Your experience with scourges

The title says it all. What are your experiences with them and how did you use them? I'm actually unsure what to make of them.

4 Lances. Very nice AT support

Even with their reduced to hit values and frailty compared to a Ravager, I consistently find 4 Dark Lance Scourges amazing. Being guaranteed a turn of shooting is a massive benefit.

I always missed with DS DL scourges so I stared going blasters. They are OK as a dev squad hunter but realistically they aren’t very survivable

Altho with DL scourges it’s fun drawing fire, they leave one expecting it to flee and you spend 2 cp to auto pass. More for laughs than real strategy

I usually use two squads, one with blasters and the other with Haywire blasters. My opponent always gets scared when I say "mortal wound vehicles on a 4, d3 on a 6" or something like that, so they shoot them like crazy when they drop in, even though they actually aren't that good. It's kind of funny because I don't care if they survive after one turn, if they do, good for me, if they don't something else didn't get shot and killed.

5 Scourge with 4 Dark Lances = 150pts. 4 shots at BS 4+ = 2 hits
Ravager with 3 Dark Lances = 155pts. 3 shots at BS 3+ = 2 hits

On the surface they're pretty much equal, until you get to the specifics.
Scourges: Will always get at least one turn of shooting, and from turn 2+ if they don't move will get an extra 2/3 of a hit. Can drop in hard-to-reach cover. But fragile, losing Lances after taking 2 wounds.
Ravager: Toughness 6, needs to take 5 wounds before it degrades at all, has a 5++. Old Dependable.

I take both. Ravagers as the main source of Darklight, but with a unit of scourges as back-up and problem solving. In general the Boats are enough of a distraction that the Scourge get to fire on turns 2+, where they're extra hits come in very useful.

When it comes to Blasters or Splinter weapons, if I wanted more I'd just take more Trueborn/Kabalites.

Mostly used them with DL, pretty satisfied with them;

Always wanted to test vanilla Shardcarbines but hasn't yet.

Two units of DLs is what I run.

IMO range is their best friend, so long as they're as far from the action as they can be and a little out of sight of some of the enemy units they tend to stick it out for a bit.

I use a unit of 5 with 4 dark lances to drop and snipe from cover all game to decent effect or a unit of 5 with just the shard carbines and have them bounce around harassing infantry. 15 poison shots can be pretty useful.

I've had mixed success with Scourges. I actually did fairly well the one time I used them with Heatlances but I think that was more situational than otherwise. I've had the most success with Dark Lances, closely followed by Blasters. Splinter Cannons did their job but I can't help but feel I could have done it better and cheaper taking something else.

The problem I've had so far is that their effectiveness is so situational and in the case of both Lance weapons, too random. If I fail to do the damage I need in one turn, be it the first or whenever I drop them down, I won't get a second chance and it's mostly based on how good my dice rolls are.

The few times my opponent chose to leave them alone after I drop them on the table, they've more or less won me the game, but I feel I can't attribute that to my tactical genius but rather the inability of my opponent to commit half as much in point value to kill what would be the biggest threat on the table.

So, in short, for me they've been about 50/50 useful but I don't feel that the effectiveness of them have been something I could personally affect through my own actions, but rather having to overly rely on favorable dice rolls and the opponent I'm facing.

2x5 /w 4DL is what I bring.
DS in cover, possibly on a higher level and snipe with dark light.
They managed to negate the center of the table to a land raider, a helldrake and various marine fire, so survivability has not been a problem to me.

I only own one squad but I find them extremely useful. The flexibility to drop then during deployment in some cover or keep them in DS to counter something scary from the opponent. They saved me in a game agains a Tau Commander-list with some late DS with lances.
I've tried them with blasters but honestly i prefer Trueborn or just some Kabalites with blasters in a skimmer.

I usually use two units, 1 with 4 x DL and 1 with 4 x Blasters. They usually do a decent job, especially if they drop in cover. They're still fragile but slightly less so than most DE (outside of Covens).

Do you guys use 5 dudes squads?

If you take them, the only weapon for them is the Dark Lance. On the drop they're prettymuch equal against the targets you should be shooting Darklight at, and they're better after the drop turn.

Hell if you have some spare points left over put a couple extra bodies to soak up some damage and keep the Lances around longer.

Scourges are amazing.
Your bog standard squad of 10 guys, with shard carbines are just to good to pass up and so so cheap at 140pts, I rarely give them anti-tank.

Generally i run 2 squads of these, 2x10 all shard carbines, bring them in, pick your target and wipe that target from the board, due to their speed they can easily bait squads and keep moving back and shooting.
TBH iv'e had these guys charged countless times too, sure they lose wounds but that fly ability(allowing to move out of combat and still shoot) is just amazing and scourges can be quite resilient in fact more resilient than you would think.
3+ in cover which is easily achievable then 6+PFP, their invul 6+ has helped me at times too.
Quite the nuisance unit and cheap as chips, no point upgrading, just keep it simple with shard carbines.

I've been using them less and less. Until you run out of DL Ravager slots, they just aren't as good. Far too squishy.

I've tried them in a few games and they've been pretty disappointing.

Dark Lance ones can do decent damage, but even in cover they die to a stiff breeze, and their range never seems to be enough to keep them safe.

Meanwhile, Blaster Scourges do poor damage and then just get deleted next turn.


Consider me unimpressed thus far.

They are a very decent alternative to Ravagers against opponents that field armies like destroyer-spam. Armies that, if they get first turn, will delete you in 1 turn.
Being able to deepstrike your entire AT power is kinda awesome in that situation.

Hmm thinking about it, i think they can go in a Bunker or Bastion.

IMO this could be very good, but extra costly. it would be an addition 100-200pts but you might have them all game, IDK if 246-356pts for 4 Lances that cant move or take objectives is worth it tho.

Mppqlmd wrote:

They are a very decent alternative to Ravagers against opponents that field armies like destroyer-spam.

Unfortunately, that'll only help me if I play against myself.


I do get what you mean though.

Is there any benefit in running a fewer lances for cheaper casualties? I am thinking about 3 poison and 2 lances.
Did anyone try it? It could be counter productive since you want to be far away but then you can't shoot with 3 guys.

Just use Trueborns then, its even cheaper if you just want 2 lances. They can be placed in cover, raider, venoms etc...

I really want a deepstrike unit to score objectives out of range. And to have a couple of lances with range sounds nice as distraction i thought.

We might see CWE get that on friday actually.

If they do, for sure we will