Snipers vs weapons teams

[Mike]

I haven’t played in awhile and was wondering if snipers were still OP in reference to weapons teams? In real life loaders and ammo bearers will bring the weapons back up, to the point, at least when I was active, if the team running the machine gun went down, my squad leader would send one of us over to get it up again. Its a machine gun, everyone knows how to use it. Mortar teams, everyone on the team went to mortar school and knows how to use it, I can understand a nearby squad not having a clue. No I am not recommending nearby infantry squads take the weapons over, that would be too complicated.

In current BA, will a sniper still take out the team if the “operator”(there really isn’t one) gets picked out or has common sense entered the game and allowed a team member(from the same team) to take over operation?

[Nat]

RAW – nope sniper still kills off a 3 man team with one shot..

GAP / common house rule – weapon teams (so not ones in a squad) are immune to exceptional damage

[Mike]

How sad that it has to be home ruled. I wonder the mindset of Warlord when they made a dedicated operator for auto-take snipers to kill.

[Triggertime]

This is why I stopped taking MMG teams. Every single game my opponent would simply place his sniper based on how my team was deployed and get his easy VP, plus knocking out one of my dice. Every. Single. Game.

[Master Chief]

There was a discussion over at the local gaming group here about how OP snipers are. I felt snipers should not ignore cover bonus because a target in a building is definitely tougher to hit compared to one in the open. Especially after a member of the unit has been hit or killed by a sniper, the rest will keep their heads down and not stand in front of any window or door.

I suspect this is why in the FAQ they subsequently amended the rules to allow Down and Small team bonuses to apply.

Perhaps sniper rules should ignore cover bonus only for its first shot at a target unit. After that cover bonus should apply as everyone will keep their heads down.

[Nat]

Master Chief.. wheres that? I’ve been looking through the latest FAQ and cant find anything saying snipers are affected by Down & Small team

[Master Chief]

Sorry my mistake, it was for HE fire against buildings.

[Darin]

We had similar feelings about snipers. We house ruled them that if they wound they do exceptional damage on a 4+, and they cannot kill heavy weapon teams. But hits from them do cause 2 pins on the target.

[Greg S]

In my experience snipers miss more than they hit and frequently fail to wound. I pretty much always bring one, just for that occasional spot-on shot.

[kevin stronach]

I’ve found similar to Greg S with my snipers; they seem overpowered when they hit & kill, but I get as many games with them killing no one.

Though that MMG wipe every game, Triggertime, also happens to me 😉

Don’t meet too many MMG teams these days. Maybe it’s them needs changing, not snipers? Especially given the cheap costs of Jeep w/ MMG units etc

[Lee Brennan]

I would like to see it changed to a forced morale test instead of the insta-wipe. 🙂

[akaean]

Snipers are possibly the most overrated unit in all of Bolt Action. They are really scary, and can do great things with a bit of luck, but overall they just aren’t worth the points against the units you’d want them to be great against.

Keep in mind that at the end of the day its a single shot, that still has to roll to hit and wound. 2/3 to hit, and then 1/2 v regs and 1/3 v vets. This translates to a 33% kill rate vs regular and a 22% kill rate vs vet.

This is pretty unreliable overall, so they make up for that with their auto precision being able to eliminate teams. Snipers are effective against Officers, Machine Gun teams, Mortars and other Snipers. Against everything else they are exceptionally lackluster.

Machine Gun teams in generally are in a bad place rules wise, since Warlord decided they should cost the same amount as 5 infantry. Except 5 infantry can move and shoot at the same time. Mortars and Snipers tend to trade pretty evenly as they are natural counters to each other, except Mortars can leverage a spotter to deploy out of sight of sniper teams. Its also not usually too hard to hide your LT from a sniper. Sniper v Sniper is always fun and exciting… seeing who can hit that 22% first!

Recently I’ve started dropping my Sniper from lists, and I’ve been better off because of it. In practice, the Sniper is only really good against targets that are bad or duel evenly against the Sniper. Sniper doesn’t help vs Howitzers. Sniper doesn’t help vs Veteran Infantry squads advancing onto an objective. Sniper doesn’t help against transports with deadly contents. Sniper certainly doesn’t help vs tanks or armored cars. Sniper doesn’t help against the things that win games.

The problem with the sniper is it creates feels bad moments when he gets a lucky shot and aces one or two units in a game. But you have to put it into perspective. The odds of a Sniper acing your MMG team aren’t actually that much better than a Mortar Team acing them with a lucky 6 (or 5)- except the Mortar team can actually threaten other things too. Snipers *feel* overpowered, but they are not.

[Greg S]

While snipers can be a treat to weapons teams, mortars are generally a threat to snipers. But I have seen games where each spends a large part of the game blasting away at the other with little effect 🙂

[Author]

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