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You the man, Boomwolf! Say it how it is!

Well said Boomwolf I totally agree that the Riptide and Tau hate overall is completely overblown and unnecessary most of the time. I'm also quite tired of hearing people complain about a unit that apparently by itself will wipe out entire armies, never is in range of enemy guns and is just invincible! I wouldn't get so annoyed by it except when they ignore all of the perks their particular book gets, and this especially goes for Imperial armies who have the best advantage in the game with being battle brothers with every other single Imperial Army out there for the most part. Is the Riptide durable? You bet I hope it's durable especially if I'm paying anywhere between 200 to 240 points for one. Is it the invincible behemoth several players make it out to be? Not even close and I apologize to the OP because it seems that no matter what Tau thread comes up it always turns into Riptide hate, especially somebody to the people who despite me another player stating several tactics to do with them choose to ignore it and complain especially the people who despite me another players stating several tactics to deal with them choose to ignore them and complain.

Trying to get this thread back on topic one of the nastiest lists ive seen is a mechanized Tau army. The best Tau player I've seen never runs Riptides due to the fact that he feels that there a point sink and has had a lot of success not utilizing the Gunline or Riptide spam. Not only is this list durable because you can give the entire army a 3+ jink save but you also have lots of smart missiles to handle infantry, EMP grenade Fire Warriors to deal with vehicles along with a few deep striking Crisis Suit teams, Sky Rays for marker light and anti vehicle / air support and squadrons of piranhas to lay down lots of fire.

". I'm also quite tired of hearing people complain about a unit that apparently by itself will wipe out entire armies, never is in range of enemy guns and is just invincible"

Sorry. Not really.

" if I'm paying anywhere between 200 to 240 points for one."

Go look at the gak 200-240 buys me in the BA codex.

I don't think you tactics mathematically work out. That's why I don't stop complaining.

" it seems that no matter what Tau thread comes up it always turns into Riptide hate"

The Riptide is in the SUBJECT of the thread! If OP didn't want to hear about the Riptide, maybe they shouldn't have asked about the Riptide.

"I won't even get started on how pathetic half the tables people play on are, and how absurdly in favor of gunlines they are, but when you use less than half the recommended terrain as per rulebook, do not wonder why things get absurd with gunlines! "

This recommendation no longer exists.

Martel732 wrote:


"I won't even get started on how pathetic half the tables people play on are, and how absurdly in favor of gunlines they are, but when you use less than half the recommended terrain as per rulebook, do not wonder why things get absurd with gunlines! "

This recommendation no longer exists.

Fine, I'll give you that they no longer have a NUMBERICAL terrain reccomendation, but they DO state that "the more scenery you can place on the battlefield, the better the game will be." this means more than a single ruin in the middle and two little bushes that some people play with (and than complain about lack of LOS blocking, as if its not up to them)

There are entire sections about forests, water bodies, ruins, craters, buildings and even vertical movement, does ANYONE look at them and says "well, this is not actually part of the game"
The rulebook obliviously EXPECTS at least SOME of these to be there,


And do you really need to have everything spelled out to you? look at any of the "in-game" pictures scattered across the books, these tables are FLOWING with terrain.

The table is not defined as a 6x4 either, but everyone seems to take THAT for granted. (seriously, look it up. there is no defined overall size, just defined distance between deploymet zones. the side is defined as "any size from 2' by 2' upwards", its not even has to be rectangular, the rulebook itself says so.)

If people can make the 6x4 assumption on their own without people throwing fits (many armies will enjoy bigger, many will enjoy smaller.), they should be able to get the "use freaking terrain" assumption properly.

Martel732 wrote:


" if I'm paying anywhere between 200 to 240 points for one."

Go look at the gak 200-240 buys me in the BA codex.

Even assuming BA codex is complete garbage (and the fact the LVO 2th place had a flesh tearers strike force in his army, I doubt it) it does not mean that by definition tau are getting too much, but that BA are getting too little.

Though in reality, the BA are pretty damn good because they got a gakload of formations that allows you crazy creations, some saving you hundreds of points of free equipment, other gives you insane rules and many FOC charts each with his ower relics, advantages and selections-giving you tons of choice.
BA are doing fine for themselves and can easily build powerful armies.
And when in doubt-they are BB with HALF THE ARMIES IN THE GAME.

Wow calm down dude. I'd respond, but you seem to be raving like a lunatic instead of here on the thread for any kind of real discussion, (you also seem like it would be pointless to talk to you, you've made your mind into a closed steel box on the issue,) so I think I'm just gonna hit that little ignore button instead.

Please keep it polite in here, or else the thread will have to be locked... thanks.

niv-mizzet wrote:
Wow calm down dude. I'd respond, but you seem to be raving like a lunatic instead of here on the thread for any kind of real discussion, (you also seem like it would be pointless to talk to you, you've made your mind into a closed steel box on the issue,) so I think I'm just gonna hit that little ignore button instead.

Who are you talking about? Is it Martel?

Probably me. The Tau haters are uncomfortable with facts.

Yeah probably. I don't get why people hate Tau so much though and how it's okay for some people to go off on rants (Martel) but not Tau players.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@ niv+-mizzet, why are you accusing BoomWolf of being closed minded when you're not willing to listen to people's explanations of how the Riptide isn't as OP as most claim it to be?

SGTPozy wrote:
Yeah probably. I don't get why people hate Tau so much though and how it's okay for some people to go off on rants (Martel) but not Tau players.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@ niv+-mizzet, why are you accusing BoomWolf of being closed minded when you're not willing to listen to people's explanations of how the Riptide isn't as OP as most claim it to be?

The riptide in and of itself isn't super broken. It's quite strong, but there's nothing innately wrong with simply having units which are strong.

The problem comes into play when you factor the riptide into the whole of a Tau list. It starts becoming silly when you factor in how easily you can up the Tide's BS and remove cover from the enemy, making it super lethal. JSJ is also infuriating for most people because it makes striking back against an already durable model all the more difficult.

Tau are a great idea in theory. An army of fairly decent / dangerous shooty units which are held back by their mid-range BS and how easily they fold in CC. They're beefed up by the coordinated application of marker lights, allowing you to flag priority targets and apply overwhelming force to a couple of things that need to die each turn. However this starts to fall apart in practice due to how easily they can mitigate these strengths, how quite a few armies live-and-die by cover, as well as the sheer stopping power of quite a few of their unbuffed guns (combination of blasts, low AP, high strength, huge range).

To be honest many armies can do something like that, for example Orks:
Green Tide with a Painboy and Lucky Still Mega Boss is a problem together as the Warboss can tank saves, allowing 100 boys to charge you.

Then for IoM:
Tiggy, Draigo and Grav Centurions.

Etc.

Back on topic.

Imagine it's back in the days of 5th/ early 6th pre-tau

I walk into a tournament and, between rounds, pitch an idea for a new unit for a tau fan dex.

"Ok, so to start off, I want this thing to be tougher than a hive tyrant with extended carapace, and with an actual invuln save...so a tyrant in terminator armor. Oh, and with an extra wound. I want him to be able to hit hard enough to kill characters and smash vehicles and ignore saves, but not be melee focused. I want him to not care about terrain at all when moving, and be really quick, like more movement than a jump pack. And I want to be able to still shoot at that speed, and have part of the movement after shooting. I want him to be able to shoot anywhere on the board with an awesome ap2 gun that insta kills most models with a large blast, but I don't like this new "snapfire-can't fire blasts" thing, so I want an alternate mode where it fires a few direct shots instead. And he also needs a second weapon (twin-linked, of course) and a whole slew of options so you can kit him out in a million different ways. Oh, and I also want him to have these cool "emergency abilities" where he can move really fast, or have an awesome invuln save, or fire a better version of his main gun, or shoot his other gun multiple times, with the downside of maybe taking a wound on the emergency mode, and I want all this in an army that has good shooting synergy so he can easily get higher BS and ignores cover, and I want him to be costed really competitively, and be a normal unit for normal size games so you can take multiples."

I bet I woulda been laughed out of the room.

This seriously sounds like a unit from an 8 year old's (completely unbalanced) fan dex. If someone explained the IA tide to me before it came out, and asked me to point-price it, I'd put it at just shy of 300 before adding options, and tell them maybe they should just make the jump to super-heavy and call it an apoc unit instead.

I don't even see how people can defend it being less than the cost of a land raider or wraithknight. My only hope is that the rumored tau codex from later this year speeds right along, and has someone working on it that has more sense than the guy who made this monstrosity.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

SGTPozy wrote:
Yeah probably. I don't get why people hate Tau so much though and how it's okay for some people to go off on rants (Martel) but not Tau players.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@ niv+-mizzet, why are you accusing BoomWolf of being closed minded when you're not willing to listen to people's explanations of how the Riptide isn't as OP as most claim it to be?

I'm perfectly willing to listen. I've been listening for two years now, and seeing it in action for two years. What I have heard from MOST of my listening, and seen from the table itself, is absolutely not jiving with what you or that guy said. I only stopped listening to him because he ceased to be civil.

And I never said Martel doesn't go on rants. I also cease listening to him at times when the argument goes circular, but I've never had a problem with feeling outright insulted from his rant.

 Frozocrone wrote:
Tau break most of the rules in the game.

'Cover save? Oh that's cute.'
'But you have no weapons! Yeah so this unit now has all these special rules.'
'I'll charge! Overwatch. Ok! And this unit. What? And this one. Huh?!'

Not limited to these things, but you get the jist. Just not really fun to play against.

That said, there may be a bit of bias in my opinion. I play DE, Nids and now Orks, so cover is kind of a important thing for me

One of the dirtiest tactics they have that is totally legit is buffmander and the missile sides behind an aegis. They go to ground and get the 2+ cover save and snap fire, meanwhile 2 units of marker drones brings them back up to full Bs like nothing happened. Drives people nuts.

Martel732 wrote:
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.

Drop Pods work in a TAC enviroment just fine, as evidenced by the large volume of Drop Podding lists in practically every big tournament. BA might not be the strongest Codex around as mono, but who plays IoM without allies and combinations in a competitive enviroment anyway.

I just played a Blood Angels list with 2 Sicarans, Void Shield Generator and a Whirlwind Scorpius, cheap assault squad Melta drop pods, and a command squad + Mephiston + Chaplain and beat a Tau player with 2 riptides, we played a standard 5 objective mission with Dawn of War deployment.

Martel732 wrote:
Okay. But I'd much rather face pods than Riptides. And I can't image what these pod lists are doing vs Orks, Nids, or Demons. Drop in and get their faces torn off?

Try a Furioso with a Heavy Flamer + Frag Cannon sometime. It's not even unlikely to delete 30 Boyz/Gaunts the turn you arrive depending on your opponents coherency. Fire the Heavy Flamer first. Just try it sometime.

My problem with the Riptide is that it is better in everyway than TMCs. Hear me out on this, I feel like TMC's are a little overpriced as they are but are at an appropriate level of durability. T6 4W 3+ is as hardy as I want a MC to be without it being something special and costing about as much to reflect that. The Riptide is more durable than any TMC on top of dealing more damage than any of them. Same goes for Dreadknights and Wraith Knights. Even Chaos Daemon MCs aren't as bad on their own until the start pulling out some rather unbalanced psychic powers and artifacts.

2+ with a 5++ should be restricted to HQ MCs like the Hive Tyrant and even a Hive Tyrant CAN NOT get to that level. I am more okay with the Wraith Knight being T8 3+ because he can not get an invulnerable without sacrificing damage. The only thing I do not like about the Wraith Knight is how fast the damn thing is. These three MCs are just so much better than the other MCs in the game and that is why they are seen as OP, the Riptide gets the most hate because let's face it, Tau are completely FOTM and a lot of people picked them up just as they became extremely powerful while claiming that they always loved the Tau...Yeah, sure. I know some people really do love Tau and that is fine, the Tau army is a good army even WITHOUT the Riptide though.

The short of the long is, if I am paying close to the same points for a Riptide as I am for many of the TMC then they should be roughly the same. They are most certainly not even in the same league as one another. The Riptide, Dreadknight, and Wraith Knight are too good in my eyes and need to be brought down a little. Constant escalation in power hasn't done this game any favors and really needs to be reigned in.

I think that the Riptide was designed purely by comparisons to Crisis! Stealth and Broadside suits.

Its S and T:
A stealth suit is S4 T3
A Crisis suit is S5 T4
So a Riptide should really be S6 T5 OR S7 T6.
I believe that it should really be S7 T6 to keep with the pattern as Broadsides should really be S6 T5 due to how big it is compared to Crisis Suits.

Its A:
A stealth suit has 1A
A Crisis suit has 2A
A Riptide has 3A
No problems here.

Its Armour Save:
It has a 2+ since it is supposed to be a monster rather than an efficient and mass producable suit, so they'd use Broadside materials.
No problem here.

Its Invulnerable Save:
I don't believe that it should be a 5++ as why would the Tau create a worse version of the shield generator for the Riptide to use?
This makes no sense; it should either come base with no invulnerable save and have to buy one or it should be a 4++.

Its IA:
An ion rifle is ap4
An ion cannon is ap3
An ion accelerator is ap2
No problem here (and all three can overcharge too, so still no problem).

Its Nova Reactor:

The 3++:
This makes sense since it is experimental so it likely uses the same shield as Shadowsun's prototype shield drone which is a 3++.

The Nova Charge:
It uses the energy to improve the gun so no problem here.

Ripple Fire:
The energy goes to the secondary gun so no problem here.

4D6 thrust:
The energy goes into the jet pack so no problem here.

Having a Jet Pack:
All of the other suits (except Broadsides) have one so it makes sense.


Have I missed anything? These points show that it does largely make sense that the Riptide is how it is.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Arbiter_Shade, I think that most people are fine with the Riptide being nerfed so long as the other two do too, but quite often people dismiss the Dreaknight claiming that it isn't as bad (even though the reason is most likely that it is IoM so there's a different standard for IoM players and Xenos) as the other two.

There's data on this. Tau, including a lot of Riptides I'm sure, barely win 50% of their games on the tournament circuit, and even including allies aren't making it into top 10s.

It's a mediocre army and the Riptide is nothing special; even in multiples.

The IoM people can complain all they want. You're just not taking the right units if you want to compete. Now, if you want live by rule #1, believe me, I salute you. But you don't get to complain that your list with 3 rhinos, 2 predators, 2 dreadnoughts, devastators and a librarian gets trolled off the table by a triptide list. Your list sucks, not your army.

niv-mizzet wrote:
Back on topic.

Imagine it's back in the days of 5th/ early 6th pre-tau

I walk into a tournament and, between rounds, pitch an idea for a new unit for a tau fan dex.

"Ok, so to start off, I want this thing to be tougher than a hive tyrant with extended carapace, and with an actual invuln save...so a tyrant in terminator armor. Oh, and with an extra wound. I want him to be able to hit hard enough to kill characters and smash vehicles and ignore saves, but not be melee focused. I want him to not care about terrain at all when moving, and be really quick, like more movement than a jump pack. And I want to be able to still shoot at that speed, and have part of the movement after shooting. I want him to be able to shoot anywhere on the board with an awesome ap2 gun that insta kills most models with a large blast, but I don't like this new "snapfire-can't fire blasts" thing, so I want an alternate mode where it fires a few direct shots instead. And he also needs a second weapon (twin-linked, of course) and a whole slew of options so you can kit him out in a million different ways. Oh, and I also want him to have these cool "emergency abilities" where he can move really fast, or have an awesome invuln save, or fire a better version of his main gun, or shoot his other gun multiple times, with the downside of maybe taking a wound on the emergency mode, and I want all this in an army that has good shooting synergy so he can easily get higher BS and ignores cover, and I want him to be costed really competitively, and be a normal unit for normal size games so you can take multiples."

I bet I woulda been laughed out of the room.

This seriously sounds like a unit from an 8 year old's (completely unbalanced) fan dex. If someone explained the IA tide to me before it came out, and asked me to point-price it, I'd put it at just shy of 300 before adding options, and tell them maybe they should just make the jump to super-heavy and call it an apoc unit instead.

I don't even see how people can defend it being less than the cost of a land raider or wraithknight. My only hope is that the rumored tau codex from later this year speeds right along, and has someone working on it that has more sense than the guy who made this monstrosity.

You'd price a riptide at 300 points?
Congrats, you just made a unit completely unplayable. even then when the price for everything was higher. (I do believe every single unit in the game got price dropped from that age, or got heavy buffs.)
Not to mention that in your description of the riptide you comfortably forgot he actually hurts himself quite often (and when he does-no emergency ability), can fail to shoot at all when he wants to blast, has the worst CC abilities in the game for an MC, got medicore LD with no improving rules, unlike any other "superunit" in the game, his movement is not completely predictable, etc, etc.

Yea, riptides sure are absurd when you neglect every single issue they has and only focus on their advantages. too bad reality does not work this way.
Heck, the Ld issue alone is a killer. how often do you hear on many units that people say "not fearless/ATSKNF=useless"? quite often. its not true, but for some reason the people who think that seem to forget it when it comes to riptides.

Math proved multiple times, a riptide's firepower compared to cost is negligible when he is not supported, and most armies can match it in their shooting, even classic assault armies. without the NOVA powers or the ability to be supported its not even a very good unit, let alone OP.

You think it should be an apoc unit? have you missed the train that there are NO apoc units any more?
Or the fact the riptide is dwarfed in both size and power compared to ANY superheavy?
Heck, you want to put the riptide in the same table with 10" blast throwers, AoE D attacks and helfire templates? you seriusly fail to see the gap in strength?



You don't see how people can defend it compared to wraithknight or land raiders?
How about the fact most weapons in the game cant even hurt land raiders? lets show you how.

Wraithknights cost more than riptides, but are among the strongest CC units in the game, on top of shooting powers that rival the riptide's, as are his mobility and durability. unlike the riptide he dose not need to keep distance, because when you get to CC, he's just getting even more lethal. Also, fearless with ld10, a riptide is not. ld attacks are some of the best anti-MC weapons in the game, and eldar has even more support than tau has because of cheap and powerful psykers. riptides might have few weaknesses and many synergies, wraithknights have no weaknesses beyond cost, and even more synergies.

Land raiders are a transport that is completely immune to most weapons in the game. anything under S8 cant even scratch it, and even S10 is rather useless without any special anti-tank rules.
Sure it can be "1 shotted", but the odds are low, and it requires hard work to pull off, and realistically can only be done by weapons that require you to get super-close.
And given that it's main purpose is a transport, and he still packs a punch that is worthy of a main battle tank, I'd say they are doing well.
But that's besides the point, becase nobody compares riptides to land raiders-its silly given the fact there are ZERO lines of semblance between the two.


Naturally though, you won't read any of it as you chose to ignore me, but ho well. that's the only way you can "win' this discussion anyhow. I've been through it dozens of times and it ended the same every time-the other guy realizing his "points" are not actually anchored with reality and either fading away, shifting to my stance or claiming I never understood him to begin with and he was not complaining of riptides at all and only dislikes the ion accelerator (who, if you even bothered reading, I have already noted as the source of the riptide issue, and also said how to fix it with a sentence: "there is no overcharge profile for the ion accelerator, only normal and NOVA.")

It's not necessarily what equipment/rules go into the Riptide- though such things do play a very large part (60" range on T6/2+/5W is very difficult to kill).

A substantial amount of it comes from how much Riptides cost; which is to say, they cost too little.

Arguments about the base price of the Dreadknight end up being empty- in order to get comparable mobility, you must spend points. In order to improve it in combat, you must spend points. In order to actually give it a gun, you must spend points.

A Riptide comes with two guns- one twin-linked- standard. It can take a 5 point upgrade for its primary weapon to get the 60" range deathmachine that it is most commonly deployed with.

Synergy-wise, the Riptide synergizes incredibly well with the Tau army- the only difference, realistically, between "Riptide synergy" and "Dreadknight synergy" is which way the synergy goes; a Riptide gains benefit from the synergy it gets from the rest of the list, while a DK gives benefit.

It's also worth noting that, from a high-level view, it's actually the case that a Riptide gets more benefit than a DK gives to their respective armies. GKs can already get lots of Warp Charge into a list; Tau get to have BS bonuses and Ignores Cover, which are quite frankly more powerful for a shooting focused army.

A lot of people don't necessarily realize that Grey Knights are, as a tabletop army, designed as mid-range shooting that's pretty prickly against assault units, with assault elements in support.

The Tau are designed as a mobile shooting army with primarily shooting oriented support. Again, at a high-level view, the Tau are much more synergistic- innately, in fact- than most armies are at all!

It may make fluff sense. (Although, being experimental, shouldn't there only be like...one or two prototypes? Similar to shadowsun's awesome shield drones?)
But I can't see it making game sense. I just recently had to explain how the thing worked to a new guy that wanted to play tau. Most of the rest of the army was easy to go over since we had done a "basics" practice game already. The riptide I had to sit him down and give a damn presentation for that one unit!

But I'm less worried about fluff on the table (I play marines, if I worried about fluff on the table, I'd go insane anytime a marine died to one lasgun shot,) and more worried about crunch. All those things combined, to me, should cost waaay above 185. That's what it comes down to.

As another example, for most of my troops, I would prefer they get hit by a str D large blast rather than an IA blast. At least with the D, I know the unit firing it costs a ton of points, and unless he rolls a 6 on the chart, I could still drop to the ground or be in some ruins and save some dudes.

I have literally seen an IA tide go "I can see that guy's foot behind that wall. Direct hit. Squad dies no cover."

I think one major thing that makes tau unfun to play against is that you (the non-tau player) don't get to roll dice. You just hope his rolls suck and then you either get a turn or he tells you your stuff is dead and he wins. The only guys you reliably get to roll dice for are like the one or two invuln save hq's you might have.

Daemons would probably enjoy the game a bit more since they ALWAYS get a save, and I know from personal trial that tau mirror matches can be kind of sweet, but for the rest of the armies, on the tau turn you just sit back and wait for him to tell you how many guys to pick up with no rolls to defend yourself.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 The Shrike wrote:
There's data on this. Tau, including a lot of Riptides I'm sure, barely win 50% of their games on the tournament circuit, and even including allies aren't making it into top 10s.

It's a mediocre army and the Riptide is nothing special; even in multiples.

The IoM people can complain all they want. You're just not taking the right units if you want to compete. Now, if you want live by rule #1, believe me, I salute you. But you don't get to complain that your list with 3 rhinos, 2 predators, 2 dreadnoughts, devastators and a librarian gets trolled off the table by a triptide list. Your list sucks, not your army.

Win %'s without context are meaningless. We have no idea how many of those tau lists lost to other tau lists, for example. It IS a popular army, after all, and every time two tau play each other, they just bring the tau % closer to 50 with 1 win and 1 loss. Some of them may have had their primary detachment be smaller than the tau detachment, (for some wl trait or something,) but technically not be a tau army. And yet another variable, how many of them were well-piloted by good generals or were well-made lists? I know several people that like to go to tourneys just to play around and rarely win more than they lose.

Unless you have data that specifically handles those particulars, it's just a general figure and not anything to swear by.

And even the highest %'s at LVO were only in the low 60's, so 50's is pretty good. I know the low armies were in the 30's. That's quite a bit worse.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also you seem to make the claim that it's specifically IoM players that think the tide is broken-good.

I personally know at least one person from every single xeno army including the tau itself that thinks the tide is over the top ridiculous for its cost.

It's just like against alpha strikes (in particular Grey Knights) all you do is let them drop in your deployment zone and destroy loads of your army as they drop, but I don't hear people complaining about Grey Knights being unfun to play against (or at least not as often).

"I have literally seen an IA tide go "I can see that guy's foot behind that wall. Direct hit. Squad dies no cover.""

How? You cannot kill what you cannot see, so he could have only killed that one guy whose foot could be seen... That guy was a cheater; it has nothing to do with being Tau.

Most armies either have deep strikers or fast units that can get close to Tau T1 so how are you not doing anything? This is utter hyperbolation just because you lost a couple games.

I'll say the same about Orks; I once faced a green tide and I found it impossible to kill as I didn't have enough shots, therefore all Ork armies are unfun to play against and all that I was able to do is watch him move his 100+ models 6", then run d6" and then charge 2d6"... How fun that was /sarcasm.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
The Riptide IS ridiculous, but there are loads of equally ridiculous units out there so it isn't alone and therefore should stay how it is.

SGTPozy wrote:
It's just like against alpha strikes (in particular Grey Knights) all you do is let them drop in your deployment zone and destroy loads of your army as they drop, but I don't hear people complaining about Grey Knights being unfun to play against (or at least not as often).

"I have literally seen an IA tide go "I can see that guy's foot behind that wall. Direct hit. Squad dies no cover.""

How? You cannot kill what you cannot see, so he could have only killed that one guy whose foot could be seen... That guy was a cheater; it has nothing to do with being Tau.

Most armies either have deep strikers or fast units that can get close to Tau T1 so how are you not doing anything? This is utter hyperbolation just because you lost a couple games.

I'll say the same about Orks; I once faced a green tide and I found it impossible to kill as I didn't have enough shots, therefore all Ork armies are unfun to play against and all that I was able to do is watch him move his 100+ models 6", then run d6" and then charge 2d6"... How fun that was /sarcasm.



Automatically Appended Next Post:



The Riptide IS ridiculous, but there are loads of equally ridiculous units out there so it isn't alone and therefore should stay how it is.

The foot behind the wall thing is totally legal. The way it works is you can see one guy, you can fire at the squad. Because it's a blast you center it somewhere else. The wounds aren't lost because you can still see one model, so the wound pool exists and models drop like flies until that one guy you have TLOS dies, at which point the wound pool is lost.

The only true thing that needs to be changed about the Riptide is the cost of the ion accelerator, raise it to about 15 to 20 points and call it good. The Riptide is durable but when compared to things such as Imperial Knights, Dread Knights ect. The base Riptide is clearly not under costed.

Yeah the wound pool exists (so let's say 4 guys), but you can only kill what's in LoS so you have 4 chances to kill that one guy.

So no, it's not legal.

"Win %'s without context are meaningless. We have no idea how many of those tau lists lost to other tau lists, for example. It IS a popular army, after all, and every time two tau play each other, they just bring the tau % closer to 50 with 1 win and 1 loss. Some of them may have had their primary detachment be smaller than the tau detachment, (for some wl trait or something,) but technically not be a tau army. And yet another variable, how many of them were well-piloted by good generals or were well-made lists? I know several people that like to go to tourneys just to play around and rarely win more than they lose.

Unless you have data that specifically handles those particulars, it's just a general figure and not anything to swear by.

And even the highest %'s at LVO were only in the low 60's, so 50's is pretty good. I know the low armies were in the 30's. That's quite a bit worse."

Win % without context? "some of these players might have been beaten by other Tau players?" Are you serious? Are all statistics meaningless because we can't know which armies played which others? How large does a tournament have to be for its data to be relevant to you? Your argument is patently absurd.

According to Torrent of Fire, Tau made up 8% of the field at LVO. So there goes your popularity argument. Counting ALL ToF ranked tournaments on ToF, Tau have won <50% of their games since 2013.

We also know they weren't in the top 10 at either LVO or Adepticon, Riptides or no. So that would seem to include Tau players beating each other EL OH EL.

Calm down sir, you're starting to get as rude as the last person I ignored. It's just a forum about toy soldiers. No need to get enraged.

What would I consider a good statistic? If someone ran a large tournament (say lvo size with 200+) where each faction was equally represented in number of players, and a faction was never allowed to play against itself.
It still wouldn't get rid of the player skill variable or the list build variable, but I would consider it a lot closer.

8% when there are close to 20 factions is more than their fair share of players.

Who's actually in top x ranking means very little to me, data-wise. It says a lot more about which army managed to not get bad matchups and were piloted well, not which army is the better book to begin with. I took 3rd in a 30 man 6 round where draigostar, flyrants, super heavies, daemons and taudar were present, and I did it with a pure BA list with two land raiders and no flyers. How? I got really lucky with matchups and game end rolls. 4 of my 5 wins would've been losses if the game had ended sooner OR later than it did. The game-end roll is ridiculously powerful, and gambling on it at the right time can turn a loss into a win. (For reference, 1st place was a taudar with riptide and serpents, who literally had 5 perfect full-points games and one draw to a necron decurion that came in 2nd. They were a full 30 points ahead of me in 3rd with my "barely win" strat getting me half-ish points each game.)

 gmaleron wrote:
The only true thing that needs to be changed about the Riptide is the cost of the ion accelerator, raise it to about 15 to 20 points and call it good. The Riptide is durable but when compared to things such as Imperial Knights, Dread Knights ect. The base Riptide is clearly not under costed.

Nope, nope, nope and a hundrend more nopes.

Nothing is wrong with the COST of the ion accelerator, the error is in the DESIGN. no cost change will fix the obvious flaw of a gun without a weakness without either spinning out of reasonable cost ranges for the platform, or feeling cheap (and at some point levels, it will do both at once, making it both bad to have, and bad to face, being the worst possible outcome)

It needs to drop the overcharge (non-NOVA blast) profile, that way you bring the IA riptides the "I need to NOVA to be effective" problem the HBC is facing, therefor reducing both its durability and its reliability and making it work properly.
That way it has a weakness, you blast is not assured, and it needs to be set up in advance for pieplate interceptions.


Back to the LoS problem-you CANNOT wound what you can't see, on a per-model base. if he only sees the foot of a single dude, no omre than a single dude can die.
A common sight that the tau-hater actually got the rules that make him angry wrong. happens every thread.

niv-mizzet wrote:I'm perfectly willing to listen. I've been listening for two years now, and seeing it in action for two years. What I have heard from MOST of my listening, and seen from the table itself, is absolutely not jiving with what you or that guy said. I only stopped listening to him because he ceased to be civil.

The Shrike offers you accurate, numerical statistics from one of the biggest 40k tournament/circuits/leagues/whatever in the US, run by one of the few committed 40k tracker websites, in a gaming field where statistics are rare ... and you dismiss these stats as substandard, and offer instead your own first hand accounts as your own stance/argument (without data).

I think it needs to be repeated that if the Riptide were as powerful and broken as some of the people here seem to believe, then they would have at least made the top 10/top 8 at the LVO or the Adepticon.

Fourth place at LVO was a Drop Pod army, btw.

2nd at LVO drop-podded some scouts (flesh tearer pods with SoT scouts inside ?_?) if we want to add to the madness.

And first was a flyrant circus backed by lictors and mawlocs of all things.

Third was eldar, and had WS spam, and a lynx

Forth was as mentioned a drop pod army with SW and IG

5th was a calssic deamon summoning army, with an attached inquis because the servo skulls ARE OP.

6th was a brass scorpion follower by some summoners and with helblades air support (practically)

7th was white scars bike spam

8th was GK telegrav centurionstar with attached dreadknights.


What I DO see in this list are many units and factions people are often refering to as "poor", and saying needs to be buffed.
What I'm NOT seeing, is riptides, or tau in general. not even as allies. not even as the edge-of-tau-power that is the firebase support cadre (an abomination that should not exist in my eyes BTW)

I disagree that a flat "win %" is actually USEFUL, due to many variables. If they had a statistic for "Army win percentage without mirror matches," I would find that statistic a lot more useful. (Although there would still be the same old player skill/list quality/dice luck/matchup luck variables.)

Some people seem to believe that if the lvo were literally "redone"- same lists same players, that the results would be the same. I say that they would be different. Draigo star was regaining control of the quarterfinal lvo match against the marines/BA list, until he scattered from a gate, mishapped, and the entire star died on a single roll.

As I've said, I like my findings scientific. "What did happen" and "what would happen more often" are not always the same.

Also, I am not Martel. I think drop pod armies are awesome and quite competitive, but not without their share of weaknesses.