Infantry tactics / formations

[Ragnar]

Hello,
I'm looking for some formation for mostly mele infantry army. I found lots of range, static formation but only few for base infantry army. If you now some would be nice if you shere it :D

[SpeaksTooFast]

It depends a bit on your faction choice and weather you expect your infantry to be the main damage dealers or they are for holding and positioning while a few other elite units do the damage.

Example 1: Khorne
You have no access to reliable magic damage and your artillery recharges it's ammo while in melee. IMO you should be less focused on your own formation than disrupting the opponents and preventing their ranged units from getting shots off. Your units can do a lot of damage but can also take a lot and if you are not careful your best units may not make it to the fight.

Example 2: Vampire Counts
Your mages can do a lot of damage to massed opponents, you also have a number of units that offer area buffs/debuffs/ and even direct damage auras. Using cheap inexpensive melee units who's main point is to centralize the enemy attack in a concentrated area where your auras and spells can have the maximum effect can work surprisingly well.

Example 3: Greenskins
Here you have decent melee infantry but also passable artillery and some respectable spell-casters. You battle buff is triggered buy engaging as many units as possible in melee. This is where going wide and trying to envelop and overrun the enemy formation seems to work well.

This is less melee infantry but if you are using an army with a significant speed advantage and facing a tough fight it is more about baiting out the faster units that can catch you then splitting up their formation and dog-pilling on isolated units.

[pit-s]

Originally posted by SpeaksTooFast:

...

I'm shocked! You forgot to mention the Beastman! ;)

[Ragnar]

Originally posted by SpeaksTooFast:

It depends a bit on your faction choice and weather you expect your infantry to be the main damage dealers or they are for holding and positioning while a few other elite units do the damage.

Example 1: Khorne
You have no access to reliable magic damage and your artillery recharges it's ammo while in melee. IMO you should be less focused on your own formation than disrupting the opponents and preventing their ranged units from getting shots off. Your units can do a lot of damage but can also take a lot and if you are not careful your best units may not make it to the fight.

Example 2: Vampire Counts
Your mages can do a lot of damage to massed opponents, you also have a number of units that offer area buffs/debuffs/ and even direct damage auras. Using cheap inexpensive melee units who's main point is to centralize the enemy attack in a concentrated area where your auras and spells can have the maximum effect can work surprisingly well.

Example 3: Greenskins
Here you have decent melee infantry but also passable artillery and some respectable spell-casters. You battle buff is triggered buy engaging as many units as possible in melee. This is where going wide and trying to envelop and overrun the enemy formation seems to work well.

This is less melee infantry but if you are using an army with a significant speed advantage and facing a tough fight it is more about baiting out the faster units that can catch you then splitting up their formation and dog-pilling on isolated units.

I was watching Total Tactics by Malleus Gaming
https://www.youtube.com/@MalleusGaming57


He shows some historic formation and deply it into warhammer. For me it was realy interesting and i start to use those formations to experiment by myself. When I was playing battles it was very schemating and quite cheesing. Now to enjoy myself again battles and looking for mor formation and triks to experiment. Static formation is intersting but now I want to try more some rush formations.

Your anser Is very helpful but I'm looking for somethink quite diffrent.

[TheSilverRaven]

I've been playing Kugath lately, so...

Ctrl+A > Right Click enemy > Occasionally use magic

This strategy works in in most matchups. If the enemy has a lot of ranged units, you might want to do the actual fighting in a forest. The same tactic is also incredibly effective for Vampire Counts.

[Ragnar]

Example of one of the looking formation.
Base source : Malleus Gaming
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3155485614&fileuploadsuccess=1

[(Steelclaw)]

The basic principle of a melee infantry army is that you want to fold around the enemy. Your formation should look a lot like a long line.

Weapon/shield infantry (or heavy armor) is frontline as usual. Great weapons or dual weapons on the flanks, because you want them to be the ones who wrap around to chop the enemy frontline in the sides/back (though some of them will inevitably need to chase enemy ranged if you don't have cavalry/dogs).

Halberds/spears are the only melee infantry which shouldn't necessarily be part of the line - keep them in reserve behind the front line to respond to large stuff, whether that be by intercepting flankers or just wading into the part of the melee in the same place the enemy monster just charged in.

If the enemy doesn't have large stuff, treat your spears as bonus swords and halberds as bonus great weapons.

If you have cavalry and you just didn't mention it, those go far on the flanks, past the great weapons. Monstrous infantry go directly behind the frontline and charge in with them, big monsters should typically go wherever the fighting is thickest since they can reposition easily (but it's often best to keep them back if the enemy ranged is active, because they tend to be easy targets).

As has been mentioned, forests are very much your friend. Water is very much not your friend, unless your infantry have Aquatic or Strider. Position accordingly.

As has also been said, magic can be a big factor in deciding the larger melee fights. If you have ranged but it sucks (e.g. orcs, beastmen), use it to soften up large targets, or enemy ranged, or even enemy dual swords.

[pit-s]

In addition to Steelclaw's comment
You can also stack your shockinf where you want to make your breakthrough to wrap around from there even if its the middle of your line - dont forget to charge with actual shock inf (usually 2handed sword/axe) before they make contact.
It may be advisable to have them a little further back to have more reaction time - or giving the enemy units in that section time to make contact with your lineholding inf first.
Also: set guardmode on those units you want absolutely not to chase after disengaging enemy units.

[Asuzu]

I play Vampire Counts a lot recently, and with no ranged units you pretty much depend on your magic and flying monsters to apply damage.
You also need to try and keep your army inside your leader morale buff zone.

So basically build a box around your lord, sprinkle in the mortis engines for aoe damage, and spam winds of death as the enemy army envelops your box.

With red line skills and research, your spear skeletons are pretty much unkillable with ridiculous defense and will hold the line forever against anything with perfect vigour. Add some damage dealers and you are fine. if you really want some ranged firepower, ally with a tomb king like Arkhan, and grab some skeleton archers, or sylvanian crossbows/gunners, but I feel like Vargheists are just better at this.

Lategame normally is Mannfred with a necros on cart and 18 terrorgheists reaping everything apart.

[Klutch]

if you lock the formation, and than attack with it your units will choose targets more or less in front of them. this is especially useful with reinforcements to unblob them and get them into the action with less micro

[Grinch]

Originally posted by pit-s:

Originally posted by SpeaksTooFast:

...

I'm shocked! You forgot to mention the Beastman! ;)

Forward deploy your un/gors into a forest near the enemy, pin the enemy in place for a well timed minotaur/boar wrecking ball, pick off the stragglers with hounds.

[Mr_Puddins]

I'll have the spears formed wide and the non-spear in columns. Also, I might actually have a second line of melee behind the first.

As far as ranged, if I go heavy on the ranged units I'll stack them in tiers behind the melee (obviously). However, most of the time I'll have a couple forward ahead of the melee to get a volley off before withdrawing them behind my melee layers.

I always stretch my army super wide across the field of battle but never so a single unit is stretched to one rank. This is especially true when I have a mostly (or all) melee army.

[CrUsHeR]

Originally posted by TheSilverRaven:

I've been playing Kugath lately, so...

Ctrl+A > Right Click enemy > Occasionally use magic

This strategy works in in most matchups. If the enemy has a lot of ranged units, you might want to do the actual fighting in a forest. The same tactic is also incredibly effective for Vampire Counts.

Lol... what.

In this game, there is exactly one thing you should NEVER do, which is to have all your units attack one target (during an open battle). Because this will cause your units to clump up, blocking each other, just asking for AOE spells getting dropped on them.

Instead, if you're so lazy you should just move your frontline forward. So you send them marching through the enemy frontlines. Units getting into melee on the way will just fight where they are.

[SpeaksTooFast]

There has been a lot of good advice offered but I would just like to reiterate that if going heavy on melee infantry using static formations more complicated than big long line may not be in you best interest. If that's what you want to build then you are more or less committing to a rush army and things like using terrain to minimize damage on the approach and disrupting enemy artillery/ranged units will be much more impactful than any formation you can yourself use.

In my experience there are two ways to normally do this well in this game.
-Pick one type of take all comers melee infantry and make that the core of your army supported by a few characters.
-Same type of melee infantry from the but about half of your army is full of faster units for flanking.

You absolutely can try to mix anti-infantry and anti-large infantry choices but I find that to be less effective on the campaign where things like unit replenishment matter. I would recommend more choosing a balanced or anti-infantry core supported by faster anti-large units.

Having halberds in reserve may sound great but realistically they are too slow to threaten most large units unless they are already stuck in combat and have already done significant damage. They will also be vulnerable to archer fire as they themselves are not engaged in combat.

[(Steelclaw)]

Originally posted by SpeaksTooFast:

There has been a lot of good advice offered but I would just like to reiterate that if going heavy on melee infantry using static formations more complicated than big long line may not be in you best interest. If that's what you want to build then you are more or less committing to a rush army and things like using terrain to minimize damage on the approach and disrupting enemy artillery/ranged units will be much more impactful than any formation you can yourself use.

In my experience there are two ways to normally do this well in this game.
-Pick one type of take all comers melee infantry and make that the core of your army supported by a few characters.
-Same type of melee infantry from the but about half of your army is full of faster units for flanking.

You absolutely can try to mix anti-infantry and anti-large infantry choices but I find that to be less effective on the campaign where things like unit replenishment matter. I would recommend more choosing a balanced or anti-infantry core supported by faster anti-large units.

Having halberds in reserve may sound great but realistically they are too slow to threaten most large units unless they are already stuck in combat and have already done significant damage. They will also be vulnerable to archer fire as they themselves are not engaged in combat.

I know I talked a lot about mixed infantry strategies, but this is really solid advice. I didn't touch on it too much since I assumed OP was either restricted to or wanted to go full infantry, but anti-large cavalry slaps, and is rarely bad at being shock cavalry vs infantry if it runs out of large targets.

[Urist Microcline]

Either stack everyone up in a big blob to drop buffs on your whole army or make a thin long line and wrap around.