Fyrd Formations: The Battle of Maldon

Good morning gamers,

Today we're going to look in this formation post at a battle that occurred in Northern England during the tenth century, which featured a "gambit-gone-right" by the Norse against the English: the Battle of Maldon. You can check out an excellent visualization of it here as well as read about it further here. Depending on when you read this, you may also have access to a re-released translation that Tolkien did of the Battle of Maldon for Oxford (check out the announcement here). Many players seek to use shieldwalls to their advantage in SBG and this battle has some interesting insights into how to use shieldwalls effectively - and what to very much avoid at all costs. Let's take a look!

The Battle of Maldon

In 991 AD, the English lord Bryhtnoth prepared an army of Fyrdmen to resist an invasion by a Viking lord believed to be Olaf Tryggvason (the eventual king of Norway) near the town of Maldon, which controlled a major riverway into Nuthumbria. Bryhtnoth held his troops on the mainland, while Olaf's forces were encamped on an island that would be soon connected to the mainland when the tide ebbed. From the translation of the old poem by Karl Seigfried, we read:

The tide went out; the seamen stood ready, Vikings many, eager for battle. The protector of the warriors then commanded the war-­hard warrior to hold the bridge, he was called Wulfstan, brave with his kin, that was the son of Ceola, who shot the first man with his spear who stepped there most boldly on the bridge. There stood with Wulfstan warriors unafraid, Ælfere and Maccus, two bold men, who would not take flight at the ford, but they steadfastly defended against the enemies, as long as they were allowed to wield weapons.

That last bit seems ominous . . . anyway, an initial assault by Olaf when the land bridge emerged was repulsed by Bryhtnoth, but Olaf issued a challenge to Bryhtnoth, requesting that his troops be allowed to cross the passage to fight on equal terms. From Seigfried's translation (emphasis added):

When they perceived and readily saw that they found bitter bridge-­wardens there, the hateful strangers began to use guile, asked that they might have passage to land, to fare over the ford, to lead the foot-troop. Then the nobleman began because of his overconfidence to allow too much land to hateful people.

Then the son or Byrhtelm began to call out over the cold water (warriors listened):

“Now a way is opened to you, walk quickly to us, men to battle; God alone knows who may control the place of slaughter.”

The slaughter­-wolves waded (not mourning because of water), the Viking troop, west over the Pante, carried shields over gleaming water, ship-men bore shields to land. Byrhtnoth with his warriors stood there ready against the hostile ones; he commanded them to form the battle-­wall with shields, and to hold that formation fast against the enemies.

For whatever reason (perhaps because he had the numerical superiority - or perhaps because he was just overconfident), Bryhtnoth agreed to allow the Vikings to pass, allowing both armies to fight with their full forces arrayed. Despite a fierce resistance, Bryhtnoth's lines eventually buckled when their leader was killed:

Then an armed warrior walked to the nobleman; he wished to fetch the rings of the warrior, armor and ring-­mail and ornamented sword. Then Byrhtnoth drew sword from sheath, broad and with shining blade, and struck on the coat of mail. A certain one of the ship-men hindered him too quickly, so that he wounded the arm of the nobleman. Golden-­hilted sword fell then to earth; he was not able to hold hard sword, to wield weapon.

In the poem, Bryhtnoth's last breath doesn't come for quite a while longer - with lots of encouraging of his men to fight and not flee the battle (and lots of his friends deciding it was better to die fighting than turn and flee). The poem is also pretty gruesome and features a lot of the anti-Viking propaganda we've seen in other accounts in this series.

So what can we learn from this tale about fighting with shieldwalls? There are three things that I found interesting - and here's how you can apply those principles in your games if you're fielding a shieldwall.

Lesson #1: Choke-Points are Good and Bad

We can all probably fault Bryhtnoth for allowing the Vikings to "fight fairly" in the open instead of fighting across the channel, but this critique overlooks two important things: first and foremost, the Vikings were on an island with a fleet, while the Saxons were on the mainland without one - and if Olaf's request for an open fight was rejected, the Vikings would have very little reason to stick around for a second go. Instead, they could hop in their boats (perhaps with the Saxons trying to catch them as they left - however successful that could be) and put out to sea outside of the Saxon reach in order to plunder elsewhere (or head up the river to Maldon). Whichever happened, the Saxons stood to lose far more than the Vikings did.

Second, much of Bryhtnoth's forces, despite their proved quality, were militia - and if his elite troops were the ones holding off the first assault of the Vikings, it would only be a matter of time before his elite troops fell and his less disciplined troops were forced to hold the land bridge. This could end disastrously - whereas fighting in an open fight allowed veterans to be interspersed with the novices, giving the entire line more staying power than if the elites were cut down early.

In general, it's good to have a chokepoint in SBG - if you can anchor your battle line between two solid pieces of terrain so your opponent has to hit you head-on, he can't wrap around your battle line and trap your models. This is a good thing - a very good thing - and most players will seek to do this if they can. However, if your opponent doesn't NEED to pass through a chokepoint . . . he won't. A smart opponent will identify if there's another way around (or just pepper you with archery to attempt to break your front rank) and take the path of least resistance.

Chokepoints also make it hard to redeploy troops - the units that sit holding a chokepoint are committed and can't be sent elsewhere without giving up a valuable position (if any kind of maneuvering at all is easy or possible). If you're playing on a map with lots of buildings, you might get some great chokepoints to hold, but supporting the rest of your army will require navigating the streets between buildings - and that could make it difficult to respond to a fast opponent who chooses to slam hard into one flank.

Finally, while chokepoints have incredible value, your ability to hold one is very much dependent on having more quality in your troops than your opponent does if the numbers are roughly even. Since deploying reinforcements to a chokepoint can be hard, the models we put in a chokepoint are pretty much stuck there - which brings us to our next lesson . . .

Lesson #2: If Losses Can Be Managed, Quality Beats Quantity

Originally, Bryhtnoth seemed to have the better quality of troops deployed on the narrow channel - which says a lot about the Saxon Fyrds and household guard, since the Vikings were fearsome foes. With the numbers that could be applied set at roughly even odds, having better quality troops allowed Bryhtnoth to get an edge early in the day.

However, when the pitched battle began, the reduced quality of Bryhtnoth's forces overall proved a limiting factor. Once the elites were mostly dead, the undisciplined and lesser skilled couldn't stand against Olaf's battle-hardened lines. While a horde of troops can beat an elite one, the longer the battle goes, the less likely a lower-quality shieldwall is going to hold.

This is very much why I recommended in another post wrapping around the enemy if you can and using a mixture of traps and shielding to break the enemy lines - and in yet another post, using heroes/pike blocks to punch holes in a line so you can wrap from the inside of the line if you can't get through the edges. If you're paying for lower quality, you've invested those points elsewhere (in good heroes or in numbers) - and if you can't bring those to bear properly against the enemy lines, you're probably going to lose. Forces like Angmar, Goblin-town, and Mordor Orc armies are predominantly limited to F3 (if that), but since they can field a LOT of guys, they can often kill what they want if they can surround them. Without trapping the enemy, these forces can easily fall to more elite troops - so keep that in mind. This leads us to our last point, which is . . .

Lesson #3: If You're Not Wrapping With A Shieldwall, You Need To Shore Up Gaps Quickly

The poem reads like a lot of epic verses - a guy dies, a friend sees it, and fights over his body (sacrificing himself to make the enemy pay). This "jumping in the gap" mentality is essential to running an effective shieldwall - having two ranks of guys isn't going to be enough, since a combat hero could chop a hole right through your line and expose your formation to being wrapped-and-trapped.

We had a formation post late last year (the Quagmire) that sought to correct this, placing units in the fourth rank to make sure a big hero didn't make a hole in the ranks (and making the second Heroic Combat fight harder to win). For hordes that specialize in having lots of guys (instead of quality ones), this formation can be an asymmetric way of bringing your numbers to bear - always have more guys to back up into (and slow enemy progress so you can respond with reinforcements in time).

If you're using a pike block (say an Easterling three-deep formation from the Host of the Dragon Emperor LL), you have some of this redundancy built into your formation already - three guys can fight at a time and if you're beaten and back away, you still have two guys that can fight. Even in these formations, it helps to have a few models (preferably F4-5 Black Dragons) that can backstop the formation if you're worried about your front-line models getting killed. Not many warriors can challenge a F5/D6 pike block, but a lot of heroes can - especially if they're mounted or if they're Dwarves. And with many of those heroes having F6+, it's not unlikely that they could chop through not one but two ranks of Easterlings on a single turn. Even if you have a third rank that survived, that's a sketchy line left for the next go-around.

This lesson highlights something we've talked about previously with regard to cavalry formations: having reserves. We have a natural inclination to throw as many models as we can into combat - and sometimes that strategy will work quite well. But a model that isn't engaged in combat can't die (unless he's shot or a Heroic Combat gets him) and if we've got the model placed to give us a better position on the next turn, we're in a better place than if we just exposed him to danger. If we're trying to hold a position to protect an important part of the board (an objective of some kind, perhaps), having reserves in place can be a very valuable tool to buy our army time - so we should use it.

Conclusion

If any of this was helpful to you, let us know in the comments below! While discussions on shieldwalls are always fun, over the next few months we'll be turning to another facet of the game that I've been focusing on a lot recently: cavalry. Tune in next time as we look at some strategies for getting more out of those more expensive, fast warriors - until then, happy hobbying!