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So a friend and I have gone back and forth about whether or not Sniper Scouts are worth using. His argument is that he has had a unit kill a few Terminators and survive a ton of fire + Precision Shot for picking out special weapons. I have told him that good rolls do not mean a unit is good and that statistically they are not as good as he thinks. Anyone care to put their two cents in?

They are hit or miss for me. Your friend, like myself, has this affection for sniper scouts despite their somewhat lacking fire power. They dont deal tons of damage consistently, but getting lucky on a precision-rend cant really annoy opponents.

Youre right, statistically they arent as great as us scout enthusiasts say they are. BUT, they do make good disruptors or even just objective sitters. Plus, sometimes I need them to fill out my troop choice when Im lacking points!

Sniper scouts with cloaks on a objective, or with telion behind a aegis with Icarus on a objective is also good.

They can be game changers. I run a 10 man squad with a Heavy Bolter, 8x Sniper Rifles and Telion and what they can do great is when in ruins. You can use then to take on targets of opportunity. Use them how you would in real life, go after HQs and Support Units. With the 36” Range they can “Control” the center of the battlefield.
If you get lucky you can take out their “Medic” or such. they are also good for MCs with their 4+ always wound.

I always seem to have terrible luck with them, which the math tells me will happen more often than not... Of course in the last team game my partner brings a bunch and first turn wipes a small raptor squad with the hellfire blast and sniper rifles, than through the rest of the game plunks a couple more obliterators. The squad I brought - one dead CSM...

I like to use snipers to kill quadguns. Seems like everyone and their mother shows up with a defense line and quadgun. 2 wounds and 3+ armor isn't that tough to shoot to death for a unit that always wounds on a 4+.

-Matt

 Leth wrote:
Sniper scouts with cloaks on a objective, or with telion behind a aegis with Icarus on a objective is also good.

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HawaiiMatt wrote:
I like to use snipers to kill quadguns. Seems like everyone and their mother shows up with a defense line and quadgun. 2 wounds and 3+ armor isn't that tough to shoot to death for a unit that always wounds on a 4+.

-Matt

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In addition to the above I find that my opponents have a dread or over-apprehension to scout snipers, or simply get focused on digging them out of cover.

In one game I had an opponent waste a few squads worth of shooting trying to dig a cloaked unit of scout snipers with Telion out from behind an ADL. With the 2+ cover save he only managed to kill a few, and then spend the entire next two rounds firing everything he had trying to kill them! This left the rest of my army free to move and fire with impunity and cost him the game.

Opponent fixation on scouts is hit or miss, but I find they tend to draw far more fire than they deserve, and mostly of the type they can get a 2+ save against with Telion and upgraded ruins or an ADL. They may not do much aside from man the quadgun, but boy do they save you're other units

One of the guys I play against a lot plays vanilla marines, and normally has Telion, and at least 5 sniper scouts. I play Templar (1 heavy weapon with 5 marines= my devastor squad). Generally I end up with 4 bolter wielding marines, and no heavy weapons after precision shots and rending. His cheap objective holding squad just cost me a disturbingly large amount of my ranged firepower... and generally repeats the act a few times per game.

Camo cloaks improving your cover save, precision, rending... what's not to love? I think it's something like 10 pts a model, and Telion is fairly cheap as well I believe.

I think scout squads are great units, and if I could field them I would

I usaly play against a Black templar player who enjoys playings lots of 5 man squad with a single heavy support and he hates it when I eliminate his special weapons.

There a cheap unit, that is most of the time ignore allowing to to freely camp an objective and with the camp make them very tought to dislodge. A 5 man squad with telion makes for a great support unit taking out those nasty special weapons, althought for more relibility I would go with an extra 5 scout.

I like em. They don't seem to earn their points back in kills, but they are a nice distraction/nuisance. But as said before they can be tough to get off objectives (unless they're assaulted). Pinning has helped me out more than once after sniping a squad leader.

If your dice are on your side they can do great things. If not, they won't. Simple as that.

I've tried running them with camo cloaks, Telion, Aegis, Bastion the whole 9! I've never found them to be competetive at all. In that they NEVER earn their points. In fact, I once had to have them jump off the top of my Bastion after it had been destroyed which ended up killing most of them. But they're fun for one off games and story drivin campaigns and such.

5men with Telion:

4 Normal Sniper Shots, 2 Hits, 1 wound.

Telion: 1.64 hits, *Wounds. (Wounds depend on the T of the Enemy, as the S of the Stalker Bolter is 4. Thus, Telion is worse at shooting at T5+ creatures than a normal sniper, other than the fact that he gets two shots.)

At 10 men w/ ML, 9 Sniper shots, 4.5 hits, 2.25 wounds. against a Marine squad, with Telion, you'll get 3.07 wounds w/ a sniper rifle, and .42~ Missile wounds. So, 3.49 Wounds.

Compared to a Tactical Squad, at 24" range: 7 Bolter shots, 4.62 hits, 2.31 wounds. If plasma, .66 hits, .54 wounds. Missile Launcher, .66 hits, .54 wounds. So, 3.39 wounds at long range, making the scouts slightly better. With a Melta/Flamer, the wounds drop accordingly.

At close range, a Tactical Squad will do: 14 Bolter Shots, 9.24 hits, 4.62 wounds. Plasma, 1.32 hits, 1.08 wounds. The Missile launcher is the same. The Melta is the single shot plasma above. The Sgt's Bolt Pistol adds another .33 wounds.

So, w/ Plasma, it's 6.57 wounds at 12" range. And.. the tactical squad is cheaper than a full scout squad w/ ML and Telion.

They are good at bunkering down. If you take telion, might as well take an Icarus and hide out with a 2+ cover save. Bonus points if theres an objective nearby.

Scouts with Sniper Rifles are good for holding objectives and pissing people off, especially with Telion operating a Quad-Gun or Icarus Lascannon, but they aren't very efficient at actually killing units. They do, however, kill individual models fairly well, so they are good against units that are reliant on special weapons, Sergeants, and the like.

Points allocated to sniper Scouts, however, are not very efficient in terms of actually killing things, so the rest of your army should be more efficient to compensate.

UnadoptedPuppy wrote:
I like em. They don't seem to earn their points back in kills, but they are a nice distraction/nuisance. But as said before they can be tough to get off objectives (unless they're assaulted). Pinning has helped me out more than once after sniping a squad leader.

If your dice are on your side they can do great things. If not, they won't. Simple as that.

What this good man said. Nothing more, nothing less.

I like the idea of them and precision shot is amazing, too bad they arent troops for space wolves or I would take them more often. I have other elites I'd rather have though

I think Telion is best on the quadgun against Guard, see that HWT, allocate the wound to that, being double toughness takes out both wounds with one shot, being a normal guy they cant look out sir and they blunt that squad quite a bit and being ap4 leaves them only a cover save if any.

Second from last game I used them, one sniper hit on a 6 (one more hit i think) both wounded and wound was allocated to destroyer lord on his last wound, opponent decided not to LOS and bang failed his 2 plus save, they are ok as a backfield objective holding squad, thats it really.

Exalbaru wrote:
I like the idea of them and precision shot is amazing, too bad they arent troops for space wolves or I would take them more often. I have other elites I'd rather have though

Wolf Scouts are not the same as Space Marine Scouts, they don't fulfill the same rolls.
Marines Sniper Scouts are good for “Controlling” locations and taking out Special Units and Gear.
Wolf Scouts are more like a SEAL Team. They show in your opponent’s backfield, make something Explode and then if enough are left alive clear an objective. Like Dark Angels Scouts they have a better to hit ratio [BS4], but I don’t think they are as good in the “Sniper Roll” for some reason.

Can you pin a squad with overwatch fire?

The comparison to tac squads was incorrect in a few ways.

First, 2 sniper missile squads are the same as one missile flamer tac squad. This is a better comparison as telion costs more and has abilities that can never be replicated on tacs or snipers without him. This means you take telion besides your normal troops if you want him, whether you go with tacs our scouts.

Anyway, at 48 inches 2 missiles at bs3 are better than one bs4 tac missile. Scouts win.

At 36, the snipers can shoot while tacs can not. Again tacs lose.

At 24 you have 6 snipers and 2 sarge snipers versus 8 bolters. You get 1 more Bolter hit but no rending precision. Thus bolters are better versus guard in the open, snipers are better versus t5+ and 4+ or better armor saves. Plus the precision can be amazing. In total snipers are superior, though bolters start to show potential versus geq.

Finally at short range, now bolters get 6.3 more Bolter hits than snipers and have a flamer. Versus meq the snipers expect 2.2 wounds of which .6 rend, which counts for triple if no cover its around. Thus about 3.4 converted wounds. The bolters get about 5. So at this range bolters now outperform versus both geq and meq, and unlike at 24 inches the difference its notable. However, their bonus quickly drops off as enemy toughness increases or versus a 2+ save with no invuln.

So in the end, tac squads are only better versus some targets and only when rapid firing. For the vast majority of ranges, snipers are better, for vehicles or monsters snipers are better, and for foot mobility snipers are better with all their movement and deployment options.

 Leth wrote:
Can you pin a squad with overwatch fire?

I'm pretty sure you can!
I've played it that way, and its saved my scouts many, many times.

The only thing it says that I know about on over watch is you can't precision shot. So I'd be willing to wager you can pin on overwatch.

I thought about it some more-
You can RAW.
But, RAI, you shouldn't be able to. Pinning is "Oh S**t, where is that comming from, get down!" If you are in overwatch, they know where it is comming from, so how is it scary at all? Why would they have to get down?

But then RAI would allow me to precision shot on overwatch. Why would one of the better marksmen in the imperium(Telion) not be able to aim suddenly as an enemy gets CLOSER. Just sayin. And I agree wih you it's weird, but a lot of rules are badly written to allow for gameplay not realism.

Didnt think you can inflict morale tests on overwatch?, is pinning classed as a morale test?

They are terrible, even with Telion. For 200 points, you could actually take something that would be a threat to your opponent, rather than a unit that doesn't do anything but sit there. Seriously, they average less than one rend per turn. Anything with a decent armor save is not bothered, not even a little bit, by snipers. I smile when my opponent brings this unit, because it means I literally have 200 more points of stuff to win the battle. They are easy enough to remove if the opponent wants them dead: Templates (Flamers, Heavy Flamers, Baleflamers), Assault by pretty much anything, and the fact that they don't have any mobility at all makes them a really bad unit.

-Myst

They're pretty over priced. They arnt bad, but for their cost there are.. better options.

As mentioned for 100 points (with camo, the only way to ever take them), you get 1 sniper wound and what 1.4 wounds total (ML with 1/2 chance to hit and .833 to wound). That would be okay if those wounds were AP2 by default, or if they were 85 points instead of 100 and the camo cloaks were free, but as it stands its just not a great use of points. Telion puts you to most of a TAC squad and not many ablative wounds....

so yeah, they're overcosted by about 20 points for what you get. I used to always try to use them but given that I use FW (adeth FTW! gives everyone infiltrate, and mortis contemptors...) there are just much, much better options. However they are a cheap scoring unit, so for me what I do is get them at 1750 to get 3 10 man tac squads and a 5 man sniper squad. I just leave them out at 1500 and below when I just need MEQ bodies more than anything.

As a chaos player, I hate scouts. They do terrible damage to daemon princes / other HQ options and really have the potential to undermine my whole strategy.

The worst is when they snipe my noise marines with blastmasters. The ability to pick off a heavy weapon is really bad and makes SM armies OP compared to most others.

Everytime I read the sniper rules with pinning, precision shot, rending, how cheap they are....I always want to play them, but then; sadly, when I do I am always dissapointed.

Maybe I can give them one more chance this weekend. They have all the right tools to be so so good. It just seems like they fall just a tad short.

250 points for Telion, 3 snipers and 1 ML with an ADL and Quad Gun may sound pricey but I never leave home without them. Telion manning the Quad Gun has constantly blown up countless transports, air and light/heavy infantry, and sitting everyone else behind the ADL to give them a 2+ cover save makes them one of the hardest troops choice to kill off the board. Time and time again I assigned them the task of sitting on an objective and they have consistently survived 9/10 games I play.

On top of that, the ADL they bring also provides 4+ cover save for the tanks and Thunderfire Cannon that I bring. What's not to like?

 g0atsticks wrote:
Everytime I read the sniper rules with pinning, precision shot, rending, how cheap they are....I always want to play them, but then; sadly, when I do I am always dissapointed.

Maybe I can give them one more chance this weekend. They have all the right tools to be so so good. It just seems like they fall just a tad short.

Don't think of them as killers. Think of them as objective holders. If you rely on them to kill the enemy you will be underwhelmed, but they tend to do well when it comes to actually winning the game-- in part because their threat profile isn't huge. In line with the whole "they aren't killers" thing, don't be afraid to outflank them if necessary.

Also, keep in mind there is a fair chance that Scouts will become BS4 in the future (their profile has sort of vacillated between editions), so look to Codex: Dark Angels to see where that's headed. If they do, they'll become somewhat more effective at shooting.