Dogs of War

Based on an actual formation known as Pike & Shot, and sick of my twenty pikemen not getting any action of late, I have decided to build a Warhammer version of the Spanish Square.

The formation looks thusly: a central block of pikemen, 6x6. On each corner of this are a group of ten Duelists with pistols. The Duelists have a champion, the pikemen have a full command trio. The total cost in points is 966.

This entire formation then moves as a single entity. If all goes well, it can dish out an astounding 61 attacks. If charged on its flanks or rear, the duelits can discharge up to 20 shots... followed by a possible 48 attacks should that not prove deterent enough.

It's far from being invulnerable. Warmachines, templates, and magic will ruin its day (although the pike unit must take 9 causalties before it flees). But I just really, really want to build it, and I will chronical its rise with this thread.

Sounds like a good and well thought idea! Do it, and tell us, how it made it's way trough the hostile phalanx! And we wanna see pics please

Pretty big points sink for this unit ! Surely your unit will be exposed as you say to some heavy shooting and nasty magic that the new ABs have like Infernal gateway or Pit of Shades . But I wish you luck and hope you have success with it !

In theory, the Square might attract so much attention that units of cavalry can scoot up the flanks of the field with no trouble, then wrap around the enemy to charge on their rear.

In theory....

Anyway, I have 36 pikemen to form the center; and one of the four units of duelists thus far.

Nice theory, but with practically half of your army tied up in one section of the battlefield you're stretching yourself a bit thin I would think...

If you could manage 2 squares to support each other that would be nasty. Good luck painting 80 duelists though

(08-29-2009 07:01 PM)Slick Wrote: [ -> ]Good luck painting 80 duelists though

You could always paint a basecolour and then dip the models

80 duelists in 1 week

If this thing were a Death Star, having half one's points in one unit wouldn't be a bad thing.

Been a while (and no pics yet... sorry), but the Square had its first go tonight. The fight was against the Chaos Dwarves, and although I ended up getting hammered in the last two turns, I must say that the formation did one thing well: it drew fire.

More specifically, it drew fire away from my heavy cav units, Paymaster, and warmachines. At one point, it was hit with a rocket blast that killed 9 men... and it still kept going! Not that you build such a formation simply as a 1000 point fire magnet, but it does give one's opponent a tough choice: focus on the Square, or on all the other stuff.

I'll post more as I play around with it some more and against differing armies.

An intriguing idea... But I dont know if I'd ever use such a thing.