Taking a look at poison, snipers, and gargantuan MCs.

[Fueldrop]

Poison and Sniper weapons have a reduced effect against GMCs, only wounding on 6's against them.

I feel this is a horrible mistake.

GMCs are very tough. Many of them are flat out immune to the small arms fire that makes up the bulk of most armies. Even light tank killers such as autocannons struggle to meaningfully wound a wraith knight, and there could be 5 of those wandering around the field in a 1850 point game.

Even those wounds that do get through its armour run into a 5+ feel no pain, a constant for all GMCs. Given cover shenanigans, a GMC can easily have a 4+ cover 5+ feel no pain, on top of 7+ toughness and 5+ wounds.

Most armies are going to have a LOT of trouble killing that, even discounting tricks like making them invisible or giving them shrouded via psyker. Not everyone can spam ranged Strength D or undermounted Grav weapons.

This is why sniper and poison weapons should not be nerfed against GMCs. They're available to almost every army in one form or another, are a hard counter to GMCs at the cost of being ineffective against cannon fodder and vehicles.

This hard counter is desperately needed in the current meta, where Wraithknights are considered severely undercosted for their durability. Even with the hard counter a Wraithknight's still got a 3+ 5+FNP between it and poison, thus hardly rendering them helpless against such foes, so they hardly become useless, and with the exception of Dark Eldar no-one can spam mass ranged poison.

That's my thoughts on the matter. If you want to convince me otherwise, go right ahead.

[CoffeeGrunt]

IMO Snipers are a bit rubbish in general, I've never seen a squad of Sniper Scouts or a Sniper Company Command Squad prove their worth. Might be my rolls, but I had an entire game recently where 4 of them couldn't kill a single Marine.

[Fueldrop]

IMO Snipers are a bit rubbish in general, I've never seen a squad of Sniper Scouts or a Sniper Company Command Squad prove their worth. Might be my rolls, but I had an entire game recently where 4 of them couldn't kill a single Marine.

Agreed. Snipers aren't really that scary, but a lot of people don't realize this. I once got a wraithlord to hide in a building for 3 full turns plus have an entire army concentrate all their firepower on a 60 point squad of rangers with high ground in a ruin. That 2+ cover was very helpful, but I think that they inflicted a total of 1 wound that whole game.

Of course, there are times when the luck just goes your way. Flying Demon Prince, had one wound left and I was out of AA. It was going to have an It Will Not Die roll at the end of the turn then swoop in and kill my stuff, so as a hail Mary I opened up with my rangers (same squad as above). Boom, headshot.
Later that game the 5 man squad sacrificed themselves to kill a wounded Kharn the Betrayer by shooting pistols at him and assaulting. He killed them all before going down, but it was still heroic as all hell.

But yes, as a general rule snipers rarely pay for themselves. Having them effective against GMCs might be a way to remedy that issue.

[CoffeeGrunt]

It was going to have an It Will Not Die roll at the end of the turn then swoop in and kill my stuff

Isn't IWND only triggered at the end of the owning player's turn?

[Fueldrop]

Isn't IWND only triggered at the end of the owning player's turn?

Probably. Still would have kicked in before my next turn.

[Dave Mcturk]

its not that snipers are truly awful - its just that most have a crazy short range - 60" would be better - and they should come in 1/2/3 man teams and not count towards kill points [or mb 1/2 a kill point ?] - and all decent quality snipers should be able to infiltrate to a 'hide' and not be spotted or hit until they fire. [and get shrouded and stealth][like anti-tank guns in ww2 games]

and the 50% chance to convert to a wound is crazy - they should be fleshbane !

some 'sniper' round types like kroot arent that bad and are really just a 'variation' on poison - not true snipers.

[CoffeeGrunt]

Yeah, Kroot can mass the shots to make Sniper work, the same as Sniper Drone Teams, especially with Storm of Fire. It seems it's mainly the Imperial factions that have such lacklustre sniping ability. 36" range and Heavy 1 makes them so meh.

[Dave Mcturk]

i play eldar - and our snipers are even worse ! 25pts for a dar that cant hit a barn door at 20 paces - i shoot better [and im not good ]

[Charon]

Not sure what game you are playing but an Eldar Ranger is 12 points.

[Dave Mcturk]

not got new codex yet - pathfinders are/were 25pts - a basic ranger is just cannon fodder ! if theyve dropped the points then awesome!

and ld 8 just stinks !