Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Riptides are not fearless, a great cheap way is a nightmare shroud. Granted it has a 18 inch range and it has a LD9 it's still hilarious to make it run off the board and Deathmarks in a NightScythe are brutal. Name the Riptide as your target wound on a 2+. That'll probably kill one.

I've tried the deathmark trick to no avail. Basically as soon as they hop out of their NS or deep strike in they get shot to pieces thanks to EWO from the broadsides and riptides. You really can't do any sneaking up on these guys. And wraiths in cover? Good luck with that - they're bigger than most monstrous creatures. Besides they're already a 3+ invuln and can't go to ground. The real problem will come when you go in for assault and you have to deal with all of that supporting fire :( You could also have the overlord hop out of the barge and try tank shocking a riptide. I play tau, too, and when I first start playing one of my peeps ran two off the board by tank shocking them with a couple of empty rhinos that I had ignored.

Anyway, here's a list I'd run against something like that. Run like hell at the riptides with the wraiths and overlord and ping-ping-ping at either the riptide or (even better) the broadsides...

HQ: Overlord, Warscythe, Mindshackle Scarabs, Sempiternal Weave, Catacomb Command Barge

: Royal Court (4#, 140 pts)
4x Harbinger of Destruction

Troops: 5x Warriors
Troops: 5x Warriors
Troops: 5x Warriors
Troops: 5x Warriors

Fast Attack: 4x Canoptek Wraiths
Fast Attack: 4x Canoptek Wraiths
Fast Attack: 3x Canoptek Wraiths

The above list could work well. Although id replace the destrukteks with a d-lord...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Reasoning behind saying so is that there is no cover saves against a d-lord in combat whereas a riptide behind a ruin reduces destrukteks to 50% efficiency.

 necron99 wrote:
I've tried the deathmark trick to no avail. Basically as soon as they hop out of their NS or deep strike in they get shot to pieces thanks to EWO from the broadsides and riptides. You really can't do any sneaking up on these guys. And wraiths in cover? Good luck with that - they're bigger than most monstrous creatures. Besides they're already a 3+ invuln and can't go to ground. The real problem will come when you go in for assault and you have to deal with all of that supporting fire :( You could also have the overlord hop out of the barge and try tank shocking a riptide. I play tau, too, and when I first start playing one of my peeps ran two off the board by tank shocking them with a couple of empty rhinos that I had ignored.

Anyway, here's a list I'd run against something like that. Run like hell at the riptides with the wraiths and overlord and ping-ping-ping at either the riptide or (even better) the broadsides...

HQ: Overlord, Warscythe, Mindshackle Scarabs, Sempiternal Weave, Catacomb Command Barge

: Royal Court (4#, 140 pts)
4x Harbinger of Destruction

Troops: 5x Warriors
Troops: 5x Warriors
Troops: 5x Warriors
Troops: 5x Warriors

Fast Attack: 4x Canoptek Wraiths
Fast Attack: 4x Canoptek Wraiths
Fast Attack: 3x Canoptek Wraiths

To few models in those Wraith squads, best to make 1 squad of 6 and 1 squad of 5 honestly.

Run some monoliths, use their portal to get units to the Tau at full strength. His riptides have very little chance of destroying them and the str 8 ap 3 pie plates out the monoliths will ruin his gunline.

Maybe not the best suggestion, but 1 wound from a scarab base (6s If I am Correct) and the 2+ armour save is gone forever. Thats a hell of a lot more wounds coming from the ABs.

 believablejeff wrote:
Maybe not the best suggestion, but 1 wound from a scarab base (6s If I am Correct) and the 2+ armour save is gone forever. Thats a hell of a lot more wounds coming from the ABs.

Scarabs would never make it into CQC unless the Riptides outright ignore them...

 Galorian wrote:

 believablejeff wrote:
Maybe not the best suggestion, but 1 wound from a scarab base (6s If I am Correct) and the 2+ armour save is gone forever. Thats a hell of a lot more wounds coming from the ABs.

Scarabs would never make it into CQC unless the Riptides outright ignore them...

I've done it... it's beautiful... but it won't happen often

 Gangrel767 wrote:

 Galorian wrote:

 believablejeff wrote:
Maybe not the best suggestion, but 1 wound from a scarab base (6s If I am Correct) and the 2+ armour save is gone forever. Thats a hell of a lot more wounds coming from the ABs.

Scarabs would never make it into CQC unless the Riptides outright ignore them...

I've done it... it's beautiful... but it won't happen often

I've done it too. Tied his Riptide up with a unit of 5 Scarabs while my Wraiths ate through his Broadsides. By the time the Riptide had finished smooshing the last of the Scarabs, my Annihilation Barge was in range, so was toast in my next shooting phase... I cleaned out all of his heavy, fast, and elite units, while retaining mine... only to end up losing on points because his outflanking Kroots came out late game to contest my home objective while his Fire Warriors stood unthreatened on the remaining objectives (closest unit to them was an A.Barge, but I forgot vehicles can't contest).
Leson learned that day: worry more about the scoring units than the scary units.

What's the minimum point buy in for a riptide it's something like 160 or 180 plus all the options etc..

Honestly I feel if your facing 3 Riptides a army , just ignore them and focus on killing everything else on board and trying to tie them up with a tarpit unit like Scarabs or something.

 skoffs wrote:
May want to consider 4 Destruct-teks + 1 Chrono-tek in that Ark, instead.
You will be amazed how much that single reroll comes in handy when trying to take down high profile targets..
...
Yes, rerolling to-hit and/or to-wound/armor-pen is the main thing you're including him for, but rerolling failed Living Metal rolls to overcome Shaken/Stunned results can mean a massive difference in a tight pinch.
Plus, once you eventually lose their ride, the extra reroll for saves/RP is gonna be worth it.
I don't know if my experience counts as pure anecdotal coincidence, but I've run them with 5x Destruct and 4D + 1C, and the later always seems to work best.
(though I wouldn't be opposed to someone running the numbers through the mathhammer for us. I am a bit curious which way is supposed to be statistically better.)

I'll give it a whirl, but not for all the cases you mentioned, I am at work after all. First I'll look at shooting one weapon with the option to re-roll to hit or to wound (but not both). There's only six possible outcomes with this orientation so its not so bad to just brute force the probabilities for each outcome. Assuming 3+ to hit, 2+ to wound, and neglecting any saves. I get an 83% chance to cause a wound with the optional reroll. Compared to a 55% chance to cause a wound without any re-roll. Its a big jump in improvement, increasing the average output for that one shot by a factor of about 1.5. So shooting wise, paired with one such weapon he's worth about half that weapon. His worth will go up some as you add more weapons but with diminishing returns as he only gets one reroll for the unit. With some rough approximations I get that with 2 weapons the optional re-roll is worth about three quarters of a weapon. Thus, I don't think its unreasonable to think that with 4 or so weapons as you suggest, he'd be nearing the worth of one full weapon but not quite. Given that it can be used in every phase for different purposes and chosen for the most critical rolls, I'd say its probably worth the extra couple points.

Like I said,
I've run both 5x Destruct-teks in an Ark and 4x Destruct + 1x Chrono in an Ark.
It could just be dumb luck, but those 5 extra points to switch one Lance for a reroll has been worth it every time.

Wraiths wraiths and more wraiths, multi charge the riptide and 10 firewarriors and laugh as the riptide runs away screaming in fear at the end of combat because all his fire warrior buddies died.

you probably want something like:
12/18 wraiths, destroyer lord, 2 nightscythes with minimum squads in

Basically give him one turn of shooting before you are into him. I wouldn't advise a CCB, it's a bit too expensive vs it's surviveability. You want as many cheap/durable 12" movers as possible and wraiths are some of the best out there.

3 Monoliths + scarabs running behind the monoliths. Even S9 ord isnt effective vs AV14. Keep multiple 5-man troops in reserve then teleport them to the front via the gate late game after most of his gunline is whittled down. Block LOS to the unit with a monolith and just cap the objectives. Tau really dont like moving, and having any sort of wraiths, scarabs, or spyders behind monoliths means they will be wary to use the riptide for smash attacks.