Hawwa sniper?

Oh wow, I haven't even noticed she got Minelayer skill in N4...

She's a very rare choice for my QK lists. Not a great shot (at BS11 and no extra bells & whistles), and not easy to get a good range band for the gun. Though Sniper Rifle (due to Shock Ammo) made short work of enemy 1-Wound models (less of an advantage today, given how widely-available shock immunity became).
But I have used her a few times back in N3 as an active turn hunter with decent results. Though getting optimal distances for the sniper rifle was... problematic (I've been long proposing giving al'Hawwa a Shock Marksman Rifle, way more useful on an Infiltrator. The troop needs a serious revisit after its origin in early HS N2). I recall totally ruining the day for a Shasvasti player by placing Shock Mines all around the place (but then al'Hawwa had no sensible weapon for close-in job. just a basic Pistol).

From my experience,

• rooftop placement in forward deployment is a bad idea - she won't be able to maneuver, and will be easily outranged by opponents.
• rooftop placement in own DZ is suboptimal - no maneuver ability, and al'Hawwa isn't stellar as an ARO sniper.
• ground-level placement in Infiltration will allow her to choose her targets and engagement distances, preferably outranging her targets and maybe attacking them from out-of-LoF. Up close, deploy mines and have someone else force the targets to react.

 

I too am planning to use her so please let us know how it works out.

Don’t have much to add and have never used this particular unit but wanted to emphasise that BS 11 really is very poor. I imagine she will be situational at best. I have used the Taureg and am often disappointed. Many times both players miss shots and it is just too order intensive.

 

I used her in one of my last games with QK, and she did ok (took out Aida Swanson and put a wound on a leutnant).

I think one of her roles is to act as a non-prone turn 1 ARO. QK is a bit short on these. The mine can double as a holo echo, discouraging your opponent from wasting discover atempts. A bit too order intensive to take care of, a bit too dangerous to ignore.

Bonus points if you find a spot where the mine threat and the sniper threat are valid. Like next to an objective, aiming down a road.

Even so, she feels somewhat niche to me. The threat she poses isn't bad for the price, but she still feels situational and unreliable.

Haqq has so many other nice tools. Daylami are tough competition for non-prone turn 1 ARO in most lists. And there are many better snipers for active turn shooting in my opinion. There are also better minelayers, like Tuareg. And harder hitting, more survivable ambush units like the Nadhir for pretty much the same price.

So she's a bit of an affordable jack-of-all-trades. If you have the points left, she's surprisingly good value. But if you look for someone to reliable fill a role, you'll probably look elsewhere.

 

I love the Al'Hawwa Sniper in my StarCo lists. She usually sits prone atop a building, ready to hunt with surprise shot out of cover (MOD -9) and trying to block objectives with the mine.

 

She does seem pretty intriguing! The tough sell when I'm building lists is to not include the Hawwa hacker and with vanilla having AVA 1 for Hawwa that competition is too stiff. As said above, many aspects the sniper brings can be covered by other pieces (daylami for long ARO threats, farzan and liberto for mines) where as the only thing that can match the hacker is upgrading all the way to a tuareg and then you are down the points and an order on the table (assuming hidden deployment). Please share your experiences though, I do think she's a pretty cool profile.

 

I started QK this year and used her often, 6 out of 18 games. From that limited experience, I agree with Errhile.

When I have multiple hawwa, i use her to have more camo (common tactic in Bakunin to have prowler+zero minelayer+zero) on the table.

I deployed once in a mid-field sniper tower but then she only gets one mine. As she's out of position to strategically deploy more mines.

I sometime used Zero sniper on a flank, or when a good spot is just outside your DZ. It sometime worked with Zero sniper, and hoping to get it to work on hawwa sniper but no luck so far. They are both BS11 with surprised attack and mimetism.

I had one okay game where after losing other pieces, i had to use hawwa sniper. Dropping mines, and shooting with pistol... not ideal as my hawwa shotgun is doing a much better job at that (for the cost of losing minelayer).

 

Since N4 dropped and I saw Hawwa Minelayer I was thinking about trying her out .I totally ignored that miniature and profle in N3, but that Minelayer for no bigger SWC cost looked good. And I even made one armylist with her.
But - to be honest - I didn't try her still.
I'm not a fan of snipers with BS11, the option to infiltrate with such a weapon is a bit wasted, and with only AVA1 it's hard to justify taking sniper over FO or hacker. I think that AVA might be the biggest problem of that profile. The hacker and FO are both good and have important roles in my typical armylists.
I never used any of our infiltrating snipers but I had some success with rather expendable Ghulam sniper. So maybe a bit more expensive but also better protected sniper with Camo/Mimetism -3 wouldn't be that bad. Maybe there will come a time when I'll check it myself ;)


PozdRawiam / Greetings

 

The Al'Hawwa sniper was the first thing I noticed for N4. It seems like a great buy with the basically free minelayer. It is also a nice surprise piece as many don't expect a mid-field camo (Minitism -3) to be dangerous past 16". But @KedzioR_vo mentioned, the AVA 1 in vanilla hurts. By using it, you give up a forward deploying camo specialist with a boarding Shotgun and d-charges.

 

I played several games with vainilla Haquisslam this N4 with good results, more than I previously expected. I did use of the AlHawa snipper in those misions where to score was about "zone control", here the minelayer option it was truly useful. While BS11 + snipper don't look too much it can be really useful to catch those warbands which don't expect a long range weapon coming from that camo mimetims -3 with "surprise attack" too far away. It can be too useful to hunt enemy skirmishers in a "top roof" battle where, again, the long range could be an advantage (as much as a disavantage). Even, in a late game can do a little harm when the "long range and SWC" weapons are scarce. If not, only placing mines and scoring in that "corner" could be enough for this profile. The 0.5 SWC is cheap and as haquisslam players we can afford to pay it ;)

So, it isn't the most multitool camo marker we can place in game in haquisslam, but for some missions it is a great choice. Of course, if we need more "button push", the other profile options become better than this, but for only "zone control" it is probably one of our best :)

Please, let us know how it works for you :)

 

Just let them give the girl Assault Pistol %)

 

Perhaps try those AVA2 Hunzakuts FO with Boarding Shotgun and D-Charges in Vanilla and still take the Al'Hawwa Sniper :)

 

I am already using the Hunzakuts AVA2 for the deployable repeaters profiles!

Playing around with the AVAs in Vanilla is half the fun!