Topic: Battleline

[Footpatrol2]

Ok I was reading through these forums and Commandant stated something that sparked my interest.

If you deploy the parent 5 wide and the detachments right beside the parent so they form a solid line, then it is impossible for anything to charge the parent without hitting the detachment and causing a disordered charge (unless that charging unit is less than 5 inches across.)   Likewise it is difficult to impossible for anything to charge the detachment without hitting the parent unit and causing a disordered charge. (again unless the charging unit is less than 5 inches across)

This got me thinking. Why does this have to be detachments. Why not just build your infantry (Battleline) to try and force disordered charges and accidental contact to take away the initiative bonuses from when the enemy charges. Please look at page 130 in rulebook to see example's.

So this post is about forming your battleline. This is not about flanker's. This doesn't provide protection against point dense units like Dragons but can help against Cav and other elite units. This is also a little scatter brained because it's involving so many things. 

Banner's and Ranks only stack once. After that they are not counted. So you only need one unit to have a banner and ranks if you want that benefit. The side units could be supporting units that need to be very close (touching/or almost touching) to the banner unit so when you receive a charge you can slightly angle them to trigger a disordered charge. The disordered charge is trigger'd because your frontage is smaller than the enemies. The supporting unit could be small or as big as the banner unit. The supporting unit needs to be smaller then 125mm.

By doing this your able to stack close orders and ideally force disordered charges. Spears would also be good for this as it adds +1 to your initiative when charged. A side effect is the enemy now might have to allocate his damage over multiple units instead of just one unit, Pro's and Con's there. A downside is buffing spells can only affect one unit (Probably should be your banner units). But Debuffing spells might be more valuable here. Something that would go well with this would be elementalism for earthen ramparts.

The basic idea would be:
[supporting unit][banner unit]supporting unit]

Now you can further build off the basic battle line and go.
[supporting unit under 125mm][banner unit 125mm][supporting unit under 125mm][banner unit]supporting unit under 125mm]

Lets do a quick example so I can better pass along the information.

Lets take Greatswords 5x5 with Fcmd + warbanner as the banner unit. Frontage 125mm
First supporting unit take 16 4x4 spearmen+champion on one side frontage 100mm Place on Left side of the Greatswords.
Second supporting unit take 2 Demgryphs frontage 100mm. Right side.

Something I've been toying around with is this:
Sometype of infantry (say Greatswords)5x5 that can take a magic banner for warbanner + bsb in free company with griffon banner + 5x5 fcmd light infantry.

If you could get greatswords and free company into the same combat your getting (BSB + warbanner + banner + 2 ranks + horde rank + 3 from griffon banner+ close order = 10 Static CR)

The detachments thing just adds another level of complexity.

[commandant]

So the reason I advise detachments is that they do all the things your supporting units do plus more.

For example the detachments help you against points dense and powerful units like dragons because they offer a counter charge possibility that give +2 CR which is a big deal when you are trying to get to CR7.

I also didn't think size is vastly important. That is a supporting unit that is 10 models big is the same as a supporting unit that is 20. (This may change if you need US10 for the +1CR).
The point if the supporting units is to create a disrupted charge and bring in more attacks.

A number of points to consider.

Because the middle unit must be contacted there doesn't need to be a banner or ranks in either of the supporting units.   During deployment the supporting units can deploy as wide or one less as your opponent's standard width. The parent (middle unit) must deploy as wide (or even 1 wider) than your opponent's standard width. With detachments you don't mind if your opponent contacts your parent unit and not you detachments as this will just result in your detachments countercharging but you need any charge against the supporting units to contact the parent.

The formation needs to be an aggressive as well as a defensive threat. I like the battle lust spell.   Sure it gives +1 attack to each model with frenzy (though if you have a load of supporting attacks that is not such a big deal) but it also gives hatred which is a big deal. It also transfers from your parent to your detachments. This means that you can unlease a truly stupid number of attacks on the charge with hatred.
The combination of battle lust and word of pain will see you just rip through units.

Demigriffons I think make bad supporting units because contacting the parent and clipping the demigriffons removes a lot of attacks. You rather want your demigriffons to be poised to countercharge the flank where 2 will have 8 attacks instead of 6 and 3 will have 12 attacks instead if 8.