Fyrd Formations: Breaking Shieldwalls and the Battle of Brunanburh

Good morning gamers,

Have you ever played a game where both you and your opponent brought S3 armies that were trying to crack through a D6 shieldwall? Is it frustrating to spend all of your game locked in the middle of the board trying to get an advantage over your opponent and failing? MESBG tends to reward armies for having high Defense (or compensate for having lower Defense by fielding far more models) - but how did armies historically break through shieldwalls? While the Svinfilking was a strategy in England, old poetry tells us a few other tidbits as found in an old song (filled to the brim with propaganda) about the Battle of Brunanburh.

In today's formations post, we're digging into the historical text (however accurate) and seeing what nuggets of wisdom can be found from the account. We'll then look at ways you can employ the strategies used historically to MESBG (which, as we all know, don't adequately reflect reality - but still). Let's get right to it!

The Battle of Brunanburh - How To Break Shieldwalls

If you have 12 minutes and want to see a visualization of the battle, check out the YouTube video from Baz Battles (the whole channel is great - I love their stuff). As a brief history lesson, King Aethelstan of the Anglo-Saxons was receiving tribute from the Kings of Alba (Scotland) and Strathclyde (western Nuthumbria), but the kings eventually joined forces (and allied with the Hiberno-Norse from Dublin) and invaded Aethelstan's lands. Aethelstan met them outside the city of Brunanburh and strove to become the first King of Great Britain by defeating their armies. The text we have of the battle can be read here, though I'll be highlighting excerpts from it below.

The song begins with a quick summary of what we're talking about, then cuts to the chase to where the fight got interesting:

In this year King Aethelstan, Lord of warriors, ring-giver to men, and his brother also, Prince Eadmund, won eternal glory in battle with sword edges around Brunanburh. They split the shield-wall, they hewed battle shields with remnants of hammers. The sons of Eadweard, it was only befitting their noble descent from their ancestors that they should often defend their land in battle against each hostile people, horde and home.

We'll skip the gloating over the enemy in light of my Scottish ancestry (I have Saxon in me too, but we'll ignore that for now) - the poem continues:

There lay many a warrior by spears destroyed; Northern men shot over shield, likewise Scottish as well, weary, war sated. The West-Saxons pushed onward all day; in troops they pursued the hostile people. They hewed the fugitive grievously from behind with swords sharp from the grinding.

We then get an account of tackling a very important lord - Anlaf of Dublin (and some of his Scottish allies for good measure):

The Mercians did not refuse hard hand-play to any warrior who came with Anlaf over the sea-surge in the bosom of a ship, those who sought land, fated to fight. Five lay dead on the battle-field, young kings, put to sleep by swords, likewise also seven of Anlaf's earls, countless of the army, sailors and Scots.

The poem then moves to the defeat of Constantine of Scotland and how great the Saxons were (I told you there was propaganda here - this section is PARTICULARLY egregious):

Likewise, there also the old campaigner through flight came to his own region in the north - Constantine - hoary warrior. . . . That grizzled-haired warrior had no reason to boast of sword-slaughter, old deceitful one, no more did Anlaf; with their remnant of an army they had no reason to laugh that they were better in deed of war in battle-field - collision of banners, encounter of spears, encounter of men, trading blows - when they played against the sons of Eadweard on the battle field.

Interestingly enough, no mention is made of King Owen of Strathclyde . . . I guess he wasn't that important. :-) The rest of the poem goes into how great and awesome the Saxons are - I don't need to highlight anything from the rest of it. However, there are four things from the lines above that I did want to highlight to bring to the forefront of the tactics section below. To illustrate the principles, though, let's use the following forces:

• Easterlings - 600pts, 35 models
• Amdur, Lord of Blades on armored horse [ARMY LEADER]
• 2 Black Dragon Kataphrakts
• 1 Black Dragon Kataphrakt with War Drum
• 2 Easterling Warriors with bows
• 2 Easterling Warriors with shields
• 1 Easterling Warrior with pike and shield
• Easterling Captain with bow
• 4 Easterling Warriors with bows
• 2 Easterling Warriors with shields
• 2 Easterling Warriors with shields and pikes
• 1 Easterling Warrior with shield, pike, and banner
• 3 Black Dragon Warriors with shields and pikes
• Easterling Captain with bow
• 4 Easterling Warriors with bows
• 2 Easterling Warriors with shields
• 2 Easterling Warriors with shields and pikes
• 1 Easterling Warrior with shield, pike, and banner
• 3 Black Dragon Warriors with shields and pikes
• Numenor - 600pts, 30 models
• Elendil, High King of Gondor and Arnor with shield [ARMY LEADER]
• 7 Warriors of Numenor with shields
• 2 Warriors of Numenor with shields and spears
• 1 Warrior of Numenor with shield, spear, and banner
• Captain of Numenor on horse with lance, bow, and heavy armor
• 4 Warriors of Numenor with shields
• 4 Warriors of Numenor with bows and spears
• Captain of Numenor with shield
• 4 Warriors of Numenor with shields
• 5 Warriors of Numenor with bows and spears

Usually when a F3-4/S3/D6 Easterling force meets another shieldwall, it hopes to ram against the enemy ranks, kill models here and there, and lose very few models - and this is because they get fairly cheap D6 units. Numenor is easier to wound than a lot of other armies, but their S4 also means the Easterlings will die quickly. Today, though, I'm going to cast off my previous biases and try to showcase how the Easterlings can break the Numenor shieldwall using the four principles of the Battle of Brunanburh.

Principle #1: Concentrated Force

First and foremost, shield walls need to be split - and we do that by concentrating attacks in a few fights. This should go without saying, but the common strategy when tackling a shieldwall is to have your guys pair in equal fights against the enemy - something like this:

I am borrowing Centaur's Easterlings - the Captain with shield and the Dragon Knight are Captains with bows and Amdur is being represented by Khamul

While this SEEMS like a great idea (have as many fights as possible and hope you win more than your opponent), it doesn't concentrate your power enough to do enough damage overall (at least not when you don't have F4 in all your fights). Most Easterling players who try to form a pike-block find their armies get wrapped by the enemy, so they end up using their pikes like spears. This not only means that more of your models need to be upgraded to Black Dragons in order to have F4 in every fight, but it also means that your ability to kill the enemy in fights that you win is reduced. Here's what happened - Easterlings lost 5 models, while Numenor only lost 4 (though the Easterlings were able to take out the mounted Numenorean Captain's horse, Amdur lost the Strike-off against Elendil and lost his Fate point):

Not a horrible exchange, but we haven't dominated anywhere . . .

Putting this out there: I'd rather have a 9pt Morannon Orc with shield and spear than a 9pt Easterling Warrior with shield and pike - and since they're historical allies, you could certainly do that. Where the Easterlings really shine, though, is when they can bring the benefit of pikes to bear against their opponents, so let's do that.

The usual problem with pike blocks (as we've addressed in a previous formations post) is that you can trap the front guy if you pike support with two models. The Phalanx rule for Easterlings gets past that - you can make way with two Phalanx models and "everything's fine." What we've formed here is a variant of the Tesudo formation we covered last year - and we've extend our battle line by adding archers to the flanks:

Some parts of the line are weak, but other parts are strong

With 26 models present (both Captain formations), we've got a healthy 14-model front-line with 6 of those models being in the pike block. This allows us to get 3-4 Attacks (depending on whether it's a fight with a Captain or not) at F4 with a banner reroll in all of the pike-block fights - perfect for getting a high roll (most of the time - 80-86% chance of getting a 5-high on 4-5 dice). When you go to wound, you have either 3 S3 hits (0.43 probability of getting a 6) or 2 S3 hits with 2 S4/5 hits if the Captain uses Piercing Strike (0.86 probability of getting a 6 - higher if your also two-hand with your Captain). This time, when the combats happened, both sides lost six models (though thanks to Amdur tying the Strike-off at F10 and Elendil getting a 4-high on the duel roll, Elendil ended up dying and the only models lost by the Eatserlings were their archers - who were in a pretty rough spot as it was):

The Numenorean center is in trouble - as is their right flank . . .

The Easterlings have done a great job splitting the Numenorean center (and Amdur and his cavalry are about to roll-up Numenor's right flank), leaving Numenor with a split-focus of tackling the pike block or spreading out to hit the models harassing both flanks. Even if Numenor gets the first move on the next turn, the pike block can support itself to keep themselves from getting into too much trouble (or even abandon the pike block to wrap around and pull supporting models off). Either way, splitting the center has worked pretty well.

Principle #2: Soften With Archery

When you think of shieldwall combat, you probably don't think about archery - and yet, archery was one of the primary drivers for using shieldwalls in the first place! The tale of the Battle of Brunanburh tells us that "There lay many a warrior by spears destroyed; Northern men shot over shield, likewise Scottish as well . . ." indicating that a mixture of melee damage and archery damage caused the shieldwall of the Scots/Strathclyde/Hiberno-Norse to falter. In both armies we feature today, we have shooting - and that shooting should be used to soften up the shieldwall for attack.

While we could certainly use our shooting to weaken the shieldwall as it advances across the field, we can also use our shooting to weaken it from the sides or rear.

I've said this many times before, but it bears repeating: shooting is good in MESBG because your opponent doesn't get a say in it - you either kill the target or you don't based on how well you roll. Sure, your opponent might deny you line of sight to what you want to shoot (or apply penalties to your shoot value via Blinding Light), but you've got the dice, you're doing the rolling, and if you roll well enough, you'll kill whatever he has. Take shots at shieldwalls - losing a single spearman could result in a fight going your way and a hole being made. The Easterling force I showed today had 10 Easterling Warriors with bows as well as 2 Captains with bows - plenty of shooting to be dangerous.

Principle #3: Hero Hunting (Or Stalling)

No shieldwall is safe if there's a big hero gunning for it. Yes, heroes can stall out against mass numbers, but as a general rule, shieldwalls are good for holding off large groups of basic warriors - not heroes or monsters (warrior or hero). Heroes like having lots of models to fight because their improved profile is often wasted if fighting a single combatant, so getting your heroes locked into the enemy's shieldwall is important.

As a result, you need to head-hunt the enemy heroes to keep them from tearing through your lines. The account of the Battle of Brunanburh tells us of five young kings and seven earls who died on the Scottish/Hiberno-Norse side - and while we're not told how they died, we know that they did. In MESBG, this can be done in one of two ways (assuming we're talking about melee fighting): having a bigger hero smack them around OR have elite troops beat them up.

Easterling Captains aren't particularly great warriors (just F4/S4/2A), but they can be devastating to a Numenorean line. Elendil and Isildur are well kitted to kill Easterling Captains, just like Amdur and Khamul can challenge Captains of Numenor well - if these heroes can focus on taking out smaller heroes, you can get a huge advantage later in the game.

You can also stunt heroes with high-Fight warriors - F6 Elven warriors are available to every Good army as convenient allies (if not historical allies) via Lothlorien or more expensively through the Halls of Thranduil. Lots of factions get access to F5 troops (Elves or otherwise) and most heroes you ally in will be F5 as well. Evil doesn't have these options, but has plenty of F4/S4 options available to their friends (at least in the Armies of the Lord of the Rings book - Hobbit evil armies have a hard time getting F4 troops).

But no matter how you do it, throwing lots of dice at a hero can stall them out - either by beating them in a fight OR forcing them to throw Might at the problem so they don't lose and get killed. Once they're out of Might, a single heroic warrior can tie them down and stall them out - and when that happens, press that shieldwall hard!

Principle #4: Maximizing Banners

Our final principle is really just a play on words - the poem of Brunanburh tells us that there was a "collision of banners, encounter of spears . . .". Banners win games - they can turn a losing fight into a winning fight or a tied fight (which sometimes means you win) and when the fighting is hard and the outcome of the game is in jeopardy, a banner is usually what turns the tide. 

This is especially true when spears are involved, since a banner allows you to reroll whatever the lowest die is without jeopardizing your highest result. The Easterlings have Amdur on their left flank and an actual banner in the shieldwall - with two banners, they have a very good chance of taking the day through sheer dice rolling. If they can hold Elendil down, then they should be able to punch through the Numenorean line.

Conclusion

How accurate the account of the Battle of Brunanburh is I can't say, but the principles within it are sound. If you enjoyed this post, let us know in the comments! Next month, we'll be looking at shieldwalls some more and ways you can adjust your shieldwall to help you crack through your opponent's wall. Until next time, happy hobbying!