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So few things will set a person back like 20 snipers shooting them in the face.

The issue is not that they can shoot characters. Its that they do mortal wounds whether or not you save.

Scouts are what 18pts (camo cause why not) and you can neuter a lot of things just by firing snipers.

Yes you need 6s. But with enough of them its largely irrelevant.

So my only idea of a slight fix is if you save the wound then no mortal wound. Would make cover and armor useful. Killing 2 guys with one shot is movie special effects not war.

I have seen scouts take out tanks (rowboat helped on the re rolls )

Thoughts

I'd love to see you play a game against Thousand Sons or another psyker heavy army if you're this scared of the mortal wounds from snipers.

As a CSM player, we don't have such toys. So tell me, do the sniper rifles require natural 6s? Or just 6+?

We have some ways to Prescience the crap out of those rolls now.

 Arkaine wrote:
As a CSM player, we don't have such toys. So tell me, do the sniper rifles require natural 6s? Or just 6+?

We have some ways to Prescience the crap out of those rolls now.

6+ to wound. The mortal wound represents headshots. To be honest snipers fielded en masse are not all that effective. They soften characters, not kill them outright.

6+

Smite has a range and has to be closest. And can be denied

Also yes smite has a warpcharge of way too low for what it does.

But having them kill said thing that can smite with you having no ability to stop it even if you make your saves is different.

THE_GODLYNESS wrote:
But having them kill said thing that can smite with you having no ability to stop it even if you make your saves is different.

I think the comment was made because the "thing that can smite" is basically their entire army. Brimstones are OP.

Don't forget that not all snipers get the mortal wound tricks (Tau Sniper Drones, for example). Mortal wounds is the only thing that makes snipers worthwhile.

I'm not saying take away mortal wounds.

I am saying if you fail the save you take an additional mortal wound.

Rolling 4 6s when shooting an ork Mek will make them stare at you blankly as their off disappears. Or blasting a weird boy.

THE_GODLYNESS wrote:
So few things will set a person back like 20 snipers shooting them in the face.

The issue is not that they can shoot characters. Its that they do mortal wounds whether or not you save.

Scouts are what 18pts (camo cause why not) and you can neuter a lot of things just by firing snipers.

Yes you need 6s. But with enough of them its largely irrelevant.

So my only idea of a slight fix is if you save the wound then no mortal wound. Would make cover and armor useful. Killing 2 guys with one shot is movie special effects not war.

I have seen scouts take out tanks (rowboat helped on the re rolls )

Thoughts

So... yeah. Your 20 snipers at 18 points a piece are 360 points generating... about 2.2 mortal wounds in a round of shooting.

Don't care.

At some point someone can do at post titled 'Snipers... maybe vaguely worth taking'

SW snipers are BS+3.

 Niiai wrote:
SW snipers are BS+3.

All scouts are BS +3 now.

Really any sniper worth taking is going to be +3 or better.

Also snipers are not even remotely op. Annoying yes, but they're absolutely essential to guarantee there's at least some way to scare enemy characters. It completely changes how I play my army for example if I see them.

I agree most armies should have something roughly equivalent to them, but snipers are in no way broken on a fundamental level. If a guy has enough to one shot a character he'll be hurting against other targets.

 Niiai wrote:
SW snipers are BS+3.

Yes? So 20 hitting on 3+ yields 13.2 hits, 1 of 6 of those pops a mortal wound: 2.2

Eldar Rangers get a little more interesting if a Farseer can Doom a target so the snipers re-roll to wound, possibly getting more sixes. You'd certainly get some characters keeping their heads down.

I'm mostly with Voss. Although I will point out he is beating the 2.2 mortal wounds thing...but the other 11 or so wounds need to be saved, so that's another 1-2 wounds on most characters. So, 360 points did blast my cannoness to little bits...if your 4 wound character cost that much, in my opinion, you deserved it for putting too many eggs in one basket. Rarely do snipers get more than 1 round of shooting on our tables, there is just too much movement, too many deep striker equivalents, etc. Yes, they can be a thing you react to, but rarely are they anywhere near my most effective unit (and I play IG so can pay 7 points for ratlings). Terrain, unit placement, too many targets, all these things matter. I have found the armies that worry the most about snipers are the ones with half their points in characters, and a generally low model count (orcs might be the exception, but again, snipers should rarely get more than one round at your characters). I actually find them about where they should be (ignoring the idea that in the future snipers are actually horrible shots...no one gets through any sniper school hitting head shots 2/3x1/6 of the time...)

I think it's important to note that a lot of characters are only 4-5 wounds anyway.

If you're shooting at Guilliman or Magnus or Abbadon with snipers... well, I hope you saved some CP for rerolls.

 Arkaine wrote:
I think it's important to note that a lot of characters are only 4-5 wounds anyway.

If you're shooting at Guilliman or Magnus or Abbadon with snipers... well, I hope you saved some CP for rerolls.

You don't have to shoot snipers at Magnus, he's 16 wounds and can be targeted normally.

Arachnofiend wrote:

 Arkaine wrote:
I think it's important to note that a lot of characters are only 4-5 wounds anyway.

If you're shooting at Guilliman or Magnus or Abbadon with snipers... well, I hope you saved some CP for rerolls.

You don't have to shoot snipers at Magnus, he's 16 wounds and can be targeted normally.

Right, so the only viable targets are 9 and less anyway. Ones like Guilliman and Daemon Princes probably aren't worth shooting at. Those 4 wound Sorcerers spamming Smite and buffs might be.

Some Snipers don't even function as Snipers. Deathmarks are the greatest example of this.

You can't take 20man sniper scouts squads, 10man is the max squad size, and wow are they so not op.

You can take 9 intercessors for the same cost, that will be much more useful overall.

I've played a lot with the snipers so far, and I love the psychological effect they have when you do put a mortal wound on a character but they have yet to kill their points worth.

 Gunzhard wrote:
I've played a lot with the snipers so far, and I love the psychological effect they have when you do put a mortal wound on a character but they have yet to kill their points worth.

They probably aren't meant to. Killing a character with a multiplier effect can be worth more than the points of the character.

Putting wounds on a character isn't necessarily the same as killing it.

I agree that if they were taking out aura characters throughout the game they'd be all stars, but the reality is far from that, you get a few lucky mortal wounds, then you get assaulted or dealt with psychically, or even just get shot up.

They're still scouts, and pretty expensive at that.

They should be able to kill at least one medium level character for their cost...

 Gunzhard wrote:
Putting wounds on a character isn't necessarily the same as killing it.

I agree that if they were taking out aura characters throughout the game they'd be all stars, but the reality is far from that, you get a few lucky mortal wounds, then you get assaulted or dealt with psychically, or even just get shot up.

They're still scouts, and pretty expensive at that.

They should be able to kill at least one medium level character for their cost...

Main utility would realistically be killing a low level character, like a guard officer, or softening up a bigger one so he'll go down easier in combat, like a space marine captain or even guileman. You're realistically not killing them but you can soften them up so they think twice about charging in to combat

Voss wrote:

THE_GODLYNESS wrote:
So few things will set a person back like 20 snipers shooting them in the face.

The issue is not that they can shoot characters. Its that they do mortal wounds whether or not you save.

Scouts are what 18pts (camo cause why not) and you can neuter a lot of things just by firing snipers.

Yes you need 6s. But with enough of them its largely irrelevant.

So my only idea of a slight fix is if you save the wound then no mortal wound. Would make cover and armor useful. Killing 2 guys with one shot is movie special effects not war.

I have seen scouts take out tanks (rowboat helped on the re rolls )

Thoughts

So... yeah. Your 20 snipers at 18 points a piece are 360 points generating... about 2.2 mortal wounds in a round of shooting.

Don't care.

At some point someone can do at post titled 'Snipers... maybe vaguely worth taking'

Or I can pay 140 for 20 ratlings. And tbh i don't mind shooting at bs4+ (i hide them move out shoot. Scarper so no retaliation)
Unless they can't threaten the rats. And you can math hammer the gak out of it. But when you roll dice tells a different story.

Have 20 scouts shoot at a lets say a rhino. Now have rowboat in the vicinity. Re rolling all those failed wounds. And they they still get to fail saves. I have seen the rhino die from the unsaved and the mortal. Same with killa kans etc.

Some games dice are hot and doing a free wound and saveable one can get obnoxious quick.

Outch what happened to the X education system? There is people actively denying the average probability of a dice roll.

In the end, for each games/phases/... where you had better than average roll you will also achieve a bunch of less than average roll. Which bring us back to the average and why "math hammering" or probability is the only way to look at the game from a game designer perspective and/or any player that want to know if X can deal with Y reliably for it's cost.

Yeah fire emblem boards have a saying "PEMN - personal experience means nothing" when discussing some of the characters, because their level stat gains are actually randomized to an extent, so you can end up with two different players using the same character at the same level where one has like...10 more stat points than the other, which is a big difference in FE.

Similar here: you can't feasibly discuss units outside a game without using probability. I've watched a tournament game where Draigo in an invisible centurion star, at full health, was shot by 4 bolters at long-range, hit by all 4, wounded by all 4, and failed all 4 saves. Absolutely uncanny luck that is probably not due to happen again in our lifetime. (In fact if I'm mathing correctly, that was something like a 1/136 million chance.) But more commonly we've all seen that one terminator drop to a lasgun. If you start counting on things like gretchin wounding knights and gaunts passing armor saves, there's not a lot of meaningful discussion to be had.

THE_GODLYNESS wrote:


Have 20 scouts shoot at a lets say a rhino. Now have rowboat in the vicinity. Re rolling all those failed wounds. And they they still get to fail saves. I have seen the rhino die from the unsaved and the mortal. Same with killa kans etc

Oh no!

360 points of scouts backed by the buffs from a 360 point low kill a 70 point tank in one turn!

Shocking!

Clearly snipers are op.

Brb, gonna go burn all my models and put it on youtube.

No, snipers aren't even close to being op. The Vindicare is incredibly annoying, but only because he is a character, making him reliably immune to getting fired at most of the time. The others can be good against single sorcerers... that's about it. So we have a weapon that can counter another one. That's fine.

If you are really worried that a ridiculously massive sniper unit backed by one of the most expensive buff-auras in the game will take out your rhinos... then I think we can safely ignore your opinion of what's op.

Aren't Ratlings like 1/3 of the cost of Scouts?

360 points of Ratlings = 51 Ratlings

51 * 2/3 * 1/6 = ~6 Mortal Wounds

 Talamare wrote:
Aren't Ratlings like 1/3 of the cost of Scouts?

360 points of Ratlings = 51 Ratlings

51 * 2/3 * 1/6 = ~6 Mortal Wounds

They're also BS 4+.

51 * 1/2 * 1/6 = 4.25.

And honestly, if 51 ratlings can all see your character, you're either playing on a silly open board, or you are strutting him around in a way where he should die. And if you didn't get first turn, those ratlings are down to 20~ left from just a little bit of small arms fire.

 Purifier wrote:

 Talamare wrote:
Aren't Ratlings like 1/3 of the cost of Scouts?

360 points of Ratlings = 51 Ratlings

51 * 2/3 * 1/6 = ~6 Mortal Wounds

They're also BS 4+.

51 * 1/2 * 1/6 = 4.25.

And honestly, if 51 ratlings can all see your character, you're either playing on a silly open board, or you are strutting him around in a way where he should die. And if you didn't get first turn, those ratlings are down to 20~ left from just a little bit of small arms fire.

Check again and be shocked and amazed

They also have an effective 4+ armor save
Plenty survivable for only 7pts each, I would love if someone with a Conscript Spam list would be willing to try proxying those conscripts as Ratlings