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Currently, Barrage weapons are better snipers than gorram snipers. So, a simple change:

Precision Shots
A model or weapon with this special rule, when shooting, gets to declare who their target will be within a squad. This can be Look Out Sir!ed as normal, unless the hit roll was a 6, in which case, no Look Out Sir! can be made.

Snap shots can never be Precision Shots.
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Models like the Vindicare Assassin would therefore never allow Look Out Sir! against his shots.

Precision Strikes would work in the same way (though who actually has that rule, besides Deathwing Knights?).

1.) Firefly, nice

2.) Do sniper rifles get a price bump? I'd say LOS with -2 modifier (so 6/4's still look out sir) if not.

This goes from "Kinda useless" to "Incredibly, insanely powerful". The utility of Precision Shots is not just that you can hit big, expensive characters, it's that you can snipe out heavy and special weapons that already get no Look Out, Sir! A Tactical squad that loses their Grav-gun isn't losing a 14 point model and a 15 point gun, it's also losing the special weapon slot they paid a model tax for, and their only recourse for stronger targets. The same is true of, say, Heavy Thunder Hammers in a Deathwatch squad or, to a lesser extent, Big Shootas and Rokkits in boyz squads.

Something weird seems to be going on with the opening post. Are you actively editing it or something?

I like the precision shots suggestion, but I think I like this better:
As per the current rules for precision shots, but models may not look out sir against said shots.

So you're still only precision'ing 1/6th of the time, but ICs and characters no longer have a 5/6ths or 50% chance of tossing your sniper shot onto their buddies. This means you probably won't be removing all the special guys from a given squad in a single salvo, but it also makes sniper weapons genuinely good at plucking out important guys and disabling deathstars. Even a nasty death star using some sort of rerollable invuln is going to start sweating when you're tossing a handful of wounds onto the lynchpin character every turn.

This would also give people a reason to field transports again (even when they aren't free!) and to take units like rangers and sniper drones.

Your suggestion is good. I would just worry about drmatically altering the number of "put the wounds where you want" shots a sniper squad would put out as a result.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As for precision strikes, they mostly work fine as they are. When I remember to use them, my solitaire enjoys plucking important models out of enemy squads.

Waaaghpower wrote:
This goes from "Kinda useless" to "Incredibly, insanely powerful". The utility of Precision Shots is not just that you can hit big, expensive characters, it's that you can snipe out heavy and special weapons that already get no Look Out, Sir! A Tactical squad that loses their Grav-gun isn't losing a 14 point model and a 15 point gun, it's also losing the special weapon slot they paid a model tax for, and their only recourse for stronger targets. The same is true of, say, Heavy Thunder Hammers in a Deathwatch squad or, to a lesser extent, Big Shootas and Rokkits in boyz squads.

This is true, it can effectively kill a 90 point combat squad with a single shot, due to the pointlessness of the four bolter marines left over. On the other hand, that's a 90 point immobile single lascannon, and I don't think losing one is a large portion of an army's power, I think in 2000 point army that 90 points is about 2.5% of value if the army. So I think being able to disable it with a single unit is not very powerful.

It could be stronger without problem.

when you're tossing a handful of wounds onto the lynchpin character every turn.

:rolleyes:

Waaaghpower wrote:
This goes from "Kinda useless" to "Incredibly, insanely powerful". The utility of Precision Shots is not just that you can hit big, expensive characters, it's that you can snipe out heavy and special weapons that already get no Look Out, Sir! A Tactical squad that loses their Grav-gun isn't losing a 14 point model and a 15 point gun, it's also losing the special weapon slot they paid a model tax for, and their only recourse for stronger targets. The same is true of, say, Heavy Thunder Hammers in a Deathwatch squad or, to a lesser extent, Big Shootas and Rokkits in boyz squads.

After four editions of snipers getting constantly nerfed they deserve something.

I do think that if you're going to make this change snipers need to be rethought as small individual elements the way they're set up in the D-99 list or in Bolt Action rather than the 5-10-man sniper squads we get in 40k these days.