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so my buddy brought out two riptides in his 1000 pt list and moped the floor with me, do necrons have a good counter available for a riptide? Tried running my wraiths at him and they got shot to bits. Any sample 1000pt lists would be helpful.

Wraiths, like you were doing already. Add a destroyer lord if you really want to ruin their day. He must have gotten lucky in shooting them up, or you didn't keep them hidden in/behind terrain.

Annihilation barges/Night Scythe tesla destructors will pour on volumes of wounds which will his saves will eventually fail.

Or ignore them and blast his troops up (he only has, what, 600 points of other stuff?) and hide your troops out of line of sight for the win.

Eldrich Lances work wonders- 35pts for a 36" S8 AP2 assault 1 shot. Go MSU and jam one in each squad, poke the riptides full of holes from inside cover.

Run it alongside Wraiths and barges and watch as your opponent has a fit trying to decide what to shoot at first.

charge him with a warscythe lord. use a CCB if you want to get there faster.

if your going that route, load up and go all in on the CC. d lord with wraiths, lord on ccb, whatever you can. heck even scarabs. charge one, take it down, then chase down the other. tesseracts are a nice finisher for when you have gotten a few wounds on one, but just wanna take him out. no saves allowed for that!

if you dont like the idea of CC...

then you will want something that can spam a ton of shots, and stand up to its fire. so annhilation barges, and tesla immortals. use veils to chase him around, and just keep spamming tesla at him. it could care less about his saves, it just deals crud tons of wounds. - these also work great against other tau stuff like firewarriors or suits.

Your problem isn't the two Riptides, it's the points level. 1000pts is very hard to kill two Riptides and do much of anything else. You need to play more points to have a reasonable chance of killing those Riptides. One you can kill at 1000pts, but two is very hard.

not really true... for tau taking 2 riptides, im guessing he has at least 15-30 pts in upgrades for each one. so guessing 220 per is not a stretch. thats 440 pts on 2 non scoring, non hq units. for HQ a crisis commander wll run him 100, so i predict fireblade to keep costs down. - wich means at least 2-3 units of firewarriors at 100+ each, (115 for 10 with a team leader markerlight) so another 300 in firewarriors.

so his army is likley a fireblade, 3 max firewarrior units, his 2 riptides, and what else? an ethereal perhaps, maybe a small suit unit.

necrons on the other hand:
annihlation barges are 90 pts. 3 of them = 270
tesla immortals for 10 are 170 per, with aother 60 for a veiltek. 2 basic overlords with WS and orb (to unlock 2 veils) clock in at 130.

overlord/ws/orb
veiltek
overlord " "
veiltek

10 tesla immortals
10 tesla immortals

ann barge
ann barge
ann barge
= 990

join a veil and overlord to each immortal squad... and you can just watch his units MELT away, including riptides. this would be my first approach if i knew a tau was taking a dual riptide at 1000.

Sadly I think Darth is right. It's a real up hill battle against 1 let alone two riptides. I just played the carnage mission with my peeps at 1500. I didn't actually read the mission so I don't know the details but the way we were playing it it was a 4 way game. Tau was the only one that gave me fits with 2 riptides, a broadside unit and a sky ray. Anyway, I managed to either run down or kill off both riptides, the commander, beat off some SW/SM and kill a few CSM and ended up tying with the CSM player. Granted at 1500 I had this list plus another anni barge, 2 more NS, another unit of wraiths and the DL had an orb.

Admittedly trying to survive all of that fire + overwatch from an etherialized gun line would be really brutal...

HQ: Destroyer Lord, Sempiternal Weave, Mindshackle Scarabs

Troops: 5x Warriors, NS
Troops: 6x Warriors
Troops: 5x Warriors

Fast Attack: 5x Wraiths
Fast Attack: 5x Wraiths

Heavy Support: Annihilation Barge
Heavy Support: Annihilation Barge

Spam Wraiths, kill everything.

literally stock up on the wraiths and throw destroy lords in there with MSS. You win. The wraith eat what ever wounds come your way, your lord obliterates him in CC and the wraith again rend in CC.

What do you do after that? Hide your scoring units somewhere. In a forest, behind a rock, under a mountain.

At a tournament I had a single wraith hold up a commander and a riptide for turns 4 & 5 Didn't kill either but managed to stop them from doing any damage...

I try to use my scarabs to tie down the riptides. The riptide will kill a couple bases a turn, but with spyder support and enough scarab attacks you should be able to get him to fail one armor save (entropic touch). After that it's dead city for the riptide. No more 2+ armor makes them way less deadly.

 DarthSpader wrote:
not really true... for tau taking 2 riptides, im guessing he has at least 15-30 pts in upgrades for each one. so guessing 220 per is not a stretch. thats 440 pts on 2 non scoring, non hq units. for HQ a crisis commander wll run him 100, so i predict fireblade to keep costs down. - wich means at least 2-3 units of firewarriors at 100+ each, (115 for 10 with a team leader markerlight) so another 300 in firewarriors.

so his army is likley a fireblade, 3 max firewarrior units, his 2 riptides, and what else? an ethereal perhaps, maybe a small suit unit.

necrons on the other hand:
annihlation barges are 90 pts. 3 of them = 270
tesla immortals for 10 are 170 per, with aother 60 for a veiltek. 2 basic overlords with WS and orb (to unlock 2 veils) clock in at 130.

overlord/ws/orb
veiltek
overlord " "
veiltek

10 tesla immortals
10 tesla immortals

ann barge
ann barge
ann barge
= 990

join a veil and overlord to each immortal squad... and you can just watch his units MELT away, including riptides. this would be my first approach if i knew a tau was taking a dual riptide at 1000.

I agree with everything about the necrons, but the Tau will probably have

Ethereal - 50

9x Man FW - 81
9x Man FW - 81

6x Pathfinders - 66

3x XV8 - 111
TL Burst

Riptide - 220
w/ Ion,Stim Inject

Riptide - 220
w/ Ion,Stim Inject

2x Broadsides - 180
TL HYMP
TL Plas
VT

Thats a lot of firepower

 Gangrel767 wrote:
I try to use my scarabs to tie down the riptides. The riptide will kill a couple bases a turn, but with spyder support and enough scarab attacks you should be able to get him to fail one armor save (entropic touch). After that it's dead city for the riptide. No more 2+ armor makes them way less deadly.

I may be wrong but isn't a Riptide T6? That means scarabs can't hurt him with their S3...so no entropic strike.

Deamon wrote:

 Gangrel767 wrote:
I try to use my scarabs to tie down the riptides. The riptide will kill a couple bases a turn, but with spyder support and enough scarab attacks you should be able to get him to fail one armor save (entropic touch). After that it's dead city for the riptide. No more 2+ armor makes them way less deadly.

I may be wrong but isn't a Riptide T6? That means scarabs can't hurt him with their S3...so no entropic strike.

A riptide is T6, and scarabs can wound it on a roll of 6. (BRB pg. 14)

he brought

2x kadra
2x 10 man firewarriors
2x fully kitted riptides
w/ 2x markerlights each
and a aegis line w/ quad gun

I couldnt get my scarabs to him (killed them all in one rund of shooting)

doesnt help we played purge and he corraled up in the farthest corner of the map.

terrain didnt help wraiths because of smart missles.

he never moved. couldnt get anything close enough without being shot to bits.

def adding the annh. barges and maybe a veiltek or two

Where are the markerlights coming from?

That is an awfully small list for 1000 points, there is definitely stuff missing.

Echoing the comment above, were these marker lights with the Riptide? The Riptide can only take Shielded Missile Drones (and they are not too good IMO).

A Destroyer Lord with Warscythe will do well against the Riptide. It'll do enough wounds to cripple the Riptide, but not enough to kill it. Hopefully, he'll pass any leadership tests so you are both stuck in close combat during his turn; this is key, you won't get shot and you can finish him in close combat in his turn, freeing the Lord to zip about on your turn.

Jefffar wrote:
That is an awfully small list for 1000 points, there is definitely stuff missing.

Well i added it up, and with the riptides buffed with IA, EWO, 2x drones each, and Stim, it comes out to 950 total. So yea, stuff missing. Maybe there's a pathfinder squad?

The only other thing i can think of is that the Cadre took two ML drones each. Which puts it at 998pts.

And really, that's a pretty scary list. However, he has no reliable way to pen your 13AV (From shields) with those IA. He could try to nova them for a S9 AP2 ordnance blast, but he could easily fail that roll, and fail to pen. Those markers are also going to be BS2 (if drones from Cadre), so the riptides will not have very good marker support.

Riptides also suck ass in combat and he has no real way to prevent combat, from happening. If you can get a commander or good CC unit in on his FW, they're pretty much toast. You'll probably end up sweeping them, and the Cadre (as he should be with them). You could also keep the riptides busy with a CC unit that has a good invuln.

You have a few options really. Don't let those scary riptides get to you. They're nothing without marker support, and honestly, he has too many riptides and not enough marker support to make them effective.

with the suggested list for the tau above, my list is the same. set the ann barges to kill the pathfinders first thing. hide your immortals out of LOS. pathfinders taking 12 tesla destructor shots, and another 6 tesla cannon shots should be dead after 1 turn. turn 2 is port the immortals in to take down the broadsides, while the barges move up and depending on deployment, either snipe a riptide, whittle some FW down, or sassist on the broadsides. turn 3 is a charge to finish off the bsides, or rip into the firewarriors. barges begin work on a riptide, and should be able to kill or seriously damage one. turn 4, immortals continue to work on the firewarriors. by now barges should be dead or gone given incoming fire, but should have been able to deal with 1 and a half of the riptides. his core is also done, so all thats left is to wrap the game up. use the veil to teleport and come at the riptides from 2 directions, making it impossile to run. shred the tesla into it, then charge. good game.

expected losses: should loose 4-6 immortals each unit. all 3 barges are expected to go down.

target priotirty is obviously the pathfinders first, with railsides close for first as well. second should be the FW base. taking it out in or with the barges will seriously limit their firepower and give your immortals some breathing room. wrap up with the riptides. (without marker and bubble wrap they are not that scary)

If Immortals are really such a good idea versus Riptides, would not Tomb Blades be a decent idea, too?
For 3 points more than an Immortal you get:
• Twin linked S5 Tesla (and we all know how much tesla likes to be twin linked).
• T5
• Jink saves
• Jetbike movement (no worry about the Riptide getting away from you).

Also worth considering would be Deathmarks. T6 means nothing to 2+ wounding. Plus there's the chance for rending. If you attach a Veil-tek you can teleport close enough to rapid fire (probably not worth risking the scatter to use the Despair-tek's flame template). That's a 1st turn alpha strike that interceptor can't stop (they started on the table, after all).

What's causing the barges to go down if they have their 13AV up? The riptide firing it's nova IA profile, while scary, isn't going to be very effective without proper markerlight support. He probably won't have many MLs on those barges, so no ignore cover and no +BS on the riptides. This means they are shooting a large blast with only BS3. Gross.

The normal profile is only S7 AP2 Heavy3 so he'd need 6s to glance. MEH. Even if he took melta on the tides, i don't think they'll be all too effective at removing the barges before they get to him. Maybe he might get lucky, but idk.

He only has a handful of S7 or stronger on the board. The majority of his army is S5 AP5. If you can get those riptides in CC and tie them up, you should be able to clean up the rest of his army. Especially if you use barges and broadside the FWs.

Also, you could contemplate a Oby and that other dude combo. Have a scythe fly in and drop off the dude, and teleport his buddy to him. Place him right, and he should survive the interceptor attack and shooting next turn. Then stroll up on him and wreck him in CC. Firewarriors couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag.

Alright, hers the sample list I have after hearing your suggestions:

Overlord: SoL, res orb

4x HoD: Eldritch lance

3x 5 man warrior squads

1x 5 man tesla immortal squad (lord attached)

5x wraiths

2x annihilation barge

totals out to 995, thoughts?

Wraiths with destroyer lord will have no problems vs riptides, really. Beware broadsides and firewarrior's rapidfire range though.

Id prolly go for a couple of deathmark squads. at 95 points a squad and wounding them on 2+ not to shabby

heavy destroyers everyday

 Schwarmfuhrer wrote:
heavy destroyers everyday

At 60pts a pop they aren't terribly efficient and would die horribly to its return fire...

How about a destructcourt inside a Ghost Ark?

5 S8 AP2 shots inside an AV13 transport for 290pts. Have a warrior brick with the Overlord footslog ahead of it for protection, massed gauss fire and synergy and get a wraithstar going to put a second high profile threat on the board.

That should total at around 1035 if my head math is correct. Add a bunch of gauss Immortals in a NS to slaughter fire warriors and a couple of ABs would fill up the list to 1485, leaving you with 15 points to spare in a 1500pts game.

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..

 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..

He costs as much as two destructeks though, and in the shooting phase his 1 re-roll isn't going to outpreform an extra shooting attack.

 Galorian wrote:

 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..

He costs as much as two destructeks though, and in the shooting phase his 1 re-roll isn't going to outpreform an extra shooting attack.

What? No he doesn't.
(Destruct-tek = 35 pts. Chrono-tek = 40 pts.)
5 points doth not an entire new Harbinger buy.

And I'm not just taking shooting.
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.)

 skoffs wrote:

 Galorian wrote:

 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..

He costs as much as two destructeks though, and in the shooting phase his 1 re-roll isn't going to outpreform an extra shooting attack.

What? No he doesn't.
(Destruct-tek = 35 pts. Chrono-tek = 40 pts.)
5 points doth not an entire new Harbinger buy.

And I'm not just taking shooting.
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.)

Huh... Must've confused the costs between the chronometron and the timesplinter cloak...

Mathhammering an optional re-roll is going to be a serious pain by the way.