Rumble

Rumble is a three-player Battle Format in which three independent armies fight for control of the same battlefield.

Unless this page states otherwise, use the normal Core Rules. Each player builds their army normally, chooses their Commander normally, and uses the Missions provided by that Commander normally. Rumble adds its own shared Take and Hold scoring layer on top of those Commander Missions.

Each army has two opposing armies, known as Rivals. Models belonging to either Rival are enemy models for all rules purposes.

Whenever a rule refers to your opponent, it may refer to either Rival unless that rule specifically requires otherwise. There are no teams in a Rumble battle.

Rumble always uses the Full Battlefield — 183 × 122 cm, regardless of the points limit of each individual army.

The three players are positioned at the three points of an equal triangle. Each player’s Deployment Zone must be equally distant from both other players and from the centre of the battlefield.

Rumble uses seven Objective Markers: one Home Objective for each player, one shared Objective between each pair of neighbouring players, and one Objective in the exact centre of the battlefield.

All three players must have an identical relationship to the battlefield. No player should begin closer to the centre, closer to more Objectives, or closer to one Rival than another.

Every Rumble battle automatically uses Take and Hold in addition to the Missions provided by each player’s Commander.

At the end of each Battle Round, each player scores 1 VP for each Objective Marker they control. The Objective Marker in the centre of the battlefield instead scores 3 VP.

A player can therefore score a maximum of 9 additional VP per Battle Round through Rumble’s Take and Hold rule. These Victory Points are separate from Commander Mission scoring and do not count towards any scoring cap those Missions have.

Objective Control otherwise works normally. When multiple armies contest the same Objective Marker, calculate each army’s Objective Control separately. The army with the highest Objective Control controls it. If two or more armies are tied for the highest Objective Control, the Objective Marker is Contested and none of them control it.

Rumble does not use an Attacker and Defender. Instead, the three players use a Priority Order: First → Second → Third.

Before deployment, all three players make the normal Initiative Roll. The player with the highest result chooses whether they want to be First, Second or Third. The player with the next-highest result chooses from the two remaining positions. The final player takes the remaining position.

Deployment alternates through the Priority Order one unit at a time: First → Second → Third → First, continuing until every army has deployed. Activations during the battle follow the same sequence.

If a player has no Ready units available when their position comes around, skip them and continue to the next player.

At the beginning of each Battle Round after the first, Priority is chosen again.

The player with the fewest total Victory Points chooses their Priority position first. The player with the next-fewest Victory Points chooses from the remaining positions. The player currently leading takes the remaining position.

If players are tied on Victory Points, those tied players make an Initiative Roll to determine who chooses first. First is not automatically the best position; a player may deliberately choose Second or Third to react to their Rivals.

Victory Points from Rumble’s Take and Hold rule and each player’s Commander Missions are combined to determine their final score. The player with the most Victory Points at the end of the battle wins.

Destroying another army does not automatically award additional VP and does not automatically win the game.

If an army is completely eliminated, it keeps any Victory Points it has already earned. Its position in the Priority Order is skipped for the remainder of the battle.

Rumble is about completing your Commander’s objectives while simultaneously fighting both Rivals for control of the battlefield.

Selecting Rumble in Campaign automatically creates a three-player battle, uses the Full Battlefield, loads the seven-objective Rumble layout, and replaces Attacker and Defender with three-player Priority.

Each player still chooses their army, Commander and Commander Missions normally. During the battle, Play Mode tracks all three players’ Victory Points and the current Priority Order. Rumble Take and Hold VP is recorded separately from Commander Mission VP before being combined into each player’s total score.