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WIth it taking 12 attacks from scout snipers at ballistic skill 3 to on average have 1 unsaved wound against MEQ why would anyone want to take a squad of them?

Even at BEST we're talking 2+ cover on an objective with camo-cloaks / telion / techmarine-bolstering action.

thats assuming youre not going to get assualted or shot with ignores cover

I don't see the points cost to be remotely worth it.

Does anyone else feel that scouts should have a better ballistic skill ? I would gladly trade rending for it in my local meta.

Kill MC with +3 or lower save?

 Awfeel wrote:
WIth it taking 12 attacks from scout snipers at ballistic skill 3 to on average have 1 unsaved wound against MEQ why would anyone want to take a squad of them?

Even at BEST we're talking 2+ cover on an objective with camo-cloaks / telion / techmarine-bolstering action.

thats assuming youre not going to get assualted or shot with ignores cover

I don't see the points cost to be remotely worth it.

Does anyone else feel that scouts should have a better ballistic skill ? I would gladly trade rending for it in my local meta.

Let's see...

1) Kill MC

2) Kill characters

3) Kill special weapons / heavy weapons carriers.

If you are using sniper rifles to kill whole squads, you are using them wrong.

Those 12 shots will also cause a further 2 normal wounds to be saved.

In addition don't forget the sergeant - he has a better chance of hitting.

You can also use your precision shots to take out enemy heavy or special weapons, icon or banner bearers, and sometimes characters.

And inflicting a wound will cause a pinning test.

Also you can get a useful heavy weapon.

When in a ruin with camo cloaks you can go to ground for the 2+ cover save, no Telion needed.

And they don't cost a lot.


Conclusion - they're cheap objective holders with a low-ish chance of inflicting damage on the enemy, but although that might be particularly effective when they do.

Yes, snipers are terrible, no one should ever take them, they're really not that effective against my MCs at all, promise

Annoy your opponent with rending percision shots to take out heavy weapons, and all from such long range he will never even target you.

I like them on my Kroot. Nothing like 12 odd sniper rifles sitting in a forest somewhere to make people keep they fancy squads away.

Nobody likes having the heavy weapon guy/sergeant/special character picked out of a squad from shooting attacks. It's a good morale breaker if nothing else.

They're abysmal on Scouts. The odds of managing to kill an MEQ special weapon are bad enough even with 10 men, while the odds of doing anything more taxing are pathetic in terms of reliability.

You want to know why they suck?

1) Very low shot count
2) Basically rely on rolling 6's to do anything decent
3) Usually poor accuracy
4) Usually terrible base AP
5) Precision shots with them can be avoided easily with LOS'.
6) Numbers 2 and 3 are made extra worse by number 1.

I can't comment on Deathmarks and Rangers/Pathfinders but generally they're avoid at all costs units.

Deathmarks are good. I find them to be pretty reliable at killing MCs and small squads. They tend to suffer though against larger squads.

I suppose the kroot can pull off the sniper role because they basically have the option of using bolters once the enemy gets closer. A couple of krootox with 48" rapid fire str 7 ap 4 never hurt either.

I've been looking into taking ratlings if MC's get more common around here. They won't exactly annihilate MC's, but they're cheap and I stopped caring about tournaments a long time ago.

For marine scouts in particular, I do agree. Instead of being free, they should cost 5 points and give either +1 to BS or wound on a 3+.

All snipers but marine snipers are good. Eldar snipers, and now kroot snipers, are both very good.

Sniper rules are fine, the only really useless thing is the Pinning test.

Sniper rifles are pretty good for taking out upgrade characters, monstrous creatures, or high-toughness models like destroyer lords.

That being said, marine snipers are definitely the bottom rung of the sniper ladder. (A Necron friend of mine claims Deathmarks are, but I've never seen them used so can't compare.) Tau Drones, Space Wolves, Imperial Guard, Eldar, Kroot, even Blood Angels have better snipers than vanilla marines. It's just one of those things you learn to accept. The trade off is Telion, who is frequently very much worth the trade.

But sadly Telion doesnt have the sniper rule.

 Jimsolo wrote:
Sniper rifles are pretty good for taking out upgrade characters, monstrous creatures, or high-toughness models like destroyer lords.

That being said, marine snipers are definitely the bottom rung of the sniper ladder. (A Necron friend of mine claims Deathmarks are, but I've never seen them used so can't compare.) Tau Drones, Space Wolves, Imperial Guard, Eldar, Kroot, even Blood Angels have better snipers than vanilla marines. It's just one of those things you learn to accept. The trade off is Telion, who is frequently very much worth the trade.

Wait, what, ya kidding me? The Deathmarks? The unit that says "Your marked MC with T > 9000 is always wounded on a 2+". I think your friend just didn't use them well I for one think I'm brining Deathmarks much more often because of the MC madness of nowadays

And Kroot snipers to me on paper look ridiculous. A Blob of snipers inside a forest with 4+ (? I think it is 4+) cover save because of stealth (Forest). A BLOB. I can't imagine MCs surviving that ammount of snipers.

They're also a good distraction, had a friend spend most of a game trying to root out a squad that had a 2+ cover save. He needed to kill them off the objective to tie but had nothing nearby so spent two turns of shooting to try and finish them.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
But sadly Telion doesnt have the sniper rule.

True...but his rules are, I think, slightly better. He doesn't wound on a 4+, but he has rending and pinning already, and a higher strength than snipers. (For the purposes of armor penetration.) He has the disadvantage of having an actual weapon strength, which means against MCs or high toughnes models he wounds less, but I almost alway see him fielded with an ADL anymore, with Telion on the big gun. His advantage is the ability to pass his BS off to someone else in his squad (which can be an allied IC, incidentally) and the ability to allocate his own wounds, regardless of what he rolled to hit. This second one is even cooler when he's manning the Quad Gun. He's not perfect, but he's pretty sweet.

I think the OP is celebrating his fifth post by saying that cheap, long-range rending weapons thst can pick out their targets aren't good enough. For a cheap troop squad, what else do you want? Or did you poorly deploy them, relying too much on cover and not enough on LOS, and they were killed?

I take 4 of them so that Telion can man an Icarus Lascannon for the lulz.

Precision Shot lascannon, hooo!

 Evileyes wrote:
All snipers but marine snipers are good. Eldar snipers, and now kroot snipers, are both very good.

Guard snipers are pretty rotten. Ratlings might just about be ok because of the better BS, but normal sniper SWSs stink.

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
I think the OP is celebrating his fifth post by saying that cheap, long-range rending weapons thst can pick out their targets aren't good enough. For a cheap troop squad, what else do you want? Or did you poorly deploy them, relying too much on cover and not enough on LOS, and they were killed?

Well since it's his fifth post, why don't we cut him some slack? We were new too, once. Both to the boards as well as the game. It seems like he had a very legitimate question stemming from confusion on how the unit should be applied. It's hardly the end of the world. Good natured, friendly advice on the correct way to use this unit is the exact sort of discussion that online communities are for, after all.

By the way, welcome to dakka, Awfeel!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Flinty wrote:

 Evileyes wrote:
All snipers but marine snipers are good. Eldar snipers, and now kroot snipers, are both very good.

Guard snipers are pretty rotten. Ratlings might just about be ok because of the better BS, but normal sniper SWSs stink.

I think that when people think of "Imperial Guard Snipers," they're usually thinking of ratlings. (I know I am!)