scourges, yay or nay?

Just digging out some models I haven't used in ages and saw my unloved scourges. Anyone having any successes with them? If so, how you running them?

Sadly I've not yet, I used to use them with deep strike in 5th to drop down and melta lance a particularly nasty enemy vehicle, I'm still learning/adjusting to 6th (took a break from 40k) but I'm put off by the amount of armies that have quad cannons or other skyfire weaponry. As a result I'd swap the melta lances for haywire blasters to help wreck enemy tanks by glancing them into wrecks, and try to keep the scourges alive by jumping from cover to cover depending on my opponents (lots of AP4 in their army = cover hop, less AP5 more AP5/6 = leap in the open).

Gutted not to try these guys yet though as the models are the best in our army in my opinion!

I prefer haywire blasters when I use them due to the consistent effect they produce. That said, I tend to dip into the fast attack space last on the force org chart...

any love for the blasters? they don't degrade with range like heat lances any have an effective 30" range with jump moves.
not sold on dark lances, haywires look good though.
how many are you guys fielding?

I think the issue with Blasters is that we can get them elsewhere on generally more survivable units (although blasterborn in a Venom that could explode beneath their feet hardly seem *that* safe...), the access to Haywire Blasters and/or Heat Lances can't easily be found else where.

The problem for a small unit (min 5 to get the funky weapons) is the closer you are to the enemy the more likely you are to die, hence the preffered 24" range (18" range puts you in return move+rapid fire range of many units), so the preference tends to be for either extremes: heat lance suicide squad (that could in theory explode a Land Raider in 1 round of shooting) or longer range for better cover opportunities and less chance to be shot/psyked to death.

A notably change with 5th to 6th (as I'm getting used to 6th still) is the Hull Point system and vehicle damage chart. This makes Heat Lances less effective (glances merely strip a hull point and pens do less damage) than they were in 5th (when a 4+ pen caused a vehicle to be destroyed rather than the 5+ now) so Haywire Blasters are the go to option these days - particularly as you can glanc vehicles to death now.

I reckon if you can get a Far Seer in your allied list then you could be onto a winner with the availability of re-roll missed shooting attacks. This almost guarrantees 1-2 glances a turn per scourge squad and if you took the larger unit of 10 then 3-4 are not out of the question.

0.666 chance to hit followed by 0.222 with the re-roll = 0.888 chance per Haywire Blaster followed by 0.667 chance to Glance, 0.167 chance to Pen and 0.167 to do nothing.

Overall each haywire blaster has a 0.741 (approx 74.1%) chance to do something to a vehicle (with the re-rolls to hit). Therefore with 4 of these you'd do 2.962 points of damage (glancing or penetrating) with haywire blasters.

Combine that with a few cheeky Blaster shots and you'll be knocking tanks down like they don't exist!

We were discussing just this on chat. How do we use scourges effectively? We a little help a two lists were designed using the Baron in a large squad to tank wounds, to increase cover saves in terrain and to hit and run if necessary. You can find the breakdown and thoughts here ...

http://www.thedarkcity.net/t6960p280-a-tdc-blog-tactics-unit-analysis-batreps-observations#bottom

I think Scourges have a place in any DE army. Haywire is very good in today's meta. But you need to attack AT on a few fronts not just Scourges. Let's be honest ... Wave Serpent spam is still one of our toughest match ups.

Jetbikes are better a lot of the time as a blaster delivery system due to the T4, the jink save, and the added utility of bladevanes/turbo-boosting to contest objectives/linebreak etc. I go with haywire as it's the one weapon they get access to that can't be replicated elsewhere by a more efficient unit... Reavers do the heat lance and blaster options better; you should never use lances on scourges, and we have plenty of good anti-infantry options.

I personally run 5 with 2 haywire blasters as I find them to be an excellent 'finisher' unit for when you don't want to use a more dedicated unit to finish the job. I.e. there's a tank left on one hull point, I can reasonably expect to manage that from a pair of haywire blasters, whilst saving my lances for untouched armour. Or if there's 2 survivors of an infantry squad after two of my venoms have fired that I don't want to pour my last venom into; the shardcarbines and 2 haywire shots should be able to take them down and I can spend the venom's shots elsewhere.