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So the scout sentinel only costs 35 points. It deploys 9" out with a scout move. From there it can move 9. It dies to a stiff breeze.

How do people like these to deny deep strike and to get onto the table and be a nusiance early? Seems like it coud have some use in lists with trucks to push up early?

- Sincerly, Vidar

If you are using sentinels you should use the armored ones with flamers. They tarpit extra well and can tank a lascannon hit. Move them to deny movmet and be shameless about charging them into your opponents forces. They can eat overwatch for your better units too.

If you want something with a scout move take ridge runners. They rock and mix well with every cult

A ridge runner is 70 points and allergic to short ranges. A sentinel is a mere 35. And flamer sentinel seems bad, even an armored one, at 45 points.

I can see the value in a Scout Sentinel, but are they better at their role than Jackals are?

It looks like armored sentinels are the same price as the scout variant. I’d go with those instead if I had to choose so that you can still deploy in ambush. Gives your opponent something to waste a lascannon shot on.

Here's the thing. The flamer armored sentinel won't die to the melee of 10 guardsmen and gets d6 autohitting flamer hits in the shooting phase. The scout sentinel will perish to most things.

No one deep strikes on turn 1 anyway. Use blips to keep your enemies at bay and you can push them like 12 inches away.

I think I am confused at what the allure for the scout sentinel is.

I’m waffling a bit here now that I’m getting into the math.

A HF scout sentinel still only takes an average of one wound a turn from 10 GEQ in melee and will kill an average of two of them each battle round. The armored sentinel would be better against S3, but will die to bolters at a similar rate and both crumple to las/auto cannons. It all just comes down to whether you prefer an extra 9’ of movement or a slightly more durable screen.

a Scout sentinel or 2 is cheap enough to not really matter if they do anything or not and can help to provide some early objective pressure.

Yes they die to a stiff breeze but if it walks onto a midfield objective turn 1 its still a thing your opponent needs to deal with, which draws attention away from the rest of your army.
That is also why I would prefer the Scout over the Armoured version. You want that distance to be able to force an immediate response.

Im trying to understand the regular tactical significance of what you are doing. it seems like you are arguing for the usefulness of the ability to throw away a unit.

-Its cheap
-it moves really fast
-it dies to everything

But if you are not charging with it turn 1 and successfully shooting with it turn one, or blocking movement... you are just playing with less points than your opponent by choice.

there is an argument to be made to run a unit of 3 with flamers. that's a scary unit. but just 1 doesn't play well enough to justify its points.

I am having a lot of trouble with orks. They can keep deepstrikers at bay turn 1 and 2.

dreadlybrew wrote:
Im trying to understand the regular tactical significance of what you are doing. it seems like you are arguing for the usefulness of the ability to throw away a unit.

-Its cheap
-it moves really fast
-it dies to everything

But if you are not charging with it turn 1 and successfully shooting with it turn one, or blocking movement... you are just playing with less points than your opponent by choice.

there is an argument to be made to run a unit of 3 with flamers. that's a scary unit. but just 1 doesn't play well enough to justify its points.

If your opponent feels the need to target your 35 point Sentinel with a unit (or units) that would otherwise target a 75 point Goliath truck packed with 110 points of Acolytes, then the Sentinel has made its points back without having to charge, block movement, shoot, or do anything at all.

So your tactic is to hinge on the hope that your opponents have bad target priorities?

You can theoretically use the scout move to force your opponent to choose an inconvenient target. To shoot the Sentinel off of a point or to prevent it from tar pitting one of their units as an example.

It occurs to me that in a pinch, Raking Fire stubbers can be relied on to knock wounds off enemy transports - about 1 per Ridgerunner, so nothing earth shattering but if your opponent is meched up, every little bit counts. +1 to wound means the stubbers are wounding T7 on 4s. That means it is not all on the autocannons to clean up transports if your mining lasers are committed to bigger targets.
Also, I ran the numbers, and for 1250 points on the nose, you can get a Jackal Alphus, 3x Goliaths with 10 handflamer acolytes/ 4 rock saws/ cult icon, 6 ridgerunners and a mortar squad. Not bad - if you have the models for it... (which I am building toward).

Thats beautiful. I still recommend adding the primus for re rolling the 1s to wound. Its doubles down on the overchanege

hangnailnz wrote:
It occurs to me that in a pinch, Raking Fire stubbers can be relied on to knock wounds off enemy transports - about 1 per Ridgerunner, so nothing earth shattering but if your opponent is meched up, every little bit counts. +1 to wound means the stubbers are wounding T7 on 4s. That means it is not all on the autocannons to clean up transports if your mining lasers are committed to bigger targets.
Also, I ran the numbers, and for 1250 points on the nose, you can get a Jackal Alphus, 3x Goliaths with 10 handflamer acolytes/ 4 rock saws/ cult icon, 6 ridgerunners and a mortar squad. Not bad - if you have the models for it... (which I am building toward).

Yeah. I am a bit short on hand flamers. But I think I can make 20 or so. I only have 2 trucks and 1 rock grinder.

This army has a very long 'build lag' and getting the models is ever so expensive.

Mantic GCPS Mule trucks for Goliaths and Tehnolog Hunters for the Ridgerunners (both very similar footprints) are the way that I am going... Then I am using a mixture of third party hand flamers and arms from a Veer-Myn sprue with some sort of chemical weapons that looks close enough. It has powered through all of my heavy stubbers from AM kits and I have had to swap for more, but have plenty of lascannons floating around!

Yeah I've been collecting over 2 years. The best practice is to buy 9 getting started packs. It covers your acolytes minus 15, you can convert theniconwards to regular acolytes with extra bits, you get your 9 ridge runners and you get 90 neophytes so you can play the army more than one way.

Buy trucks and don't glue the grinders to the front. They fit just fine without falling off after painting.

Its a lot of money... but smart eBay sleuthing might help from.time to time.

I also just finished painting the fi al version of my list here.

That looks cool. I like the familiar count as. A great solution. Also, who doe not like a snake familiar?

I doubt I will get up to all 6 rockgrinders. But perhaps I can grab one more, up to 3.

It looks like we all will get our models in line in time for a corona vaxine and a codex change. I really hope that trucks remains good. (Although all 9th edition codexes so far has had great internel and external balance.)

I just want mining lasers to be d3+3 here is hoping

dreadlybrew wrote:
So your tactic is to hinge on the hope that your opponents have bad target priorities?

Don't take this the wrong way, but it sounds like you haven't played with the unit or tactic before.

I regularly used SC to take mid field and most importantly move block. This cannot be math hammered. Too many people think they can run numbers on every unit to squeeze max efficiency but the game doesn't play out exactly like that.

Having a dirt cheap, fast unit that is resilient to most other GEQ small arms is and can move 18" outside your DZ turn 1 is hugely beneficial. You can move block lanes as mentioned earlier, as well as zone out alternate deployments, soak indirect abilities like smite etc. Or you can easily hide it in a quarter for behind enemy lines or engage points, all while threatening other similar units abilities to perform actions by assaulting them. You can even engage units to shut down shooting and assaults.

For those reasons I think the unit has a ton of merit, especially with the HF since you can threaten small action monkey infantry units.

One thing I have not thought about the heavy flamer is that it is ouer furthest reaching flamer turn 1 I think. 9+9+12 = 30 inch of flamer threat turn 1. That is quite good for killing chaff. It might not be a problem GSC often have (I do not know) but it is not that bad.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
What do people think of the pop up explosives? Popping lying in wait. Get within 3", use the stratagem to throw X greandes, and then throw 4d6 explosives S8? Acolytes or bikers. Alternativly have them running out of trucks with 4 explosives.

What are peoples experiences? I am considering it as an alternative.

 Niiai wrote:

What do people think of the pop up explosives? Popping lying in wait. Get within 3", use the stratagem to throw X greandes, and then throw 4d6 explosives S8? Acolytes or bikers. Alternatively have them running out of trucks with 4 explosives.

What are peoples experiences? I am considering it as an alternative.

Most of my experience with Acolyte bombers is that they are very good at blowing up large squads where you can benefit from blast (*cough* Necron Warriors *cough*), but they are a bit less consistent than bikes against bigger targets and are obviously squishier. I'm a bit uncomfortable with hand flamers on them after the range extension and associated points increase, just feels like a poor use of points when the squad can get a similar volume of dice from their free Blasting Charges (basically trade reliability on hit rolls with reliable volume of shots via blast)

Operating out of a Truck is a bit different. I prefer two squads of five (2x5) instead of one squad of ten. Extra Explosives can't be used while embarked, but two squads can each throw one demolition charge each so they can still unload their payload fairly quickly. These squads I feel a bit better giving Hand Flamers to, as the Truck helps a bit with survivability and they will probably have some targets available while driving into range for bombing.

Jackal Bombers I've generally found best against big targets. Drive-by Demolitions and naturally doubled Alphus aura range gives them added consistency and since each can take a demolition charge they aren't leaving bodies standing around doing nothing. My biggest problem is that I tend to use my bikes for screening and early turn objective pressure, so reserving a squad for bombing duty is a hard trade. I have considered using Psychic Summons to cheat out a fourth squad, but points and command points being as tight as they are makes it hard to set them aside.

Use the great fire snake if you want to do the biker bombs. Max out a unit of 12 bikers with 10 demo charges and shotguns. If you want to include wolfquads with flamers on them its always worth it.

Pay 2 cp to arrive just outside 3", pay 3 cp to shoot, use extra explosives, shotgun and grenades with the ones you arent democharging with, then in the shooting phase extra explosvies with drive by demolitions. You can't move (legally i think you arent allowed to move) but +1 to hit and wound is a big bang. Ill dig up a picture of a biker snake I used in 8th to ruin an ork army.

Its cp heavy like...7 cp at once but you can clear a lot off the table.

 Niiai wrote:
One thing I have not thought about the heavy flamer is that it is ouer furthest reaching flamer turn 1 I think. 9+9+12 = 30 inch of flamer threat turn 1. That is quite good for killing chaff. It might not be a problem GSC often have (I do not know) but it is not that bad.

Or another 30", have acolytes in a truck in ambush. That's 1" from DZ + 5" length of truck + 12" movement + 12" flamer.



SK

 sierrakiloph wrote:

 Niiai wrote:
One thing I have not thought about the heavy flamer is that it is ouer furthest reaching flamer turn 1 I think. 9+9+12 = 30 inch of flamer threat turn 1. That is quite good for killing chaff. It might not be a problem GSC often have (I do not know) but it is not that bad.

Or another 30", have acolytes in a truck in ambush. That's 1" from DZ + 5" length of truck + 12" movement + 12" flamer.

SK

Ah yes by deploying them as blips, indeed you can use their lengh once the opponent's movement phase ends, or when you start.

How are the Acolytes moving twelve inches and firing pistols?

E: oh, I get it.

The only legal way to do it is out of fire trucks

I suppose one could use Perfect Ambush off of an ambush token, roll a 6 for the extra movement, and then make a normal 6'' move. Exceedingly unlikely to work, but technically possible.

I'm hoping to get some test games with a mechanized GSC list against my brother's Dark Eldar (ideally see if I can get him to build something similar to the popular configurations). I think a build with lots of "fire trucks", bikes (to screen), a squad of Ridgerunners, and maybe some whip-morphs (to intercept Incubi or melee characters) might be able to put up a good fight. Trucks bring a fair amount of autocannon fire which is good for cracking Raiders/Venoms and we don't care as much about Dark Technomancer-boosted liquefiers (basically a flamer with extra AP for most of our units).

Kellermorph might also get some time to shine. Theoretically he should be able to mow down Drukhari infantry and characters and, as far as I know, they don't have any interception tricks to stop him from popping up and gunning stuff down.

My most regular opponent is a Drukhari player. We only had 1 game with the new dex so far, but we've found that his Drukhari suffer vs the Cult. Our blips keep them in a far more restrictive space turn 1, and their lethality is somewhat "wasted" on our really bad units. Our weapons are also really good against them, since massed S3 guns are pretty good against them. Firetrucks especially are potent vs the Dark Eldar, but their Flyers are very strong against us. If their units dive in on our Ridgerunners, the Ridgerunners are actually likely to survive, which makes us very able to slice apart whatever unit they threw in. Worst case, we can leave the Ridgerunners in close combat, because the Heavy Stubbers firing at close range are still a threat to Wych Cults.

So yeah, I'm happy with the Dark Eldar meta.