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 Bach wrote:

RayND wrote:
Another thread full of Tau players who refuse to acknowledge that they are a problem. Maybe the issue is the playerbase and not even the faction?

Next time you try to imply your bs isn't OP, switch armies with your opponent and have them beat the crap out of you with your own army and see how you like it.

That's the thing, I do. I also play CSM/KD and although it is harder to play an assault army, I can usually catch and kill them. The people I play with can usually do the same. That's not denial, that's just a lot of experience with Riptides.

I find that about 20% of my models reach the Tau on average. I can't beat them in assault at 5:1 odds. I have no idea how the people you are playing with are catching Riptides with enough forces. Maybe the Tau players are going easy on them.

If you can't beat tau in the assault phase then I don't know what to tell you. What exactly are you fielding?

I run Chaos Spawn, bikes, Flesh Hounds, Maulerfiends, etc. In my lists, I try to have 8- 12, 12 inch moving, units moving forward. Even with pie plates, the Tau player will likely have a hard time targeting that many fast units, especially if they loaded up on Riptides/and Stormsurges.

That may not be the way you play though, I don't know. If you have a low model count army then, yeah, pie plates are going to hurt a lot more.

 Bach wrote:
If you can't beat tau in the assault phase then I don't know what to tell you. What exactly are you fielding?

I run Chaos Spawn, bikes, Flesh Hounds, Maulerfiends, etc. In my lists, I try to have 8- 12, 12 inch moving, units moving forward. Even with pie plates, the Tau player will likely have a hard time targeting that many fast units, especially if they loaded up on Riptides/and Stormsurges.

That may not be the way you play though, I don't know. If you have a low model count army then, yeah, pie plates are going to hurt a lot more.

How are Tau not thrashing that list you just gave? Tau have so many shots on top of the immortal Riptides pie plate spam. 8-12 units? You might have a chance with 20. Or 25. Yeah, Tau do THAT much damage. They even get almost a complete extra shooting phase when you assault them. Yeah. Totally fair.

I field the most disposable crap possible because I know Tau and Eldar are gonna take my toys away. I'm not naive. That just doesn't jive with fielding effective units. One shotting even a 70 pts tactical squad earns the Riptide it's points back in 3 turns. That's the cheapest possible target, too.

Martel732 wrote:

 Bach wrote:
If you can't beat tau in the assault phase then I don't know what to tell you. What exactly are you fielding?

I run Chaos Spawn, bikes, Flesh Hounds, Maulerfiends, etc. In my lists, I try to have 8- 12, 12 inch moving, units moving forward. Even with pie plates, the Tau player will likely have a hard time targeting that many fast units, especially if they loaded up on Riptides/and Stormsurges.

That may not be the way you play though, I don't know. If you have a low model count army then, yeah, pie plates are going to hurt a lot more.

How are Tau not thrashing that list you just gave? Tau have so many shots on top of the immortal Riptides pie plate spam. 8-12 units? You might have a chance with 20. Or 25. Yeah, Tau do THAT much damage. They even get almost a complete extra shooting phase when you assault them. Yeah. Totally fair.

I field the most disposable crap possible because I know Tau and Eldar are gonna take my toys away. I'm not naive. That just doesn't jive with fielding effective units. One shotting even a 70 pts tactical squad earns the Riptide it's points back in 3 turns. That's the cheapest possible target, too.

While I fully agree with your criticisms of the Tau, I do wish to note that the strategic advice commonly offered does work:

Take out the marker lights, and the Tau crumble. BS 3 shooting that can't ignore cover is pretty pathetic when the Tau are the ones doing the shooting.

I was playing a 2 v 2 on Friday: Khorne Daemonkin and Crimson Fists vs. Tau and Tyrranids. By the end of turn 3, after the stormsurge got slaughtered by daemons wielding giant axes and the marker lights were all but taken out, even with a crisis suit or 3 remaining on the table, I found myself speaking the unspeakble:

"We can ignore the Tau player now. Time to start killing big scary monsters."

Traditio wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Bach wrote:
If you can't beat tau in the assault phase then I don't know what to tell you. What exactly are you fielding?

I run Chaos Spawn, bikes, Flesh Hounds, Maulerfiends, etc. In my lists, I try to have 8- 12, 12 inch moving, units moving forward. Even with pie plates, the Tau player will likely have a hard time targeting that many fast units, especially if they loaded up on Riptides/and Stormsurges.

That may not be the way you play though, I don't know. If you have a low model count army then, yeah, pie plates are going to hurt a lot more.

How are Tau not thrashing that list you just gave? Tau have so many shots on top of the immortal Riptides pie plate spam. 8-12 units? You might have a chance with 20. Or 25. Yeah, Tau do THAT much damage. They even get almost a complete extra shooting phase when you assault them. Yeah. Totally fair.

I field the most disposable crap possible because I know Tau and Eldar are gonna take my toys away. I'm not naive. That just doesn't jive with fielding effective units. One shotting even a 70 pts tactical squad earns the Riptide it's points back in 3 turns. That's the cheapest possible target, too.

While I fully agree with your criticisms of the Tau, I do wish to note that the strategic advice commonly offered does work:

Take out the marker lights, and the Tau crumble. BS 3 shooting that can't ignore cover is pretty pathetic when the Tau are the ones doing the shooting.

I was playing a 2 v 2 on Friday: Khorne Daemonkin and Crimson Fists vs. Tau and Tyrranids. By the end of turn 3, after the stormsurge got slaughtered by daemons wielding giant axes and the marker lights were all but taken out, even with a crisis suit or 3 remaining on the table, I found myself speaking the unspeakble:

"We can ignore the Tau player now. Time to start killing big scary monsters."

The answer to that is make taking out the marker lights a suicide mission. If you lose 75% of your list killing the marker lights, BS 3 becomes fine.

pathetic is a BS 2 shooting that can't ignore cover, a classic on orks. The tau shoots very nice or, with no marker, shoot normal close to good (because the level of the weapons).

Martel732 wrote:
I've tried. And tried and tried and tried.

You need to start posting battle reports for C&C. You also need to start trying new things once in a while.

Weren't you thinking of buying a IK once? What happened with that?

Yoyoyo wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I've tried. And tried and tried and tried.

You need to start posting battle reports for C&C. You also need to start trying new things once in a while.

Weren't you thinking of buying a IK once? What happened with that?

I'm getting the box set soon. I'm nervous about fielding them because WK laugh them off the table, as do scatbikes. Tau have D missiles as well.

Yoyoyo wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I've tried. And tried and tried and tried.

You need to start posting battle reports for C&C. You also need to start trying new things once in a while.

Weren't you thinking of buying a IK once? What happened with that?

Why should he have to buy an IK to have a fair shot against Tau, or anyone else, for that matter?

I'm not convinced it's even going to help much. IK's aren't very good. Because vehicles. They can't hurt Riptides, so meh?

I'm pretty sure you can Stomp them out, even if you didn't have D melee.

The trick is going to be getting stuck in.

Yoyoyo wrote:
I'm pretty sure you can Stomp them out, even if you didn't have D melee.

The trick is going to be getting stuck in.

I was talking with shooting. I assume I never get to assault Tau. Because Tau.

Martel732 wrote:
I was talking with shooting. I assume I never get to assault Tau. Because Tau.

A few Knights should definitely help you get into assault.

Good luck buddy!

Martel732 wrote:
I'm not convinced it's even going to help much. IK's aren't very good. Because vehicles. They can't hurt Riptides, so meh?

who said that? They can ABSOLUTELY hurt riptides. Oh you mean one shot them, then, yeah. BUT IT IS A SLUGGING MATCH!!!

what kind of losses are you taking from supporting fire overwatch? remember, no blasts large blasts or templates. I generally consider myself fortunate to strip 2-3 models to overwatch, then I watch as I pick all my models up off the board.

And I have operated under the impression that we can only attempt to deny offensive powers. If you try to power up force weapons, we cannot deny. if you try to buff your units, we cannot deny. Am I wrong in this?

 carldooley wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I'm not convinced it's even going to help much. IK's aren't very good. Because vehicles. They can't hurt Riptides, so meh?

who said that? They can ABSOLUTELY hurt riptides. Oh you mean one shot them, then, yeah. BUT IT IS A SLUGGING MATCH!!!

what kind of losses are you taking from supporting fire overwatch? remember, no blasts large blasts or templates. I generally consider myself fortunate to strip 2-3 models to overwatch, then I watch as I pick all my models up off the board.

And I have operated under the impression that we can only attempt to deny offensive powers. If you try to power up force weapons, we cannot deny. if you try to buff your units, we cannot deny. Am I wrong in this?

Yes, you can deny them, but only on 6's.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 carldooley wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I'm not convinced it's even going to help much. IK's aren't very good. Because vehicles. They can't hurt Riptides, so meh?

who said that? They can ABSOLUTELY hurt riptides. Oh you mean one shot them, then, yeah. BUT IT IS A SLUGGING MATCH!!!

what kind of losses are you taking from supporting fire overwatch? remember, no blasts large blasts or templates. I generally consider myself fortunate to strip 2-3 models to overwatch, then I watch as I pick all my models up off the board.

And I have operated under the impression that we can only attempt to deny offensive powers. If you try to power up force weapons, we cannot deny. if you try to buff your units, we cannot deny. Am I wrong in this?

I meant with their shooting attacks. They can't hurt missilesides, either. At least, not the version I'd be running.

Traditio wrote:

Yoyoyo wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I've tried. And tried and tried and tried.

You need to start posting battle reports for C&C. You also need to start trying new things once in a while.

Weren't you thinking of buying a IK once? What happened with that?

Why should he have to buy an IK to have a fair shot against Tau, or anyone else, for that matter?

Why should a Dark Eldar player have to buy terrain? As with allies they should "suck it up".

It's still not even clear what an IK is going to do against Tau except die.

Martel732 wrote:
It's still not even clear what an IK is going to do against Tau except die.

You're not doing your research Martel. Here ya go, 3x IK (Baronial Court) and SM Allies facing off against Riptide Wing and 2x Stormsurges.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/674962.page

1x Riptide and 1x Stormsurge dead to D-melee, 2x Riptides removed via Stomp, 1x Stormsurge dead to combined army shooting. They are not immortal, they still die on a 6 like everything else. Riptides cleaned up the dismounted infantry with Ion Accelerators, which is your experience. However, they couldn't really influence the more decisive SHV/GMC fight. And that's the kind of unit you're looking at getting.

Just for fun here is the Tau list:

1x Commander (Iridium, Drone Controller, Warlord)
2x5 Firewarriors
8x Marker Drones
2x Stormsurges (1x with Pulse Driver, 1x With Blastcannon, Early Warnings, Shield Generators)
1x Riptide Wing (3x Riptides with Early Warning, Stimulant Injectors, Missiles and Ion Accelerators)

Out of those 3x IK, one ate 4x D-missiles and died at the top of T1. The surviving 2x IK killed 1520pts of "immortal" Tau MCs/GMCs over the course of the game, with only a little help from allied shooting. 80% of MC/GMC kills were through assault, 100% of assault kills were from rolling 6's on the D table. No mathhammer headaches, just roll a 6, remove it from play. There's a lesson here.

I'm not personally a big fan of GW's sales strategy and their SHV/GMC push, but if WK and Riptides are giving you headaches, that's the group you play with. Nothing wrong with playing games with a 4W/4HP limit.

I'm so pissed at things that clearly, Clearly should have been Vehicle (Walker) being MC and getting crapload of saves & FNP.

I think they still get FNP vs a "6" on the D-table don't they?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Yoyoyo wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
It's still not even clear what an IK is going to do against Tau except die.

You're not doing your research Martel. Here ya go, 3x IK (Baronial Court) and SM Allies facing off against Riptide Wing and 2x Stormsurges.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/674962.page

1x Riptide and 1x Stormsurge dead to D-melee, 2x Riptides removed via Stomp, 1x Stormsurge dead to combined army shooting. They are not immortal, they still die on a 6 like everything else. Riptides cleaned up the dismounted infantry with Ion Accelerators, which is your experience. However, they couldn't really influence the more decisive SHV/GMC fight. And that's the kind of unit you're looking at getting.

Just for fun here is the Tau list:

1x Commander (Iridium, Drone Controller, Warlord)
2x5 Firewarriors
8x Marker Drones
2x Stormsurges (1x with Pulse Driver, 1x With Blastcannon, Early Warnings, Shield Generators)
1x Riptide Wing (3x Riptides with Early Warning, Stimulant Injectors, Missiles and Ion Accelerators)

Out of those 3x IK, one ate 4x D-missiles and died at the top of T1. The surviving 2x IK killed 1520pts of "immortal" Tau MCs/GMCs over the course of the game, with only a little help from allied shooting. 80% of MC/GMC kills were through assault, 100% of assault kills were from rolling 6's on the D table. No mathhammer headaches, just roll a 6, remove it from play. There's a lesson here.

I'm not personally a big fan of GW's sales strategy and their SHV/GMC push, but if WK and Riptides are giving you headaches, that's the group you play with. Nothing wrong with playing games with a 4W/4HP limit.

Still seeing those 400 pt hunks of junk dying awful easy. That IK player was very fortunate to come away with a win. You could spend all game trying to "6" stomp a Riptide. Not a good strategy imo.

Martel732 wrote:
I think they still get FNP vs a "6" on the D-table don't they?

...

Still seeing those 400 pt hunks of junk dying awful easy. That IK player was very fortunate to come away with a win. You could spend all game trying to "6" stomp a Riptide. Not a good strategy imo.

To your first question, no. FNP rule excludes D-weapons and ID.

I disagree that the IK player was fortunate. He got seized on and lost a Knight in T1.

2x Knights with chainswords are going to shake off most damage from at a Riptide Wing and murder them with ease. This is a mismatch in your favor, D-melee and Stomp (on a 6HP SHV) are clearly more than adequate. How much more offense do you need? Are you worried the Riptide taking off a HP or two might scratch the paint job?

IK can still get shot off the table in 1 turn, but that's how it goes. You will take losses. Doesn't mean that it's a bad unit.

Well at least they can't shake off the D chainsaw with a stim injector.

 Ratliker wrote:
I'm so pissed at things that clearly, Clearly should have been Vehicle (Walker) being MC and getting crapload of saves & FNP.

This should be the motto of current 40k.

do you folks want to know WHY I am able to ROFLstomp my opponents, both with my army and with theirs? I don't fear either. There are some matches that I go into knowing that I am going to lose, and you want to know a secret? they are some of the closest matches I have ever played. If you show up to a game thinking 'OMG (s)he brought THAT?!?' you are going to get stomped because you are surrendering initiative to your opponent.

If you want easy, try buying some chicks and a baseball bat, or playing a botmatch in CS where all the bots can bring is knives. If you want a game, show up to your gaming venue and ask for a game. If you have a problem with what your opponent is bringing, then TALK TO THEM.

 Jaxler wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I've tried. And tried and tried and tried. Those "counters" have a tendency to be shot off the table before they can be employed. At least for those of us who can't field invisible centurions.

There's two things with a lot of grav: grav devs and grav cents. Bikers can't bring enough hurt: the Riptide just laughs off 3-5 AP 2 wounds because it always have a 5++/5+++ going for it. Minimum.

Yes, you can tarpit a Riptide for a huge chunk of the game, but at a cost of one of you own units after the Riptide has already blown it's own point value off the table trivially.

Perhaps the riptide isn't the problem, and either your army needs an update, or you need to learn how to play.

Preach it brother!

 carldooley wrote:
do you folks want to know WHY I am able to ROFLstomp my opponents, both with my army and with theirs? I don't fear either. There are some matches that I go into knowing that I am going to lose, and you want to know a secret? they are some of the closest matches I have ever played. If you show up to a game thinking 'OMG (s)he brought THAT?!?' you are going to get stomped because you are surrendering initiative to your opponent.

If you want easy, try buying some chicks and a baseball bat, or playing a botmatch in CS where all the bots can bring is knives. If you want a game, show up to your gaming venue and ask for a game. If you have a problem with what your opponent is bringing, then TALK TO THEM.

It's plastic on a table. I also know I must get into assault with Tau to have a chance. The match vs Tau practically plays itself. Get into assault while taking minimal casualties. The minimal casualties part is the hard part.

Can we stop with the "learn to play" crap? That gak isn't helping anyone.

Jaxler wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I've tried. And tried and tried and tried. Those "counters" have a tendency to be shot off the table before they can be employed. At least for those of us who can't field invisible centurions.

There's two things with a lot of grav: grav devs and grav cents. Bikers can't bring enough hurt: the Riptide just laughs off 3-5 AP 2 wounds because it always have a 5++/5+++ going for it. Minimum.

Yes, you can tarpit a Riptide for a huge chunk of the game, but at a cost of one of you own units after the Riptide has already blown it's own point value off the table trivially.

Perhaps the riptide isn't the problem, and either your army needs an update, or you need to learn how to play.

How to make the Riptide more fun to Play:

As a tau player with 1 regular riptide and 2 Y'varha's I would love to see the regular tide get a boost. He's +1 Toughness with better nova abilities but worse movement options and less firepower than the fast attack tide. He's tough when you give him stims but gets swept in combat the moment he loses a wound. Ld9 - 1 or 2 wounds from any combat monster cavalry unit reduces his leadership to 7-8. He'll fail that and then get swept because of his Initiative 2. Half the time I don't even nova charge because I tend to roll a 1/2 and fail the FNP.

Movement sub-par - 6" move, then 2d6" jet pack move - but realistically that 2d6" nets about 7" movement. So he gets roughly 12" movement each turn. Now someone will argue that they can 4d6" that by nova charging but really you want to spend that nova charge on ripplefire or 3++.
- So any cavalry or GC/SHW or anyone else that moves 12, charges with Fleet, will catch the riptide.

I'd like to see Riptides get both their weapons as a paid option like 50pts and he can equip both the IA and the HBC. His multitracker lets him fire his TL SMS/PR/FB as well as his 2 main guns. That would make the Riptide 275pts but It would be worth it. A nice bonus would be if he was able to fire his main guns at 2 different targets, one of his gun at full BS and the other would snapshoot. Which would be fine because of markerlights. That model would be awesome looking and fit the theme of the FW Riptides having both arms carrying big guns. Nova profiles for the big guns would only apply to 1 when charged.


How to make the Riptide more fun to play against:
I dunno. I rarely fight them. When I have I ignored them and killed everything else. I've found the really lose effectiveness without markerlights. They're easy to tarpit, easy to sweep, get mucked by combat monsters. They're a distraction carnefex.

It's not really easy to sweep or tarpit, but whatever. You admitted yourself that you rarely fight against them. Maybe YOUR Riptides are getting swept or tarpitted.

The paint job is well done but the paint scheme is gaudy and busy. I can't tell what's going on. Definitely not my style.