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I've now been out of the hobby-part of 40k for a couple of months, after I got bored of my 'Tallarn' IG force a couple of months back. In that time I've been lurking here on Dakka, and reading quite a few 40k novels, the latest of which happens to be 'Battle for the Abyss' (which I happened to come across at my local GW store on the 5th ed. release date). While there I also had a gander at 'Apocalypse: reloaded.' Now while I've never actually played an Apocalypse game, it's always interesting to see what ideas one can get from the material published. And as so many times before, I came across something that caught my eye, and lit a fire under my ambitions:

Space Marine Scout Company

Now I might be a bit off on this, but if memory serves it went something like this:

+ Master of Recruits
+ 10-man Scout squads
+ 0-10 Land Speeder Storm (Speeder transports)
+ Scout bike squadrons

+ Some special ability I can't really remember

(If anyone can confirm/deny the specifics of this part, I'd be grateful)

Now, I've always liked the space marine background, but there's something about power armour that doesn't quite work for me. So I figure this might be a good a chance as any to start up up a marine force. Now, basing this on the rumors floating around the web, as well as the current SM codex, how would one go about creating such a force?

Having a look around different sources, I've settled (for now) on these units as possible participants in a 10th company strike force:

+ Scout squads (duh!)
+ CC squads with bolt pistol/CC and geared-up veteran sergeant
+ Anti-infantry squads (bolters, sniper rifles, heavy bolter)
+ Anti-tank squads (Missile launchers, perhaps something for the sergeant)
+ Sniper squads
- If rumors about Scout special character are true, he'd obviously be a must, being able to lend his BS to a model in his unit (BS 5 krak missile, for instance)
- Depending on how the rules turn out, many of these units might benefit from being mounted in a Land Speeder Storm. But since we don't really know that
much about it yet, I'll let the speculations about it lie for now.

+ Land Speeders
- Land Speeder w/Multi-melta for tank hunters
- Typhoons for long-range support
- Tempests (FW model w/Assault cannon and TW Missile launchers w/krak&frag) for versitility, though they cost quite alot.
- Tornado for versitility

+ Scout bikes
- Never had any experience with bikes of any kind, so no idea how I'd use these

+ Master of Recruits
- If I remember the book correctly, he's a Space Marine Commander. Kitted for that 'stealthy style,' of course
- Perhaps joined by a command squad with the 'infiltrate' UR. Not sure what to arm them as.

Any other units you feel should be added to the list?

--------------------------------

Now with that in mind, how would one go about fielding such a list? And what problems would you face doing so? Since I'd have to collect quite alot of these in order to field an apocalypse-size force, lets focus on regular-40k games: 400 - 2000 points seems the most likely range for me.

Model count/survivability
While Space Marines (hurr!) are quite hardy due to their power armour, scouts don't have that luxury. With T4, 4+ carapace armour and 13 points a pop (using the current codex) they're closer to beefed-up Storm Troopers in my eyes. And then there's the AV 10 Speeders...

Firepower
Missile launchers, multi-meltas, melta bombs and, to a certain degree, assault cannons offer a degree of anti-tank fire. And of course there's the possibility of armoury weapons for veteran sergeants. Against infantry there's a plethora of bolters, heavy bolters, sniper rifles, assault cannons and more. Not to mention the odd frag missile now and then.

Mobility
A key aspect of this kind of force is obviously mobility. Infiltrate & scout universal rules and the Land Speeder transports (can't wait to see the rules for these) are key parts of this.

Now it's time to open the proverbial floor for suggestions. To sum it up a bit:

- Is this a fool's dream? Can a force consisting of just scouts actually achieve anything?
- What key elements should be included?
- Squad setup? (kinda hard to answer without knowing the upcoming rules)

Thanks in advance

al-Majid Agandhjin bin Ahfal al-Rashid

Depends how you want to play this.

As a shooty army, even 60 storm trooper armies are better than this. At least they have 12 plasma guns.

As an assault army...well it depends on the new speeder rules I guess. You could run some sort of ghetto version of Speed Freeks/Mech Eldar.

In my opinion, you've gotta work on getting the perfect balance of anti-troop/anti-tank. You're able to get the anti-troop within the scout squads. You can get the anti-tank with units that you're able to move up the field quickly. For example; Land Speeders, Bikes, and anything in a Rhino. I wouldn't put the thought of maybe getting a squad of Devastators with Lascannons or something else that's anti-tank in a Razorback. I want to play an army like this as well... and I think it's gonna happen when I finish my Eldar and Chaos armies. I can only dream about this army. I throughly enjoy the thought of getting Scouts and maybe backing them up with a small PASM core.

The infamous 10th company list, will the new rules make it viable? Doubtful.

Every rendition ive seen so far (these have all been proxies, its common knowledge that complete painted army perform better ) fails due to one key factor: there arnt that many ap 3 weapons with the ability to do multiple wounds a turn, but there are a ton medium str weapons with multiple shots and ap 4. At that point the 'numbers' advantage when compaired to marines get thrown right out the window.

Other than that a canny tactician might be able to make it work with clever pinning, ive heard rumor that you need to test for each pinning wound caused, and that sniper rifles got a big buff in being rending.

One thing i can tell you from experience is that scout bikes are the Emporer's least favorite unit. i bought a lot on ebay when building my white scars army that included 5, and there is jsut no way around it. They have move through cover so that will help you not crash into things, but dont expect them to really put the hurt on anything, or to be able to withstand even a moderate ammount of firepower pointed at them. i would strongly suggest any of the other fast attack options over them, i think the perfect compliment to scouts are speeders anyway ;D.