Vengence: Keeping your Elves Angry

Introduction- So I was trading PMs when someone asked me a question that upon reflection I hadn't actually given thought to. "What is a 'Vengence' formation?". This is a great question, but formations to take advantage of Vengence aren't discussed that much (In fact I can't recall the last time I saw a thread on it) which is something of a shame since they vary somewhat (or should) from a normal fighting infantry formation. The idea behind a Vengence formation is to take advantage of all of your out of activation movement and attacks by only exposing a limited number of models at a time to enemy attack and using Reach to keep the other models safe.

Bricks are Bad- A good general lesson to learn, but moreso with Vengence. So what do I mean when I say "Brick"? A "Brick" is when you put everything in one place for whatever reason like this:

The problem with this formation is that you're troops are tightly packed, so another unit of charging infantry can get to almost everything in your unit. While bad for normal infantry, it's practically criminal to be in such a tight bunch if you have Vengence. Sentinels weak DEF stat means that in a formation like the one above it's not out of the question to lose almost everything on an enemy charge reducing your Vengence to only a few models (one of which is probably the banner). Then you have other things like AoEs that cause Corrosion, Fire, or AoEs that deal straight damage to everything instead of the normal blast damage and sprays have a field day. In short, just say no. The other major problem is that in this formation your opponent can do to you what you should be doing to him. Look at the below image:

Your formation isn't going anywhere because they can't take free strikes from the enemy Bane Knights, but if you kil them with the Sentinels, the unit is getting Vengence and effectively doubling their attacks at the cost of three models in addition to stopping your forward movement which is often fatal for melee units. You should be doing this to other infantry.

Vengence in General and Sentinels in Particular- Vengence formations in general are usually spread out and you'll also often models turned at wierd angles to make it exceptionally difficult to charge models in ranks further back without getting free-struck. This forces you to fight a handful of models which means almost the entire unit can get Vengence. It's not a bad idea by any stretch of the imagination to play all Reach infantry formations like this to minimize the damage you'll take from charges, but with Vengence it's how you get the most out of the unit. Here's an example of a fairly typical "on the fly" formation someone would have mid-game:

Sentinels add an extra layer to this since Vengence is only a Granted ability. Maybe the officer sleeps with the wives of all his men or something, but they tend to relax a lot when he bites it which is good for their blood pressure, but bad for your battle plan. In a Sentinel Vengence formation, the Front rank should be as far as possible from the officer (he's CMD 10, so you've got some room to work with) with the officer hidden behind some joes and the banner giving the officer the extra ARM for Defensive Line. This ultimately results in more of a fan-shaped formation, but it's the best way to fight with the unit since their volume of attacks in melee will far outstrip most competition and extend their threat range in the process. Using the above trick demonstrated with the Bane Knights sacrificing a few models to stall out movement while the rest of the unit hangs back waiting to get angry is also good, but try to stay spread out as much as possible:

Closing thoughts-All of this is dependent on opponents wanting to fight. Against ranged heavy opponents an all out blitz is usually in order to apply pressure with the officer hanging way back. That being said, even if they just have a counter-attack element maintaining a somewhat loose formaiton always works better. Even on a good day Sentinel armor isn't going to keep them alive vs. charge attacks. Doubling your attacks and getting out of activation movement is worth the sacrifice of a few. One other thing to keep in mind here is that you want to set up situations where you're engaging the enemy as often as possible, that way they either trigger vengence, lose models, or just stand around doing nothing and given those options most opponents will begrudgingly trigger Vengence.