Unexpected Military Formations: Epic Movie Moments Edition!

Good morning gamers,

Have you ever watched the Lord of the Rings movies or the Hobbit Movies and been like, "That would be so cool to do in MESBG?" I mean, you're watching the movie, you see something REALLY cool, and you're legitimately feeling either, "I SOOOO want to do that on Monday night" or "I really wish that worked as well in MESBG". In recent months, I've done posts that looked at real historical formations that don't really work in MESBG (but CAN work - kind of) and formations that, by all rights, shouldn't work in MESBG but do. Today, we're tackling something entirely different (and yet, completely similar): things that we KNOW worked in the movies, but by all rights, should not - may I even say CANNOT - work in MESBG.

I'm going to begin by saying two things on this subject: first, not everything from the movies should be in Matched Play. Legolas shouldn't be able to place a token on the ground whenever he kills someone with a shield and be able to "surf" on that shield (being able to move full and shoot so long as he's going downhill) - that's good for scenario play, but less so for Matched Play (too many things to think about - and by the way, it is a special rule in the deeping wall scenario in the War in Rohan supplement). 

However, some Legendary Legions have brought elements of "movie magic" into the game - like Lurtz's ability to throw a shield at someone. What we're aiming for isn't to add rules to MESBG so we can do stuff in the movies (though I think that could be included in Legendary Legions or scenarios in sourcebooks), but rather to find ways to use the existing MESBG rules to make the movie moments happen (or at least, something like them).

Second, MESBG isn't designed to work like real-life. It just isn't - real-life action is far too complicated to replicate on the tabletop. Why don't bow-armed models need to take time to drop their bows and draw their swords? How can a model carry a bow, spear, shield, and banner all at the same time? Where are all those throwing spears kept? While the rules could address these things (the carrying-so-much-gear thing actually WAS accounted for when I first got started in the game), it adds unnecessary complications and record-keeping (is this Warrior of Rohan the guy who threw the spear on the previous round, or was it this guy?). If something works in real-life a certain way and MESBG has ignored that benefit for the sake of simplicity, so be it. I do think things like hitting a target that has moved should be harder, and I think spears and pikes should have some benefit in the front rank - more on this later - but it's okay to me that these things don't mirror real life perfectly.

With these two thoughts in mind, let's start looking at a movie moment that we all love - the charge of the Elves towards the Uruk-Hai pike block at Helm's Deep!

Movie Moment #1: "The Uruk-Hai Pike Block"

I mentioned in passing just now that spears and pikes in the front rank don't do anything in MESBG. I recommended in an article on the Assault Upon Helm's Deep LL that their pikes should get a special bonus if they a) are charged and have not moved, and b) are ranked up three-deep (something like +1 To Wound on everyone or removing cavalry charge bonuses). While Easterlings can get great mileage out of having three ranks of pikes (since the Phalanx special rule allows most of the Easterling models to have two models make way for a friendly model that loses a combat), other factions (Dol Amroth, Lothlorien, and of course Isengard) have to be a bit more careful with how they use their pikes. In many situations, you'll see pikemen operating as spearmen for these factions - except for certain models on the flanks who are able to support two-pikes-deep because there's an escape route for the first pike to make way for the model that's being supported. Still, wouldn't it be nice if you could replicate a three-deep formation with your Isengard (or Dol Amroth/Lothlorien) pikes?

Breaking this charge with pikes? Yeah, we're never doing that in MESBG . . .

Yes, this looks cool - but how do we make it practical in MESBG? For this challenge, I'm going to abide by the following restrictions:

• I'm only going to use pikemen - no Uruk-Hai Warriors with shields/crossbows in the front rank, no Berserkers in the front rank, just pikes;
• I'm allowed a Captain in the formation to give it access to Heroic Moves/Marches (and add a little extra punch - even though he has no pike); and
• The formation should not have any of its models be trapped by poor model placement.
  

Let's look and see what usually happens when you try to do a three-rank pike support maneuver - we'll look at lists with the following participants (and for record, the forces of good army is intentionally equipped with gear that is thematic to the movies - NOT how you'd actually want them in normal game play):

• The Defenders of Helm's Deep LL - 500pts
• Theoden, King of Rohan with heavy armor and shield
• 7 Warriors of Rohan with throwing spears and shields
• 9 Warriors of Rohan with shields
  
• Aragorn - Strider with armor
• 8 Galadhrim Warriors with Elf bows
  
• 1 Galadhrim Warrior with Elf bow and banner

This list has 27 models - all infantry - and runs the bare minimum heroes to simulate the Deeping Wall's force that hold the breach (or watches from the Hornburg in disbelief). If played competitively, you'd actually want Haleth down there with Aragorn and a bunch of Rohan guys (Rohan Royal Guards especially) while your Elves back up Warriors of Rohan near Theoden while carrying spears and Elf bows, so that those F3 Warriors of Rohan become F5. Right or wrong (theme is never wrong, though), they are engaging the following force:

• Assault Upon Helm's Deep LL - 500pts
  
• Uruk-Hai Uber-Captain with two-handed axe
• 11 Uruk-Hai Warriors with pikes
• 1 Uruk-Hai Warrior with pike and banner
  
• Uruk-Hai Shaman with armor
• 8 Uruk-Hai Warriors with crossbows
• 1 Uruk-Hai Demolition Team with 2 Flaming Brands
• Uruk-Hai Siege Veteran with Isengard Assault Ballista
• 1 Siege Crew
• 1 Siege Crew with pike
  

With 28 models, the Uruks have a very slight numbers advantage and lots of Uruk-Hai to receive the charge. To be thematically appropriate, let's assume that we're playing a scenario where the armies can start in the center of the board and intend to charge on the first turn (Aragorn and his Elves charging into the pikes). How do you array your pikemen to receive that charge? Let's look at the least-inspired way to do it - form a big brick:

The Elf with spear and bow is standing in for our banner guy . . .

Here we have a three-by-three pike block supported by two models on each side to protect the flanks - the Uruk-Hai Uber-Captain is in the center of the formation and a banner is nearby - not supporting the Captain, since we don't want any more -1s if we choose to two-hand. This formation, however, is going to get wrapped pretty easily by the Elves and Aragorn (and by the way, the two Galadhrim that don't look like the others were painted by my kids - they liked the final result, so I'm keeping them as is . . . for now):

Two Elves run deep into the formation to remove control zones . . .

. . . some more Elves pile in on one side . . .

. . . and Aragorn piles in with two Elves at the corner while the center is charged by two models.

Undoubtedly, Aragorn will be calling a Combat to chew through guys (who they all wound on 5s) - though he could choose to call a Strength instead to make it more likely he kills two people (in which case, we would have wanted to charge two models instead of one). The Elves do their best to wrap after Aragorn wins the fight and kills the guy):

Well that was expected . . .

And of course, with Aragorn STILL on the loose, the Uruks lose more guys when the normal fights are resolved:

Thanks to a freak success involving two pike supports on the right side, the kill count is nearly equal, though the Elves have Aragorn and the Uruks do not . . .

With Aragorn and 6 Elves against an Uruk-Hai Captain and 8 pikes, the odds aren't terribly against the Uruks EXCEPT that they're spread very thin and can be trapped pretty easily if Aragorn calls another Combat next turn - so let's just say that the brick didn't work. We might be tempted to say that the biggest problem for the Uruks was going three-ranks-deep (since we had trapped guys on the first round) - and this is certainly true (traps win games, after all). 

The ACTUAL problem we faced was that the Uruk-Hai battle line was only five files wide (which was because we were three-ranks deep in the middle, but we were also being flanked). If you've ever ranked up three ranks of Uruks (or even Easterlings), this will not have been a surprise - low front coverage means traps (and more importantly, we can't concentrate attacks in the forward arc). But how can we "safely" get three Attacks into our fights without trapping our men? Well, let's understand a little bit more about how pikes work in MESBG.

Three formations: linear, triangle, and "Mickey Mouse"

Here we see three different ways you can orient your pikes: on the left, we see three models in a line fighting an enemy. When aligned this way, we have a pike who is supporting a pike who is supporting a friendly model, so we get 3 Attacks. This is the most direct way to support, but if the middle model gets shot, we go from having 2 supporting models to 0 supporting models. With only D5, this is an easy way to get your models extra attacks but makes them very vulnerable to archery.

In the middle, we have three models in a triangle with only one of those models engaged - because they are all in base contact, we still have a pike who is supporting a pike who is supporting a friendly model, so we get 3 Attacks. Because everyone is in base contact, our opponent will need to kill both pikemen to deny us the supporting attacks (so this is a bit better, though it takes up more horizontal space than the linear approach we just viewed).

On the right, we have a "Mickey Mouse" set-up where we have two pikemen in base contact with a friendly model but NOT in base contact with each other. When this is the case, we don't have a pike supporting a pike supporting a friendly model, so we can only benefit from one of the pikes, giving us 2 Attacks. However, like the triangle formation, we can benefit from either pikeman, so both will need to be shot for us to lose our supporting attacks.

The middle formation is the best approach if you are worried about enemy archery, though the first one takes up less space because it utilizes the area behind your formation better (making your formation deeper instead of longer). Don't do the third one unless you intend to have your pikes operate as spearmen (and even then, I'm not sold). So how do we make our pike block a bit more flexible and less worried about being trapped? By employing a mix of the left and middle illustrations above!

Same forces, different Uruk-Hai formation . . .

You can see in the formation the use of triangles: we have two pikemen in the front rank with a third pikeman touching both. We've added to this triangle a single model that slants to the side - this gives the center model the ability to move backwards and give way for whatever model he's supporting. We've used the same 13-model formation and because of how we've set up our formation now, we have one five-man formation and two four-man formations giving us up to 7 models in the front line (and 8" of total coverage). Now I know what you're thinking: there's no way we get three Attacks with THIS formation. Well, that's true to an extent, but hear me out . . .

The Elves charge - but it's much harder to wrap-around this time . . .

Let's assume that we've been charged by the Elves we looked at before - THIS time, we don't have five guys in the front taking up 5" of real-estate, but rather have up to 7 guys taking up ~8" of real-estate - that's almost double what we had before and will keep us from getting trapped from all sides. In addition, all the models that are engaged (except the two guys on the ends of the formation) COULD have 3 dice in the fight (and our Captain could have FIVE dice). Furthermore, all of the front-line models are within range of our banner, so our models can roll anywhere between 2-6 dice to win the fight. Not bad, eh?

The funny thing about this formation is that it rewards you the most if you have priority (which we are likely to have on the turn that a smaller infantry army charges us - and more than certainly have it if cavalry are charging us for the first time). Since we have priority, we get to decide what order the fights will be fought in - Heroic Combats excepted. If there are no enemy Heroic Combats to worry about, we are able to pick which fights we want the 3 Attacks in and we resolve those first. Then we can deal with the 1-man-with-banner-support fights and hope for the best. In this case, we probably have a Heroic Combats from Aragorn - let's see how he does this time around:

Well, okay, some things never change . . .

Once again, Aragorn could have charged two models on the first turn, but because of the pike formation, he knew he'd be facing 4+ dice (with a banner reroll, most likely) - and THAT would have been a BIG risk. So Aragorn played more conservatively (again) and charged only one model and called a Combat with a friend. He won and he killed the guy, charging into some of the pikemen who have already fought (so they get to fight again).

The aftermath - one side of the formation crumbled, the other side held . . .

Well, it's still bad - but if you look at the fighting resolution, we killed quite a few Elves and limited the kills that our troops received. The pike rank did break under the charge on its right flank (viewer's left), but we're in a much better position now than we were before. 

It's important to note that while this formation did fall apart (at least a little), it's only part of the story of this fight - Theoden and his warriors of Rohan may outnumber the remaining Uruk-Hai, but they have to deal with crossbows, a ballista, and a bomb - yikes! The pike block may have been torn up, but the other Uruks are ready to tear into the Rohan models. And yet, despite the casualties suffered, we didn't melt away as quickly as you'd think - part of that is due to placement of troops and the threat that our placement posed to the enemy heroes.

Honestly, the formation would benefit a lot from having non-pikemen in the front rank (guys with shields could defend by shielding if they're not supported by pikes or Berserkers would get 2-4 Attacks depending on whether they were supported or not), but the flexibility of using your front-rank troops to support their nearby comrades if they're not all engaged is a huge benefit as well (something we didn't probe here). Perhaps this formation is relegated to "looking cool" and not competitive, but I leave that to you.

Conclusion

For the next few months, we'll be visiting some of the other epic movie moments on the first Thursday of the month, showing you how to do really cool things from the movies in a way that works in MESBG - if you like these posts, let us know! Our next journey will take us to the first moments of the first film that was released - be sure to rewatch the first 15 minutes of the Fellowship of the Ring before August comes around. Until next time, happy hobbying!