Range extending in Warrior squads

Aftrer to a discussion on The TyranidHive, I thought I'd bring it here; I don't know if this is common knowledge, it was news to me!
http://thetyranidhive.proboards.com/thread/44085/shooting-faq

The upshot is: if a squad of Warriors standing in an arc shoot their splinter rifles at a squad of Marines, of whom only ONE Marine is at 23" from all of them, the rest at 25+, only one Marine dies (the rest cannot be allocated to, as they are out of range of the Warrior unit).

If, however, one of the Warriors carries a Splinter Cannon, the range of the unit for Wound Allocation is now 36", so ALL Marines can die.
Note, this does not extend the SHOOTING range of the rifles; number of shots is based on each Warrior being in range of the first target; wounds are then pooled, then allocated, based on the longest range.

Follow the Hive's thread for a discussion, I personally feel that the Heavy Bolter DOES extend the wound pool's range as per rules, even though that is silly!

I may now consider adding a Splinter Cannon to my Warriors; I had decided not to, as I didn't consider it worth it, but this interpretation does increase the effectivness of the squad, so I will re-consider.

Yep.
4 guard flamers and a lasgun is biggest abuse I've seen
Some sort of rifle armed eldar with flamer zombies would probably beat it

There was some discussion on it when the FAQ originally came out (link). Something to watch out for when dancing at 36" range with venoms.

The thing is, before the FAQ, people were killing a whole squad of marines with only one marine being in range. Chaos Daemon Flamers of Tzeentch were killing whole squads of orks even though they only cover 4.

If anything, the FAQ made sense. Its just being abused.

It's being abused due to the strange wording of being in range of any weapon in the firing unit rather than the weapon actually being fired. We already split wounds from different weapons into different wound pools so how hard is it to say that wounds from a particular pool cannot be allocated to any models that are out of range of all weapons in that pool?

Remember everyone, a models position is merely an abstract concept, not a constant

I think people are over reacting a bit, yes, theres some scope for abuse, but, using the splinter rifle example.
9 shots, 6 hits, 3 wounds, 1 failed MEQ saved. Yes, we could get a modest bit of luck and kill two, but its not exactly game changing.

Yes, a sniper rifle armed eldar HQ attached to a mob of D-Flamer Wraith would be a different matter, but its going to come up so rarely as to be irrelevent in the grand scheme of things. I really cant see people building a (successful) strategy around it

Theres just too many variables.

It's not really a question of whether it is likely to be abused frequently. It's more a symptom of GWs inability to write rules properly or think things through. We know that they don't care about 'competitive' play but the simple fact is that a set of rules that is suitable for competitive play can be used just as easily by non-competitive players. The same cannot be said of the reverse situation!