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Having recently bought the codex I'm putting together some tester lists, quick advice needed, does anyone take scouts and if so what load out do people give them, I ask this as mine are looking a bit silly with no arms until I can work out what weapons to give them...

While I like having a small squad with sniper rifles and camo cloaks in my space marine list, I don't see the need for them in a dark angels list due to reduced cost of their tactical squads. Plus being able to take a heavy or special weapon with a 5 man

I was thinking a medium unit with shotguns, hide em up near some vulnerable enemy unit and then rush them, gums blazing and hope for the best... Is this a stupid as it sounds now I've written it?

Camo cloak, sniper rifles, aegis defense line with quadgun. Cheap anti-air, 3+ cover save, scoring on backfield objective.

Its nice that they are cheaper and are troops, but I miss my old BS4 scouts

Scouts are a lot less attractive because they can't have teleport homers. Scouts/terminator armies were a lot of fun to play.

They are a cheap way to get more bolters on the field to take advantage of the devastation standard.

If you need troops who are cheap you must take scouts.

 thantanoss wrote:
If you need troops who are cheap you must take scouts.

Except for +2 points you can get +1 BS, +1 WS and a 3+ save. Scouts aren't exactly cheap when you compare them to DA tacticals.

... Anyone wanna buy some half finished scout models...

I think you want camo cloaks, and then either BP& CCW or sniper rifles, and one missile launcher. If you play reasonably often against armies which are weak in close combat (Tau, IG), the BP & CCW become more viable. Otherwise snipers are probably best.

I don't think they're worth it taken just to camp an objective in your backfield. As other people have pointed out, DA tacticals are cheap, and you can protect them pretty well too by Reserving them initially, to walk onto an objective.

To gain good usage of Scouts you need to make use of their Infiltrate special rule.

So you ideally want to spread objectives out during objective placement, and try to set up so that at least one objective is relatively far away from where your opponent's and your own main forces are likely to be deployed, either near to a table edge or next to some LOS-blocking terrain. Then, after both of you have deployed your armies, Infiltrate the Scouts onto/near that isolated objective, and provide fire support to the rest of your army with your sniper rifles (I think the Missile Launcher, possibly even with Flakk Missiles, is also a reasonable buy).

The other way to do this is to use the Infiltrate rule to Outflank instead. So you make sure as many objectives as possible (during placement) are close to side table edges, and then bring the Scouts on late game to get onto them.

Also, in all cases, make sure those objectives are placed in or right next to Area Terrain or Ruins, to maximize the cover benefit those scouts get and the value of their Camo Cloaks.

I ran 10 snipers with cloaks yesterday, they did fairly well.

A scout unit with a camocloak behind an Aegis defense line and with 6 inches of a darkshroud has a 2+ cover save. Equipped with sniper rifles and maybe a missile launcher, they can hang back and prove some nice shooting with excellent durability.

I run 10 scouts with bolter camo and a combimelta. I use them with my heavy bike stand of devestation list. they can get up and within salvo bolter range one turn one, unlike tactical marines. I usually scout my squad with my librarian forward and then on turn one cast prescience on my scouts. move/turbo if needed the banner in range of the scouts. while keepong the other bikers in range as well. This along with my bikes and my tau/gk allies(depending on mood) give me a very effective alpha strike.