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With the focus on hordes now for big blocks of spearmen or halebardiers what would you do for a detachment on say a block of 40-50 spearmen?

Since you can have up to half the size of the parent unit as a detachment would you go with a full 20-25 man detachments for this monsterous unit or would you stick with the 10-12 man detachments that have worked in the past? I'm not familiar with the new rules yet so I don't know if removing ranks works like it did before or not.

Also what would would make great detachments now? Would spearmen or militia be better for detachments?

One last question, have swordsmen lost thier place as the best core unit for empire?

well you have to have 2 ranks of 5 models to break a rank AFTER combat is resolved.

so..... 10 guys if they take 1 casualty isnt breaking ranks anymore. that should answer that question.

Swordsmen no longer get to strike first (unless buffed) so halberdiers have a real place.

A unit of at least 12 is good - if you work oit out you have probably 3 - 4 attacks coming at you, probably faster than you, so you need to be able to have at least 10 left (5x2) to break ranks.

Note also that detachments don't count toward core requirement any more, so they get expensive.