#shield wall

I have produced three different ideas of what camp half blood large scale formations would be. Please pick between them as I have asked our staff with little response 😭

Idea 1- the combined arms

Using standard sword and shield as the front line with spears behind, once the spears are out of range of the front, the sarissa is integrated. The spears behind slide under the arm of the soldier infront

Idea 2- standard hoplite phalanx

The type of formation you would see in ancient greek movies such as 300 or the image provided above. With sarissas added behind the line to provide more structure and defensive strength

Idea 3- sarissa phalanx

Same as above but every soldier carries a sarissa even if only the front line carries a shield

The reason for number 1 being the only one to incorporate swords is that swords, even if they are a brilliantly fascinating weapon that draws one eye much like the embers of a blaze, were sidearm weapons. This would largely be because they do not work well in formation, but also that polearms like spears would work better. However, swords do still make sense for demigods outside of formation as they are not dealing with armour and so the weapons can properly deal damage as well as the fact they don't need to be tightly packed allowing for larger swings. This works especially well with the type of sword they use (the xiphos aka the leaf shaped blade) as this sword was mostly a cut weapon like later arming swords.

These formations would make the most sense for battles such as labyrinth, Manhattan, and smaller battles that likely would have happened off screen

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So the issue with the Ironborn relying on shield walls - a military strategy that was characteristic of the Early Midde Ages - is that they are almost entirely made up of melee infantry (mostly spearmen and axemen) and have relatively few archers and no cavalry. The rest of Westeros have moved on to a Late Medieval paradigm of warfare that stresses a combined arms approach which relies on a mix of knightly cavalry, more advanced melee infantry (men-at-arms, pikemen, etc.), and archers who work in concert, with melee infantry protecting archers from cavalry, archers targeting blocks of infantry, and cavalry attempting to break enemy infantry often by attacking from the flanks or rear. A Vikinger-style shieldwall is extremely vulnerable to this Late Medieval army. For one thing, we know that Ironborn don't have the discipline to hold the shieldwall together in the face of a cavalry charge - and when infantry formations break, they can be utterly destroyed as happened at the Battle of Hastings. Moreover, even if the Ironborn could hold their formation, the mere presence of cavalry means they have to stretch their lines to protect their flanks and rear, which means they then have a much thinner line with which to oppose the enemy's infantry.

Likewise, if an army made up entirely of melee infantry shieldwalls come up against large numbers of archers who are supported by knights and/or infantry, they can be absolutely decimated as the archers easily target their slow-moving tightly-packed formations who can't retaliate out of fear of counter-attack from the cavalry, as happened at the Battle of Falkirk.