Adlerfurt Pikemaidens

Battlefield Role: Heavy Pike Infantry

Weapons: A long pike and a longsword as sidearm.

Outfit: Steel enclosed helmet. Steel place pieces and a cape over reinforced brigandine armour.

Skill level: Proficient polearm skills, average sword training.

Affiliation: Adlerfurt, in the Kaiserin Lands.

Doctrine: Bellona's Way of the Warmaiden

Strengths: Their very long pikes keep the enemy at bay. They can also form up a tight phalanx formation that completely obliterates incoming cavalry charges.

Weaknesses: They need both hands to handle their very long pikes, so they do not carry shields and are vulnerable to arrows.

Spearmaidens are already rather effective units to defend a given position on any battlefield. Both against infantry and cavalry alike. However, the Duchess of Adlerfurt stepped up her game to a whole new level of combat-effectiveness by completely reinventing those traditional units into something way deadlier.

Parting from the premise that size does really matter, Duchess Anna Stahladler of Adlerfurt started arming her spearmaiden regiments with stupidly long pikes of over 5 meters length instead of common spears of mere 2 meters, enabling them to place several rows of sharpened spearheads in between themselves and anyone who dares to come against them. This means that anyone daring to attack them from the front will have to deal with no less than 4 to 6 rows of thrusting spears, so nothing but the boldest and the stupidest human beings would ever charge at such a sea of death.

Pikemaidens are, therefore, a solid walking barrier of pointy pikes, making the perfect obstacle to deny the advance of any enemy unit. They can hold off even the fiercest charges of the mightiest shock cavalry, and also reinforce a breach on any fortress' wall as effeciently as humanly possible.

Yet, such a great advantage does not come without its own downsides, which can be great weaknesses if not properly dealt with.

Firstly, their pikes are just so fucking long and cumbersome to use that the Pikemaidens need both hands to handle it, rendering any attempt of using shields as passive protection utterly useless. This, along with the very tightly packed phalanx formation that they use, makes them quite exposed and vulnerable to enemy arrows, so the Duchess decided to invest quite a high budget on those low-born soldiers' survivability, armouring them up with enough plate and brigandine armour to cover their entire bodies.

Secondly, pikes are indeed amazing weapons for attacking an enemy from a good melee distance with several other Pikemaidens covering your flanks and back, but they are completely useless if the regiment is caught out of formation or on the flanks. For this, Duchess Anna Stahladler decided to once again invest even more on those valuable pike units, providing them with good-quality longswords and a proper sword fighting training. In the event of being outflanked or taken by surprise, a Pikemaiden can very well drop her pike and draw her longsword, fighting off the enemy with quite a good preparedness for that.

But while those smaller weaknesses can and are properly dealt with in the Adlerfurt armies, what can not be so easily fixed is the drastically low maneuverability of the Pikemaiden regiments once they are engaged into phalanx formation. If the flanks and the rearguard of the Pikemaidens isn't defended by friendly troops, they can be easily outmaneuvered and have their formations broken, taking away their biggest advantage, which is their pikes' long reach.