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Doesn't imp guard have access to a metric butt ton of las cannons?
those things make riptides cry.

Or heck take a bunch of av 14 walls and make your Tau opponent really sad

Zoans and DoM. Make him take those leadership checks with Physic Shriek. He will fail some.

Although in a game recently I made a riptide insta pop himself thanks to enfeeble and hallucination. That works wonders but wouldn't count on it.

Easy -
Tie him up in assault.

You dont have to kill him, just keep him busy.

The riptide, like most tau, is just terrible in CC...sure he is a mc...but with his WS and IN, he will kill maybe two guys a turn.

A penal legion or conscripts are what...80 points?

If that is not your style, get snipers.

Or if he is foolish enough to buy the drones....hit him with a pskyer battle squad and weaken resolve..then kill a drone. He runs off the board.

This game is not about what you can kill - it is about what you can render ineffective at critical points in the game.

I'd just like to add that getting into assault can be hard. Charging into a proper Tau army should be like sticking your hand in a wood chipper (interceptor for when you deep strike, then a turn of shooting, then the entire army overwatching into you when you charge).

You have to decide whether getting in their face is really worth it. most Tau armies that aren't a Farsight bomb really suffer hard from lack of offensive power. Tau can't really go out and take objectives. It gets to a point where you have to decide just how many forces you're willing to feed into the shredder. Maybe just hiding out of sight is the best option, then jumping onto the objective turn 5.

Nah, trying to hide in cover and objective jump on turn 5 will lose you games. (tau ignore cover quite well, and Los is easy to establish for something which can move like a riptide) Assault is the way to go, and Tau being slightly better at overwatch than most armies does very little to change that.

The only way I could see your proposed strategy being viable would be with something like nightscythes + minimum squads of warriors. (or a similar minimally-point-invested yet very mobile troop choice.)

Also, tau armies are less mobile than ever now - with the loss of their fast tank upgrades, and all the rules encouraging the units to stay close to one another.

This means they are less reactive, and more susciptble to blasts than ever before - something many guard lists have a lot of access to - from moarters to battle cannon blasts.

Also, if indeed this individual is focused only on winning, it is easy to dupe, misdirect or manuver them to you liking - a good solid fient, or threat to outflank can manuver them where you want. Of course, these are more advanced manuvers.

The riptide is indeed a powerful unit - but three of them is a lot of points sunk into non scoring models - of which the tau's are just flimsly (pathfinders are guardsman flimsy - and you should have a good idea of how easily those die).

best of luck.