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  You either love them or hate them, Swear by them or never take them.

   Sentinels are among one of the cheaper walker units in the game next to the killa kan. They are also one of the most fragile of the walkers in 40K. Nothing is fancy about them, they just trudge foward and maybe law down a few turns of shooting if they are lucky enough or maybe get that nice side shot on  a tank and blow it to hell.

   Advantages:

 1) With Scout you can maker a run for cover, move into position, hide. This also works great in escalation missions where you wont be having armor for a few turns (I have bad reserves rolls).

2) Fast attack and HQ choice means you can have up to 12 of these suckers come at once and saturate the field with Sentinels and at 2 sentinels per squad you can keep 1 sentinel working and still be at over 50% strength.

3) Cheap point cost means you can spend points on these guys while saving up for that lascannon or meltagun you always wanted for christmas.

4) Weapon Options range from heavy flamers to multilasers to lascannons which also means you choose the mission for the sentinel and the wargear options make it an option for further mission profiles.

  Disadvantages:

1) Fragility of armor 10 and opentopped means these things die to mean looks and foul language. Usually they are a target of opportunity or a grab for easy VP. Assume the worse with your sentinels and know they are just doing their job.

2) Ballistic Skill 3 means while a mobile lascannon is nice, its also going to miss about 50% of the time so usually stock up on the multishot weapons

3) Competition with the Hellhound or Rough riders also means you will have to choose between the 3 of them and sometimes you have to sacrifice a few.


    Mission Profiles:

 1) Objective grabbing with a low threat unit that utilises the scout move to get closer to a table quarter or to head to the other side to claim an objective and with the rest of your army dukeing it out with the enemy.

 2) Running up the sides to get a nice side shot on an exorcist or hitting a squad with the longrange punch of the autocannon while ducking around cover and taking your shot with the hope the returnfire wont destroy you.

 3) Hand to Hand with some assault units may sound crazy but in actuality I have with a sentinel charging Genestealers, demons, marines, and kill them off by the Explosion is sometimes worth the 45-50 vp. Its a drastic tactic but when the enemy reaches the lines of a guard army, use what you got.

 4) Draw fire from what hopefully are your heavy weapon squads by the sheer saturation of targets and the concept of "damned if you do, damned if you dont". Sure you can shoot the Sentinel but that now leaves the heavy weapon squads to shoot back or vice versa.

  Hope someone found this useful I was bored and out fo my love of sentinels I wrote this and I think the are an underrated unit.

I have only used 1 sentinel in a recent game of my equipped with a multilaser vs. a Nid army. It did a very good job absorbing fire that would've been directed at my Russes, while killing nids and holding down a flank.

I love em.

I take 4 las cannon sents and 1 heavy flamer sent in my IG list.

The las cannon sents always make their points back and with their range, anything that can be used to shoot them is a shot being taken away from your lemans, just like you mentioned.

You forget that sentinels can also be drop troops. Arriving turns 2-3 greatly increases their survivability as many threats are already dead.

I've never found sentinels to come close to making their points back over the long run. They're fragile, BS3, and while they have the range to stand off, anything fast moving can shoot them up pretty badly.

I have 9 of them, and I trot them out for mega battles and the like, but there are far more attractive options in the codex, IMO.

I like HF sentinels in a good CoD game. They also work well if you Drop Troop them.

I would definately agree that there are far nicer options in the codex, but sometimes for fun, they make perfect units that end up performing some sort of crazy honorable action by the end of the game.

The fact that you can arm them with long range weapons makes up for the fact that they have low armor. So long as you keep them as close to max range as you can, the shots coming back at them are not likely to amount to much. Not too many players are going to be shooting at sentinels when they could shoot at a russ or a hellhound. Taking them in squads of 3 also helps you mitigate damage since you can assign hits in a way that favors you.

Its funny that you posted this since I was going to post the same thing (but you saved me the effort). 

In short I'm not sure about sentinles, Ive used them with varried results. 

I once took out 3 lemon russ (from an armoured company list) with a lascannon sentianl squad (since he was forced to shoot his tanks at my infantry, and I tried to keep the sentinals more then 42" away; so that his heavy bolters were worthless.) but at the same time in other games, ive lost my sentinals on the first turn.

The way I see it there optimal build is with multi lasers, since this allows for some good anti infantry at a decent range, and also anti light armor.  Also in a list using the deepstrike doctrine you benift from there ability to deep strike take out a tank (via its rear armour) then either draw fire from your squads, or if you opponent doesnt sacrifice the shooting neccisary to take them out, you can tie up a squad in close combat.

  These are one of the few vehicles I find it useful to put a HK missile on. If I were to REALLY use my sentinels, I would have 6 with Lascannon and HK missile, 6 with multilaser. Deepstrike the lascannon ones and take out anything you know will cause you trouble (Obliterators, basilisk, whirlwind, The leadership boosting Force Commander, Tau suits). Then the enemy has to decide to either back-track to deal with the Sentinels, or risk the sentinels shooting into them the rest of the game.  Having Enemies back-track and waist two turns makes Guarsmen happy. It is two more turns they get to avoid close combat.

 

 You might not get your points back, but you definately make it easier for other troops to do their job.

iam contemplating a smallish IG army down the road simply because i want to take units that nobdy really takes including all 12 sentinels and i'd love to have a full squad of ogryn. it may not be the most effective IGforce in the game but it sure would be unique

Hardly unique, Sentinels are quite popular. The are average by being unaverage, the good points about them are very good and the bad are crippling. So all in all they even out. Whether to take them or not all depends on what else you have.

Guard have a range of good fast attack choices. Hellhounds can be very effective, as can rough riders. Like Sentinels there are fans of each that like them enough to fill the fast attack slots with them.

If you like Sentinels back them up with other vehicles. Russ are very good at attracting fire away from the Sentinels, Hellhounds and Chimerae also.


I personally think deepstriking Sentinels is a bad idea, the Scout deployment is nmore valuable. In escalation it means heavy weapons here ansd now.

Sentinels make a better sacrifice unit than guardsmen, they are cheaper for a start and can hold up an opponent for longer thasn they are worth because they dont run away.

I personally would never put lascannons onto these fragile platforms. It is just too expensive, not to mention the fact that it'll hit only half of the time. The great thing about the sentinel is the fact that it is meant to be used as a flanker, so most of the times you don't have to attack front AVs.

I like them fine with multi laser, it's cheap, has multi shots and a relative high strength. But if you want them to have a more anti armor role, than the autocannon is your best bet. Statistically autocannons have the same chance of downing a falcon as a lascannon.

If I was to deep strike them I would probably arm them with the multilaser and HK and aim for some rear shots (this will work well with an all drop IG army, but that has it's limitations as well), but as was mentioned earlier, the scout ability is very attractive.

Scout is a huge ability for all the reasons previously stated.

I personally run 3 autocannon sentinels in my Armored Company lists as well as my regular IG list. I find it to be a good balance between number of shots and strength.

But I have seen many good uses out of the heavy flamer variety as well. They are the cheapest and you can dump six of them (one HQ and one Fast Attack) and two Hellhounds for heavy flamer madness. You basically get one shot with the heavy flamer and then you charge and use the Hardened Fighters doctrine  to get the extra attack and higher WS. If you can land in S3 you are immune forever and even S4 needs a 6+ to glance.

I think a light infantry, flamer heavy/CC guard army has a great deal of potential. Flamer sentinels would be a big part of that.

My theoryhammer guard uses Sentinels w/ Heavyflamer and Smokelaunchers. Scout, hide, pop smoke, keep walking.

I like the idea of using them as a speed bump against assaulting forces.

I also like the idea of deepstriking but I prefer not to, I like having all my models on the table.

Smoke wont help Sentinels, and Hardened Fighter is a waste of points. If you want to assault with a Sentinel you arent sending it in to win, you are sending it in to die and to buy a turn for the rest of your forces. Or longer if you send in a unit of three. The powerfist can only be in one place at once, and hits from it dont transfer over from one Sentinel to the next.