Multi-player games

Has any of you done a multiple player game and if so how was it organized? How well did it play out?

My group tried this and it was a total mess with poor planning.
Basically it was 2 500 pt games playing on a 8x4 with each player deploying on their quarter of the table only, no mixing. The fight was long edge to long edge.

This was not told to the attacking team, whom have already made their lists to work together with a mix of British and Americans. This totally destroyed the strategy that was planned.

This lead to a change is plans and had the US player to totally ignore his opposing player and move all his units to his teammates and the both the US and British just steamrolled the 2nd German player causing him to break.

Also after set up it was decided that the players did not share the BR pts and the if one army broke the whole side broke.

The Defenders (Germans) made all the rule changes with the allied side arguing that it was bullshit. This lead to a player almost quiting the game.

Once everything was done with these rule changes hurting the Germans more than helping.

So one guy didn't get to play much, another guy getting over ran and a bunch of arguments and no one having a good time.

So I am hoping you guys might have some insight so we can prevent this again. We plan on having more multiple player games. But right now it's not going to happen.

1) Why didn't the other German player flank attack the yanks?

2) Why didn't you choose an overall commander for each side?

3) Each player keeps his/her own BR, but each side works as a team.

Paul

Never played a multiplayer game, but i would play it different:

1) Set the point value
2) decide which scenario and
3) set-up the board layout
4) divide the points between the players equally (except 10% you can transfer between the players)

Every player start in his sector. All players of the team share the BR. All players share the number of orders.
There after are no other rules.

Haven't really tried anything like this myself, but would suggest the following:

1) Pool the orders generated from the dice, with players alternating spending them. Players may give their orders to their teammates to use. Each player gets to keep their orders from Officers, and only they may use these orders.

2) Deployment and co-mingling should depend on scenario. If the plan is to have multiple dispersed deployment zones, I would recommend splitting them by player (with the possible exception of scouts and HQ). If it is all one deployment zone, players should co-mingle freely.

3) Add in special multi-player rules. Maybe have something to represent Brits and Americans not quite working together perfectly, such as having worse moral if only other guys are near them, or make it so other countries officers can't remove pin. Add in rules on communication- such as teams not being allowed to talk privately, unless they take a BR token, or use wire communications or whatever. In short, have stuff so that it's not just a big game, but a real multi-player game.