Unexpected Military Formations: The Bow-Tie Formation

Good morning gamers,

In today's formations post, we're returning to a topic we've covered several times already: ways to set up your army to march across the board more effectively. We've seen already how to maximize the total area you can cover with your March (which translates into more models moving faster) with the Millennium Falcon or Pac-Man formations, but today we look at a more versatile variation of these concepts: the Bow-Tie Formation.

Marching And Adaptability

To illustrate the formations today, we'll be using the following army, an 800-point variant of the Men of the West LL that I ran at our most recent tournament here at TMAT:

• Aragorn, King Elessar [ARMY LEADER]
• 4 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields
• 10 Warriors of Minas Tirith with shields and spears
• 3 Warriors of Minas Tirith with bows
• Eomer, Marshal of the Riddermark with shield
• 3 Warriors of Rohan with shields
• 3 Warriors of Rohan with shields and throwing spears
• 8 Warriors of Rohan with bows
• Gandalf the White

It turns out that most Marching formations are inflexible - both in MESBG and in real life. Most players probably have a formation like this to March around:

Aragorn provides the Heroic March - everyone is in range, but where they can go will be heavily restricted

This formation loses almost half of its possible Marching area and will find it difficult to change directions without giving up drastic amounts of movement. We can fix the first problem (maximizing possible space) with a Millennium Falcon formation:

Aragorn's Marching straight forward, but everyone around him has more flexibility (and we can pack into March range in this formation)

This formation better uses the Marching radius of Heroic March, but still leaves us inflexible in our movement (we kind of have to go forward). We can solve both problems (maximizing space with greater freedom of direction), though, with a Pac-Man formation, which gives the Marching hero more latitude for where he moves (thanks to the wider forward arc):

Our options are wide open now . . . if we're moving forward . . .

But what if our enemy outflanks us (or is trying to) and we need to shift our battle lines to face the newly repositioned foe. Wouldn't it be nice if we could leave avenues open for us to move sideways or backwards (to maneuver behind terrain, retreat, or pursue a foe better)? For this, I present the Bow-Tie Formation:

The "bow-tie" is based on the shape of the channels that are open for travel by the Marching hero . . . kind of . . . I struggled with what to name this formation, can you tell?

The Millennium Falcon formation works because you leave a passage open for the Marching hero - all we've done here is leave a few more channels open. These open passages allows the Marching hero to go where he wants in whatever direction he wants.

One benefit you get from the Bow-Tie Formation is that the narrow channels of travel give the Marching hero great protection from archery (more than you get in the Pac-Man Formation and more or less the same as you get in the Millennium Falcon Formation). This formation LOOKS open, but it's actually not for the model that's Marching you. If that's a Captain or a big hero, your opponent might have 6 shots on him if he's directly in front of the formation. Otherwise, he'll have to shoot at the guys in the blocks around the Marching hero.

This formation gives you lots of options for movement when marching, but it's also surprisingly flexible because you can reshape the formation easily into other formations. Unlike the Millennium Falcon or Pac-Man Formations, if you are charged while in a Bow-Tie formation, you won't have a cluster of trapped models. You can also easily reform from this formation into a normal shieldwall (view how here) or a Boar's Snout (view how here) or a pair of Schiltrons with a Viking shieldwall between them (view how here - though I will note that I made a few movement errors, so just map it out ahead of time) the list goes on - and it's due to the inherent openness of the formation. Pretty cool, huh?

Conclusion

So is this formation superior in every way to the Millennium Falcon or Pac-Man formations? I don't think so - when you don't need the maneuverability, you get a lot better area usability from the previous two formations (and some scenarios just require you to advance straight ahead or forward in an arc). If you need that, then use the other formations. If you know, however, that you'll be advancing up the board for a few turns, but don't know your exact direction, the Bow-Tie Formation is a pretty safe bet.

At our TMAT GT last month, I played two games with an army similar to this one and used the Bow-Tie formation in a To The Death game (where I needed to March up the field around various patches of terrain towards a Bolt Thrower and some entrenched Rangers with Stalk Unseen) and relied on a Pac-Man formation to get closer to the center objective quickly in a Divide and Conquer game (where I had clear paths through Bree). Again, context is everything - pick what you need for the scenario you're playing.

In our next formation post, we turn back to history and will be discussing a skirmisher formation that you can use to get more out of your shooting models - and how to rethink about shooting-heavy list formations (because, you know, why not use those shooting-heavy lists more efficiently so your friends hate you more?). Until then, happy hobbying!