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Hi folks!

I have recently adopted a Space Marine army and my main opponent is going to be a beefed up Plague Marine Nurgle army where his core troopers have T5. They will also get a boost that will make it hard for me to effectively fight them in close combat.

So I was wondering if the otherwise so hated Scout Snipers wouldn't be a viable option. With BS4 and 4+ wounds they could nestle themselves in the quite dense city ruins that often make up our battlegrounds and pick off their targets. With camo cloaks to make them survive most shots against them they should be quite hard to root out without diverting mass amounts of fire power (and if they soak up a lot of attention that in itself can be a good tactic).

What do you say? Might I be on to something here or are Snipers always a bad choice?

I don't have too much experience with Wolf Scouts, but they don't seem too good. If I did run them it'd be with CQC weapon infiltrating as a roadblock, or outflanking as tax for a formation.

Although they don't seem too shabby against deathguard.

Space Wolves pay extra for scouts that have the same stats as codex marine scouts because GW didn't update SW's points cost now that vanilla scouts are the same WS/BS. As for performance.... sniper scouts are ok and they are a low profile unit that can sit back and plink at things. They generally are ok at fishing for rending shots against high toughness models with good armor saves or trying to pick off special weapon models buried in blobs of infantry. They should in theory be good at hunting HQs but look out sir makes precision shots against units with HQs incredibly unlikely to do more than kill the grunts that accompany the HQ.

For vanilla scouts I would say they are a decent pick up but for space wolves your paying extra for no benefit. The only thing they have going for them is that they can benefit from their acute senses when outflanking but that doesn't justify their higher ppm (and outflanking doesn't synergize well with sniper weapons).

 Vankraken wrote:
Space Wolves pay extra for scouts that have the same stats as codex marine scouts because GW didn't update SW's points cost now that vanilla scouts are the same WS/BS. As for performance.... sniper scouts are ok and they are a low profile unit that can sit back and plink at things. They generally are ok at fishing for rending shots against high toughness models with good armor saves or trying to pick off special weapon models buried in blobs of infantry. They should in theory be good at hunting HQs but look out sir makes precision shots against units with HQs incredibly unlikely to do more than kill the grunts that accompany the HQ.

For vanilla scouts I would say they are a decent pick up but for space wolves your paying extra for no benefit. The only thing they have going for them is that they can benefit from their acute senses when outflanking but that doesn't justify their higher ppm (and outflanking doesn't synergize well with sniper weapons).

^^ Pretty much as this. ^^

Wolf Scouts have one advantage that we can slap them with multiple plasma guns and the WGPL can be equipped with a Combi-Plas or Plasma pistol for 3 plasma weapons in a 5 man squad. Good for harassing TEQ's and giving them camo-cloaks ups their survivability but not by a lot.

In most cases in non fluffy games I tend to avoid them as they're far to easy to kill for first blood.

I only ever use Wolf Scouts as a minimum size squad with Bolters.

Wolf scouts are useless, space wolves don't need them at all. They can only be taken if they're a mandatory unit in a formation, like the blackmanes, so you're forced to include them. Otherwise don't bother with them, if you want a shooty unit take long fangs with missile launchers or lascannons or you can spam some land speeder.

Wolf Scouts blow chunks for the most part but if you can get them a well covered vantage point in the buildings you can make a genuine objective holding pain in the butt.