Unexpected Military Formations: The Gear Tooth Formation

Hey Reader!

In my last post I talked about the Army of Dale legendary legion, and near the end I had an offhanded comment about how I think you can maximize your use of the Wall of Blades special rule on your Knights of Dale and Bard II through an effective formation, and that is what we're going to discuss today! Look at me actually completing a project. Hyperfocus ADHD for the win.

I'll be presenting two variations on the "Gear Tooth" formation, the first being the one that I suspect the designers of the game had in mind (or at least it's a standard deviation from what the game designers had in mind), and then I'll follow up with what I think is actually a more effective version that does all of the same things but better.

Now it's worth noting before we go into this that the Gear Tooth formation is really only effective as a defensive formation, which makes sense since Wall of Blades can only be used when you are charged. So keep in mind that if you're looking for an offensive formation there are better options out there, like the Boar Snout or a similar formation.

I.  Game Designer Intent behind Wall of Blades

When designing the Knight of Dale, I suspect that the game designers were thinking people would employ what I like to call a "Norse Shieldwall": that is to say, two ranks of warriors, with the second rank sporting spears, the first rank sporting shields, but no one in the formation has the Shieldwall special rule. This is commonly employed by elves of various kinds, Rohan in the Defenders of Helm's Deep legendary legion and the Theodred's Guard legendary legion, Moria goblins and orcs/Uruk-Hai of various kinds, etc., and the formation looks something like this:

In this post, all models with the Wall of Blades special rule
will be in blue, so that should make them easy to see

The issue with this is the Dale is highly ineffective with this form of fighting. Not only are they paying for spears on their Knights of Dale, but since you're paying 11pts for the Knight of Dale in the front and 9pts for the Warrior of Dale with Spear/Shield (or 10pts if you swap the shield with an Esgaroth Bow for ranged fire support up until the lines clash), you're paying 20+pts per file, and that assumes you don't have a hero like Bard II in the front rank as well, which is really expensive for a F4 S3 D5/6 Norse Shieldwall (elves are basically the same cost and you're getting better Fight Value and Defense).

This cuts into your numbers, which reduces the length of your battle line. Add onto this the possible inclusion of siege equipment, expensive allied warriors and heroes, and your battle line gets even shorter, making it easier to wrap you and trap your forces (which, with a lot of D4-5 in the mix, is not good).

So how do we make this formation better? We adjust it to a Gear Tooth Formation.

Version 1 of the Gear Tooth Formation places the Knights of Dale in the front as before, but this time we place the spearmen in a flanking position, artificially extending the frontline while keeping the spear support in place to preserve the front line.

Knights up front, daring people to charge them. The spears keep more
than one person from charging them, and the banner is safe from charges

In addition, it also keeps your Knights of Dale from being tagged by multiple people, as the spearman's control zone keeps the second person from charging into your Knight of Dale. This means that at worst you'd be looking at 2 dueling dice on your side against an opponent + 2 pikes (so 3-5 dice), and they are almost certainly going to cost far more than 20-21pts per file. That is a phenomenal trade if it goes poorly, and an effective use of your points if you win the duel roll.

The Easterlings can charge through most of the gaps, but if they do,
between shielding and rerolls their numbers don't help, and we flank them

This is also model efficient: in this scenario, one partial warband (Bard II + 13 models) is holding off 2 Easterling warbands (Rutabi + Captain + 24 Easterlings), allowing you to either throw troops elsewhere, or flank this body of troops with whoever is to the right or left of the formation.

But wait, there's more! There's a second variant of this formation that I actually prefer, and it's less intuitive and slightly more advantageous, but hear me out...

II.  The Better Version of the Gear Tooth Formation

This is a more points-efficient version, and I really like it: you have a front line of swordsmen backed up by Knights of Dale as their spear supports, and then you leave gaps large enough for enemy infantry to charge through between your swordsmen, with your Knights of Dale offset to spear support them, covering these holes. This does two things.

This saves points on warriors, encourages them to give us our Wall of Blades
special rule instead of moving past us, and we still cancel out their numbers

First, it still prevents two people from charging your swordsmen, thanks to the Knights of Dale providing a control zone. So your opponent has one of two choices: they can either forego charging as many guys into combat and just fight you one file against one file (in which case the swordsman can feint since the Knight of Dale provides F4 to the fight), or they can send people through to attack the Knight of Dale, thereby provoking the Wall of Blades special rule and the swordsman instead opts to shield, thereby still keeping the two dice to win the fight (ideally with a banner reroll), helping you hold the line while the Knight of Dale runs the charging attacker through.

Second, it's deceptively dangerous to your opponent: since you have offset your lines, the chances of trapping the people that rush into the gaps to fight the Knights of Dale is higher than normal, and since you had to move first, there's a good chance you're determining the order in which the fights are called. So with double the wounding dice and +1 to the damage roll, you're in great shape to slay for days.

And since you're able to expand the battle line even further thanks to the intentional gaps in the line, the chance that you get wrapped is quite low, keeping your archers safe and your siege weapons secure from enemy engagement.

So as the swordsmen hold the line and the knights and heroes slay the enemy, the enemy gets "ground down by the gears," so to speak, until you have a more manageable number of foes. That is the Gear Tooth Formation.

Conclusion

And naturally you can do this with any spear-supporting army: Uruk-Hai and Easterlings can also do this well, as you could go three deep with 2 Attack models in the front rank, which really entices the enemy to send people in after the pikemen (because 4 Attacks at F4 S3-4 is just brutal), and they have good mid-range heroes that they can pepper into the lines to help kill things. 

And of course elves, Minas Tirith, and Arnor can do a decent job on this as well as they have reliable spearmen to do the heavy lifting, though from personal experience I prefer rangers backing up my Warriors of Arnor, which can lead to issues with the Gear Tooth formation as your spear support is fragile and can give way quite easily (not to mention you lose the spear AND the shield when you give a Warrior of Arnor a banner for reasons I don't understand, so exposing a banner to attack is quite dangerous...).

So if you're looking for a way to maximize your Knights of Dale or just need a way to lengthen the frontage of your battle line, this is a way to do it! Let us know what you think! It may not be based on a historical formation per se, but within the context of the game, I think it checks out. September and October will tell when I put it to the test,

Watching the stars,

Centaur

"Centaurs are concerned with what has been foretold!  It is not our business to run around like donkeys after stray humans in our forest!" ~ Bane, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone