Scouts and why I love them.

I love scouts, I love the models and I love their rules. The units are capable of deploying ahead of your force, reserving and outflanking in to take advantage of your opponent. Not to mention the physchology of your enemy when he see's scouts is to take them less seriously. They talk about their reduced WS and their lower save oh and how much outflanking sucks. These are common arguments against scouts. Valid to a point till you start looking at the scout differently. Scouts work synergistic-ally that is to say in order to their job right they need help from other units in your list working together.


Advantages of the Scouts,

Scouts are fast. Lets look at them they have move thru cover so they can move rapidly while still getting a cover save. They for the most part are infantry and thus move 6" and can assault six. They can deploy via infiltrate or they can outflank and they get a full movement before the start of the game. Not to mention two excellent fast attack options in the Landspeeder storm and the scout bikers. The storm brings the scouts insane movement potential as the storm also has scout, and thus can deliver a turn 1 charge, or it can be held in reserve full of goodies that outflank in as well. Scout bikers can also be devastatingly fast as they can turbo-boost on their scout move and also turn 1 charge or outflank into the back field. Scout armies rely on this speed as a weapon to choose where and when we strike.

Scouts hit WS4 enemies just as hard as WS4 tactical marines in fact kitted properly they have more attacks base. This is where scouts are under utilized namely close combat. Scouts with bp and ccw get two attacks base and 3 attacks on the charge. This means a unit of 10 scouts on the charge is generating 32 attacks on the charge assuming the srgt has bp and ccw or PW. Compare to standard tact squad that can at most generate 22 attacks on the charge. You as the scout are still hitting your opponent on 4's and wounding him on 4's.



Scouts have access to poison weapons, i.e. the sniper rifle and the hellfire shell in the heavy bolters. Scouts can eat MC's better then most things. Add to this the ability to force pinning checks and you have a key weapon. Taking scouts also opens up Telion so you can pick off a sang priest or two. Combine these weapons with the power of the Camo cloak and you have a nice unit that hurt pretty much anything it fires at.