Fixing Snap Shots (& Overwatch)

The idea of the snap shot made its debut in 6ed. The advent of flyers seemed to require a mechanic to make them harder to hit, and the simple idea of needing 6s stepped up to the plate. As is often the case, once the mechanic had emerged, it seemed to find a home in a range of other places too, helping fast moving and pinned troops remain involved in the game.

Overwatch was a big part of 2ed, but was removed in the transition to 3ed. Overwatch then was a very different beast to the rule we have now; it cost a unit it's turn, but allowed them to fire during the following enemy movement phase. This allowed a unit to cover an approach from an as yet unseen enemy. As charging also happened in the movement phase in 2ed, it could also be used by a unit that expected to be assaulted next turn, which could occasionally prove useful if the enemy were presently out of range of some of your good guns.  Unfortunately, taken to extremes it resulted in games stagnating, with both sides hidden and on overwatch to punish whomever came out of hiding first. This is no doubt one of the reasons it was removed. It's return in 6ed leveraged the new snap shot mechanic, with a kludge for templates, and a more limited focus.

So what's the problem?



Sadly, there are several.

- Inequitable. Snap shots don't effect everyone equally. A BS4 Space Marine has lost a much greater proportion of his effective shooting capacity than a BS2 Ork (75% vs 50%).

- Too limiting. Snap shots make flyers and invisible units much harder to hit than they should be, resulting in some situations that are not very fun at all. For a game, this is a problem. If you want to play a game and not have fun, you should be playing Monopoly, not 40k.

- Arbitrarily restrictive. As the simplistic mechanic doesn't support other forms of shooting, templates and blast weapons in particular suffer for no good reason. If a Space Marine is perfectly capable of shooting a krak missile at a flying Hive Tyrant, why should he not be able to shoot a frag missile at it if for some reason he wanted to? Why can he shoot a multimelta at an enemy flyer, and a plasmagun, but not a plasma cannon?

- No stacking. Snap shot conditions don't interact. Consider a few scenarios with a Space Marine firing a lascannon.

 - Standing still, firing at a Gretchin 48" away. Chance to hit: 66.7%.
 - Walking forwards, firing at a Land Raider 2" away. Chance to hit: 16.7%
 - Leaning out of a Rhino moving at Cruising speed, firing at a speeding flyer. Chance to hit: 16.7%.
 - Gone to ground, firing his lascannon with his butt-cheeks at an Ork charging him from behind. Chance to hit: 16.7%.

I accept that in a system without hit modifiers there is going to be odd situations, particularly when targeting large static things from close range. But that doesn't mean we have to settle for a flat 16.7% chance across all armies, all situations.

The fourth problem is the easiest to solve. Simply add the caveat that multiple conditions that would ordinarily force a model to fire only snap shots instead prevent the model from shooting. Moving a heavy weapon on a normal infantry model is a snap shot condition. Shooting at a flyer is a snap shot condition. Trying to do both at once should result in not being able to shoot.

The other three problems can be resolved by tying snap shots to characteristics, in much the same way that almost everything else in the game is. I think the easiest way is to replace the requirement to roll 6s to hit with a requirement to reroll successful hits. Blast weapons that snapfire should be rerolled at the opponents discretion, and template weapons should reroll successful wounds instead, in a mirror of the twin-linked effect on weapons. Twin-linked and snap shooting would therefore cancel each other out, and a model forced to snap fire a twin-linked weapon resolves it as a normal shooting effect, without the benefit of twin-linked or the penalty of rerolling successful hits.

Rerolling hits allows for snap shooting to scale with the shooter's BS, maintaining the proportion of effectiveness lost between different unit types. It also makes snap-only targets much easier to hit (unless you are an Ork, in which case it is slightly worse, but with that many dice to throw it really should be). This is great for reining in flyers, but does reduce the efficacy of pinning, and poses a major problem with overwatch becoming much more deadly.

In truth though there are other problems unique to overwatch, beyond the issues with snap shots outlined and solved above.

- Lack of tactical depth. You get charged, you get to overwatch, it's that simple. The only consideration for the assaulter to affect this is the order in which he charges his units.

- No mitigation mechanism. The only ways to prevent overwatch, currently, are by fiat in an ad hoc selection of Codicies. This means that units that really suffer from overwatch often have no defence, severely comprimising their utility and often relegating them to the shelf. See Wyches, Genestealers, and the like.

- The elephant in the room. Shooting units are already more powerful than assault units. Why tip the scales further?

Removing overwatch entirely would be one way of addressing the concerns, especially the last. However, the idea and feel of overwatch is probably worth preserving. So perhaps there are other solutions.

First, let's take assault grenades. Their current role of allowing units to assault into cover at no penalty (or a reduced penalty, initially) has been in place since 3ed. That made sense in 3-5ed, where being struck from behind cover was even rationalised as sometimes incorporating close ranged fire from prepared defenders. But 6ed changed to explicitly representing this close ranged fire with overwatch, without changing the effect of assault grenades.

Assault grenades should prevent overwatch. After all, surely it is harder to fire at your very immediate enemy if there are grenades exploding around you? However, the range of the thrown grenade in 6-7ed is only 8". So let's simply say that defending models within 8" of an unengaged enemy model with assault grenades may not fire overwatch.

In this phrasing, any model may supply the grenades, which I think is ok. This allows supporting units to cover the way of other units not equipped with grenades, and gives a greater role to characters with grenades provided that they are willing to put themselves within range. Some tactical depth is therefore given to the attacker, allowing him not only to better utilise support units but also to angle his attack for maximum benefit. At the same time, it disincentivises "long shot" 10 - 12" charges, adding a greater cost. Additionally, the defender may employ countertactics, deploying in greater depth than usual to allow rear ranks to fire overwatch even if the front rank is suppressed.

There is also the possibility of defining defensive grenades as neutralising an attacker's assault grenades, enabling overwatch again, although my favoured route would instead be a -2" to charge moves against a unit with defensive grenades.

The final piece of the puzzle, I think, is arc of fire. Vehicles already use the fire arc concept, and while infantry are surely more flexible, I don't think that they should receive a free pass. Notably, flying monstrous creatuers would be less extravagant if they were no longer able to shoot devourers out of their arses.

With fire arcs, there would finally be some benefit to flanking and charges executed at an enemy's rear, namely escaping overwatch by sneaking around them. Additionally, shooting units in general would effectively be less maneuverable, and pinned units could be more easily bypassed.  There is also the opportunity to provide different fire arcs for different classes of weapon, for example reflecting the relative difficulty of siting and aiming infantry heavy weapons with narrower fire arcs.

I think a good starting point would be 180 degree front fire arcs for most weapons, and 90 degree front fire arcs for heavy weapons. These can then be halved when firing snap shots, again mitigating the higher number of hits that will be seen under the changes above, and reinforcing the importance of maneuver to effective firing.

After all, balancing the intent of the snap shot with mechanics that allow for a greater tactical depth while reducing the potential for flying invincibility can surely make for a more fun game.