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Anyone using sniper drone teams with success.  If so how and what tactics are working best.  I am trying to decide if I want to use them or not.  They seem pricey but with thier stealth field they could possibly kill enough models to earn thier points back?  I was also thinking you might need at least two teams to focus fire power.

I have (though only for local gaming and using proxied-up models). I've found if you're going to take Sniper Drones, go for broke. It's a heavy slot you're loosing, and that's one less Hammerhead, so may as well take all three and be done with it. They're pants against pods. You can't use Spookys tactic of dispersal (6" move, anyone?) so it's not possible to set up crossing fields of fire. If you're using Sniper Drones vs. pods then use them because you want a BS4 marketlight OR because you want to try and use an 80pt unit as bait for a counter-deepstrike gambit. If you're expecting to get an efficent kill/return on points, look elsewhere. With three teams, non-Markerlit railrifles usually score me about 5 kills a turn, total. I usually get a failed pinning test every 2 turns (but that's probably my dice rolling) and locking a functional marine unit is almost as good as killing it. The stealthed BS4 markerlight is, in my opinion, more valuable than the railrifles. Odd to say, but Sniper Teams can't usually be zapped by counter-fire so they can be lighting up targets right from the get-go, which is potent psychological weapon. Sniper Team make great bait units. It's hard to ignore a Sniper Team - when that $%$"££"£! BS5 Hammerhead just put a big smoking hole in your pred .

-During setup I have found them to be useful as a truly anoying pushback unit...set them up right along your frontline in cover.  The opfor must stay atleast 18" away and, as you can deploy them first (HS TOS), you can deny your opponent a large portion of the map in long-side deployments...assuming the opfor starts on their own side (infil, DP, etc.)

-More often than not my opponents will forget one of the following: SDT are not scoring, SDT are not super units, SDT have stealth feilds, SDT MLs are BS4 and are of great use if they go unhandled (they don't seem to remember MLs are Tau rocket launchers).  If the opfor is an assulting army deploy the SDTs in the mid-rear areas of your DZ and let them walk into the feild of fire...you might lose a turn of shooting in the start, but if they last two turns longer...

-I may have a biased opinion because of both the armies I face and the fact that SDTs always do something amazing once or twice in my games.  In times of pressure my opponent has ducked left to avoid afew hits from a SDT only to forget the railhead 47" away that has a line on that possition through eight units and around a forest by two millimeters.

-To sum the rant up: I have had great luck with two SDTs...They do lack the firepower of the Ionhead you could have purchased, but they are a far more suttle force...they buy their points back in untis they inconvenience until you get around to focusing fire on that unit.

hope that was helpful...Good gaming to you

Basically it depends on who you are fighting, they are awesome against necrons or shooty non-pod marines but anything assaulty just eats them up before they can make their points back, at the end of the day I would rather throw in another 130pt IonHead or 180pt Railhead

As for stealth Markerlights, what is kind of fun is 4x Stealth Suits + 6x Marker Drones & 2x Gun Drones (both gun drones attached to 1 stealth) these are 3 ablative wounds.

They get to infiltrate and very importantly are scoring units until 7x models go down, since marker drones are unit type: as user, they get jet packs, so although you have a 320pt squad, you just run away after 5 or 6 wounds and go for the objective b/c you have 12" movement per turn and you have a 320pt unit that sits in the corner/end (hopefully not center)

Again, 320pts is a HUGE sink but markerlights that can't be targetted are really sweet, the only problem you run in to is IG forces where everything is indirect and they still have a 1/3 chance of landing right on top of you.

IMO, I wouldn't run this in a tourney, but against friends it is really fun having the person across from you swearing at you and your invisible marker drones for an hour.

I am at work right now so I can't check but I thought only shield drones copied stats of units they are assigned to.

I beleive you are thinking about the save that they keep the same as their owner, Sheild/Marker & Gun drones are unit type: as owner (except gun drones on their own which are jump infantry)

They've worked ok for me. I find it nice when they pin a chaos squad, chaos don't get to reroll pinning tests so this is good. They're a bit meh overall.