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I hear Riptides are the most powerful unit the Tau can bring. Not arguing that.

I'm simply curious, If I run a 1000pts game, and bring three riptides and a powerful commander,

Are riptides powerful enough to stand alone in an army setting? or do I need to support them with troops, tanks, crisis suits, drones, etc etc?

What are your suggestions?

Riptides are very powerful and incredibly tough in their own right, but they need markerlights to do maximum damage.

I was thinking:
HQ - Commander - CDF, Drone Controller, NSJ, CACN, 2x Markerlights (139pts)
Fast - 12x Marker Drones (168pts)
Elite - Riptide - Advanced Targeting, Stim Inject - (218)
Elite - Riptide - Ion Accell, TL Plasma (185pts)
Elite - Riptide - ... (180pts)


890pts Total


Still working on the riptide builds.

Assuming your commander is sitting with the marker drones you're successfully marking the same unit upto 14 times and absolutely nothing else. Its overkill

I will probably knock it down by six Marker drones.

I'm just messing around. I don't even own any Riptides... yet.

Well you'll need Troops anyway to fill a CAD.

I don't see three Riptides working well at 1000 points. Yes, they are durable (very durable indeed), but they are not very killy. Broadsides and Crisis offer much more firepower for the points cost.

This list is a bit preposterous. Do you know much about Tau?

At the bear minimum you need 2 squads of markers, 1 is over killing the target massively, and it not giving you much flexibility. Additionally you have loads of useless gear on your commander.
Furthermore you have very little way of killing anything. A big blast kills maybe 2-5 models (depending on how they're laid out), will miss on occasion, and will fail once every game.

Tau's strength is not a riptide (although a riptide is very strong) it's the many facets of the army that synergize well.

At 1000 you only really want 1 riptide IMO.

Yes, I understand the list does not work.

I am the type of person to understand a unit better once I have run it up against a few different types of units on the table top.

I was more or less just throwing together an Unbound Riptide list to test out against my friends Space Marine army. To see where the Riptides Strengths and weaknesses are. (as well as my own strategies applied solely to the riptides.)