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IIRC the Flyrant list never got the chance to face WS spam, but was designed to hard-counter Serpent spam.

The Pod list was built around a null deploy setup.

Serpent spam is self-explanory.

Space Wolves in Pods are actually one of the best options for the most common scale of games (~1500-2000 points, AFAIK), and IG can bring some useful tools/objective sitters.

Bikerspam is good because it's a bunch of T5 dudes, who are Relentless, and thus a good platform for grav-weapons.

The Grav Centstar with some Dreadknights is really just taking the stellar units of an overall very limited/overcosted book, and then combining them. If you look over the GK book in any depth, you'll notice that the viable options are very few, which also leads to monobuild problems... because there happens to be only one viable build.

Marines at this point are reduced to Bikerspam or Centstars; both options are powerful... but they're almost the only competitive options that Marines have.

 gmaleron wrote:
The only true thing that needs to be changed about the Riptide is the cost of the ion accelerator, raise it to about 15 to 20 points and call it good.

That, and drop it to +3 Sv and 4 Wounds or preferably, make it a Walker.

As it is, Riptide simply breaks how the fiction is modelled on-game.

niv-mizzet wrote:
Calm down sir, you're starting to get as rude as the last person I ignored. It's just a forum about toy soldiers. No need to get enraged.

Constantly telling everyone to "calm down" is more likely going to have the opposite effect. Not only that but I don't see where all this rage is supposedly coming from.

niv-mizzet wrote:
What would I consider a good statistic? If someone ran a large tournament (say lvo size with 200+) where each faction was equally represented in number of players, and a faction was never allowed to play against itself.

So in other words then it's literally impossible to get a good statistic, what with the vast majority of players fielding an IoM army of some kind and not being able to fight against other IoM armies. That and managing to get equal representation for every faction would be very difficult indeed, not every faction appeals to everyone and obviously the ones seen as being less competitive aren't going to be played as much in a competitive environment.

...like Tau, apparently, but we simply can't accept that as a fact because Tau are totes broken OP and ruined the game.

 Sidstyler wrote:

niv-mizzet wrote:
Calm down sir, you're starting to get as rude as the last person I ignored. It's just a forum about toy soldiers. No need to get enraged.

Constantly telling everyone to "calm down" is more likely going to have the opposite effect. Not only that but I don't see where all this rage is supposedly coming from.

niv-mizzet wrote:
What would I consider a good statistic? If someone ran a large tournament (say lvo size with 200+) where each faction was equally represented in number of players, and a faction was never allowed to play against itself.

So in other words then it's literally impossible to get a good statistic, what with the vast majority of players fielding an IoM army of some kind and not being able to fight against other IoM armies. That and managing to get equal representation for every faction would be very difficult indeed, not every faction appeals to everyone and obviously the ones seen as being less competitive aren't going to be played as much in a competitive environment.

What is civil and what isn't is another opinionated matter. I happen to think that ridicule over an opinion crosses that line. I'm not perfect, I've done it too, but when my head's on straight, I refrain from that.

Not literally impossible, but practically impossible, perhaps. And yes, I never said it would be easy. If you've ever done any complicated statistic research, you know that lots of variables make it very very very very very tricky to get good usable data. It's not something you get in an afternoon. And 40k has hundreds of 1-6 RNG rolls of varying importance and weight. That data is neat to look at, but for faction v faction comparisons, mirror matches will skew the numbers of more-played armies closer to 50%.

It's another tough resilient unit (like Wraiths) that doesn't particularly care about incoming fire.

In general it seems like these units give players fits.

 BoomWolf wrote:

 gmaleron wrote:
The only true thing that needs to be changed about the Riptide is the cost of the ion accelerator, raise it to about 15 to 20 points and call it good. The Riptide is durable but when compared to things such as Imperial Knights, Dread Knights ect. The base Riptide is clearly not under costed.

Nope, nope, nope and a hundrend more nopes.

Nothing is wrong with the COST of the ion accelerator, the error is in the DESIGN. no cost change will fix the obvious flaw of a gun without a weakness without either spinning out of reasonable cost ranges for the platform, or feeling cheap (and at some point levels, it will do both at once, making it both bad to have, and bad to face, being the worst possible outcome)

It needs to drop the overcharge (non-NOVA blast) profile, that way you bring the IA riptides the "I need to NOVA to be effective" problem the HBC is facing, therefor reducing both its durability and its reliability and making it work properly.
That way it has a weakness, you blast is not assured, and it needs to be set up in advance for pieplate interceptions.

I get what your saying man and would agree with that, keep it the same points cost but get rid of the large blast capability would work great!

Backfire wrote:

 gmaleron wrote:
The only true thing that needs to be changed about the Riptide is the cost of the ion accelerator, raise it to about 15 to 20 points and call it good.

That, and drop it to +3 Sv and 4 Wounds or preferably, make it a Walker.

As it is, Riptide simply breaks how the fiction is modelled on-game.

To much of a nerf, WAY to much of a nerf. It is perfectly fine with the Wounds and Save it has. If it got hit that hard I would expect it to go down in points, like Dreadknight base level.

Whiskey144 wrote:
The Riptide's virtues are it's durability- mostly "over time", wherein it's unlikely to be killed throughout the course of the game- and the fact that the Riptide can more-or-less invalidate large swaths of Marine armies- or others which similarly rely on 3+ armor to protect them.

Bottom line.

The Riptide is overpowered because most people play Space Marines and SM players expect point prices to be catered SOLELY to them.

Whiskey144 wrote:
Marines at this point are reduced to Bikerspam or Centstars; both options are powerful... but they're almost the only competitive options that Marines have.

Ultramarines Pod list also did quite well, recently. IIRC the #1 player on the ITC runs this list.

But the above rule certainly applies to almost any army that wishes to be competitive - Demons are reduced to Fateweaver/Belakor + screamerstar/dronestar. Tyranids are reduced to taking a minimum of 3 flyrants. Elder are reduced to WS spam. Tau are reduced to TripTide (despite not placing with said TripTide in quite some time). Etcetera and etcetera.

I'd also point out that the #2 list at LVO was an Imperial Fists/Blood Angels Scout list which did utilize two mini deathstars (one of them being Centurion) - but the fact is that it was a pretty unique list.

There is a bit of 'Woe is Me' sentiment from a minority of Marine players, and yet Space Marines were 4/Top 8 at LVO, and 5/Top 10 at Adepticon. It is very difficult to take such criticism as something other than personal grudges against the Tau for whatever reason, when the results of 40k's toughest environments (arguably) clearly prove otherwise.

 EmpNortonII wrote:
Bottom line.

The Riptide is overpowered because most people play Space Marines and SM players expect point prices to be catered SOLELY to them.

So you don't find it broken that one unit can invalidate 99% of Marine infantry units, regardless of whether or not those units are in cover?

andbreak wrote:

Whiskey144 wrote:
Marines at this point are reduced to Bikerspam or Centstars; both options are powerful... but they're almost the only competitive options that Marines have.

Ultramarines Pod list also did quite well, recently. IIRC the #1 player on the ITC runs this list.

But the above rule certainly applies to almost any army that wishes to be competitive - Demons are reduced to Fateweaver/Belakor + screamerstar/dronestar. Tyranids are reduced to taking a minimum of 3 flyrants. Elder are reduced to WS spam. Tau are reduced to TripTide (despite not placing with said TripTide in quite some time). Etcetera and etcetera.

I'd also point out that the #2 list at LVO was an Imperial Fists/Blood Angels Scout list which did utilize two mini deathstars (one of them being Centurion) - but the fact is that it was a pretty unique list.

There is a bit of 'Woe is Me' sentiment from a minority of Marine players, and yet Space Marines were 4/Top 8 at LVO, and 5/Top 10 at Adepticon. It is very difficult to take such criticism as something other than personal grudges against the Tau for whatever reason, when the results of 40k's toughest environments (arguably) clearly prove otherwise.

I commented on how the #2 list was, when boiled down, a null deploy list. It's a very clever setup- and one that I admit to not understanding at first- but it leverages multiple threats (like said "mini-stars") as well as the ability to control deployment more-or-less perfectly.

I would say that it is a result of that particular player simply having an absolutely superb grasp of how to apply the current mechanics. However... it would seem that the vast majority of players- competitive or otherwise- seem to lack such a super grasp. Moreover, it would seem that such a list has not been seen in quite a while, and was likely a surprise to many people that played against it.

Going against the meta can work... but it requires some exceptional player skill, IMO.

A lot of the problem with most Marine units really just comes down to the fact that they pay for a lot of kit that they rarely have the opportunity to use- frag and krak grenades are a really good example of this. A lot of it just stems from the fact that "good" basic grunt run-of-the-mill infantry models basically require some kind of ability to "scale". Sure, Tacs get a special weapon and a heavy... but how does that compare to pseudo-Rending (Bladestorm) or wannabe-Haywire (Gauss)?

As far as why Tau have "fallen out of favor", as it were, in the tournament scene... no idea. I don't really follow the tournament scene- I really only learned about the 1/2 spot LVO players' lists because it came up in a roundabout way in, IIRC, the Terminator thread in Proposed Rules. But considering that the Riptide has remained a vehemently hated unit- and with good reason it seems- I would surmise that there is some kind of mechanics-related reason.

And insofar as Eldar being reduced to Serpent Spam... I'm kind of doubtful about that. It seems that that is the best- and certainly one of the top-placing- builds, but I rather doubt that the Eldar book is limited to only Serpent Spam.

I've also not heard anything about TripTide- on these boards at least.

I realize that drop pod curb stomp many popular builds, I just don't think they are as great as many Xeno players make them out to be.

The above post about how crazy the Riptide sounds in the context of even 5th ed is a good summary of why this unit's pricing is absurd. The Tau's actual overall efficacy in tournaments is not necessarily correlated to how stupid good Riptides are.

"BA are doing fine for themselves and can easily build powerful armies. "

I guess I missed that memo, because they still play like a bottom 25% codex.

Whiskey144 wrote:

So you don't find it broken that one unit can invalidate 99% of Marine infantry units, regardless of whether or not those units are in cover?

Again, not one unit. You need marker lights to remove cover saves. Specifically, you need two. To Remove Cover and make a Riptide BS5, you need a total of four marker light tokens.

So let's look at markerlights.

Units with Markerlights cost points. Units with Markerlights must also be in range of said unit. Markerlights are Heavy 1. No move and shooting without snapfiring. IIRC, there are nine models in the base codex that can take said marker lights - 5 of them are characters with Markerlight upgrades: Ethereal with Markerlight. Fire Cadre with Markerlight. Fire warrior Team Leader with Markerlight. Stealth Team leader with Markerlight. Sniper Drone Controller with Markerlight. Let's be honest, those choices are pretty unspectacular with their BS3, One Shot a turn ML (exception barring SDC with BS5). Marker light Drones. Pathfinders. Skyray. With the exception of the Skyray (which can only put out 2ML a turn at BS4), the other sources are insanely easy to kill.

Whiskey144 wrote:
But considering that the Riptide has remained a vehemently hated unit- and with good reason it seems- I would surmise that there is some kind of mechanics-related reason.

I can (and have) agree to this. As it stands, I do believe the Riptide to be a very, very strong unit and one of the playmakers of the Tau codex, and I haven't stated otherwise. However, my contention comes in when the Riptide's 'OP' nature (a spillover from the 6th Edition days of O'vesaStars and Farseer+Riptides) is still hailed as gamebreaking and metachanging. Powerful? Yes. Unstoppable machine of death and war and pieplates? Not so much.

Much of the complaints I've seen are unfounded and based in, in my opinion, grudges and resentfulness. I'd feel it be more conduitive to see healthy threads titled 'How to deal with Riptides' in the tactics section rather than ... well, threads like these.

Martel732 wrote:
I guess I missed that memo, because they still play like a bottom 25% codex.

Let's not derail this into yet another 'Martel Laments the State of Blood Angels Thread'. I still remember the BA 18" overcharged-rhinos-i-can-assault-out-of Edition. Everyone's been at the bottom (even Tau), it's nothing interesting.

I didn't bring it up. I just dare you to find something the cost of Riptide that's remotely as good in the BA codex. It's also of interest that the two marquis BA units, DC and SG, are completely raped by the Riptide.

Eldar have never been at the bottom. Just sayin'.

Martel732 wrote:
I didn't bring it up. I just dare you to find something the cost of Riptide that's remotely as good in the BA codex.

Mephiston.

andbreak wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
I didn't bring it up. I just dare you to find something the cost of Riptide that's remotely as good in the BA codex.

Mephiston.

Maybe in 5th ed.

Ok seriously this is getting absolutely ridiculous.

This exact same conversation is had literally every single month and the exact same people say the exact same thing every month.

I don't post very often but I feel the need now.

Tau are no longer OP. Base Riptides are not OP. If you don't understand this now you never will.

Everyone concurs it is the Ion accelerator that makes the unit to strong because it is way underpriced. Every single person who complains about the riptide complains about the IA and EWO but seem to always forget that a player pays for these things and they don't come base.

Yes we all agree that these things need a point increase and or rules changes (e.g. get rid of overcharge IA and/or increase cost) but the second you increase the BASE cost of the BASE riptide you kill it. It will literally no longer be at all worth it. Look at the competitive scene where the best players are playing. Tau are not OP and riptides are not very good.

I am so sick of this conversation and I don't want to single someone out but seriously Martel. Every single time you say the same thing about how bad your BA are and no matter what people say you can't seem to get it through your head that you are wrong. Come on man, stop kidding yourself and stop kidding us.

I'm not sure you understand the mechanics behind why a Riptide with an IA+EWO is so amazingly awesome, if that's what you think.

Because even though the IA and EWO don't come stock... they're 5 points apiece. So for a 10 point upgrade you can get a 5" S8 AP2 blast, with a 60" range, that can use Interceptor... which means that you can:

-Annihilate DS'ers
-Murder anything with an armor save and realistically T5 or down, along with any T4 multi-wound model
-Potentially instakill entire squads, thanks to leveraging synergistic army effects
-Be nearly uncatchable by combat units, thanks to JSJ and the option to get a 4D6" thrust move
-Be nearly unkillable by shooting thanks to being out at 60", IE out of range of 90% of AP2/AP1 weaponry

Face it man- Riptides are broken. The fact that they're even halfway passable in combat just makes it even worse.

Incidentally, I think that the following changes would make a good fix:

Riptides are now AV12/12/10 Walkers with 3 HPs (I could be convinced to make it 4HPs), and have movement like Jet Pack Infantry. Nova Charging is similar to now, however instead of taking an automatic Wound (which vehicles cannot) or losing a Hull Point, if a Riptide fails its Nova Charge roll it suffers a Crew Shaken result, which also reduces its Thrust move to 2D3", instead of 2D6".

Incidentally, if Riptides remain MCs, my recommendation would be:

-Lose 1 Wound
-Lose 1 Attack
-Lose 1 point of Strength (IE, becomes S5)
-Lose Smash (why would a Riptide want to smash crap?)
-Drop Armor to 3+ save
-DECREASE the cost of FNP for the 'Tide
-Tweak Nova Charge to be less damaging, but still risky (I'm not quite sure how this could be done)
-Rework both the Ion Accelerator and the HBC to be viable weapons without the Nova Charge, but not brokenly powerful with the Nova Charge; the IA is potentially too powerful when Nova'd, while the HBC is nearly dead weight without being Nova'd.

You literally just missed the idea point of my post. Congratulations. Read it again and then come back to me. Seriously what you want to do the Riptide will make it totally unusable. Lets be honest all you and Martel "really" want is for the Riptide to be completely removed from the game and that's your opinion but your only proving my point.

Smash isn't very useful for the Riptide anyway, no need to remove an ability it will almost never use. And if it is its almost certainly dead already, smash or not. And no matter what way you slice it, its still a very large thing more than capable of stomping stuff to death, but at WS2 its not very good at it.

Greggy wrote:
Ok seriously this is getting absolutely ridiculous.

This exact same conversation is had literally every single month and the exact same people say the exact same thing every month.

I don't post very often but I feel the need now.

Tau are no longer OP. Base Riptides are not OP. If you don't understand this now you never will.

Everyone concurs it is the Ion accelerator that makes the unit to strong because it is way underpriced. Every single person who complains about the riptide complains about the IA and EWO but seem to always forget that a player pays for these things and they don't come base.

Yes we all agree that these things need a point increase and or rules changes (e.g. get rid of overcharge IA and/or increase cost) but the second you increase the BASE cost of the BASE riptide you kill it. It will literally no longer be at all worth it. Look at the competitive scene where the best players are playing. Tau are not OP and riptides are not very good.

I am so sick of this conversation and I don't want to single someone out but seriously Martel. Every single time you say the same thing about how bad your BA are and no matter what people say you can't seem to get it through your head that you are wrong. Come on man, stop kidding yourself and stop kidding us.

Generally speaking, they don't present convincing arguments. You can single me out, but I kind of don't care. Berating me isn't very convincing, either. Your post is a bunch of statements not backed up by convincing arguments as well. I can go into gross detail of why the BA aren't a very good list if you like.

Martel the problem is you never listen to any of the arguments presented into any of these threads. There is literally no point in me wasting my time trying to tell you what has been told to you 100+ times. You have no idea.

Greggy wrote:

Everyone concurs it is the Ion accelerator that makes the unit to strong because it is way underpriced. Every single person who complains about the riptide complains about the IA and EWO but seem to always forget that a player pays for these things and they don't come base.

At the cost those upgrades are, they might as well be built into the base cost. 5 points is nothing. Look at the Dreadknight. The sword is 10 points, the psycannon is 35, and the Teleporter is 30. And the Dreadknight is horrible if you don't purchase this 75 point package. The Riptide is far from useless if it doesn't purchase those two upgrades, but you'll always take them regardless.

The Riptide can objectively be called broken at face value, and even more when you consider all the internal synergy it gets from the army. Its not so broken as to make the entire codex OP, but its definitely way too good.

Greggy wrote:
Martel the problem is you never listen to any of the arguments presented into any of these threads. There is literally no point in me wasting my time trying to tell you what has been told to you 100+ times. You have no idea.

Actually, I have quite a good idea. I listen to all arguments. I just reject a lot of them. I'm willing to bet I could thrash most of the people on here talking up the BA in an army swap.

I personally dont care what results are of any tourniment. Simply because every single one ramps up the level of competition and ego and cutthroatness. It isn't anything like what show up in B&Ms and basements everywhere. So those results don't actually show what is fun in a game. And I can tell you I personally wouldn't enjoy playing against any of the top 20 armies.

So yeah, if your Tau army functions on the premise of making a Riptide this ultimate killing machine, then yeah, it could be OP. But if you want to use you markerlights to help your missile sides, or maybe launch several seeker missiles then suddenly you have nothing to expend on a Riptide.

I still personally don't see what is so damaging about 5-7 large blast templates per game. Which is all its ever going to do. Against most MEQ armies, squadrons of Russes will do more damage. Hell, even SOB exorsists will have more hits over the course of the game because they cant get screwed on the scatter.

What I love about the riptide and its become very clear in all these same threads is the psychological effect that this unit has. People fear it far more for the damage that it could do rather than the damage it really is going to do.

This thread again? Tau aren't top dogs anymore because IK's exist. That one model that anyone can take (and most can cast invis on) invalidates the Tau codex.

 Mulletdude wrote:
This thread again? Tau aren't top dogs anymore because IK's exist. That one model that anyone can take (and most can cast invis on) invalidates the Tau codex.

Last I checked, Knights are very vulnerable to suicide melta. Something Tau do very well.

Don't attach non wargaming posts to Dakka.
Reds8n

Just like every other time this is come up it has dissolved into Tau hate and unfortunately it's being spearheaded by Imperial players who feel that the game should cater to their needs. Not calling out every single Imperial player with that, but it's definitely a few who feel that the Riptide should be nerfed to the point where it is absolutely useless. But it's the end of the world if we even mention that the Dreadknight should be raised in points cost or any other precious Imperial unit. This thread has become a complete joke.

 gmaleron wrote:
Just like every other time this is come up it has dissolved into Tau hate and unfortunately it's being spearheaded by Imperial players who feel that the game should cater to their needs. Not calling out every single Imperial player with that, but it's definitely a few who feel that the Riptide should be nerfed to the point where it is absolutely useless. But it's the end of the world if we even mention that the Dreadknight should be raised in points cost or any other precious Imperial unit. This thread has become a complete joke.

Riptides wouldn't be useless if they had to pay 20-30 points for the IA. They'd be fairly costed, just like the Dreadknight is(within the context of its codex)

Dude. Templar. That's exactly what we have been saying. Increase the IA. Its all this other crap that is ridiculous. Do you even read these comments or just post? my god.

Greggy wrote:
Ok seriously this is getting absolutely ridiculous.

This exact same conversation is had literally every single month and the exact same people say the exact same thing every month.

I don't post very often but I feel the need now.

Tau are no longer OP. Base Riptides are not OP. If you don't understand this now you never will.

Everyone concurs it is the Ion accelerator that makes the unit to strong because it is way underpriced. Every single person who complains about the riptide complains about the IA and EWO but seem to always forget that a player pays for these things and they don't come base.

Yes we all agree that these things need a point increase and or rules changes (e.g. get rid of overcharge IA and/or increase cost) but the second you increase the BASE cost of the BASE riptide you kill it. It will literally no longer be at all worth it. Look at the competitive scene where the best players are playing. Tau are not OP and riptides are not very good.

I am so sick of this conversation and I don't want to single someone out but seriously Martel. Every single time you say the same thing about how bad your BA are and no matter what people say you can't seem to get it through your head that you are wrong. Come on man, stop kidding yourself and stop kidding us.

In your opinion*