Pack Focus: Wolf Scouts - Memkel

 Fluff

I have always loved the idea of Wolf Scouts - dark humoured, brutal and silent, sowing the seeds of havoc and confusion behind enemy lines. Peerless trackers and huntsmen, they strike where the enemy least expects them yet where they can do the most damage.
   My scouts are led by a grizzled and brooding old Wolf Guard named Memkel, a master of fieldcraft, marksmanship and survival. He is my great company's master tracker and lead scout, Wolf Priests, Rune Priests and even the Wolf Lord deffering to his knowledge and experience of tracking when planning raids, ambushes or scouting missions. After finishing his aspirancy as a Blood Claw he was inducted straight into the Wolf Scouts, his cold demeanor fusing seamlessly with those of his new peers. After decades of murderous service to his company he was finally gifted the mantle of Wolf Guard after the infamous battle of Svarlbad wherein he and his squad infiltrated and destroyed 50% of a traitor guard artillery position that was hurling explosive murder down on his comrades in the snowblinding Hel valley below. After dealing with the initial traitor artillery he and his squad set about gutting the command bunker of the enemy position, going room to room with frag grenade and hunting knife before marking the remainder of the enemy guns for orbital bombardment.

Tactics

On the tabletop I like to stick with the fluff, my scouts almost always operating behind enemy lines in an attempt to get into the back of the enemy army. The squad typically packs in a melta gun with Memkel taking a combi melta, melta bombs and a power fist just to make sure that any tanks the squad comes into contact with get scrapped asap. It might seem a bit strange to take both melta bombs and a powerfist for a primary tank hunting unit but I've found that if there are no tanks around for me to melt there always seems to be an almost inexhaustable amount of infantry nearby waiting for a bout of fisticuffs. The melta bombs are only really ever used for land raiders (which anyone who plays against space marine players on a regular basis knows - they crop up a hell of a lot for such an expensive unit) or even walkers at a push.

Besides tank hunting I find that the unit plays a very good role in distraction. They're often seen as a kind of bogeyman unit, people get itchy when they know you have them in reserve and so play more cautiously. Then when they do come on its very common for an entire army to turn around and throw everything at them to gun them down. This is pretty awesome if you're packing a footslogging army as it gives your front line a free turn of movement in which to close with the enemy. As long as your scouts can take down their intended target before they get swamped they've usually made their points back.