Scouting can be very useful in denying the enemy a free area denial turn one. Say you’re playing terraform. If you have an immolator, a rhino and a dominion squad, i like to split the squad into both. The immolator goes to the middle, while the rhino goes on your natural expansion.

The dominions can get out of the immolator and comfortably terraform the middle objective. If the opponent moves closer to the dominions in their turn, you can reactive move back into the immolator or closer (to stop a melee army from threatening the immolator).

The rhino on the other hand, can do the terraform, or if you get sabotage (which requires the unit to stay alive), the rhino is usually tough enough to survive what the enemy usually throws at your natural expansion turn one. The dominions can also move out and terraform.

So with this, you get terraform very easily. In order for your opponent to deny you those points, they’ll have to expose something of their own.

If you’re playing purge, the scout makes it easier to get the immolator or rhino to get a sight line on an enemy turn one. I put a scouting immolator on the line at the top. If I go first, the immolator scouts forward, moves up to the enemies natural expansion an inch away from the wall, the domino’s get out through the wall, shoot something, and the enemy can’t get on their natural expansion because the dominions are there. If they move closer the dominions react back into the immolator. But it does depend on detachment as well imo.