Scourges

Maybe dark lance scourge can be used with a bastion in the middle of map. Hard to get in position, but once there, can be usefull. The bastion can too be used as lign of sight blocking, and, if I recall corectly, with a comm relay, for reserve manipulation.

dumpeal wrote:

It's perfectly fine to try to get your  topic back on his track. You exposed an idea and it's not because it switched to "dark eldar sucks" that it means everything was told on this topic. YES, dark eldars have been nerfed. YES they sucked compared to OP armies. We ALL know that. It's told in virtually EVERY topic in this forum. Can we just focus on the questions people ask, instead repeating the same thing over and over, topic after topic?

Exactly my thought. Now, if we can get past grieviances: there is mystics to be done.

cptmetal wrote:

But to be honest, the constant mentioning of the fact that we were hit hard with the nerf bat and that we are doomed is quite tiring.

Me, personally, I have a problem keeping scourges alive because they always seem to be top priority. Maybe I could use them as distraction units for my grotesquerie.

The Dark Eldar is a highly diverse army which means small tweaks in lists can make significanse. Putting one character in a squad can quickly make it a high-priority unit, switching focus from one squad to another. Let's just say some lists open up slots for scourges to be used. If you put scourges in a list where they are going to be high priority gun-fodder, perhaps that is your way of playing. I think the key here is to look for a way to use grots as a distraction instead. After all, that's how it should be, not the other way around.

MarcoAvrelis wrote:

I usually have two units of 4hwb-scourges. They perform well, except when facing a cunning opponent who knows the importance of killing them quickly.  When not, they usually kill a LR turn one, and then keep killing vehicles until there's no vehicles left to kill. with 4+/6++ FNP, they're surprisingly hardy too, and sometimes, they do other stuff too.

As I like to say: not through strength but through cunning. This shows what rewarding unit the scourges can become if used with skill. I think the key here is to lurk for possibilities where the scourges excell. They can be used as a bolster to your anti-vehicle artillery. As mentioned, ravagers and lancers usually go for the lesser kills.

Demantiae wrote:

Mathematically larger squads of un-upgraded Scourges (i.e carbine equipped Scourge) are quite efficient at killing infantry. Not as good as Venoms or gunboats but probably a close third. You could leverage this by fooling an opponent into thinking they weren't dangerous - as they prioritise those Venoms and/or gunboats your rapid moving Scourge are doing work on their troops unmolested. They'd make a decent surprise assault unit too. Pouring carbine fire into a unit and then charging them should make short work of anything that isn't a marine or combat specialised. Scourge equipped this way might theoretically make for a good objective assaulting force, particularly late game where they can be where they need to be and have the PfP boosts to give them the edge.

Other than the above theoretical Scourges come in two flavours. You have the suicide squad heat lancers who's job is to blow up that one thing that needs to die asap and to draw fire away from your other units once it's job is done. Use those to ensure you're other units get a turn of safety from fire. The other flavour is the haywire Scourge who's job is to float around the edges of battle popping any vehicle that dares try to breakout towards your backline or towards objectives. They're as much a deterrent as they are a destroyer. Use these to manipulate the battlefield to pin your opponent into area's you want them to be in. Haywire Scourge are also good for baiting enemy units to come out and deal with them, pulling them out of position for your other units to take advantage of.

Splinter canon Scourge can be very useful but are massively expensive for what they do. However if you can cleverly place them and they are unmolested by enemy fire the weight of their splinter fire is significant. They might have a role in utterly obliterating certain infantry squads in a single round of shooting, but you'd need to spend a turn getting them into position without retaliation for that to work (so you can maximise the salvo shots). As part of a super-alpha strike they might be useful as a one-shot. But their only advantage over a couple Venoms would be a safer DS. One unit is less likely to scatter badly than 2 and with a WP you only have one unit to get into position.

Dark Lance Scourge are frankly useless without relentless. Scourge should be buffed to have this rule so they can use the weapons that come on their sprues.

Blaster Scourge are kind of pointless when you can take Blasterborn to do the same job (and you can run them in a Venom for extra versatility). There's nothing blaster scourge can do that blasterborn can't also do but in a safer way.

Some descent points were made here. I disagree on the your statement that kabalites are better in ALL lists. It depends on what you field. Feel free to argue against my statement.

CptMetal wrote:

But to be honest, the constant mentioning of the fact that we were hit hard with the nerf bat and that we are doomed is quite tiring.

I understand your position, and were we friends hanging out to play 40k, you wouldn't have to "hear" it over and over again. But my presence here isn't that sort of relationship. I'd say 90% of my posts here are, in my mind, considered a public service to help individuals or random people who stumble onto our conversation/thread from google.

So, while you may have seen me say "That's not correct, X was nerfed." 50 times, if it's in a new thread and someone once again makes an inaccurate statement, I have to respond in that new thread as if someone who is going to read that conversation has NOT seen me say that 50 other times if my target audience is new players and potential new players.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I hope this helps to clarify my position so you don't think I'm just trying to beat the same old drum for your benefit, or to annoy you. It's because I think accurate facts need to be represented in threads here to maintain the credibility of this site and this community.

Hellraiser wrote:

The Dark Eldar is a highly diverse army which means small tweaks in lists can make significanse.
.

Fluff wise and model wise, there is a lot of diversity in the faction... but on the table top, there are basically 2 effective strategies left in the whole book.  The only remaining diversity I see is whether you have the points/models for scourges, taloi, razorwings, or reavers.

Hellraiser wrote:

As I like to say: not through strength but through cunning. This shows what rewarding unit the scourges can become if used with skill. I think the key here is to lurk for possibilities where the scourges excell. They can be used as a bolster to your anti-vehicle artillery. As mentioned, ravagers and lancers usually go for the lesser kills.

In 7th edition, "cunning" means exploiting formations and their granted bonuses.  This is something the dark eldar almost literally cannot do.  Meanwhile, USRs like interceptor become more and more common with every release.

I might argue that this alone is enough to eschew heat lances, as they force such a tight deep striking window, that an enemy can easily predict it and aim his interceptors that way.

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

I'd say 90% of my posts here are, in my mind, considered a public service to help individuals or random people who stumble onto our conversation/thread from google.

I would say that as a new player I greatly appreciate this sort of advice. One of those "random people" that stumbled from google is me. Most of the time i've seen lists or discussions where the OP would say "I just like these guys(hellions, wyches, Incubi) a lot, they aren't getting removed" after you have discussed that said unit was perhaps less then optimal; and then you would actually help to incorporate them, giving the best opportunity for the unit or models to shine.

One of my favorite looking units are the Incubi. I love their fluff aswell. I'm sure most of us do. But being new to the game it's nice to at least be warned that they might not be the greatest design in the rules. It's then up to the person if they would rather have fun playing the models they like, bleeding edge competitiveness be damned or instead recognize that they themselves don't like losing and wish to give themselves the best chance to win, playing a primarily Dark Eldar list.


I doubt many of us on here if any at all from what i've seen are WAAC, or ultimate power gamers. They don't strike me as the type to play Dark Eldar, at least not in it's current form. All of us on here care in some mixture of fluff, model aesthetics, playstyle and competitiveness. It just depends ultimately of your thresholds of each are, and I don't think getting more information on any of those topics is ever a bad thing.

It is interesting to consider the different options for units like Scourges, but there comes a time where the public service announcement needs to come in and say this is a poor option (and XX is better).

I see the following viable options for Scourges:
Haywire Blasters - good in most cases, unless there are no enemy vehicles
Heat Lances - better than Haywire Blasters, but need to get so close there is a high risk of mishap with deep strike

And the other options:
Shardcarbines - Venoms with Warriors have similar output per point, and have objective secured
Splinter Cannons - as above, plus more mobility for the Venom option
Blasters - Trueborn in a Raider are a better option for the same points
Dark Lances - Ravagers with Dark Lances are a better option for the same points
Shredders - In all of the years I have played Dark Eldar, Shredders have never been a worthwhile investment.

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

Now this IS off topic, though tangentially related simply by your posting here: I'd totally believe it if I were told that you were an undercover GW employee. You have the traits I'd expect a rules team member to have. Full of fluffy enthusiasm for the dark kin, but with a distinct lack of understanding of the rules of 40k.

Oh yea? One good I can tell you about me is that I am extremely rich!

When I say "Use Scourges" do you think it means change all anti-tank units to scourges or do you think it means use scourges where they come in handy?

Kantalla wrote:

Hellions are similar but with a better melee attack and hit and run.

Here I will disagree. The benefit of using Beastmasters instead of Scourges on the venom-shooting department is that they cost 6 points less and are beasts, which allows them to move 12 while not being harmed by terrain, on the drawback of having 1 less shot and far weaker armor (5+ instead of 4+ 6++, which is a huge deal). Hellions, on the other hand, cost only 3 points less, have the same drawbacks, and are not beast, but jump infantry, so they cannot move into terrain as beastmasters can, which is in fact a big issue because the lost resilence can be countered by being able to gain cover through terrain, and the ability to move through the board without problem, capturing and what not.

It is true, hellions are better on melee and have hit and run. But you could pay 3 more points and have a better armored, better shooting unit. So in this comparison, I think its better to go either full shooty-armored scourges, or swarm it up with beastmasters and just shoot and annoy enemies from cover.

In fact, I hardly see any redeeming value of hellions. But that's for another thread, I guess.

AP5 on their melee attacks isn't entirely worthless. The Hellion tax for Kabalite Raiding Party means you can deepstrike in turn 2, shoot, then assault turn 3 with S5 AP5. Might not be competitive but far from worthless against some armies.

I just don't belive they'll survive to do much on turn 3. Yeah, they DS, so they are close to the enemy. If they could be any kind of threat, a bunch of bolter-like shots would mow them down. Add the overwatch, and the lack of grenades, and nope, they are dead.

That is the real problem with part of the codex. You cannot give a unit swarm-like stats, some gimmicks, and price them as a Space Marine. I am literally paying the same cost of a space marine for a t3 5+ guy with no grenade that is suppose to go on melee, what am I going to do with that? Oh, yeah, they have AP5, which means that it's suppose to kill GEQs on melee, which is exactly what's more harmful to them (tons of weak attacks vs T3 5+), on an army that doesn't actully need helps killing GEQs (cause venoms would kill them anyway).

To kill GEQs I don't need AP5, I need a lot of attacks and a way to survive a GEQ-like amount of crappy attacks on my direction. T3 5+ isn't doing it, and no FNP is changing that fact. I mean, these guys are as resilent as wyches against shooting, and less resilent than wyches on melee. Than wyches!

Yeah, they are not worthless, but not being worthless doesn't mean that they are worth anything either. On the same codex you have units that do the exact same thing, but better. I mean, you are paying 3 points less than a Reaver. A Reaver. And those guys have T4, can jink, can move 36 if they want to, have better HOW, and have more attacks. Yeah, they don't have AP5, nor S4, but they do S4, rending HoW hits (which can kill both GEQs and MEQs), can have CC, and have more attacks and more resilence.

They had a pass on the past codex because you could use them as Troops with the baron, and in fact the baron made them a cool unit thanks to stealth, which gave them the resilence they lacked. Also, they had +1S and +1A, and now only +1S. And AP5, but again, AP5 isn't that great when you'll end up facing 4+ or better saves (eldar, tau, necrons, SM...).

Frederick Vael wrote:

Here I will disagree.

I believe you then went on to agree with me! Beastmasters better than Scourges because of move through cover.

Shardcarbine Scourges, Beastmasters and Hellions are all mathematically similarly efficient as a Venom or Kabalite Warriors. However, being way too squishy and not having objective secured means they are not comparable in terms of game efficiency.

Oh, yeah, I agree on BM being better than Scourges on that role. Disagree on Hellions being "similars but with better melee". Mostly I was trashing the Hellions. A full BM unit was in fact a surprise, as I hadn't thought that before, and it's quite interesting indeed.

Hey, I converted my own scourges from warrior models and I wanted to get some opinions on bases.

I think that the warrior's static pose isn't dynamic enough for scourges, so I had an idea of mounting them on a small flyer stand.

Rules wise...they're jump infantry just like hellions, so why not?

Tactics wise...not being able to claim a lot of LoS cover isn't too big of an issue, but the extra height might be able to deny cover from some units.

Thoughts? I'm not trying to "break rules" in any way, I just thought that they would look cooler
I'd like to hear opinions and see if anyone might cry cheese.

Frankly I don't see the issue, I also would have used wych legs if I had been you, as an aside I think you grossly over define what cheese means. A mediocre/above average unit, even if mildly modeled for advantage, will never "become" cheese.

amorrowlyday wrote:

Frankly I don't see the issue, I also would have used wych legs if I had been you, as an aside I think you grossly over define what cheese means. A mediocre/above average unit, even if mildly modeled for advantage, will never "become" cheese.

You'd be surprised at the mindset of some WAAC gamers, haha. I've seen wrathlords modeled to be crawling on the ground to avoid them being shot at.

I went ahead and just put them on normal bases. I could see the elevated models having an advantage with suicide deep-striking squads, but I don't roll like that.

I actually just purchased a Scourges kit (as well as Wracks and a Venom). I have no clue how to properly use them in game, but I plan on using them as Tank Hunters. This is because in Dawn of War: Soulstorm, Scourges excelled at the role. After reading through this thread, it seems I'm on the right track.

The only thing I'm stuck on is Heat Lances vs Dark Lances, as in DoW:SS the Scourges can only be given Dark Lances. I've never even heard of a Heat Lance until I got the codex.

Trazhras wrote:

The only thing I'm stuck on is Heat Lances vs Dark Lances, as in DoW:SS the Scourges can only be given Dark Lances. I've never even heard of a Heat Lance until I got the codex.

Best option is probably haywire blaster. The dark lance is heavy so you can only snapfire if you move. Heat lances are okay but haywire are more reliable for AT duty.

But with a range of 36 inches on the Dark Lance, I wouldn't exactly move them around. I'd treat them more like my Heavy Weapons Teams when I was playing Astra Militarum.

The problem with DL scourges (as others have said) is that you loose out on movement. For 140 pts you get 5 scourges with 3 lances. For 125 pts you get a ravager with AV 11 and 3 lances (who can still move 6" and shoot the lances).

If you take HWB, you get to move and shoot, all the while maintaining your 24" range to the target. With heat lances, you need to get 9" to make use of the melta. Blasters are 18".

Scourges are one of the few units able to take 4 lances, so maybe they are worth it in that regard.

I really don't compare my forces with stuff I don't own. So yes, I can take a Ravager for cheaper but I cannot currently afford a Ravager.

Apologies for the mild thread resurrect, but I've been toying with an idea for Scourges in a combined CWE/DE army.

I've got one list with 4 HWB for the standard deep-strike vehicle nuking suicide squad.

My other idea was to use them as a harassment/bullying unit.

Basically, a sizeable unit of basic shardcarbine Scourges with a power lance Solarite and a bare-bones (power weapon, banshee mask and shuricat probably) allied winged Autarch. This unit would do what DE do best in the fluff, zooming around picking off unsupported squishy units while other scarier parts of the army take the flak (Kabalite gunboat, Grotesque and Succubus Raider, Talos, Fire Prism, Scatterbikes).

My thinking is that provided that the Autarch isn't the warlord, and you've got sufficiently scary other units to draw fire, you've got a unit with decent ranged output, high speed, enough clout in CC to finish off depleted units and a decent enough armour save that if the enemy wants to delete them they'll have to pull a decent enough amount of firepower from elsewhere to do so.

Viable as a tactic?

Thinking about it, this would probably do better minus the Autarch to make them even less of a priority target, but I was thinking the Scourges would provide a halfway decent escort/ablative wound service for my Autarch.

No special value above Reavers + Autarch. You basically will get slightly worse unit.

Huh, didn't realise that Reavers cost the same as Scourges.

Scourges get slightly more ranged output, but lose out in toughness and CC attacks.

Yeah Reavers probably are the much better harassment unit.

Scourges would be great if they were jetpacks instead of jump packs. Luckily we have our Corsair cousins who can take up to 10 dark lances and do the JSJ fun!

You're also losing out on your autarch taking the hilariously undercosted laser lance.

In terms of general Melee effectiveness

Reavers>Hellions>Beastmasters(w/khymaera or birds)>Scourges

Reavers and Hellions both have HNR and drugs for a potential str5 furious charge. Hellions can be taken in 20 man blobs.

I'm really looking at a 3 man unit of Reavers with an arena champion holding a cluster caltrop, and a laser lance/banshee mask Autarch, AND a unit of Hellions with jetpack prince(shard of Anaris and shadowfield) and jetpack void dreamer with a shimmerhield. Reaver ball charges scary overwatch unit and Hellions followup and possibly multicharge. Both units HnR on the opponents turn.

Scourges just can't compete on the max side of min/max.