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Why no Stim Injectors on the Riptides? That 5+ FnP worth its points cost in gold especially when the Riptide has a HBC.

 jy2 wrote:

 Maniac_nmt wrote:

Why email it to GW dev team, do we have a full list of all of the armies brought? Before going all 'burn the witches' you should first ask what armies were fielded and how many folks there were. If the bulk majority of armies are Tau or Eldar or some combo with them those results aren't surprising or even indicative that anything needs to change.

If they are in the minority, then yes, you probably do have a point.

I think the results speak for themselves. Not only are those 2 armies really good, but they are really popular as well and thus, too many people are flocking to them.

While GW is not completely to blame, they do deserve a lot of the criticism. Whereas in most new codices when they come out, maybe about 25% of the units are good, 50% alright and 25% bad. As for the new Eldar and Tau, probably 50% of the units are good and there are practically no bad units. That is a sign of internal codex imbalance. There really isn't much weakness in those 2 codices and mostly strong units and army synergy. And whereas most of the unbalanced codices take a little while before you start seeing them dominate in tournament play, with Eldar and Tau, you are seeing it almost right away. Unfortunately, that is going to be the state of things for quite some time. It usually takes a new Edition release before those over-powering codices get nerfed.

Popular nothing, "everyone" used to play Space Wolf and Blood Angel in some form or fashion in 3rd. Marines in general have always been extremely popular. The question is do they have an imbalance not so much in representation, but in how well they do against everyone else.

When Dark Eldar came out, I remember seeing a lot of threads about everyone 'flocking' to Dark Eldar. It will remain to be seen how this plays out over the long term with Tau and Eldar. Hence my question. There may be something there to 'op cheese flocking' and there may not. When you make up over 50% of the army lists, it's not surprising to see a heavy ratio in the finals. The massive domination is odd, but a single showing is not statistically significant enough to immediately cry foul. Two tournies do not make up enough data, and nothing so far shows causality. It shows correlation, but not causality (by that, it means that two things are both high or low, it doesn't show how they are related) at this point.

Everyone said grey knights were overpowered and would dominate with henchmen spam, dreadknights and purifiers, not any more.
Everyone said imperial guard were overpowered and would dominate with massed vendetta's and artillery, not any more.
Everyone said necrons were overpowered and would dominate with annihilation barges and night scythes, not any more.
Everyone said chaos were overpowered and would dominate with hell turkeys and,errr, that's it, not any more.

I'm getting sick of this. All of the builds listed above are still good and will do well at tournaments, with competent players. This type of thread is unhelpful and misleading.

These two tourneys everyone brought Tau/eldar lists... Next tourney, half of the people will bring SM Grav spam as you are dealing with MC spam or Wave serpent spam, Grav spam will beat them down. So starts the cycle anew.

Dozer Blades wrote:
The way i look at it if I was to bring 4x Riptide three would have ion and one heavy burst. I'd never play the list though.

I'd go 2 HBC + 2 Ions for 4 riptides. For 3 tides, I'd go 2 HBC's + 1 Ion.

And I'd love to play against that list.

I played against it and won with one of my Heresy armies... was an intense game.

 Blood Hawk wrote:

 jy2 wrote:

That really depends on what type of army you are playing.

I've designed my armies to not really care about AP1/2 guns all that much (i.e. wraiths, zombies, necrons in flyers, daemons with invuln's, guardians, termagants and T6 TMC's, wave serpents, etc.). Probably my only army that is concerned about the IA is my Draigowing, who can just put Draigo in front to tank those shots.

Against my armies, the HBC is a much more fearsome weapon. My armies usually fear volume-of-fire more than they do low AP weaponry, even if they are blasts.

Volume-of-fire you say? That is what tau troops for for. No seriously that is how it has been for 3 codexs now. You kill the big stuff with elites/heavy support/HQ, the fast attack supports the army and the troops kill the rest. The same reason I never bring stealth suits, I already have plenty of pulse weapons why would I bring more? Using the HBC for VOF is a waste, you get A LOT more shots else where for cheaper. HBC is for the anti air set up, which works but isn't always needed.

If you think that HBC's are only useful against infantry, then you really aren't seeing the whole picture. The HBC is more than just a VoF weapon. It's actually a very flexible gun with much more utility than the Ion Accelerator IMO. The only area where the IA is better is against 2+ models (especially those who are deepstriking in). Otherwise, the HBC is better against 4+/5+ units, monstrous creatures, vehicles, heavy armor (AV14) and flyers overall.

The main disadvantage of the HBC is that it is more likely to cause more harm to the wielder than the IA.

 Jabeedo wrote:
The HBC takes a huge, wet, greasy mathematical dump all over the IA against the Mechdar army. That's not to say that the IA doesn't help out a bit in this match up as a one of; it fills a different roll that at times can be ABSOLUTELY DEVASTATING if not played around correctly. This is actually one of the only match ups where this tends to be the case. Awesome report, thanks!

Thanks for the data. It confirms what I've known all along. Lol. The HBC is really an under-rated gun.

 AtoMaki wrote:
Why no Stim Injectors on the Riptides? That 5+ FnP worth its points cost in gold especially when the Riptide has a HBC.

Because my opponent opted for the Skyfire/Interceptor option.

With the farseer there, overheating isn't as bad with the riptide as most would think. The initial nova-charge is unavoidable, but Guide/Prescience reduces the chances for Gets Hot! to only a 1 in 36 chance.

Your deployment was pretty much what I expected, and that's pretty much the outcome i envisioned. I saw some comments about how one sided this game was: the thing with these two armies is once one has a decisive firepower advantage the other cant usually get back into it unless the player thats ahead makes a critical error. Like once JY2 started wiping out the support and infantry of the tau line it would've taken him doing something really absurd honestly to let his opponent back into the game.

JY2 I think your friend should try out this unit:

burst tide: HBC/SMS, skyfire/intercept and 2 shielded missile drones
commander with all of the normal kit (MSS, C&C, PEN, and iridium, and hit/run)
farseer on EJB with shard of anaris.

I was running this pre-ovesa star and it was pretty resilient. Its also fearless (negating the main concern of having drones) and has I5 hit&run. This unit should also reliably take out a serpent a turn, or do very close to 3 unsaved wounds to a wraithknight. At least as long as the HBC is novacharged. Its also great vs landraiders and has a good deny the witch roll, which can really help vs the other list/report you recently posted.

 Maniac_nmt wrote:

 jy2 wrote:

 Maniac_nmt wrote:

Why email it to GW dev team, do we have a full list of all of the armies brought? Before going all 'burn the witches' you should first ask what armies were fielded and how many folks there were. If the bulk majority of armies are Tau or Eldar or some combo with them those results aren't surprising or even indicative that anything needs to change.

If they are in the minority, then yes, you probably do have a point.

I think the results speak for themselves. Not only are those 2 armies really good, but they are really popular as well and thus, too many people are flocking to them.

While GW is not completely to blame, they do deserve a lot of the criticism. Whereas in most new codices when they come out, maybe about 25% of the units are good, 50% alright and 25% bad. As for the new Eldar and Tau, probably 50% of the units are good and there are practically no bad units. That is a sign of internal codex imbalance. There really isn't much weakness in those 2 codices and mostly strong units and army synergy. And whereas most of the unbalanced codices take a little while before you start seeing them dominate in tournament play, with Eldar and Tau, you are seeing it almost right away. Unfortunately, that is going to be the state of things for quite some time. It usually takes a new Edition release before those over-powering codices get nerfed.

Popular nothing, "everyone" used to play Space Wolf and Blood Angel in some form or fashion in 3rd. Marines in general have always been extremely popular. The question is do they have an imbalance not so much in representation, but in how well they do against everyone else.

When Dark Eldar came out, I remember seeing a lot of threads about everyone 'flocking' to Dark Eldar. It will remain to be seen how this plays out over the long term with Tau and Eldar. Hence my question. There may be something there to 'op cheese flocking' and there may not. When you make up over 50% of the army lists, it's not surprising to see a heavy ratio in the finals. The massive domination is odd, but a single showing is not statistically significant enough to immediately cry foul. Two tournies do not make up enough data, and nothing so far shows causality. It shows correlation, but not causality (by that, it means that two things are both high or low, it doesn't show how they are related) at this point.

I'm going to avoid "popular" right now because popular is a subjective thing. Instead, I'm going to talk about the "dominating" armies of their times and I'm going to do it through 1 common GT that they all have shared - Adepticon. For 2013, however, I will also use Nova 2013 as well because it is probably the first major GT to showcase both the new Eldar and Tau.

As we all know, Eldar and Tau cominated Nova 2013. They took 8 out of the Top 10 spots (and I believe 12 of the top 16), including the Top 7 finishes.

At Adepticon 2013, Necrons were supposedly the most dominant army at the time as they made up 8 of the Top 16 armies and finished with 3 in the Top 5, including the overall winner.

At Adepticon 2012, Grey Knights were supposed to be the top dogs. There, they finished with 7 in the Top 16, with only 2 in the Top 5 and the highest placing at 2nd. Surprisingly, #1 was actually necrons back before there were flyers in the game.

At Adepticon 2011, Guards and Space Wolves were considered the 2 top armies in the game. There, they combined to take up only 4 of the Top 16, with Tony's Space Wolves finishing 1st. Not surprisinly, orks were still very strong then as they nabbed 4 spots in the Top 16. So while good, space wolves were anything but dominating.

The difference here is that both the Grey Knights and Necrons took a while to dominate. Both necron and the kights have been out for at least a year already before the results above. Whereas for Eldar and Tau, they are dominating right off the bat.

I honestly don't believe that this is a "flavor-of-the-month" deal. Yeah, a lot of players have migrated to the new Tau/Eldar armies. And many of them will probably move on to the next army when it comes out as well. However, despite the movement of the players, my hypothesis is that Tau and Eldar are still going to perform consistently well and to me, that will be the sign of a truly dominating army.

jamin484 wrote:
Everyone said grey knights were overpowered and would dominate with henchmen spam, dreadknights and purifiers, not any more.
Everyone said imperial guard were overpowered and would dominate with massed vendetta's and artillery, not any more.
Everyone said necrons were overpowered and would dominate with annihilation barges and night scythes, not any more.
Everyone said chaos were overpowered and would dominate with hell turkeys and,errr, that's it, not any more.

I'm getting sick of this. All of the builds listed above are still good and will do well at tournaments, with competent players. This type of thread is unhelpful and misleading.

I believe in results over what "everyone said". Screw what "everyone says". You can't deny the results of the biggest tournaments with some of the best players.

 Ninjacommando wrote:
These two tourneys everyone brought Tau/eldar lists... Next tourney, half of the people will bring SM Grav spam as you are dealing with MC spam or Wave serpent spam, Grav spam will beat them down. So starts the cycle anew.

I believe that even if people jump ship, a strong codex is a strong codex (until it gets intentionally nerfed). People can migrate to the new marines or the new tyranids next year, but Tau and Eldar are still going to perform consistently well in tournament play. Just like necrons still perform consistently well despite Tau, Eldar and Chaos doing well nowadays.

And the secret to a strong codex isn't any 1 single unit that will counter another strong unit. It is an army with good TAC units that work synergistically well together with all the other units in the army. That is the classic army that will stand the test of time no matter what you throw at it.

 Dozer Blades wrote:

Dozer Blades wrote:
The way i look at it if I was to bring 4x Riptide three would have ion and one heavy burst. I'd never play the list though.

I'd go 2 HBC + 2 Ions for 4 riptides. For 3 tides, I'd go 2 HBC's + 1 Ion.

And I'd love to play against that list.

I played against it and won with one of my Heresy armies... was an intense game.

Nice!




Automatically Appended Next Post:

thanatos67 wrote:
Your deployment was pretty much what I expected, and that's pretty much the outcome i envisioned. I saw some comments about how one sided this game was: the thing with these two armies is once one has a decisive firepower advantage the other cant usually get back into it unless the player thats ahead makes a critical error. Like once JY2 started wiping out the support and infantry of the tau line it would've taken him doing something really absurd honestly to let his opponent back into the game.

JY2 I think your friend should try out this unit:

burst tide: HBC/SMS, skyfire/intercept and 2 shielded missile drones
commander with all of the normal kit (MSS, C&C, PEN, and iridium, and hit/run)
farseer on EJB with shard of anaris.

I was running this pre-ovesa star and it was pretty resilient. Its also fearless (negating the main concern of having drones) and has I5 hit&run. This unit should also reliably take out a serpent a turn, or do very close to 3 unsaved wounds to a wraithknight. At least as long as the HBC is novacharged. Its also great vs landraiders and has a good deny the witch roll, which can really help vs the other list/report you recently posted.

Thanks for the tip. My opponent does have a tendency to learn from his mistakes rather than to creatively explore the possibilities that are out there. Frankly, I'm all for giving the farseer a jetbike and having him join a riptide if it makes sense.

I also like the tactic of joining the commander to a riptide instead. After all, broadsides are already twin-linked, you can remove cover with the markerlights and Tank Hunter works better when there are more shots like a nova-charged HBC.

This is what I would probably do. I would join the farseer to 1 riptide and the buff commander to another riptide. Now you can have all 3 riptides twin-linked. Also, 2 of them would be testing on LD 10 as well (that is, if they move away from the LD bubble of the Ethereal). And if you get Perfect Timing, you can also have 2 units of riptides ignoring cover without the need for the pathfinders. He can probably dump 1 unit of pathfinders + change and try to fit in a skyray or something. There's just so many possiblities with Tau+Eldar working together.

With Tyranids and Orks on the event horizon I think eldar and tau both have their days numbered at the top. I'm sure both of these horde armies will be quite fast with the right builds and can overrun the top two xenos. Of course this is just conjecture on my part. Anyways one thing I have noticed about eldar is the meta builds we see fold real fast in melee which I think will hurt them a lot more in the future. I'd love to see a new beam weapon that cuts right through wave serpents like tin foil... That would really even the playing field imo.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
With Tyranids and Orks on the event horizon I think eldar and tau both have their days numbered at the top. I'm sure both of these horde armies will be quite fast with the right builds and can overrun the top two xenos. Of course this is just conjecture on my part. Anyways one thing I have noticed about eldar is the meta builds we see fold real fast in melee which I think will hurt them a lot more in the future. I'd love to see a new beam weapon that cuts right through wave serpents like tin foil... That would really even the playing field imo.

It's hard to say. Tyranids have always been good IMO, but they've never been truly dominating. I don't really see that trend changing from what I hear in the rumours. Orks will be orks. I just don't really see their style-of-play changing so drastically that it would put them over the top of eldar/tau....and IMO, that may be a good thing. I have a hunch, and that is none of the new codices that will be coming out will be able to overtake the new Tau and Eldar codices as the most dominating TAC armies. Of course this is just conjecture on my part as well.

Eldar does have 1 build that won't fold so easily in combat....the seer council with Dark Eldar allies. It's not a balanced army, but IMO it could potentially be the most dominating eldar build around. Even I'm having a tough time trying to crack it. Even without Fortune, it's a tough nut to crack, but with Fortune on, forget about it.

BTW, there is a beam weapon that can potentially cut right through wave serpents like tin foil....it's called the death ray. Just wait til those serpents use the serpent shields offensively and then hit them with the deathray when your doom scythe comes in.