Basic Tip: Snipers and windows

Taking a walk...

Have you ever told your Sniper to start knocking heads inside a garrisoned building? You have a clear line of sight to the building, the Sniper even has yellow or green cover right where he’s standing. Yet the crazy sonuvabitch won’t shoot! Nope, he’ll go for a stroll, walking at a crawl to the other side of the target building. Sweet baby Jesus, is this frustrating or what? The worst thing that can happen is for you to tell the Sniper to attack the building, then go off and order some other units around. When you come back to make sure the Sniper is putting Krauts to bed (or Yankees, for that matter) like he’s supposed to, you find the idiot has walked into a roving Jeep or Motorcycle or into barbed wire, which uncloaks him. I’ve even had Snipers walk their way into a Butterfly bomb or mine for the loss.

Out of sight, out of mind...

The reason Snipers like going for a walk sometimes is simple: windows. For your Sniper to shoot from his current position, he must have a clear line of sight to a window of the garrisoned building and that window must have a helmeted enemy noggin in it. No noggin, no shot. No shot but an attack order = time for a walk. If you think about it, this makes pretty good sense.

Look before you give the order.

It’s the same COH building logic that allows a grenade to sometimes kill an entire MG squad in a building — or sometimes only one squad member. Get that ‘nade in the right window, where the MG squad is clustered together, and you got a good time coming. In a big building, where MG members disperse into windows on opposite sides of the building, you are guaranteed an incomplete kill with one grenade.

NOTE: You can try using a regular, uncloaked unit like a Rifle squad in conjunction with your Sniper. The Rifle squad will cause the MG (or any garrisoned unit) to change windows, so as to fire on the Rifle squad. If you time this right, your Sniper can fire and instantly kill the MG gunner before he opens up. Do this too late, and your Sniper will get suppressed/pinned right along with your Riflemen, even though he is invisible.