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How do you kill the thing! This thing is one of the toughest things in the game and would really like some advise on how to kill it thanks.

ive not faced one but my concerns against facing one has increased plasma and melta weapons in my armylist - massively.

what army are you fielding?

Use the Force, Luke . Curse him with Misfortune and shoot to death.

JOTWL and as much plasma, las and melta as I can put into it

If you don't have an efficient way to kill it...

Don't.

Unless you are running a death star, a lot of Terms, or don't know how to properly spread your army, its damage output isn't really that great.

Focus on their troops. Win the game by playing the game, not your opponent.

Jaws is an efficient Riptide Killer o be sure. Just make sure you have more than one guy to pull it off.

Jefffar wrote:
Jaws is an efficient Riptide Killer o be sure. Just make sure you have more than one guy to pull it off.

Foehammer from Arjac then Jaws from my 2 Rune Priests (hopefully in two different directions.)

ShadarLogoth wrote:
If you don't have an efficient way to kill it...

Don't.

Unless you are running a death star, a lot of Terms, or don't know how to properly spread your army, its damage output isn't really that great.

Focus on their troops. Win the game by playing the game, not your opponent.

Attach O'vesa to a crisis suit troop, O'vesa can now take objectives.

On-topic, the biggest problem I've had for my riptide was a CC dreadnaught who was able to beat him to death. I've almost lost him to a scarab swarm, but since he is S6 he was able to squish them all before he fail an armor save.

He may be a monstrous creature, but he is still a tau. If you have any assault from reserves like a Lucius Drop Pod, That will be you best chance to catch one.

I assault it with any of my monstrous creatures or a squad of poisoned infantry.

I charge 5 x Spawn w/ MoN and tarpit it on turn 2. Maybe I get lucky and roll 5-6 for special ability and have poison to wound it.

Except you can't assault from reserves even with that drop pod.

It is hard to ignore something that puts out 12 shots at you.

I faced my first one a couple of weeks ago. A single psychic shriek did the job

I just started playing Tau a couple of weeks ago and one of our ringers played me with the new SM codex. He rhino rushed my riptides and tank shocked two of them off the board - didn't see that one coming Live and learn I guess...

 Nilok wrote:


He may be a monstrous creature, but he is still a tau. If you have any assault from reserves like a Lucius Drop Pod, That will be you best chance to catch one.

Unfortunately that was nerfed, so now it is just an expensive drop pod, mostly.

The occasions where I have lost my Riptide.

1) Ork bikers, klaws included in the unit.

2) Chapter Master beatstick with shield eternal and thunderhammer

3) Daemon Prince or Bloodthirster (can't quite remember which one did it)

4) Wraithguard with distort weapons (wonded on a 6 and id didn't save so removed from play)

5) Rune Priest with JoTWW (Once again removed from play)

Has anyone had luck with grav bikers against a riptide yet?

ha kill it?

i just puppet master it and watch the tau players face as his riptides gun barrel slowly swings toward his army.....

 ninjafiredragon wrote:
ha kill it?

i just puppet master it and watch the tau players face as his riptides gun barrel slowly swings toward his army.....

I've actually had this happen to me as well.

With DE, poison works well enough. DE can pile on ranged poison attacks like none other..

Massed Dissie fire or DL work too, but it takes forever. Kill everything else, then come knocking...

Orks - I've only killed a Riptide twice with Orks, but then i've only faced one twice..

First time it was Clawed to death by Meganobz.

Second time Zagstrukk bipped in and cleaned its clock from Deepstrike.

Daemons - Get in and fong the thing, or ignore it. A full unit fo plaguebearers with a herald can give it pause, as did my tooled up GUO hq. I run mono-nurgle, but there are some other sweet options out there.

 PrinceRaven wrote:
I assault it with any of my monstrous creatures or a squad of poisoned infantry.

Drown him in Gants, or Enfeeble Warp Lance from a Zoanthrope.

 g0atsticks wrote:

 PrinceRaven wrote:
I assault it with any of my monstrous creatures or a squad of poisoned infantry.

Drown him in Gants, or Enfeeble Warp Lance from a Zoanthrope.

With 2 psychic tests, 2 deny the witches, a roll to hit, a roll to wound and a 3++ or 5++, I don't think that's all that viable a strategy.

Last night I got into CC with one using my catacomb command barge. It punched itself in the face a few times, I whacked on it with my warscythe a little. 2 turns later it died.

The second riptide was down to 2 wounds. Amazingly I didn't fire too much at it! I think I fired an annihilation barge at it once, caused 4 wounds. It lost 1, then 2 more from failed overcharging.

I got a greater unclean one into CC with a riptide and 1 shot it thanks to instant death balesword ,that was super cool. Riptide rolled a bunch of 1s for its jetpack move. GUO slugged up and rolled boxcars for the assault. Perfect storm kind of situation. Pretty much anything you might use to easily kill a wraithknight, will also kill a riptide. Which yeah, isn't all too much.

Or Enfeeble Smash. Or punch him to death in CC with Power Fists.

Lots of poison is my go-to Riptide killer. Plus, rending is good as well.

Depends on what his army is composed of. If hes running 40% or more of his points in riptides, you dont. There is simply no army in the game that can deal with that many wounds on 2+/5++ (or 3++). This is why they are brought to tourneys. The only solution is to hope to god it isnt KP and try to win via objectives.

If they only have one, focus fire with AT weapons is pretty much your only option. Few armies can get into CC with it and even fewer have enough AP2 high strength weapons to kill one in a reasonable amount of time. One fist doesnt do it, you need more than that, which is hard to find on a fast unit.

Better solution isnt to kill them, its to tarpit. Grab some gaunts, orks, spawn, or anything you can get a lot of cheap and run them into the riptides. They will spend most of the game punching the force.

Whoever thought putting an inv save on a shooting 2+ T6 MC creature was slowed. Whoever thought a 3++ was a good idea should be fired. This is the one unit that makes me not want to play tourneys anymore despite years of placing.


Edit: i see people suggesting poison. Do the math. Seriously, poison??? Lets say a venom since thats the only craft in the game who can put out cost-effective poison. You need whopping 120 poison shots to take down one stim'd riptide. 10 Venoms shooting at a single target. Is that even remotely reasonable? At the point level of 10 venoms he has 4+ riptides and an army that is spec'd out with the most mid-strength weaponary in the game. Do you even expect to get a 2nd volley with your venoms? Poison is a horrible way to kill 2+.

You gotta get that melee, son. Throw some poisoned Gargoyles in there. Will it take a while to kill the Riptide? Yes. Will it be totally worth it? Damn straight.

Riptides typically hurt themselves through the nova reactor more often than the opponent does through shooting/cc. However, there are some tricks that can be implemented to take them down.

1.) Blood Angels "Fear the Darkness" psychic power. Yes, blood angels aren't really seen much but a librarian with "fear the darkness" has a 50/50 chance of making the riptide simply run off the board edge.
2.) Terrify psychic power - same premise as above. use weaken resolve or horrify or some other Ld neg-mod first if possible.

And finally, probably the most universal way:
3.) Multi-charge! Tau like to form up groups during the enemy phase so more units can take advantage of the 'supporting fire' rule. While this is good for tau, because they get so much overwatch, it's actually good for you too! When a tau player bunches up in such a way, they become prime target for a multi charge -- and there isn't much of a downside because most tau have defensive grenades and all of them overwatch you regardless of how many targets you declare. So the trick is this - get into CC with a riptide, and as many other squishy tau units (or tanks!) as possible. A glance on a tank counts as 1 unsaved wound and a Penetrating hit counts as 2. Win combat by X, and force all the tau to take a morale hit at -X. You'll usually sweep not just the riptide, but the other 1 or 2 targets of the multi-charge as well.

Fast units like bikes, jetbikes, beasts, and jump infantry are best for pulling off this maneuver.

20 Gargoyles + poison sacs = Dead Riptide

xghostmakerx wrote:
20 Gargoyles + poison sacs = Dead Riptide

Not quite - back of the napkin mathhammer says:

20 gargoyles = 40 attacks.

26.8 hits (2/3 chance to hit) with 6.5 of them being 6's.
20.8 to-wound rolls on 4+ = 10.4 additional wounds - total 16.9 wounds.

2+ armor save = 2.70 failed saves
5+ feel no pain = 1.81 failed saves

So, rolling average doesn't even see you scrape 2 full wounds of a riptide with that unit. Now what it does do, however, is keep that pesky riptide locked in combat until the end of the game, so it doesn't shoot at you. That is as good as dead, but still not dead.

They should be out of combat in a few turns though, and having only lost something like a quarter of the brood to the Riptide's pathetic CC abilities.