Optimum Scourge Loadouts

Hi, let's talk about Scourge loadouts:

5 man or 10 man units, how do you equip? Heat lances, Splinter cannons, blasters or Haywire?

What ratio of special weapon models to shardcarbine models?

I am thinking of running 2 5 man teams, one with shardcarbines (possibly heat lance for opportune vehicle hits/TEQ) for anti-infantry and one with haywire blasters for anti-tank.

I'd say 5-man teams with 4 special/heavy weapons. Personally I think a mix of haywire and blasters is quite good but others swear that you should only ever take one type of weapon in a squad.

I've got two units of five scourges. One with heat lances the other with Haywire Blaster. The heat lances went on a pretty neat suicide mission destroying a serpent in the last codex. The other squad is good too, but I have got problems keeping them alive. I'm too aggressive.

I also use a unit with 4 heat lances and a unit with 4 haywire blasters. both are 5 strong.

The disadvantage to haywire blasters is if your opponent brings no tanks then they're largely wasted points.

Heat Lance scourges are great, but often need support through a webway to avoid worrying deep strike mishaps that leave them out of melta range.

Don't discount the anti-elite usage of heat lance scourges though - 5-man terminator units and equivalents hate them.

I prefer a unit of 5 with four blasters, and starting them on the board.  They may die to a whisper, but their mobility combined with four S8 AP2 shots usually can alpha strike something before they are wiped out.

I also like the same unit of 5, but with four haywire blasters.  I usually deep strike that unit and use the superior range of the haywire blasters to avoid the riskier deep strikes.

If there is enough terrain to hide the Haywire scourges out of line of sight, I would do so. 24 inches is enough to threaten most vehicles. Especially if you factor in the movement. And you can try to make use of the terrain that only the target is able to see them. And if it's dead, everything is fine.

Count Adhemar wrote:

I'd say 5-man teams with 4 special/heavy weapons. Personally I think a mix of haywire and blasters is quite good but others swear that you should only ever take one type of weapon in a squad.

I agree with this, though I am one of the people who only ever takes them with haywire - that said, the Count's approach makes a lot of sense depending on how many Scourge squads you wish to take. I only ever really take one, and at that point the max haywire makes a lot of sense. if I wanted to take 3+ I'd go for the mix of weapons, no doubt.

I either run 5 man squad with HWB or 5 man squad with HL and a WWP caddy. It really depends of the rest of the list. If I have allied firedragon for example, I don't need HL and I'll go with HWB.

While it's true that HWB are lackluster if your opponent doesn't have any tanks, it's only really a problem in kill points games. In objective games Scourges are still pretty mobile and they are low priority if they only have infantry to shoot at so they can be used to score/deny objectives.

I almost always take 2 units of 5 with 4 HWB each.

Only once has a Land Raider seen turn 2.

I run a squad of 5 with 2 haywires and 2 heatlances. I may run a squad of 4 heat lances. I also can run a squad with 2 haywires and 1 heatlance and 1 blaster. I may mix them up a bit but thats generally what I use.

What determines what I take with my scourge is determined by my list because most of my lists are all comers lists. For example, if you are playing a extremely aggressive list then take a unit with heatlances. They will die but the results are very satisfying.

I personally never mix them. I want my HWB squad at max range to limit the returning fire while I want my HL squad within 9" to get the job done.

Blaster weaponry seems to be an interesting idea. Do they fare better than lances or Haywire Blaster?

I like to mix just in case the HL scatter out of range.

Blasters are lances. Heat lances have a better chance at perpetrating a vehicle so yes. But they the unit mostly dies the following turn because of the short range.

I run a 5 man squad with 4 haywire blasters. I've been considering trying another unit of 5 with blasters. They might be a higher points cost but, it seems like a very well rounded unit with decent mobility and range. Also, I've played my scourge as a bare bones unit with no upgrades. They wiped out a 5 man chaos terminator squad in one turn. That might have been unfortunate rolling for my opponent but, still that was huge for me in that match. Don't underestimate the shardcarbine in low points games

CptMetal wrote:

Blaster weaponry seems to be an interesting idea. Do they fare better than lances or Haywire Blaster?

Blasters are lance weapons, but they're only a 12" range.

IMO Haywire blasters are the way to go. In 1750pt games I take 2 squads of 5 with 4 HWB's in each. In 1000 i take 1, 5 man with 4. I average 3HP's worth of damage in their first, and often last, turn of shooting. The 24" range allows me to place where I want them to deepstrike about 9" away from their target, so no matter where they scatter, they're going to be in optimal range. 120pts to kill anything with 3hp and then absorb alot of the enemy fire is awesome.

Last game I played my scourges no scattered behind one of the enemy's two dreadnaughts, while my blasterborn moved to the rear of the other. Seeing him throw dice down in frustration as I landed 3 pens with the blasters and 2 glances and a pen with the HWB's was top tier ish.

when i take 2 5man squads w/hwb they tend to be unemployed in the later rounds with all AV gone, so i normally only take 1 or the other with blasters that are 18" not 12"

tokendeadguy wrote:

Blasters are lance weapons, but they're only a 12" range.

Blasters are 18", actually.

My take all comers choice is 4 haywire blasters, but I find 2 haywire squads is often too much, so I usually use a second squad with 4 blasters and a few extra shardcarbines thrown in as ablative wounds that maintain the same range.  This second unit is pretty handy for termies and deathstars when you run out of AV to pop.

If i'm fighting hordes of light infantry, or high toughness low armor units, I have actually had good luck with my squad of 5 vanilla scourges or even shredders (most of my scourges are magnetized).

If I have points left over (and I know I am fighting guard, tau, or maybe eldar) I'll take a solarite with agonizer on the haywire squad so that it's not pointless to throw them into combat.

Plasma grenades, 4+(6++) armor, assault weapons, and the jump pack hammer of wrath attack can make for an unpleasant surprise under these circumstances.

Angus Khan wrote:

tokendeadguy wrote:

Blasters are lance weapons, but they're only a 12" range.

Blasters are 18", actually.

I've been living a lie then, disregard what I said.

I think the obvious take-away here is what not to take.  Don't take splinter cannons or dark lances, as you'll be moving(or count as moving) almost every round.  4+ armor makes scourges less dependent on cover than most of our foot troops so take advantage of that 12" movement.

Alternatively - Scourges are the only real source of haywire blasters or shardcarbines in the codex, which for me is reason enough to take those options.  Heatlances and blasters can be had (less effectively) on reavers for the same price; blasters, dark lances, and splinter cannons can be had at roughly the same price/effectiveness in an (less competitive) elite slot with trueborn; Sslyth are the only other way to get shard-carbines on the table, and they're prohibited by a number of factors.

Personally I've had a sad experience using scourges. I like the model - I have 20 of them - 4 with blasters, 4 with carbines and 12 with magnetized barrels, so I can have any loadout. And they seem to be neat on paper. BUT.
In my meta there is 50/50 chance my opponent has a vehicle, so I run HLs. With an Archon on a Webway elevator of course. I ran about 10+ games and always happened something from the list below:
1. Didn't come in the good time (even with Autarch)
2. Came in good time, but there were no appropriate targets anyway (no tanks, heavy infantry or monsters are in good cover or have 3++)
3. Came in good time, but missed or failed to pen/to wound (most often case)
4. Came in good time, but the enemy had intercept
5. Came in good time, but the enemy had ceramite (I don't know 30K rules and my opponent forgets to tell every detail).

Two last cases can be reduced to "no appropriate targets" case, as because of intercept or ceramite the guys can't do what they should do on the battlefield.

So I decided not to take them anymore and I run Fire Dragons who are most point efficient because YOU DON'T NEED TO BUY THE DAMNED GUNS FOR THEM!!! And 3+ armor of course. Even dragons are not perfect, they suffer the same problems like missed shots and lack of targets, but they have better equipment and they are CHEAPER!

You can't really compare fire dragons and scourges as they serve the same purpose but in different ways.  But besides that the newest eldar codex is pretty absurd anyway.

Fire dragons are much more like trueborn; if a trueborn unit could take 10 melta guns, melta bombs, power armor, gained +1 on vehicle damage chart and battle focus (which is amazingly useful), could take a serious character upgrade for 25 points, and were 4 points cheaper than a trueborn with kabalite armor and a blaster.

The only upside to the dark eldar in this case are the extra melee attack, power from pain, and arguably the ability to purchase longer range weapons.  Open top transports would also be clear advantage over our craftworld cousins, if it weren't so easy for them to get those too.

Overall fire dragons are far more effective and cheaper than our version.. but so is virtually everything else in the craftworld codex.

It's a shame it feels so dirty playing craftworld right now.

The newest codex is absurd, that is true, but some generic Eldar units (like those Dragons) are almost the same during years. Poor game design of DE is a sad fact, so I prefer to make Eldar units looking like DE and play them. It's like a deal with my pride.

But I wouldn't say that dropping Heat Lance Scourges from portal it's something different from dropping Dragons from portal. Anyway they are supposed to blow up a vehicle and then die in peace. Scourges tend to do the second without doing the 1st))))
HW Blasters of course assume that you will set up your Scourges in a different way, playing them on board and threating the enemy tanks from a distance. But I didn't succeed here also. My opponent either don't run Vehicles or I somehow fail to hurt a Trukk in the open. So the guys just are a distraction and objective holders, which is too expensive for 120 points.

Trueborns with their 30% chance to hurt a vehicle IN THE OPEN are total waste of points for me.

Seraff, where are you getting 30%? Also what if you threw them in a raider with dark lance and wwp archon with blaster? Still not worth it?

First of all you need to hit - it is 70% when rolling 3+. Then you need to penetrate, it is 4+ as almost 90% of serious vehicles have armor 12 and more. So you halve the chance and get 35% (I just rounded it don as a "bad luck factor")
So in most cases the chance to hurt a vehicle with blaster is the same like to hurt a non vehicle with splinter weapon. Compare amount of shots made by S-Cannons and by Dark light weapons and you will see, the last ones are overrated and overpriced.