Yeah, it's basically an extremely short range bolter but with good (and plentiful) ammo and the one shot blaze possibility. Not sure if I'd take it over the bolter though since I still think it's 10-15 c too pricey with that range. IMO it's once again an example of how little the designers have factored in range in their points decisions, which would be fine if ZM was the ONLY way in which you played the game. It makes me wonder just how much terrain they would describe as a minimum to get SM to work as intended :-/