I could not bring myself to raise the old shieldwall consideration thread but I did want to talk about the rule again. I have played some small to mid point games with Minas Tirth recently and have seen this rule in action. I have not tried it alongside Ingold as yet. I have been running two bands of warriors 4x2 and they have done pretty well. With warriors in both ranks one can lose a fight in the battle line, withdraw, and keep the +1 defense pretty easily. It is not always a game changer for me but it is nice. Is it worth not taking a fight 4 back rank, however, possibly. Has anyone else had the chance to work with this rule some and what is your opinion of it now?

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"Draw your sword with a heavy heart, but swing it with a heavy hand"

I have used it. I found that 4 WoMT with shield in the front(1), with 4 ranger with spear behind(2), with 2 WoMT with spear and shield(3) on the side maintains the shieldwall and fight 4 in the centre.
3 1 1 1 1 3
3 2 2 2 2 3
Turns into this if I lose a fight.
3 0 0 0 0 3
3 1 1 1 1 3
0 2 2 2 2 0
Zero is a vacancy.
Overall the shieldwall is still maintained.

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By all that you hold dear on this good Earth,
I bid you stand, men of the West!

But you will never know which battles you will lose.
It could also go something like this:
0 1 1 0 0 3
3 2 2 1 1 3
3 0 0 2 2 0

In that case, if your opponent has priority in the next turn, only 3 of the 8 soldiers will benefit from the shieldwall rule. Or 2, of he/she attacks only the front row...
And with a higher fight value it's more likely that the warriors with shield and spear on the flanks will lose, so it will look like this:
0 1 1 1 1 0
3 2 2 2 2 3
3 0 0 0 0 3
With only the 2 in the middle benefit from shieldwall if you have no priority in the next turn.

Well then I would cry.
However, the idea hinges on either getting priority, your opponent not charging, or calling a heroic move.

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By all that you hold dear on this good Earth,
I bid you stand, men of the West!

I am not really sure if it is enough to justify running the regular warriors in full blocks over splitting them with elite spear support but I think that the rule is a nice touch. In smaller games it seems to do well and I think it gives the horde game a slight boost. I am interested to see how it preforms with different hero selections, including Ingold, and as front rank fodder for dol amroth pike blocks.

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"Draw your sword with a heavy heart, but swing it with a heavy hand"

In my opinion the whole key with MT is how to form your ranks in the actual battle. If you have the classic shieldwall and some rangers with spears behind it, you have to choose what you need to do in a certain situation. F4 and cover your flanks or D7 and shoot. Depends on the enemy, terrain, objectives, numbers and a lot of other factors. This is the dilemma that the new edition puts on you and this is the way MT was meant to be played.

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Conversation/Ideas over painting etc, can check here:
http://www.one-ring.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=29455

I just started playing Minas Tirith properly recently, but the one thing I really wanted to try this edition is Boromir with the Banner and a chunk of warriors in a shieldwall. Next to the banner the warriors are F4 D7 and C4 all for 8/9pts....they preform well from what I have seen (a couple practice games and a 5 game tournament) and I’ve only lost 1 game with them do far, and that was against Smaug :/. Anyway, I think the strength of the list now is in the relative spamability of high D troops. For me the F4 that way is good enough, and it’s much easier to maintain the shieldwall.

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Fight! Fight to the last man!

If this was to be our end then I would have them make SUCH AN END as to be worthy of remembrance

That seems decent. They get close to Iron Hills with the banner.

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Cheers,

P