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noob question .... when my squad of 10 scouts fire , they all have to fire at the same troop right ?



because i was thinking of running....

Telion with stalker patern boltgun ( only legal weapon it seems )

1 scout with Heavy Bolter or Missile launcher ( costs 10 points either way )

5,6 or 7 scouts with sniper rifles ( or i bin the plastic i bought lol )
1,2 or 3 scouts with bolt guns

and thinking that so long as X amount of snipers still delivers the goods i can swap out a couple of snipers for botguns which may may the unit slightly more viable
thinking i would be losing a couple of sniper rounds at extreme range but perhaps gaining some firepower mid range

I would stick to all of one type of weapon with Scouts. And if you intend to bring Telion, then I'd stick with Sniper Rifles.

As for the Heavy Weapon option, I would choose one based on what you feel the rest of your list is lacking. If you have less Anti-Tank, take the ML. If you have less Anti-Infantry, take the HB. Supplement what you don't have already with a weapon that would benefit the list more. If you find that you're fairly equal in both cases, I would go with the HB. Wounding on a 2+ with a small blast template will cause havoc on any infantry squad, and when firing with Telion's weapon and wounding with Eye of Vengeance (which are Str 4, mind you, and in fact NOT a Sniper weapon), you can force up to 2 wounds to be allocated to a single model (ideally a Sgt. of a squad, or an IC attached to said unit).

Snipers are ok, but its hitandmiss with them from time to time.

I find the best way to deal with termies is a squad of 10 marines rapid firing into them. You can move a Rhino 10" - disembark the squad 2" and then rapid fire up to 12". That should give you 20 bolter shots - 15 hits - 8 wounds - 2 failed saves??

There's no easy solution to terminators but I don't think snipers will solve the termie issue for you!!

Statistically speaking, 20 bolter shots from marines into terminators will inflict closer to 1 wound than 2. 2/3 hit chance, 1/2 wound chance, 1/6 failed save, gives us a 1/18 chance of a bolter shot to kill a terminator. And being in rapid fire range means the terminators will be able to move and assault in next turn.

Plasma, melta, and any other AP1/2 option works just fine against terminators as long as you put down at least a few shots. But the best answer to terminators in the SM codex is probably your own terminators.

DevianID wrote:I am going to have to disagree with everyone else here it seems. Scout snipers perhaps the best troop unit that SM get. 85 points gets you 3 bs3 snipers, 1 bs4 sniper, and a missile launcher. This scoring squad can outflank if needed for a distant objective, infiltrate/scout to get the best possible firing angle turn 1, and the sniper rifle can and will damage tanks like rhinos. Plus they are fantastic versus t6+ creatures, can pin, and can rend 2+ armor.

I think the thing people miss is how hard things in 40k are to kill in general. Take the termie unit. How many bs4 bolters does it take to expect to kill 10 terminators? Well 10 wounds is 60 armor saves, 120 hits, 180 shots. Does this mean dont shoot bolters at terminators? NO! Do shoot your bolters, as every bit helps.

After all, it takes 120 bs3 sniper shots to do what it takes 180 bolter shots to do. Plus you can pin the termies with snipers, and your 36 inch range engagement range keeps you safer from return fire.

While I believe that Sniper Scouts have very little offensive ability, I agree with the above, up to a point. Scouts actually have a lot to recommend them, as compared to Tactical Marines. However, this is mostly a reflection of the relative weakness of the Space Marine codex. Simply, it doesn't have any good Troops choices, as compared with newer codices, like Dark Eldar, Blood Angels, Orks (best Troops in the game), and especially Space Wolves.

Given that neither choice is that great, I'm surprised more Space Marine players don't run at least 1 or 2 squads of Sniper Scouts to hold their rear objectives. They might seem like a bit of a liability in KP missions, but a Tac Squad pretty much needs a transport, so I see it as a wash even as far as KPs are concerned.

swuk wrote:slightly off topic

Is there any unit in the game that snipers are awesome against ?

Short answer no. As a general rule of thumb don't get caught up with how a model looks or what its fluff suggests it can do. When you play this game its better to look at each piece like a generic game piece. Game wise the models simply represent rules and some are clearly better than others. Also don't get in the habit of looking at units in a vacuum. Your going to end up doing more wounds on a MC or a transport with a Rifleman dread or a land speeder typhoon for less points then you will with a ten man sniper scout unit. You will save loads of money looking at the rules dispassionately like that and finding things that are cheep and effective. Its up to you to make your models look bad ass with good paint jobs and cool conversions. Start with something that has solid rules first then make the model look cool yourself later and I think you will be happier as a hobbyist and a gamer.

If you still like scouts though space wolves do them better (though the sniper version still sucks) so give that book a look if you want to use scout models.

Biggest problem with Wolf scouts though are that they're elites, and not scoring :/ great for long range death with their BS4 and weapon options, but they can't hold an objective. Only contest it.

Space wolves have plenty of awesome scoring units already and don't need scouts crowding the troop slot. The ability to come on your opponents board edge toting a melta gun with BS 4 is priceless.

spot on advice cromwest

i deliberately went for snipers cos the looked cool and more importantly because i assumed they would perform well , have a straight forward role and do it well....how wrong i as lol


40k is a slightly odd war game , the battlefield size is slightly too small for strategy , all these infiltrate , deep strike ad drop pod style stuff deployments make a mockery of traditional set deployments...kind of spoils the game and turns it into a random rugby scrum....this makes unit choices kind of tricky

on a calmer/larger battle board most units would have time and space to find a valid role

i guess that's why im struggling with my choices

as im discovering its ML & Bolters , everything else is suspect lol ( which is a bit dull considering there are 20 odd weapons to choose from )


for your interest : Imperial Gaurd was my close second choice to start with , wasn't to keen on the heroic style plastic ( looks to toy town )
i looked at all the other races & visually they remind me of sci fi b movies or alien races form a 3rd rate comic book....the icon but dated space hulk seemed the sane choice

....i new i should of gone for war hammer magic , lol ....i thought 40k would be saner and less gimmicky battle play wise.....again how wrong was i




This is ALL GWs fault , obfuscation over WYSIWYG ....ive been sold a happy meal instead of a square one lol

...for sale large collection of unpainted SM ...slightly warm as they have been sitting in the microwave for some time now



life used to be so simple
http://theminiaturespage.com/news/844805/

So simple?!

From your link:

" why not streach uniform accuracy to 3-5 years – or is that heresy?"

I say it is heresy. If a manufacturer goes to the trouble of getting everything in the uniform and equipment exactly right for a particular campaign, the least we can do it use the figures for the intended campaign. Unless, of course, one lacks either the time or money to create two armies that are only differentiated by the shako"

Yeah, because I want to build a whole new freaking army any time I want to play a DIFFERENT CAMPAIGN. Damn, man, that sounds just awful.

Stormcallers wrote:
My snipers (bought because they looked cool) have only been played in 3 games, they've caused a whopping 4 wounds total, and one glancing hit vs a dread (w/ML) the wounds were all saved and the dread saved his glance a 4+ from smoke launchers. so I've taken this 85-100 pt unit 3 times and not gotten a single point back.

Only 4 Wounds??
Your doing it wrong then, i play against Necrons and they were the best unit in game, after chapter master insta killed a whole squad of warriors,
id put them up in cover that has had bolster Defenses on it, and given Camo cloaks they have same save as a Terminator (2+),
These guys are super effective against Necrons as most there guys are T5 + (lord, inmortals,Destroyers, C'tan)

im still kinda nooby, iv only played against necrons so far. I also hate people that use "Mathhammer", just play the friken game damit, MH is useless, you carnt predict what those dice roll, you ever rolled 5 ones?? mathhammer tell you that?? ever blown up a tank with a random shot just to see what would happen, if you use MathHammer your never going to get any experience or fun out of this game.

I have gotten some mileage out of scout snipers, but nothing too spectacular or too recent. They're pretty good against high toughness critters, though they do best when the mob in question doesn't have much of an armor save. For a cheap scoring squad that will help deal with that synapse creature or c'tan while lurking on that rear objective, its almost worth bringing a squad in a list if you're not going to be able to change your list around (i.e. tournament). At the least, it has a chance to free up some firepower to go after something bigger and nastier.

RogalDorn69 wrote:
im still kinda nooby, iv only played against necrons so far. I also hate people that use "Mathhammer", just play the friken game damit, MH is useless, you carnt predict what those dice roll, you ever rolled 5 ones?? mathhammer tell you that?? ever blown up a tank with a random shot just to see what would happen, if you use MathHammer your never going to get any experience or fun out of this game.

Mathhammer is a great way to decide on purchases before you make them or to get an idea of how a unit is reasonably going to act on average. That said you really wont be able to do it all that well unless you have a college level statistics course or higher (or sit down and learn stats for fun in your free time). Its a good guide to help you make decisions if you have a fairly good handle on the probability of a units success on a given action it can help when there seems like too many decisions to make. Like if your unit could fire on four different units knowing how easy it would be to kill said units and how bad it would be if each of them lived can help a lot with target priority. It also helps with things like should I charge or should I rapid fire, do I have enough anti-tank/infantry in my list, can I take out a landraider ect., ect. Its not going to win you games but it will make you a better player and keep money in your pocket by helping identify units that are not worth their points.

RogalDorn69 wrote:
im still kinda nooby, iv only played against necrons so far. I also hate people that use "Mathhammer", just play the friken game damit, MH is useless, you carnt predict what those dice roll, you ever rolled 5 ones?? mathhammer tell you that?? ever blown up a tank with a random shot just to see what would happen, if you use MathHammer your never going to get any experience or fun out of this game.

Yes, because not knowing what is more likely to happen is useless. Why not just guess, right?

This, my dear friends, is why casinos are booming businesses.

Granted it can be a nice guide-line but people that base whole games around some numbers is just not fun and boring,
I would never plan out a game using numbers that dont all ways reflect what would happen, maybe to set up a small unit to take down another specific unit or tank,
maybe this opinion will change with more years of gaming or become even stronger. And you dont need the MathHammer to know what is more likely to happen, you have a brain and experience from past games, You dont need Numbers to know what unit is best to shoot at...common sense maybe. But like i said maybe in the futrue i can see more need to use the MH

casinos are booming ( im taking your word for it) because more people are getting thicker and thicker, everything is tricked in those places except the roullet and you can card count but everything eles they got shiz up their sleves , And WTF have casinos got to do with WH40K

Well for one 40k IS a game based purely off numbers. It has a permissive rules set filled with absolute rules of what each game piece (a collection of stats) can do. That can absolutely be calculated and sometimes you can find results for thing that seem to be counter intuitive so it is helpful in finding out things that experience alone will not find. Boring is in the eye of the beholder, math is all I do professionally to solve problems so applying it to a system of numbers like 40k is not that big of a stretch for me.

RogalDorn69 wrote:

casinos are booming ( im taking your word for it) because more people are getting thicker and thicker, everything is tricked in those places except the roullet and you can card count but everything eles they got shiz up their sleves , And WTF have casinos got to do with WH40K

Because both are based on probability. And people base their decisions not because of probability, but because they are feeling lucky (oooh, I might win next time today is my birthday! Ooh m sniper squad miiiiight kill off those TH/SS terminators, there's a chance for it after all!).

Numbers may not alwas reflect what would happen, but they do reflect what is likely to happen. Basing your decisions on what is likely to happen is more wiser than shooting in the dark. Or maybe you're feeling lucky?

RogalDorn69 wrote:Granted it can be a nice guide-line but people that base whole games around some numbers is just not fun and boring,
I would never plan out a game using numbers that dont all ways reflect what would happen, maybe to set up a small unit to take down another specific unit or tank,
maybe this opinion will change with more years of gaming or become even stronger. And you dont need the MathHammer to know what is more likely to happen, you have a brain and experience from past games, You dont need Numbers to know what unit is best to shoot at...common sense maybe. But like i said maybe in the futrue i can see more need to use the MH

casinos are booming ( im taking your word for it) because more people are getting thicker and thicker, everything is tricked in those places except the roullet and you can card count but everything eles they got shiz up their sleves , And WTF have casinos got to do with WH40K

The 'trick' of casinos is this and nothing more: a slight probability edge on every game they run. They have a mathematical win rate of 52.5% of the time on even odds bets. The more times you experience an event the closer you will tend to be to average. Mathhammer helps describe probable results, like the scout snipers being unable to take down terminators in time. In the vast majority of games, they won't. Once in a long while they could, but it's unrealistic enough that you shouldn't count on it. You can reasonably count on results lying within a single standard deviation of the average result, and that allows you to make the occasional counterintuitive, but informed, decision.

You have to be realy good at maths , or a very experienced player in order to play out a scenario in your head.

....as if scouts at 75 points where going to allowed to be awesome for ever.

I saw long shooting range and low army price. + cool plastic. But there's very complex numbers on the board ( embedded in the strategy ) Stuff that cant be read from points charts in the books.

Knowing that 1/6 doesn't happen all that often isn't hard math, realizing that scout snipers rely on this 1/6 to kill enemies with single shot weapons should tell you that they aren't going to be killing volumes of guys anytime soon. Its rather basic math.

That being said, scouts have their place, just not as a main force. They are decent harassment units, and are annoying to have to kill (being scoring, but not offensive, and cheap) There is also great value in a unit that is essentially expendable (esp for a high cost army like marines). I've used mine as counter infiltrators, preventing enemy infiltration, and as scout move blockers, saving my more important things from nasty first turn melta/assaults. I give my scouts bolters, because I use them in a midfield role, and move them quit often, but with certain lists is might be better to run them as snipers, where you won't be needing to move all that much.

swuk wrote:You have to be realy good at maths , or a very experienced player in order to play out a scenario in your head.

notabot187 wrote:Knowing that 1/6 doesn't happen all that often isn't hard math, realizing that scout snipers rely on this 1/6 to kill enemies with single shot weapons should tell you that they aren't going to be killing volumes of guys anytime soon. Its rather basic math.

QFT! Its a dice, its got SIX faces! Working out chance when you have 6 outcomes is basic math. Like schoolchildren basic math. "Oh my god, I'm rolling 10 dice, not one! How am I going to work this out?!?!?" If you say need 4+, so HALF of your dice rolls will succeed, your going probably going to get 5 successful rolls! If a coversave is 4+, approximately 50% of the wounds you cause will be saved! If you need a 3 to glance and 4+ to penetrate a vehicle, your probably going to get a result! So to play out a scenario- if your probably going to hit, and you've got ONE shot, remember, you PROBABLY will hit, so you might miss! If you do this 4 times, then the odds INCREASE dramatically in your favor! is this really that complex thought?

I generally use my scouts to take BO's and harrass. They're excellent at pissing off the opponent, especially on those rare occasions where you're outta krak missiles and the scout put the killing wound on the hive tyrant. I'd say the best use for your scouts shoooting though is situations where you wanna hit a high toughness unit to soften them up. pinning is useful against enemy fire support, if you can pin them. (Lootas, Havocs etc.) however the dice rolls aren't in your favor, generally. basically they're a cheap unit that can dig in at or around an objective.

Rurouni Benshin wrote: you can force up to 2 wounds to be allocated to a single model (ideally a Sgt. of a squad, or an IC attached to said unit).

You still have to follow the normal rules for wound allocation, it's just that the shooting player allocates rather than the defending player.

Well, I take a Scout squad pretty regularly, but if I'm firing them at Terminators, then it's either because that's all that is left, or desperation :-)... They camp on objectives, snipe/harass and sometimes even pin something with their kills... They are pretty good at delaying the enemy, but I'm playing them in a Fleshtearers (BA) force, so a delay here or there allows me to get jump troopers in to do the actual work :-)

The complex math i was referring to has nothing to do with the dice. Its to do with the mathematics that occurs when you play a game. The way a units " values change " depending on everything else thats on (or happening on) the board. Its not possible to model that in your head so when you have a unit which is "optional" to field it makes it harder to understand its true value.

Scouts are probably worthwhile , people run them and some run them well but if you are new to the game they are not the easiest choice...as im finding out lol

Im getting lots of good advice here that should help me achieve a decent standard of play. There is a lot to learn when you are starting out. I tend to play creatively and usually reach a good standard of play in most games I indulge in. Im up against 20+ years of expertise as the game has been around for sometime, so seeking a bit of advice will prolly go a long way.

swuk wrote:
Scouts are probably worthwhile , people run them and some run them well but if you are new to the game they are not the easiest choice...as im finding out lol

Therein lies the tactics, yes? Most units are quite situational... the game would be quite staid if you just min/maxed one themed unit and destroyed everyone... then everyone would have generic armies of the same min/maxed cookie cutter units. There's a reason people don't min/max scouts! They combined arms them with other units...



As for mathematics, there is a truth in it that is elegant ( I cringe at those who disparage it!)

It's not that hard... there's a Mathhammer for morons (216 rule) here to get you started

OR

You can just ask on the tactics forum... you're not the first person to work this stuff out before making expensive purchases!

even better

(H x W x S) then halve it = % chance of a kill ( near as dammit )

so you dont need to try & divide by 216 in your head

Over 2 rounds, I killed 3 terminators with 10 scouts in one squad. Heavy bolter and 9 snipers. Squad was only 5 men strong, 2 TH/SS, 2 TLC, 1 AC (he was DA). 3 player king of the hill, he won by 1 point.