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Heya everybody,

After a while of absence from Wh:40K I thought about finishing my IG army, but faced two elements I wasn't too sure about: Straken and Armoured Sentinels.

First off: Straken.
I have had some pretty good experience with Straken back in 5th ed. If his command squad got to charge, it was good at eliminating small "left over" squads of enemies. I used it as a sort of clean up squad to destroy small groups that aren't really worth a lot of heavy fire and don't pose a real danger to Straken's life, but still need to get killed. Besides just being an afformentioned clean up squad, Straken's gang also served as an anti-deep strike unit. Not that he'd prevent deep strikers, but since I ran his gang with 3 flamers, they'd just flamer the **** out of what ever landed and then assault it. This has worked pretty well for me, although sometimes a little lasgun fire support was needed.
So I have found Straken usefull as a clean up unit, anit deep-strike force and as a counter-attack unit to help out units that were having trouble in close combat.

But of course Straken's qualities as a force multiplier are as, if not more, important. Although Furious charge doesn't let you turn your guardsmen into charging Space Marines as it used to (S4 I4... I'm going to miss that ), the strength boost is stil appreciated at times. More attractive to me is the counter attack usr. If you run large groups of guardsmen, counter-attack is an immense blessing. Not only that now overwatch helps our little dudes out against anyone trying to get into close combat with them, counter attack will help scaring off anyone who is indecisive about assaulting. If anyone assaults a group of 30 guardsmen (that is implying that so many are actually still alive), they will not only face the overwatch fire, but also double the close combat attacks.

In the end, I like Straken, but the question remains whether or not these few pros are worth his cost, especially giving how quick he can die at times.
Any opinions, experiences or the like on this guy?

Last but not least, I was wondering about the armoured Sentinel.
I get that public opinion of them is rather low and I have myself never used them, but I am wondering how effective they could be as a close combat unit. Besides adding some nice little heavy weapons fire, their front armour of 12 is a touch nut to crack, meaning that most units must fall back out of combat, or if they are unlucky enough to have a single power fist or the like in their squad, will be wasting their days praying for 6's to actually cause any harm.
Again, anyone have some experience or his/her two cents to give?

 Fire_for_effect wrote:
First off: Straken.

Too expensive as a "finisher", just buy some more guns with his points and finish shooting the unit to death.

Too situational as an assault bonus, assault blobs are nerfed and the loss of I4 hurts. It's not terrible, but I'm not convinced it's worth the points anymore.

Last but not least, I was wondering about the armoured Sentinel.

Garbage. Way too expensive (seriously, a multilaser armored Sentinel costs as much as a Chimera and has less durability, no HB, and no transport capacity), and worse than Vendettas or even Hellhounds.

I'd rather not post but what i knew of straken other than what you did is that he's also a really good vehicle assaulter. He'd probably be good in a transport of some kind carried in to destroy some vehicles. He used to be strength 7 on the charge with 2d6 armor penetration and like 5 attacks. Usually when i assaulted a vehicle with him it'd end up dead. He's even killed a dreadnought in close combat before admittedly at the cost of his own life.

I don't know enough about armored sentinels to know how to use them but they do have plasma cannons. I think they probably cost too much for the money you have to pay to get em but that's GW for ya.

All of this was the case in 5th edition and now with 6th edition and having been out of 40k for at least a couple years i don't know how things have changed. I hear 6th edition 40k is a lot like fantasy but for some reason i'm not fond of needing to get a new rulebook with new rules. Not to mention i'm used to 5th. I wasn't fond of kill points though with a multiple squad army of guard or that vehicles were hard to kill with ranged weapons often.

If i ever do go back to guard i will probably see if i can convert some helicopter type models and run them as that forge world unit which was described as an apache (admittedly it was described on 4chan sadly). The other thing i would like to have is a super heavy air unit that basically bombards the ground with missile laden death.

Sorry for going off topic.

Anyway i used to run straken a lot back in 5th and that's what i did. Very awesome vehicle-killer if you use him for that.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
He'd probably be good in a transport of some kind carried in to destroy some vehicles.

You can't assault out of a vehicle.

And if you want to kill tanks, take a cheaper 4x melta CCS and don't bother screwing around with expensive characters.

I don't know enough about armored sentinels to know how to use them but they do have plasma cannons.

Which are terrible. Three of them cost more than a LR Executioner which has better shooting AND AV 14.

All of this was the case in 5th edition and now with 6th edition and having been out of 40k for at least a couple years i don't know how things have changed.

So why post?

Well i played 40k a bit and that's what i did with straken.

Yeah plasma cannons were probably a waste on that.

I thought my 5th edition knowledge might still have some merit. It sounded like straken was still decent enough in 6th from what i have actually heard.

Just felt like throwing my experience out there.

So, straken has lost a lot of his lustre.

On the one hand, he himself got worse, as he's no longer able to hide in his CCS anymore (and LoS! only works half the time), which is bad given that HP for vehicles has shifted your average AV up slightly, which means more stuff is going to be on the table that can insta-glib him. You also have to deal with the vagaries of random charge range and overwatch now, which isn't any more pleasant. Also, at least where I've been playing, there has been fewer and fewer chances to really mix it up in close combat anymore, as people are all doing more stand-off shooting, given how much worse assault got.

Take all of these problems and amplify them, and you get what happened to his buffs. Basically, there isn't going to be a lot that you're going to want to be giving furious charge to anymore. Better to build your list for shooting and speedbumps rather than to try and hang on to power blobs.

As for armored sentinels, yeah, they're not great, but they can be worth taking in certain circumstances. Compare a pair of lascannon armored sentinels to a lascannon HWS and you get something that loses a third of its killing power, but doesn't just instantly blow away at the first angry stare. Compared to a vendetta, it loses about half of the killing power, (though I'd note has roughly the same durability, what with +1HP, not caring about skyfire, and being able to actually USE cover saves), but, unlike a vendetta, it can't just be ignored if you're more aggressive with it in the ground game. Compared to a MM/LC vanquisher, 3 armored sentinels put out roughly the same killing power, but are faster, don't die instantly to those rare close combats that DO come by, and don't take up a heavy support slot.

They're really not THAT overpriced, honesly, for what they do. The problem is that what they do is a rather niche role. Basically, they're better at close combat in a non-close-combat rules edition. Otherwise, the only real benefit is the ludicrous amount of HP worth of lascannons you can put down, but that only really comes into play if you're spamming the hell out of them.

I'd suppose they'd also be comparable to ogryn - a moderately tough unit that can be a linebacker. Unlike ogryn, though, they get to shoot lascannons before they tarpit the hell out of something.

 Ailaros wrote:
Compared to a vendetta, it loses about half of the killing power,

More than half, and for more points.

(though I'd note has roughly the same durability, what with +1HP, not caring about skyfire, and being able to actually USE cover saves)

Not even close. Only being hit on 6s is MUCH better than an extra HP, and Vendettas can still get cover if you have tall enough terrain or are willing to evade and fly back next turn.

but, unlike a vendetta, it can't just be ignored if you're more aggressive with it in the ground game.

How exactly is it impossible to ignore the Sentinels but possible to ignore a unit that has twice their firepower and vastly superior mobility to use that firepower? Neither unit can score or deny objectives, so all that matters is firepower vs. durability and the Vendetta is the clear winner. Except the Vendetta ALSO contributes to scoring objectives since it's probably carrying a scoring unit and if you just ignore it that scoring unit is going to arrive on an objective on turn 5.

Compared to a MM/LC vanquisher, 3 armored sentinels put out roughly the same killing power, but are faster, don't die instantly to those rare close combats that DO come by, and don't take up a heavy support slot.

Not even close. The Sentinels are more expensive, and have much less firepower. They're only even close to equal against targets outside 24", inside that range the Vanquisher dominates. And the Vanquisher isn't even a great unit, so equaling it isn't very impressive.