tempestus scion purpose?

[Kanjejou]

its a nice looking unit but what is their ingame purpose they don't have as much hp as base guard and hot shot lasgun doesnt seem to give them a lot more damages... are they just better looking guards?

[Khalagar]

They have more armor so they are slightly bulkier. They aren't great though, I only build them for Overwatch soaking fodder to stand in front of my Heavy Weapon Teams.

IMO, basically all infantry in the entire game is terrible besides the armor pen variety or the "Stand there and get shot a lot" variety like Terminators. Devastators / Heavy Destroyers / Heavy Weapon Teams make basically all of the other normal infantry pointless, and bulkier tanks and vehicles make the tanky infantry pretty meh too. You have to build Terminators because you don't have anything better on SM because your vehicles suck, but I'd take a Monolith or Leman Russ over Terminators for sure, SM just don't have any vehicles on that tier.

Scions are just mostly a waste of resources that could have gone to Heavy Weapon Teams and Basilisk imo

[I>U]

Probably to counter Immortals, mostly.

Immortals are bane of IG, if someone bothered with making a relation table of a kind, they would have easily taken the top score vs Guards and HW teams (6 accuracy + 4 calculated armour leaves 1 DP per team member), so you can simply spam them in Necron-IG matching and force your opponent to build Sentinels.

In theory, they can chase after the gants into a forest, but I never even tried this, to be honest.
Also, they should be better on narrow spots, when you are limited to 5-7 units in 2 lines and on foresty maps, generally.

[Milhur]

They are far better in forest and imperial ruins terrain (lots of it around).

[GeezerCake]

Originally posted by Water Monster:

They are far better in forest and imperial ruins terrain (lots of it around).

This. Often overlooked, but it can make a world of difference.

[John Josep Jingleheimer Schmidt]

Originally posted by Khalagar:

They have more armor so they are slightly bulkier. They aren't great though, I only build them for Overwatch soaking fodder to stand in front of my Heavy Weapon Teams.

IMO, basically all infantry in the entire game is terrible besides the armor pen variety or the "Stand there and get shot a lot" variety like Terminators. Devastators / Heavy Destroyers / Heavy Weapon Teams make basically all of the other normal infantry pointless, and bulkier tanks and vehicles make the tanky infantry pretty meh too. You have to build Terminators because you don't have anything better on SM because your vehicles suck, but I'd take a Monolith or Leman Russ over Terminators for sure, SM just don't have any vehicles on that tier.

Scions are just mostly a waste of resources that could have gone to Heavy Weapon Teams and Basilisk imo

What this game lacks is +% extra damage to "X", you remember that in the first dawn of war you had, rock paper scissors and artillery?

Enemy is making a cannon fodder rush? sentry turrets againts infantry and pour some basilisk// heavy weapon squads.
Quick defense? some guardsmen will do the trick, or die trying in the name of the emprah

Chaos space marines in terminator armor advancing throught north? call some leman russ to do the job, and if we are short on papers some heavy weapons squads while the cannon fodder draws fire.
Enemy by far distance ? drop-pods and pour some LAS fire
dark heresy? thank the emprah i brought my flashlight.

What this game lacks while playing AM is... some reddit good'ol memes like that one series named "All guardsmen party"

[sammysleeth]

I've found that less models but higher accuracy kind of breaks even for damage on unarmoured targets. I tend to infantry spam guardsman and since I've already researched frag and krak grenades and medkits when scions become available i find the extra AP keeps infantry relevant a little longer.

they only really get a bonus to damage with their shooting though and since i find infantry is mostly just useful for grenades and med kits I typically just stick with guardsmen if my resources are tight as i find pumping out tanks once they become available is generally a better bang for your buck.

i wouldn't recommend getting them if you favour heavy weapons teams because of competing resources but i like basic infantry better as they have access to medkits and have higher hp preferring to have my tanks in the 3 tile back slot.