Interpreting the Sniper Rules from Crossfire

Some musing on snipers in Crossfire resulting from a question I asked the Crossfire Discussion forum …

What happens when a sniper is revealed by Recon By Fire? I had assumed they get their free shot and then die, but I can’t find anywhere in the rules that says it. Have I missed something?

I later discover Ian H had asked pretty much the same question earlier.

These questions gave quite varied interpretations of the standard rules, and also threw up some suggested non-standard rules.

Our own interpretation of Snipers in standard Crossfire is:

  • Deployed hidden.
  • Shoot once in either Phasing or Reactive fire.
  • Removed when revealed.
  • Shoot if revealed and haven’t shot before.
  • No need for a figure.

Ian H (original question)

One thing that came up was hidden squads and snipers.

If you have a building that contains a sniper and one or more squads (all hidden) and the sniper fires, are the squads revealed?

My interpretation of the rules is:

Rule 5.31. “ALL hidden squads in a particular feature are detected immediately when:…1 Any one of the hidden SQUADS move or fire”

No, they are not revealed – the sniper is not a squad.

The rules also imply that if the squads were revealed, the sniper wouldn’t
be, and that snipers can’t ambush fire.

Which all seems very sensible to me.

One thing that does come to mind is: can snipers be searched for by RBF? Given the generality of rule 6.7 the answer seems to be yes.

John Moher (responding to Ian H)

I think they should [be revealed by RBF] – the use of the term “squads” in this case is just a generic comment meaning “stands”.

IRL a sniper would never “hide” in a location that was being used by other troops as there would be too much risk of them giving away the sniper’s position.

He should’ve been in the house opposite or down the street, or whatever…

[John later said he agreed with Reda’s interpretation – see below]

Steve Burt (responding to Ian H)

The question is what happens when a sniper is revelaed like this, or by someone moving into his
terrain feature.
Options are:
a) The sniper is removed
b) The sniper gets his single shot and is removed
c) something else

We play b)

On your other question, standard CF rules are that if one thing in a terrain feature is revealed, all are. However, we play with the very neat rule that only things which throw 1s on reactive fire get revealed [see Revealing Hidden Stands]. RBF will still reveal everyone, though.

Nikolas Lloyd

I think if RBF uncovers a sniper, the sniper should not get to shoot. There is no other defence against them, and there is no decision to be made – of course the player will shoot with his sniper if he can. I don’t play with snipers. I don’t think that they are fun.

Personally, I never use snipers in scenarios I design, because I can’t see the fun in them. They are near enough impossible to take action against, get only one shot, and succeed or fail entirely due to luck. I tried a while ago top come up with rules for making them fun, but didn’t come up with anything very good. Some sort of sniper system involving genuinely difficult decisions is needed, in my opinion.

Chuck Parrott

I’ve always assumed they didn’t get revealed by RBF and could take their shot at any time later. But I can’t say I recall any one in our games passing up the free shot before the sniper could be engaged by RBF. As soon as a platoon leader or FO comes in LOS, we took the shot.

In one game, I tried abstracting the snipers further and gave the German defender 3 sniper cards to use during the game rather than positioning actual sniper stands. Rules governing using the sniper cards were only when you had initiative, only one per initiative, and only to PC’s or FO’s that any stand could draw a LOS. Worked out pretty well, the snipers scored one PC kill out of the 3 stalling an American assault for a bit, not a bad

Reda

We play the RBF on sniper as written : a sniper is only removed when it fires.
So when a RBF is successful the sniper is placed on the feature at the will of the owner (even in
a place where it could no have been RBFed – considere it has moved a bit when discovered). And it
is posted here waiting for a target to come. the inconvenient here is that the enemy knows where
it is. The menace is identified. In the same way, the sniper can move as well. It stays on table
until it fires….

In another flaw considering the rules and how they are written. It is said that in a element where there are hidden SQUADS (acting for squads and HMGs) and there is a Fire from this, every SQUAD is reavealed. Because of this flaw, we do not reveal the snipers. But if the sniper fires, it does reveal every squads (we should say stands in this case because the same problem arises for PC, FO, Guns, and vehicles).Maybe an official answer is necessary : can Rob Wolsky answer to this ?

[Reda uses a PC/FO sized based for his on-table Snipers.]

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