Basic Trope: Troops that should be fighting in formations don't.
- Straight: Bob's army does not fight in any clear formation.
- Exaggerated: Bob's army consists entirely of pikemen, and doesn't fight in any kind of formation
- Downplayed: Bob's army does use formations but only when bracing for cavalry.
- Justified:
- Bob's army hasn't had any training in formations.
- The battle has been going on for a while, and the army has become disorganised as a result
- Breaking from formations in this case is a good example of thinking on their feet. Their foes had mastered grenades and staying in formation would allow a single grenade to easily kill dozens of soldiers.
- Giants aren't stupid but are far more psychologically solitary than humans. Even when serving a common cause they would find it difficult to cooperate in a time sensitive situation like a battlefield. Going Back-to-Back Badasses when both are surrounded is about the best thet can manage. Instead they rely upon brute strength and superior reach.
- Inverted: Bob's army fights using proper formations... even the parts that really don't need to or and would only be hindered by an extensive formation (such as scouts).
- Everyone fights in formations including wildlife and not even a counterpart (herd animals forming a circle in response to prowling predators for instance).
- Subverted:
- Bob's army looks like a rabble, but as Charlie's cavalry comes charging into it, it quickly organises itself into a workable formation.
- Bob's army's formations only look nonexistent, as clear formations would give away their tactics to the enemy.
- Double Subverted: ...only for the soldiers to lose morale and run away before the cavalry hits.
- Parodied:
- Both sides fight in a terrible formation, and both sides end up taking massive casualties as a result. This ends up being lampshaded thouroughly, via Black Comedy.
- Bob's army, without any formation, charges headlong into perfect formation of Charlie's troops. Charlies troops fly like ragdolls.
- Zig Zagged: Bob's assembled a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits to fight Charlie's Empire. They're completely untrained, until Bob gets some ex-soldiers to teach them better. However, Bob has them look like a rabble in an attempt to trick Charlie, who doesn't know they've been trained, and as soon as Charlie's army charges, they break and run in fear, because they weren't trained particularly well.
- Bob's army heavily favors missle weapons but uses loose modern skirmish formations and using cover far more often. Only when pressed and out of ammo do they engage in brief and brutal melees counter charges with short spears. These anchronistic tactics turn out to be a plot point that his men are displaced grunts falling back on inapplicable modern training as "superior".
- Averted: Bob's army fights in absolutely perfect formation when appropriate.
- Enforced: "We need to make the battles more entertaining for the viewers."
- Lampshaded: The Hero, The Smart Guy, or their counterparts, the Evil Overlord or the Evil Genius, remark on how the complete lack of anything resembling a formation becomes a problem.
- Invoked: The Mole infiltrates the enemy's army to sabotage their training.
- Exploited: Bob (who lives in a very early Bronze Age culture) invents the shield wall
, and his army becomes essentially invincible in battle, since no one else has anything comparable. - Defied: Bob realises that his army has no formation, and makes sure they can fight in one.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: "I'm guessing the guy who wrote this story has no idea how military tactics work."
- Deconstructed: The lack of formation use causes Bob's army to lose most of its fights while the victories can't be considered one in the long term.
- Reconstructed: Bob's army adapts to acting as skirmishers instead and win through dividing enemy forces into one on one fights.
- Implied: The aftermath of a battle shows many loosely scattered corpses as opposed to the groupings that would be expected from formation fighting.
You call that a formation?! Back to the unabridged version with you!
