9″ from all other objectives, and more than 3″ from the edge of the map.

Victory Points are awarded as follows:

  • At the end of the first battle round, players score 1 victory point for each objective they control.
  • At the end of the second round, players score 2 victory points for each objective they control.
  • At the end of the third round, players score 3 victory points for each objective they control.
  • And lastly, at the end of the fourth battle round, players score 4 victory points for each objective they control.
  • If at the end of any battle round, a player holds all four objectives, they score an additional 4 victory points.

The player with the most points at game’s end wins.

Notes on scenario: The Attackers are not allies – they are competing with each other as well as the Defender and do not share Victory Points.

Warband sizes: Players are expected to field their full 1000 point warbands (no need to scale back to 800 or 750 as some scenarios encourage).

Tips: the Defender begins with an advantage and a disadvantage. They are able to place the objective markers in order to create favourable placements, and more easily claim them early on due to their numerical superiority. However, they will have the two attackers advancing on them from either side for control of the objectives.

Looking for more 3-Player Warcry Scenarios?

This scenario was originally released as part of the Foetid Lands Pack is a Warcry battlepack intended primarily for casual play and specially designed for 3 players.

These scenarios were curated and/or designed by Joseph McLaughlin (organizer of Montreal’s Golden Troll Tournament) and Alexander Nachaj (of Quest and Cartridge, right here).

Each of the scenarios in this pack is intended for a three way free for all (1v1v1) and comes with the deployment, victory conditions, and twist pre-selected and paired together thematically to make setting up a match quickly, and without much randomization.

The only element not included is the terrain setup, for which you can use any of the terrain deployments and pieces you have at your disposal.

Some of the material presented herein can be found in various rulebooks and mission packs previously released, while some are original creations. This battle pack is non-commercial and intended to be shared as a community resource.

You can pick up your PDF of the battlepack over at our Ko-Fi page free of charge:

Tag: scenario

  • 3-Player Warcry Scenario Ruleset – Desperate Defence

    3-Player Warcry Scenario Ruleset – Desperate Defence

    3-Player Warcry games are often frantic and nerve-wracking affairs – in other words, some of the best tabletop out there. However, there’s not a ton of scenarios for 3-player games as opposed to 2-player scenarios. The following post details one of the free 3-player Warcry scenarios that we recently released in the Foetid Lands pack.…