Stratego community

I’m wondering what you guys think? Is it better to burn your Scouts quickly or save them? I’ll give some of my thoughts, but I still haven’t really decided what I think about Scouts, as they are quite a peculiar piece.

On one hand, if you burn all your Scouts early, you get early info on all of the opponent’s front row pieces and you may have the ability to read their setup. This would allow you to potentially concentrate your forces on whichever flank the opponent is going to attack down. Burning Scouts early also digs lanes for your more important pieces to maneuver, and you aren’t really sacrificing any attacking power to do it, since Scouts can only trade with each other or kill a Spy.

On the other hand, Scouts can be a valuable tool for securing draws/hitting open flags, thanks to their increased mobility. Also, if you can position one of your high pieces near the opponent’s back rows, you can quickly fire a Scout and perhaps snag a trapped Major or Captain (for example). This essentially allows your Scout to “trade” itself for a higher piece. It is a bit harder for Scouts to “trade” for higher pieces at the beginning of a match, because front row pieces are usually backed in some capacity at the start of the match and less high pieces are in the front rows at the start anyway.


If you have 6 more Scouts than your opponent (for example) going into the mid-game and all high pieces are unknown on both sides, this is obviously a massive advantage to have. I would be inclined to save as many Scouts as possible for this reason. At the same time though, an end-game of a Marshal, 5 Miners and 8 Scouts on one side, against 4 Lieutenants, 4 Sergeants and 5 Miners is not at all favorable for the player with the Scouts (assuming flags are closed). This makes me inclined to save my midrange pieces and burn my Scouts.

Some sort of blend between the two is probably the most optimal, but for the sake of a thought experiment I would like to know (assuming you were forced) whether you would choose to burn all of your Scouts in the first 20 moves or save them all, until all of your midrange pieces are dead?

Scouts are often used as cannon fodder and for right measure. While their ability to move multiple fields at once is extremely powerful at the right moment, it is highly situational.

If possible, I believe it to be a great idea to save a scout or two. The less scouts you have, the more valuable they become. This isn't the case with pieces like sergeants/lieutenants.

Some games you just burn through them rather quickly, it happens. In other games you can afford to save a few. Placing them in good spots for this during the initial setup phase might also help

It's a good idea to save one or two for endgame, especially so if your opponent tends to have an open flag.

Do either of you think it’s a good idea to try and preserve all of the Scouts until at least the mid-game? I’ve been working on a setup theory that hides as much info as possible for as long as possible and also has a big Scout advantage to make gaining info easier against opponents who also like to hide their info. The main problem is being down a lot of midrange pieces if you aren’t careful, but I’d like to try and make it work somehow.

(01-02-2021 10:45 PM)01AAAAF Wrote: [ -> ]Do either of you think it’s a good idea to try and preserve all of the Scouts until at least the mid-game? I’ve been working on a setup theory that hides as much info as possible for as long as possible and also has a big Scout advantage to make gaining info easier against opponents who also like to hide their info. The main problem is being down a lot of midrange pieces if you aren’t careful, but I’d like to try and make it work somehow.

I don't think it's a good idea to always preserve all your scouts until the mid-game at all costs. It makes you too predictable. E.g. if your opponent knows you always do this, he won't come at you with sergeants anymore So you want to rely on a mixture of scouting, bluff defense (which also could be scouts, but moving only one square!) and real defense.

E.g. if you open on your flanks with mid-range pieces (captains, majors, perhaps a colonel) then you won't have good escape lanes early on. To discover what pieces are coming at them from behind the lake, you could use one or two scouts on the B- and I-lanes. This also creates some mobility for you that allows for a retreat or supply of fresh defenders.

Of course, your opponents will sometimes use miners and sergeants to bleed you from a few scouts, so don't overdo it and mix it up.

Hmm, well regardless of whether or not it is actually viable, I have actually been enjoying playing this way quite a lot, recently. I think preserving all of my Scouts is helping to improve my intuition, as I can’t just fire a Scout every time I don’t know the identity of a piece. Then, I can use my Scout advance to hunt down the opposing Spy and whatnot, which is actually proving to be quite useful. Probably won’t be a tactic I use in my main setups, but I think I’m still going to use it to mix things up a bit/just have some fun.

Both strategies can be highly successful if coordinated properly with the rest of your gameplay.

If you watch some of Sorrow's games (on YouTube) he likes to open with a couple of captains and hit everything that moves until he finds a major or better, and then once he has that information he advances with a combination of strong pieces and scouts to apply pressure. Since he preserves his scouts early, he has them available in the mid-game to bluff and also to scout unmoved pieces that are vulnerable to his pressure.

If you watch Fairway's games, he isn't afraid to shoot off scouts and usually has fewer scouts than his opponents.

There are pros and cons to each approach, and it's fun to try both. After all, there's an advantage to your opponent not knowing what to expect from game to game.

I don't care about scouts at all unfortunately i don't have videos of them - use them to get info - most of the people that preserve scouts lose sergs/leuits instead to preserve them and if you have serg/leuit advantage heavy you can overcome two much more crucial pieces if you are good such as a colo or capt/major etc. They are the least important piece in the game

I would amend that and say they can be useful as bluff pieces - and for other elements to eliminate spies/flags but i dont think it matters if you keep 1/2 even for an open flag because typically you ahve given up the sergs/leuits by using them as scouts to preserve actual scouts. And therefore it buries you if you dont get up a colo + or major + other higher pieces

(01-05-2021 11:06 PM)GhostfaceKillah Wrote: [ -> ]I would amend that and say they can be useful as bluff pieces - and for other elements to eliminate spies/flags but i dont think it matters if you keep 1/2 even for an open flag because typically you ahve given up the sergs/leuits by using them as scouts to preserve actual scouts. And therefore it buries you if you dont get up a colo + or major + other higher pieces

Yeah, this is exactly the problem I have been running into during my experiments. Just for fun I went with a corner flag and every single Scout on the back row, just to test the theory at its most extreme version. I would end up being down a lot of midrange pieces like you said, since they were essentially the Scouts of the setup. I was able to kill the Spy a lot of the time since I had all 8 Scouts going into the mid-game. I was also using the Marshal, General, Colonels and most of the Majors on the 3rd row to keep my own info as low as possible and make sure I could use my Scout advantage to gain an overall info advantage.

Even though I was able to kill the Spy with a Scout in pretty much every game, the Marshal being so deep in the setup meant that I wasn’t really able to capitalize on that. Once you get to the end-game, the Spy isn’t even that useful anymore because the pieces it would normally guard are spaced out and can use 2-square/run away if threatened. I guess it helped a bit when trapping a piece with my Marsh + another piece.

Saving the Scouts that long was only really good for trapping unmoved Majors and whatnot that were in the back 2 rows and couldn’t escape because they were next to bombs or something.

You could divulge some fake tactics as a bit of a bluff, I suppose. You could go around telling everyone that you’re a Spy blitzer and that every game you blitz with the Spy down the right side lol.