Equping Scout squads?

[Ration]

Hello i have 10 Plastic Scouts (HB box) to assemble and was wondering what weapon combos to take?

[Koremu]

What do you want them to do? Hold an isolated objective? Assault lightly defended enemy objectives? Act as a screening force for the Power Armoured advance?

[Ration]

well not really thougt that far acually. want them to be a effective way of fighting power armor i guess

[bystrom]

There are several options still, which might not be ideal, as the scouts from the heavy bolter box (correct me if I'm wrong) can only be equipped with bolters, close combat weapons and bolt pistols or shotguns.

 

Some ways of using the squad:

1) Infiltrate and try and get close to assault or rapid-fire; this either requires other more resilient units as any unit can rather easily be out-fought when alone, using them as a speed-bump or making sure you're only fighting a small portion of the army. The last would be a bit difficult against a power armoured foe as quite a few such squads are good enough to beat back a scout squad on their own.

2) Outflanking to try and hit them by surprise; this is a bit of a gamble as your opponent knows you're outflanking along with the chance involved with outflanking. It does allow for possible objective-grabbing.

3) Starting in the deployment zone. This is used mostly to defend/take an objective (mostly used by shooting squads so that they can do something) or work more as a counter-assault squad.

 

When it comes to setups, I've used a 10-man 'assault' variant, every scout equipped with close combat weapons and bolt pistols and the sergeant toting a power fist. Its mostly useful against lighter armoured troops though, as they rely on weight of numbers and aren't as resilient as say assault marines (which lean against fighting lighter armoured troops as well).

 

Some other variants I've heard of is using 5 scouts equipped with CCW and 5 with shotguns as it allows the squad to put hurt on the opponent before assault in exchange for doing worse in CC.

 

I haven't used 'tactical' scouts, those equipped mostly with bolters though. When it comes to the sergeant, if you want to combat power armour, a power weapon or a power fist is a good choice; maybe even giving him a combi-weapon with a power fist for some added punch. There's also the issue of a heavy weapon. It does conflict with an 'assaulty' squad, I guess it depends on preference.

 

Some useful information can be found here, even though its aimed towards a pure scout force, which needs to be taken into consideration when reading.

[Reinholt]

Scouts, in my opinion, are never going to be optimal for taking on opponents wearing power armor (other than perhaps sisters in assault).

 

The lower WS hurts them up close, so even the CCW / BP guys are not as effective as they could be against other marines, and the lower BS hurts them at range.

 

With that said, they have their uses, and I think the snipers definitely have a place in an army if you don't go too crazy with them. Four snipers and one ML scout can be a real pain to get rid of if you put them somewhere out of the main line of the battle, and they are troops and do count as scoring, so you can make last minute objective grabs with them.

 

Also, putting five guys with BP / CCW and a sergeant with a PW or PF in a Land Speeder Storm can be very useful for last minute objective grabs, as well... or a good sucker punch if you find an isolated squad or need to back up some other unit in your army.

[greatcrusade08]

MEQ are the toughest opponents for scouts, but excluding snipers which cannoit be made using your boxed set, i think the best set up would be a 50/50 mix of shotguns and BP/CCW, for outflanking or to go up against smaller lighter units, like dev squads, other scouts, using meltabombs for tank hunting duties etc

 

GC08