Sniper Scouts

[Wysten]

Aye, the major attraction with elites is that, beyond the first wolf guard squad, theres very little competistion. (Running mech? Run Dreads, want a little desruption? Run Scouts, want your Grey Hunters to utterly rule? Take enough wolf guard to give them one each, want an actual killy uber unit? Dude, Thunder Wolf and HQ are just down the road XD) So you could probably take scouts without, say, having to lose Long Fangs. Though Whirlwind is better at the same job. Though is mobile pinning better then a third pack of long fangs? Depends on what you want out of the slot, after all, we are not the chaos where our melta platforms are restrictively expensive.

 

That being said, I guess the snipe scouts can mult task, it's just a question of whether you want them to specialise (4 bolt pistols and a melta going in, then hit with 3 melee attacks charging and 2 for every round of continuous combat) or have a platform that can act as a melta platform or snipe, but probably will only use one set of abilitys at any one time. Kind of like Sea Guard in the Elves codex, they can forfill the spearman and archary aspect at the same time, but runs the risk of not using one of it's two abilitys thoughout the battle effectively unless fighting defensively, where they can shoot then take the charge to use their melee prowess. Only issue is the Scout probably ends up a lot more worse off then a grey hunter by that point, considering they will have only one attack each after their intial two. Probably best that a wolf guard is attached so it can do it's anti anything duty well either, as 1 melta gun is not reliable.

[Darkseer]

Probably best to stick with the usual 5 man meltacide pack for cheap and cheerful fun.

As you pointed out, the Wolf Scouts suck in close combat if you give them the sniper rifles.

[Wysten]

Aye, I started writing my charcter thinking it was fesable to run them as one or the other. But now I feel it's best running them as one or the other as:

 

1) Every slot in the codex, Elites excluded, have a cheap way to deal with massed infantry or mech. Are scouts better then Land Speeder Tornados, Long Fangs or Whirlwinds at dealing with Infantry? 100 points is not cheap for a unit that can simply do one or the other, but if equiped for one role loses efficency in the other. Land Speeders meanwhile never lose efficency in one or the other, they can be equiped to do both and can do both, just it's a choice of what they want to do when they come in. Long Fangs are the same as speeders that they can fire at the most importent thing fairly well, Whirlwinds can't, but they will always do what they can do really well for fairly cheap.

 

With scouts they are the same, they are not as good as pinning and need to focus on pinning to try and keep them being too much as obivously giving them a wolf guard won't help their sniping much. Otherwise focus on hand to hand combat where they are pretty unique in the fact that they can blow a tank up pretty well, then assualt it. Most either do one or the other unless they are Grey Hunters, and they can't pop up right behind them.

[Aeddon]

Had a game the other day where these would have come in handy. OBEL my scouts behind my brother's genestealers and wipe them out only to be left away from all the other action for the rest of the game. It could have been nice, there was cover right there and I could have been sniping his Tyrant from accross the field. Ah well...I'll have to try it out next time.