Sniper

“One shot, one kill. The rifle does the work; the patience does the killing.”

The Sniper is the modern descendant of the longbowman and the marksman tradition: a single rifleman trained to engage at long range with precision rather than volume. Where a Rifleman holds the line, a Sniper picks targets from cover – thinning enemy formations before they can close, and crippling officers and crew-served weapons before the main attack arrives.

Stats

Abilities

• Ranged Attack – Can attack enemy units up to 2 hexes away without exposing itself to melee retaliation.
• Fortify – Digs in on the current hex for a defensive bonus.

Available Promotions

• Combat I – +10% attack (5 XP)
• Combat II – +10% attack (15 XP, requires Combat I)

Upgrade Path

Full chain: Archer –> Longbowman –> Sniper

Strategy

The Sniper is the ranged successor to the Longbowman and the only Industrial-era ranged infantry. With 16 Attack at range 2, a Sniper deals more damage per shot than a Rifleman while taking no retaliation – but with only 4 Defence, anything that reaches it will tear it apart. Snipers belong behind a screen of Riflemen or Tanks, picking off attackers before they can close.

Snipers excel at softening defenders before an assault, especially against entrenched units that don’t have the mobility to chase. A pair of Snipers can chip an enemy Rifleman down to half health in two turns, dramatically lowering the cost of the eventual melee attack. They are also strong defensively when fortified on hills or behind walls: enemy units must walk into range and absorb a free shot before they can swing back.

The main risk is the same as with any ranged piece: overextension. A Sniper isolated from its support is dead the moment a cavalry unit appears. Always pair Snipers with Riflemen or armoured units, keep them in or adjacent to friendly territory, and treat them as glass cannons rather than skirmishers.

Historical Background

The discipline of the precision marksman is older than rifled firearms themselves. Specialist sharpshooters appeared during the American Revolutionary War, where Continental riflemen using long-barrelled Kentucky and Pennsylvania rifles could hit a British officer at three hundred yards – a range at which a smoothbore musket would not be expected to hit a barn door. The British, who relied on disciplined volley fire from massed Brown Bess muskets, considered the practice of deliberately targeting officers to be barbaric and ungentlemanly.

The modern sniper, as a recognisable battlefield role, emerged during the American Civil War and matured in the trenches of the First World War. Hiram Berdan’s United States Sharpshooters, equipped with Sharps rifles and trained to aim and fire from concealment, demonstrated the lethal potential of small numbers of skilled marksmen. By 1916, the static front of the Western Front had given rise to professional sniping schools on both sides, with specialised optics, camouflage suits, and elaborate deception techniques. Snipers of the Second World War – Soviet Vasily Zaitsev at Stalingrad, Finnish Simo Hayha in the Winter War – became national heroes whose individual tallies ran into the hundreds.