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In all my years of 40k I can't remember seen too many scouts on the field [or board to be more precise].

Probably due to Tac squads been so good tbh, but still I wonder.

Scouts look like a nice deal in vanilla armies, 13 pts a pop aint bad. They seem pretty limited option wise, and to be fair a Tac squad can do anyting they can do better except for infiltrating of course.

BUT, how would they fair in mass numbers? Say mostly scouts for troops...

Not a greatly competive army I admit, but from a Tau backround dishing out loads of shots seems to stick. Say 4-6 squads of 8-10 scouts with heavy bolters, standard chaplain+ Assault squad and whatever else

At the 1.5k range after taking your scouts you would still have a decent chunk of pts to splash out with.

Just a few musing I cannot awnser myself, so ill give the floor to you lot instead

its an ok idea, but sooooo hard to do and win. if the opponent just deploys accordingly to deny your scouts juicy targets and they don't get scared of the infiltrate then they become no problem. any HB's will cut your men down in droves, and most armies have enough of them or their equivalents. also 4+ armor may look good, but it ends up being paper thin most of the time and saves to few guys to be worth it. i think a scout unit or two has it's place in the marine armies, but not as the center point of the list

it'll be interesting to see where scouts end up in the 5th Ed codex - in recent codexes they've slowly been moving from Troops to Elites, thus killing off the old 'scouts and terminators' army. Personally I'd see nothing wrong with non-infiltrating scouts as troops, but fluffwise i guess that spoils the point of them being 'scouty' if they can't scout

From a power prespective, scouts are just not worth it. You get 2 points and infiltrate in exchange for 4+ armor instead of 3+. Totally not worth it. 4+ armor just doesn't cut it. It's too easy to punch though and too easy to overload with shooting or massed hand to hand attacks. Infiltrate is an ability that is mediochore at best. For the most part all it does is get your units killed faster. However if your whole army is infiltrating, what it does do is make whoever goes first win the game. Another thing to look at is the fact that scout armies are going to be really light on anti tank power.

They will be extinct soon now that they are moving to the elite slots in new marine lists. GW had a braincramp on that one. I used to use a full squad with the old BA dex but now they just can't compete against vet assault squads.

Also, unless you take a lot (capital letters) of scouts, that two pts. per model becomes redundant. Also, they are far less flexible than tac squads and can't get a transport. No nifty LOS blocker, no adaptation, no nothing. The only thing they can get that scouts can get and tac's can't is sniper rifles. Utter ****, if you ask me!

yea the sniper rifle never really made scouts worth it to me. just really expensive ways to do almost nothing as pinning the target squad rarely ever happens

Sniper rifles actually sound kinda uber in the codex, but the fact that they only work properly on orks, IG and high tuff creatures with low armor saves make them about sixty miles past utterly useless. Anything else will shrug it off, and pinning with it is harder than getting a Battle Sister to yodle!

I can speak from experience, I tried a large scout army in the 2000K region and got a backside handed back to me on a plate.

Even when I managed to use the Infiltrate to good advantage they simply didn't have the staying power. Which is sad really as an entire scout army does look incredibly cool IMHO, but coolness doesn't always perform well.

The best use I got from the scouts was when I used a one/two squad of scouts armed with snipers and a missile. As long as i had Tactical or assualt marines they faired a lot better and did MODERATE damage which could have been better for the points. They faired better against IG/Tau than Chaos/Eldar.

As "Two Daemons" said, pinning is nigh impossible with certain armies. Eldar especially!

A Sister of Battle yodelling? Count me in! lmao

Yea... Sister of Battle yodelling made me stop and read that twice!

I was wondering if Infiltrate could be used to simply set up last and respond instead of sneak forward as usual. Being able to get HBs and MLs where they will be able to respond best seems good.

Then again, a lot of things SEEM good

My shooty army from hell used 4 squads of sniper scouts. They were cheap, and had longer range, and with missile launchers were flexible.

How I used them reveals why I used them. I would take a whirlwind, and then deploy the scouts across the table. By then my opponent had deployed alot of his units. I then deployed my 2 tactical squads, and my 3 Elite ( Honor your Wargear) Dev squads, matching my firepower where it would be most effective.

This army was very effective, and I stopped using it because I got tired of marines and needed a better HTH option with it and never felt like painting up the chaplain and assault squad.

A valid point, but even if you set down your scouts in cover and your devs to match his firepower, wouldn't he just move his vulnerable units into cover and then cover his own infantry by getting stuck in with your scouts? Yarr!

Thats what I generally found, I infiltrate my sniper/missile scout squad into woods or ruins to get the cover save and a good LOS, and then after turn 1 regardless of wether I go first or not they usually get blasted to dust.

The best way I have found is to infiltrate them in my own lines(yes kinda makes it pointless I know lol) to get advantage of the "put down after deployment" rule and use them from there.

All this talk of scouts makes me want to field them again. Against Tau, Whirlwind's rule!! Being a Tau player myself I know how bad they can be.

All I can say is 2xSniper Scout squads sniping from two rooftops, 3xWhirlwinds, and the "Hand of Irritation"(Good dice rolls) out of 18 rolls in the game I scattered twice, don't think I could roll any better if I tried.

Whirlwind can be a nice compliment to your army depending on the race your playing, Have never seen the point against Chaos/marines or eldar as they never fail their Ld

under the proposed 5th edition rules, choppy scouts and sniper scouts both get a whole lot better. Unfortunately, I'll bet large sums of money that the vanilla marine codex will put their scouts into the elite slot.

sniper scouts in 5th edition will have to hit with their BS but will gain rending (and probably combat squads) - final result there will be that they are worse against light infantry, but better against heavy infantry and monstrous creatures. you can use tac squads and heavy support to handle light infantry.

choppy scouts in 5th edition can be held in reserve on any mission and may arrive on the short table edges instead of your own edge. Coming on from your own edge against fast assault is great counter-charge tech. "flanking" from a short edge, or even just threatening to do so is a useful tool for more aggressive armies.

the one scout unit that has never been good and looks to continue the trend is the bolter scout unit. that unit is just an infiltrating tactical squad with no special weapon and no power armor. It's all sorts of bad.

No, no, unless they really do something serious, like making their armour save 3+ or something like that they will still not be taken! Why use an elite slot on Scouts when if you want to be aggressive you can take a Bike Squad, Tellie Homer and DS Ten angry Assault Terminators into the ruckus? All for a troop and an elite choice... Or just stick the Tellie homer on something else. The only thing that scouts in fact are viable for is placing teleport homers. Make them CC and your opponent just might make the critical mistake of having his men charge you. And *poof*, you have 10 seriously overweight Space Marines slugging away at them with Thunder Hammers/Lightning Claws!

Why use an elite slot on Scouts when if you want to be aggressive you can take a Bike Squad, Tellie Homer and DS Ten angry Assault Terminators into the ruckus?

You are so full of. . . something. Assault Terminators are a joke. Always have been. That's something that won't change in 5th ed unless assaulting or at least moving on the turn you DS becomes possible, and I really don't see that happening. Coming in from another table edge is so superior to DSing that I cannot believe that anyone who has used or faced both could not realise this. My conclusion: you have never used or faced Wolf Scouts or the Kommandos + special Nob. Correct?

The only thing that scouts in fact are viable for is placing teleport homers. Make them CC and your opponent just might make the critical mistake of having his men charge you.

What kind of bizarro logic is this? If you give Scouts CC weapons. . . people will want to charge you? I suppose in your world, if you give Scouts shooty weapons, it will make people want to shoot you!

No what i mean about people wanting to charge them is that they will naturally come closer. Shooty Scouts are hopefully quite far back if you take them. And hopefully they will do that in 5th ed. If not, normal Termies with ACs. And no, most of the players in my area play Nidzilla/Stealer lists, the rest play Eldar with the logical Cookie Cutter list, which by the way is cheesy beyond belief! Anyway, my point actually is that until GW makes Sniper Rifles rending or AP1, chuck them on the shelf and take some tac squads.

Using scouts as teleport homers isn't a bad idea in theory, but in practice its troublesome to pull off.

1) Do you, field a miminal squad of scouts with homer just to be able to use it and hide the scouts from view?
2) Do you, give them all snipers, HB's, missiles etc and put them into cover so you can still use the weapons and hope they don't die before you can use the homer?
3) Do you, field a huge CC squad of scouts and hope you can draw fire away from the terminators once they home in and use the scouts as support for the terminators in CC.

These are the options I've considered in the past, but as my marine army is hugely assualty I decided it wouldn't be practically or tactically sound.

I'm sure others may have had success with this...

The only real advantage scouts have over tac marines is that they can get bp/ccw without taking up a trait, and have infiltrate. And infiltrate is a fairly minimal advantage in this case.

Very true, it only really allows you use slightly different tactics to what you would normally do with all power armoured marines.

It would be one of those things that they either pull it off and perform well or get wiped out. I don't think you can build a high performing list using scouts but it does give you an alternative and interesting variation to what would overwise be a standard army setup that everyone uses.

If scouts were given a 3+ save, had a points bump to bring it in line then it would be worth the elite slot. As they aren't they should stay as troop choices.

They have the Infiltrate skill - which is an Elite ability in the new codexes. This is why they are going to be an Elite choice.

Maybe this means Infiltrate will be better in 5th edition? One can only hope.

I've never personally looked at the Infiltrate as being classed as an Elite ability but I can see why it can be classed as one.

Looking at the other codex's they have several units that are classed as Elite (the Tau stealth crisis suits for example) but these units have extra abilities on top of the Infiltrate that makes them elite (Tau Stealth field for example)

I guess my main gripe is that I field 3xDreadnoughts in my armies and if I had a choice between a dreadnought and a kitted out Scout squad then the dread would win.

Does anyone know how the new infiltrate will work if it is being changed or if scouts might be given other abilities?

One I've heard is that snipers MIGHT get the rending ability. If its true then scouts definatly belong in Elite slot and I'd be happy to field a full squad in place of one of my precious dreads. IMHO lol

if you wanted to build an all infiltrate army i guess scouts would be cheap troops.

i experimented with using a squad in my dark angels, it wasn't terrible. i combat squaded a unit of ten, which made for pretty good infiltration defense. half were shooty and half fighty, both were expendable. ultimately i didn't go with it as a standard setup though as it only payed off if my opponent was going to infiltrate CC threats.