Stacked line?

[tenwit]

Fair enough. Hold onto the idea for your follow-up column, Hit the Line.

[Jural]

I have played against a developed orc team with enough strength and guard that I was unable to get advantage hits on the team without parking a player on the end line...

well almost. Luckily my opponent chose to field a goblin instead of an additional orc linemen, and I broke through with a single die block with an induced Hubris Rakarth... but if he had thought better of it, there was nothing I could have done

[DoubleSkulls]

5) You have time for a defensive score but you need a fast jump.

This is very dangerous if you haven't got some of preceeding too.

Unless you are leading by 2, then the risk is stacking the line leaves you with a very high risk your opponent will pop somewhere and get through for a 2 turn score.

[sann0638]

Just playing devil's advocate, what if your opponent is slow (Khemri, Dwarf) and you wanted to tie him on to the line - tempt him to stacking the line to avoid forming a cage, allowing you to disrupt before he does so?

[Storch]

I have always found stacking the line is a bit of a gambit. You are essentially daring your opponent to either let you get some good 2 die blocks against his line and open holes or force him to put more guys on the line himself, limiting his own ability to make a play for the ball.

It all boils down to the relative "bashiness" of the two lines. Stacking the line will not get your opponent to commit if you stack it with 4 Chaos warriors who all have Block, Claws, and Mighty Blow as that's suicidal not tactical. He needs to see a real benefit to putting more bodies on the line. Guard heavy dwarves are another example of where stacking gets you nothing as our opponent is assumed to not be completely stupid. On the other hand, putting 4 Saurses and a Kroxigor up front could make someone think twice as they don't want to let you break free with one or two of those guys and run amok in his backfield.

[mattgslater]

Stacking the line will not get your opponent to commit if you stack it with 4 Chaos warriors who all have Block, Claws, and Mighty Blow as that's suicidal not tactical. He needs to see a real benefit to putting more bodies on the line. Guard heavy dwarves are another example of where stacking gets you nothing as our opponent is assumed to not be completely stupid.

I actually don't think I agree here. I think that those are the lines you want to stack. If your opponent can't handle your line, he still needs to put three guys up to do so anyway. Maybe they'll have to dodge away, but three 2+ dodges yields 91 failures out of 216 attempts; that's over 40%!

I never thought of the goal of a stacked line as being to tie the opponent down making blocks, but rather to force your opponent to try to make their hole in the wide zone or on the "joint" covered by a linebacker. The idea of using a stacked line to tie up blocking actions is interesting, but seems it would demand good armor (or fair armor and low prices) in a non-bashy team. What team race could pull that off? Does anyone else stack the line to soak up blocks rather than controlling real estate? How do you back that line? Obviously, in that case, you're not putting your linebackers one-back, because if the line is getting kd'ed, they're likely giving up free assists on the blitz.

I guess you could run a 4-3 that way, so each of your linos has a pull-off to hand and your equal-ST opponent would have to set up a front of 7-9 to comfortably knock 'em all down. It might only take 4 actions, but it might take 5, 6, 7.... That leaves you with a middle LB and two outside LBs to soak up the blitz. That's enough guys to cover all the interior squares, but not enough to do so and assist each other. You're probably not keeping anyone out with that strategy, but you may very well end up in a good spot if the pick-up attempt fails, with your opponent all clumped up in the middle of the line, and not enough pressure to protect whatever breakaways your oppo can launch up Broadway... I wonder if that would work?

Humans could do that, I guess. Get two Guard Blitzers for the interior line positions and two linos to play DE, and with a couple SS Catchers sitting in the WZ, you can't keep 'em out, but you can leave them to blitz into the middle of the formation. Vs. ST3, put the Ogre in at middle LB, and they've got a nice little dilemma. It's quite risky, and I don't know if I'd do it, but I'll test it for the column against my buddy's Skaven. Anyone got a success story with such a formation?

[Storch]

Matt, I think you have indirectly pointed out another key factor as to whether to stack the line: the personality of your league.

I play an extremely bashy league this season (Chaos, Nurgle, 2xDwarf, 3xOrc, Lizardmen, Vampire, Necromantic, and 1 Human). I've got the Chaos team and they are an aberration owing to my uncanny ability to roll doubles, giving me 3 Warriors with Block and Dodge. Aside from them, the Humans and Vamps are the only ones who could be expected to dodge with any sort of success on a regular basis. In a situation like that, you line choices are perceived by many to be A) feed three players to your opponent to beat likea rag doll or B) commit more players to maybe balance the line and make your opponent roll a couple 1 die blocks here and there.

In a league like this the problem becomes that only putting 3 men on the line means that usually after about 3 or so blocks, there is a big hole where the line used to be and letting your opponent run 4 or so players right up the middle is more of a liability than potentially being a man or two short in the back field. It's a very real possibility in our league that if you don't put enough players on the line, your backfield quickly becomes the line and then you have much bigger problems.