Continuing with the Imperial Guard retrospective here’s a couple of Imperial Guard Sentinels I painted early 2004. Tempus fugit I guess. The Sentinel is another underrated 40k model in my opinion. They’re great little vehicles with a wide range of posing options if you’re happy cutting up the legs and feet.

In fact one Forgeworld kit I’ve always fancied is their Sentinel Powerlifter. Although to be honest looking at it now I believe I could probably scratch build something similar from plasticard and patience. I do have another primed and half assembled Sentinel sitting in the garage too.

Sentinels are also pretty handy on the 40k tabletop. Sure they’re light weight (armor 10) and open topped but they’re a cheap weapons platform that excels in supporting your poor bloody infantry. Particularly if you ditch the worthless multi-laser and go for some of the more powerful weapon options.

The weapons on these two Sentinels were spares from a plastic IG Heavy Weapons boxed set. The laser cannon isn’t that useful being an overpowered single shot BS3 weapon, but the autocannon is a great compromise between stopping power and rate of fire. Even with the Guard’s poor ballistic skill a few autocannnon rounds are likely to hit home before the Sentinel is bought down.

None of the weapons on these Sentinel are actually glued on. I resorted to a crude system of plastic pins to make the weapons interchangeable. I should probably replace those pins with rare earth magnets now I have some in the garage.

I’m sure I’m not the only Imperial Guard Sentinel fan. I recall seeing some photos of an army that had maxed out it’s force org chart with the maximum possible number of Sentinels - nine from memory. I can’t find that link now otherwise I’d include it in the post!

Unfortunately after several GW Asia Pacific prices rises in the last couple of years means the Sentinel model is now $45nz locally. Rather expensive for a model that consists of a single sprue. I do note that Scrap Dragon sell them for approx $31nz ($28au), I think that’s almost what I paid for these Sentinels back in 2004. Tempting!