Unexpected Military Formations: Epic Movie Moments, Part III

Good morning gamers,

We're back with our third installment of the "epic movie moments" that no one in their right minds would try to run in MESBG! We've looked recently at the Uruk-Hai receiving a charge from Aragorn and some Galadhrim and how you can set up your Rivendell battleline to do the "windmill thing" to attack everyone with two-handed weapons and no supports. Today, we turn to a moment that is really stunning to watch but EVERYONE was thinking, "That's a really dumb move" - yes, we're looking at the Elves jumping over the Iron Hills line from the Battle of Five Armies!

Movie Moment #3: "The Elven Jumping Sequence"

Did anyone else almost cry when you saw the Dwarf shieldwall preparing to meet the Gundabad Orc charge during the Battle of Five Armies and the Elves go VAULTING over the line, landing on top of the Orcs and hacking through them? Sure, this wasn't a sound tactical decision, but it was AMAZING, right? Well, of all the things you can't do in MESBG, hopping on the heads of friendly models is not one of them (though I could see this being a rule in a scenario for the Battle of Five Armies sourcebook, whenever that's released). Somehow I doubt it will ever become part of a Legendary Legion, but how would one attempt to capture this event in the game?

Weeeeeeeee . . .

Let's break down the scene: first, the Dwarves have formed a shieldwall with at least two ranks (everyone having spears). Second, the Elves come up over the Dwarf ranks and arrive in front of the Dwarves. Third, the Dwarves stop making a big wall and instead charge in after the Elves. So that means in MESBG, we need to do the following:

• Have Elves behind our ranks of Dwarves;
• Have at least two ranks of Dwarves with spears on everyone;
• Have the Elves get over/past the Dwarves; and
• Have the Dwarves come in afterwards.

When you put it that way, it doesn't sound so bad, now does it? Obviously to demonstrate this, we need a historical alliance of the Halls of Thranduil and either Erebor Reclaimed or the Iron Hills, so here we go:

• The Halls of Thranduil: 283pts
  
• Thranduil, King of the Woodland Realm with everything
• 6 Mirkwood Elves
• 3 Mirkwood Elves with Elf bows and Elven Glaives
  
• The Iron Hills: 417pts
  
• Dain Ironfoot, Lord of the Iron Hills on war boar
• 11 Iron Hills Dwarves with spears
• 1 Iron Hills Dwarf with spear and banner
• 4 Iron Hills Dwarves with crossbows
• 2 Iron Hills Goat Riders
  

So in this list, we have a ton of Iron Hills Warriors with shields and spears (and a banner because why not), supported by 4 Dwarves with crossbows, 3 Elves with Elf bows, Thranduil and Dain (escorted by two Goat Riders), and of course 6 Mirkwood Elves who are ready to "leap over" the Dwarf anvil at the right time. For those keeping track at home, this list meets almost all of the criteria I use for balanced lists at 700-points in our Bare Necessities series (we only have 29 models instead of the recommended 30, but we could do that by removing something from Thranduil if we "needed to" - but I don't think we do).

Here's how we set up the formation (the models showcased here are provided courtesy of Rythbyrt, because I don't own any at this point in time - the Elves all have glaives though, while the models we're looking at today are all sword-only):

Our Dwarves have a six-file, two-rank battle line ready to receive the enemy charge (and any arrows they wish to throw at us). Behind them are some Elves, slightly off-set from the middle and ready to race ahead of the Dwarves and charge into the thick of it. I've placed the Elves in a tight formation so that they can't be hit by enemy archery that tries to drift around the Dwarves (plus there's probably some element of distrust between them, as they Elves and Dwarves are bitter rivals who find themselves as unlikely allies at this moment).

When the enemy is close to charging us (and we're not under any threat of being shot), a Dwarf from the left-most file moves 2" to the right of the formation and one of the Elves from the rear formation takes his place in front of the Dwarf ("jumping over," if you will):

Weeeeee!!!!

We can do the same thing with another Elf and the second left-most Dwarf from the second rank (which means we still have a slightly-larger-than-1" gap between the Dwarf front-rank and this newly-arranged battle line):

Lolloping over the Dwarf (with lots of room to "actually" make the movement work) . . .

The third file in the new formation is made . . .

Got another Elf over the line . . .

. . . and the fourth is in place as well:

Four Elves jumping over Dwarves so far!

At this point, we don't have any space for the last two Elves to move to the front normally, so we need to do some Dwarf shuffling to get the formation to line up correctly (most importantly to make sure the Elves are all within range of the banner - and that the banner will only be touching Dwarves):

Slide a few Dwarves into the front - making room for the banner and making sure the banner keeps Shieldwall for as long as possible!

We now need to slide the banner over and clear out a 2" gap (measure, measure, measure!) and place two Dwarves in a line there:

Gotta make a gap - and a gap we made!

And we have our last Elves moving into position through the new gap:

Room to move through "legally", Dwarves to jump over "thematically", job's a good one . . .

With the Elves finally "jumping" into position, we close up the formation - with Thranduil moving in behind the ranks as an essential part of this formation:

Two trapped Elves, but they'll be alright . . .

So what does all this work do for us? It actually does a few things. Elves are great models, but without shields they're really squishy. Against some kinds of archery, even D6 Elves can be skewered. D8 Iron Hills Dwarves (while in shieldwall - D7 otherwise) are very resilient to enemy archery and the formation we started with makes it very hard to actually shoot at the Elves unless the archers are moving around the flanks (where they risk getting torn apart by our archers and cavalry). 

Remember, we're here too . . .

Second, once the fighting begins, the Elves provide the ability to do more damage in melee than the Iron Hills Dwarves do. Why? Because the Elves can go two-handed - and as we talked about last time, your chances of winning the fight are pretty good when going two-handed with a high Fight Value and a banner reroll (and in THIS fight we have a F4/S4 spear-supporter and a banner reroll). Furthermore, the Elves can benefit from a +1 To Wound bonus since Thranduil is nearby, so these Elves can get +2 To Wound (potentially rerolling 1s if they Feint). If you're fighting against even-Defense models, they'll wound at least one-pip better than the Dwarves will and against odd-Defense models they'll wound two pips better.

Finally, since Mirkwood Elves can't get standard spears, we're avoiding paying 2 points/glaive on the Elf melee models in order to get more spears total, making our formation much more flexible than it would be if half (or even less than half) of the Dwarves had spears. Did you see how we shuffled one of the front-rank guys to be a second-rank guy at the end of that formation maneuver? That wouldn't be possible if he didn't have a spear.

Now I know what you're thinking: why would I risk having a D5 Elf in the front rank when I could have a D7-8 Dwarf in the front rank? Maybe you do want that (the archers can be clumped together so that there are 4 Iron Hills Dwarves with crossbows in front of the 3 Mirkwood Elves with Glaives and Elf bows if you want that), but the Elves give you the flexibility of dealing extra damage which the Dwarves cannot do. This is a defensive formation originally that turns into an offensive formation - and one that might throw your opponent for a loop if he's not careful. At the end of the day, though, you're doing it so you can do that scene from the movie - and honestly, when you've played a bunch of games, that counts for something.

Conclusion

Hopefully you learned something from this - I know I really enjoyed figuring out how to do it. We'll be back sometime in the future for other epic movie moments - if you have something in mind, drop it in the comments and we'll see what we can do! Until next time, happy hobbying!