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I guess if you have not played one maybe the answer is that you should be more worried about them then you are?

I'm still not seeing how you are auto getting in range, unwounded, and killing all of them. That is where your similation falls apart for me. There is no explanation of how this will happen.

Are you Jumping across the table and assuming LOS blockers?

Deepstriking into range (which is bound to fail) as you will get instant killed by the Riptides before you do anything?

My whole point is that I don't think you can do what you seem to think you can.

By your own math you need to do 13AP 2 wounds to kill 1 (assuming it does not NOVA charge for a 3++, then it takes what 26?). So say you kill one in a turn, what are the other 3 doing?

Math is great....assuming optimal condidtions for yourself and not the enemy is not.

 Scipio Africanus wrote:
Hi Guys, I've heard a lot about the four-riptide build but never had to face one.

As far as I'm concerned, they're not a threat, but I have an army which is extremely capable of taking out things with the monster typing. (Y'know, having the monster hunters special rule.) and I ignore most of their hurt with a constant 2+ coversave.

So long as I'm getting rid of any markerlights, I really can't see what all the fuss is about - I've done the math, with a farsight bomb like mine you can kill a riptide and a half a turn (admittedly, both need to be within 12". I'm also assuming I took no casualties at the time of shooting.) and then assault to kill the other riptide and a half - if that doesn't work, I can hit and run and shoot at it.

So what's the fuss? Am I an anomaly or is this list just not such a big deal.

Also, if someone can shoot over a model of the 4-riptides build I'd love to test it out for myself.

If you manage to do the same with an army that does not have the same kind of power builds. Id consider that impressive. but grabbing one of the better power build armies out there is just lazy.

Breng77 wrote:
I guess if you have not played one maybe the answer is that you should be more worried about them then you are?

I'm still not seeing how you are auto getting in range, unwounded, and killing all of them. That is where your similation falls apart for me. There is no explanation of how this will happen.

Are you Jumping across the table and assuming LOS blockers?

Deepstriking into range (which is bound to fail) as you will get instant killed by the Riptides before you do anything?

My whole point is that I don't think you can do what you seem to think you can.

By your own math you need to do 13AP 2 wounds to kill 1 (assuming it does not NOVA charge for a 3++, then it takes what 26?). So say you kill one in a turn, what are the other 3 doing?

Math is great....assuming optimal condidtions for yourself and not the enemy is not.

At best, I get the drop on them. At worst, I get in pretty much unscathed. they're gonna get at most a turn of firepower on me (a good number of my tournaments have let my farsight bomb infiltrate because of shadowsun.) If I get first turn I get fireshield from tigurius giving me a 2+ cover save before they can hit me and I wreck the most dangerous unit (O'vesa star, if it's on the field.) At very worst, you're looking at killing most of my drones.

Also, you're talking 4 nova charges there. O'vesa get's a re-roll, but it's still 3 which is enough for one fail. Every third turn he saves one and loses two wounds for it, assuming enough are alive by turn 3.

Anyway, the real point is, have you seen a farsight bomb go at another farsight bomb? It's not pretty. O'vesa star doesn't sound much different. If I'm getting within 12" first turn (and I can) I've pretty much got any unit in the bag, Farsight Bomb, O'vesa Bomb and possibly even a screamer star included. Especially if O'vesa is reduced to T4 because of how many T4 models are in the unit (I guess that'd need to be 4, which doesn't sound likely.)

Does anyone know how monster hunters works for O'vesa? Because I should get the rule against him, but other wounds won't be hitting him, surely? (I can get the 11-13 wounds necessary to kill him.)


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Bishop F Gantry wrote:

If you manage to do the same with an army that does not have the same kind of power builds. Id consider that impressive. but grabbing one of the better power build armies out there is just lazy.

Well that's completely polite. Actually, I wrote a lot of the convention on running a large farsight bomb. A good portion of the lists I see these days use many of the tactics I've built personally. It's one thing to call me lazy because I am using a powerful army. But it's a complete other to disregard the fact that I designed this list myself, tweaked through dozens of games to get it down to what it is now. I Don't waste time with missile pods because I know I'll make distance. And because I don't waste my time on AP4 shooting, I'm lazy?

Also, again. I can do this without feeling afraid of a riptide army using just a sternguard drop pod army, which doesn't even come close in terms of output to this farsight bomb. I just don't see 4 pie-plates as all that scary. Even if one is ignoring my cover saves.

 Scipio Africanus wrote:
A good portion of the lists I see these days use many of the tactics I've built personally. It's one thing to call me lazy because I am using a powerful army. But it's a complete other to disregard the fact that I designed this list myself, tweaked through dozens of games to get it down to what it is now.

Awwwww, thats cute Maker of oh-so-original powerlist for whole world Sorry, I dont mean to be mean. Its just saying "hey, I have this, one particular army (by accident one of competetively strongest too) and I dont fear those pesky Riptides! So, whats the fuss about? I dont get it" is pretty much...absurd.

Try to take something else, different dex, and try it.

Because I need to do 30 wounds on one or get to melee with it and the fether shoots me if I do + it's friends do so too.

In other words I need 135 Loota shots at one to kill it, and 45 lootas shoot maximum of just that if every one of them rolls 3 for shots, but likely they'll shoot only 90.

SO beyond the iffy legality of infilatrating the unit. Even if you can there is no way against a savy player that you will be within 12" on turn 1.

You cannot infiltrate within 12" (18 if there is LOS) of any enemy unit. So your opponent deploys a couple units out front and the Ovesastar behind them...now you are further away (possibly 36+" away). So more than 1 turn of shooting. 2+ cover is meaningless because they will have ignores cover, with 2 Templates ...so kind of pointless.

Ovessa is Majority T6 (as his shielded Missle drones keep his toughness).

SO sorry just don't see how against a skilled player you accomplish what you are stating.

Even if you are allowed to infiltrate...you will be 2 turns away from effective shooting. So that is then eating a minimum of 4 S8 AP2 Large Blasts that are twin linked ignores cover. So I'm just not seeing you getting there unharmed...you simply are not mobile enough, or durable enough for me to buy it.

Assume four riptides, three groups of pathfinders.

O'Vesa Star has a buffmander.

Enemy has first turn? Riptides stand in front of Pathfinders, block LoS or grant cover. Whether the storm. Return fire next turn with ~3 Riptides dropping ignore cover AP2 blasts. Repeat for turn 2. Repeat for turn 3. etc.

You have first turn? See above, but without you taking a shot first. O'Vesa squad will likely be the only one to get the shot off, but it ignores cover and is twin-linked so it's probably good enough to put a huge dent in something.

All Riptides should be running some 2/3 combination of FNP, Interceptor, or Skyfire. Meaning any deep strikers have to contend with an ENORMOUS amount of fire before they get a shot off. This doesn't take into account kroot bubbles that may be around or HYMP Broadside Teams, who will further cause problems.

The problem is this, to quote myself:

obsidiankatana wrote:It's why they're so good: a combination of durability, maneuverability, and firepower that is as-of-yet unmatched.

Why are people afraid of four-riptides?

Because for some reason GW thought dakkatastic Riptides were fine whilst deep strike/outflank assaults (ie, the gak that can catch them) are clearly too powerful

GW is awful at designing super units. If its strong, fast, and tough, you can bet your arse its underpriced by a huge margin

What I've started doing against Tau with my Dark Angels is bringing 6 3-man biker squads with no upgrades whatsoever, scouting all of them forward, and them deepstriking in a bunch of terminators on turn 1. Guys running that many Riptides really have to prioritize targets and it's pretty much impossible for them to kill everything I've got on the table. Assuming I have anything left at all, Terminators come in, bikers get an assault off against anything they can just to hide from being shot at even more, and if they can tie up the Riptides, sweet. All they have to do is tie it up til my next turn when my terminators can assault and I'm pretty solid.

It's worked out okay for me so far. The biggest issue is how goddamn stupidly good Riptides are in melee. People like to pretend they aren't any good in it because WS2, but guess what. Unless you're rocking WS5 or better, WS2 is the same as WS3, and for the purposes of hitting things yourself, it's WS4 most the time. You still hit on 4+ and because Monstrous Creature gains smash, you're still pretty much insta-gibbing anything you touch. Riptides are rocking 2+ armor so most likely anything that can break it's AP in close combat actually goes after it anyway because unwieldy.

I'm not saying someone is going to build a list designed to get Riptides into close quarters, but I'm just saying they are good to squish a guy or two every close combat and are really difficult to hurt.

obsidiankatana wrote:It's why they're so good: a combination of durability, maneuverability, and firepower that is as-of-yet unmatched.

This. I think four riptides is too many personally and three is a better number without taking away too much of your support, but they are incredibly durable given the manueverability and firepower they have.

Can't cheese a cheeser!

Riptide spam are among the lists that just make 40k unfun. I'd just rather find something better to do with my time than waste 2-3 hours becuase GW doesn't playtest their codexes properly.

The one thing I would love to do is take a Herohammer list against a Riptide list. Some C:SM funtimes with a Bikemaster, Lysander, Calgar, and Cypher. Four EW HQs more than willing and capable to put a Riptide down each - just have to get there. I think that'd be good for some fun.

People get hyper-upset when 4+ units combine to kill maybe 12-15 models per turn.

I don't know why either.

Breng77 wrote:
SO beyond the iffy legality of infilatrating the unit. Even if you can there is no way against a savy player that you will be within 12".

you can infiltrate 18" in sight, and move 6". What's so complicated about that that a savy player can contest it?

I mean, unless it's hammer and anvil, there are very few places to hide. Even if you do hide, I can just assault another riptide to hide on the second turn.

And, I know that Infiltrating based on a character's rule is iffy. But I'm going to make use of it if it's specifically allowed in a tournament.
Some of these tournaments also force my suits to only use one gun on overwatch. So sad.


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 Dakkamite wrote:

Why are people afraid of four-riptides?

Because for some reason GW thought dakkatastic Riptides were fine whilst deep strike/outflank assaults (ie, the gak that can catch them) are clearly too powerful

GW is awful at designing super units. If its strong, fast, and tough, you can bet your arse its underpriced by a huge margin

No argument.

Thankyou for finally being someone who gave me an actual answer, rather than saying "you can't tell me your not afraid while taking a powerful army list."

Dakka, I can tell you I'm not afraid. It took until more than 30 replies for two people to give me the answers I Was looking for. I wasn't trying to cause an upset, I merely pointed out that I didn't see what was so bothersome about the particular army. I'm very slowly getting a picture of what the problem is. I'm still taking flak for not having had to face an army that I still don't find all that threatening.

Is this anger against me for not being afraid of something, or against the four riptide list for being good against units of elite infantry? Here's a point, Monsters. 4 riptides can chug out 12 S7AP2 shots which is 6 hits with 4 wounds. That doesn't take down most tyranid monsters. (maybe 5, but that's assuming that we're talking about a t.fex, tervi, or trygon/mawloc.) Armies with scouts can rush in small units to tie up the monsters with WS2. I'm not afraid of four pie plates, and I'm not afraid of riptides. I'm not afraid taking a marine list which can't even be considered tournament-realistic and still feel I'd have a decent chance.

If you come down in drop pods, crowd around the riptide. They can't pie-plate you if they'd have to land over an allies base. If you're deepstriking, find other ways of getting onto the field. Don't leave your units in clumps, spread them out in lines so they're naturally going to be less to hit. Spread them out in coherency so there's going to be less to hit.

Crowding around an objective doesn't help. if you're losing 5 guys to a pie plate that didn't scatter really well you're not spreading out well enough. Any "savvy" player will spread out well enough, hugging cover save for the one that can ignore it.

Quadtide was scary at first since no-one knew how to deal with it. Its still a top-tier build, but it isn't as scary as it used to be.

Lucarikx

I swear to Emprah this is a troll thread. 1 riptide is a major issue for non competitive lists. 4 well.... it's 4 riptides!

Why is this even an active thread anymore..... Riptides combine good maneuverability, good damage output and high toughness on a relatively cheap platform that (with the tools available) is very hard to even get near especially with the other tools in Tau codex' arsenal. 2 Riptides is scary enough. Four? Thats just mean.

 Bronzefists42 wrote:
I swear to Emprah this is a troll thread. 1 riptide is a major issue for non competitive lists. 4 well.... it's 4 riptides!

No, Scipio Africanus makes good points in how to minimize a Riptides threat. He doesnt understand that those 4 Riptides are just as unafraid of his Farsight bomb as he is of them.

 Scipio Africanus wrote:

No argument.

Thankyou for finally being someone who gave me an actual answer, rather than saying "you can't tell me your not afraid while taking a powerful army list."

Dakka, I can tell you I'm not afraid. It took until more than 30 replies for two people to give me the answers I Was looking for. I wasn't trying to cause an upset, I merely pointed out that I didn't see what was so bothersome about the particular army. I'm very slowly getting a picture of what the problem is. I'm still taking flak for not having had to face an army that I still don't find all that threatening.

Is this anger against me for not being afraid of something, or against the four riptide list for being good against units of elite infantry? Here's a point, Monsters. 4 riptides can chug out 12 S7AP2 shots which is 6 hits with 4 wounds. That doesn't take down most tyranid monsters. (maybe 5, but that's assuming that we're talking about a t.fex, tervi, or trygon/mawloc.) Armies with scouts can rush in small units to tie up the monsters with WS2. I'm not afraid of four pie plates, and I'm not afraid of riptides. I'm not afraid taking a marine list which can't even be considered tournament-realistic and still feel I'd have a decent chance.

If you come down in drop pods, crowd around the riptide. They can't pie-plate you if they'd have to land over an allies base. If you're deepstriking, find other ways of getting onto the field. Don't leave your units in clumps, spread them out in lines so they're naturally going to be less to hit. Spread them out in coherency so there's going to be less to hit.

Crowding around an objective doesn't help. if you're losing 5 guys to a pie plate that didn't scatter really well you're not spreading out well enough. Any "savvy" player will spread out well enough, hugging cover save for the one that can ignore it.

In the eleventh reply to this thread, I told you exactly why a Riptide is terrifying on its own - which extrapolates to tell why four are even worse.

Now, to break down your futher points - the solid shots aren't remotely why people fear the Riptide. It's the pie plate, which is a 2.5'' radius plate, 5'' diameter. Which means that, when centered on a single infantry model, it will hit at minimum two others. Assuming maximum spread. So you would have to spread all of your infantry out 2'' from each other, and still lose three of them. Conservative estimations put three Riptides ignoring cover, but it's hardly difficult to make all four ignore cover if the enemy is within 36'' of your markerlight support. Two hits is all it takes - requiring four lights to fire at each target, marking a total of twelve pathfinders. You're more likely to see 21 on the board. O'Vesa ignores cover because of the buffmander. So that's four ignore-cover AP 2 pie plates, each killing a minimum of three infantry targets assuming no scatters and maximum infantry spread. Twelve models seems like a pittance, yeah? That's the minimum amount of damage they could inflict. Instant killing anything T4 or lower. Odds are, you can't spread all of your units out the maximum separation. Even if you do, you lose an infantry unit on your first turn. Gone. After having done everything right to avoid it.

Assume you crowd the Riptide, or its allies. Remember that 5'' plate? Add in a 6'' move. You would have to entirely surround the unit to deny their ability to vacate the area for the plate to drop anyway. Then you lose that unit.

Target priority and the ability to remove them are the strengths of the Tau Codex, through focus-fire and ability to ignore armor/cover. Riptides are the platforms to achieve this. And they will - you can't escape them from range, and they don't care about cover, so LoS and assaults are your only options. LoS is a limited solution, assaults require you to close within Markerlight range - exactly where the Riptides shine brightest. If you survive that gauntlet, you have to catch the target. Is it a Riptide? He'll 4d6 assault move away, assuming the 2d6 isn't enough. Is it something else? Clustered Tau units share overwatch, tear you a new one, and you likely fail the charge.

Looking at Riptides in a vacuum, doubting their capabilities is easy. A lot of people did it before the codex released. Gameplay application showed them to be monstrously effective.

 obsidiankatana wrote:

Looking at Riptides in a vacuum, doubting their capabilities is easy. A lot of people did it before the codex released. Gameplay application showed them to be monstrously effective.

I don't doubt their capabilities, I just don't feel they're as dangerous as they're trumped up to be. And I still fail to see it as being as effective as the internet thinks it is.

I appreciate what you've told me, and I can start to see why armies that aren't capable of getting the drop on markerlight support or riptides would be worried. I'm just not convinced I need to be worried.

 Scipio Africanus wrote:

I don't doubt their capabilities, I just don't feel they're as dangerous as they're trumped up to be. And I still fail to see it as being as effective as the internet thinks it is.

I appreciate what you've told me, and I can start to see why armies that aren't capable of getting the drop on markerlight support or riptides would be worried. I'm just not convinced I need to be worried.

If you can deal with them, don't be worried. Just be aware that all the chatter is far from baseless.

Riptides come with a hidden markerlight tax. If the commander brings that many riptides with no support, he is a fool! A fool i say!

But, if you're killing pathfinders and especially marker drones turn 1...you're opponent might not be that good. Pathfinders i can see, but drones being out in the open turn 1? That commander isn't abusing JSJ.

 Scipio Africanus wrote:

 obsidiankatana wrote:

Looking at Riptides in a vacuum, doubting their capabilities is easy. A lot of people did it before the codex released. Gameplay application showed them to be monstrously effective.

I don't doubt their capabilities, I just don't feel they're as dangerous as they're trumped up to be. And I still fail to see it as being as effective as the internet thinks it is.

I appreciate what you've told me, and I can start to see why armies that aren't capable of getting the drop on markerlight support or riptides would be worried. I'm just not convinced I need to be worried.

The internet fails to see you being as effective as you think you are.

 Scipio Africanus wrote:

I don't doubt their capabilities, I just don't feel they're as dangerous as they're trumped up to be.

Agreed. They're ok, good even. Four of them is worse than two of them though. They aren't enough fire power to win a game on their own, and at four, that's what you've committed too.

Is this a troll thread? It must be, right?

If not, you'd realize that you can't sit here and ask why it's scary while you use an army capable of utilizing that type of list...And you'd realize that you're theorycrafting, and need to go actually play a list with 4 tides before telling everyone else they're not scary. "I found the perfect counter in my mind, they aren't scary" doesn't make them less scary...

Someone lock this thread for the love of god.

 troa wrote:
Is this a troll thread? It must be, right?

If not, you'd realize that you can't sit here and ask why it's scary while you use an army capable of utilizing that type of list...And you'd realize that you're theorycrafting, and need to go actually play a list with 4 tides before telling everyone else they're not scary. "I found the perfect counter in my mind, they aren't scary" doesn't make them less scary...

Someone lock this thread for the love of god.

No. Most tactics threads aren't in the habit of trolling.

I was trying to find out what was so scary about your average riptide army. I'm starting to get a picture, but I'm still not entirely convinced. If the threat is four pieplates, I'm laughing. If the threat comes from pathfinders or other markerlights, I'm laughing if I get the drop (which I theoretically do 50% of the time).

Now the fact is I said *I'm not afraid*. You can't tell me I have to be afraid, you can only tell me why you're afraid. If I face one, I might get a different picture in my head. It doesn't mean I won't go in with a confident manner, rather than a defeatist one.

Farsight bomb doesn't even work against riptide spam because they will just interceptor you with a bunch of large blasts which ignore cover via buff commander

 CrownAxe wrote:
Farsight bomb doesn't even work against riptide spam because they will just interceptor you with a bunch of large blasts which ignore cover via buff commander

Because I'm deepstriking. Beautiful reading of the conversation thus far.

Scipio Africanus, if I may?

I think that what you should do is try trading armies with someone at some point for a single game. Switch things up a little. Take the tools that another player has been left with and use the experience to gain a more clear perspective. You will likely find your answer there.