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So far i have a devastator squad. I am looking to buy the Grey Knights Strike Squad with a librarian. And perhaps a command squad.
So far the person i am going to be playing against has three battlesuits. A fire warrior team and a Kroot carnivore squad.

How can i build against this?

Any advice for a newcomer to this game would be appreciated.

Sounds like right now he would be very vulnerable to getting tied down in melee. So, Assault marines?

What point level are we talking about here.

Also, what you are you arming your devastator squad with?

Get a Whirlwind
Get a pod full of Sternguard
Get a small bike squad armed with gravguns and combi-grav sarge
Get a 10 man unit of Devastators with 4 Lascannons to take down their vehicles / help the bikers take down the riptide.

Just to clarify first, are you collecting Space Marines, or Grey Knights?

For SM counters the obvious answer is bikes, probably with grav guns.

Right now im working with devastators and a TAC squad of Space Marines. I equipped my D-squad with 2Las-cannons and 2 Missile launchers but my tac squad is just offited with bolters mostly.
I was tossing around the idea of grey knights but I'm not sure how effective they would be against a ranged-heavy opponent.
I am mostly concerned with trying to find a HQ unit that will help me with a speedy assult, i like the idea of rushing those Swamp Horse Commmies.

unorthodox11 wrote:
Right now im working with devastators and a TAC squad of Space Marines. I equipped my D-squad with 2Las-cannons and 2 Missile launchers but my tac squad is just offited with bolters mostly.
I was tossing around the idea of grey knights but I'm not sure how effective they would be against a ranged-heavy opponent.
I am mostly concerned with trying to find a HQ unit that will help me with a speedy assult, i like the idea of rushing those Swamp Horse Commmies.

Space marine captain/chapter master on a bike. Possibly khan (very good for giving bikes and transports scout).

Wargear depends on how cheesy you want to get. Smashf****r for example will wreck face at this points level, as there will really be very little to stop him. Won't make you many friends though.

I would go for lascannon dev squads. Maybe a couple of them. I once faced 22+ las cannons in a larger game and they had absolutely no issue dealing with any of my large units like my dual Riptides. My opponents also took multiple orbital bombardments that helped them take out my Broadsides. Another thing to consider to deal with crisis suits is to bring rocket launchers - the Str 8 Ap3 will insta-gib them and invulnerable shields for the suits are quite expensive.

Next up - if you're considering GK. I would suggest running a libriarian squad with a retinue of Terminators with a psycannon. From there a Nemesis Dreadknight will really help you deal with everything else. His Heavy Incinerator will help evaporate troop and pathfinder choices. Equip it with a Nemesis Greatsword and get in close with the shunt to deal with the Riptides. Even with the Tide's ability to thrust he cannot quite escape the 12" movement from the personal teleporter. It may be common place but it wouldn't be a bad idea to double up on the NDK. With good reason of course as it's easy enough to deal with one.

However - make sure to take note if the opponent is taking early warning override - this gives the unit intercept which will make it quite difficult to Deep-strike from reserves - however I believe if you get access to Gate of Infinity they will not be able to intercept as that is done in the movement phase (Correct me if I'm wrong)

A single whirlwind will obliterate cover seeking Tau. They are your usual answer for Kroot and Pathfinders most of the time.

Smashbane is far more fair than even a single Riptide.

Martel732 wrote:
Smashbane is far more fair than even a single Riptide.

Depends what army you play. My gravgun bikes and daemon cavalry couldn't care less about riptides.

Playing a game with a shooty army against a riptide behind a really high wall would be pretty annoying though.

At low points games against Tau, a single Chapter Master on bike with artificer armor, shield eternal and burning blade will make short work of half his army.

 Big Blind Bill wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Smashbane is far more fair than even a single Riptide.

Depends what army you play. My gravgun bikes and daemon cavalry couldn't care less about riptides.

Playing a game with a shooty army against a riptide behind a really high wall would be pretty annoying though.

Riptides still kill entire bike squads at a time, so I don't see how you don't care.

He'll shoot better than you as long as he has few targets. Get in his face and force him to split his fire over several units, so deep strike is your friend. Legion of the damned should be pretty darn solid versus tau, come to think of it. Otherwise multiple cheap biker squads with a power axe sergeant is cool, and so are drop pods.

kodi wrote:
He'll shoot better than you as long as he has few targets. Get in his face and force him to split his fire over several units, so deep strike is your friend. Legion of the damned should be pretty darn solid versus tau, come to think of it. Otherwise multiple cheap biker squads with a power axe sergeant is cool, and so are drop pods.

Sounds like that should work, but in practice it has a lot more problems than it sounds like on paper. Deep striking sucked in 5th, and hasn't gotten much better imo since. That turn where you can't do anything except shoot or run is a killer. Literally.

I found that when I lost to Tau, and that was often, it was because I allowed the Tau player to play their game. I spent an entire week gaming every day trying to beat Tau with CsM. Yeah, Chaos I know. But the lesson was still the same. Play your strengths, minimize his.

A Riptide without support is a pain yes, but not nearly as bad as it could be. Game after game I was able to minimize the effects of the Tide against my opponent, mostly because he refused to use marker lights. When he did bring support I nuked it and kited his riptide into a chargeable position. Tau are going to want to shoot you but in order to kill them you have to outgun them, outplay them and if you can, melee them.

Now, being a Marine player I know all too well that our codex lacks close combat options. Sure they are there but you're not going to pin your hopes of victory against Tau on the one or two units that can come to grips. If you reall really want to charge Tau you need to set it up properly and this means you're building your list around charging the only army in the game that begs you to try it. Instead you ought to use the gifts God ( or was that Roboute?) gave you! Versatility!

Drown the riptide in Tacticals, infiltrate scouts onto objectives, drop a melta dread behind his tanks, stuff some terminators down that pretty little firing line, all the while raining death down from afar with your Devs and barrage fire. There is a ton of Tau killing potential in the codex!

Now go catch some fish heads!

The Tau can still kill back faster, though. Marines just have very poor offense for their cost.

Martel732 wrote:

 Big Blind Bill wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Smashbane is far more fair than even a single Riptide.

Depends what army you play. My gravgun bikes and daemon cavalry couldn't care less about riptides.

Playing a game with a shooty army against a riptide behind a really high wall would be pretty annoying though.

Riptides still kill entire bike squads at a time, so I don't see how you don't care.

On average they don't.

Shoot the markerlights first, spread the bikes out and the riptide will kill 2-3 a turn at most.

Consider an iontide using 5 markerlights to get BS6 (for the no gets hot roll), and ignores cover, and novacharge to double shoot his missilepods/plasmaguns.
If we count him as hitting 3 bikes with his ion blast (which should be the absolute worst case scenario), in total he will kill on average 3.6 bikes.

Once you stop the ignores cover and improved BS this goes way down to under 2 kills a turn.

After this the bikes' 12 move, gravguns and hit and run ensure the riptide is dealt with in short order.

That's why my bikes don't care.

In a small points game as the OP suggested, the riptide will have very little markerlight support. Smash-chaptermaster builds on the other hand don't need support, and will wreck a lot of face all by themselves.

As I said though, it really depends on your army. Shooty ones without grav really have a tough time with riptides.

At the end of the day neither spamming riptides or running smash-chapter master builds will get you many friends.

Edit: I don't know why people are talking about riptides. The OP has never mentioned them lol.

Buy some Grav Cents, put Tigurius and a random libby in the Grav Cent squad, and roll on Sanctic Daemonology and Telepathy. Try to get Invisibility and Gate of Infinity. You can now teleport an invisible somewhat-broken unit around the board.