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Hi, Im new to Dakkadakka as a user but have been following alot of the forums over the past couple of years. Anyway I was wondering what the dakkadakka community would make of my five riptide list using the new farsight enclaves book with Tau as battle brothers (obviously this is a slightly topheavy list ):

HQ
Commander Farsight
Bodyguard: Shas'vre O'vesa

ELITES
Riptide - Heavy Burst Cannon, Velocity tracker, Early warning override, Fusion gun, Earth Caste Pilot Array
Riptide - Heavy Burst Cannon, Velocity tracker, Early warning override, Fusion gun, Earth Caste Pilot Array
Riptide - Ion accelerator, Early warning override, SMS

TROOPS
3 crisis battle suits - 6 flamers, 3 ritual bonding knives
7 fire warriors
7 fire warriors
7 fire warriors
10 kroot

FAST ATTACK
4 pathfinders
4 pathfinders
4 pathfinders

ALLIES:
Cadre Fireblade
9 fire warriors
Riptide - Ion accelerator, Early Warning override, SMS

=1999+1

tactics are basically intimidation with the riptides while the kroot outflank/stay in reserves and the crisis team use farsight's warlord trait to deep strike with pinpoint accuracy and flame the hell out of any enemy objective campers/units the riptides can't see.

I don't have the Enclave Supplement so I can't comment too much but here's the critique:

What's your plan against AV14?

What's your plan against flyers? With 2 mediocre sky firing units.

Also that Crisis team will under perform due to casualty removal being limited to range. Swap 1 flamer for a Burstcannon and your free to apply the flamer wounds to anyone within 18".

Also you seem light against mech.

Perhaps Missile suits and Missilesides would be the best support to the Riptides.

Isn't the Earth Caste Pilot Array a Signature System and limit 1 per army?

 redthirst wrote:
Isn't the Earth Caste Pilot Array a Signature System and limit 1 per army?

Yep, he can only take one signature system.

So your dropping farsight and 3 suits into flamer range?
General idea for suits is to keep at some range and shoot things, not get up close.
I like flamers and usually do take them, but its simply for a last ditch shot at a unit if i cant keep away from them. (Ymgarl stealers for example)

Riptides are nice, and that many really do cause a problem, unless you play against DE often.

Cant help but feel this list is a 1 trick pony though.
Getting dragged into combat is pretty much the end of it and you dont have the fire power to avoid that.

I only see 4 riptides here, where's the fifth one?

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
I only see 4 riptides here, where's the fifth one?

Shas'vre O'vesa comes with one as wargear.

@FlingitNow
plan against AV14 - fusions on the riptides plus overcharged io accelerators. ordinance str9 is a pretty decent chance of penetrating a landraider.

The skyfire units arent aweful since they can overcharge pretty comfortably with the earth caste array. [edit - turns out they cant have an earth caste array because of o'vesa. any suggestions?]
i guess i could try and squeeze in a couple of broadsides however that would probably mean dropping a riptide. and the point of this list is survivable in-your-face riptide pressure

Farisght drops with the flamer squad and he has a plasma rifle so I'm not too worried about casualty removal although i take your point and will swap in a burst cannon.

At the moment the only mech i'd really worry about is serpent spam, 6th makes the rest weak enough i am comfortable in not facing a mech heavy army.

 redthirst wrote:
Isn't the Earth Caste Pilot Array a Signature System and limit 1 per army?

my bads - thanks for the spot. In my mind i didnt carry signature systems rulings over to farsight enclave signature systems rulings.

 Jackal wrote:
So your dropping farsight and 3 suits into flamer range?
General idea for suits is to keep at some range and shoot things, not get up close.
I like flamers and usually do take them, but its simply for a last ditch shot at a unit if i cant keep away from them. (Ymgarl stealers for example)

Riptides are nice, and that many really do cause a problem, unless you play against DE often.

Cant help but feel this list is a 1 trick pony though.
Getting dragged into combat is pretty much the end of it and you dont have the fire power to avoid that.

I agree that that is the general idea of suits however in this case i wanted to use farsight's warlord trait for accurate deepstrike. In addition to this since the crisis teams are troops choices they can reasonably clear an objective of enemy troops and then entrench relying on riptide distraction to cover them. (i guess its worth looking for some points for missile pods as their third system for once they are on an objective)

with three ion accelerators, 2 heavy burst canons 30 pulse rifles, cadre and various crisis shenanigans i personally dont think its lacking in firepower compared to most competitive lsits, just compared to a min/maxed tau army...

i agree it will need finesse to avoid combats however there are few armies short of venom spam and some eldar builds which i feel threaten this list shooting-wise. a closecombat deathstar list such as nob bikers worries me though...


Oh and another trick I didnt refer to in the original post is O'Vesa is an indpendent character! (unless i am interpretting that incorrectly I can put her in a squad of fire warriors to increase survivability/take ap2 wounds for her).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ok so the revised list is as follows

HQ
Commander Farsight
Bodyguard: Shas'vre O'vesa

ELITES
Riptide - Heavy Burst Cannon, Velocity tracker, Early warning override, Fusion gun
Riptide - Heavy Burst Cannon, Velocity tracker, Early warning override, Fusion gun
Riptide - Heavy Burst Cannon, Velocity tracker, Early warning override, Fusion gun

TROOPS
3 crisis battle suits - 6 flamers, 3 ritual bonding knives, 3 missile pods
7 fire warriors
7 fire warriors
10 fire warriors
10 kroot

FAST ATTACK
4 pathfinders
4 pathfinders
4 pathfinders

ALLIES:
Cadre Fireblade
9 fire warriors
Riptide - Ion accelerator, Early Warning override, SMS

NB O'vesa goes in the unit of 10 fire warriors. either to protect her from ap2 or to protect the troops unit from small arms fire. depending on what my opponent brings. I felt I couldnt squeeze any broadsides in without threatening either my troop saturation or my riptides. however anything short of a necron airforce of forgeworld should be managable.

You have a lot of troop choices that will die extremely quickly to most kinds of pressure and are relatively slow. Dropping some of the fire warriors for kroot will give you better chances at taking objectives, but then again this list won't win much anyway unless you kill a majority of the opponent's army. Heaven help you against flyers

floraljetbike wrote:
You have a lot of troop choices that will die extremely quickly to most kinds of pressure and are relatively slow. Dropping some of the fire warriors for kroot will give you better chances at taking objectives, but then again this list won't win much anyway unless you kill a majority of the opponent's army. Heaven help you against flyers

i see how kroot may increase my mobility and resiliancy but they'll slightly reduce my damage output from firewarriors which is something i am lacking. The way the lists workis is the riptides alleviating the pressure on my troop choices.

Ok so from the feedback ive got i think i need to rejig my loadouts on my riptides. so if i give three of them heavy burst cannon and fusion blasters with EWO and velocity trackers. then give the last one an ion accelerator and fusion gun and i have O'Vesa. Then obviously against fliers i overcharge my guns. with 25 T6 2+/5++ or 3++ wunds i can afford one or two gets hots. Lets get into the mathhammer!.

Im not completely sure why intercepting skyfiring riptides are seen as aweful against flyers.
An overcharged HBC will destroy any AV10 flier before the flier can even strike due to interceptor (average 1 glance, 2 pens). against AV11 it deals on average 1 glance and 1 pen which if lucky will destroy it, but more likely will cripple it, stripping 2 hull points plus whatever the pen generates. against AV12 it does 1 penetrating hit. Agreed this is statistically unlikely to destroy the flier but is still a threat to it and for instance is likely to cause stormravens and vendettas to jink and so reduce incoming fire.
although these calculations are without jink saves, jinking will reduce the fire coming back towards the riptides and so its effectively helping the tau in the war of attrition which is effectively 'ignore the fliers and focus on the ground units'.
in addition this is not including the twinlinked fusion guns mounted on the riptides (i have assumed that they are out of range but with 5 riptides on the table they are unlikely to all be out of range)

helldrakes are worth a special mention being the toughest fliers out there will give the riptides a run for their money, making it necessary for 2 or 3 riptides to combine fire to take one down in a turn. However they cannot threaten riptides with careful vectorstrike-avoiding placement and the MSU nature of the troops choices protects them as well to some extent.

in an army with more than three AV12 fliers or necron scythe spam, this list will struggle to down them all. however there are very few fliers out there which can pose a significant threat to riptides. The beauty of riptides imo is that using the nova and rending HBC they can effectively sacrifice resiliance for firepower which I can do when particularly threatened by fliers.

I agree that flier spam is not the ideal match up for this list however it doesnt seem to need the heavens to help it survive...

The HBC VT and EWO is mediocre skyfire. Not amazing not bad, if and only if you Nova charge. Hence why with the Earth caste pilot it is a mediocre sky firing unit. Without him you're reliant on passing a 3+ Nova charge. You're also forced to do this every turn and you lose a wound if you fail. This is the issue.

Redo the maths remembering Helldrakes get a 5++ and Necrons can jink without losing much fire power due to Tesla. Working on the basis that one of your 3 Riptides has failed its Nova...

S6 just isn't great for sky firing. Its not bad but S7 makes a huge difference, doubling your chances against AV12 and giving a 50% increase versus AV11. You've decent Volume fire with the HBC but only really if you Nova it.

You only have 4 Riptides

 sing your life wrote:
You only have 4 Riptides

Nope, Shas'vre O'vesa is basically a riptide iirc

 FlingitNow wrote:
The HBC VT and EWO is mediocre skyfire. Not amazing not bad, if and only if you Nova charge. Hence why with the Earth caste pilot it is a mediocre sky firing unit. Without him you're reliant on passing a 3+ Nova charge. You're also forced to do this every turn and you lose a wound if you fail. This is the issue.

Redo the maths remembering Helldrakes get a 5++ and Necrons can jink without losing much fire power due to Tesla. Working on the basis that one of your 3 Riptides has failed its Nova...

S6 just isn't great for sky firing. Its not bad but S7 makes a huge difference, doubling your chances against AV12 and giving a 50% increase versus AV11. You've decent Volume fire with the HBC but only really if you Nova it.

well if you read above i did take this into account in my analysis after the maths. personnally id rather know how many jink saves my opponent will need to make rather than i will do 0.87 hulll points damage or whatever its calculated to be... in addition to this I didnt include the twinlinked fusion blasters.

im only forced to do this ever turn that im shooting at fliers... and im not too worried about a couple of my wounds in exchange for some skyfiring

I take your point about the lack of 'earth caste pilot array' effectively neutering my skyfire response against some lists. What would you do while trying to keep the 5 riptide princinple of the list?

Try and find 15pts to up the heavy burst cannons to ions that way its a long range anti air when not overcharge or nova charge im not a big fan of HBC after i totaled a riptide with5 gets hot rolls!!!!

With 24 fire warriors either group them up into two groups of 12 and use leftover points to give the Kroot sniper rounds or balance them into 3 groups of 8 ..

If i recall, fielding one of farsight's command team ignores the restrictions on signature systems. Unless they changed that in an updated ebook edition. So you can field O'vesa and one other riptide with the earth cast piloting array. That is my understanding, anyways.

morfydd wrote:
With 24 fire warriors either group them up into two groups of 12 and use leftover points to give the Kroot sniper rounds or balance them into 3 groups of 8 ..

The reason I've had them unbalanced numerically is so that i can put O'Vesa in the larger group for mutual protection. The fire warriors are protected by O'vesa being at the front with 5 T6 wounds and a 2+ save with feel no pain against small arms fire while i can LOS the ap2 attacks onto the fire warriors. I was wondering if people have a view on if O'vesa can join units. O'Vesa is a monstrous creature but also an independent character - can she join units?

grotms wrote:
If i recall, fielding one of farsight's command team ignores the restrictions on signature systems. Unless they changed that in an updated ebook edition. So you can field O'vesa and one other riptide with the earth cast piloting array. That is my understanding, anyways.

I guess I can replace one of the earth caste arrays but am now looking for other skyfire options not being able to max out the skyfiring riptides...

If you put O'Vesa with Firewarriors he becomes T3 due to majority toughness. This is a really bad idea.

Also ignore the guy suggesting Ion for AA I don't know what planet he is on.

As for solutions. Drop enough troops to get a Skyray. Not ideal but your best bet in the circumstances. Or make sure your troops are mobile enough to camp in your opponents deployment zone against a flyer heavy list. Or Quad gun or Missilesides with VTs.

You should put O'Vesa in with the squad of suits. Because he has those two T6 drones he will increase the majority T of the unit to 6, greatly increasing the lifespan of those suits.

cool lol

 FlingitNow wrote:
If you put O'Vesa with Firewarriors he becomes T3 due to majority toughness. This is a really bad idea.

Also ignore the guy suggesting Ion for AA I don't know what planet he is on.

As for solutions. Drop enough troops to get a Skyray. Not ideal but your best bet in the circumstances. Or make sure your troops are mobile enough to camp in your opponents deployment zone against a flyer heavy list. Or Quad gun or Missilesides with VTs.

Ah crap, forgot about majority toughness. As a slight side note 2 velocity tracking missile sides on average do one glance and one pen to an AV12 flier before jink/invul where as a HBC does a single pen. However the riptides carrying them have interceptor (IMO this is massive) and a fusion gun...
the missile sides are cheaper and don’t hurt themselves. Ok so I’m thinking quadgun as well as more mobile (i.e. outflanking) troops...
Unfortunately I’m not able to fit in missile sides without seriously either jeopardizing my scoring abilities or riptide threats. This is mainly due to the farsight tax on O’vesa and the 3 crisis suits I have to include…

Mulletdude wrote:
You should put O'Vesa in with the squad of suits. Because he has those two T6 drones he will increase the majority T of the unit to 6, greatly increasing the lifespan of those suits.

Thanks for the tip. Ok so if i form a unit of 3 crisis suits with 6 missile pods and velocity trackers I have a resilient scoring unit (majority toughness 6 with O'vesa's 2+/fnp to tank krak missiles and small arms fire) which can double up to threaten fliers with O’vesa splitting off. Actually I like this build with the unit throwing out 4 bs2 str7 shots, 12 bs3 str7 shots, a fusion gun and an ion accelerator. However it does rather leave me with the problem of how to make the most of Farsight and his deepstriking warlord trait. The benefit of the flamer crisis unit was it was a mobile threatening troops unit...

so here is my latest version of the list. Again any constructive criticism/comments welcome!

FARSIGHT ENCLAVE
Commander Farsight
Bodyguard: O'Vesa

riptide – HBC, Velocity tracker, Early warning override, fusion gun, earth caste array
riptide – HBC, Velocity tracker, Early warning override, fusion gun
riptide – Ion accelerator, fusion gun


10 kroot - 1 hound
10 kroot - 1 hound
10 kroot - 1 hound
3 crisis suits – bonding knife ritual – 3 missile pods, velocity trackers

4 pathfinders
4 pathfinders

ALLIES:
Cadre Fireblade
8 firewarriors
Riptide – Ion accelerator, Fusion gun

Aegis defence line – quad gun
compared to the original list this one has far less str5 pulse rifle fire as well as no obvious use for farsight. in exchange it has significantly greater anti air capabilities with the VT crisis and the quad gun...

may be completly overlooking something here but i cant see a point in putting a earth cast pliot on with skyfire as it reduces the BS to 1 or am i completly missing something here??

It reduces WS to 1.

i feel like a dunce now ha ha thats ok i swear it said BS (which would have been usless)

 kezwick wrote:
i feel like a dunce now ha ha thats ok i swear it said BS (which would have been usless)

Haha thankfully not otherwise it would be on almost pyrovore-level uselessness with as much chance of hitting itself when overcharging as the enemy!

Thanks for all the input you guys have had. Not sure how soon I'm going to be able to playtest the final list I posted but will try to let you all know of the result.

Might seem silly, but if you take a riptide with 2 missile drones thats then a unit of 3.
Throw the named riptide with them and you have 6 T6 models with 16 wounds.
Use the drones to take the low AP shots and it ignores the usual LD issues with riptides and drones.

Will have to throw the normal riptide an ion though to keep up because it seems like you need to focus on 1 weapon type with that unit.

Will be pretty nasty though and near impossible to take the unit out quickly.
Can even throw farsight with them to stop your warlord being killed.

It's an imbalanced list, but a really good one. You're fully embracing RPS, which is not a bad thing. Your easy match ups will be very easy, and your counters will be scarier than they would be with a more balanced selection.

You overestimate the ability of Riptides to clear out flier/flying circus builds, but I agree that's not an unwinnable match up for you. A Slaneesh rush list is going to be pretty tough, you don't have the Kroot body guards to protect your Riptides. You may actually have trouble with Wraithwing. You're going to have to get close to kill the AV13, then the Wraiths will eat your Tides. And if the Riptides are taking care of the ABs, who is killing the Night Scythes? Your VoF is pretty low for a Tau list, so the Wraiths will live a lot longer than they should (to say nothing of Daemon horde builds, scariest for you being Slaneesh as mentioned earlier).

Regardless I think it will be a super fun build to play.

 Jackal wrote:
Might seem silly, but if you take a riptide with 2 missile drones thats then a unit of 3.
Throw the named riptide with them and you have 6 T6 models with 16 wounds.
Use the drones to take the low AP shots and it ignores the usual LD issues with riptides and drones.

Will have to throw the normal riptide an ion though to keep up because it seems like you need to focus on 1 weapon type with that unit.

Will be pretty nasty though and near impossible to take the unit out quickly.
Can even throw farsight with them to stop your warlord being killed.

Before I start, apologies about the text block. Am playing devil's advocate here outloud in order to theoryhammer the idea.

Thats a thought - I quite like this build however can see 2 major problems. the first is the foot print, even with jsj this unit is going to be even more of a nightmare to keep out of combat than a normal riptide. the second is an all of your eggs in one basket case. If an enemy catches this unit (which will realistically happen pretty often with relatively low number of shots in the army) then i could quite feasibly loose 2 riptides and farsight as a result of several thunderhammered missile drones and poor morale. Also I'm not sold on you saying that it solves the LD issues with riptides and drones. I effectively just delay the problem until the opponent can kill 2 shielded missile drones (and with jetbikes and fliers this wont be as unlikely as one might think) but then have a greater risk of two riptides running away. Lastly it means that I have to fire both O'vesa and an ion cannon riptide together. Against msu this will overkill and in an army where my shooting options are already limited I think this is worht considering. Having said all of this, it sounds like a decent alternative to putting O'vesa with the crisis, if i can squeeze in another 2 missile drones and IMMENSE amounts of fun placing farsight between his two towering bodyguards!!! thanks for the inspiration

anonymou5 wrote:
It's an imbalanced list, but a really good one. You're fully embracing RPS, which is not a bad thing. Your easy match ups will be very easy, and your counters will be scarier than they would be with a more balanced selection.

You overestimate the ability of Riptides to clear out flier/flying circus builds, but I agree that's not an unwinnable match up for you. A Slaneesh rush list is going to be pretty tough, you don't have the Kroot body guards to protect your Riptides. You may actually have trouble with Wraithwing. You're going to have to get close to kill the AV13, then the Wraiths will eat your Tides. And if the Riptides are taking care of the ABs, who is killing the Night Scythes? Your VoF is pretty low for a Tau list, so the Wraiths will live a lot longer than they should (to say nothing of Daemon horde builds, scariest for you being Slaneesh as mentioned earlier).

Regardless I think it will be a super fun build to play.

Haha thanks. 6th edition has really played into my hands never having been a fan of armies consisting of one of each unit type in a codex (ok exaggerated for effect but you know what i mean) or mech. At the moment I worry about CHAOS:
helldrake spam wiping out my troops/being pretty unkillable
Wholetthedogsoutlists (20-60 khorne hounds)
flying circus's
[arguably slaanesh although tbh they will have even more fragile troops than this list without the resistance of the riptides so i wouldnt say this is anywhere near autolose - might have to play this build soon could be quite close!]
obviously necrons (wraithspam, annihilaiton barge spam, flier spam or all of the above!)
balanced eldar but just because having not played the new codex they scare me and dark eldar allies are NOT good for T6....

on the other hand although it will struggle IMO it can survive most of these lists to an extent. And to answer your question about who will kill the night scythes - my other riptides

with only 2 units of 4 pathfinders .... against most people they are going to be the first thing on the board targeted, just to point out.