It isn’t the most controversial thing to say that the Sentinels bring the coolest, impressive and most customisable models to Marvel Crisis Protocol. They look awesome on the table.

Their rules, however, often receive a fair amount of disappointment from players. But here is my controversial take for you: I don’t think they’re as bad as people say!

I played 50 games with Sentinels so you don’t have to – and here is what I learned.

So first, let’s go over some of the most complained about parts of Sentinels and what I think about them after 50 games.

They have low physical defence dice. 

Yes, this is a problem on all Sentinels and Cassandra. But, Sentinel Prime MkIV has 10 health on his healthy side which is an okay defence in itself. Plus Cassandra Nova has Stealth and Psychic Distraction which shouldn’t be ignored in the world of defensive tech.

They are slow and their big fat bases can get stuck behind terrain.

For the Sentinels, a large base and short move is fast enough. It’s the same as Juggernaut, although granted, the only form of movement they have are making actual move actions, which is not what you want your 4 & 5 threats to spend their time doing if you can help it. Plus, Restraint Cables makes it really easy for them to bring targets to them, which saves them from taking move actions.

Also, in the 50 games I played a Sentinel only had their movement blocked by terrain once. Perhaps I got lucky with the tables I played on, but I went to various events with a wide variety of tables and it was basically never a problem.

They have a terrible leadership.

Only getting power when they Daze a character certainly limits the output of Mutant Hunters. But, if you play around it by going hyper aggressive (and splashing characters who excel at chasing down characters like Cosmic Ghost Rider and Thor, Hero Of Midgard) then some extra power in the early rounds can really help you snowball.

The leadership only working on Dazes means that it basically switches off from Round 4 onwards. But anyone who has played Magneto-led Brotherhood knows that power leaderships tend to become less relevant in later rounds anyway. So it isn’t too bad – and Thor getting an early Daze in order to pass a power to a Sentinel who can then use Restraint Cables to secure another Daze actually works nicely. 

They don’t have many affiliated characters.

Well…yes. For now. We now know that Bastion, Nimrod & Omega Sentinel are coming in 2026.

But let me introduce you to the two honorary Sentinels I had accompanying me throughout my 50 games.

Taskmaster has the Rogue Agent superpower, meaning he can serve as a 3 threat affiliated character, allowing you to splash more non-Sentinels while staying affiliated. There isn’t much to say here outside of the fact that Taskmaster is a 3 threat; he doesn’t do much. I’d just send him off on a flank to pick up an Extract. Nothing fancy.

Which brings us to our much fancier 3 threat pseudo-affiliated friend…

Winter Soldier is crazy in Sentinels. They need all the damage dealers they can get in order to trigger the leadership as early and as often as possible. Assault Rifle is great for that, as is Red Fury. But the real secret sauce here comes from Hydra Tactics. For just 2 power, Bucky can place himself off of those large Sentinel bases in order to get exactly where he needs to be…and it can be done more than once per turn!

Often I had Winter Soldier stand at the back, behind a couple of Sentinels. He can then Hydra Tactics twice off both Sentinels to now be on the other side of the board, attack twice, pick up an Extract and then use the power he just generated from a handful of Assault Rifles to Hydra Tactics back! You’ll need to pause here to show your opponent Winter Soldier’s card — yes, he can do it multiple times a turn; yes, he can do it while holding an Extract; yes, it’s nuts.

I mentioned taking Thor, Hero Of Midgard earlier and wanted to go over why. With the Mutant Hunters leadership, you need to get Dazes happening early and fast. Now Thor can’t achieve much Round 1 since he got errata’d, so I tend to just double move him next to my preferred victim for the top of Round 2 (with Sentinel Prime MkIV + Sentinel MkIV, you’re basically guaranteed to have priority for most of the game). It doesn’t take much for Thor to secure that daze, which then allows you to pass power around to the Sentinels to help get more Dazes across the board.

Thor can be replaced by any of your favourite killers. So long as they spend power well and have the ability to chase down targets. Cosmic Ghost Rider, Malekith The Accursed, and so on.

Now onto the affiliated characters…

Cassandra Nova

(I really liked Emma Corrin as Cassandra Nova in Deadpool & Wolverine, so I made myself this custom card.)

Cassandra Nova has a ton of tricks up their sleeve – and a lot of text on their card, some of which barely gets used. Flesh Manipulation and Biokinesis are both far too expensive for Cassandra to pay for and don’t quite fit into the play style of the character or the affiliation in my experience. Power is better spent for Mind Possession, Psychic Distraction and sometimes both at the same time (the advance granted by Mind Possession will trigger Psychic Distraction for a nice one-two). Psionic Bolt being Range 4 means it can be used while Cassandra is stood safely outside of Range 3 thanks to Telepathic Cloak.

Mental Domination is a must take card here.

It gives a bonus attack that doesn’t cost an action, along with some guaranteed displacement.

The problem with all of this, as hinted at earlier, is Cassandra’s power generation. You are praying for some Wilds and/or damage to show up when using Psionic Bolt. They spend power extremely well because of all the various tricks on their card, plus Mental Domination, but I never had a case where they could do it all. 

I ran Infinity Formula in my list, and that was the only time I really felt comfortable bringing Cassandra along. But when they can get the power they can usually hold down an entire flank by themselves. Just don’t let the enemy get in too close, as 2 Physical Defence really shows itself when that happens.

For more detail on how I think Cassandra Nova should be played, head here.

Sentinel Prime Mk4

A more detailed breakdown of how I feel Sentinel Prime Mk4 fares on the table can be found here.

But the short version is that his large health pool makes up for his poor defence dice. The reason you take him is Pattern Analysis. It’s amazing, it’s limitless per turn, and it makes everyone else in the squad really shine.

Sentinel Mk4

A more detailed breakdown of how I feel Sentinel Prime Mk4 fares on the table can be found here.

The beauty of these guys (besides their stunning and highly customisable models) is that you can take two in a roster at once. Now, in my 50 games I found that this wasn’t necessary. They’re pretty below-par 4 threats, but bringing one along lets you use Online and Operational which is an amazing, take-it-every-game kind of Team Tactic Card.

Tactics Card

This card, as mentioned in the above-linked pieces, is amazing. It really lets you push Sentinel Mk4 to it’s limit before spending a measly (by Sentinel power economy standards) 4 power to bring them right back to good-as-new.

This card feels cool at first, but then you realise that Cassandra Nova has to be within Range 3 of multiple Sentinels. I’ve already mentioned that I only played Cassandra on Infinity Formula, where they hold down a flank on their own, and I only play one Sentinel Mk4 at a time. So for me, this card never really came into consideration, especially given Cassandra Nova’s power shortage.

To add to that, E shape Secures are no longer a thing, which limits the usage of this card further as the squad is rarely that close together.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that this card makes another character affiliated for the sake of having >51% of your squad affiliated, but it doesn’t. From what I can tell, there’s only a couple uses for making someone Sentinel affiliated.

One is to allow them to benefit from Efficient Machines. That could be cool on a character like Gambit, who really excels when he rolls Wilds. Another is to have an extra character who can pay for Directive One (see below), but that card is so cheap I’m not sure it matters.

Who knows; maybe Bastion will bring some new toys to the Sentinels that will help make this card more impactful.

Hilariously, this could have been another use case for being Sentinels-affiliated thanks to Under Your Skin…but it specifically says Sentinel Programming superpower. 

This card is fine. Guaranteed damage is pretty cool as it gets around defensive tech like counting Blanks, but this also hurts your allies. It does give out guaranteed Stun, though, which is nice. But by the time one of your Sentinels is KOing, we can pretty safely assume that everyone around them will be pretty powered up. I don’t think this is worth a Team Tactic Card slot. 

Now this card is very interesting. I had this in my 10 Team Tactics Cards, but only played it in a handful of games. But when I played it in the right matchup, it was honestly pretty game winning.

A total of 2 power off two Sentinels is basically free, as they’re often swimming with power. Turning off defense dice rerolls works great into teams like Web Warriors and Invaders. Playing this at the right time, when you’ve got your opponent surrounded and taking away their Spider-sense, the Sentinels really start to feel like the gigantic smashy robots they really are. 

The Verdict

After 50 games with these guys I’m here to say…they’re not that bad! Sure they’ve suffered from losing E Shape Secures – and the game is a lot more mobile than they can really contend with these days.

But if you manage to get them into the positions they need to be in…away from pesky Hulks and Beta Ray Bills so they can’t be thrown into each other…the Sentinels can really do a lot of work.

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