Starcraft 2 is a thinking man’s game (or a thinking woman’s game, for the sake of political correctness). Decisions are made on a razor’s edge, and small errors in judgment can cost you a game.
Anyone who has experienced that intense feeling of mental fatigue after a thirty minute game can attest to this. The score screen lights up your monitor and you slouch back in your chair, drenched in your own sweat, blood pounding in your temples, as you bask in the warm glow of a well-earned victory (or sink into the hollow emotional black-hole of a soul-crushing defeat).
It makes sense that as an intelligent player, playing an intelligent game, you’ll naturally be attracted to the intelligent race. Leave the filthy, brainless aliens to the peasants. And why play as your own ilk? Leave those intellectually inferior halfwits to the gamers who enjoy mindlessly shooting at stuff. You know, like Call of Duty players (just kidding, put down your torches and pitchforks). No, no, you need something more advanced than that. Something more… cerebral. Something with units like…
The Protoss Sentry
The Protoss are all about superior technology and efficiency of units. They have the strongest and most expensive units in the game. In big battles, a Protoss user has to rely on good micro-management and having the correct army composition. And if a Sentry is not a major part of your current army composition, you’re doing it wrong.
The Sentry is arguably the most important unit in the entire Protoss arsenal. A support unit, it is a key part of any defensive position or offensive push. It can be an intimidating unit to incorporate, and is often misused or ignored in the lower levels of play. So if you’re guilty of a little Sentry under-appreciation, read on. I’m going to show you how to ‘Toss like a boss.
Vital statistics
Cost: 50 minerals, 100 vespene gas, 2 supplies
Requires: Gateway, Cybernetics Core
Abilities: Ground and Air attack, Forcefield, Guardian Shield, Hallucination (Hallucination requires upgrade)
Build time: 42 seconds
Speed: 2.25
Hit points: 40 hitpoints, 40 energy
Armour type: Light, Mechanical, Psionic, 1 (+1 per upgrade level)
Damage: 6 (+1 per upgrade level)
Attack cooldown: 1
Range: 5
How to use it
The Sentry is a support unit. In big battles it’s not there to be dealing huge damage, but to help your Protoss army be the best they can be. They’re expensive and fragile and should be protected; never let them near the front line of your army,
The Sentry has 3 impressive abilities to make use of; the Forcefield, Guardian Shield and Hallucination. All these abilities have similar uses in every matchup, so instead of going into each matchup specifically, I’ll discuss each ability in turn.
Hallucination
The least used of the abilities and the only one which requires an upgrade, Hallucination is actually very handy. Allowing you to make mirrors of any unit in the game, it has 2 practical applications which see use. Firstly, a hallucinated Phoenix makes an excellent scout. Fly all over his base and see exactly what he’s doing, and it’ll cost you nothing but energy. Secondly, it allows you to create frightening units like Colossi, which if your opponent believes to be real, will cause him to panic and do one of two things: focus fire on your fake units, while your army decimates his, or instantly “gg” and leave the game when faced with a seemingly unbeatable army. I have seen both these things happen at the highest levels of play.
Forcefield
Forcefields are impassable barriers, and have varied and dynamic uses, and allow for some of the most impressive to watch micro-management battles at the higher levels of play. This doesn’t mean, however, that they don’t have an important role in every level of play. A single forcefield can completely block a base’s ramp. This means that if you’re being rushed, you can hold off all enemy forces just by forcefielding your ramp while you wait for reinforcements to build. This tactic can also be used offensively; forcefielding an opponent’s ramp allows you to destroy an opponent’s natural expansion while his army watches helplessly.
However, it is in big battles where good forcefields can make it an extremely one-sided fight. In Starcraft 2, a unit “concave” is deadly. Units all in well formed concave all fire at once, maximizing their damage. By using forcefields, you can split up an opponent’s army, causing only some of his units to attack at once, while others struggle to get into position. While all this is happening, your army is happily shooting down his forces. These kinds of forcefields are especially strong when used in conjunction with Colossi with the extended range upgrade. This allows you to keep all his units out of range of yours, while your Colossi attack for free. Think of yourself as a malevolent detention master, you want to be as comfortable as possible, while making him squirm and shift, trying to find a workable position.
Guardian Shield
A fairly standard and easy to use spell, Guardian Shield reduces ranged attack damage received by 2 to all units within its calming blue bubble. This spell is most useful when fighting off Mutalisks, as it reduces the effect of their bounce damage greatly. But it’s easy to cast, powerful and doesn’t require any intense micromanagement; you want to be throwing these up anytime you’re fighting a ranged army. Just be aware that overlapping shields do not “stack”.
A set of perfectly placed forcefields leaves these dangerous and expensive Hydralisks helpless as they get destroyed with minimal damage to the Protoss.
What to do against them
A well-placed Ghost EMP can drain all the Sentries’ energy, making them almost worthless. In addition to this, “Massive” ground units break Forcefields just by moving through them, these are the Colossi, Ultralisks and Thors. One other tip I can give you however is to try and “bait” Forcefields. Running units such as Zerglings in and out, you can attempt to force a field (see what I did there), thus wasting the Sentries’ energy.
Conclusion
If this unit isn’t already a feature in your army, it needs to become one. Learning good Forcefield placement is essential to becoming a better player. Sentries may feel a little bit frightening to use, but learning to use them effectively is a lot easier than it may seem.
A short video showcasing some of the most important uses of Forcefield
Discuss the Protoss Sentry in the forums
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