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Taking a look at 8th, one of the biggest things I've noticed is big characters with area buffs that are going to be a right pain. Now this is alright for things like the Swarm Lord (12 wounds means it is big enough to shoot at at all times) but for characters with under 10 wounds (Guilliman I'm looking at you) there's going to be a problem, especially if your opponent bubble wraps them so they can't be shot or charged.

The solution? Snipers! IIRC, GW did say there will be ways to snipe these characters and thank god because we'll need it.

Now thia is ok for some factions: Tau, Eldar, Space Marine, Imperial Guard, etc. but what about other factions: Orks, Tyranids, Daemons, etc. how will they deal with these characters?

For Daemons I can assume psychic mind bullets will be the solution.

For Orks and Nids though, could we see sniper units appear/return? Would you be happy about this? What sniper units would you lile to see to deal with hidden characters?

For nids I'd hope the lictor got a nice little ability to help out with that. I mean assassinating characters easy seems to be his thing.

Snipers don't seem to fit Orks so I doubt we'd see one for them, but maybe they'd get something similar at least.

As for csm, how would they deal with it? Mind bullets is obvious but is there anything else so far?

Maybe Lictors will have some character assassanating rule. I'm pretty sure that's their thing, ambushing right?

/ninja'd

Orks and Nids don't exactly strike me as the kind of armies that would bother with assassinating specific individuals. They are more like steamrollers that seek to crush all before them.

Nids would just want to eat said hero in order to see if there was anything useful in its DNA. Ork leaders would probably regard such an individual as worthy of a good scrap while the boys watched and cheered.

 mrhappyface wrote:
Taking a look at 8th, one of the biggest things I've noticed is big characters with area buffs that are going to be a right pain. Now this is alright for things like the Swarm Lord (12 wounds means it is big enough to shoot at at all times) but for characters with under 10 wounds (Guilliman I'm looking at you) there's going to be a problem, especially if your opponent bubble wraps them so they can't be shot or charged.

The solution? Snipers! IIRC, GW did say there will be ways to snipe these characters and thank god because we'll need it.

Now thia is ok for some factions: Tau, Eldar, Space Marine, Imperial Guard, etc. but what about other factions: Orks, Tyranids, Daemons, etc. how will they deal with these characters?

For Daemons I can assume psychic mind bullets will be the solution.

For Orks and Nids though, could we see sniper units appear/return? Would you be happy about this? What sniper units would you lile to see to deal with hidden characters?

Ork Snipa-Commandoz? I'm listening.

Nids are the easiest army to add units to. "The Hive Mind bioengineered this new creature for specific purpose X after the armies of the Milky Way started using Y tactic or Z unit a lot." I could see a dedicated hunter unit that can either Deep Strike or infiltrate near characters and mulch him in melee*, or have huge monsters like the Swarmlord or Trygon mulch sad characters. I maybe see Warriors being given sniper options maybe. But snipers don't really fit the Hive Fleet ways. If they needed a particular individual dead it has many other methods. For example, at Macragge it used the Swarmlord to counter Calgar's strategies and then defeat him in melee. A 5th Edition fluff piece in the codex about Jormungandyr (where a CHapter split between Loyalist and Chaos factions in civil war put aside their differences), it hasa brood of Ravenors tunnel into his headquarters and shred him. *Genestealers are also very assassin like, and can probably do this job well. Trygon tunnel or Infiltrate ~10" away from the target, advance D6" and then charge 2D6". Assuming that the model is 10" away (because its much easier to work with 10" than this nonsense of over 9") it only needs to roll a total of 9 on 3D6 to get engaged. And even if 2 or 3 die to Overwatch, a full brood of 18 plus Broodlord is going to be dishing out 70+ Str 4 Rending attacks, plus Broodlord maybe another 5 Str 5 or 6 attacks. Even Roboute Guilliman is going to get blendered by that. Even an Imperial Knight might be screwed in that case.

Whilst possible we may see some form of tyranid sniper, I'm not sure they need it given that they are effectively immune to battleshock.

I could see blood axes using sniper type tactics. But I'm still expecting to see some ork rule that reduces the effectiveness of battleshock (some version of the mob rule).

I think it also comes down to how powerful characters actually are. It's sounding like characters will become more of a support role, providing boosts to the troops, rather than the troops supporting the character.

Also, I think characters are going to become very vulnerable to deep striking units as players will have a lot of control over where there deepstrikers land - a unit of deepstrikers landing 9" away from a character and rapid firing is going to hurt, as the character will be taking all the fire on himself.

What about flyer assassinations? If you only target them as the nearest unit I can see flyers zipping across the board, hunting down characters.

Giantwalkingchair wrote:

Looks great

In third edition, Ork Lootaz did not have standardized weapons, rather, they could buy the weapons from any IG or Space Marine squad, including sniper rifles.

Lictors make a lot of sense for Nids, but bubble wrap will still likely keep characters pretty safe.

Again, in prior rule sets, Termagants could use spikerifles, which were a longer range weapon than basic flesh borers.

http://www.solegends.com/citcat1997uscall/c1997usb40kp0116-01.htm

It's not out of the question that we'd see tyranid "snipers."

 Polonius wrote:
In third edition, Ork Lootaz did not have standardized weapons, rather, they could buy the weapons from any IG or Space Marine squad, including sniper rifles.

Lictors make a lot of sense for Nids, but bubble wrap will still likely keep characters pretty safe.

Again, in prior rule sets, Termagants could use spikerifles, which were a longer range weapon than basic flesh borers.

http://www.solegends.com/citcat1997uscall/c1997usb40kp0116-01.htm

It's not out of the question that we'd see tyranid "snipers."

I forgot all about Lictors. I would be quite happy to see them getting character-killing rules over Snipers. Maybe they can infilitrate within 6" of the character (or 6" without LoS 9" with), Sniper on their flesh hooks and character killing rules.

Blasts are now a random number of hits. But maybe the weapons that had the barrage rule will get some targeting bonus: they could be able to fire at characters or units out of LoS, but with a -1 to hit. Not all barrage weapons should get something like that, but it could help things like biovores.

Also, characters that are also snipers are going to be a thing (vindicare assassin, death jester, Illic Nightspear etc.), they might be pretty good since the opponent might be unable to take them down quickly (I assume armies that rely on character buffs will try to blasts snipers quickly).

Crazy Jay wrote:
Maybe Lictors will have some character assassanating rule. I'm pretty sure that's their thing, ambushing right?

/ninja'd

Remember that, from what we've seen so far, characters only have a kind of protection against shooting.

Grot snipaz please!

However, i'm skeptical about it. Seems that the closest we get to sniping is throwing power klaws.

 Karhedron wrote:
Orks and Nids don't exactly strike me as the kind of armies that would bother with assassinating specific individuals. They are more like steamrollers that seek to crush all before them.

Nids would just want to eat said hero in order to see if there was anything useful in its DNA. Ork leaders would probably regard such an individual as worthy of a good scrap while the boys watched and cheered.

Take a look at the story behind the Deathleaper and see just how badly you're underestimating Nid assassinations. That being said, they're not snipers. The closest sniper rifle we have currently in terms of long range fire is the Venom Cannon, which fires shards of something coated in venom or something of that sort. Rules-wise, even that is a Blast weapon. The downside of every gun being an organism that usually shoots other organisms is that you may as well send a big organism to get the job done for sure. On the table, I usually used Mawlocs for that task which is a little larger than a sniper's bullet.

Seems to me that most factions that lack snipers have tricky assault units and vice versa. Plus a few (Space Marines, Blood Angels, Space Wolves) that have both.

I could be wrong, but I think there will be two useful ways to assassinate characters, and those look like the ways - snipers and, well, assassins of various types.

A Lictor's flesh hooks might play a similar role if they can be used to pull characters out of position.

I'm actually quite curious what they're going to do with IG sniper rifles, considering what we saw in the Tau preview: the sniper drone didn't have Strength X, it had S5 AP0, a pulse rifle profile.

Of course, IIRC Tau have been an exception to "snipers are SX" in the past, so it might not mean anything. Still, if they gave IG snipers a lasgun profile that would be a little bit silly for sniper SWTs. "Oh no, Reboot Girlyman is being targeted by three lasguns! Oh wait..."

They'll probably do something or other to help IG snipers do their job though. Like I said earlier, maybe SX is still a thing and Tau are just the exception.

I'm really hoping to see my Transuranic Arquebus come to some sort of use. I made three of them for one unit of Rangers, but at the premium price they're fetching, I have yet to see them do a single thing ever that is in any way superior to the basic ranger rifle.

But how can anyone resist these things. They look schwifty as all hell.

 koooaei wrote:
Grot snipaz please!

However, i'm skeptical about it. Seems that the closest we get to sniping is throwing power klaws.

*straps pair of wings onto a Grot and loads him onto a catapult with the words 'aim fer der leaderz'

or alternatively aim a shock attack gun over the battlefield and send said (now) winged grot through.

Giantwalkingchair wrote:

I want to put that on the ceiling over my office chair...

Ork snipers? Ummm... I don't see it.
My strategy would be to use weirdboys and artillery
And finally bury big characters with bodies.

I could see either gretching snipers similar to ratlings or a mek big gunz that acts as a sniper with d6 shots

Or just krump em from behind with Kommando's and bombers. Who cares if there hidden if you start blasting things with BOMBS!

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Or just krump em from behind

... Krump.... 'em?

 n0t_u wrote:
Snipers don't seem to fit Orks

The Celestial Lions would like to have a word with you...

I honestly don't see how the current rules for IC's are as bad as how things currently are. In 7th everyone could hide IC's in squads, meaning you couldn't even target the IC until you destroyed the squad first. What is the functional difference between then and now?

If anything IC's are more vulnerable now then before due to buffs no longer working while the unit is inside a vehicle.

I can see Deathmarks being even more useful and actually fulfilling their fluff role. I'm excited.

*drop 9 inches away, within rapid fire range*

"Hello there."

Haven't you heard about Ork Snipers? You should ask the Celestial Lions about them...

 BlaxicanX wrote:
I honestly don't see how the current rules for IC's are as bad as how things currently are. In 7th everyone could hide IC's in squads, meaning you couldn't even target the IC until you destroyed the squad first. What is the functional difference between then and now?

If anything IC's are more vulnerable now then before due to buffs no longer working while the unit is inside a vehicle.

Weeeeeeeeell.... not being used to having big baddies since I was a GK (and then everything is a big baddie) I noobishly put my Cawl in a unit of Skitarii Vanguard. They lost a few guys, rolled poorly on the morale check, ran off and took Cawl with them. ICs aren't just 100% immune to stuff just because they're in a unit. If you piss in your own face like I did, it can make them die long before they're supposed to.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
I honestly don't see how the current rules for IC's are as bad as how things currently are. In 7th everyone could hide IC's in squads, meaning you couldn't even target the IC until you destroyed the squad first. What is the functional difference between then and now?

If anything IC's are more vulnerable now then before due to buffs no longer working while the unit is inside a vehicle.

Three things have changed for me now:
1. Characters are far beefier now.
2. Characters have an area effect rather than just any one unit.
3. You could bubble wrap a character so that it can't be shot OR charged due to it being a different unit that is being charged and a multi charge can't be made.

It will make things like Guilliman very difficult to deal with. That isn't necessarily a bad thing as long as we have something to counter.