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Play FE, use all crisis suits.

Martel732 wrote:
They are also overpowered because MCs are overpowered in general. The Ritpides just happens to be a long range MC, which makes it several fold harder to kill.

If MCs are overpowered 'in general', what is your idea of a balancedunit then? Since stuff can only be iverpowered/underpowered by comparison.

LordBlades wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
They are also overpowered because MCs are overpowered in general. The Ritpides just happens to be a long range MC, which makes it several fold harder to kill.

If MCs are overpowered 'in general', what is your idea of a balancedunit then? Since stuff can only be iverpowered/underpowered by comparison.

Compared to walkers, they are incredibly overpowered. Compared to infantry, they are overpowered. They fight at 100% efficacy no matter how many W are missing. That's incredibly powerful right there.

What IS balanced? It's hard to say at this point. Most 7th ed codices are agreed by most people to be "balanced" except Necrons.

Re: the riptide, let me ask this question. You show up to a pick-up game. Your opponent deploys his army. Would you rather see him put down on the table: a riptide, a flyrant with devourers, an imperial knight, or a dreadknight? How about at a tournament?

There's a lot of hate for the ignores cover ability, but IG have an ignores cover order that I don't often hear people complain about. And they can issue orders from out of sight, while markerlights at least have to make themselves vulnerable in order to work.

Martel732 wrote:

LordBlades wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
They are also overpowered because MCs are overpowered in general. The Ritpides just happens to be a long range MC, which makes it several fold harder to kill.

If MCs are overpowered 'in general', what is your idea of a balancedunit then? Since stuff can only be iverpowered/underpowered by comparison.

Compared to walkers, they are incredibly overpowered. Compared to infantry, they are overpowered. They fight at 100% efficacy no matter how many W are missing. That's incredibly powerful right there.

What IS balanced? It's hard to say at this point. Most 7th ed codices are agreed by most people to be "balanced" except Necrons.

Have you thought that Maybewalkers are UP then?. Apart.from knights and maybe the new Skitarii walkers, ypu can remove MCs completely and they stiillwouldn't be worth fielding.

Also, OP in regard to what infantry? Simgle wound cheap infantry, or the likes of Broadsides or Grav Cents?

It's also denatable that 7th codexes are balanced. Personally, I see Cidex Flyrants quite a bit ahead of the pack, while orks and maybe BA a bit behind.

Whiskey144 wrote:

andbreak wrote:
FNP at 35 points, so it's not always a 'period'. I no longer run FNP on my Riptides in <2000 point lists because the points have not been worth it (in my experience). The 5 wounds is probably tied to the downsides of overcharging the nova reactor, which, without fail, have caused 1-2 wounds on my Riptide per game. You also must remember that the s8ap2 large template is tied to a 'Get's hot!' roll, and I average about one 'Get's hot!' roll a game per Riptide.

Most of the time my Nova Reactor rolls have gone to the 4d6" jump move, or to ripple fire the fusion blaster. The 3++ only comes up when I'm bracing for some Grav pain.

I cannot say how OP or 'not-fun' the Tau army is in casual play these days, as I generally play in tournaments and expectations are different - but Tau haven't been too hot in the 'big' tournament scene for 7th and I've yet to steamroll or table my opponents with my Triptide list - with the exception of drop pod armies. Intercepting Riptides are very dangerous. Otherwise, on average, 2 of my 3 riptides will be dead by the end of the game - due to my opponents target priority and my own purposeful positioning/sponging.

It is, however, still the case that you can- if you so choose- guarantee FNP on a Riptide. It's not reliably possible to do the same for the Dreadknight.

I also do not accept your explanation for a Riptide having 5 Wounds- if anything, I could turn it around and say that Dreadknights, Carnifexes, and other close-combat/short-range shooting oriented MCs need an extra wound because they will be in the enemy's face very quickly, and in order to actually contribute firepower/capability they have to be within range of almost every single AP2/AP1 weapon in the entire game.

A Riptide can easily sit back and be out of range of everything but Lascannons, which are an expensive and these days fairly uncommon heavy weapon to put on the field.

Further, are you trying to say that it's not possible to just boost a Riptide to BS6 and give it Ignores Cover? Because that solves Gets Hot quite nicely. If you don't buy that particular interpretation of the BS rules, then I'm sure that there's some way that you could easily and cheaply twin-link that Ion Accelerator so that you can ignore Gets Hot effects.

Also, the comment about the 4D6" Nova'd Thrust Move? Yeah, that plays into the whole "Riptides are annoying and unfun because they are practically unkillable". IA Riptides have been one of the biggest reasons that power armored models are becoming more and more invalidated- said T4/3+ (or T3/3+) models have increasingly difficult times actually surviving- even in cover (not that it matters against Tau...). There used to be a time when Marines wanted to be in cover because it was an advantageous position and provided a nice insurance policy against AP3/AP2/AP1 weapons. These days the Marines are more likely to not be on the board- either they're in a metahl bawkse of some kind, or they're simply not taken in a list, because they're far more likely to die against the enormous amount of AP2/AP1 weapons- especially said weapons that sport 5" Blast templates- than do anything remotely useful.

I'd also like to point out that statlines like that of the Riptide do not help the issue- T6/2+ needs some kind of way to be countered, and unfortunately it seems that the best counters are also really good at killing masses of T4/2+ and T4/3+ infantry models.

I'm not arguing, nor provided any sort of argument, to any of your points - only a personal explanation/thoughts from my own experiences (with the exception of FNP on Riptides being a period, when it's not). It's easy to surmise that the Riptide's 5 wounds is directly correlated to the chances of wounding itself from a GW rules standpoint. We can agree to disagree here.

I don't believe I mentioned anything about boosting a Riptide's BS to 6 or Ignoring Cover. Only that it has a chance to 'Get's hot!' when firing it's s8ap2 large blast (regardless of modifiers that can avoid this, because marker lights are not present 100% of the time). You're extrapolating.

I also made no comparisons between the Riptide and the Dreadknight, because I don't feel as if there's one. The Riptide is better, but they both have their places in their respective army lists. I'll point out that their have been more Dreadknights in Top 10 lists than Riptides in Top 10 lists in the last two big tournaments of 2015 (LVO, Adepticon). There were also 4 Space Marines in the Top 8 LVO, and 5 Space Marines in the top 10 of the Adepticon; but no Tau in those standings. In fact, the highest ranked Tau at Adepticon used a Leviathan detachment with Flyrants.

So once more, in the competitive scene - both national and local - I feel as though Tau (and by extension, the Riptide), through experience and recorded results, are no longer as OP as they were in sixth. My 'tides have died to many different sources, in many different ways, many different times. Anti-proponents of the Riptide should borrow a friend's army and take three to their next competitive tournament. You'll find their weaknesses super quick.

Casual play? I wouldn't know.

office_waaagh wrote:
Re: the riptide, let me ask this question. You show up to a pick-up game. Your opponent deploys his army. Would you rather see him put down on the table: a riptide, a flyrant with devourers, an imperial knight, or a dreadknight? How about at a tournament?

There's a lot of hate for the ignores cover ability, but IG have an ignores cover order that I don't often hear people complain about. And they can issue orders from out of sight, while markerlights at least have to make themselves vulnerable in order to work.

Because the IG orders can only be given to infantry within 12" they cannot confer ignore cover to vehicles or embarked units. If command squads could give ignore cover to leman russ demolishers we'd certainly be hearing about it.

LordBlades wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

LordBlades wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
They are also overpowered because MCs are overpowered in general. The Ritpides just happens to be a long range MC, which makes it several fold harder to kill.

If MCs are overpowered 'in general', what is your idea of a balancedunit then? Since stuff can only be iverpowered/underpowered by comparison.

Compared to walkers, they are incredibly overpowered. Compared to infantry, they are overpowered. They fight at 100% efficacy no matter how many W are missing. That's incredibly powerful right there.

What IS balanced? It's hard to say at this point. Most 7th ed codices are agreed by most people to be "balanced" except Necrons.

Have you thought that Maybewalkers are UP then?. Apart.from knights and maybe the new Skitarii walkers, ypu can remove MCs completely and they stiillwouldn't be worth fielding.

Also, OP in regard to what infantry? Simgle wound cheap infantry, or the likes of Broadsides or Grav Cents?

It's also denatable that 7th codexes are balanced. Personally, I see Cidex Flyrants quite a bit ahead of the pack, while orks and maybe BA a bit behind.

Flyrants are from 6th. Before we got to necrons in 7th, the only unit that I could ever complain about power wise was anything good armed with da lucky stikk. And one OP melee model is pretty easy to deal with, as well as has some answers in the form of heavy flamers or better for the bike version, or ap2 for the mega version.

Most things in the game take 3 or more turns to pay for themselves. IK for example. There's no way they're causing 370 points of damage on t1, especially without ignore cover. Even getting lucky with the melta cannon and 1 shotting a land raider still hasn't paid for the knight. If a model stays alive to turn 6 and keeps doing its job, I expect it to pay for itself roughly 1.5 to 2 times. Even the reaver Titan, a 1450 point model with ranged str d and devastating missile barrages, typically takes 3-4 turns to actually inflict 1450 points of damage to the enemy. If it ever gets stopped from shooting by say, melee, it's efficacy drops sharply.

A riptide can and does pay for itself on turn 1-2 most times I see it played. By turn 6 I usually see them pay for themselves in triplicate if not more.

In all honesty they should have been walkers, complete with vehicle damage chart, along with the other big knights.

A point of hilarity is that a knight paladin vs one riptide at long range (like say, the deployment zone spread,) will actually lose the shooting war with the single riptide with no marker light support, and the tide is literally half it's cost. An even match of 2 tides would be able to get on 2 facings and tear it apart, as long as they use their average 13" movement to stay away from the knight's 12".

The worst thing is that the Riptide breaks with the Tau's whole fish theme. This inconsistency cannot stand, I say! Down with tidal phenomena naming conventions, up with vehicles named after fish!

niv-mizzet wrote:

LordBlades wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

LordBlades wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
They are also overpowered because MCs are overpowered in general. The Ritpides just happens to be a long range MC, which makes it several fold harder to kill.

If MCs are overpowered 'in general', what is your idea of a balancedunit then? Since stuff can only be iverpowered/underpowered by comparison.

Compared to walkers, they are incredibly overpowered. Compared to infantry, they are overpowered. They fight at 100% efficacy no matter how many W are missing. That's incredibly powerful right there.

What IS balanced? It's hard to say at this point. Most 7th ed codices are agreed by most people to be "balanced" except Necrons.

Have you thought that Maybewalkers are UP then?. Apart.from knights and maybe the new Skitarii walkers, ypu can remove MCs completely and they stiillwouldn't be worth fielding.

Also, OP in regard to what infantry? Simgle wound cheap infantry, or the likes of Broadsides or Grav Cents?

It's also denatable that 7th codexes are balanced. Personally, I see Cidex Flyrants quite a bit ahead of the pack, while orks and maybe BA a bit behind.

Flyrants are from 6th. Before we got to necrons in 7th, the only unit that I could ever complain about power wise was anything good armed with da lucky stikk. And one OP melee model is pretty easy to deal with, as well as has some answers in the form of heavy flamers or better for the bike version, or ap2 for the mega version.

Most things in the game take 3 or more turns to pay for themselves. IK for example. There's no way they're causing 370 points of damage on t1, especially without ignore cover. Even getting lucky with the melta cannon and 1 shotting a land raider still hasn't paid for the knight. If a model stays alive to turn 6 and keeps doing its job, I expect it to pay for itself roughly 1.5 to 2 times. Even the reaver Titan, a 1450 point model with ranged str d and devastating missile barrages, typically takes 3-4 turns to actually inflict 1450 points of damage to the enemy. If it ever gets stopped from shooting by say, melee, it's efficacy drops sharply.

A riptide can and does pay for itself on turn 1-2 most times I see it played. By turn 6 I usually see them pay for themselves in triplicate if not more.

In all honesty they should have been walkers, complete with vehicle damage chart, along with the other big knights.

A point of hilarity is that a knight paladin vs one riptide at long range (like say, the deployment zone spread,) will actually lose the shooting war with the single riptide with no marker light support, and the tide is literally half it's cost. An even match of 2 tides would be able to get on 2 facings and tear it apart, as long as they use their average 13" movement to stay away from the knight's 12".

You're (deliberately or not) picking scenarios that favor the Riptide:

-Riptides are pure shooting units. As such their first turns are the most effective, with their efficiency either remaining constant through the game, or dropping off if they get engaged in melee (argument you bring up in relation to titans but not the Riptide). Knights on the other hand are a ranged+melee unit. They start off decent and greatly increase in performance by turn 2-3 when they get into melee. By using 'what turn has the unit paid for itself', you're in fact comparing the Riptide's strongest turns with the knight's weakest.
-You claim Riptide pays for itself in 1-2 turns. The only way it's going to pay for itself in turn 1 is if you have a dumb oponent (who clusters expensive units in a nice blast-shape in a place where you can reach with Markerlights turn 1) and the stars align (no scatter, no gets hot, alldailed invul saves or cover if applicable).
-Knight moves 12 and charges 2d6. This means his threat range is 19 on average, 24 max. How do you plan to indefinitely stay out of a 50" bubble (knight's own base size included) centered on the knight on a 6 ft. by 4ft. table?


EDIT: Personally I feel the MC type should go and die in a fire. I really see nothing that can't be actually reproduced by either infantry or vehicles. As long as MCs exist however, I think having Riptides be MC is the best way to represent the superior construction and mobility they have in fluff compared to Imperial walkers like Dreadnoughts.

The fact that a riptide diminishes effectiveness in melee is fairly well obvious. I would hope on a 40k board that I don't have to state that explicitly. While people play against titans MUCH MUCH less, and I have run into several people that didn't even know they could be locked in melee, and further, that they SUCK in melee, beyond just not dying and fishing for good stomps.

Tides are also super hard to catch. 6" move ignoring terrain, shoot at you, then 2d6" move. If you really need to book it, you can nova for 4d6" and run d6 also for say, turn 7 objective grabs or escaping from a corner. That's an average of 23.5 inches of movement, or as fast as an FMC crosses the table. You could roll hot and leave swooping FMC's in the dust with a 30-36" move. You don't have to stay away from a knight indefinitely. You have to stay away until it dies, which is a lot sooner than "indefinitely."

Thanks to the short sighted weaponskill chart, tides aren't bad in melee, which is supposed to be their weakness. They can easily fight a large selection of independent character badasses like Mephiston, and melee oriented hq's that cost almost as much as the tide itself, only really being scared of the top tier guys with eternal warrior and ap2 weapons like Lysander, abba, Dante etc. I even had an opponent forget about a death co dreadnought (Cassor the damned to be precise) that podded in, he shot at other stuff and didn't boost away. I charged in with Cassor, dealt a couple wounds, then got owned by a smash. True it was a little lucky to blow him up on the first smash, but the fact that the thing even stands a chance against a melee focused dread IN MELEE is just stupid.

And it doesn't take a dumb opponent to make a tide's points back on t1. Have some broadsides glance out a rhino with robotech missile spam, squad has to emergency disembark within THREE inches, put two lights on the 10 man squad, boom, squad dies, sans maybe 1 or 2 guys. 140+ a heavy weapon, a special weapon, and a power weapon/fist on vet sarge. Obviously you should put the weapons and sarge in the back, but they're not going to make it anywhere or be of any use with no more bullet sponges. A few fire warriors or crisis suits can finish them as an after-thought.
And I recently had an enemy tide from the tank hunting formation nova charge to get ordnance and blow my land raider in one shot during a tourney. Are you calling me a dumb player just because a tide rolled a 6 and lighted to negate my ruins cover? I guess you are.

That gun is one of the reasons I don't do marines in rhino/razorbacks. That and serpent shields. They're just too easy to kill for those weapons. And sure enough, they sometimes show up in the same list. I also don't run sanguinary guard almost solely because of the IA. I wish I could run them, but I only do tac lists with zero tailoring, and I don't want to start a game against tau down 200 points on his first shot.

The most fun tau list I ever played against used devil fishes with squads of fire warriors with the pinning assault gun zipping around the field and pinning squads, in addition to backfield support.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

office_waaagh wrote:
Re: the riptide, let me ask this question. You show up to a pick-up game. Your opponent deploys his army. Would you rather see him put down on the table: a riptide, a flyrant with devourers, an imperial knight, or a dreadknight? How about at a tournament?

There's a lot of hate for the ignores cover ability, but IG have an ignores cover order that I don't often hear people complain about. And they can issue orders from out of sight, while markerlights at least have to make themselves vulnerable in order to work.

Casual game? Dreadknight or flyrant. Dread is nice and hops right up to me to die. I just ignore flyrants and get objectives. They're annoying though, mainly because you can't get away from their shots like you can with flying vehicles.

Tournament? Dreadknight, flyrant, or IK. Any of them other than a tide please. I once again ignore flyrants and focus on mission and their ground forces, dread still hops right to me and dies, and IK, well my tourney lists usually involve a lot of melta. Unfortunately melta just sort of annoys riptides. Takes an average of 14 melta shots to down a riptide that hasn't nova shielded and did not buy fnp, whereas I've taken down an obelisk with 3, and a knight with 6. (3 in two different arcs.)

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
I might have a different view on this, because I play with mostly city boards. It seems everybody else in existence fights on flat plains with the occasional tree.

Pretty much, yeah. Flat green tables with felt "terrain" is how the vast majority of 40k games are played, which is why from 5th onward people have been bitching harder and harder about how powerful shooting is and subsequently how OP Tau are.

And you can't just tell people to play with more terrain, they either flat out tell you "No" or give you a thousand excuses as to why their groups won't "let" them or they otherwise just can't. No, the only solution to the problem is either nerfing Tau so hard that the army is literally unplayable on anything but a flat table with no terrain, or just going the "easy" route and removing them from the game entirely, because 1) feth people who like stuff I don't like and 2) everyone has just plain given up on GW knowing how or even wanting to re-balance the game.

Hilariously though they keep buying more Space Marines and sending GW the message that they're doing everything right, despite all the bitching and moaning they do online which is falling on deaf ears.

Anyway, I think it's pretty telling that pretty much every single Tau discussion focuses almost solely on the riptide. It's pretty obvious to me where the problem lies, so I'm not sure why people are still pretending that JSJ'ing crisis suits and pathfinders with markerlights or the god-damned pulse rifle are the most broken thing from any game in the entire history of gaming. Tau were trash before the riptide, and they would still be trash without it.

Martel732 wrote:
They are also overpowered because MCs are overpowered in general. The Ritpides just happens to be a long range MC, which makes it several fold harder to kill.

Man, I must have missed all those Carnifexes ripping up the competitive meta.

No, MCs are not over powered. Their base rules are fine. Some MCs are very very good for their point costs, but that's them and not the fact they're MCs.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
They are also overpowered because MCs are overpowered in general. The Ritpides just happens to be a long range MC, which makes it several fold harder to kill.

Man, I must have missed all those Carnifexes ripping up the competitive meta.

No, MCs are not over powered. Their base rules are fine. Some MCs are very very good for their point costs, but that's them and not the fact they're MCs.

Mediocre MC's DO exist. As a whole though, MC's get a ton of bonuses that some of them shouldn't have. All of them having ap2 melee and a backup land raider-wrecker/character killer ap2 melee attack by default, for example. High numbers of wounds with high toughness and generally good saves and no penalty whatsoever for taking damage until the last wound comes off. Even a super heavy has a random chance of losing extra "wounds" from single shots.

If they had made a tide an AV 14 all-around walker with special jump pack rules, it would still be good, and definitely underpriced compared to monoliths and land raiders, but I would fear them less. T6 2+/5++ 5w is just absolutely intense to try and get through. That's like primarch levels of defense right there. And if it WERE a vehicle, a single pen would knock it out for a round, at the very least, or possibly blow off the IA and neuter it.

I'd be OK with that if vehicles weren't so fragile. They haven't yet figured out the sweet spot for vehicles yet.

Alcibiades wrote:
The worst thing is that the Riptide breaks with the Tau's whole fish theme. This inconsistency cannot stand, I say! Down with tidal phenomena naming conventions, up with vehicles named after fish!

This is by far the most useful addition to this (useless) thread. You got exalted for that.

Here's the deal:

If you're not a tournament player, that's fine. There's no "right" way to play the game. But, if that's your milieu, just agree not to play each other with things you collectively deem "OP." Isn't the whole point of playing friendly games to keep it friendly? If I showed up to my local FLGS with a list and someone's face turned sour reading it, I'd just bring something else. The point is to have fun...isn't it? (Personally I think the point is to have fun at tournaments too; but you have to like the idea of getting your butt kicked sometimes to get better)

What I don't understand about this whole sentiment about Riptides (or Knights, or Flyrants or entire armies!) is that if you don't play in tournaments, you can choose your opponents!

Complaining is pointless. Making "OP" units is actually great for GW's business model. Some players are attracted to them for the rules, and then others are forced to compensate by either ALSO buying one or buying an equivalent unit to respond in kind.

It will never change. Either adapt and overcome, or find some opponents who share your 40k worldview.

 The Shrike wrote:

Alcibiades wrote:
The worst thing is that the Riptide breaks with the Tau's whole fish theme. This inconsistency cannot stand, I say! Down with tidal phenomena naming conventions, up with vehicles named after fish!

This is by far the most useful addition to this (useless) thread. You got exalted for that.

Here's the deal:

If you're not a tournament player, that's fine. There's no "right" way to play the game. But, if that's your milieu, just agree not to play each other with things you collectively deem "OP." Isn't the whole point of playing friendly games to keep it friendly? If I showed up to my local FLGS with a list and someone's face turned sour reading it, I'd just bring something else. The point is to have fun...isn't it? (Personally I think the point is to have fun at tournaments too; but you have to like the idea of getting your butt kicked sometimes to get better)

What I don't understand about this whole sentiment about Riptides (or Knights, or Flyrants or entire armies!) is that if you don't play in tournaments, you can choose your opponents!

Complaining is pointless. Making "OP" units is actually great for GW's business model. Some players are attracted to them for the rules, and then others are forced to compensate by either ALSO buying one or buying an equivalent unit to respond in kind.

It will never change. Either adapt and overcome, or find some opponents who share your 40k worldview.

I suppose the heart of the issue is twofold. One of my concerns is that my opponents don't seem to like playing against my army. Again, I don't think my lists are terribly cheesy and I rarely play a straight gunline, but people just don't have fun when crisis suits are raining down on their backfield and fire warriors are firing 30+ S5 shots at BS5 with ignores cover. It's not that there aren't ways to counter it, it just seems to frustrate people rather than give them a fun challenge. So my question for people that feel that way is, why? Why is a green tide of a hundred fearless, FnP Boyz bubble-wrapping a bunch of klaw nobz that can run and charge on the same turn a jolly good game and Tau anything seems to be a chore. How can I make a list that would be fun AND challenging to play against.

As for the riptide, I guess the question is a) am I going to get raged at for using it in a pick-up game, and b) when I play league games/mini-tournaments is it still going to be competitive against all the other stuff that people can bring. I've been playing orks mostly the last year or so, and I'd like to bring my Tau back out for a change of pace, but the meta's shifted in the meantime in ways that seem not terribly kind to the servants of the greater good in general and the riptide in particular. My riptide has been a bit of a disappointment relative to what I'd hoped he'd do, so I'm wondering if building a list around the broadside/riptide combo is still as much of an auto-win/auto-get-stabbed-in-the-parking-lot-afterwards as it once was.

Seriously, mobile tau is the answer to all that. The problem is that tau are incentivized away from that, because of the cost of the devilfish.

Their base rules might be fine, but their point values, in general, are NOT fine.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

office_waaagh wrote:
Re: the riptide, let me ask this question. You show up to a pick-up game. Your opponent deploys his army. Would you rather see him put down on the table: a riptide, a flyrant with devourers, an imperial knight, or a dreadknight? How about at a tournament?

There's a lot of hate for the ignores cover ability, but IG have an ignores cover order that I don't often hear people complain about. And they can issue orders from out of sight, while markerlights at least have to make themselves vulnerable in order to work.

I'll fight the dreadknight over any of those others all day every day.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sidstyler wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
I might have a different view on this, because I play with mostly city boards. It seems everybody else in existence fights on flat plains with the occasional tree.

Pretty much, yeah. Flat green tables with felt "terrain" is how the vast majority of 40k games are played, which is why from 5th onward people have been bitching harder and harder about how powerful shooting is and subsequently how OP Tau are.

And you can't just tell people to play with more terrain, they either flat out tell you "No" or give you a thousand excuses as to why their groups won't "let" them or they otherwise just can't. No, the only solution to the problem is either nerfing Tau so hard that the army is literally unplayable on anything but a flat table with no terrain, or just going the "easy" route and removing them from the game entirely, because 1) feth people who like stuff I don't like and 2) everyone has just plain given up on GW knowing how or even wanting to re-balance the game.

Hilariously though they keep buying more Space Marines and sending GW the message that they're doing everything right, despite all the bitching and moaning they do online which is falling on deaf ears.

Anyway, I think it's pretty telling that pretty much every single Tau discussion focuses almost solely on the riptide. It's pretty obvious to me where the problem lies, so I'm not sure why people are still pretending that JSJ'ing crisis suits and pathfinders with markerlights or the god-damned pulse rifle are the most broken thing from any game in the entire history of gaming. Tau were trash before the riptide, and they would still be trash without it.

They would still have S7 spam, which ALSO kills marine armies like they are going out of style. Or really anything that's not a 2+ save MC or AV 14.

I have never lost a game against tau with my spacewolves, not once. Drop pod full of blood claws with a flamer and a rune priest using tempestus with the helm of durfast. Sky claws, swift claws, and thunder wolves rushing upfield, infiltrating wolf scouts in a razorback with twinlinked heavy bolters. The gun line doesn't hold, period. Blood claws main failing is lack of ws4, they hit almost all tau units on 3s, then wound on the same. Hitting someone with ignores cover, twinlinked Tesla cannons in the psychic phase puts out a world of hurt. And the heavy bolters just chew through fire warriors. Hit units behind other units and eliminate the supporting fire option altogether.

To answer the op's query, they are far from overpowered, and can be a lot of fun. Just remember to not try to beat them at shooting, beat them at everything else!

SW are usually a great match up for Tau, because they completely turn off their chapter tactic. High quality Tau lists will eat those infiltrators. If heavy bolters were any kind of a solution for anything, people would actually use them.

A properly built wolfstar is very difficult for Tau to beat. If you can manage to get invisibility, it's even better. Either way, you force the Tau player to play to the objectives. And that's if they're a mobile army with reserves drop in behind the star. If it's a gunline, they're cooked.

As for BA, you have the best Stormraven variant. In fact, they're perfect for killing Riptides. In addition, they can carry things you can kick off the ramp to charge on subsequent turns. Even if they never make it, they force the Tau player to shoot at them while your backfield assault squads in rhinos take objectives.

I'm sick of this thread. Tau had barely above 50 percent win shares at LVO and NOVA. I can't speak for Adepticon, I haven't seen the numbers but I highly suspect it's the same. They are a middling army people.

Find something else to complain about or get better at the game.

The Riptide is NOT overpowered in any way shape or form, the only thing that needs to be changed is the cost of the Ion Accelerator, increase its points cost. Other then that there is nothing wrong if it. This is from experience playing both with it AND against it. Also to everyone complaining about the JSJ and markerlights also need to cool their jets, almost every army has the ability to ignore rules like that in some way its not solely the Tau. Markerlights though good are not hard to kill (a T3 or T4 model with only a 4+ or 5+ save) and the JSJ is something that makes the Tau unique. Overall Tau hate and Riptide hate is completely overdone and exaggerated to ridiculous levels more often then not.

Also yes it is very possible to build a competitive Tau list without Riptides, the best Tau player at my FLGS refuses to take a Riptide because he feels they are garbage compared to other things in the army and has done very well without them. He runs a Fish of Fury style list with lots of Devilfish, Piranhas and Skyrays.

 The Shrike wrote:
A properly built wolfstar is very difficult for Tau to beat. If you can manage to get invisibility, it's even better. Either way, you force the Tau player to play to the objectives. And that's if they're a mobile army with reserves drop in behind the star. If it's a gunline, they're cooked.

As for BA, you have the best Stormraven variant. In fact, they're perfect for killing Riptides. In addition, they can carry things you can kick off the ramp to charge on subsequent turns. Even if they never make it, they force the Tau player to shoot at them while your backfield assault squads in rhinos take objectives.

I'm sick of this thread. Tau had barely above 50 percent win shares at LVO and NOVA. I can't speak for Adepticon, I haven't seen the numbers but I highly suspect it's the same. They are a middling army people.

Find something else to complain about or get better at the game.

Stormravens are terrible against Riptides. What are you talking about? Overcosted firepower is not a solution. Also, your army gets blasted apart while you wait for the stupid things to arrive from reserves.

Martel732 wrote:
Stormravens are terrible against Riptides. What are you talking about? Overcosted firepower is not a solution. Also, your army gets blasted apart while you wait for the stupid things to arrive from reserves.

S8 AP2 Missiles and being armor 12 all around allow you to damage a Riptide pretty well and make it hard for it to take you out.

 gmaleron wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Stormravens are terrible against Riptides. What are you talking about? Overcosted firepower is not a solution. Also, your army gets blasted apart while you wait for the stupid things to arrive from reserves.

S8 AP2 Missiles and being armor 12 all around allow you to damage a Riptide pretty well and make it hard for it to take you out.

You need many more AP 2 shots than the Stormraven can generate to engage a Riptide effectively.

Its actually not a bad investment at all especially if it only makes up part of your army, and if your army is getting blasted apart maybe change up your tactics? No offense man in our past debates regarding it you clearly wont be okay with the Riptide until it is nerfed into the ground so badly that your army could walk all over it it seems....

 gmaleron wrote:
Its actually not a bad investment at all especially if it only makes up part of your army, and if your army is getting blasted apart maybe change up your tactics? No offense man in our past debates regarding it you clearly wont be okay with the Riptide until it is nerfed into the ground so badly that your army could walk all over it it seems....

No, I just want it costed appropriately for its firepower and durability. Durability that every Tau player seems to play down. The BA, for example, have nothing even close. Not even our Lord of War.

Ah yes, the magic "tactic" argument. Where's the tactics against 60" pie plates of doom on a platform that takes dozens of AP 2 shots to bring down? I can space my models and pray they roll bad. Some tactic.

The Dreadknight is a damn joke compared to the Riptide. It often shunts itself to it's own doom. Not exactly fearsome. Being close sucks. Being 60" away is good.

Martel732 wrote:

 gmaleron wrote:
Its actually not a bad investment at all especially if it only makes up part of your army, and if your army is getting blasted apart maybe change up your tactics? No offense man in our past debates regarding it you clearly wont be okay with the Riptide until it is nerfed into the ground so badly that your army could walk all over it it seems....

No, I just want it costed appropriately for its firepower and durability. Durability that every Tau player seems to play down. The BA, for example, have nothing even close. Not even our Lord of War.

Ah yes, the magic "tactic" argument. Where's the tactics against 60" pie plates of doom on a platform that takes dozens of AP 2 shots to bring down? I can space my models and pray they roll bad. Some tactic.

Drop Pods? BA have access to a very powerful Drop Pod army and again you bring this up. You must play on the largest tables in exsitence because for some reason you never are in range of a Riptide. Looking at the base Riptide you tell me what makes it undercosted because when compared to other MC's especially the Dreadkinght it is PERFECTLY costed and unlike the Dreadknight it cant hurt itself 1/3 of the time. And again that is where tactics come in with the Dreadknight, generally you run them in pairs and jump them both on one flank and decimate that flank. If you are jumping your Dreadknight into positions where it will get obliterated with shooting the following turn then that is poor tactical decision making.

Drop pods again? Drop pods can not be used in a TAC environment because there a large number of lists where drop pods are pure suicide.

Correction: I'm within range of them with lascannons. Do you know how many lascannons it takes to kill a Riptide? It's insane.

Two dreadknights shooting can't decimate my flanks in one turn. Then they die. But five rounds of Riptide shooting sure can wreck an entire list. I don't give GK players a choice. The shunt into kill zones or shunt too far away to hurt me. Either way, they are eating a crap ton of grav and plasma that the Riptide never has to worry about.

As a BA player, I can tell you first hand how much it SUCKS to have to come to your opponent in this game.