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.

I mean, I think in some ways his assessment is pretty good. I do see how you could compare the two and that the Riptide could definitely be a lynchpin, but they are also very, very different and thus hard to compare. Both offer amazing tactical advantages and both are very, very hardy. I also think that both can have armies built around them with great success. I still fear the Heldrake more though. The biggest factor is not being able to hide from them. In my experience, no matter where you go, the Heldrake can find you and kill you.

"But my army's better because it has machine guns and missiles!" - this thread.

I'll happily fight a Tau army with three Riptides with my armoured company.

Eldar trickery.

Jus' sayin'...

Just a question: Shouldn't y'all be talking about this after you've fielded or fought against a Riptide?

It just seems rather silly to me to have people saying, "SQUAD OF RIPTIDE AND SHADOWSUN IS INVINCIBLE!" when you haven't even played with it.

1068SCP wrote:
Just a question: Shouldn't y'all be talking about this after you've fielded or fought against a Riptide?

It just seems rather silly to me to have people saying, "SQUAD OF RIPTIDE AND SHADOWSUN IS INVINCIBLE!" when you haven't even played with it.

This.

Just assuming you can tell how it works w/o playing it is meaningless.
Nobody can predict how other gamers will react to it in a real-game situation until you've tried it. Just saying that "It takes X shots for you to kill a Riptide, and it can kill that unit in one shot" is assuming quite a lot of factors.

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
Please bring two LR, Drop Pods and Rhinos against my Tau force. I guarantee you won't cross the no-man's land. Face it, Codex Marines are boned against Tau.

Yes, I wil take your obviously educated and well thought out position....wait, no, thats not what you have demonstrated thus far

Every criticism of your stance has either been ignored or "refuted" by going "nah uh!" . Neither of which are constructive, mature and rational responses to a discussion thread

You havea sset position, and no amount of reasoned discussion will remove you from it. Your amount of sheer blind faith is impressive

I haven't seen the statline of the Riptide yet, but either way you can't Jaws a Heldrake, and I'm guessing that the Riptide doesn't have the highest initiative in the world.

I've used the Riptide 3 times now, it is good, very good. But i'd rather have a Helturkey, lol. Can't underestimate the effectiveness of Vectoring one unit then flaming another, that sort of versatility is unparalleled.

WOW!!!

just read this entire thread to amuse myself for a while and thought i'd put some of my thoughts in....

i fail to see how the riptides can be anything like as dangerous as the OP suggests... if they are all next to each other, all have interceptor, are in visable range of broadsides with interceptor and visable to a battlesuit commander then they MIGHT intercept a unit of marines to death and then (after losing a 200ish point unit) the marine player enjoys about 750-1kpts of the tau army not firing for a turn (because you cant intercept and fire the weapon again next turn)

it is really not hard to claim cover, and the CHEAPEST ways tau can remove it get expensive pretty quick..... in addition to which, riptides only move 6" so actually hiding from them is damned easy.

if it tries to nova charge every turn you should only need to do 2 wounds to kill it (similar to the steam tank in fantasy i can see taking a few wounds stopping people from trying to use the nova...)

i think the riptide is a damned cool model, and fills a role that the tau need (hard to kill, good at shooting) but it is competing for slots against stealth suits (2+ save most of the time anyway and a much more annoying threat - only T3 but easier to hide) and crisis suits (much more versatile in terms of options)

even a single flying greater daemon, winged hive tyrant or dreadknight scares me more than a trio of riptides

They move 6" + 2D6" thrust move.

Even at the best (18'' move) they can't dodge forever, and odds are they'll move less than that

There's no need for ad hominem attacks if you can't substantiate a response.

But just so you know, I've been playing 40k for 14 years since Codex DA in 3rd Edition, and am currently going 23 games undefeated with the new Ravenwing. The only draw was due to the
store closing early and not finishing the last turn.If you somehow doubt my tactical acumen, you're very much welcome to come down to London to have a go if you think you're 'ard enough.

The terrain I play on is rather sparse and there is usually not very many places to hide, this probably influences my response. But if you look at tournament arrangements, there rarely is that much cover
anyway (25%) of the boards is recommended. Also, 2/3 of the deployments favour Tau, as diagonal deployment and long board edge deployment play to their strengths.

It's pretty plain that your solutions are bad against 3 Riptides. So far DE poison spam is probably the strongest counter, but if you focus the Riptides as Ascalom has found out
your army dies to other things.

As a pretty astute player has pointed out, by attacking the Riptides you lose the game, because you're wasting firepower which could kill far less resilient things.

In any case, you can bubble wrap the Riptides effectively with screens of cheap Kroot. Think less of using the Riptides in isolation but rather having three resilient firing platforms
with versatile firepower which cannot be stunned, shaken, or otherwise stopped.

Jaws is limited to a 24" range, psychic test, Deny the Witch, and only has a 1/2 chance of removing the Riptide.

Even then, there still are two Riptides to deal with... and your Rune Priest has just put himself in a position to be shot by the entire Tau army.

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
But just so you know, I've been playing 40k for 14 years since Codex DA in 3rd Edition, and am currently going 23 games undefeated with the new Ravenwing. The only draw was due to the
store closing early and not finishing the last turn.If you somehow doubt my tactical acumen, you're very much welcome to come down to London to have a go if you think you're 'ard enough.

The duration you've played the game is pretty much irrelevant. I've played 16 years at this point, and in that time I've seen people who've been playing for 2 weeks table people playing for 10+ years. Skill is not at all correlated with how long you've played the game. Once you know the rules inside and out, 3-4 games and you are pretty much the best you are ever going to get. I just went 3-0 at a small local tournament with my nids last month, and I'd played 2 games of 6th before that. Your record of 23-0 speaks more of your opponents being crap then you being some manner of gaming savant as well.

The terrain I play on is rather sparse and there is usually not very many places to hide, this probably influences my response. But if you look at tournament arrangements, there rarely is that much cover
anyway (25%) of the boards is recommended. Also, 2/3 of the deployments favour Tau, as diagonal deployment and long board edge deployment play to their strengths.

Well, that's a problem. I believe the rulebook states D3 pieces per 2'x2' square.

It's pretty plain that your solutions are bad against 3 Riptides. So far DE poison spam is probably the strongest counter, but if you focus the Riptides as Ascalom has found out
your army dies to other things.

Anything you would use to kill terminators, dreadknights or heavy monstrous creatures will work against a Riptide. Plasma, outflankers, deep-strikers, fast movers, staying out of LOS, shielding with cannon fodder...etc. There's a multitude of ways to lessen their impact.

As a pretty astute player has pointed out, by attacking the Riptides you lose the game, because you're wasting firepower which could kill far less resilient things.

Every weapon has an optimal target. I wouldn't use bolters against a Riptide, but I wouldn't waste multi-meltas/plasma against firewarriors/kroot either.

In any case, you can bubble wrap the Riptides effectively with screens of cheap Kroot. Think less of using the Riptides in isolation but rather having three resilient firing platforms
with versatile firepower which cannot be stunned, shaken, or otherwise stopped.

Jaws is limited to a 24" range, psychic test, Deny the Witch, and only has a 1/2 chance of removing the Riptide.

Even then, there still are two Riptides to deal with... and your Rune Priest has just put himself in a position to be shot by the entire Tau army.

Of course, for the cost of your 3 Riptides, you get 6 rune priests....so there's that.

A Riptide isn't anything special, it's basically a Dreadknight with a long ranged weaker demolisher cannon on it. The only thing it really has going for it is that it's long ranged, and it's fairly tough to kill. The firepower is nothing impressive for 185+ points. If you seriously fear these things will unbalance the game, well, you are a pretty poor player.

Actually the bulk of my army was intact, though a fair few vehicles had lost hull points. The units that killed the Riptides mostly survived the battle.

He won on objectives IIRC, with the battle ending turn 5. If i'd had another turn he'd have lost by one objective, but he had one tenacious fething fire warrior camping it and refusing to die...

I'll not deny though that if i'd ignored at least one Riptide to frag a few other units, i'd likely have hat a win, for the cost of probably one unit. I'll remember that for next time.

Long Board Edges only has a 24'' no-mans land between the two sides. Not hard to close the gap on that. A Fast Skimmer army could do it in one turn. Corners is more of a git, but not insurmountable.

Most tournaments i've been to actually favour terrain that blocks LOS, at least a bit, A bare table with a few scattered tufts of grass favours shooting armies that don't need cover (IG, SM and Tau). A board that actually provides enough cover will allow shorter ranged armies to play a bit better to their strengths (DE, Eldar) while a heavy cover battlefield favors Close-in armies like Orks and Daemons.

The duration you've played the game is pretty much irrelevant. I've played 16 years at this point, and in that time I've seen people who've been playing for 2 weeks table people playing for 10+ years. Skill is not at all correlated with how long you've played the game. Once you know the rules inside and out, 3-4 games and you are pretty much the best you are ever going to get. I just went 3-0 at a small local tournament with my nids last month, and I'd played 2 games of 6th before that. Your record of 23-0 speaks more of your opponents being crap then you being some manner of gaming savant as well.

I never claimed to be as such, and since you don't know the first thing about the opponents I've played, I would refrain from making judgements. But since you insist on making a blanket statement
based on zero evidence, I can't stop you from putting your foot in, can I? Then again, according to you all it takes is a knowledge of the rules and 2-3 games, and magically every player becomes a potential GT winner.

The reason I replied with my 40k history is because certain players were casting aspersions on whether I actually play the game, which I most certainly do, and frequently.

The terrain I play on is rather sparse and there is usually not very many places to hide, this probably influences my response. But if you look at tournament arrangements, there rarely is that much cover
anyway (25%) of the boards is recommended. Also, 2/3 of the deployments favour Tau, as diagonal deployment and long board edge deployment play to their strengths.

Well, that's a problem. I believe the rulebook states D3 pieces per 2'x2' square.

Anything you would use to kill terminators, dreadknights or heavy monstrous creatures will work against a Riptide. Plasma, outflankers, deep-strikers, fast movers, staying out of LOS, shielding with cannon fodder...etc. There's a multitude of ways to lessen their impact.

You're confusing 'lessening their impact' and 'ways to kill Riptides,' Part of the point of this post was to point out things that work against Terminators don't work against Rips because of their superior range and maneuverability. Things that lessen their impact obviously work, like spreading out because this is effective against all blast weapons, but things like gtg in cover but are less effective, because Tau can JSJ and remove your cover save. Also, because of Interceptor deep strikers and out-flankers are far less effective.

Every weapon has an optimal target. I wouldn't use bolters against a Riptide, but I wouldn't waste multi-meltas/plasma against firewarriors/kroot either.

Congratulations on pointing out the obvious. You clearly failed to grasp even the basic premise of the point.

Of course, for the cost of your 3 Riptides, you get 6 rune priests....so there's that.

In normal games you only ever get four, and if you do you're left with a top-heavy, sub-optimal SW army. Let's stop pretending that JOTWW is a catch all solution to Riptides because a) It's limited to SW B) It's not very long ranged or even a guaranteed kill.

A Riptide isn't anything special, it's basically a Dreadknight with a long ranged weaker demolisher cannon on it. The only thing it really has going for it is that it's long ranged, and it's fairly tough to kill. The firepower is nothing impressive for 185+ points. If you seriously fear these things will unbalance the game, well, you are a pretty poor player.

This is the kind of myopic reductionism I started this post to combat. The Riptide is much tougher than a Dreadknight (2+ 3++), and its firepower is average-good for 190 points, and it has more flexibility and movement. You have not substantiated your argument with a single useful rebuttal.

Ad Hominem attacks are the last refuge of those who lack content. (if you don't know what Ad Hominem means, google it.) Please make up your mind if it's me who's a bad player or my opponents.






Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ascalam wrote:
Actually the bulk of my army was intact, though a fair few vehicles had lost hull points. The units that killed the Riptides mostly survived the battle.

He won on objectives IIRC, with the battle ending turn 5. If i'd had another turn he'd have lost by one objective, but he had one tenacious fething fire warrior camping it and refusing to die...

I'll not deny though that if i'd ignored at least one Riptide to frag a few other units, i'd likely have hat a win, for the cost of probably one unit. I'll remember that for next time.

Long Board Edges only has a 24'' no-mans land between the two sides. Not hard to close the gap on that. A Fast Skimmer army could do it in one turn. Corners is more of a git, but not insurmountable.

Most tournaments i've been to actually favour terrain that blocks LOS, at least a bit, A bare table with a few scattered tufts of grass favours shooting armies that don't need cover (IG, SM and Tau). A board that actually provides enough cover will allow shorter ranged armies to play a bit better to their strengths (DE, Eldar) while a heavy cover battlefield favors Close-in armies like Orks and Daemons.

Not all armies are quite as fast as Dark Eldar or as good against Monstrous Creatures.

You're assuming that the 3++ goes off every time and that you can also use the Nova Reactor to boost the shooting? Of course it's going to seem unstoppable with those assumptions. The fact that you don't play with enough terrain further skews the results in favour of the Riptide. You're coming across as incredibly arrogant to me, but it might just be the Internet.

Your posting style is extremely frustrating and hostile, and carries a subtext of "if you don't agree with me, you are stupid", so hopefully this doesn't get turned into a flame war.

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:

The duration you've played the game is pretty much irrelevant. I've played 16 years at this point, and in that time I've seen people who've been playing for 2 weeks table people playing for 10+ years. Skill is not at all correlated with how long you've played the game. Once you know the rules inside and out, 3-4 games and you are pretty much the best you are ever going to get. I just went 3-0 at a small local tournament with my nids last month, and I'd played 2 games of 6th before that. Your record of 23-0 speaks more of your opponents being crap then you being some manner of gaming savant as well.

I never claimed to be as such, and since you don't know the first thing about the opponents I've played, I would refrain from making judgements. But since you insist on making a blanket statement
based on zero evidence, I can't stop you from putting your foot in, can I? Then again, according to you all it takes is a knowledge of the rules and 2-3 games, and magically every player becomes a potential GT winner.

You never claimed such....well, there are 4 explanations in my mind to a 23-0 record;

1. You are a vastly better player then your opponents (whom are of "average" LFGS level), making you some one in a hundred gaming genius.
2. Your opponents are poor.
3. You are lying about your record (it's the internet, why not?)
4. You cheat....a lot.

Giving you the benefit of the doubt that you aren't a cheater or a liar, or you are flaunting your records to just be a braggart...that leaves mediocre opponents, as if they were on your level the dice would have handed you at least 1 loss in the course of 23+ games. My experience with LFGS play is crap opponents overall. Maybe 1 out of 30 is decent, but they are rare, and much like myself have gotten tired of stomping the poor players on "friendly" gaming nights and retired to play at home with friends in a less serious atmosphere or against opponents they know will give them a challenge. So most likely you are fairly good, and your opponents really aren't in your league, similar to myself. If you want actual interweb credibility, you will have to post some major tournament wins like a few of the players around these forums. You won't get much credibility just throwing up a win/loss record where you cannot verify the quality of your opponents, or even if you are lying or not.

Anything you would use to kill terminators, dreadknights or heavy monstrous creatures will work against a Riptide. Plasma, outflankers, deep-strikers, fast movers, staying out of LOS, shielding with cannon fodder...etc. There's a multitude of ways to lessen their impact.

You're confusing 'lessening their impact' and 'ways to kill Riptides,' Part of the point of this post was to point out things that work against Terminators don't work against Rips because of their superior range and maneuverability. Things that lessen their impact obviously work, like spreading out because this is effective against all blast weapons, but things like gtg in cover but are less effective, because Tau can JSJ and remove your cover save. Also, because of Interceptor deep strikers and out-flankers are far less effective.

Ways to lessen the impact of a unit;
#1 Kill it.
#2 Hide from or kite it.
...etc

Killing it is a way to lessen it's impact on a game. Granted, it's fairly difficult to kill, but counting it's nova reactor working every turn is silly. Odds are one of the three is going to fail that 3+ throw, so it will attract the available firepower. Also your argument of "It will always be out of range" is a bit of an exaggeration as well. In a standard setup, the furthest you could deploy away from a unit I was trying to get close is 32.5" (12" up, 48" across the board, ~3.5" wide base), in vanguard strike it's ~48" (I think...I mapped it out, but it's late and my math might be sketchy), and playing length wise, you are looking ~44.5". That's 1 turn of movement for a unit with 48" range at WORST. You are rarely out of range with a 48" weapon on a 6x4 board in my experience, so a 72" range is largely unnecessary, and does little to protect you from 48" range weapons as there just isn't the room get to that max range. It's also difficult to argue that the Riptide will always be out of LOS due to JSJ, then state that it will always have a good target to fire at.

Every weapon has an optimal target. I wouldn't use bolters against a Riptide, but I wouldn't waste multi-meltas/plasma against firewarriors/kroot either.

Congratulations on pointing out the obvious. You clearly failed to grasp even the basic premise of the point.

I'm not 100% clear what your point was really. Was it that any firepower directed at it at all is a complete waste because it would almost certainly have a more optimal target elsewhere? There's other ways to deal with other units, but the Riptide will require a fair amount of firepower to bring down. So if you want it dead, and you will want to kill it quite often, then you will have to free up the available firepower by engaging other units with other tools.

Of course, for the cost of your 3 Riptides, you get 6 rune priests....so there's that.

In normal games you only ever get four, and if you do you're left with a top-heavy, sub-optimal SW army. Let's stop pretending that JOTWW is a catch all solution to Riptides because a) It's limited to SW B) It's not very long ranged or even a guaranteed kill.

I think you missed MY point here. Riptides aren't free, and for what you are paying for them some times it's worth throwing away a smaller unit for a chance to take it out. Losing a 100 point rune priest for a 50% chance to drop a Riptide is a pretty decent gamble actually. Of course no one would field 6 rune priests, hell, more then 1 would be rare in a competitive list.

A Riptide isn't anything special, it's basically a Dreadknight with a long ranged weaker demolisher cannon on it. The only thing it really has going for it is that it's long ranged, and it's fairly tough to kill. The firepower is nothing impressive for 185+ points. If you seriously fear these things will unbalance the game, well, you are a pretty poor player.

This is the kind of myopic reductionism I started this post to combat. The Riptide is much tougher than a Dreadknight (2+ 3++), and its firepower is average-good for 190 points, and it has more flexibility and movement. You have not substantiated your argument with a single useful rebuttal.

Ad Hominem attacks are the last refuge of those who lack content. (if you don't know what Ad Hominem means, google it.) Please make up your mind if it's me who's a bad player or my opponents.

I really don't know how else to phrase it. It doesn't really do anything we aren't accustom to dealing with. We all have experience dealing with T6 multi wound 2+ save creatures with Dreadknights, Tyranno-fexes and Mephiston kicking around. The only real challenge it provides is that it likes to sit back instead of coming forward like the others, but we also have experience dealing with units like to sit back because of heavy artillery or back field leman russes or whatnot.

What I really don't get is your overall point. Are you trying to claim that Riptides are our new overlords and we should all bow to our soon to be tournament dominating Tau masters? Because I don't think that's what you really mean, and I don't think that's true anyways, since Tau are largely a middle of the road army from what I can see. Sure Riptides are a good, maybe even a great unit, but they won't change the way we think about the game or cause people to run back to the drawing board to start their tournament lists from scratch like Helldrakes did. Helldrakes have a lot more reach with their firepower (since LOS and cover are largely irrelevant due to it's speed and weapon), not to mention their firepower is a fair bit more impressive and very alpha strike style. Riptides are just another long range template heavy weapon in many regards. In terms of staying power that really depends on the amount of anti-aircraft the opponent has, but overall neither is very easy to get rid of, but you have a lot more options when dealing with a Riptide.

In the end, I'm keeping my eye on the battle report forum and looking for some local Tau players to play against to see how it fares on the board, but I don't really expect it to be a dominating presence.

 ausYenLoWang wrote:
FA slots can contest objectives yes?

turn drake to Hover mode....

Vehicles cannot contest, period Contesting has to be a denial unit, which is essentially infantry and MCs, not vehicles. (Pg 123 core rule book).

nosferatu1001 wrote:
They move 6" + 2D6" thrust move.

The average roll of a 2D6 is 7. So, 6+7= 13" average movement. Running is another D6, average of 3.5, for an average total movement of 16.5".
Not fast enough to outrun any fast attack options, or charging units with fleet who run before charging. Add in the fact that the Tau player will probably prefer to shoot than run, and you're back down to 13" movement. Not fast enough to out run anything in a single turn, and ranged weapons will still have their fun.

Jus' saying...

 liquidjoshi wrote:
"But my army's better because it has machine guns and missiles!" - this thread.

I'll happily fight a Tau army with three Riptides with my armoured company.

My army is better because it farts out beetles and grubs!

have you ever noticed, if you take the wings off of a heldrake and look at it from behind, it looks more like an angry daemon lobster.....

nosferatu1001 wrote:

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:Gosh, I can't believe how obtuse some Marine players are here about their precious drop-podding Sternguard, who cost 2x a Riptide. If I had a drop pod army and was facing 3x Interceptor Riptides + whatever else interceptor Tau are packing, would be terrified. Considering a large proportion of your army is in those three initial drop pods as opposed to 570 points of models who have a good chance of surviving your initial shooting phase AND SHOOT YOU FIRST, it's pretty clear podding/dsing anything is a bad idead against 3x Riptides.

Sigh

Again, you are assuming you can ALWAYS shoot ALL 3 riptides at the contents of the drop pods. That isnt going to happen in actual play. Youarent getting better than BS3 on the turn i drop because you dont have interceptor marker lights on that riptide

Your continued "I wil only consider unlikely extremes" is pointless to a rational, reasoned discussion of the merits and weaknesses of the riptide. According to you it has none, which is frankly crap as far as statements go.

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
I just played a couple of games with a Soulgrinder which has BS3 Pieplates, and I wasn't much impressed.

Good thing Tau can increase BS...

Not on interceptor they cant. And what happens when I kill your markerlights? What happens when my 2 LR hit your lines because you still only have a 50% chance to kill a LR *after* you penetrate? What happens when your precious MC gets TS by a 35point rhino, fails a morale check and falls back off the board?

Is the Riptide strong? YES. It is *strong*. Is it as insanely broken as you are attempting to claim throughout this thread? No.

Your premise has been disproven, over and over. Give it up

This whole thread is hilarious. It's like arguing with a child who starts to kick and scream "three pie plates!" with their fingers in their ears, oblivious to what anyone has to say.

Asmodai Asmodean wrote:"Footslogging, TH/SS are dead. Deepstriking, TH/SS are dead. Land-Raidering, TH/SS are dead. Storm-Ravening, TH/SS are dead. "

Im glad you sorted the tactics out here.

For people who believe that triple Riptides are going to win your games for you, bear in mind these points:

1) Most games are objective-based. While any KP game will favour the riptide, you're spending 555+ points on three models who cannot capture objectives, and will rarely contest ans they need to stay far away from the enemy to be effective.

2) Terrain. You can't see everything. Units can/will hide from you.

3) There are weapons, psychic powers and tactics that can cause the Riptide to fail morale, and fall back 3D6". You often say you'll camp on the back of the game board so that you can snipe. If the Riptide falls back even once, it's dead.

4) Using interceptor gives you *some* chance of killing a unit before it can do anything, when it appears. But you have a fair chance of failing to eradicate it, and cannot shoot in your turn to get better targets.

5) Overcharging has a chance of FAILURE. You can hurt yourself quite badly if you over-rely on it.

6) You're spending a large chunk of points on something that's effectiveness can be negated somewhat.

 xttz wrote:
Saw this mentioned elsewhere, although I don't have a copy of the new codex to check it....

"Drones taken as upgrades for a unit act as additional squad members in all regards"
Is it true that if the Riptide loses a drone, it's forced to take a morale test due to 25% casualties?

yep
on the plus side, means it is no longer a single model unit. means you can join characters to it. Shadowsun for Shrouding and 4D6 jetpack anyone?

CalasTyphon216 wrote:

 xttz wrote:
Saw this mentioned elsewhere, although I don't have a copy of the new codex to check it....

"Drones taken as upgrades for a unit act as additional squad members in all regards"
Is it true that if the Riptide loses a drone, it's forced to take a morale test due to 25% casualties?

yep
on the plus side, means it is no longer a single model unit. means you can join characters to it. Shadowsun for Shrouding and 4D6 jetpack anyone?

It's at this point that I stop caring about shooting the Riptide, and just focus on annihilating the rest of the army

There really seems to be two camps here, those that think the riptide is unstoppable and those that think the riptide is a joke. Having actually played a few games with it I can say it is very good but it is not without its flaws. First and foremost it is very survivable. It can take a lot of hits and still say standing. Some of you may be thinking that it is as easy to deal with as 5 terminators, in some respects this is true but t6 means mass infantry fire doesn't hurt the riptide nearly as much as terminators and because it is a single model templates are less effective. This means the things that you want to use to take it out are your anti-tank guns with high damage and ap1/2, other wise you waste too much fire on it. For example, many players are saying DE they will kill the riptide with poison shots, a little math hammer shows us it will take 90 bs4 poison 4+ shots to take it down (135 if he has fnp) so realistically that is out of the question, on the other hand it only takes 13.5 bs4 s8 ap2 lance shots to kill it (20.25 if it has fnp). So the riptide is vulnerable to mass hits from anti-tank guns but some armies anti-tank is not the best and as a result those armies will suffer.

Another one of the riptides weaknesses is assault. If you can catch it you are good. But it is actually really hard to catch with its jump pack and if you get too close it can last ditch effort nova charge for a get away. Realistically you need jump troops, beasts or something else that can move 12+'' a turn. Normal 6" movement is just not going to work (try to think about how many times you caught a crisis suit in combat with a normal 6'' movement). Range is also an issue with a 72'' gun. So units like wraiths are very good against the riptide, while units like terminators are not. But be careful chasing after a riptide. It will take a few turns to get to and if the player is smart they will lead you to an area where you are exposed to fire and/or far away from the rest of the tau army, meaning your dedicated assault units might not see assault again. So although assault is the best way to deal with the riptide it can be a bit risky.

So now lets look at its weapon. The ion accelerator is probably going to be the weapon of choice and it will almost always be over charged. So we are looking at a 72'' 3 s7 ap2 shots or a s8 ap2 large blast that can potentially ignore cover. Does this scare you? It really depends on your army, against an army like tyranids the blast doesn't really scare them because they have many high toughness multiple wound models and cheap infantry, the 3 s7 shots are troublesome but relatively weak compared to a crisis team. Against an army like GKs with small units of high costing models the gun is a lot more scary. Over all for damage to point cost crisis suits and broadsides are probably better, but it has survivability that other units don't have. So for some armies ignoring the riptide(s) is not a bad idea. Or at least ignoring it until you deal with weaker threats because personally I think I am winning if go after my riptide rather than my crisis team.

Because of the riptides great mobility and survivability I think its main job is going to be line breaker and objective denial. This is very similar to GUO who uses his bulk to sit on a backfield objective and keep the enemy from scoring it. And I think this is something tau desperately needs. I see it as an auto include in a tau list as a 1 or 2 (as its weapons are not strong enough for 3) I do not see a meta shifting around it like the hell drake though. If the meta shifts because of tau I think it will be more do to broadsides or anti-air in general more than because of the riptide.

Necron Dlord with sempiternal weave, MSS and rez orb in a challenge? Jump infantry, S7 ignore armor, rerolls all around along with forcing a 3d6 Lds to hit seem like a pretty good deal to me. 4+ Ever living never hurts either.

Shortened and restructured for ease of replying:

 lambsandlions wrote:

1)Another one of the riptides weaknesses is assault. If you can catch it you are good. But it is [hard] to catch with its jump pack and if you get too close it [can] nova charge for a get away. Realistically you need jump troops, beasts or something else that can move 12+'' a turn. Normal 6" movement is just not going to work.

2)Range is also an issue with a 72'' gun. So units like wraiths are very good against the riptide, while units like terminators are not. But be careful chasing after a riptide. It will take a few turns to get to and if the player is smart they will lead you to an area where you are exposed to fire and/or far away from the rest of the tau army, meaning your dedicated assault units might not see assault again. So although assault is the best way to deal with the riptide it can be a bit risky.

3)So now lets look at its weapon. The ion accelerator is probably going to be the weapon of choice and it will almost always be over charged. So we are looking at a 72'' 3 s7 ap2 shots or a s8 ap2 large blast that can potentially ignore cover. [Scary]? It really depends on your army, against an army like tyranids the blast doesn't really scare them because they have many high toughness multiple wound models and cheap infantry, the 3 s7 shots are troublesome but relatively weak compared to a crisis team. Against an army like GKs with small units of high costing models the gun is a lot more scary. Over all for damage to point cost crisis suits and broadsides are probably better, but it has survivability that other units don't have. So for some armies ignoring the riptide(s) is not a bad idea. Or at least ignoring it until you deal with weaker threats because [I think] I am winning if go after my riptide rather than my crisis team.

4)Because of the riptides great mobility and survivability I think its main job is going to be line breaker and objective denial. And I think this is something tau desperately needs. I see it as an auto include in a tau list as a 1 or 2 (as its weapons are not strong enough for 3) I do not see a meta shifting around it like the hell drake though. If the meta shifts because of tau I think it will be more do to broadsides or anti-air in general more than because of the riptide.

1) I agree with you here. The assault option requires fast, hard-hitting units to deal with. Possible options include chaos raptors/spawn/bikers/daemon princes etc. Jump infantry could do quite well in trying to reach the Riptide. One thing that could be really effective is using C:SM or BA Vanguard Veterans. Deepstrike them, then use "Heroic Intervention" to get straight into melee.

2)If by " wraiths are very good against the riptide, while units like terminators are not" you mean that any foot slogging termies are going to have a hard time, then I agree. 72" will hit almost anything in sight on a 6x4 board.

3)Exactly. Armies that invest heavily in 2+ or 3+ saves, or elitist units are going to be the most heavily hit by the Riptide. But horde armies have the expendability and massed attacks/firepower to deal with hard threats like the Riptide.
One thing I must say, however, is that Chaos Daemons are going to have fun with Tau. They have fast units, who are excellent in melee, can all Deepstrike, and spam 5++ saves. Things like Fateweaver combos could prove devastating to Tau, even with the Riptide.

4) I can see the Riptide sitting on the rearguard objectives, but linebreaker? I dispute that, personally. It might be tough, but the further forward you go, the closer you are to the enemy. It will be easier to get assaulted, and the blast shots risk scattering onto yourself far more than if you take advantage of the 72" range.

I've dropped 2 riptides by turn 3 using the chaos codex and hel turkeys. The " which is better argument " really is they come out to a tie. I can blow riptides off the board and tau can kill my hel turkeys, oh well. I play a nurgle army and drop tau about the same every time because tactics count for something even though dice are random. My flyers are used to distract and remove infantry types with the flamers and deal with light vehicles and other flyers. Between my obliterators and my havocs and my plague marines riptides lasted on a few games to turn 4, yes they are dangerous,but, not superman. Nor are helturkeys the end all of the chaos codex, I'd rather they made blight drones a choice for a flyer in the chaos codex my self. I've used a sorcerer to enfeebled a riptide and pie plated him to dead with a vindicator.... Not un-killable at that point. I've had my turkeys popped coming in from reserve from a double force org ADL with quad guns. Poof no turkeys. They are more even due to what they are designed to do. You take a riptide to pop a tank like a landraider or battle wagon, flyers and kill infantry. You take a heldrake to kill infantry, flyers and lite vehicles. Really they do there jobs well. If your going to compare them to each other base it on their roles on the field, they weren't designed to do the same thing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

some random necron guy wrote:
Necron Dlord with sempiternal weave, MSS and rez orb in a challenge? Jump infantry, S7 ignore armor, rerolls all around along with forcing a 3d6 Lds to hit seem like a pretty good deal to me. 4+ Ever living never hurts either.

Don't forget nightscythe for transport with some lych guard

Seriously?

This thing is one outflanking Dominion or Deep Striking Seraphim squad away from the scrap heap. Drop-Pod combi-melta could do it, too (or combi-plasma for that matter).

Hey, I know! Lets just Veil in a unit of Lychguard with shields and a duelling lord, just for laughs, shall we?

Ooh, ooh, I know! Lets break out the Tri-las Predators and Leman Russ Battle Tanks!