"War doctrine varied greatly between races as a whole. The goblins for example, due to their preponderance in jungle-laden areas, strongly favored harassment and guerilla attacks from concealment.
Orcs favored a single, blistering charge to decide a battle on the spot. This came as a nasty surprise to the humans, who favored attrition tactics to make full use of their usually superior numbers.
Elves were skirmishers and raiders by nature, though under the influence of a warlike enough Warchief, they had been witnessed to do devastating frontal assaults as well.
Dwarves on the other hand usually favored a steady defense, paired with what was usually a crippling counterattack. A dwarven army defending a fortification had been shown to regularly defeat enemies five times their number or more." - Eldigan Schönberg, scholar of military history, circa 607 VA.
It was one thing to visualize troop formations with tokens on a map in strategy meetings.
It was an entirely different feeling to be standing shoulder to shoulder with those very same troops, prepared to fight alongside them, with the people he was responsible for arrayed out neatly behind his back.
Reinhardt was not a newcomer to battlefields. Yet this was probably the first time he - and many of the current Free Lances left - participated in a battle of this scale. The largest he had participated in during his career as a mercenary before this was a battle that saw roughly fifteen thousand men to a side, nearly a decade ago, during a "skirmish" between the dwarven kingdoms.
Due to his group's position - and the overall shorter height of the dwarven army - he got a good look of their overall formation. It was very much like what they discussed the night before, the formation forming a rough trapezoid more wide than deep.
At the very front, just ahead of where his group was placed, were a wide line of dwarves arrayed ten deep. Each of them were clad in heavy armor and carried a tower shield the size of a door, with only a single slot for vision at eye-height, filled with a clear crystal of sorts.
Behind him were the dwarven light infantrymen, arranged into eight square formations, four wide and two deep, of roughly three thousand men each. He noticed that each formation had a dedicated group who carried three meter long spears as well, probably as a countermeasure to the enemy cavalry.
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As for cavalry, their own "light" cavalry was to the sides at the rear of the formation, split into two groups of two thousand riders each, one group on each flank of the formation. Each of them also had five hundred or so of the heavy cavalry further out on their outer flank.
Dwarven cavalry, even light ones, were relatively slow for a cavalry unit, but they were unparalleled in destructive force, only truly matched by the rare orcish war-lizard platforms. While they would fare poorly in a chase against the enemy cavalry, should they manage to force a head-on clash, the results would be devastating for the humans.
The Crown Prince himself stood tall on top of his war chariot. He was in the center rear of their formation, the fifty war chariots grouped together, with the remaining heavy cavalry on their flanks as they awaited their chance to strike.
With a spyglass to his eye, Reinhardt took the chance to observe the enemy formation arrayed against them across the field. Their more numerous enemies were arranged in a curve, a formation meant to envelop the opposing side.
He saw their numerous cavalry at the ends of the curve. Each of the sides having roughly a thousand mounted knights on armored warhorses, as well as five thousand more lightly armored riders armed with javelins and spears. Quite typical human heavy and light cavalry, all considered.
As for the rest of the massive army facing them, the majority of them looked little different than the zealot militia they had to deal with early on in their incursion. Men and women of all ages often with makeshift weapons in their hands, all of whom looked far too eager to fight.
The exception was a force of maybe seven to eight thousand that held the enemy center. They looked to be trained soldiers, better equipped with uniform gear, and in a more disciplined formation. The Crown Prince and his aides had guessed that their opponent might attempt to bog them down with their militia first, before their infantry and cavalry struck.
Slowly, the two armies moved closer to one another. They entered arrow range soon after, and both sides began to pelt their enemies with projectiles almost at the same time.
The militia's archers were clearly less trained, their coordination lacking, and their aim more haphazard. They made up for it with sheer numbers however, as their arrows fell like raindrops on the dwarven army.
In return, the dwarves in front stoically raised their massive shields at an angle, while others behind them lifted their shields up high to form a roof above their formation. Their second line shifted slightly, as they moved to the slight gaps between the shields and pulled out heavy repeating crossbows, which they fired from those gaps in return.
Their fire took a far heavier toll on the enemy militiamen, but the enemy had plenty more where they came from, and the sight of their fellows falling and dying to the bolts only seemed to enrage them more.
Behind the first line, Reinhardt had also ordered his men to raise their shields. Those who did not usually use a shield had carried a makeshift wooden shield for this purpose, while Mischka and her group took they front as they raised their truly humongous shields and helped cover the rest with it.
The rain of arrows carried on unabated, as those in the rear lines also came into range and added their contribution to it. The humans were able to put more weight to their fire, but the dwarves had far more effective results given their opponent's general lack of proper armor.
Then finally the frontline of the zealots reached within three hundred paces of the dwarven frontline, and they began to charge with a loud bellow as they waved their weapons menacingly.
In response, the frontmost dwarves planted their heavy shields into the soil and braced against it as they formed a literal shield wall, while the second line brought out their weapons. The third line angled their shield to cover them from arrows in turn, as the whole line stopped in place and readied themselves.
The bloody clash between the frontlines signified the beginning of the battle of Jahra Plains.