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I got some scouts from a friend and they have this load out.

Sgt. combat blade bolt pistol
3 bolters
1 heavy bolter

Is this a good set up to use in a semi competitive fashion?

I kind of like it because if the squad moves I have bolt pistols on all of them so the heavy bolter has the same range as the others and if I choose them to sit in cover with camo cloaks on my home base objective I get the punch of the heavy bolter.


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This is for nilla marines. Don't know if that makes a difference.

Sounds like a slightly versatile squad. Sgt is a bit weak though, no shooting and no special cc weapon.

Honestly? No.

If you take bolters on Scouts you have to compare them to full Space Marines who come with bolters, better BS, and that wonderful 3+ armour save along with the option of a transport.

85 points gives you 5 Scouts with a heavy bolter. 90 points gives you 5 Space Marines, who can be riding in a heavy bolter Razorback for 130 points.

I prefer a shotgun and meltabombs on the sarge, but the rest of the squad is the same as yours.

Outflank them and assault a tank near the board edge, if a tank isn't in range you can set up a small, annoying, firebase.

Give your sarge meltabombs, camo cloaks are optional, and outflank as above.

Biggest difference between vanilla and other marines is that vanilla ones can take Telion. I don't have any experience using him, but my impression from others is that he is awesome.

Telion Rips.
I usually prefer to equip my scouts with CCW and BP, srg with combi melta and PF. This enables them to do some real damage on the way in to a enemy tank or transport. Once stuck into melee they make a pretty annoying speed bump for one round. Mostly scouts are not to competative unless you put them in a LS storm. then they can really stir things up.

Well, in a non-competitive setting it will work. But its not very efficient since the heavy bolter will hard do some damage. I'd mount them in a Landspeeder Storm for increased mobility.

Bolt pistol & combat blade, give the Srg a powerfist and combimelta. Only run 5 like this, the extrabodies insure the Srg can get to where he needs to be to punch a hole in something.

Basically I run them as a threat to backline vehicals.

The 2 scout builds I like are 5 with fist and all shotguns in a land speeder storm with multimelta, or 5 with sniper rifles and a missile launcher.

These 2 configs both provide something useful for the points that is not outperformed by other units, not just tactical units.

The storm, for example, runs 165 points, scouts to point blank range and shoots a multimelta, while also assaulting a juicy target before it has even moved.

The missile squad outflanks or infiltrates/scouts to get good side shots with the missile and sniper rifles (which are great antitank side arms considering they can pen av11 in an av11 dominated metagame) while also being cheap and small scoring units.

Freman Bloodglaive wrote:Honestly? No.

If you take bolters on Scouts you have to compare them to full Space Marines who come with bolters, better BS, and that wonderful 3+ armour save along with the option of a transport.

85 points gives you 5 Scouts with a heavy bolter. 90 points gives you 5 Space Marines, who can be riding in a heavy bolter Razorback for 130 points.

90 points of marines is terrible though. No special or heavy weapons, no special deployment or movement options, no real purpose other than warm bodies ect. Also a HB razorback as a suggestion? Other than GKs with their S6 HB is this even a remotely good idea? HBs suck unless its on a dakka pred or scout squad (for the poison blast).

The scout squad for 85 points gets an anti infantry blast that is surprisingly effective, 3 bolters, and a sarge with a decent amount of attacks. They also get infiltrate, move through cover, scout, and the ability to outflank. Their weapons load-out is perfect for midfield control, and with the decent number of attacks (due to sarge) can outflank assault or scout movement/normal movement/rapid fire weak squads. Its a solidly effective squad for 90 points due to how much it can do. The BS problem is so overblown i just don't get what the big deal is. Bolters hitting 1/6 times more often is so insignificant that it isn't even worth considering (how many bolt shots do you need to kill a marine on average?, missing 1/6 times more often against hard targets doesn't really matter).

Also the 3+ save is also overblown. You know what scouts get in cover against small arms? 4+, and if its a bunch of shots go to ground for 3+. Or take cammo cloaks (something I don't really like, gives up too much efficiency) for 3+/2+gtg. The AP issue does come up if the scouts are in the open, due to AP4 being common and AP3 and lower being expensive and rare. But once again, scouts are built for cover, and its not hard to spot AP4 weapons.

As for the ML sniper riffle scouts that some people prefer: If you want a versatile squad with superb midfield ability to instead choose to be a ineffective standoff unit with no reason to actually use most of its special rules... Also sniper riffles are so mediocre that it makes them nearly useless.

The two ways I run scouts are as bolter/HB/BP&CS midfield harassment, and as LSS suicide BP/CS melta/PF squads. Both builds make the most use out of special rules, and both builds actually have effect on enemy deployment. I think I've won more games with good scout use than I've won with tac marines (tac marines get the glory since they get the objectives at the end, and the scouts usually die, but its the scouts that won the battle).

Not, have you used sniper rifle scouts? You decry them, but by almost every objective matter the sniper scouts outperform the squad you mention with bolters. If you feel the sniper rifle is a poor weapon (for an 85 point unit!), why is the Bolter + heavy Bolter better? Maybe if the snipers didn't also have pistols I could see a point.

DevianID wrote:Not, have you used sniper rifle scouts? You decry them, but by almost every objective matter the sniper scouts outperform the squad you mention with bolters. If you feel the sniper rifle is a poor weapon (for an 85 point unit!), why is the Bolter + heavy Bolter better? Maybe if the snipers didn't also have pistols I could see a point.

The sniper rifle unit plays in an inferior manner. Stand of an shoot doesn't make good use of scouts rules. If you want to spend 85 points on a mixed use stand off platform get a dakka pred. The ability of a 5 man bolter squad to deploy midfield (to counter infiltration, enemy scout moves, ect) mixed with their midfield small arms gives them a versatility that a sniper squad just doesn't have. Oh sure, you could play with sniper scouts in that manner, but you wouldn't get to shoot as much as you would like. I get more millage out of a small midfield harassment squad then I would with a stand off and shoot squad.

I do agree the bolter is a pretty poor weapon, but its good enough at killing small units, it has decent enough VoF at close range, and with scouts gives you a choice if you want to fire the BP or double shoot when you move. With sniper rifles you don't get that choice. Instead you get a mixed use heavy weapon that isn't good at either. The HB for scouts is amazingly effective. 2+ to wound with its small blast gets the enemy to spread out more than making use of frag missiles. If they spread out you just fire solid shot. Against xenos armies the firepower is a legit high priority threat, and increases the scouts harassment value. With a ML you are likely to not want to waste it firing against infantry. Yet the sniper riffle is pretty poor anti tank, so those shots are almost wasted on a BS 3 crapshoot with the ML. The ML is meh against infantry, frag helps but wounds less often than the HB. Solid shot is ok at killing a single PA guy in the open, but the remaining sniper riffles are just too low performance (BS 3, single shot, chance to rend isn't bad, but not something to count on when you get only 3-4 shots).

No, snipers>>bolters. Stop theory hammering, based on scouts wanting to get close to rapid fire, they will die. Dying is fine but go for shotguns or something so cc is an option.

Scouts stay away and fire but not kill, else they camp on an objectives and fire but not kill.

Anyway treat yourself to 5 snipers box and Telion.
Heavy bolter, 5 snipers, Telion and 3 bolters will be all right. The difference between 3 bolters and 3 snipers with BS3 is really small, given you will trying shooting to use Telion to kill an actual model and the heavy bolter for wounds.
The bolters help with wound allocations.

MFletch wrote:No, snipers>>bolters. Stop theory hammering, based on scouts wanting to get close to rapid fire, they will die. Dying is fine but go for shotguns or something so cc is an option.

Scouts stay away and fire but not kill, else they camp on an objectives and fire but not kill.

Anyway treat yourself to 5 snipers box and Telion.
Heavy bolter, 5 snipers, Telion and 3 bolters will be all right. The difference between 3 bolters and 3 snipers with BS3 is really small, given you will trying shooting to use Telion to kill an actual model and the heavy bolter for wounds.
The bolters help with wound allocations.

I'm not theory hammering. I use the scouts all the time as I've described. They are super effective for how many point I use on them and which slot they come out of. I'll gladly pay points for a unit to do what bolter scouts do, but i can get better options elswhere for what sniper scouts do.

Bolters are the most flexible option. You can stand off at 12+ inches and single shot out to 24, or you can close to rapid fire, or you can fire bolt pistols and assault. Shotgun scouts can only get close and fire/assault, snipers can only stand off and shoot (they can BP+assault, but you are unlikely to due to how you deploy them), and CC scouts while good are only meant to do that.

Not, the issue you just described breaks down like this. 12.1 inches away you have 1 Bolter shot or 1 sniper shot. Sniper is better. Close range with pistols are identical. Thus you would lose 36 inch range for 2 s4 shots that preclude shooting instead of 1 shot on the move with pistols. Now, because shooting the Bolter puts you in assault range but still precludes assaulting, while the sniper has no competition in the 24.1 to 36 inch range, snipers are much more versatile. Especially against targets like wraith lords, or av11.

Small units of scouts need sniper rifles, and to stay back.

Larger squads can make use of sniper rifles if your list can benefit from it, but shotguns are were scout excel.

Scouts suffer from having a WS of 3, this means most opponents him them on 3's in melee, shooting 20 shotgun shots before assaulting helps mitigate this quite a bit. I suggest trying them this way.

DevianID wrote:Not, the issue you just described breaks down like this. 12.1 inches away you have 1 Bolter shot or 1 sniper shot. Sniper is better. Close range with pistols are identical. Thus you would lose 36 inch range for 2 s4 shots that preclude shooting instead of 1 shot on the move with pistols. Now, because shooting the Bolter puts you in assault range but still precludes assaulting, while the sniper has no competition in the 24.1 to 36 inch range, snipers are much more versatile. Especially against targets like wraith lords, or av11.

Who actually plays wraithlords in a serious manner? If they are going with a wraithlord list you have all the anti tank shooting to take them out with (since they didn't take mechanized HS, S8+ weapons should be freed up for bone golem killing). AV 11 is very common, but once again better things to take out them with than sniper rifles. Needing 4s, 6s, and 5+ to get pens when you only talking 3-4 shots is far to unlikely to consider seriously, even before the difficulty of actually killing things on the damage chart.

Also did anywhere in there I state that i care if the bolter scouts get assaulted? They are just scouts, they expect to die. In fact I want them to be assault, as it puts the enemies assaulting squad right in my kill box. Even then if they are in cover there is no guarantee that the assault make it, still have to have the enemy roll well enough on the difficult terrain test.

Snipers shooting at 24-36 inch range has no effect on the board other than attrition, and as attrition causing units they are far too weak to consider to be very effective. As bait and harassment units, bolter scouts are often very effective. If they take the bait you get to pick off an assault squad, if they don't you get some light anti infantry support. Against xenos the RoF of bolters is more effective than most give credit for. I do almost like shotguns, but assaulting isn't something I normally do against dangerous units, even with a double shot beforehand (if nothing else overly effective shooting can deny assaults). Scouts are just weak marines, and marines aren't exactly known for being deadly in CC with most units. The candidates for assault are usually so weak I don't even BP them do to having them run away or get assault denied by model removal. I do like making my opponent charge my scouts, as forcing interaction is what scouts are meant to do.

Against Xenos the scouts will die in cc if they get into rapid fire range. Then armies like orks can out fire rapid firing marines.

The idea with the shotgun is just flexibility, it will most of the time be as effective as a rapid firing bolter, but being able to charge a unit afterwards is just useful to tie up the enemy.

To be clear if you agree scout normal weapons are not killy why care anyway. Hiding in the bushes with meltabombs or combimelta would usually be the bigger threat.

The only reason to take scouts is that they are troops. This involves sitting on objectives 2/3 of the time, it is their raison d'etre. If the objective is more than 24'' away then snipers will be useful.
The exception is Telion who is actually killy and a reason to have scouts in a list.

24'' to 36'' fire power means you are not in assault or template range. So suddenly virtually all wounds they will take will have a 3+ and probably 2+ save. Even if you say this firepower will not do much, bolters will not do much more but will give the enemy an easy kill point or waste a scoring unit.

MFletch wrote:
The only reason to take scouts is that they are troops. This involves sitting on objectives 2/3 of the time, it is their raison d'etre.

24'' to 36'' fire power means you are not in assault or template range. So suddenly virtually all wounds they will take will have a 3+ and probably 2+ save. Even if you say this firepower will not do much, bolters will not do much more but will give the enemy an easy kill point or waste a scoring unit.

I pretty much never sit scouts on objectives, or camp any objective with any unit for that matter. Camping telegraphs your intentions, and puts the initiative in your opponents hands. Scouts aren't just for scoring either, its more that they CAN score that is a nice perk. Tactical squads are meant for scoring, and the only reason I even bother taking them.

As for kill points, I've not cared about giving up kill points in long time. The tactical advantage of good scout use makes up for their sacrifice much of the time I use them.

As for "wasting" a scoring unit, I don't see it that way since I've got plenty of redundant units to actually score. 2-3 full tac squad manage scoring duty.