When outnumbered - how do you keep enemies from getting into your soft back-row?

[jpinard]

Two different cases. Barbarians or Noble House humans vastly outnumber me, and I don't know how to keep them from circling around and overwhelming my 7 front-line guys.

Second case is Orcs, who bull-rush and force my guys back and penetrate deep. How do you manage these two cases?

[Cat®]

When they flank around what I find works is either putting your edges one tile back, or to make a one space gap to leverage your ZOC. The most important part is to not remain in rigid formation when that happens and move units that are available to defend where necessary. If your centre tank is not engaging anything odds are they can be needed to help on the sides. Having your stronger units on the edges is also a good idea. Secondly this is why Footwork on your backline is very useful.

Pure numbers tldr: Don't be rigid, there is nothing wrong with splitting your forces in half through the middle as the centre breaks down.

For orc warriors specifically you have a little bit more of an equipment dependent situation. You need to crunch their armour to really deal with them, and that usually involves a few going AH HA. Footwork is again very useful, and then you just got to use hammers and other armour crunchers to crack their shell so you can start tearing them up. Fearsome is the death knell of orc warriors.

Orcs tldr: Specialise against them, they will touch your backline at least once so build for that.

[['w']]

I use rotate and this on everyone, for my ranged units also footwork.

Everyone has a 1hnd weapon and a shield or two, besides their hammers or flails / 2hnd hammers or ranged weapons for the second row

I focus on single enemies and try to flank them where they seem to be the weakest, I try to avoid fighting enemies who are at least equal in equipment and outnumber me.

And I started to take pathfinder on everyone, at lvl 11

if nothing helps, I form a circle or I savescum :D

[Hairy Coo]

Idea is to kill things fast before you are swarmed. Make sure in any fight 10/12 of ur bros are good at killing stuff, other 2bros are tanks on thw wings preventing overflow for a few turns. Mosty valid for orc/barb fights.

Dead enemy does no damage to your backline :)

[Heron]

I prefer to deploy spear wall tanks on my flanks, especially for sea of tents and stuff like that. One on each flank can usually buy enough time to crush the centre with heavy damage dealers and then it evolves into a 2 front battle on the flanks. Using movement blocking terrain features can greatly help too but isn't always possible.

[mpkinton]

Rigid formations can be detrimental if the enemy is flanking you, but in the case of orc warriors just trying to bash their way through, a rigid formation is great. They can not bash if the spaces behind your guys are filled. Knowing when to break off is extremely important, but knowing when to sack up and hold the line is important too. This usually leads to them bashing the edges of the formation, so just spam indom with those guys.

Orc warriors are extremely reluctant to take up a poor position (lower elevation, swamp tiles) You can use this to your advantage too.

[laveley]

To be honest, this is one of the reasons why most late game fights become more os less a dps run. So the answer for your question is killing them as fast as possible.

[The Duck Knight]

nets and a ton of CC.
I also tend to have my backline not full squishy, but damage/tank hybrids which is also most of my frontline. so on Vet/vet everyone can hold a line against 2-3 enemies alone for a few turns till backup arrives or I smokebomb them out of the dangerzone.

[McGrits]

For 24 unit (or less) orc fights, a couple ranged units are ok unless there are a plethora of orc warriors. For the high number of orc warrior fights and any orc fight at the 32 unit size, the back row is comprised of qh 2h long-short weapons bros. Usually a couple of 2h axe bros, a 2h hammer bro and a 2h mace bro. I will also use a polearm bro and my bannerman. Everyone has rotate except the polearm bro and banner man bro who have footwork.

As mentioned above, formation is key with an indom bro on the edge to prevent the warriors from busting through. I really only do this on the concave edge. When they try to wrap around there is a 2h axe bro to meet them. For the convex edge, you have to be careful for when they push the edge bro out (usually the mace bro) but they just run into the 2h hammer bro on the inside.

[Coldoge]

Pre-battle spread the formation across the nine tile front. There may be gaps depending on how many in the front rank. Single tile gaps are covered by ZOC on both sides of the gap. Gaps may be filled by someone plugging from the second rank. If gap is not plugged, enemy jumping into gap are pretty much surrounded.

Spreading out the formation does not prevent the AI going around the flanks but makes it harder.

[chandl34]

What kind of backline do you have? If you're using a lot of archers instead of polearm experts, your dps is going to be low. Use billhooks for single target damage and swordlances for aoe, with quickhands. As long as your front line can also do damage, this should help you kill fast enough so that you never get surrounded.

Even so, you should probably still back up to the edge of the map, if you are concerned about your dps output.

[Heron]

Originally posted by chandl34:

As long as your front line can also do damage, this should help you kill fast enough so that you never get surrounded.

Against 30+ orcs you need to secure your flanks somehow, just killing does no longer cut it at that point. Overflow is going to happen and it's going to mess up your backline if you don't have a plan to prevent it.

The only alternative is to have a backline that cannot be messed up.

[chandl34]

Originally posted by Heron:

Originally posted by chandl34:

As long as your front line can also do damage, this should help you kill fast enough so that you never get surrounded.

The only alternative is to have a backline that cannot be messed up.

A polearm expert shouldn't get messed up in melee, unless they have a few warriors on them. Same thing would happen to any other 2H character though. But again, you should back up to the wall if you don't think you can out-dps the approaching orcs.

I don't recommend spears. That's how I used to fight it a long time ago, but it's too slow. They're only particularly useful against young anyway, and being completely surrounded by young is a good thing.

[msunavygrad]

Originally posted by The Duck Knight:

nets and a ton of CC.
I also tend to have my backline not full squishy, but damage/tank hybrids which is also most of my frontline. so on Vet/vet everyone can hold a line against 2-3 enemies alone for a few turns till backup arrives or I smokebomb them out of the dangerzone.

Nets? Why didn't you bring this up before now?

[Leistungsumfang]

When entering those fights I put taunt-spearwall tanks on the flanks.
Once the enemies are behind them and closing in on the more squishy guys, I just taunt them with the tanks.
That makes flankers engage the tank.
At that point in the game you need rather sturdy tanks of course.

[Heron]

@chandl34

To be clear, I'm talking about sea of tents fights, not some willy-nilly orc camp.

The spears aren't meant to deal any damage. They're meant to deny a zone for a turn or two (your flank), maybe three if you're rolling well. A 70 matk spear master tank has a good chance to delay orc warriors with spearwall for 2 rounds. That's 2 rounds he'd otherwise be spending close up in melee, risking damage and getting his shield hacked to pieces. 2 more rounds for your centre to crush the orc centre. That's very good.

Even better against chosen, those are easier to hit with spearwall and you absolutely don't want anyone to stand near them if you can help it, not even your tanks.

Backing up all the way to the map edge is so lame and time consuming that I never do it.