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The thing with killing tanks with a sniper is that in 40K, the power supply for most human tanks is on the back. In plain sight. Unarmoured.

feth yeah tractors!

Exergy wrote:killing men is much easier than rendering a scope useless. For one thing men are much larger than a scope.

It is certainly possible to destroy a tank with a sniper rifle but it isnt very likely. It is entirely possible to down a fighter jet with a pistol shot, again not very likely.

Case in point, when armies of the current world want to take down tanks they use large caliber guns, rockets, or missiles when they want to down aircraft they dont use pistols, they use flak guns or SAMs. Tanks main vunerability is to infantry, but not because of their guns, sniper or otherwise but because of their grenades, democharges, and the like.

I find it very unlikely that an average or moderately above average soldier could hit the right part of the track, scope, radio, or other very vunerable spot on a tank in real battlefield conditions while the tank is moving. Given 15min to set up, without any distractions or visual obscurity, I bet a sniper could hit something squishy on a tank that isnt moving, but those are very differetn conditions.

I drove tanks for a little over a decade in the Army. For reference, I was an M1 Abrams crewmember (MOS 19K).

I've taken sniper shots through my periscopes - I actually have a purple heart because of one engagement where a sniper ran a bullet through my center periscope and the spent lead landed in my lap and melted my nomex to the skin - and we had them down the barrel of our main gun (hearing a round ping off the breech block really makes you glad tanks don't run with the main gun "hot"). We've also had a .50cal round break a track link - that was accidental (the FNG hit the commander's joystick climbing out of the tank and stitched about 20 rounds up the side of the tank next to him, breaking the track and giving the crew a nice scare).

The only one we weren't moving for was the accidental .50cal discharge. That was at a gunnery range while we were sighting our weapons. So yes, it's really, really possible for a sniper to kill even the heaviest tanks on the battlefield.

mossman jones wrote:How about S = BS

That would screw over the IG and possibly Eldar? I don't know the BS of pathfinders off the top of my head. Marines would be "alright" but that would still defeat the purpose, as it would make a sniper rifle worse than a boltgun, except with longer range.

I know that.it comes up every thread like this, but.it would seriously break the Vindicare Assassin. Shield Breakers and Turbo Pens, wounding most things.on 2+ and Str 8+ 4D6 with Rending for vehicles?

The Vindicare Assassin could largely be left alone. He's not using a "sniper rifle" - he's using an "Exitus Longrifle" which has its own rules.

Or you could give the Vindicare an option to trade the Exitus Longrifle for the vanilla sniper rifle for free, but it'd lose the special ammunition.

Is there any way to get my spotter idea to work? Points are flexible, and I like the idea of having the spotter give +1 (or something) to BS and allow that model to allocate wounds. It would have to be quite a big boost to be worth the cost over another sniper model if the sniper rifle rules seem to work as is.

Eldar Rangers use a Ranger Longrifle. The vindicare uses an Exitus Rifle and Pistol. All have the sniper rule. It would affect them.

My friends and i use soem house rules for Snipers to amke them more appealing.

Hit and Wound on 3+

The squad can either mass fire at a unit (wounding all models as normal) OR they can nominate a single model and all direct their fire at that model (thsi only works for models with Sniper Rifles, you can't snipe with a ML)

We've used it a few times and it isn't massively OP as cover still works and the range is the same. plus most peopel have their ICs in transports anyway and thwe Sniper Rifel is still only S3 rending vs armour.

Deadshot wrote:Eldar Rangers use a Ranger Longrifle. The vindicare uses an Exitus Rifle and Pistol. All have the sniper rule. It would affect them.

I post mainly from work during downtime, and don't have my codices to hand here, but I remembered the Exitus bit at least!

Still, this would be a wargear option rather than a change to the sniper rule. I suppose I could've worded that better - I'm talking about the rifles themselves, rather than the sniper rule.

But then you would.need to list specific units.in the BRB or rewright and explain the rule.in each codex.


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And for the record I wasn't correcting you.on the Exitus.

Why not just add the wargear option to the squads themselves and leave out the Vindicare (since I'm pretty sure the Exitus rifle with special ammo is quite a bit better than anything I could come up with that isn't "Hits on a 2+, wounds on 2+ and causes ID with no armor or invulnerable saves allowed")?

I don't know where the ID or no.invulnerables allowed comes.from.

He can either wound on 2+ with Hellfire.
Wound on 4+ as normal, but each wound inflicts 2 wounds with TurboPenetrator. Against Vehicles it has a total penetration of 3+4D6 with rending on all dice.
Wound on 4+, but from the moment the wound is allocated the model, any wargear that provides and invuln. is negated for that wound and the rest of the game. Things like Chaos Daemons, Lelith and Wyches, Zoanthropes, the Avatar, etc. all gain saves through special rules, so would be unaffected.

I think it was because someone suggested that the strength of the weapon be the same as the BS of the shooter. With the Vindicare's BS of 8, that'd essentially turn his rifle into a missile launcher with special issue ammunition.

Shooting the round in a tanks barel...now that sounds like a vindicare BS 8 kinda shot.


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How about wounds on a successful second to-hit roll. So BS matters more...

Nah, the barrel on the main gun of an Abrams tank is 120mm (almost 5" in diameter), so it's not a very hard shot to make. I could make it at 400 yards with a scoped 30-06, so I'm pretty sure that a trained sniper could make it at far longer ranges.

And making BS matter more would only improve the rifles for space marines (even the Vindicare is only an option for marine armies) - as far as I know, the only other snipers in the game are BS 3, which would be exactly the same.

Its a wonder why we would use any other antitank weapon. Or tanks at all really.

Because a person trying to tine his shot perfectly to when a shell is being loaded and get it into tge barrel under battlefield conditions is going to be under a mountain of presure, and if he misses he will be discovered.

Not to mention tanks don't have to stop to fire anymore making the shot harder.

Oh and don't forget, if you can see far enough into the muzzle of the tank's weapon to put a bullet, that means that tank's gun is pointed almost directly at you. Most people have higher priorities at that point in their life than trying to line up a perfect shot.

I propose these changes to all sniper weapons:

-A universal 12" addition to maximum range (Deathmarks still only shoot twice at 12")

-Use the same rules as rending but make it "to hit" instead of "to wound" for snipers.

To hit OR wound, rather than instead of. So if the player rolls a 6 to hit, it rends/autowounds. If we roll a 6 to wound, it rends as normal.

I also thought of another idea.

How about we make all snipers AP- but force re-rolls of successful saves (including invulnerable and cover), to represent the extreme accuracy of snipers.

This would make it impossible to blow up tanks with a sniper (unless open topped or some other modifiers) and give snipers the role of taking out hard targets in cover (along with low AP template weapons). If it turns out to be too powerful, you could always drop rending.

If I'm doing my math right this makes the rate of save failure:

2+ 30.56%
3+ 55.56%
4+ 75.00%
5+ 88.89%
6+ 97.22%

Or perhaps instead we could modify the save's result by -1 instead of rerolling giving us:

2+ 33.33%
3+ 50.00%
4+ 66.67%
5+ 83.33%
6+ 100.0%

Tarrasq wrote:I also thought of another idea.

How about we make all snipers AP- but force re-rolls of successful saves (including invulnerable and cover), to represent the extreme accuracy of snipers.

This would make it impossible to blow up tanks with a sniper (unless open topped or some other modifiers) and give snipers the role of taking out hard targets in cover (along with low AP template weapons). If it turns out to be too powerful, you could always drop rending.

I like the AP- and reroll regular armor saves. I would have it completely ignore cover EXCEPT cover from turbo boosting. Sorry I dont see a sniperifle hitting things going that fast that easily. I would also leave invunerable saves as is. Its a forcefield, holy blessing, daemonic gift, or some such. It should ward off snipers the same as lascannons.


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Chesh wrote:

I drove tanks for a little over a decade in the Army. For reference, I was an M1 Abrams crewmember (MOS 19K).

I've taken sniper shots through my periscopes - I actually have a purple heart because of one engagement where a sniper ran a bullet through my center periscope and the spent lead landed in my lap and melted my nomex to the skin - and we had them down the barrel of our main gun (hearing a round ping off the breech block really makes you glad tanks don't run with the main gun "hot"). We've also had a .50cal round break a track link - that was accidental (the FNG hit the commander's joystick climbing out of the tank and stitched about 20 rounds up the side of the tank next to him, breaking the track and giving the crew a nice scare).

The only one we weren't moving for was the accidental .50cal discharge. That was at a gunnery range while we were sighting our weapons. So yes, it's really, really possible for a sniper to kill even the heaviest tanks on the battlefield.

And I design aircraft for a living. I use to work up at Boeing's plant outside Philly where they build the Osprey and Chinook. Plenty of aircraft are downed by small arms, especially those kinds but you might be surprised how many F16s went down or suffered crippling damage in desert storm to AK47s.

The issue is still reliability. The army does not use snipers as it's primary antitank weapons. Infantry with AT4s, AGM114s, TOW missiles, other tanks are what the army generally deploys against armor because they have the greatest probability of success. That your tank got hit by 3 sniper rounds and you came out of it with a bruised head is a testimate to how ineffective snipers are. If your tank had been hit by three AGM114s it is unlikely you would have survived.

What's more the increasing strength and rending rules currently being suggested do not increase the chance of a weapon destroyed or crew stunned result they increase the chances of the vehicle going boom which is incredibly hard for a .50 to do. To make things realistic why not make sniper rifles str0 against vehicles but auto glance them on a 5 or 6 to pen.