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I think that the Riptide should be T5.

Why? Let me run some math.

Let's assume that the Riptide shoots at a Dreadknight, and used his Nova Charge for the 4d6 Jet Pack move to get further away. Our unlucky Tau player, though, rolls a 6 for his Jet Pack move, and the Dreadknight strolls on up to him, then charges him.

With 5 attacks on the charge, our Dreadknight hits 10/3 of the time.

He wounds 50/18 of the time.

The Riptide (with only a 5+ Invuln) saves 50/54 of the wounds, leaving 100/54 going through.

But his FNP roll saves another third (100/162) letting 200/162 go through. Simplify that down, and you get 100/81.

Add in Hammer of Wrath (one hit, wounding on a 4, with a 2+/5+) and you get ([1/2]*[1/6]*[2/3]=1/18) and you get just under 1.3 wounds.

This means that, on the charge, a Dreadknight, the single best unit in Codex: Grey Knights... Does one wound to a Riptide. And that drops to around a 2/3rds chance of wounding if the Riptide has his 3+ Invuln.

If it was T5, though, even with a 3+ Invuln, the Dreadknight will most likely wound at least once, and that's enough to kill it, since it's doubled out.

Martel732 wrote:

Unfortunately none of those are reliable methods of dealing with it as it is currently implemeted. Plasma, melta and lascannons all lack the rate of fire to threaten riptide. 2+ armor and t6 make it immune to most cc.

Note how I repeated each weapon system multiple times. MOAR is the answer.

In CC just bring a Powerfist or Meltabombs. Or nerf the Riptide/buff your guys with Psychic powers. Speaking of which, given the new SM Psychic powers you really have some killer tools for attacking Tau. Turn 1 charges are crazy doable with Electrodisplacement. In fact I'd say that power is practically game-breaking against Tau.

 JNAProductions wrote:
I think that the Riptide should be T5.
. . .
If it was T5, though, even with a 3+ Invuln, the Dreadknight will most likely wound at least once, and that's enough to kill it, since it's doubled out.

Nobody has problems with multiple TMCs with T6 though. I think that's a re herring.

But if you really wanted to ID it you could try going for Enfeeble and knock it down to T 5.

 JNAProductions wrote:
I think that the Riptide should be T5.

Why? Let me run some math.

Let's assume that the Riptide shoots at a Dreadknight, and used his Nova Charge for the 4d6 Jet Pack move to get further away. Our unlucky Tau player, though, rolls a 6 for his Jet Pack move, and the Dreadknight strolls on up to him, then charges him.

With 5 attacks on the charge, our Dreadknight hits 10/3 of the time.

He wounds 50/18 of the time.

The Riptide (with only a 5+ Invuln) saves 50/54 of the wounds, leaving 100/54 going through.

But his FNP roll saves another third (100/162) letting 200/162 go through. Simplify that down, and you get 100/81.

Add in Hammer of Wrath (one hit, wounding on a 4, with a 2+/5+) and you get ([1/2]*[1/6]*[2/3]=1/18) and you get just under 1.3 wounds.

This means that, on the charge, a Dreadknight, the single best unit in Codex: Grey Knights... Does one wound to a Riptide. And that drops to around a 2/3rds chance of wounding if the Riptide has his 3+ Invuln.

If it was T5, though, even with a 3+ Invuln, the Dreadknight will most likely wound at least once, and that's enough to kill it, since it's doubled out.

why no force weapon? that single wound kills it, and fnp cannot be used against force weapons.

my info may be out of date, but both sword and hammer are force weapons, and the sword allows you to reroll all hits and to wound rolls? And the gatling psilencer gives you a ranged force option?

 Insectum7 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

Unfortunately none of those are reliable methods of dealing with it as it is currently implemeted. Plasma, melta and lascannons all lack the rate of fire to threaten riptide. 2+ armor and t6 make it immune to most cc.

Note how I repeated each weapon system multiple times. MOAR is the answer.

In CC just bring a Powerfist or Meltabombs. Or nerf the Riptide/buff your guys with Psychic powers. Speaking of which, given the new SM Psychic powers you really have some killer tools for attacking Tau. Turn 1 charges are crazy doable with Electrodisplacement. In fact I'd say that power is practically game-breaking against Tau.

 JNAProductions wrote:
I think that the Riptide should be T5.
. . .
If it was T5, though, even with a 3+ Invuln, the Dreadknight will most likely wound at least once, and that's enough to kill it, since it's doubled out.

Nobody has problems with multiple TMCs with T6 though. I think that's a re herring.

But if you really wanted to ID it you could try going for Enfeeble and knock it down to T 5.

No one should be afraid of psychic powers that can't be relied upon. Besides, the Tau will just murder all my psykers turn 1 with their crazy firepower.

Martel732 wrote:
No one should be afraid of psychic powers that can't be relied upon. Besides, the Tau will just murder all my psykers turn 1 with their crazy firepower.

a psychic power that cannot be relied upon. . . like force? A ML1 power that you don't need to roll for, that can instagib any creature in our army with the exception of the stormsurge? . . . and all the psykers in your army? what do you play, GK? . . . where you know, EVERYTHING is a psyker in your army?

Or guard, where my priority would likely be your artillery?
Or Space Marines where my priority would be your Grav or suicide drop pods?
Or Tyranids, where. . . okay, I'm going to do my best to kill your psykers because thayare your AT.

Force weapons won't get anywhere close to Tau. They'll be shot dead long before they are a threat. The beauty of Tau is that they can massacre several priority targets a turn. Because shooting is their schtick.

The psychic power is was referring to was electrodisplacement, not force. But force is unreliable because assault is really hard in 7th ed.

Okay a question, one that I am well aware that I'm not supposed to ask on these forums:

What are the current rules, of the GK Psilencer and Gatling Psilencer? what is their strength, AP, ROF and special rules?

I was going to say that the usual Argument has been a GK Dreadknight, using the teleport move to get into beatstick range of a riptide. To my understanding, the psilencer is a ranged force weapon; meaning that the dreadknight slash teleport squad carrying them doesn't need to get into CC to gib a tide.

My understanding of the Gatling Psilencer was a Heavy12 Str 4, AP- 18" weapon, with force. that means that it has a 1/3 chance to kill a riptide a turn. . . before it has a chance to fire, or overwatch, or anything else. Is my understanding out of date?

Also, are there other ranged force weapons?

8 hits.

Wounding on 6s, so 8/6 (4/3) wounds.

Saving on 2s, so 8/36 (2/9) chance of doing an unsaved wound.

That's a 22.2 repeating percent chance of killing a Riptide... If you manage to get Force off.

Seems to be an awful lot of numbers flying around here.

40k being the massive game of chance it is, I personally think these maths stats aren't going to give you an accurate measure of anything about the Riptide's durability. What is more important to consider is how the Riptide synergises with other Tau units, and how it fairs against weapons classed as being "good" at killing MC's, sans the fancy mathematics.

This isn't directed at any individual here, but we seem to be going round in circles, with very little being agreed on.

G.A

 General Annoyance wrote:
Seems to be an awful lot of numbers flying around here.

40k being the massive game of chance it is, I personally think these maths stats aren't going to give you an accurate measure of anything about the Riptide's durability. What is more important to consider is how the Riptide synergises with other Tau units, and how it fairs against weapons classed as being "good" at killing MC's, sans the fancy mathematics.

This isn't directed at any individual here, but we seem to be going round in circles, with very little being agreed on.

G.A

Unless this thread is being monitored by someone who can actually change the next codex or can force a statline change in large formats like the ITC, this is all spitballed wishlisting anyway. If someone is listening, I like

 chalkobob wrote:
Solution one

My issue here is that people want to turn it into a walker, which would make it immune to their faction's basic weaponry, but would allow it to be one-shotted. now I have killed mcs with lasguns, but not as it sounded in the above posts. 'OMG, it is still standing, what am I going to do? Oh it has one wound left . . . LASGUNS!' (i hate caps lock)

 carldooley wrote:


Unless this thread is being monitored by someone who can actually change the next codex or can force a statline change in large formats like the ITC, this is all spitballed wishlisting anyway

I guess you could say that for a lot of rules threads here. They serve more to prove a point than to actually change anything. Make of that what you will.

Either way, I feel like my usefulness in this thread has expired, since we mostly agree on what the Riptide is meant to be, and are now discussing potential rule fixes.

My issue is that a point increase would have been an acceptable thing to do when the new Codex dropped. But GW didn't bother to do so.

 carldooley wrote:
My issue is that a point increase would have been an acceptable thing to do when the new Codex dropped. But GW didn't bother to do so.

Yeah, but they made no changes to grav so there's no point in meeting the Riptide until grav is sorted out

Martel732 wrote:

No one should be afraid of psychic powers that can't be relied upon. Besides, the Tau will just murder all my psykers turn 1 with their crazy firepower.

1. People hate Invisibility because it's reliable enough to make a difference.

2. Are you standing your psykers in the open without a bodyguard? Because I can protect at least some of my units when I deploy.

3. If you're just choosing not to use the toolkit GW gives you (for the sake of argument) to solve your Riptide problem, I can't sypathize.


I'm seeing Electrodisplacement as a guaranteed first turn charge into at least some section of the Tau lines. Drop Pod in with multiple, cheap squads right in front of those units you want to charge. After taking hits from Interceptor, swap any remaining unit with a nasty combination of CC stuff in your backfield, then assault and wreck face. Our old favorites, Assault Terminators would work wonders here, or make it a Bike unit to get the full Charge distance through Difficult Terrain, or a Jump unit that didn't use it's Packs in the Movement Phase to allow a re-roll of Charge distance.

My Riptide is a smouldering Wreck, seriously, I bought one and moddeled it to look like it got hit point blank by a Marauder Destroyer's payload.

 carldooley wrote:
My issue is that a point increase would have been an acceptable thing to do when the new Codex dropped. But GW didn't bother to do so.

Most of the releases this past year have been adding new things and formations/Relics, not fixing things.

Purportedly the GW Design Studio has acknowledged that 7th has a limited shelf life now and is working on 8th.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

No one should be afraid of psychic powers that can't be relied upon. Besides, the Tau will just murder all my psykers turn 1 with their crazy firepower.

1. People hate Invisibility because it's reliable enough to make a difference.

True, people hate invisibility because it's extremely tilting, has only one counter (oddly enough, in the Tau), and those who build armies around it roll enough on the table that they are pretty close to guaranteed to take it. You usually only need 1-2 guys with it, since it goes on a deathstar.
It's nerfed in most tournaments though.

 Insectum7 wrote:

2. Are you standing your psykers in the open without a bodyguard? Because I can protect at least some of my units when I deploy.

It's extremely difficult to protect 1-2 units from the Tau. Most people aren't spamming force weapons in standard lists, so I wouldn't expect more than 2 unless its GK.
If every unit could have a force weapon on a decent carrier (So not 1k sons ) MC's wouldn't seen as imbalanced. Sadly, this is not the case.
If the Tau look and say "only grav/bikes/psykers are a threat" they will destroy those units. So you either spam them and make a skew yourself, or lose. You can't take two normal bike squads and expect them to survive tau shooting, for example.

 Insectum7 wrote:

3. If you're just choosing not to use the toolkit GW gives you (for the sake of argument) to solve your Riptide problem, I can't sypathize.

What exactly is the toolkit outside of grav? Force weapons are extremely expensive and fragile. Plasma must be taken in insanely high numbers to kill a riptide, and outside of combi weapons, can't be spammed in most lists (1-2 per unit, plus combi at most is pretty standard).
To give you an idea, plasma is the following;
3+ to hit, 3+ to wound, 3++ save, 5+ FnP -> 2/3*2/3*1/3*2/3= 8/81. So 5 plasma guns for 1 wound, assuming rapid fire, 25 plasma guns to kill one on average (roughly, odds are slightly against you). 25 plasma guns is 8 tactical squads, and 3 full sternguard with combi and drop pods. That's...that's so many points. Many tau take 2-3 units of them as well.
It's just not an effective tool. Most melee weapons are in a similar boat, except wounding is much worse, save can be worse (yay 2+!), but there are more attacks. Luckily the Tide can run.

The Tides have extremely few counters. It's why they are so popular, and they tilt the meta heavily to deal with them.

 Insectum7 wrote:

I'm seeing Electrodisplacement as a guaranteed first turn charge into at least some section of the Tau lines. Drop Pod in with multiple, cheap squads right in front of those units you want to charge.

I play Tau and Marines, among other armies. It's quite easy to bubble wrap 3 riptides with the other basic infantry, making it so you have to mulch through several squads before getting to charge the tides.
Even if they don't bubble wrap to the extent that you can't deploy close enough, tides are fast. Much faster than the vast majority of units that can be deployed in pods. It's very rare for me to get my tide caught by anything but bikes, tbh. And unless you took 3 squads of stern guard per tide, or 8 squads of infantry per tide, you won't be killing one. And they work the same on 2 wounds as they do on 5, unlike tanks. Maybe not one wound (wouldn't risk Nova there, imo).

 Insectum7 wrote:

After taking hits from Interceptor, swap any remaining unit with a nasty combination of CC stuff in your backfield, then assault and wreck face.

My backfield isn't going to get there by turn 2 unless its bikes. The tide has no target priority here, they just kill stuff as it moves up. Moving in waves is the worst way to fight the tau, you need to hit them all at once at multiple points and overwhelm their RoF. Everything must be charging the same turn, or it'll die turn by turn.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Our old favorites, Assault Terminators would work wonders here,

Assault termies will never ever reach a Tide unless you've made mistakes. Massive mistakes. Assault terminators are hot garbage and shouldn't be a serious consideration for any force, imo.

 Insectum7 wrote:

or make it a Bike unit to get the full Charge distance through Difficult Terrain, or a Jump unit that didn't use it's Packs in the Movement Phase to allow a re-roll of Charge distance.

Jump units are, for the most part, overpriced garbage. You could possibly build a jump unit that could tie up a tide, but it'll be relatively frail and die to simple guns from the warriors since they just aren't cost effective. If chaos isn't running raptors, there is NO reason for Marines to run jump units.
Bikes are good, you can add them to the toolkit. They usually take grav or are a deathstar, so work well against Tau and the tides. Hardly leads to a large toolkit, and those options are often considered quite OP.

To be fair, other armies have more options. Wraiths are very fast and a small unit will tie up the tide pretty effectively, even if they don't kill it. Eldar have a ton of options to do decent damage quickly, and have the WK as a counter. GK have some options though they lose points quickly to the firepower. Mech can drop in effectively and remove...kinda.
But most armies just roll over to 3 tides. It's not even a combo like a deathstar, its just drop 3 tides and roll your way to victory.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

No one should be afraid of psychic powers that can't be relied upon. Besides, the Tau will just murder all my psykers turn 1 with their crazy firepower.

1. People hate Invisibility because it's reliable enough to make a difference.

2. Are you standing your psykers in the open without a bodyguard? Because I can protect at least some of my units when I deploy.

3. If you're just choosing not to use the toolkit GW gives you (for the sake of argument) to solve your Riptide problem, I can't sypathize.


I'm seeing Electrodisplacement as a guaranteed first turn charge into at least some section of the Tau lines. Drop Pod in with multiple, cheap squads right in front of those units you want to charge. After taking hits from Interceptor, swap any remaining unit with a nasty combination of CC stuff in your backfield, then assault and wreck face. Our old favorites, Assault Terminators would work wonders here, or make it a Bike unit to get the full Charge distance through Difficult Terrain, or a Jump unit that didn't use it's Packs in the Movement Phase to allow a re-roll of Charge distance.

There is no way to guarantee electrodisplacement like invis. I think the above post covers my thoughts.

Akiasura wrote:
things that didn't really acknowledge the tactic I was advocating

I think you misread what I was suggesting there.

Electrodisplacement allows a psyker to exchange his (and his units) position, with another frendly unit within 24", and then charge. Drop Podding unit lands next to Tau positions, and takes interceptor. Then in the Psychic phase that unit exchanges it's position with say, some Assault Marines with attached Librarian (whose casting the power) and a Captain/whatever with a Thunder Hammer. So in the Assault Phase, first turn, the Assault Marines+Captain+Librarian are charging the Tau lines.

Nobody's stuck hanging around in the backfield except the Drop Podded squad that got swapped out for positioning. This is a brad new way to get those Assault Terminators across the field, and you're not relying on Force Weapons to do your work, your looking at ye 'olde Powerfists or whatever you want to bring. Terminators bring a ton of attacks, but other units have the option of Sweeping the 'tides.

Range of power is 24", but since the movement phase happens first, your'e looking for a 30" range for most units from the beginning of the turn. Jump and Bikes 36", THEN assault. Doctrines make this good for attached Characters, since they can take advantage of the squad they're with, and re-roll attacks for example. Even throwing a Tactical Squad into CC with elements of a Tau army is starting to get you somewhere. Even if you aren't killing them outright, CC means they aren't firing.

Martel732 wrote:

There is no way to guarantee electrodisplacement like invis. I think the above post covers my thoughts.

If you wanted it, you could improve your chances.

Right, those Terminators with Power Fists? Deal an average of ([2/3]*[5/6]*[2/3]*[2/3]=40/162=20/81) just under a quarter of a wound per attack. (Assuming a 5+ Invuln, not a 3+.) So you need 7 Terminators to, on average, kill a Riptide on the charge. Assuming, you know, the Riptide doesn't kill anyone on Overwatch or at the I2 step.

Every turn in combat is a turn it isn't shooting at you. Which would you prefer?

Also, better to kill it the second round of combat anyways.

I'd prefer the Riptide were a reasonable unit to kill. Which it isn't.

The Codex Astartes teaches us that simply wishing for your enemies to die is far less effective than making the most of what you have at hand.

Martel732 wrote:


No one should be afraid of psychic powers that can't be relied upon. Besides, the Tau will just murder all my psykers turn 1 with their crazy firepower.

What is this Martel - psykers are unreliable and not the answer to everything? But what do you say to every Guard player? "You dont have it hard, just bring a blob with invisibility primaris psykers"? "Psykers are really good, use them more"? "Your just refusing to adapt, psykers are really good"? Etc.
Long story short Martel, your happy to claim one thing, but when push comes to shove you will change your tune rapidly.

 Insectum7 wrote:
The Codex Astartes teaches us that simply wishing for your enemies to die is far less effective than making the most of what you have at hand.

Exalted!

 master of ordinance wrote:

Martel732 wrote:


No one should be afraid of psychic powers that can't be relied upon. Besides, the Tau will just murder all my psykers turn 1 with their crazy firepower.

What is this Martel - psykers are unreliable and not the answer to everything? But what do you say to every Guard player? "You dont have it hard, just bring a blob with invisibility primaris psykers"? "Psykers are really good, use them more"? "Your just refusing to adapt, psykers are really good"? Etc.
Long story short Martel, your happy to claim one thing, but when push comes to shove you will change your tune rapidly.

Marines get far less utility out of their psykers than IG do because they can't hit nearly as many models as once. Plus, the IG can make use of most divination powers, whereas this guy is talking about buying multiple libbies to fish for electrodisplacement specifically. Any libbies that don't roll it are basically wasted points, whereas a primaris divination psyker at least has prescience.

Also, IG have way more bodies to shield their psykers with from ion accelerators. LoS is not nearly as useful for marines, as we are still losing a marine at least.

When push comes to shove, every situation is different, and I'm not changing my tune at all.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Insectum7 wrote:
The Codex Astartes teaches us that simply wishing for your enemies to die is far less effective than making the most of what you have at hand.

BA have no effective tools. Still. Because GW says so. And the Codex is a steaming pile of gak. BA have no viable deathstars, and that's basically game set match vs Tau.

Martel732 wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:

Martel732 wrote:


No one should be afraid of psychic powers that can't be relied upon. Besides, the Tau will just murder all my psykers turn 1 with their crazy firepower.

What is this Martel - psykers are unreliable and not the answer to everything? But what do you say to every Guard player? "You dont have it hard, just bring a blob with invisibility primaris psykers"? "Psykers are really good, use them more"? "Your just refusing to adapt, psykers are really good"? Etc.
Long story short Martel, your happy to claim one thing, but when push comes to shove you will change your tune rapidly.

Marines get far less utility out of their psykers than IG do because they can't hit nearly as many models as once. Plus, the IG can make use of most divination powers, whereas this guy is talking about buying multiple libbies to fish for electrodisplacement specifically. Any libbies that don't roll it are basically wasted points, whereas a primaris divination psyker at least has prescience.

Also, IG have way more bodies to shield their psykers with from ion accelerators. LoS is not nearly as useful for marines, as we are still losing a marine at least.

When push comes to shove, every situation is different, and I'm not changing my tune at all.

This is just completely wrong. It doesn't matter how many models you buff with a power, its about how effective it is. Buffs are force multipliers and on IG units it doesn't matter because IG are still bad and paper. You buff an already good a durable SM unit like Cents or Thunderwolves and you made that unit exponentially more powerful. It not even hard to get psychic powers you want in SM because you can take Severin Loth (who just picks what ever powers he wants) or Tigerius (who rerolls the powers he gets so has a 75% chance. Plus taking multiple psykers works for getting powers you want statistically because it compounds. A single lvl 3 Psyker may only have a 50% chance, but 3 of them give you an 87.5% chance of getting at least one of the specific power you want. Also who cares about having more bodies to LoS to if the unit your psyker is in is invicible and doesn't take wounds anyway?

I mean look at the meta. SM has compettive psyker deathstars (Thunderwolves, Centstar, Super Friends), IG have none. That should tell you upfront that you are wrong.

Okay substitute marines with "BA" then. However, you are speaking of very SPECIFIC combinations. In general, the more models you can hit with a buff, the better it is. Giving a 50 man guard squad a 4+ invuln save means a lot more than giving 5 marines a 4+invlun save. I don't see how that is debateable. Giving BS 3 models a reroll to hit is a percentage bigger jump in hits than giving it to BS 4.

BA can't make their units invincible to Tau. Not even close. That's why BA can't even entertain spamming psykers as a solution.

We all know what SW and superfriends death stars are all about. I'm talking about the rest of the field vs Tau.

Martel732 wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:

Martel732 wrote:


No one should be afraid of psychic powers that can't be relied upon. Besides, the Tau will just murder all my psykers turn 1 with their crazy firepower.

What is this Martel - psykers are unreliable and not the answer to everything? But what do you say to every Guard player? "You dont have it hard, just bring a blob with invisibility primaris psykers"? "Psykers are really good, use them more"? "Your just refusing to adapt, psykers are really good"? Etc.
Long story short Martel, your happy to claim one thing, but when push comes to shove you will change your tune rapidly.

Marines get far less utility out of their psykers than IG do because they can't hit nearly as many models as once. Plus, the IG can make use of most divination powers, whereas this guy is talking about buying multiple libbies to fish for electrodisplacement specifically. Any libbies that don't roll it are basically wasted points, whereas a primaris divination psyker at least has prescience.

Also, IG have way more bodies to shield their psykers with from ion accelerators. LoS is not nearly as useful for marines, as we are still losing a marine at least.

When push comes to shove, every situation is different, and I'm not changing my tune at all.

I... I dont even.... How..... More bodies? You are joking right? We can only ever affect one section with a power at any one time, you do know that right? So we can only cover as many models as a Marine player can with - whats that? Oh, your talking about blobs. Yes, those. The infantry blob that no one uses because it is so utterly, terribly bad that unless you get every single one of the three/four different powers you need at the start of the game and you manage to cast all of them every turn. Fail to get even one off and your blob will either vanish faster than a Snowman in hell, or it will be reduced to an even lower level of laughable damage output.
Of course, even if you do get all those powers off you still have the main issue that is the Lasgun. 45 of your 50 men are armed with a flashlight and the other 5 are armed with an even weaker penlight, so your actual damage output will be largely neglible and if your opponent has a vehicle they can effectively neuter your blob and you can do nothing in response.
Of course, the answer is to get some special/heavy weapons in there. So, we now have 5 Plasma Guns for another 75 points, and 5 Autocannons for another 50 points. So your blob now has a choice, either move and lose a big portion of its firepower or shoot and fail to advance. Your Plasma gunners are wonderful, baring the fact that an average of two will kill themselves on the first volley, and an average of one will die with every subsequent volley. Oh, and they are still BS 3, so have fun hitting things.
So, your vast bolb with its:
5 Autocannons
5 Plasma Guns
5 Laspistols
25 Lasguns
plus two ML 2 psykers
now totals 580 points. It cannot split its shots, it has to focus all of its firepower on to one target, if it is chargd it will die and its morale is terrible. It is finally ready to take to the battlefield. Good luck, because if you fail to get even one of those psychic powers off then your massive and insanely expensive blob is dead.
Oh, and PS, you cannot deal with heavy armour at all or deal with medium (AV 12) armour reliably. And every time you fire you lose 25 points (50 on the first volley) worth of models as a Plasma Gunner kills himself.

Marines get just as much utility from the psychic powers, infact they get more as they can reliably take small arms fire and so any buffs (especially defensive ones) are even more effective.

As for having more bodies, well not really. Our units die far faster than Marines, so those extra bodies account for nothing and our Psykers are instagibbed by anything of S6 or above. Oh, and they have inferior stats to a libby and a laughable save that might as well not exist, but only cost 10 points less.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Akiasura wrote:
things that didn't really acknowledge the tactic I was advocating

I think you misread what I was suggesting there.

Not really, you suggested melee combat and plasma weapons earlier. I addressed all of that.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Electrodisplacement allows a psyker to exchange his (and his units) position, with another frendly unit within 24", and then charge. Drop Podding unit lands next to Tau positions, and takes interceptor. Then in the Psychic phase that unit exchanges it's position with say, some Assault Marines with attached Librarian (whose casting the power) and a Captain/whatever with a Thunder Hammer. So in the Assault Phase, first turn, the Assault Marines+Captain+Librarian are charging the Tau lines.

There are several problems with this strategy, which I did mention.
1) Tides tend to be bubble wrapped in troops. You must likely won't get to charge the Tides on turn one unless your opponent deploys poorly, and will be stuck charging the troops. There are only a few outcomes to his;
a) you wipe the squad due to superior combat profiles and are open in the next turn for the tide to fire on.
b) you suffer so many overwatch casualties that you don't wipe the squad and are stuck in CC next turn. This is optimal, but you most likely won't be strong enough to take on the tide any longer, or the tide can just move away. It is extremely fast.
2) Tau have the ability to overwatch in herds. One unit charging in turn 1, like you're suggesting, will eat a metric ton of overwatch since there is zero reason to save it.

 Insectum7 wrote:

Nobody's stuck hanging around in the backfield except the Drop Podded squad that got swapped out for positioning. This is a brad new way to get those Assault Terminators across the field, and you're not relying on Force Weapons to do your work, your looking at ye 'olde Powerfists or whatever you want to bring. Terminators bring a ton of attacks, but other units have the option of Sweeping the 'tides.

As noted, the assault terminators are not as easy to bring into CC as you make it out to be. It'll be rare for a unit to be that close to the tides, especially if your opponent is aware of the strategy you're attempting to use.
Second, while PFs do work on a tide, providing they can catch them (and even then it's 2/3*5/6*2/3*2/3 5++ save for 40/162, so every two terminators is roughly a wound w/o charging. This is best case, worst case is 2/3*5/6*1/3*2/3 for 20/162, and now you aren't doing much, needing 4 terminators just to wound one time without charging), the regular attacks don't. A regular marine charging will be doing 2/3*1/6*1/6*2/3=nothing at all. You're relying on the leaders to do this, so you can really only do this with 1-2 squads at most, and it's a very expensive trick.

Let's look at cost;
You mention leader and psyker, that's easily in the 200-250 point range depending on loadout. SCs will run more and the more CC you make the leader the worse it gets. A chaplain helps but only with termis or if you're going for the psyker to get his power off. Then you have the accompanying squad with Pf at least, for roughly 150-200 points. Then you have the squad who is teleported back + pod, which I assume no upgrades, for 90+35. This is a running total of 200+150+125 for 475, or nearly 500 points, and it may not work (you may not reach the Tides, you may get overwatched, you may not roll the power).
Worst part? You can only do it once or twice, and many lists take 3 tides.

This is not an effective counter. You are better off by far utilizing grav spam. I play Tau and Marines, I would never use this and wouldn't be overly intimidated by it. 1 squad in my face turn 1 is not scary...a lot of my troops now have something to shoot at in rapid fire range.