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Hey guys, while playing at my FLGS today I watched yet another game where Riptide Tau spam seemed to be unbeatable, that is until a player that rarely comes in showed up with his "Air Cav Raven Guard" list and asked to play him. This list WRECKED the Tau player and frankly I was quite impressed with what it did, he ran the following:

-Shrike
-x3 Squads of assault marines (two of x6 and one of x5 with Shrike) with x2 Flamers and Melta bombs and Jump Packs.
-x3 Tac Squads of x10 men with Melta Guns in Rhinos (Combat Squadded)
-x1 Tac Squad of x5 Marines in a Razorback with TL-Lascannon
-x3 Stormravens with Assault Cannon, Multi-Melta and Searchlights.

The Assualt Marines and Shrike were inside the Stormravens while the rest of the army was on the board. First turn he ran his rhinos up and popped smoke, the Razorback sat back on home objective and sniped the Tau players lone Skyray in a good display of shooting and a failed cover save. Next turn lost a few Rhinos and a single Combat Squad of Marines, then the Stormravens came on and just WRECKED face by focusing all on one Riptide at a time. Third Turn all of them went to hover, Shrike and Assault Marines hopped out and mopped up everything but the Riptides, he then won through weight of fire.

Just wanted to see what you guys thought about this and if an "Air Cav" Space Marine army would be competitive in general or just in the case of heavy MC lists such as Riptide, Wraithknight or Dreadknight spam as I feel it may be a potential list that would work really well against gunline lists, Tau in particular.

seems a solid approuch.

He was lucky that all three came on at at once (8/27 of a chance) and that the tau player apparently had little or no interceptor. Don't get me wrong - I love raven assaults, but they are risky!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I suppose with cheap c:sm assault squads as well as cheap supporting units, its not as risky for vanilla if a raven goes down as he still has lots of other units.

Yeah, sounds like a lot of luck to me as well.

Also, I wouldn't call that air cav at all; I came in expecting 3 Ravens and 3 Talons.

Well, seems like a solid RG list. Stormraven are rather hard to take down. But as said, he was lucky that all came on turn 2.

I've been working on the list concept. You can read about it here.

Lots of scouting Rhinos, good firepower when it comes on. Only thing missing is an ADL with comms relay for midfield cover for the scouting Rhinos and reserve manipulation.

Have Tau stopped bringing their AA tech?

Not too much AA in a Riptide Spam list. You can easily avoid the 18" range on a Riptide fusion gun with a Raven and still be in position for a good turn three. It would be interesting to see what the Tau player had in his list.

Can't Riptides have skyfire and interceptor? Isn't that the whole point of a Riptide?

Yeah...That sounds like someone who's not running riptides smartly more than anything. If he's placing riptides right, he should have at least one skyfiring with interceptor as well, which should take out at least one raven(sorry, but armor 12 is easy to pen).

It's a cool concept, but you'd need to see how it does once the Tau players there adjust to it, which will happen pretty quickly I'd imagine. And once they do, down go ravens, including their occupants.

Penetrate or hull point out troa? Most skyfire weapons do have trouble penetrating AV 12, but they do succeed at hull pointing things out.

Martel732 wrote:
Can't Riptides have skyfire and interceptor? Isn't that the whole point of a Riptide?

They can. But they don't have great range on the best weapons to use against a storm raven. The most common loadout gives them 3 S7 shots with plenty of range or 1 S8 with 18 inches of range. Not too much a bubble.

3 S7 shots is not amazing I'l admit. S7 is far more dangerous to a Stormraven than a helldrake, remember. Stormravens don't have 5++ or HP regen. In fact, most of my stormraven losses are to being HPed out by S7.

What about using tigerous as allied or primary to help boost the reserve roll chances;

Storm Ravens are pretty good for taking on Riptides as they come with those sweet AP2 missiles, and you don't have to worry about flying over things that can shoot at your rear armour because the armour is the same all round.

With his list, I'd change a few things though. First of all, I'd completely revamp the Tac Squad loadouts and either go full-melta or take a combi-plasma/flamer, multi-melta and plasma gun/flamer.

I'd completely scrap the RB-TLLC Tac Squad and replace it with something like Sniper Scouts if he used it as a home objective holder, (which at that would be more fluffy) or a TLHF to completely massacre entrenched Firewarriors in an alpha strike.

I'd remove Shrike in a heartbeat, because frankly he's just trash for what you pay and he's not even getting anything out of his infiltrate bonus. I'd replace him with maybe a Captain with JP, Thunderhammer and Eternal Shield for about the same cost.

Cool. I like that list.

I think there is some basis for his win but I don't think it is something the Tau player could not have won against. Stormravens are frankly amazing if used correctly and in my opinion the scouting TAC marines in rhinos are excellent. There is some fat in the RG list that could be trimmed but this seems to be a pickup game so it probably doesn't matter.

In my experience MTO is a solid counter to Tau riptide spam as they cannot put out the damage to stop most of these lists. Pulse bomb Tau probably would have helped but this list has some counters to that as well.

Martel732 wrote:
Penetrate or hull point out troa? Most skyfire weapons do have trouble penetrating AV 12, but they do succeed at hull pointing things out.

Pens. I tend to have my SR blow up to the local Riptide player, either the turn it comes on or their next turn.