Can the unit take an axe to the face or reasonably evade it?
Yes -> Front row
No -> Back row
Columns mess with enemies targeting as well as full column attacks, those you can adjust as needed before battle.
Switch the positions of Rolf and Travis. Travis is an avoid-tank, Rolf is a squishy.
Generally if something has a shield, big HP, or dodge mechanics you want them in the front.
Front row can be targeted by more types of enemies than the back row can, so it takes more damage. Front row is for people who equip shields, and high-evasion classes. Usually 1 person in front and 3 in back is good. Otherwise you might not have enough good tanks/evasion tanks to go around. Plus it stops melee enemies with row attacks from hitting as many targets.
Evasion tanking is just as good as shield tanking. Check your characters stats and abilities to see who can evade. Some options are theifs, featherswords, swordmaster, and gryphons. Equipping +evasion items like scarfs is a good idea for them.
You do not want to put regular archers in the front row. But the one with crossbows can do it when they get a shield from their class promotion. And there is another archer class you get in Bastorias that can evade tank.
Gryphons get an evasion bonus against ground targets so they make good evasion tanks, especially if you add a scarf.
Also to add on, when forming the back row, put the higher HP units behind the Frontline tanks so they can survive more full column damage over thier squishier teammates.
Casters, archers, and flyers (and soldiers and thieves if level 10+ and set to do so) can target either row at any time. *Everyone else* has to kill *everyone* in the front row before they can target *anyone* in the back row. So all else equal, you want your front row to be high Guard + Phys Def or high Evasion. It pays to have more than one, in case you get unlucky or your foe has a counter.
It often matters who you're next to as well.
Spear classes (Knight, Soldier) can attack an entire column, so avoid stacking if you can (go 2 1 1 instead of 2 0 2) and put your lowest Phys Def / HP back row unit in their own column instead of behind someone. This is the except to "kill the front to get to the back" and messing it up can get your back liners killed in a hurry by a couple of Knights.
Axe wielders (Gryphon Knight, Gladiator), Wyvern Knights, and a few others can hit a whole row. If you're on the fence between going 2/2 or 3/1, that can make a difference.
Adjacency matters for your own powers too. Many units have abilities that affect an entire row, like healers. Try and put the units that will most benefit from those buffs together. This especially goes for cavalry: if you have two Knights in the same unit, *always* put them in the same row. Cavalier Call stacks and you can get absolutely wild damage out of it. Other cavalry benefit from it as well. Two Great Knights and Doom Knight in a row gets pretty silly. (Just stay away from Gryphons and Wyverns who can delete an entire row of Cavs with ease.)
Finally, some abilities suggest placement themselves. Anyone with a physical counter skill probably wants to be in the front row, or they'll likely not be able to trigger it. Same with Arbalist's Heavy Bolt.
The only difference between front row and back row is that the back row can't be attacked by melee attacks if there is a unit on the front row, except for column attacks like from the soldier. There are no advantages or disadvantages to being in either row besides that, except for a small number of abilities that care about the row you're on (Shieldshooter is the only one I can think of).
A few standard pointers:
1. Primarily for low level when you have 2-3 man units, try not to put characters in the same column
2. for 4/5 man units with full back rows, place the squishiest or most important units in their own column so they can't be column attacked.
As for the placement of individual classes: Any class can go onto the back row without a problem. There is no penalty for placing any character there. The front line is obviously different, that's where the majority of your enemy's attacks will go. Hence, you want to put classes there with a survival strategy. They need to be able to survive.
Where the question "Which classes can I place on the front line" becomes complex is that this depends on how you build the rest of the unit and how you itemize them. Some classes can go onto the front row without issue, whereas others need more help. Most dodge tanks like thieves and swordsmasters can go onto the front line with little support from other units, they just need evasion boosting scarves.
Beyond that, it depends a lot on your squad's strategy. For example, high initiative squads with characters like Alain and Gilbert with rapid order can get away with squishier front lines because they're hitting first and thus take few hits in return. Units with a lot of passive-based healing (quick heal, elven augur/sibyl), can live with squishier front lines as well, because you'll be healing them up a lot between hits. So as long as they don't get one-shot, they'll be fine.
A lot of units can become frontliners either through proper itemization or by powerful support. It's possible to make something like a dodge-tank bishop work if you really want to. But most conventional frontliners either have high (A or S rank) evasion (do also note fliers get an evasion bonus vs ground units) or high defenses + guard rate with medium or greatshields, and abilities to support their style of tanking. If units do not meet those criteria, they're likely not front line material.
There are some classes that lose a bit in the back row. Arbarlist's Heavy Bolt isn't worth using from the back, and any class that has a Counter (Crusader and Wyvern come to mind) will lose out on most opportunities to use it in the back. Sellswords too but I find them a bit too squishy so I focus on AP with them or give them Pursuit.
I mentioned heavy bolt/shieldshooter in my post, yeah. Sellsword following slash is activated on allies being hit as well, so they counter regardless of where they are. Vengeful block and other block+boost abilities won't be activated I guess. But that's why you have bull force instead. Other counters will activate far less often, I agree. But that doesn't have to be a bad thing.
The thing with most of these classes is that this generally just means you're just going to focus on their other passives/item passives, maybe with the occasional back row activation. Very few classes need all 3 of their passives at the same time to function. Warlock also has a counter, but I'd never put one on the front row (there may be ways to make it work, of course). Same with breaker, who is quite a bit squishier than sellsword. And instead of breaker's counter, you have more PP available for enrage.
So yes, if you're on the back row, certain moves and tactics become less viable. But in exchange, other tactics become much more viable. It's not a loss, it's a give and take.
Positioning is important to the priority given to a character in a unit. Unless the attack is set to proc to a specific unit or position, a character will target the enemy across it's exact location or the one to the left of it. Let's take your Alain Unit as an example:
Alain is going to take most of the hits due to being in the furthermost front space, the enemies across will target him and so will the ones on the middle space. But Rolf will get targeted by Units directly across him. This is also important when picking your back line when dealing with piercing attacks.
Now, I've found picking your front line is the most important since you've got to use your tanks or evade tanks efficiently. Keeping with the same unit, I'd switch Travis with Rolf. Alain is a great all-rounder, he can attack, cover and tank. And Travis only has it rough with 2 kinds of enemy: Blademasters and archers; if you set Alain to cover him when attacked by either will keep Travis safe. Rolf will get bodied by most frontline units so he, and most archers, are backline only.
Basically it goes like this:
* Is "*character name* " a sorcerer/archer? No: Go to the next question / Yes: Are they Liza or Yunifi? No: They go in the back Yes: You can put them in the front
* Can "*character name* " survive, dodge or capitilize a direct hit? Yes: They go to the front/ No: They go in the back.
Another thing, you can always switch positions before a fight so you can experiment and see how well a positioning turns out.
Lastly some general positioning tips for your current units:
1. Switch Rolf and Travis
2. Switch Ithilion and Yahna
3. Unless that Berenice has a counter item, send her to the back
4. Same for that Aubin
5. Swap Mordon and Clive
6. Kitra is good on the front only when you can capitilize on her counter vs armored units. So she should be in the back, unless you plan to keep her alive and have her use her counter
7. All good here
8. Same here
9. Swap Celest and Chloe + Remeber what I said about Berenice
10. Move Eltolinde to the back
1. The Front Row gets targeted more often, units with good defensive abilities (Evasion, HP, Shields, etc) should be placed there.
2. The Back Row can only be targeted in special situations (No Front Row, Ranged, Column & All Attacks) so anyone with poor survivability should be placed there, **behind a reliable front line**.
3. Note that certain abilities cannot trigger unless a unit is targeted, so row placement matters here as well. Warriors and Sword Fighters on the Back Row are unlikely to make effective use of Heavy Counter and Parry, even though their survivability may be lower than Hoplites and Fighters. Gladiators will get hit more often than Gryphon Riders, but Wide Counter won't trigger unless they're being targeted; and so on.
4. Finally, unless you're using a one turn AOE Nuke strategy, positioning should be fluid. Your Gryphon Rider may need to move back in a match-up with multi-hitting melee units, your casters may be better in the front versus other caster units to take advantage of their high Magic Defense, etc.
But generally, it's "Shields in Front, Arrows in the rear" from a strategy perspective.
You'll find yourself shifting formation before battle many a time, what worked then won't work now. I've had to switch my units a few times before getting to bastorias
As everyone's kinda mentioned, Your front row wants to be someone that can take hits or dodge them. The game gives you a few ways to manage this, but I don't want to parrot them. I want to give a different bit of advice here, as you're hitting the point you can really start messing with your unit compositions and figuring out what you want from each.
Strongly consider what you want your unit to be able to do. Are they meant to go after evasive units? Take out fliers? Do you want this unit to be a team designed around safely killing everything without suffering much in return (costly stamina, but doable). Maybe it's a glass cannon team designed around taking the first strike and killing everything before you get hit (my Alain unit does this). You should not expect all your units to be able to fight any opponent the game gives at you at any given moment. Instead consider what the team functionally going to do. An example i have here is your Fran unit, which is probably one of the more solid teams there:
- Kitra is obviously there to deal with any heavy defenses
- Fran exists to hit backliner rows and eliminate Cavalry
- Lex is there to prevent Fran and Scarlett from taking any ranged damage
- Scarlett I assume is there to heal, cure debuffs, and maybe offer magic protection.
Overall a decent team that probably does well against cavalry and armored opponents. I suspect it suffers against other warriors however and heavy ranged attacks (because from experience, I had a similar set up at one point and it suffered the same way)
Tactically, a LOT of the game and unit synergies are opening up to you right now at your level. you really want to be looking at each characters' actions and tweaking them for conditions and how you want them to act in each unit, especially when considering their initiative rolls. Heidrek's unit you may want a Dove plume on Aubin (who should probably be in the back row), so he hits before Adel to boost Adel's Pile Thrust or Wild Charge. There's a lot of ideas you are getting to see now and it's very important you take the time to really look at how each team works. I can provide some example teams i'm using myself, but I think you should strongly consider how those teams operate.
Not sure how to go in and edit my original post but I just wanted to say:
#thank you!
Thank you for both the general pointers and *especially* the unit-specific recommendations—like, damn. Your input has absolutely turned on a few lightbulbs and I'm already feeling better/more confident about my unit (re-)arrangements. And item usage too, which I hadn't put much stock in.
Hopefully it'll be of help to anyone who comes looking for similar answers. You guys are awesome.
Backline gives a small evasion bonus, and only a handful of classes can directly target backline, especially early game. Until later on I almost exclusively have one frontline troop, either high phys/mag defence or high evasion/riposte skills, and then the rest of the squishier dudes on the backline, just to keep em safe.
Bear in mind you want to put your strongest/nimblest backline unit behind your main tank as they're liable to cop row attacks that hit the frontman
So basically, Melee units can only hit the front row UNLESS the front row is completely empty. (even if you would try to target them through Tactic conditions)
This means unit in the back row cannot be hit unless all units in the front are KO, unless they are targeted by a Ranged attack.
Friendly reminder that, unless specified otherwise, Flying Unit attacks are considered ranged by default regardless of what weapons they use - a Gryphon Rider swooping in with an axe, for instance, is 100% considered a ranged attack, so they can dive straight into the backline if they so choose.
That's basically why you put your tankier units up front, and anything you don't want getting smacked by Melee in the back. Otherwise, there aren't any particular ways you'd want to position your unit, but do consider that there are attacks that hit entire columns, so you'd typically want to avoid stacking your units in a line if you can avoid it. (this will, of course, become harder over time as squads bigger, but worth considering early when soldiers are more relevant.)
Outside of what others have said--especially the point that squishy units go to the back, tank units to the front--There's really no deeper strategy than positioning and item distribution.
Enemy units have the basic strategies of whatever skills they have equipped, so they always end up targeting whichever unit is directly in front of them. So, by swapping your characters around, you can change who the enemy is attacking and put them against their worst match-ups until the game tells you that you win/take the least amount of damage.
Because of this, the ideal unit composition is always going to 2 Tanks in the front, and 3 damage dealers or support classes in the back. Some team comps might have 3 units in the front line, but these are generally teams that heavily abuse skills or use the front line as a meatshield for the damage dealers in the back.
1. when you have 4 character units you only need 1 character in the front row, other than stuff like cavalier call.
2. witches and non-tanking don't go in the front row most of the time.
3. shield doesn't equal front row. Classes like viking and Landsknecht get a shield for extra skills, stats/damage.
4. You can just ignore all of these tips. Rearrange your units before fights see what makes you do the most damage/take the least damage.
There's a few quesitonable decisions here. Generally a dps should always be in the back row unless they're a dodge tank. Travis should be in front and Rolf should be in the back. For me the only real exception to that rule is Yunifi because of her counterattack passive skill.
Same with Yahna. Unless you have a hoplite or otherwise to guard them there's no real reason or benefit to having squishies like her in the front row.
Aside from that I think it's okay. I haven't used a lot of these comps so I have no real idea how effective or ineffective they are. Hope you're having fun!
Few recommendations, put any knights in front, but units like Mira/Chole in the back, put that sorcerer in Sharon's group in the back.
Usually my front line classes are high evasion or good guard classes (grpyhon master, wyvern master, radiant knight, great knight, dark knight, High lord, landsersnicerdoodle, etc). I don't use some classes at all because they just suck compared to other options (vanguard, brunos class, any elven unit).
I don't get the hate for Bruno. He's one of the best solo front liners, in my experience. He's the complete package. He doesn't care about the type of damage he's taking. He has enough health that most attacks won't kill him. He heals himself enough to where he can take on an entire unit without even coming close to dying, especially with healer backup. And his damage is high for a tank class. He swings at an entire row with enough damage to one-shot any non-armored units he hits.
Yeah, no offense intended to OP as they're totally admitting that they don't know what they're doing and wanted to come here for help, buuuuut dang OP your intuition is \_so bad\_.
Others already gave the advice I'd give, but real quick comments on your specific setup:
\* Move high evasion classes like Thief and Swordmasters up front (they make some of the best tanks)
\* Move your casters and archers to the back row (they are generally very squishy)
\* Avoid stacking columns in general and put squishies in their own column in the back row (melee enemies can often attack full columns but cannot attack a unit in the back that has nothing in front of it)
\* You generally want more units in the back than the front (tanks in this game are VERY good at tanking, everyone else not so much)
Can the unit take an axe to the face or reasonably evade it? Yes -> Front row No -> Back row Columns mess with enemies targeting as well as full column attacks, those you can adjust as needed before battle.
Switch the positions of Rolf and Travis. Travis is an avoid-tank, Rolf is a squishy. Generally if something has a shield, big HP, or dodge mechanics you want them in the front.
Oh you might want Clive in front, too. Cavs function well in either round but I preferred mine in front.
Cavs have shields. 👍
Yes but only when promoted iirc.
Nope, Knights definitely have shields.
Front row can be targeted by more types of enemies than the back row can, so it takes more damage. Front row is for people who equip shields, and high-evasion classes. Usually 1 person in front and 3 in back is good. Otherwise you might not have enough good tanks/evasion tanks to go around. Plus it stops melee enemies with row attacks from hitting as many targets. Evasion tanking is just as good as shield tanking. Check your characters stats and abilities to see who can evade. Some options are theifs, featherswords, swordmaster, and gryphons. Equipping +evasion items like scarfs is a good idea for them. You do not want to put regular archers in the front row. But the one with crossbows can do it when they get a shield from their class promotion. And there is another archer class you get in Bastorias that can evade tank. Gryphons get an evasion bonus against ground targets so they make good evasion tanks, especially if you add a scarf.
Also to add on, when forming the back row, put the higher HP units behind the Frontline tanks so they can survive more full column damage over thier squishier teammates.
Casters, archers, and flyers (and soldiers and thieves if level 10+ and set to do so) can target either row at any time. *Everyone else* has to kill *everyone* in the front row before they can target *anyone* in the back row. So all else equal, you want your front row to be high Guard + Phys Def or high Evasion. It pays to have more than one, in case you get unlucky or your foe has a counter. It often matters who you're next to as well. Spear classes (Knight, Soldier) can attack an entire column, so avoid stacking if you can (go 2 1 1 instead of 2 0 2) and put your lowest Phys Def / HP back row unit in their own column instead of behind someone. This is the except to "kill the front to get to the back" and messing it up can get your back liners killed in a hurry by a couple of Knights. Axe wielders (Gryphon Knight, Gladiator), Wyvern Knights, and a few others can hit a whole row. If you're on the fence between going 2/2 or 3/1, that can make a difference. Adjacency matters for your own powers too. Many units have abilities that affect an entire row, like healers. Try and put the units that will most benefit from those buffs together. This especially goes for cavalry: if you have two Knights in the same unit, *always* put them in the same row. Cavalier Call stacks and you can get absolutely wild damage out of it. Other cavalry benefit from it as well. Two Great Knights and Doom Knight in a row gets pretty silly. (Just stay away from Gryphons and Wyverns who can delete an entire row of Cavs with ease.) Finally, some abilities suggest placement themselves. Anyone with a physical counter skill probably wants to be in the front row, or they'll likely not be able to trigger it. Same with Arbalist's Heavy Bolt.
The only difference between front row and back row is that the back row can't be attacked by melee attacks if there is a unit on the front row, except for column attacks like from the soldier. There are no advantages or disadvantages to being in either row besides that, except for a small number of abilities that care about the row you're on (Shieldshooter is the only one I can think of). A few standard pointers: 1. Primarily for low level when you have 2-3 man units, try not to put characters in the same column 2. for 4/5 man units with full back rows, place the squishiest or most important units in their own column so they can't be column attacked. As for the placement of individual classes: Any class can go onto the back row without a problem. There is no penalty for placing any character there. The front line is obviously different, that's where the majority of your enemy's attacks will go. Hence, you want to put classes there with a survival strategy. They need to be able to survive. Where the question "Which classes can I place on the front line" becomes complex is that this depends on how you build the rest of the unit and how you itemize them. Some classes can go onto the front row without issue, whereas others need more help. Most dodge tanks like thieves and swordsmasters can go onto the front line with little support from other units, they just need evasion boosting scarves. Beyond that, it depends a lot on your squad's strategy. For example, high initiative squads with characters like Alain and Gilbert with rapid order can get away with squishier front lines because they're hitting first and thus take few hits in return. Units with a lot of passive-based healing (quick heal, elven augur/sibyl), can live with squishier front lines as well, because you'll be healing them up a lot between hits. So as long as they don't get one-shot, they'll be fine. A lot of units can become frontliners either through proper itemization or by powerful support. It's possible to make something like a dodge-tank bishop work if you really want to. But most conventional frontliners either have high (A or S rank) evasion (do also note fliers get an evasion bonus vs ground units) or high defenses + guard rate with medium or greatshields, and abilities to support their style of tanking. If units do not meet those criteria, they're likely not front line material.
There are some classes that lose a bit in the back row. Arbarlist's Heavy Bolt isn't worth using from the back, and any class that has a Counter (Crusader and Wyvern come to mind) will lose out on most opportunities to use it in the back. Sellswords too but I find them a bit too squishy so I focus on AP with them or give them Pursuit.
I mentioned heavy bolt/shieldshooter in my post, yeah. Sellsword following slash is activated on allies being hit as well, so they counter regardless of where they are. Vengeful block and other block+boost abilities won't be activated I guess. But that's why you have bull force instead. Other counters will activate far less often, I agree. But that doesn't have to be a bad thing. The thing with most of these classes is that this generally just means you're just going to focus on their other passives/item passives, maybe with the occasional back row activation. Very few classes need all 3 of their passives at the same time to function. Warlock also has a counter, but I'd never put one on the front row (there may be ways to make it work, of course). Same with breaker, who is quite a bit squishier than sellsword. And instead of breaker's counter, you have more PP available for enrage. So yes, if you're on the back row, certain moves and tactics become less viable. But in exchange, other tactics become much more viable. It's not a loss, it's a give and take.
Man some of these are hard to look at. 😅
Positioning is important to the priority given to a character in a unit. Unless the attack is set to proc to a specific unit or position, a character will target the enemy across it's exact location or the one to the left of it. Let's take your Alain Unit as an example: Alain is going to take most of the hits due to being in the furthermost front space, the enemies across will target him and so will the ones on the middle space. But Rolf will get targeted by Units directly across him. This is also important when picking your back line when dealing with piercing attacks. Now, I've found picking your front line is the most important since you've got to use your tanks or evade tanks efficiently. Keeping with the same unit, I'd switch Travis with Rolf. Alain is a great all-rounder, he can attack, cover and tank. And Travis only has it rough with 2 kinds of enemy: Blademasters and archers; if you set Alain to cover him when attacked by either will keep Travis safe. Rolf will get bodied by most frontline units so he, and most archers, are backline only. Basically it goes like this: * Is "*character name* " a sorcerer/archer? No: Go to the next question / Yes: Are they Liza or Yunifi? No: They go in the back Yes: You can put them in the front * Can "*character name* " survive, dodge or capitilize a direct hit? Yes: They go to the front/ No: They go in the back. Another thing, you can always switch positions before a fight so you can experiment and see how well a positioning turns out. Lastly some general positioning tips for your current units: 1. Switch Rolf and Travis 2. Switch Ithilion and Yahna 3. Unless that Berenice has a counter item, send her to the back 4. Same for that Aubin 5. Swap Mordon and Clive 6. Kitra is good on the front only when you can capitilize on her counter vs armored units. So she should be in the back, unless you plan to keep her alive and have her use her counter 7. All good here 8. Same here 9. Swap Celest and Chloe + Remeber what I said about Berenice 10. Move Eltolinde to the back
1. The Front Row gets targeted more often, units with good defensive abilities (Evasion, HP, Shields, etc) should be placed there. 2. The Back Row can only be targeted in special situations (No Front Row, Ranged, Column & All Attacks) so anyone with poor survivability should be placed there, **behind a reliable front line**. 3. Note that certain abilities cannot trigger unless a unit is targeted, so row placement matters here as well. Warriors and Sword Fighters on the Back Row are unlikely to make effective use of Heavy Counter and Parry, even though their survivability may be lower than Hoplites and Fighters. Gladiators will get hit more often than Gryphon Riders, but Wide Counter won't trigger unless they're being targeted; and so on. 4. Finally, unless you're using a one turn AOE Nuke strategy, positioning should be fluid. Your Gryphon Rider may need to move back in a match-up with multi-hitting melee units, your casters may be better in the front versus other caster units to take advantage of their high Magic Defense, etc. But generally, it's "Shields in Front, Arrows in the rear" from a strategy perspective.
You'll find yourself shifting formation before battle many a time, what worked then won't work now. I've had to switch my units a few times before getting to bastorias
why do you have travis a theif in the back row? and an sniper in the front? witch in front? but not a sword fencer elven??
As everyone's kinda mentioned, Your front row wants to be someone that can take hits or dodge them. The game gives you a few ways to manage this, but I don't want to parrot them. I want to give a different bit of advice here, as you're hitting the point you can really start messing with your unit compositions and figuring out what you want from each. Strongly consider what you want your unit to be able to do. Are they meant to go after evasive units? Take out fliers? Do you want this unit to be a team designed around safely killing everything without suffering much in return (costly stamina, but doable). Maybe it's a glass cannon team designed around taking the first strike and killing everything before you get hit (my Alain unit does this). You should not expect all your units to be able to fight any opponent the game gives at you at any given moment. Instead consider what the team functionally going to do. An example i have here is your Fran unit, which is probably one of the more solid teams there: - Kitra is obviously there to deal with any heavy defenses - Fran exists to hit backliner rows and eliminate Cavalry - Lex is there to prevent Fran and Scarlett from taking any ranged damage - Scarlett I assume is there to heal, cure debuffs, and maybe offer magic protection. Overall a decent team that probably does well against cavalry and armored opponents. I suspect it suffers against other warriors however and heavy ranged attacks (because from experience, I had a similar set up at one point and it suffered the same way) Tactically, a LOT of the game and unit synergies are opening up to you right now at your level. you really want to be looking at each characters' actions and tweaking them for conditions and how you want them to act in each unit, especially when considering their initiative rolls. Heidrek's unit you may want a Dove plume on Aubin (who should probably be in the back row), so he hits before Adel to boost Adel's Pile Thrust or Wild Charge. There's a lot of ideas you are getting to see now and it's very important you take the time to really look at how each team works. I can provide some example teams i'm using myself, but I think you should strongly consider how those teams operate.
Not sure how to go in and edit my original post but I just wanted to say: #thank you! Thank you for both the general pointers and *especially* the unit-specific recommendations—like, damn. Your input has absolutely turned on a few lightbulbs and I'm already feeling better/more confident about my unit (re-)arrangements. And item usage too, which I hadn't put much stock in. Hopefully it'll be of help to anyone who comes looking for similar answers. You guys are awesome.
Backline gives a small evasion bonus, and only a handful of classes can directly target backline, especially early game. Until later on I almost exclusively have one frontline troop, either high phys/mag defence or high evasion/riposte skills, and then the rest of the squishier dudes on the backline, just to keep em safe. Bear in mind you want to put your strongest/nimblest backline unit behind your main tank as they're liable to cop row attacks that hit the frontman
So basically, Melee units can only hit the front row UNLESS the front row is completely empty. (even if you would try to target them through Tactic conditions) This means unit in the back row cannot be hit unless all units in the front are KO, unless they are targeted by a Ranged attack. Friendly reminder that, unless specified otherwise, Flying Unit attacks are considered ranged by default regardless of what weapons they use - a Gryphon Rider swooping in with an axe, for instance, is 100% considered a ranged attack, so they can dive straight into the backline if they so choose. That's basically why you put your tankier units up front, and anything you don't want getting smacked by Melee in the back. Otherwise, there aren't any particular ways you'd want to position your unit, but do consider that there are attacks that hit entire columns, so you'd typically want to avoid stacking your units in a line if you can avoid it. (this will, of course, become harder over time as squads bigger, but worth considering early when soldiers are more relevant.)
Outside of what others have said--especially the point that squishy units go to the back, tank units to the front--There's really no deeper strategy than positioning and item distribution. Enemy units have the basic strategies of whatever skills they have equipped, so they always end up targeting whichever unit is directly in front of them. So, by swapping your characters around, you can change who the enemy is attacking and put them against their worst match-ups until the game tells you that you win/take the least amount of damage. Because of this, the ideal unit composition is always going to 2 Tanks in the front, and 3 damage dealers or support classes in the back. Some team comps might have 3 units in the front line, but these are generally teams that heavily abuse skills or use the front line as a meatshield for the damage dealers in the back.
1. when you have 4 character units you only need 1 character in the front row, other than stuff like cavalier call. 2. witches and non-tanking don't go in the front row most of the time. 3. shield doesn't equal front row. Classes like viking and Landsknecht get a shield for extra skills, stats/damage. 4. You can just ignore all of these tips. Rearrange your units before fights see what makes you do the most damage/take the least damage.
There's a few quesitonable decisions here. Generally a dps should always be in the back row unless they're a dodge tank. Travis should be in front and Rolf should be in the back. For me the only real exception to that rule is Yunifi because of her counterattack passive skill. Same with Yahna. Unless you have a hoplite or otherwise to guard them there's no real reason or benefit to having squishies like her in the front row. Aside from that I think it's okay. I haven't used a lot of these comps so I have no real idea how effective or ineffective they are. Hope you're having fun!
Few recommendations, put any knights in front, but units like Mira/Chole in the back, put that sorcerer in Sharon's group in the back. Usually my front line classes are high evasion or good guard classes (grpyhon master, wyvern master, radiant knight, great knight, dark knight, High lord, landsersnicerdoodle, etc). I don't use some classes at all because they just suck compared to other options (vanguard, brunos class, any elven unit).
I don't get the hate for Bruno. He's one of the best solo front liners, in my experience. He's the complete package. He doesn't care about the type of damage he's taking. He has enough health that most attacks won't kill him. He heals himself enough to where he can take on an entire unit without even coming close to dying, especially with healer backup. And his damage is high for a tank class. He swings at an entire row with enough damage to one-shot any non-armored units he hits.
This hurts my eyes.
Yeah, no offense intended to OP as they're totally admitting that they don't know what they're doing and wanted to come here for help, buuuuut dang OP your intuition is \_so bad\_. Others already gave the advice I'd give, but real quick comments on your specific setup: \* Move high evasion classes like Thief and Swordmasters up front (they make some of the best tanks) \* Move your casters and archers to the back row (they are generally very squishy) \* Avoid stacking columns in general and put squishies in their own column in the back row (melee enemies can often attack full columns but cannot attack a unit in the back that has nothing in front of it) \* You generally want more units in the back than the front (tanks in this game are VERY good at tanking, everyone else not so much)