Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Has anyone else seen the giant flaw in the game system yet? Independent characters can no longer hide inside meat shield units and give area buffs which is cool, to keep them alive the game says that you cant directly target an Independent character....Except for snipers which can.....Now this was always kind of a thing don't get be wrong but now that those ICs are so valuable its my guess that I will be facing off against a lot of SM scouts with sniper rifles, Eldar Rangers with Sniper Rifles, and basically any army that can field them in numbers. Why? Take a 100pt unit and it kills my 100pt IC that is holding my army together....game over basically.

Well that kinda fits the role of a sniper unit; to take out a key enemy target rather than wholesale slaughter.

I say that the snipers might be balanced out by the fact that once they do take out the character, they're effectively useless afterwards, and it might work into the more tactical aspect of the game where they create an area of denial, which can limit your character's movements (and thus buff bubble) until they are taken care of.

Transuranic Arquebus is 25p a pop, and say we put 2 in a unit of 5 Rangers, that's 100p. As cheap as you can make it.

no movement since they're heavy but 60" range. S7, AP -2, D3 wounds.

They should hit one bullet per turn (slightly more, statistically) If they wound on 3+ that would give us something like a 70% chance that one shot will go through, but these wounds can then be svaed at -2, which will for a lot of targets give them a 5+. That brings it down to around a 50% chance that one shot goes through. That shot does statistically 2 wounds with a 16.6% chance that it will do an additional mortal wound.

So the 100p will do around 1.2 wounds per round. All of course dependant on what character they're shooting at.

So no, the snipers aren't going to just clean out your 9 wound characters. Or at least it's as likely that they do that as that they do literally not a single wound in the entire battle.

And what happens when you take 4 of those instead of 2? Suddenly you are killing an HQ every turn.

SemperMortis wrote:
And what happens when you take 4 of those instead of 2? Suddenly you are killing an HQ every turn.

No you don't. That's 2.4 wounds with a 30%ish chance to get one more wound. And you can also double the amount of HQ then.

SemperMortis wrote:
And what happens when you take 4 of those instead of 2? Suddenly you are killing an HQ every turn.

No, you're doing 2.4 wounds per the math presented above.

Or you mean 4 squads, which would be 400 points, and I'd expect a character to be dead (except probably not).

Ratlings only cost 7 points a model and can be taken in squads of 10, so they might be potentially threatening to characters with less than 5 wounds.

Some factions have better snipers than others, and some factions have to worry about snipers more than others. Space Marines seem to generally be in the "don't worry" category.

Then on the other end there's the Imperial Guard, with their T3 characters prancing around with 3 wounds.... good thing the Ratlings are on their side.

Not to mention many HQs will be tougher. Some will have 4+ invulnerable saves/+2 armor (both of which net you a 4+ save vs this weapon). Many HQ have units which can take bullets for them, either due to a rule or as part of the same squad.And, this is quite possibly the best sniper unit in the game currently.

So a dedicated sniper force can probably take down an apothecary in 2 or 3 turns, maybe 1 or 2 if they went all out and their troop section is basically just snipers. They might even be able to take down your warlord in 3-4. But they have to pay a ton of points to do it.

This is basically just "lasguns can kill tanks, tanks are worthless!" 2.0. Snipers aren't that deadly, you have to take them in bulk to do anything but whittle down characters.

 ross-128 wrote:
Ratlings only cost 7 points a model and can be taken in squads of 10, so they might be potentially threatening to characters with less than 5 wounds.

Some factions have better snipers than others, and some factions have to worry about snipers more than others. Space Marines seem to generally be in the "don't worry" category.

Then on the other end there's the Imperial Guard, with their T3 characters prancing around with 3 wounds.... good thing the Ratlings are on their side.

They also have about a million characters.

10 ratlings deal around 2.2 damage a turn to an apothecary. Against a company commander, they are 4 wounds a turn (which is death). So ratlings can kill something a little under half their cost in a single turn.

I didn't realize Ratlings were so cheap, those are great. The shorter range and higher fragility do mean it's rather hard to hit the character who si presumably behind his army without being exposed to return fire though (and they will die to return fire, even in cover they are toughness 2 and a 4+)

SilverAlien wrote:
10 ratlings deal around 2.2 damage a turn to an apothecary. Against a company commander, they are 4 wounds a turn (which is death). So ratlings can kill something a little under half their cost in a single turn.

I didn't realize Ratlings were so cheap, those are great. The shorter range and higher fragility do mean it's rather hard to hit the character who si presumably behind his army without being exposed to return fire though (and they will die to return fire, even in cover they are toughness 2 and a 4+)

Ratlings also get infiltrate, +1 cover and get a free move after shooting. Toughness 2 though, so not perfect.

It all makes them a really cool niche choice. They are an expendable unit you can pop in to try and delete a character. The fact that they might be useful again after god knows how many years of being a laughing stock is a very attractive thought.