SM Scouts

[LloydsGamble]

Hey all,

I've recently been playing a lot of SM and I feel I have a pretty good grasp of them. Since I felt comfortable, I decided to try coming up with own strategies and build orders - specifically one were SM Scouts play a major role.

Just posting this to hear people's opinions on Scouts, their weapon options and how they could be used outside their basic capping duties. I have tried massed Plasma Scouts in t2 and its pretty fun, but hard to get to that point as you may imagine. I have only now realised that their plasma gun isn't affected by target finder upgrades, anyone know why?

This is just for fun really, but can anyone think of a semi-viable BO/strategy which utilises Scouts heavily? I can win with Tac Mass and ASM harass so now I want to see if I can find a way to win with scouts as a significant part of the force, be they equipped with flamers, plasma guns or sniper rifles. Although now that I know that their plasma guns become obsolete immediately, I can't see what the point of having them is.

Sniper training and Infiltration reseacrh are both fairly costly in early t1/t2 so its quite a challenge to figure out a BO where I can have fully upgraded scouts in t2 without completley crippling myself.

Thoughts?

[Maktaka]

Scouts can be pretty potent in tier 1 when massed with Sniper Rifles by skipping a barracks, but that costs an arm, a leg, and often the game. The anti-building damage of Sniper Rifles is so low the scouts get mulched by a single turret, so you have to hit them before they can get one up. Obviously this is not a good idea against Orks with their infiltrated, squad-based builders and Waaugh Banners everywhere. Don't expect SRs to do well against an IG player who secures "their" portion of the map before you arrive with them; the scouts will one-shot the guardsmen, but an LP2 and IC with garrisoned units will stop your advance cold.

Then there's the cost of massing them to where they're useful. For 5 req more you could have another tac marine, who does more DPS and has more health with a better armor type. And those Sniper Rifles, oy. A non-negligible research cost and weapon upgrades that are the most expensive in the entire game (tied with Nob Klawz, a tier 3 weapon).

I get WHY they're so expensive, because fully kitted out Scouts can just wreck anything in tier 1, but that's a lot of req and power to drop on a build that either wins you the game in tier 1 or loses you the game in tier 2. Well, you'll be in tier 1 still, your opponent will be the one in tier 2 with a vehicle that laughs at your scouts. Sniper Rifles are a complete non-starter in any team game where one player can support the other as the Scouts will get overwhelmed, making you unable to capitalize effectively on a tier 1 investment of this magnitude (e.g. Into the Breach, Mortalis). SRs are probably best against Necrons (Warriors and Flayed Ones move too slow), but Wraiths are very, very cheap and smash Scouts good as long as the Necron gets out enough to tie up your Scouts in one go instead of streaming them with their slow build time.

And ultimately, you're still not going to finish things with SRs alone. You need tacs with Flamers at some point to do the anti-building damage so you can wreck their LPs, as SRs suck at that. That means you're building the Chapel-Barracks in tier 1, building a tac squad, and getting the Flamers, more expense on top of the huge amount you've already invested in a non-scaling tier 1 army.

Honestly, you'll get a lot more mileage out of giving them Flamers or Plasma, putting a Skull Probe on them, and researching infiltration in tier 2 (which will also cloak the Skull Probe). It gives you some useful firepower on a unit you're already going to have on the field anyway and makes them infiltrated for good survivability as long as you can focus down detectors quickly. All-or-nothing all-ins with SRs are so iffy that I just don't trust them.

[Rotlung]

Unless you have a ton of Scouts with SRs (which isn't very cost-effective to be honest, Maktaka has highlighted the flaws above), you're only going to do serious morale damage if you have a lot of Flamers. SM Tacs are better for this.

What might be more feasible would be to focus on Scout harrass in the early game, and quickly move on to vehicles (dreads), well before your opponent manages to get AV, for maximum impact. Chaos stands a better chance at pulling this off in my opinion, but I think it should be possible with SM too, if you can micro your Scouts well enough (expect to have to dance a lot).

[LloydsGamble]

Thanks for the input guys. I've had some success v Eldar in particular with 3 units of SRs, but like you say you either do enough to win or you lose. Hard.

I think it's time for me to learn a new race, I find I keep trying uncoventional strategies when I play SM, probably an indication I should try something new.