Skirmishing Against Shieldwalls: The Bayeux Tapestry and the Battle of Hastings

Good morning gamers,

In this month's formations post, we're looking at the Battle of Hastings. We actually referenced this battle a few years ago in a post on Shieldwall formations, but today we will look at the historical record as presented through an odd medium: a large hand-crafted tapestry that has been replicated at least once and tells the protracted history that led up to the Battle of Hastings. This is none other than the Bayeux Tapestry.

The Bayeux Tapestry: How the Normans and Saxons Fought

As I mentioned when we reviewed the Battle of Brunanburh, there is a tendency in these "original sources" to provide propaganda. This is true here too - the Normans built the Tapestry (Bayeux is a city in Northern France/Normandy) and so it shows many of the Norman exploits in a positive light. If you want to watch a humorous review of the entire tapestry, I highly recommend you watch Lindybeige's YouTube video on it - it's really great. The Battle of Hastings shows up near the end of the tapestry and shows us two things: first, that the Saxons created a shieldwall (the men standing close together with their shields linked and their spears raised) and that the Normans . . . didn't (or at least, that's not all they did).

Why is that? We see two things about the method of warfare for the Normans: archers on foot and cavalry charging into the fray (with spears, swords, and clubs). Now if you look at visualizations of the attack (either here or here), you'll see that the Normans did use heavy infantry (and they probably formed a shieldwall). But the emphasis of the Norman invasion wasn't primarily about the shieldwall - it was about having a toolkit of options that could harass your opponent and draw out the enemy with shooting. No "I'm gonna spending all day pressed up against the enemy shieldwall" method of fighting for the Normans - they wanted to find a more expedient alternative.

We've been talking about Shieldwalls a lot recently - and in MESBG, shieldwalls are incredibly common (and can be a quagmire for many armies). We've looked at ways to break the enemy shieldwall by concentrating your power and reforming your shieldwall to wrap-and-trap the enemy, but let's take a deeper dive into how to skirmish with enemy shieldwalls - which is particularly useful if you don't think you can survive a fight with the enemy shieldwall.

Skirmishing and Breaking Shieldwalls

To illustrate the formations today, let's look at the following two 550-point armies:

• Rohan - 549pts:
• Theoden, King of Rohan on armored horse with shield and heavy armor [ARMY LEADER]
• 1 Rider of Rohan with throwing spears
• 4 Riders of Rohan
• Theodred, Heir of Rohan on horse with shield and throwing spears
  
• 4 Warriors of Rohan with shields
• 4 Warriors of Rohan with shields and throwing spears
• 4 Warriors of Rohan with bows
• Gamling, Captain of Rohan on horse with the Royal Standard of Rohan
• 5 Riders of Rohan
• The Black Gate Opens LL - 550pts:
• Uber-Mordor Troll Chieftain [ARMY LEADER]
• 3 Morannon Orcs
• 4 Morannon Orcs with shields
  
• 6 Morannon Orcs with shields and spears
  
• 1 Morannon Orc with shield, spear, and banner
  
• 1 Mordor Troll with War Drum
• Morannon Orc Captain with two-handed hammer
  
• 3 Mordor Orcs with Orc bows
  
• 3 Mordor Orcs with Orc bows and spears
• 2 Morannon Orcs
• 4 Morannon Orcs with shields and spears

Both armies are pretty similar in size (25 Rohan models vs. 29 Mordor models) but Mordor can create a 13-wide shieldwall if they want to (with 2 Trolls in the line somewhere) while the Rohan army will have a 4-wide shieldwall that can't spear-support. As we learned in our last formations post, the Mordor force could wrap around the Rohan "shieldwall" easily and crush it.

Despite the monsters and better shieldwall on the Mordor side, the Rohan army has an advantage: they have three times as much shooting as the Mordor force does and they can shoot from beyond charging range. Let's assume both armies are playing To The Death and deploy 24" apart:

The armies are arrayed for battle . . .

The Mordor army wins priority and knowing that the Rohan army isn't going to "just come to them", they call a March and beat the War Drum to advance 12" forward so that they can get their Trolls fighting. The Rohan army advances their melee warriors forward so that the throwing spears are in range, the infantry bowmen advance a few inches to get a good look at the Orc bowmen, and Theodred and the throwing-spear Rider of Rohan advance to be able to cast their spears:

Some of the Rohan guys charge, others stand and shoot . . .

In the Shoot phase, the infantry and Theodred/his cavalry guy don't get any kills (and very few hits, actually), but the Riders of Rohan standing still get 4 hits and get three 6s to wound - that's cool!

Arrows fly - with brutal success!

As we begin the next round, there is an ~7" gap between the armies and Mordor keeps priority. The Mordor force knows that they aren't in charge range of the Rohan guys, but also know that only Theodred and one other Rider can charge. If they beat the Drum to get some extra movement, they won't be able to charge anyone - so instead, they don't beat the Drum but DO call a March so they can get closer to the enemy where the Riders are.

Theodred needs to charge (the Rohan player can't cut off his charging options), so he charges into the Troll (easily passing his Terror check) after some of his melee guys make way for him (engaging one of the segments of the Mordor shieldwall). No throwing spears do any damage, but Theodred is in with a bunch of guys against the Drummer Troll. Theoden and Gamling charge into some warriors on the other side and leave the Mordor Troll Chieftain unengaged (so he can't Barge-then-Hurl Combat-then-Hurl - thanks Jack for catching this in the comments! - into the Rohan mounted models - especially the heroes):

The Rohan army engages - though note their reserves on both flanks!

There is no shoot phase since everyone's locked in. As we finally see the Shieldwalls clash, we see a second trick that the Rohan army has: cavalry. Mordor is on the back foot and when the fighting begins, the F4/S4 of the Riders of Rohan look like they have the advantage over the Morannons. But it's the Heroic Combats from Theoden and Gamling that really turn the tide, as they slam into more warriors, crippling the rear of the formation, and causing the right battle line of the Mordor army to collapse:

Theoden burns 1 Might to wound a Morannon, while Gamling rides cleanly through his foes . . .

As we play the fights out, the Rohan "shieldwall" either shields when only one guy is involved or strikes normally in the fight where they doubled-up. They lose one guy there, but elsewhere on the battlefield, they rolled over a lot of guys. There were fights that they lost here and there without suffering losses, but they killed a bunch of guys including the Morannon Orc Captain and the Drummer Troll. Theoden is out of Might (needed to boost a wounding roll in his second fight too), but he's near Gamling, so that's fine. 

Mordor has no shieldwall anymore - and Rohan has them surrounded . . .

As we prepare for the next round, the Mordor army is reeling and are very close to being broken (lost 13 models, broken after 2 more losses) and are dangerously close to being quartered (9 more losses) which will end the game. With most of the Rohan cavalry out of charge range by the infantry but able to charge into the infantry if they wish, it's unlikely that Mordor will be able to hold up to the oncoming charge. Tough luck for Mordor . . .

Most of the new entrants of Valhalla aren't human, are they?

Why Does Flanking and Skirmishing Work?

So why did this work? Well, there are a few things that shieldwalls rely on that we're going to exploit. First and foremost is that shieldwalls don't like exposed flanks. Having cavalry tucked behind your own shieldwall not only protects the horses from being shot out by most threats, but also allows them to wrap around the enemy flanks and attack the spearmen so they can't support the front line. Once the supporting rank buckles, the front line will have to shield in order to maintain a dice equality. However, if the enemy chooses to shield, then your models can't die (in general - a few heroes can make Strikes after shielding) - which gives you an advantage on the next turn too.

Second, shieldwalls pack their models in close together so that they can bring their numbers to bear - and that means you can trap them easily. As we've all learned from the Green Dragon Podcast, traps win games. Generally speaking, shieldwalls only get traps on the periphery if they can wrap around the enemy ranks OR try to concentrate attacks (maybe in a pike block) somewhere in the middle of the battle line instead of going for traps in the first place. By having fast troops that can race around the sides and pull spearmen into other fights, not only can you deny the front-line some of their attacks (or force people to shield), but you can also slaughter the rear models and trap the front-rank models (who are then easier to kill).

Third, shieldwalls have a difficulty staying together over multiple rounds as each model either stays in place if they win the fight or backs up if they lose a fight. As the rounds progress, the lines become more and more muddled. If you have cavalry models that can flank the enemy battle line, you can make the enemy shieldwall break apart faster. Instead of taking several rounds to break the enemy line, you can do it in a single round, as was shown above.

Finally, most shieldwalls rely on keeping a two-rank system in place to win fights - using shooting to weaken the enemy front rank not only removes the number of models we'll need to kill before the fighting begins, but can also force the enemy to reform their lines (giving a smaller battle line an easier time fighting the enemy). We talked last time about how you can adjust the size of your battleline and rely on shielding to keep the number of dueling dice you roll high at the cost of not being able to wound the enemy, but you don't want to do this if you can help it. Shooting (especially with throwing weapons) is a really great way to mess the enemy formation up right before a critical charging turn.

Conclusion

Now lest you think that this only worked because of the scenario, keep in mind that skirmish armies do even better in objective scenarios where your opponent needs to spread out around the board - shieldwall lists want to bunker down, while skirmish lists like being spread out. We could have done any number of scenarios and the Rohan army could concentrate its fire on one piece of the enemy and still achieved a similar result.

We've spent a lot of time in the past few formations post talking about shieldwalls - how to beat them and how to reform them. We'll be taking a break from shieldwalls for a bit, but if you have thoughts about them - how to use them and how to fight them - let us know in the comments below. Until next time, happy hobbying!