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... feel pretty pointless most of the time. You get a tiny chance to pick which model to wound against, which then usually resists the attack, because most of the time you're relying on a second roll of a 6 to get past the armour of anything worth picking off.

So, I had an idea to not only make PS feel more useful, but to better represent hyper-accuracy.A choice.

When you score a Precision Shot, you can either select which model to wound against as normal, or declare that the shot Ignores Cover. If you use Ignore Cover, it's allocated using the standard rules, naturally.

I think the problem is that Look Out Sir! is such a crazy impenetrable forcefield that it renders PS useless against most things you'd want to target. Even a lowly Sgt has a 50% chance of ignoring the PS that already took you rolling 6's to earn, and ICs laugh at your PS with their 2+ LOS save.

Honestly, I'd rather just get rid of LOS altogether so that specialist sniper units can actually do what they're supposed to do. Most ICs already have ridiculous survivability, and you can surround them with meat-shields, but they shouldn't be able to dodge sniper fire.

Honestly, I think that the way to fix Precision Shots is to make a distinction between Sniper weapons and weapons that are just especially accurate/precise (ex: the difference between the Transuranic Arquebus and the Galvanic Rifle).

As a general rule, I like the OP's proposal, but I'd amend it in that Precision Shots should work on 5+ instead of a 6, if you do not choose the Ignore Cover option.

For weapons with the Sniper trait, though, they should be treated instead as always being Precision Shots. This then makes weapons like the Transuranic Arquebus, Hexrifle, and sniper weapons in general, much more useful/desirable, because you can then stack wounds by the bucketful on MCs/high-T targets to whittle the squad down, or you can punch a buttload of holes into a squad leader/special weapon carrier/expensive beatstick character.

Funnily enough, I think this would end up buffing non-Eldar forces more than anything else (Tau Sniper Drones, SM Scouts, IG-anything-with-a-sniper-rifle, sniper Kroot, that sort of thing).

What if LoS were 3+/5+ instead of 2+/4+?

Bharring wrote:
What if LoS were 3+/5+ instead of 2+/4+?

I'd rather just drop it altogether and give warlords and their units Look Out Argh! It makes sense that a warrior would give their life to save the General, Chapter Master, Farseer, or Ethereal, but it's just clunky when every Sargent rolls a hundred LOS saves every round. Players should be rewarded for playing smart and trying to take out enemy characters, it shouldn't be a struggle for a sniper to take out a squad leader, but it should be reasonably hard to kill their warlord.

The problem with making snipers always be precision shot is that it makes every squad vulnerable to them. I usually field 3 units of boyz that are foot slogging. If you have 1 unit of snipers (say 10 snipers) and lets say you hit and wound with 1/2 of them that means that my Ork Nob needs to make 5 look out sirs and realistically with a 4+ thats not gonna happen. So that cheap unit of snipers just removed the biggest threat from a 215pt Squad, reduced the leadership dramatically (mob rule sucks) and they can do that every single turn. It would basically ruin what semblance of balance their is in the game. Furthermore, no horde army (except maybe IG) have snipers so it would be just another buff for Eldar/SM style armies.

It's not really a buff to "Eldar/SM" armies as it is a buff to units armed entirely with Sniper weapons, as well as specialty sniper weapons that are deployed as a special weapon choice.

Off the top of my head, the former includes (but is likely not limited to):
-SM Sniper Scouts
-IG Ratlings
-Tau Sniper Drones
-Kroot Carnivores with pulse rounds/sniper rounds (forgot what the specific upgrade is called)
-Eldar Rangers/Pathfinders
-Necron Deathmarks

And in the case of the latter (Sniper weapons as a special/heavy choice), that includes but is not limited to:
-DE Wracks, when armed with a Hexrifle
-Almost all IG infantry
-Skitarii Transuranic Arquebus on Vanguard/Ranger squads

Oh, and one-man sniper units, like:
-Vindicare Assassins
-That Eldar dork
-Any Eldar character with the Ulda-no-whatty sniper rifle.

Honestly, the main issue I see with Sniper weapons is that they don't function as they would from a logical standpoint. They can't inhibit enemy movement (for whatever reason...*), they can't reliably pick out enemy models, and they struggle to overcome all but the flimsiest of infantry armor.

I dunno, maybe Sniper and Precision Shot need to just be rebuilt from the ground up.

*For certain, 5th&6th had Pinning Sniper weapons. I think that 4th did as well, but I wouldn't know for sure.

"In the line of fire"

Treat Look out sir as double kill shots! The sniper intended to kill 2 birds with 1 stone! If the enemy vlcan make a look out sir then he must do so and the sgt is still hit!

Whiskey, Eldar/SM style armies, that would include Tau :-P they are a pretty good cross between the two.

But anyway my point was that it would adversely effect Horde armies the most, since usually theirs only 1-2 useful characters inside a giant horde of rampaging CC models. Picking them out pretty much nerfs the unit.

I agree snipers do need some new rules though. At this point when I play against sniper units I don't even bother taking them out because ....well they don't do much.

I think if they amended it so that precision shots/strikes gave a baseline negative modifier to LoS! rolls similar to the No Escape! rule that Assassins have might make them more palatable to consider as a viable rule. So maybe a -2 modifier? It at least downgrades it so that the plucky sergeant only avoids it on a lucky roll of six whereas independent characters only get a 50% chance, much better than the almost guaranteed 2+.

 Grimskul wrote:
I think if they amended it so that precision shots/strikes gave a baseline negative modifier to LoS! rolls similar to the No Escape! rule that Assassins have might make them more palatable to consider as a viable rule. So maybe a -2 modifier? It at least downgrades it so that the plucky sergeant only avoids it on a lucky roll of six whereas independent characters only get a 50% chance, much better than the almost guaranteed 2+.

That's a good fix. You get normal LOS against regular directional shooting, No Escape! against precisions shots. My concern is that again you have players rolling tons of dice trying to get that 6 LOS just to save a squad leader.

An additional fix for LOS, you only roll once per turn per character model and the result applies to all shots fired that turn.

Whiskey144 wrote:

Honestly, the main issue I see with Sniper weapons is that they don't function as they would from a logical standpoint. They can't inhibit enemy movement (for whatever reason...*), they can't reliably pick out enemy models, and they struggle to overcome all but the flimsiest of infantry armor.

That could be an interesting buff for sniper rifles, just give them the pinning special rule. Still doesn't make them particularly powerful, but it'd be a nice buff.

 Cothonian wrote:

Whiskey144 wrote:

Honestly, the main issue I see with Sniper weapons is that they don't function as they would from a logical standpoint. They can't inhibit enemy movement (for whatever reason...*), they can't reliably pick out enemy models, and they struggle to overcome all but the flimsiest of infantry armor.

That could be an interesting buff for sniper rifles, just give them the pinning special rule. Still doesn't make them particularly powerful, but it'd be a nice buff.

They used to have it, never understood why they took it away in conjunction with real rending.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 TheSilo wrote:

 Grimskul wrote:
I think if they amended it so that precision shots/strikes gave a baseline negative modifier to LoS! rolls similar to the No Escape! rule that Assassins have might make them more palatable to consider as a viable rule. So maybe a -2 modifier? It at least downgrades it so that the plucky sergeant only avoids it on a lucky roll of six whereas independent characters only get a 50% chance, much better than the almost guaranteed 2+.

That's a good fix. You get normal LOS against regular directional shooting, No Escape! against precisions shots. My concern is that again you have players rolling tons of dice trying to get that 6 LOS just to save a squad leader.

An additional fix for LOS, you only roll once per turn per character model and the result applies to all shots fired that turn.

I like your fix regarding one dice roll. It never made sense to either how you could dog pile all your nearby comrades/minions to cover all the bullet shots flying at you with buckets of dice.

I'd probably say that Look out sir! should be a roll of a 5+ for characters and can only be done once per phase, or maybe even once per phase and per unit firing the Precision shots, and buff it to a 4+ or maybe 3+ on Warlords and Independent Characters.

Also bring Pinning back for any weapon with the Sniper rule, seeing as that's practically what Snipers are used for.