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I play rangers a lot, usually in a squad of 5. I recently bought more and was wondering what would be the best number in each squad?

Minimum size squad of pathfinders has worked best for me. Sit them on a home objective in almost any cover and their enhanced cover will make shooting them nearly impossible to anything but flamers.

Five really is the magic number because either they get their cover save and wont have a problem....or they dont get a cover save and all that more pathfinders in the squad means is more deaths. Flamers or cover ignoring blasts will ruin a squad of any size, as will an assault by anything even resembling a cc unit.

Five pathfinders are usually better than five rangers just because its not that many more points, and pathfinders really are a big improvement.


Sliggoth

Yeah, I agree with the above posters that squads of 5 Rangers are sufficient and that the upgrade to Pathfinders is worth the investment.

However, watch out for cover ignoring weapons.
The number of those weapons increased during the last two years
and eventually will give the Pathfinders are hard time.

wuestenfux wrote:Yeah, I agree with the above posters that squads of 5 Rangers are sufficient and that the upgrade to Pathfinders is worth the investment.

However, watch out for cover ignoring weapons.
The number of those weapons increased during the last two years
and eventually will give the Pathfinders are hard time.

Same as above..

Look out for those pesky Marine Sternguard Veterans and their special ammunition! Arrrgh!

I don't know, if Rangers are taking fire from an expensive squad of stern that just dropped in the lap of the eldar army...and are shooting rangers and not using those nice combi's on something else, that's a pro not a con.

It's the other fast unit that can deliver a flamer or get into combat that you should target first if you want the rangers to live.

Hell at a small squad, you can afford to put them in reserve and try to keep them out of trouble when they walk on.

I know my Trio of Hvy bolter attack bikes love hunting Ranger equivalent units. THey may not have cover ignoring weapons, but they pour alot of shots on the move and are able to approach quickly enough to engage them in combat.

Be wary of outflankers too.

I've actually found six pathfinders to be my magic number because of the way that six shots breaks on the odds for a d6. Usually one round of shooting from six rangers produces two wounds, one of them at AP1. With five you more frequently get only a single wound. Also six can still hop into a falcon if they need to (and if there's one around) and zip across the board to score.

But agreed with everybody else on the value of the upgrade and the warnings about cover.

5-6 pathfinders is best in my opinion, parked on or near an objective. If you use a big unit, they perform more or less the same job, but the unit will still get wiped by an assault or by cover-ignoring fire (usually drop-podding sternguard or flamers, but other units can do the same job)

I would always upgrade from rangers to pathfinders, and I would never ever use more than 2x5 in a list, even that is pushing it. The simple fact is that unless positioned carefully and protected by other units, they're dead.

Rangers can get the same cover save as Pathfinders if they go to ground. You are actually paying 5 points/model for the offensive upgrade, so it depends how often you can shoot at usefull targets during a game if the upgrade is worth it?

The 5 points per model also gives them one marginally-useful ability, and one super-useful-worth-the-points ability.

The marginally useful ability is that it gives them the Scouts USR. This can be useful if you're setting up first in Dawn of War and your opponent doesn't want to start entirely off the table... actually a somewhat rare situation against skilled players.

The really useful ability is the ability to completely ignore cover when moving. You can easily set up pathfinders for reliable late-game objective runs.

So true, thanks. I'll try and have them alive by turn 5 next time for this

I have never run them as anything but pathfinders. The 5/6 for rending is so much better, and 2+ in cover (usually ruins or forests) is just god. I actually don't face too many cover ignoring minus the thunderfire and flamers. BUt I try to tangle the flamers up with other things.

Only reason I asked is because I have heard six usually works better.