Kyrt wrote:
On sniper, no your interpretation of the last one is not what I meant. Basically the attacker can always choose what to allocate a sniper hit to, as one would expect, but still can't choose what to allocate the non sniper hits to. Those can only be applied front to back (by the defender) as normal. Remember the rules for normal hits prevent you from allocating to a unit that has already been allocated one. The upshot being you can put your sniper hit on a unit that has already taken a normal hit, but you can't do it the other way round. If sniper were treated like macro as a separate round it would be simpler, but alas it is not (as the FAQ makes clear). It's really not as complex as it seems in practice though as usually it is possible to do what the attacker wants some way or another.
As to who gets to choose, I realise you were asking about choosing the order, but it seems to me pretty clear to me that allocation of sniper hits is down to the attacker entirely. Thus if there is to be any choice at all about the order applied I don't see any support in the rule to suggest it would be anyone other than the attacker making this choice. The FAQ is a further clarification of the part of the rule that explicitly describes the attacker choosing to allocate, not a general commentary about the allocation rules in general.
I found your example confusing, but I think I see what you're getting at now. However, I wonder whether you are actually over-complicating it. What I mean is this:
Yes, the FAQ says that Sniper hits can be allocated either before or after regular hits (presumably the Attacker's choice, as you say).
But this doesn't have to mean that there is any difference in the outcome. We can just as easily take it to mean that it
doesn't really matter which way around you do it (before or after), so long as you do it before saving throws and before MW hits.
'Before or after' only matters if you over-complicate things by saying Sniper hits
can't double up with other hit allocations — which seems needlessly complicated and also seems to rule out the possibility of the attacking player putting all their Sniper hits onto a single stand, for example.
Part of what makes it confusing is this: Normally, the target player allocates hits, within certain restrictions. But Sniper is special in that, in effect, the attacking player 'pre-allocates' Sniper attacks (and thus, indirectly, hits) because he chooses specific targets — the target player doesn't do anything to allocate Sniper hits.
It seems to me that the simplest explanation is this — do the following steps, but choose either step 3 (option A) or step 5 (option B), not both:
- Attacking player rolls to hit for all 'regular' shooting attacks.
- Attacking player rolls to hit for all MW attacks.
- Option A: Attacking player declares which units he will target for Sniper attacks, and rolls to hit for each individually. These attacks may 'double up' with other Sniper attacks and thus may cause multiple hits on the same target unit.
- Target player allocates regular hits in the usual way (for simplicity, ignore the fact that some units may already have Sniper hits allocated to them — after all, Sniper is a special rule that overrides the basic rules and another FAQ does say "Can a Sniper hit be allocated to a unit that has already been allocated a regular hit? A. Yes").
- Option B: Attacking player declares which units he will target for Sniper attacks, and rolls to hit for each individually. These attacks may 'double up' with other Sniper attacks, and may double up on units that already have regular hits allocated to them.
- Target player makes saving throws for all regular and Sniper hits and removes casualties.
- Target player allocates MW hits, makes any Reinforced Armour saving throws where appropriate, and removes casualties.
Note that option A and option B work in exactly the same way — the difference is that with option B the attacking player gets to see how regular hits are allocated before he picks his targets for Sniper attacks. So in practice you'd always favour option B as you have more information that way around and there is nothing to else to gain with option A.
You can make other interpretations, but I think this may be the simplest and thus in line with the general ethos of Epic. So unless anyone sees a flaw, I'm inclined to remove my inline comments and put in something like the above as a 'house rule' box so that at least people have a clear option next to the ambiguous source text.