Unexpected Military Formations: Skirmish Triangles and the Battle of Dunnichen

Good morning gamers,

In today's formation post, we're departing from shieldwalls (well, not departing far) and Marching people around and turning towards skirmisher formations. Shooting armies are on the rise and new players who want to get into these armies may be tempted to "just rank up" their models in order to use the formations they already know and apply them to shooting lists. Unfortunately, this can have unintended consequences on their firing lanes and cause their faith in shooting to wane. Never fear, though, we'll go over a very simple formation you can use which is inspired by a strategy used by the Picts back in the seventh century.

The Battle of Dunnichen (and its various other names)

You can watch a short video about the battle here and a longer, more academic video here, but what you'll find from both of these is that scholars disagree on where this battle was actually fought. What we do know for sure is provided in the Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation by Bede, who wrote the following ("that same king" refers to Egfrid, king of the Northumbrians):

. . . for the very next year, that same king, rashly leading his army to ravage the province of the Picts, much against the advice of his friends, and particularly of Cuthbert, of blessed memory, who had been lately ordained his op, the enemy made show as if they fled, and the king was drawn into the straits of inaccessible mountains, and slain with the greatest part of his forces, on the 20th of May, in the fortieth year of his age, and the fifteenth of his reign. His friends, as has been said, advised him not to engage in this war; but he having the year before refused to listen to the most reverend father, Egbert, advising him not to attack the Scots, who did him no harm, it was laid upon him as a punishment for his sin, that he "should not now regard those who would have prevented his death."

You can also see notations about the battle in the Annuls of Tigernach (here, click on T668, then go to T686.4) and the Annuls of Ulster (here, click on U686), though neither is very informative about the battle itself (just that it happened). Ignoring some of the propaganda/commentary from Bede, we see something very simple: the Picts, who didn't use shieldwalls (like the Northumbrians did) pretended to flee so as to draw the enemy into bad terrain and cut them down. Instead of playing to the advantage of the shieldwall, the Picts used their better knowledge of the terrain and maneuverability to force the Northumbrians to fight differently than they would have preferred. The idea of using terrain to slow down an enemy advance so that you can kill them slowly is an all-too-common strategy in MESBG and something that skirmishing armies do quite well.

So how do you do it? How do you make your opponent come after you when he KNOWS you're just going to shoot him? The answer is . . . you change the way your army is formed up to make your army both more flexible and (ironically enough) more inviting to crush.

In Defense of: Castellans of Dol Guldur

This is a sweet paint job (not mine...)

Photo Credit: Azazel's Bitz Box

Tiberius: Today Rythbyrt is back with a defense of one of his favorite units: Castellans of Dol Guldur. I know what you're thinking: Castellans are horrible heroes who can't be defended - not even by the TMAT team. While I could attempt a defense of the units, my experience has been tied to fighting them, not running them. So, I leave you to Rythbyrt to learn how these guys work.

Rythbryt: I'll be honest: when Tiberius asked me to do this write-up, I had two instant thoughts:

1. Absolutely, 1000% YES!

2. Wait, people don't like Castellans?

Apparently, people don't like Castellans. And I'm not sure why. They're one of the most unique profiles in the game. They're incredibly flexible. They pack a surprising whallop. They're spooky. I think the models are dope (although I admit the one with two blades is a tad flat). And they even have their own fight song!* So why all the hate?

No idea. But if your local meta isn't a fan of Castellans, yet loves all sorts of stupid, popular list ideas (like pretty elves, slogged dwarves, a mounted horse king, massed rangers, or five magical wizards storming a spooky castle), have I got some a LOT of thoughts for you!

(Gosh, I've missed this...)

Odd Man Out: Five Ways To Handle Byes At Tournaments

Good morning gamers,

Over the past ten years, we've thrown a lot of tournaments here at TMAT - and as the Tournament Organizer (TO) for most of them, I can say running a tournament for your friends is a really great experience (albeit hectic and stressful sometimes). One of the most common problems that TOs face across the world is what to do when you have an odd number of players/teams. Naturally, people come to a tournament and want to play - no one wants to sit out for 1-2 hours watching other people play. 

To answer this age-old question, different tournament organizers have taken a variety of approaches to "solve" the problem, but each has their own draw-backs. So, in today's post, we will be exploring all the options I've heard of (and tried out) for handling byes and talking through their advantages and their disadvantages. Let's get right to it.

In Defense Of: Galadhrim Knights

Good morning gamers,

In this series, we've mostly looked at heroes who get heavily critiqued in the competitive community. Today, we're looking at a warrior selection that doesn't receive much respect: Galadhrim Knights. As one of two mounted profiles in the Lothlorien list (alongside Celeborn - I mean, Galadhrim Captains and NOT Celeborn!?!?!?!), you'd think that in a game that gives incredible bonuses to being mounted, any mounted model would be beloved and prized. Some of us (I am a fairly recent convert) have used them and grown to love them (probably with a high learning curve that made us hate them for a while) and others just don't see it. So today, we're looking at these guys in detail to learn all the tricks of the trade - let's get stuck in!

Why NOT To Take Galadhrim Knights

Whenever you hear someone complain about Galadhrim Knights, the words "Rivendell Knights" are often heard in the same breath. Rivendell, like Lothlorien and the Halls of Thranduil, are either historical allies or convenient allies with every Good faction in the game - so any Good faction CAN have cavalry if they are willing to give up their army bonus (unless they're one of those rare historical allies with the Elves, which are mostly factions of the hero/monster variety).

Rivendell Knights are similar in cost to Galadhrim Knights when both are given shields and bows (22pts for a Riv-Knight and 21pts for a Gal-Knight), but the wargear is different in three key ways: first, the Galadhrim Knight is astride an armored horse vs. the Rivendell Knight's "normal" horse (which makes the Lothlorien mounts less likely to die against S2/S4 archery, but makes no difference against S3 attacks). Second, the Rivendell Knight has a hand-and-a-half sword vs. the one-handed sword of the Galadhrim Knight (which, admittedly, most players don't use two-handed, so the difference here is academic). And third and more important of all, the Rivendell Knight has a lance (+1 To Wound on the charge) while the Galadhrim Knight does not have a lance (not even an option).

Quest of the Ringbearer: Pop-up Bree, Part 3

Good morning gamers,

We're back for the last post (for now) on my Bree board - this time, talking about the other buildings I've built for the board and some of the additional 3D printed bits I commissioned Centaur to print for me to fill them. If you haven't read the previous posts in this series, you can find them on our Quest of the Ringbearer page. Let's get right into it!

The New Buildings

Here's a quick look at the old and new pieces that Centaur printed for me - this, in addition to what I already have, won't be enough to fully populate the city, but I see filling each building as a long-game (I don't want to "just print a bunch of stuff" when there might be things I find later that I want).

It's unclear if Bree had a standing militia in the books, but it had a gate-keeper (Harry Goatleaf will probably make an appearance whenever I use this building) and we know from the books that when Sharkey's Rogues began invading the Shire, they gathered in Bree and started making trouble (and those loyal to order and peace rallied behind Barliman Butterbur to defend their town, kick out the Ruffians, and establish a more secure town). As such, I assume that at least one building should serve as a bunkhouse for whatever local militia are "on call" that day. Here we have a few cots for resting on, as well as some crates for those men to refresh themselves as they await trouble. Functionally for game play, this is a pretty open space.