I need help with Scourges!

Hi all,

With the new codex I bought 2 boxes of scourges and was excited to field them. They are my favorite models.

I tried the haywire blasters 3 games against a necron to bring down his ghost arks and it didnt work at all. The 24" range allow them to fire only once (before getting killed by the ark and its 10 warriors), and 4 haywire is not enough to takedown a jinking ark. In fact, they often only manage to make it lose only 1 hullpoint, if any...

Maybe the answer is deepstriking heatlances, but with the scatter I fear to mishap of fall out of melta range.

How do you use scourges? Thanks in advance!

If you got 2 boxes of scourges, you should be able to field 2 units of 5 scourges with 4 haywire blasters each. You have to understand the math on haywire blasters to use them effectively.

4 haywire blasters vs. a jinking skimmer will, on average, deal 1.09 hullpoints to a vehicle. That means against a 3HP vehicle, you're going to have to fire 3 units of scourges w/4 haywire blasters at it to have an above-average chance to kill it in one turn.

Knowing this, you basically want to pick your battles, which you CAN do with scourges 12" movement. Also, place them in ruins a lot so they have the option to go to ground for a 3+ cover save if targetted by overwhelming firepower(which you can choose to do AFTER you find out how many wounds you're facing).

Against non-transport vehicles, if you cause them to jink, you win that round because they're snapfiring now. The fact that a vehicle can jink while passengers may still fire at full BS is something that you have to consider when you're performing target selection. If you don't have enough to take out that transport in one go, you're probably better off ignoring it for the time being and avoiding it, since it can only move 6" while still allowing the passengers to fire at full BS.

No matter what you use, if there's only a single squad of scourges and you don't have anything else that the Ark needs to shoot, you're gonna have a bad time. Either redundancy or multiple options are really going to be paramount.

Both haywire and heat lances (the latter of which should absolutely be Deep Stricken in) are viable builds. I actually prefer one of each.

As above...

Keep them 24" away, in cover and have many other real threats drawing fire.
Your opponent's target priority should be overwhelmed.

What is best, heat lances or blasters on scourges? (if you don´t want to use haywire)

Well blasters are 5 pts more than heat lances so the designers obviously think the blaster is superior.

I'd agree with them, str 8 is quite useful and they don't have to get within 9" to fire at full affect vs AVs. This makes blasters less suicidal, so you may actually get to fire them more than once.

That is if you don't like haywire... for some reason.

Keep in mind that you are going to loose distance with any of the other weapons.

If your shooting with a Blaster at 18", that means the unit your shooting at will move 6" at you (minimum), then be within 12" rapid fire range.

If you try to shoot at wrait units, you can just kiss your scourge ass good-bie

Why would you want Haywire scourges? I'm actually regretting that I built Haywire scourges. He will just put them into cover and they can't kill what they shoot at. I need a chance to at least stun or shake the vehicle and Haywire just doesn't do that.

The only reason to use them is against an enemy to force him to stick to cover. But it's too difficult to keep them alive.

I prefer them with heat lances and deep striking to be honest.

While deep striking heat lances are a valid tactic, that's a suicide squad. Haywire blasters allow them to be firing FROM cover too, due to the 24" range.

Honestly, if people are targeting your scourges every time, and it's causing you a problem dealing with their mech, then you simply don't have enough AT in your list. Haywire scourges are by far the most reliable way to take hullpoints off of vehicles without considering forgeworld or allies.

If I chose something other than haywire on scourges, it'd likely be to help them be more versatile when dealing with things that have a toughness value, like elite infantry and MCs, since the haywire blasters are only S4. But if my main issue was with vehicles, the answer is likely more haywire.

Both heat lances and haywire blasters are superior to the blaster, though.

Thank you all for the advices. I see the problem: I didnt have enough AT, and there was no ruins on the map, leaving them without cover.

I will give them another try, but I think I will mix them with lances ravagers.

Mononcule wrote:

I will give them another try, but I think I will mix them with lances ravagers.

Haywire scourge + Lances have always worked for me on the ranged side of AT.

BUT, i've always had some fast close combat AT options as well. Usually grots and reavers. These units always seem to take out more tanks than the guns do.

I think you need to experiment with both ranged and cc combinations to find what works best for you.