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So it is the unit markerlighting who gets to ignore cover? Need to have a chat with our Tau player...

No. The unit that has a markerlight puts tokens on a unit instead of wounds when they fire. The tokens are used by any other unit in the codex.

Say for example pathfinders fire 8 shots, get 4 hits which produces 4 tokens. Then one Riptide uses two tokens to remove cover and fires. If the unit is still alive then another unit can use remaining tokens in the same phase.

 Savageconvoy wrote:
No. The unit that has a markerlight puts tokens on a unit instead of wounds when they fire. The tokens are used by any other unit in the codex.

Say for example pathfinders fire 8 shots, get 4 hits which produces 4 tokens. Then one Riptide uses two tokens to remove cover and fires. If the unit is still alive then another unit can use remaining tokens in the same phase.

I don't have the Tau codex to reference, but is this accurate?

Our groups Tau player suggested that once a Markerlight is used, it benefits ANY UNIT for the rest of the turn.

For example- 4 markers are placed on a unit. A unit uses two to remove cover, but the unit survives. A different unit then fires but also ignores cover from the previously spent markerlights- the remaining 2 can be used for something else (like increasing BS, for example).

I think the way you described it was how the old Markerlights worked, which IMHO was far more tactical and required thought (I had no problem with them). If I am wrong about this, well, that may completely change my opinion on how I feel about Tau's ability to remove cover- it would be far less of an issue.

XenosTerminus wrote:


I don't have the Tau codex to reference, but is this accurate?

Our groups Tau player suggested that once a Markerlight is used, it benefits ANY UNIT for the rest of the turn.

For example- 4 markers are placed on a unit. A unit uses two to remove cover, but the unit survives. A different unit then fires but also ignores cover from the previously spent markerlights- the remaining 2 can be used for something else (like increasing BS, for example).

I think the way you described it was how the old Markerlights worked, which IMHO was far more tactical and required thought (I had no problem with them). If I am wrong about this, well, that may completely change my opinion on how I feel about Tau's ability to remove cover- it would be far less of an issue.

Dear god no
"Immediately before a unit from Codex: Tau Empire shoots at
a target that has one or more markerlight counters, it can
declare it is using one or more of tl1e markerlight abilities
listed below. Each ability costs a number of markerlight
counters - remove this number of markerlight counters
from the target immediately when the ability is declared.
A unit can combine any number of markerlight abilities providing
that there are enough counters." pg68

your play group is cheesing you and all you had to do is read. just ask for the rules next time something seems super over powered.

 Desubot wrote:

XenosTerminus wrote:


I don't have the Tau codex to reference, but is this accurate?

Our groups Tau player suggested that once a Markerlight is used, it benefits ANY UNIT for the rest of the turn.

For example- 4 markers are placed on a unit. A unit uses two to remove cover, but the unit survives. A different unit then fires but also ignores cover from the previously spent markerlights- the remaining 2 can be used for something else (like increasing BS, for example).

I think the way you described it was how the old Markerlights worked, which IMHO was far more tactical and required thought (I had no problem with them). If I am wrong about this, well, that may completely change my opinion on how I feel about Tau's ability to remove cover- it would be far less of an issue.

Dear god no
"Immediately before a unit from Codex: Tau Empire shoots at
a target that has one or more markerlight counters, it can
declare it is using one or more of tl1e markerlight abilities
listed below. Each ability costs a number of markerlight
counters - remove this number of markerlight counters
from the target immediately when the ability is declared.
A unit can combine any number of markerlight abilities providing
that there are enough counters." pg68

your play group is cheesing you and all you had to do is read. just ask for the rules next time something seems super over powered.

lol

A lot of my gripes from this ENTIRE thread are moot now. While I still find Tau/gunlines to be boring to play against, and overly optimized Tau lists are still extremely busted against casual lists, it's refreshing to hear that Markerlights aren't as busted as I thought they were.

That will teach me to trust my WAAC friends.

XenosTerminus wrote:
lol

A lot of my gripes from this ENTIRE thread are moot now. While I still find Tau/gunlines to be boring to play against, and overly optimized Tau lists are still extremely busted against casual lists, it's refreshing to hear that Markerlights aren't as busted as I thought they were.

That will teach me to trust my WAAC friends.

Facepalm....

XenosTerminus wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

XenosTerminus wrote:


I don't have the Tau codex to reference, but is this accurate?

Our groups Tau player suggested that once a Markerlight is used, it benefits ANY UNIT for the rest of the turn.

For example- 4 markers are placed on a unit. A unit uses two to remove cover, but the unit survives. A different unit then fires but also ignores cover from the previously spent markerlights- the remaining 2 can be used for something else (like increasing BS, for example).

I think the way you described it was how the old Markerlights worked, which IMHO was far more tactical and required thought (I had no problem with them). If I am wrong about this, well, that may completely change my opinion on how I feel about Tau's ability to remove cover- it would be far less of an issue.

Dear god no
"Immediately before a unit from Codex: Tau Empire shoots at
a target that has one or more markerlight counters, it can
declare it is using one or more of tl1e markerlight abilities
listed below. Each ability costs a number of markerlight
counters - remove this number of markerlight counters
from the target immediately when the ability is declared.
A unit can combine any number of markerlight abilities providing
that there are enough counters." pg68

your play group is cheesing you and all you had to do is read. just ask for the rules next time something seems super over powered.

lol

A lot of my gripes from this ENTIRE thread are moot now. While I still find Tau/gunlines to be boring to play against, and overly optimized Tau lists are still extremely busted against casual lists, it's refreshing to hear that Markerlights aren't as busted as I thought they were.

That will teach me to trust my WAAC friends.

They may have to be upgraded from WAAC to TFG. That is some serious rules "mistake". No wonder you were so pissed about Tau, this would effectively make all Tau units/weapons BS5 and ignores cover all the time.

Yeah. I'm guessing your friend didn't play Tau until the last few months. I almost have to assume it's an intentional mistake, since knowing how markers work is like Tau 101.

I must agree, this is probably intentional.

I knew better then that back before I even got my first battleforce.

This also explains your attitude, under "markers apply to all" limits a 200 point dedication for markerlight allow a full 1500 army to have BS5 or better and ignore cover.
Under the REAL limits? that 200 point dedication will give that to two or three squads, at best. (and that before you take into account their quickly dwindling numbers)

Well ultimately this thread was not in vain, then.

While it degraded temporarily, ultimately I have more insight into how to approach Tau overall, and know one of my major issues was because of an incorrectly played rule.

It also has shown me that I need to study my opponents books more than I have (I haven't done this in 6e much, which is my own fault). I should be able to fix all of my issues bar not enjoying facing them, so with that I do thank everyone that contributed despite my temporary unjustified rage.

That being said- if anyone has anything additional to contribute as far as opinions on the new Tau/how to overcome some of the challenges they present (especially from a Casual perspective), feel free to continue the thread.

 Mr.Omega wrote:
I partially agree with Xenosterminus.

In regards to the Riptide, I'm just going to quote myself.

Although I'd already decided upon it before, my opinion that Riptides are the most broken and dumb unit in 40k at present has been reinforced. They're just ridiculous. For 200 or less points, you have an almost impossible to kill unit that does absolutely everything. High strength, AP2 pie plates? Yeah. Melta gun for heavy AT? Yeah. Effective AA? Yeah. Nightfighting? Range? Whats that? Oh, you're going to plan to shoot from a distance/assault me? I get a 2D6 jump pack move, so screw you.

12 Lascannon shots at BS4 (aka taking 3 Devastator squads fully tooled up with them) results in an average 4.444 (possibly plus a bit) wounds against a Riptide in each shooting phase. Bearing in mind this thing has a 72'' range and massive height, can jump on buildings and jump down to get LOS on anywhere on the board and abuse cover saves, AND the fact my calculations take into account that the Riptide hasn't gone for the 3++ (in which case, 2.222 wounds) you are basically boned using Devastators. You'll fire once, then he'll drop a pie plate on one of your Devastator squads, and if you even suffer 2 deaths (which is pretty likely), your wound output goes down to 3.704 average. You need to kill these things fast. If he has two, or even three, what the hell are you going to do?

You just devoted the entirety of your 450 point fire support reserves to wounding one 185 point model. Well done.

The only solution I can think of is drop podding Company Vets/equivalents with 10 Combi Plasmas, hoping you get within range and that he hasn't bubble wrapped. If you rapid fire all of them, you've got 5.926 average wounds, or average dead. On the other hand, you now have a 300+ pt squad of 2 attack Tactical Marines that are worthless at anything else, that will inevitably meet the bad end of a metric ton of pulse rifle shots. The fact that you're almost paying double the price of the Riptide just to remove a sub 200 pt model is ridiculous.

You can't ignore it. It can shoot at you 99% of the time, with a S8 AP2 pie plate that will obliterate your infantry. Unless your opponent is a complete idiot you will never charge it, because a competent player will abuse its movement+2D6 (or if he NR's, 3D6) jump to put him miles away from your assault units, if he doesn't already have a bubble wrap. He'll probably be on the other side of the table.

They invalidate Space Marine mechanized armies. You want to know what my 40 Marines in my Dark Angel army would do if they all rapid fired at 12'' at a Riptide?

With the bolters, average 2 wounds.
With the plasma guns, average 2.37 wounds.

You are never, ever, ever, going to get 40 Marines within rapid fire range of a Riptide owned by a competent player. Even if you do you won't kill it in one turn on average, and then that Riptide and the rest of his army is going to either be A) Sitting on or taking the objectives or B) Massacring you with fire.

When I look at my IG, Marines and Ork Codexes, I have to think, 'man, how am I going to set this army up? where's the killy stuff? how do I do W,X and Y without sacrificing Z?'

Usually, that's 'how do I kill tanks, how do I kill MC's, how do I kill flyers, without sacrificing scoring capability too much or list structure/reliability?'

A Tau player can start his list by going 'Oh, this Riptide can have a Velocity tracker, and handle everything. In fact, lets have two. Scoring units, damn. Oh, I know, Fire Warriors, they can start shooting effective fire from turn 1, and they're 54 points starting price. Easy. '

And the most important question, the entire reason for playing the hobby in the first place:

I do not find it fun in the slightest to play someone who can wipe me off the board while I barely get to scratch most of his army. If that's the case, whats the point of unpacking your models?

I've yet to see anyone come up with a compelling argument against this.

The riptide is still BS 3 with low initiative, and requires a a lot of points to make it that mythical ignore cover never scatter monster that everyone makes it out to be.

Stop trying to kill the damn thing and go for other targets.

if a Tau army is playing them, they are probably putting a Ton of points into supporting it be it marker lights or a support commander.

and you cant forget that if it or anything else has decided to intercept it cannot shoot till the following turn. which gives you a whole turn to do something else.

Kill the troops as he probably wont have many
Kill the pathfinders
and get locked into combat and don't kill the ethereal so you stay locked.

The riptide is a super resilient monster but its out put is diminished greatly if he has no support.

 Savageconvoy wrote:
Yeah. I'm guessing your friend didn't play Tau until the last few months. I almost have to assume it's an intentional mistake, since knowing how markers work is like Tau 101.

... at the same time, there is SOME measure of personal responsibility here. There is a threshold of shenanigans that, when crossed, makes me say "Lemme see that codex, chief".

Markerlight bonuses lasting for everyone, cumulative, entire turn is like an order of magnitude past that.

When in doubt of a BS rule, ask to see and read it yourself, that's the lesson of this 6 page thread.


-- Haight

XenosTerminus wrote:

 Savageconvoy wrote:
No. The unit that has a markerlight puts tokens on a unit instead of wounds when they fire. The tokens are used by any other unit in the codex.

Say for example pathfinders fire 8 shots, get 4 hits which produces 4 tokens. Then one Riptide uses two tokens to remove cover and fires. If the unit is still alive then another unit can use remaining tokens in the same phase.

I don't have the Tau codex to reference, but is this accurate?

Our groups Tau player suggested that once a Markerlight is used, it benefits ANY UNIT for the rest of the turn.

For example- 4 markers are placed on a unit. A unit uses two to remove cover, but the unit survives. A different unit then fires but also ignores cover from the previously spent markerlights- the remaining 2 can be used for something else (like increasing BS, for example).

I think the way you described it was how the old Markerlights worked, which IMHO was far more tactical and required thought (I had no problem with them). If I am wrong about this, well, that may completely change my opinion on how I feel about Tau's ability to remove cover- it would be far less of an issue.

Dafuq?

Heck no, if that were true any unit no matter how crazy strong would die every turn as long as we got some markerlights on it.
Markerlights arent AS powerful as people make them out to be. Unless we chuck a LOT of points into them it only bolsters 1-2 of our units, not all of them.

Old markerlights were pointless besides boosting BS, but they were difficult to field. Marker drones were a fortune and pathfinders were as easy to remove as they are now. Unless someone actually used Seeker Missiles the old markerlights didnt do anything at all but boost BS. Now they remove cover as well and are a little easier to field. In fact my tau lists prior to new dex didnt even use markerlights they were so expensive lol..

 Vineheart01 wrote:


Dafuq?

Little late there

yeah i think the thread has ran its course by now.

as he realized that his friend was playing wrong.

The more you know.

 Desubot wrote:

The riptide is a super resilient monster but its out put is diminished greatly if he has no support.

Whilst I agree with this, I do think that Riptide is a poorly designed unit. It breaks the fiction in that it combines tank-like armament and mobility with extremely durable Monstrous creature. It makes Tau tanks pointless if it wasn't artificially limited by FOC slots: lets face it, if Riptides and Hammerheads were in same FOC slots, would anyone take Hammerhead? Ever?

Wraithlord for example is much less durable against heavy weapons. 2+/5++ monstrous creatures just shouldn't exist - period. Well, at least Dreadknight doesn't really have tank-like heavy weapons.

the Dreadknight is a melee monster, though. And has a once per game (which is all it needs) 30" movement. It doesnt need an anti-tank gun it has an anti-tank blade and really only has issues with laaaarge blobs (like Orks) if he cant torch them a couple times first.

No one answered it because it was at least 50% strawman arguments.

 Mr.Omega wrote:

12 Lascannon shots at BS4 (aka taking 3 Devastator squads fully tooled up with them) results in an average 4.444 (possibly plus a bit) wounds against a Riptide in each shooting phase. Bearing in mind this thing has a 72'' range and massive height, can jump on buildings and jump down to get LOS on anywhere on the board and abuse cover saves, AND the fact my calculations take into account that the Riptide hasn't gone for the 3++ (in which case, 2.222 wounds) you are basically boned using Devastators. You'll fire once, then he'll drop a pie plate on one of your Devastator squads, and if you even suffer 2 deaths (which is pretty likely), your wound output goes down to 3.704 average. You need to kill these things fast. If he has two, or even three, what the hell are you going to do?

You just devoted the entirety of your 450 point fire support reserves to wounding one 185 point model. Well done.

You indicate the riptide is using it's overcharge every turn in which case it has a fair chance to fail (1/3 chance) and take a wound for the trouble. Additionally why are you taking a dev squad with no aegis/cover and no ablative wounds? So 584 pts that should average a dead riptide a turn while taking ~1.5 dead meaningless casualties a turn if you bothered spreading out at all. The entire opponent 3x riptide will not even make it through your ablative wounds before we even consider the wounds they take fro overcharging or when they fail to overcharge. Not that this matters as this entire scenario is somewhat ridiculous.

 Mr.Omega wrote:

The only solution I can think of is drop podding Company Vets/equivalents with 10 Combi Plasmas, hoping you get within range and that he hasn't bubble wrapped. If you rapid fire all of them, you've got 5.926 average wounds, or average dead. On the other hand, you now have a 300+ pt squad of 2 attack Tactical Marines that are worthless at anything else, that will inevitably meet the bad end of a metric ton of pulse rifle shots. The fact that you're almost paying double the price of the Riptide just to remove a sub 200 pt model is ridiculous.

You seem to have a major misconception that you should be able to kill a 200 pts model in a single turn and only have to sacrifice an equal number of points. This is not balanced in any way as it would mean drop pod SM would be the kings of every and any match up. If you drop a squad like you propose to do then you should drop 3-4 threats all in the opponents face. This means that you will average a dead riptide and the opponent will average a dead squad of mostly useless vets while you hammer his line with the other threats.

This is like me saying Tau suck because when I DS my single unit of crisis suits into the middle of your army they get killed! but only after they manage to kill your land raider.

 Mr.Omega wrote:

You can't ignore it. It can shoot at you 99% of the time, with a S8 AP2 pie plate that will obliterate your infantry. Unless your opponent is a complete idiot you will never charge it, because a competent player will abuse its movement+2D6 (or if he NR's, 3D6) jump to put him miles away from your assault units, if he doesn't already have a bubble wrap. He'll probably be on the other side of the table.

Again you put forth statements that are a mixture of falsities and just logical contradictions. Your opponent is a good master player who keeps his army bottled up so you cannot assault his riptides and you are incapable of using cover and spreading your units out so that a large blast wholesale "obliterates" your infantry. If you were to actually read any of the batreps from competent players on this board (read jy2 and reece to see some vs Tau action) then you would realize that players who play their riptides that conservatively usually lose on the objectives as Tau have troubles moving out to claim objectives and have troubling killing things on cover 42.1" away.

 Mr.Omega wrote:

They invalidate Space Marine mechanized armies. You want to know what my 40 Marines in my Dark Angel army would do if they all rapid fired at 12'' at a Riptide?

With the bolters, average 2 wounds.
With the plasma guns, average 2.37 wounds.

Just wow, what do these even have anything to do with each other. Mechanized marine armies are invalidated by not killing a MC with bolters? Have you heard of AV11+ or T8? Because you know what is infinitely worse than 2 wounds average? 0 wounds possible. Honestly were you counting on bolters and 2 plasma guns killing everything for you?

 Mr.Omega wrote:

You are never, ever, ever, going to get 40 Marines within rapid fire range of a Riptide owned by a competent player. Even if you do you won't kill it in one turn on average, and then that Riptide and the rest of his army is going to either be A) Sitting on or taking the objectives or B) Massacring you with fire.

Just like how you should have brought a way to be within your 12" SM engagement zone with his main force or 42" away with more firepower than 3 S9 AP2 large blasts that do NOT ignore cover, if he cannot get markerlights on you you will keep either your cover or your 3+ save.

 Mr.Omega wrote:

When I look at my IG, Marines and Ork Codexes, I have to think, 'man, how am I going to set this army up? where's the killy stuff? how do I do W,X and Y without sacrificing Z?'

Usually, that's 'how do I kill tanks, how do I kill MC's, how do I kill flyers, without sacrificing scoring capability too much or list structure/reliability?'

A Tau player can start his list by going 'Oh, this Riptide can have a Velocity tracker, and handle everything. In fact, lets have two. Scoring units, damn. Oh, I know, Fire Warriors, they can start shooting effective fire from turn 1, and they're 54 points starting price. Easy. '

If the riptide could take unlimited systems for free you would be right. They can take 2 and it costs enough that they usually end up land raider expensive. You are just seeing all the possibilities without taking into account the price or slot limitations. It would be like me saying "you can take 90 plasmaguns in an IG army at 1850 pts!!!" Except that is completely wrong because the plasma gun on a guardsman does cost 20 pts but you cannot actually field this.

 Mr.Omega wrote:

And the most important question, the entire reason for playing the hobby in the first place:

This is the only part of your post I would truly without reservations agree with.

 Mr.Omega wrote:

I do not find it fun in the slightest to play someone who can wipe me off the board while I barely get to scratch most of his army. If that's the case, whats the point of unpacking your models?

You kind of ruin it with this statement. If someone is capable of doing this to me I consider it a challenge and it is usually one of the more interesting games for me. I usually end up thinking about it for a while and figuring out how to counter it. This has happened exactly once in my entire time of playing 40K (first game ever I perhaps killed 3 DE warriors in 3ed when they were not really that good). If you don't want to figure out how to win and don't want to loose you will need to ask the opponent to scale down on the challenge level. Some people like to play the game on hard and some on easy.

XenosTerminus wrote:
Credibility? It's a forum for a game that involves plastic soldiers.

It seems like no matter where you turn most conversations about this game spiral out of control into opinionated pissing contests between nerds. I have no issues debating, the issue here is that most people reply with the classic 'my experience says otherwise', automatically dismissing what the other person stated is an issue for them. Either that, or they offer their 'expertise' in list building and army methodology- all very situational and not entirely helpful based on the points I raised.

If it matters at this point some of my most memorable games were in fact, losses. No complaints- just good times with some beers. Could care less what the outcome is, because the games were close, and most importantly fun.

Ever since Tau came out (and to a lesser degree IG) I have just not enjoyed fighting them. That is largely because I, as you already pointed out, like a game with variety. Why have a codex filled with interesting unit choices and great models if you will never see 90% of them?

Clearly I enjoy assault more than shooting, but that is not to say I dislike shooting entirely. I simply think that gunlines, or 'shooty' armies, are boring, uninspired, and often utilize some of the cheesiest rules to outright ignore some of the rules in the game. Do other people enjoy this? Definitely. I can say with relative confidence, however, that the majority of people rarely enjoy facing off against gunlines- it makes for very dull games.

hahaha so whenever you loose an argument you claim that the other person is a nerd and start rambling on about how this is "only a game" yet you continue raging for the next four pages... Wow now you are a valuable contributor to this forum...

A little late. He apologized for that long ago and it was all based on a terrible misunderstanding pointing to a definate and unfair advantage taken by the Tau player.

It's not the context that I'm interested in. It's the fact that under any sort of pressure in a thread he responds like this...

 ansacs wrote:
No one answered it because it was at least 50% strawman arguments.

 Mr.Omega wrote:

12 Lascannon shots at BS4 (aka taking 3 Devastator squads fully tooled up with them) results in an average 4.444 (possibly plus a bit) wounds against a Riptide in each shooting phase. Bearing in mind this thing has a 72'' range and massive height, can jump on buildings and jump down to get LOS on anywhere on the board and abuse cover saves, AND the fact my calculations take into account that the Riptide hasn't gone for the 3++ (in which case, 2.222 wounds) you are basically boned using Devastators. You'll fire once, then he'll drop a pie plate on one of your Devastator squads, and if you even suffer 2 deaths (which is pretty likely), your wound output goes down to 3.704 average. You need to kill these things fast. If he has two, or even three, what the hell are you going to do?

You just devoted the entirety of your 450 point fire support reserves to wounding one 185 point model. Well done.

You indicate the riptide is using it's overcharge every turn in which case it has a fair chance to fail (1/3 chance) and take a wound for the trouble.

Um, no I do not. I explicitly state that my calculations did not factor it in, as though that is the standard situation. I point out that were someone to play a risk, you'd have far worse odds of killing/wounding it.

Additionally why are you taking a dev squad with no aegis/cover and no ablative wounds? So 584 pts that should average a dead riptide a turn while taking ~1.5 dead meaningless casualties a turn if you bothered spreading out at all.

Ironically, you seem to have failed to realize this is the *definition* of a Strawman argument. In addition, if you had seen the page I had posted it on, you would have seen people recommending Lascannon Devastators and writing up lists with them.


Not that this matters as this entire scenario is somewhat ridiculous.

It was to refute the proposition directly on that page, which was that 3 teams of Lascannon Devastators would be a good idea. There is no strawmanning here. I take the proposition exactly as it is, only through return fire estimations I estimate they have cover.

 Mr.Omega wrote:

The only solution I can think of is drop podding Company Vets/equivalents with 10 Combi Plasmas, hoping you get within range and that he hasn't bubble wrapped. If you rapid fire all of them, you've got 5.926 average wounds, or average dead. On the other hand, you now have a 300+ pt squad of 2 attack Tactical Marines that are worthless at anything else, that will inevitably meet the bad end of a metric ton of pulse rifle shots. The fact that you're almost paying double the price of the Riptide just to remove a sub 200 pt model is ridiculous.

You seem to have a major misconception that you should be able to kill a 200 pts model in a single turn and only have to sacrifice an equal number of points.

I never stated in this point that this is my view. My view is that you are paying a ridiculous amount of points to kill it with such a strategy.

 Mr.Omega wrote:

You can't ignore it. It can shoot at you 99% of the time, with a S8 AP2 pie plate that will obliterate your infantry. Unless your opponent is a complete idiot you will never charge it, because a competent player will abuse its movement+2D6 (or if he NR's, 3D6) jump to put him miles away from your assault units, if he doesn't already have a bubble wrap. He'll probably be on the other side of the table.

Again you put forth statements that are a mixture of falsities and just logical contradictions. Your opponent is a good master player who keeps his army bottled up so you cannot assault his riptides and you are incapable of using cover and spreading your units out so that a large blast wholesale "obliterates" your infantry.

It doesn't take a team of rocket scientists and senior mathematicians to deduce that a S8 AP2 pie plate is going to decimate infantry.

With a melee centric horde army, you can't afford to use cover or spread out too far. Irregardless of spreading out, (which isn't always advisable when you need to hold an objective or get somewhere quickly, even without playing hordes) you're going to get hit fairly hard.


then you would realize that players who play their riptides that conservatively usually lose on the objectives

Riptides can't claim objectives, and have a 84'' threat range. There is no reason to move them forward with your scoring units unless you need to fire off the support weapons for whatever reason, and even then you can JSJ.

 Mr.Omega wrote:

They invalidate Space Marine mechanized armies. You want to know what my 40 Marines in my Dark Angel army would do if they all rapid fired at 12'' at a Riptide?

With the bolters, average 2 wounds.
With the plasma guns, average 2.37 wounds.

Just wow, what do these even have anything to do with each other.

I've already attempted to show that Devastators (which are frequently found in SM Mechanized armies, including my own when I still played them actively) are ineffective against Riptides, and this is a reinforcement of the proposition that SM Mechanized armies are invalidated as I'm showing the other key part of the typical list isn't well adapted to handle it either.

Mechanized marine armies are invalidated by not killing a MC with bolters?

*And 4-5 Plasma Guns.

Have you heard of AV11+ or T8? Because you know what is infinitely worse than 2 wounds average? 0 wounds possible.

Which Is why you take Devastators, or Predators.

Honestly were you counting on bolters and 2 plasma guns killing everything for you? *4 plasma guns

How can I honestly respond to this without sighing? When the entirety of your Fire Support Reserves are spent wounding a Riptide which could end up killing a good portion of a squad, I want it to die quickly. If I had to dedicate my Tactical Marines to the task, they wouldn't be much use. Hence double or triple Riptides means you're relying on spending 2 turns killing each one with the entirety of the Devastators or other FSR. 1.5 dead Devastators a turn is only going to hamper efforts further. Yes, on its own this point doesn't make a lot of sense, which I will concede.

Tri-las Predators are roughly about equal in wound output iirc, and they're your only other practical option in the heavy support department. I'm not entirely up to date on the different tank busting methods Tau use but I would not expect them to be much more survivable, and when you do lose one your wound output plunges.

 Mr.Omega wrote:

You are never, ever, ever, going to get 40 Marines within rapid fire range of a Riptide owned by a competent player. Even if you do you won't kill it in one turn on average, and then that Riptide and the rest of his army is going to either be A) Sitting on or taking the objectives or B) Massacring you with fire.

Just like how you should have brought a way to be within your 12" SM engagement zone with his main force or 42" away with more firepower than 3 S9 AP2 large blasts that do NOT ignore cover

I never stated they ignored cover. What part of 'Space Marine mechanized army' implies I haven't brought a way to get within the 12'' engagement zone? Please, I'm intrigued.

, if he cannot get markerlights on you you will keep either your cover or your 3+ save.

Non Ion Accelerator big blasts are irrelevant to my argument. I never mentioned marker lights at all.

 Mr.Omega wrote:

When I look at my IG, Marines and Ork Codexes, I have to think, 'man, how am I going to set this army up? where's the killy stuff? how do I do W,X and Y without sacrificing Z?'

Usually, that's 'how do I kill tanks, how do I kill MC's, how do I kill flyers, without sacrificing scoring capability too much or list structure/reliability?'

A Tau player can start his list by going 'Oh, this Riptide can have a Velocity tracker, and handle everything. In fact, lets have two. Scoring units, damn. Oh, I know, Fire Warriors, they can start shooting effective fire from turn 1, and they're 54 points starting price. Easy. '

If the riptide could take unlimited systems for free you would be right. They can take 2 and it costs enough that they usually end up land raider expensive.

A Riptide with a Velocity Tracker, Fusion Blasters and Ion Accelerator is 205 points. That's not Land Raider level expensive. That sort of Riptide can basically handle anything, as my quote of myself sought to point out.

You are just seeing all the possibilities without taking into account the price or slot limitations.

Uh, yes I have taken into account the price, and I have implied at least once in my post that they are cheap for what they do. The fact you could take something else in Elites is irrelevant.

It would be like me saying "you can take 90 plasmaguns in an IG army at 1850 pts!!!"

Except that is completely wrong because the plasma gun on a guardsman does cost 20 pts but you cannot actually field this.

You're forgetting the fact that Double/Triple Riptides is about 3 or 4 times cheaper than your analogy (even if edited for realism), and taking a crap ton of plasma guns is not an easy choice that handles everything like adding the odd Riptide is. Nowhere near, in fact.

Okay this is getting silly to answer each point individually. I am going to focus on a few select points.

 Mr.Omega wrote:

You just devoted the entirety of your 450 point fire support reserves to wounding one 185 point model. Well done.

It was to refute the proposition directly on that page, which was that 3 teams of Lascannon Devastators would be a good idea. There is no strawmanning here. I take the proposition exactly as it is, only through return fire estimations I estimate they have cover.

How can I honestly respond to this without sighing? When the entirety of your Fire Support Reserves are spent wounding a Riptide which could end up killing a good portion of a squad, I want it to die quickly. If I had to dedicate my Tactical Marines to the task, they wouldn't be much use. Hence double or triple Riptides means you're relying on spending 2 turns killing each one with the entirety of the Devastators or other FSR. 1.5 dead Devastators a turn is only going to hamper efforts further. Yes, on its own this point doesn't make a lot of sense, which I will concede.

Tri-las Predators are roughly about equal in wound output iirc, and they're your only other practical option in the heavy support department. I'm not entirely up to date on the different tank busting methods Tau use but I would not expect them to be much more survivable, and when you do lose one your wound output plunges.

I will just collect the entire dev argument here as you did not understand what I said.

I did not wound it. I killed it on average. This means that over a course of 3 turns you can theoretically average 3 dead riptides with a return casualties of 4.5 dead ABLATIVE wounds (you know the 13pt marines you take to catch bullets for a dev squad, in this case 3 marines and a sarge per squad). So for 600 pts of riptides vs 500 pts of SM the SM win the firefight by a significant margin and get an ADL on top of it. The silly part of this being that you will rarely have these sort of firefight duels where the riptide is going to fire at the devs.

 Mr.Omega wrote:

I never stated in this point that this is my view. My view is that you are paying a ridiculous amount of points to kill it with such a strategy.

Wow so you ignore at least 3/4 of what I said? I will restate that 1 drop pod is a dead squad. 3 drop pods is an answer to a problem. That or if your "mechanized" SM force can manage to close to a support distance with the drop pod. Are we talking razorbacks here?

 Mr.Omega wrote:

It doesn't take a team of rocket scientists and senior mathematicians to deduce that a S8 AP2 pie plate is going to decimate infantry.

With a melee centric horde army, you can't afford to use cover or spread out too far. Irregardless of spreading out, (which isn't always advisable when you need to hold an objective or get somewhere quickly, even without playing hordes) you're going to get hit fairly hard.

What type of army do you play? A mechanized SM assault army? Besides the point but now I am just curious.

This is 3 of them. I could have put out more firepower with a battlecannon leman russ against the same army. Does this mean the leman russ is OP because SM running bunched up across the board to attempt an assault without cover is a good test of what is OP. Man you must think heldrakes are god like if riptides are OP based on this measurement. Three S9 AP2 large blasts are not what I consider decimating infantry but I don't run SM bodies across an open field. Against my poor DW army it sucks but so does almost every battle in plasma high metas.

 Mr.Omega wrote:

Riptides can't claim objectives, and have a 84'' threat range. There is no reason to move them forward with your scoring units unless you need to fire off the support weapons for whatever reason, and even then you can JSJ.

Are you aware they can contest objectives? The way most Tau players deal with objectives on the other side of the board that I have seen is composed mostly of shooting them clean (harder than most make it out to be), contesting with a riptide (probably the most reliable), or claiming it with outflanking kroot (this is not exactly common but is a decent method).

 Mr.Omega wrote:

I never stated they ignored cover. What part of 'Space Marine mechanized army' implies I haven't brought a way to get within the 12'' engagement zone? Please, I'm intrigued.

Non Ion Accelerator big blasts are irrelevant to my argument. I never mentioned marker lights at all.

I'll just finish this with the idea that if the riptide does not ignore cover then you can just GtG in cover on an objective and take it as the Tau player has serious difficulties moving out of their deployment zone. This is why ML are important to such an argument. If you are getting within 12" of the engagement zone then why are you so angry with riptides? You should be charging with your force next turn and you should have pushed the tau player into their deployment zone enough that they can never claim the mid/back field objectives.

I don't understand how droppods aren't a good answer to Tau. The only unit that really has the firepower to make effective use of Interceptor against a non vehicle target is the Riptide thanks to the large blast that ignores armor of all kinds. However it's still a BS3 blast and can still scatter, and your opponent can deploy from the drop pod before you get to fire. As I said before:
16.7% chance for the shot to get hot and not fire, and then cancel their next shooting phase as a bonus
66% chance to scatter.
if it does scatter and the radius of the template is 2.5" then any result of 6" or more has a chance to completely miss the target or significantly reduce the amount of wounds. Chance of 6 or higher to scatter on 2d6" is about 60%.
That's kind of far off from a 99% of the time being able to shoot at infantry and obliterate them.

40K is a bad game. The rules are designed to sell miniatures, gentlemen. Balance and gameplay are secondary to making rules that compel people to buy the new toys. This is the business Games Workshop is in. As someone who's been playing the game for a long time, cries about imbalance have been echoing through the 41st Millenium for at least the last 10 years. Perhaps the Tau 'dex is significant departure from the last few codices preceding it, but I don't think this is a new trend, and from what I hear, the Eldar 'dex is pretty atrocious too.

I've really liked the Tau and Eldar dexs. The chaos dex isn't bad, just boring and needs a few tweaks. (like not having 1Ksons worthless.)

 grumpusbumpus wrote:
40K is a bad game. The rules are designed to sell miniatures, gentlemen. Balance and gameplay are secondary to making rules that compel people to buy the new toys. This is the business Games Workshop is in. As someone who's been playing the game for a long time, cries about imbalance have been echoing through the 41st Millenium for at least the last 10 years. Perhaps the Tau 'dex is significant departure from the last few codices preceding it, but I don't think this is a new trend, and from what I hear, the Eldar 'dex is pretty atrocious too.

I don't think 40k is a bad game, I think that's too harsh and vague a term. In fact I think 40k is a great vehicle for storytelling and for having fun with your friends. When both players bring themed or balanced lists tactics are even occasionally involved! The problem with the game is that it isn't designed for tournament level play. The rules are clunky and the codices hilariously out of sync with one another, and it's confused about whether it's a large scale or small scale game (apocalypse being an obvious cash cow aside). Another thing is there are too many factions to balance properly and the nature of the one by one release of dexes means there will never be even mediocre balance. The backstory is great (yes the grimdark is over the top but I think that adds to the charm) and the models are usually fantastic, which is why I remain drawn to the hobby. However if you want a competitive game, 40k isn't it. Epic and BFG are alright but I don't know of anyone personally that plays those anymore (a shame really, if only they would fund them again.) I think WM, Infinity, and FoW are the most tightly written rulesets on the market right now.

My FW heavy IG army eats Tau alive. I out range them, take away the benefit of their precious Aegis, force pinning tests at -1 all over the place, and blow throw their heavy hitters.
It is honestly a joke.

My daemons list makes them cry as well.

I can also beat them with my chaos space marines, but it is a much more balanced fight.

Haven't tested my 20 Paladin Draigo Wing against them yet. I would speculate that match up would depend on how good their intercepter shooting is.

That is because FW stuff is too good for their cost. Do note who gets most of the FW goodies.

Nah, I would say the same thing about Tau. There is a reason so many people are screaming about them.

Side note, as I said, I have beaten them with pure CSM and Daemons as well. So, no, it doesn't take FW IG to do it. But it sure is fun blowing them away with
FW IG. Tau players typically get a real sour look on their face after about turn 2 when facing my IG.