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They don't have enough fire to hit 5/6 separate deepstriking units. probably will scatter (2/3rd of the time) and if they used the nova shooting, they are forced to snap shoot until their turn, and that means they cannot intercept you, because they have to snap fire a template. and interceptor is support system, of which they only get 2, and sacrifice the shooting in their own phase, which could be better with other rules/interactions.
in unlimited points versus unlimited points, sure.

Basically the answer is invisibility or bust.

Or dark angels psychic powers, or any new space marine psychic powers, or leadership tests, or force, or msu or spend 1 turn taking out marker lights and abuse cover, or avoid LOS, or enfeeble it to t5 and thunder hammer thunder wolves, or forewarning or poison (which given isn't a SM answer),

 pumaman1 wrote:
Or dark angels psychic powers, or any new space marine psychic powers, or leadership tests, or force, or msu or spend 1 turn taking out marker lights and abuse cover, or avoid LOS, or enfeeble it to t5 and thunder hammer thunder wolves, or forewarning or poison (which given isn't a SM answer),

None of that really works. The tau will blast your psykers off the table trivially without invis. Tau don't care about MSU. They have the shots to cover that. You can't kill the marker lights because you get intercepted. Riptides can move and shoot with full efficacy, so staying out of LOS is very challenging.

 pumaman1 wrote:
...or poison (which given isn't a SM answer),

Says who? If your backfield is full of five-man sniper Scout squads the Riptide is going to be chosing between wasting firepower on a sixty-point squad or taking a constant barrage of Poisoned (4+) Rending shots.


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Martel732 wrote:
None of that really works. The tau will blast your psykers off the table trivially without invis. Tau don't care about MSU. They have the shots to cover that. You can't kill the marker lights because you get intercepted. Riptides can move and shoot with full efficacy, so staying out of LOS is very challenging.

None of this is provable or disprovable. Whether your psykers explode trivially depends on a vast number of factors, whether the Tau list has the shots to not care about MSU depends on what the Tau have and what the MSU is, whether you can kill the Markerlights depends on what you have and what they have, and whether you can be out of LOS of the Riptide depends on the table.

psykers normally have 4++ or 5++, so they dont all insta die.

is it an army of exclusively riptides? do they always have first turn? do you have no one on the field that is bs4 and semi-competent with a weapon?

you literally now have access to a psychic power that can throw LOS blocking terrain between you. you can scout up and move up a fast unit to be within inches of the unit, magicswap them with another beefier unit, and charge turn 1, you literally have so many answers. maybe you wont 1TK them, but if you tie them up or make them less effective at all for shooting, for even a turn, you've defeated them.

Or take fast land raidesr in the new BA detachment, scout 12 " move 6" disembark 6" and then assault from the assault vehicle, which just happens to shoot 2 of its own weapons because its fast now, no deep strike or interceptor needed, and riptides cannot reliably kill a land raider in 1 turn of shooting.

Fair enough.

But poison doesn't work against 2+ armor/FNP. It just doesn't clear enough wounds.

 pumaman1 wrote:
psykers normally have 4++ or 5++, so they dont all insta die.

is it an army of exclusively riptides? do they always have first turn? do you have no one on the field that is bs4 and semi-competent with a weapon?

you literally now have access to a psychic power that can throw LOS blocking terrain between you. you can scout up and move up a fast unit to be within inches of the unit, magicswap them with another beefier unit, and charge turn 1, you literally have so many answers. maybe you wont 1TK them, but if you tie them up or make them less effective at all for shooting, for even a turn, you've defeated them.

Or take fast land raidesr in the new BA detachment, scout 12 " move 6" disembark 6" and then assault from the assault vehicle, which just happens to shoot 2 of its own weapons because its fast now, no deep strike or interceptor needed, and riptides cannot reliably kill a land raider in 1 turn of shooting.

If your vehicle scouts, I don't think you can Assault out of it.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 pumaman1 wrote:
psykers normally have 4++ or 5++, so they dont all insta die.

is it an army of exclusively riptides? do they always have first turn? do you have no one on the field that is bs4 and semi-competent with a weapon?

you literally now have access to a psychic power that can throw LOS blocking terrain between you. you can scout up and move up a fast unit to be within inches of the unit, magicswap them with another beefier unit, and charge turn 1, you literally have so many answers. maybe you wont 1TK them, but if you tie them up or make them less effective at all for shooting, for even a turn, you've defeated them.

Or take fast land raidesr in the new BA detachment, scout 12 " move 6" disembark 6" and then assault from the assault vehicle, which just happens to shoot 2 of its own weapons because its fast now, no deep strike or interceptor needed, and riptides cannot reliably kill a land raider in 1 turn of shooting.

If your vehicle scouts, I don't think you can Assault out of it.

This is true.


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 pumaman1 wrote:
psykers normally have 4++ or 5++, so they dont all insta die.

is it an army of exclusively riptides? do they always have first turn? do you have no one on the field that is bs4 and semi-competent with a weapon?

you literally now have access to a psychic power that can throw LOS blocking terrain between you. you can scout up and move up a fast unit to be within inches of the unit, magicswap them with another beefier unit, and charge turn 1, you literally have so many answers. maybe you wont 1TK them, but if you tie them up or make them less effective at all for shooting, for even a turn, you've defeated them.

Or take fast land raidesr in the new BA detachment, scout 12 " move 6" disembark 6" and then assault from the assault vehicle, which just happens to shoot 2 of its own weapons because its fast now, no deep strike or interceptor needed, and riptides cannot reliably kill a land raider in 1 turn of shooting.

I don't know what psykers you are talking about. Oh, yeah. Eldar psykers. Marine psykers get jack for invuln.

Relying on a random power is foolish. "Access to" is not the same as having it when I need it. Plus, BA have no fancy casting formation.

You can't use a LR in a generalist list because of grav and D weapons. Furthermore, you can intercept the crap out of the unit when it disembarks to assault.

BA have lots of BS 4 guys, but Riptides are basically impervious to all of the weapons they can choose from.




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Tau are basically a hard counter to units that aren't effectively immortal. Think TWC with stormshields, Wraiths, invisible units. etc. You can throw as many "reasonable" units as you want against them, they'll just die.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 pumaman1 wrote:
psykers normally have 4++ or 5++, so they dont all insta die.

is it an army of exclusively riptides? do they always have first turn? do you have no one on the field that is bs4 and semi-competent with a weapon?

you literally now have access to a psychic power that can throw LOS blocking terrain between you. you can scout up and move up a fast unit to be within inches of the unit, magicswap them with another beefier unit, and charge turn 1, you literally have so many answers. maybe you wont 1TK them, but if you tie them up or make them less effective at all for shooting, for even a turn, you've defeated them.

Or take fast land raidesr in the new BA detachment, scout 12 " move 6" disembark 6" and then assault from the assault vehicle, which just happens to shoot 2 of its own weapons because its fast now, no deep strike or interceptor needed, and riptides cannot reliably kill a land raider in 1 turn of shooting.

If your vehicle scouts, I don't think you can Assault out of it.

You are correct, and i apologize for the error.

That said, then scout 12", move 12" flat out 12", even if they explode your land raider next turn, with 36" of un-molested movement in 1 turn, who can you not assault? And in fact in the BA formation, its not a scout move, its a movement as if you were your movement phase, it specifically avoids using scout, so you still can use it.

Lucifer armoured task force

For Riptides to be remotely fair, ranged AP 2 instant death would have to be a more common option. Stacking FNP onto a 5 W model with T6 is just too good.

It's a shame space marines have no access to force, or enfeeble and s10 weapons, or d strength psychic power, or allied titans at an 1850 point level, or imperial knights with sD attacks and super melta, or flyers which avoid templates almost entirely, or a significant amount of grav on bikes that wound on a 2+, or tournament wins, or vehicles that are free and can absorb wounds for the unit inside to allow them to keep scoring, or score 2 objectives at the same time obsec, or tactics, just a darn shame.

lol. @pumaman1

I was sure you'd get over your pity party by now, #2016spessmarinesstillsuck @Martel732

I have no idea how this thread is still going on (the way that it is). Competitive 40k is literally a Rock Paper Scissors match. There will always be answers to specific lists. The trick is to make a list that has more good match ups than bad match ups. Space Marines can do this very well. Pumaman listed several. You can't fit all of the mentionables in a single list but you can certainly pick a couple of them.

If you don't like Riptides, you take grav (better yet - scouting grav). If you are building a list and don't like Tau, there are more than enough options to do well against them while maintaining a balanced list.

Unfortunately for EVERY army and EVERY list there are weaknesses. Why keep complaining when you keep using the same lists? Move on, please. Please. Pretty please? (Move on with a singular list - feel free to keep suggesting more answers to Riptides, as there are plenty)

Sorry if I seem particularly critical today - I just don't understand why Martel derails every post he participates in by counter arguing every suggestion that's made with another complaint. [Riptides too gud. Space Marines need cheaper answers.]

I will give him that he usually corrects some rule clarifications, so cheers for that! But come on, man, the forums are already full of complainers - there are entire posts titled as such. Be helpful and friendly, or don't hit the 'Submit' button.

Thanks for understanding. I hope this doesn't come off as rude - just trying to understand the point of continuously bogging down every post about Xenos being stronger than Space Marines.

Martel732 wrote:
You can't use a LR in a generalist list because of grav and D weapons. Furthermore, you can intercept the crap out of the unit when it disembarks to assault.

You can't intercept a disembarking unit. Only units that come on from reserves.

Tau in general put me in a very bad mood. It doesn't help that even after the "upgrade" book, vanilla marines are still 10X better than BA.

Obviously, vanilla marines can just put gladius on the board and dare Tau to kill all the obj sec in a timely manner. Or buy a FW guy with automatic invis.

Wouldn't a group of grav cents buffed by a conclave be able to clear them out? With Invis on the Tau would have to devote a lot of firepower to eliminate that unit.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Wouldn't a group of grav cents buffed by a conclave be able to clear them out? With Invis on the Tau would have to devote a lot of firepower to eliminate that unit.

Yes, gravstar is one of the accepted ways to deal with this. I never claimed there weren't. But they're all also super obnoxious in and of themselves.

Martel732 wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Wouldn't a group of grav cents buffed by a conclave be able to clear them out? With Invis on the Tau would have to devote a lot of firepower to eliminate that unit.

Yes, gravstar is one of the accepted ways to deal with this. I never claimed there weren't. But they're all also super obnoxious in and of themselves.

So then what is your issue? Blood Angels can ally in a gravstar.

By the time you do that, you might as well not play BA. It's a LOT of points. I think they usually have Draigo as well.

dont marines have the anniversary marine with str 5 ap2 and instant death?

Martel732 wrote:
By the time you do that, you might as well not play BA. It's a LOT of points. I think they usually have Draigo as well.

You could just paint the Cent star in Blood Angels livery and using somewhat different basing materials (like using, say, cyan flowers) to denote the units belong to a different codex but still maintaining a cohesive look. Make a counts-as Tiggy using Blood Angel bits too.

That's true. There is a BA upgrade kit.

In battle company I've been using a cataphractii captain with shield eternal attached four 4x grav cannon devs. Use terrain amd your own pod to bot get intercepted by the entire tau army, let the captain tank and start blowing up a high value asset s turn with your snp grav cannons.

Tie them up with a sacrificial tac squad in cc while your other obsec units swarm the objectives... seriously, they're not unbeatable. They're very good, but so is MSU Battle Company...

Have a watch of one of the batreps on Frontline Gaming from a few months back.

Of course, tac squads aren't as good vs MC's now with the grenade nerf :/

BC?

I've played my Whitescar scouting rhino gravspam (6 cannons - one in each Tac rhino) gladius against a double riptide wing (6 individual 'tides) + SuperTuna overcompensation suit. It was a grind, but I was able to kill 5 of the 6 riptides over the course of the game. One of those, though, was a statistical lolwut when my chaplain conked one wound through the 2+/5+++ with his crozius and ran it down in combat. So, would possibly count on not being able to kill more than 4, normally.

Basic strategy was to scout up the grav rhinos and toss expendable drop pods at him so that he'd have to waste his rhino-busting guns intercepting the garbage or risk losing a shooting phase being tied-up in combat while he squishes through the sacrificial marines. Strategy pretty much worked out according to plan. Massive carnage on both sides.

Takeaways from that game were that the SuperTuna dies shockingly easily to doctrined grav amps, and that it takes one of the currently most powerful armies in the game to handle multiple riptides.

 JNAProductions wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
You can't use a LR in a generalist list because of grav and D weapons. Furthermore, you can intercept the crap out of the unit when it disembarks to assault.

You can't intercept a disembarking unit. Only units that come on from reserves.

Nm misread quoted quote

 FL5 wrote:

Takeaways from that game were that the SuperTuna dies shockingly easily to doctrined grav amps, and that it takes one of the currently most powerful armies in the game to handle multiple riptides.

Or that it takes one of the more busted FW units and 6 of the most unkillable units in one of GW's more ridiculous formations to handle ~500 points of free ObSec units. Either way, all of them are bad for the game IMHO. Still, that's an interesting result, thanks for sharing. I'm intrigued though, did he have an inquisitor with skulls to stop scouting?