Free for all board games change the social contract. There are no allies, no shared objectives and nobody to blame. Whoever is winning becomes everybody’s problem, and managing that perception is often more important than managing your position.
Headhunters, one of the modes in Trials of MAYA, is a good example of how a competitive combat system changes character when you remove the teams.
What is Trials of MAYA?
Trials of MAYA is an expandable card-driven arena combat game. It combines three genres: MOBAs, classic 90s tactics games, and TCGs without booster packs. It plays 1 to 4 players in 60 to 180 minutes for ages 14 and up, across five game modes. Headhunters is a free-for-all bounty hunt for 2 to 4 players where you race to earn enough bounty points. It launches on Gamefound September 8, 2026.
What changes without teams
The combat engine is identical to the team modes. Each round every player commits a card face down onto a three-slot action mat and reveals simultaneously, with that number setting initiative now and returning as energy two rounds later. You spend energy on Move, Attack, Defend, Draw, Push and Pull. Champions upgrade mid-match through objectives that pay XP.
What changes is the shape of the incentives, in three ways.
Nobody covers for you. In the 2v2 Siege mode you can commit fully to one job because a partner handles the other. In a free-for-all you are your own frontline and your own escape plan, so overextending is much more expensive.
Being ahead is dangerous. When the win condition is a bounty race, the leader is the most attractive target for everyone else. Building a lead quietly is a genuine skill, and so is deciding when to stop being subtle.
Third parties decide fights. Two champions committing to a fight are both spending resources, and a third who arrives afterward collects. That dynamic exists in every free-for-all and it is the main thing that separates the mode from a duel.
Why the same system works for both
This is the interesting design point. Headhunters does not use a modified ruleset. It uses a different win condition on the same engine.
That works because the underlying decisions are already about resource timing rather than about a specific opponent. The Energy Gambit asks whether you want to act first now or have more later, and that question is equally sharp whether you are facing one opponent or three. The difference is that at four players, a low commitment might get you the initiative against everyone or against nobody, because you are guessing at a field rather than a person.
The arena helps too. A short terrain vocabulary of walls, spikes, high and low ground and voids, plus push and pull that deal collision damage against obstructions, means positioning stays readable even with four champions and their captured minions on the board.
Rulebooks and public metadata are on BoardGameGeek, the full breakdown is on the official page, and there is a Tabletop Simulator build.
Who free for all board games suit
Free for all board games suit groups that enjoy the social layer: reading the table, choosing targets, and the moment where everyone realises they should have stopped somebody two rounds ago.
They suit odd-numbered and awkward groups, because there is no pairing problem.
And they suit tables where the teams mode has become predictable, since the same champions behave quite differently when nobody is watching your flank.
If your group prefers coordination and role division, the 2v2 Siege mode is the better fit. If they prefer a table where everyone is a threat, Headhunters is built for exactly that.
Follow or back Trials of MAYA on Gamefound.