How to cope with 5 Riptide Tau

[Gentlemanloser]

 

This one is easy.  You kill all six firewarriors he brought

 

Hard to do when they're in reserve.

 

As I've mentioned a couple of times already in this thread. ;)

[W0lfie]

This one is easy. You kill all six firewarriors he brought

Hard to do when they're in reserve.

As I've mentioned a couple of times already in this thread.

Unless he has magic dice, that protects them for ~1-2 turns. Then they get eaten by heavy flamers.

Another way to mess with him: IG allies with Vanquishers sporting beasthunter shells. Because 1 shot killing multiple riptides is fun.

[Captain Idaho]

I've never heard of Beast Hunter shells?

[Grey Mage]

Clarification - the broadsides don't have interceptor or skyfire; they have volume of fire.  The Riptide has interceptor.

 

You cannot reliably get an incoming flyer behind cover and if you just to stay more than 36" from the broadsides, you might as well not bring it because that lets the tau threat bubble confine your movement an deployment.

 

So you bring in your 'Raven and don't reploy anyone from it.  The next Tau turn the Broadsides pretty reliably drop the 'Raven.  Even if you manage to weather that turn of fire, you'd better deploy the next turn or the Broadsides will glance you out of the sky.

 

Alternately, you bring in the 'Raven and do Skies on the way in.  Broadsides still pretty reliably drop the 'Raven, but before they do that, the Riptides intercept the Skies deployments.  Sometimes you can get those guys to Skies behind cover or something, but that can be hard to do if you want to keep them effective plus DS into terrain is dicey.

You either need more patience or better terrain. Seriously, given that youll be switching to skimmer mode the incoming angle is less than important really, what matters is keeping everything alive until turn 3 when you pounce. Its not that hard, if I can keep a lone AV 10 flyer alive vs 3 broadsides and 3 Riptides and two Skyrays I think a stormchicken should be a walk in the park.

 

 

 

I've never heard of Beast Hunter shells?

 

Imperial Armor 1, armored battle group I believe.

[Gentlemanloser]

 

Unless he has magic dice

 

Or some form of manipulating Reserve rolls.  Like Psychic Communion.

 

Still, if your whole gameplan is "Kill the Kroot/Fire Warriors", you lose two turns, while he Pew Pew's you army.

[Storm Dragons 3rd Company]

 

Clarification - the broadsides don't have interceptor or skyfire; they have volume of fire.  The Riptide has interceptor.

 

You cannot reliably get an incoming flyer behind cover and if you just to stay more than 36" from the broadsides, you might as well not bring it because that lets the tau threat bubble confine your movement an deployment.

 

So you bring in your 'Raven and don't reploy anyone from it.  The next Tau turn the Broadsides pretty reliably drop the 'Raven.  Even if you manage to weather that turn of fire, you'd better deploy the next turn or the Broadsides will glance you out of the sky.

 

Alternately, you bring in the 'Raven and do Skies on the way in.  Broadsides still pretty reliably drop the 'Raven, but before they do that, the Riptides intercept the Skies deployments.  Sometimes you can get those guys to Skies behind cover or something, but that can be hard to do if you want to keep them effective plus DS into terrain is dicey.

You either need more patience or better terrain. Seriously, given that youll be switching to skimmer mode the incoming angle is less than important really, what matters is keeping everything alive until turn 3 when you pounce. Its not that hard, if I can keep a lone AV 10 flyer alive vs 3 broadsides and 3 Riptides and two Skyrays I think a stormchicken should be a walk in the park.

 

Obviously, different terrain might help, but I only get to place half of it and then there are those nice hills and stuff, often placed by my opponent, that let things get high enough to shoot over the blocking terrain, especially at things on flyer stands.  And then there is the opponent who takes pretty good advantage of these things.  Sure I can keep away and force him to be out of range or only use indirect fire missiles, but most of the time that means I'm not where I need to be and I'm reacting so that my army is not doing what I really need to be doing.  Don't get me wrong, saying to use terrain and try to concentrate forces on the attack is very, very sound advice.  So is "kill all the enemy troops."  But sometimes those just don't get you in the endzone.  Kill all the troops fails, for example, in purge or against a foe whose viable win strategy is to ignore the mission table the enemy and who only brought 2 min squads because the rules required it.  Terrain depends on random dice roles, placement, available terrain, enemy position, location of objectives or other places you have to be, and mission.  If your opponent is good, then they will be doing their best to use all of these against you so it won't always be possible to fly into a nice safe void, wait out a turn, and then pounce.  If your opponent isn't good, then you probably don't need help.  While there are plenty of not-good opponents who might field 5+ Riptides, setting up across from one does not mean that your opponent isn't good.

 

After all, if you were to have the 5 riptide guy on here asking for help shooting down these flyers that keep coming in and hiding behind these tall fuel tanks so they couldn't be shot, you could give that person the same advice.  Use terrain better. Position yourself so that that flyer can't target you.  Make the flyer have to choose which Riptide to target in the next turn and then pound the contents with all the other Riptides the following turn - that flyer and its contents are probably about 1/4 - 1/3 of the Space Marine army and worth the loss of a Riptide. Shoot the flyer guys' troops.  Sometimes you can; sometimes it's not that simple.

[W0lfie]

I've never heard of Beast Hunter shells?

Small blast of instant death goodness.  I'm not gonna post Strength, AP or range, but you can probably guess at them given that I suggested it against riptides.

 

Also, as I said, grav weapons are where you should be looking.  A combat squad of sternguard with combi-gravs will on average kill a riptide a turn.  They won't always have their nova shields, but when they do you can use Tiggy or Azhara Redth (if using FW) to make him re-roll successful saves, and get back to averaging a Riptide kill/SG combat squad/turn.  If you are willing to resort to FW characters though, you may want to consider Vaylund Cal, Sevrin Loth, Valthex or Captain Androcles, the first two are perfectly capable of soloing one in CC in a turn, and don't have to worry about S10 ID.  Androcles lets you spam devastators and bring the hurt from afar.  Valthex gives you hellfire shells on even tac marines, terminators or whatever you'd like.  Or bring a caestus ram, laugh manically as it ignores the broadsides shots and drop terminators and pie plates on the riptides.  Or rapiers.  Really, there are a ton of options if you're willing to get...unconvensional.  Dreadknights are tough when they're spammed, riptides not quite so much.

[Dam13n]

I would rate a Bike Command Squad with 5 Grav Guns (or an Apothecary and 4 Grav Guns) over Sternguard in that instance.

 

1 - they can't be intercepted (as the Sternguard will most likely have to drop pod to get close enough)

2 - they are Relentless so always fire to full effect with the Grav guns (Salvo)

3 - they are manoeuvrable thanks to being bikes

4 - they can be combined with Khan for scout shenanigans

5 - they come with a built in cover save so the Tau player has to decide between Ignores Cover and +X BS with his markerlights.

[Grey Mage]

 

 

Clarification - the broadsides don't have interceptor or skyfire; they have volume of fire.  The Riptide has interceptor.

 

You cannot reliably get an incoming flyer behind cover and if you just to stay more than 36" from the broadsides, you might as well not bring it because that lets the tau threat bubble confine your movement an deployment.

 

So you bring in your 'Raven and don't reploy anyone from it.  The next Tau turn the Broadsides pretty reliably drop the 'Raven.  Even if you manage to weather that turn of fire, you'd better deploy the next turn or the Broadsides will glance you out of the sky.

 

Alternately, you bring in the 'Raven and do Skies on the way in.  Broadsides still pretty reliably drop the 'Raven, but before they do that, the Riptides intercept the Skies deployments.  Sometimes you can get those guys to Skies behind cover or something, but that can be hard to do if you want to keep them effective plus DS into terrain is dicey.

You either need more patience or better terrain. Seriously, given that youll be switching to skimmer mode the incoming angle is less than important really, what matters is keeping everything alive until turn 3 when you pounce. Its not that hard, if I can keep a lone AV 10 flyer alive vs 3 broadsides and 3 Riptides and two Skyrays I think a stormchicken should be a walk in the park.

 

Obviously, different terrain might help, but I only get to place half of it and then there are those nice hills and stuff, often placed by my opponent, that let things get high enough to shoot over the blocking terrain, especially at things on flyer stands.  And then there is the opponent who takes pretty good advantage of these things.  Sure I can keep away and force him to be out of range or only use indirect fire missiles, but most of the time that means I'm not where I need to be and I'm reacting so that my army is not doing what I really need to be doing.  Don't get me wrong, saying to use terrain and try to concentrate forces on the attack is very, very sound advice.  So is "kill all the enemy troops."  But sometimes those just don't get you in the endzone.  Kill all the troops fails, for example, in purge or against a foe whose viable win strategy is to ignore the mission table the enemy and who only brought 2 min squads because the rules required it.  Terrain depends on random dice roles, placement, available terrain, enemy position, location of objectives or other places you have to be, and mission.  If your opponent is good, then they will be doing their best to use all of these against you so it won't always be possible to fly into a nice safe void, wait out a turn, and then pounce.  If your opponent isn't good, then you probably don't need help.  While there are plenty of not-good opponents who might field 5+ Riptides, setting up across from one does not mean that your opponent isn't good.

 

After all, if you were to have the 5 riptide guy on here asking for help shooting down these flyers that keep coming in and hiding behind these tall fuel tanks so they couldn't be shot, you could give that person the same advice.  Use terrain better. Position yourself so that that flyer can't target you.  Make the flyer have to choose which Riptide to target in the next turn and then pound the contents with all the other Riptides the following turn - that flyer and its contents are probably about 1/4 - 1/3 of the Space Marine army and worth the loss of a Riptide. Shoot the flyer guys' troops.  Sometimes you can; sometimes it's not that simple.

And just because your opponent is good doesnt mean they can always negate the advantage that terrain can give you. And you dont have to sit their passively hoping for an opening- you have an entire army and a deployment phase to get your opponent to react in a way that gives you the opening you need. Proper use of terrain is vital to tactics, and I think its often over looked in the blank white table that is the vacuum of internet debate.

[Lysere]

I would rate a Bike Command Squad with 5 Grav Guns (or an Apothecary and 4 Grav Guns) over Sternguard in that instance.

 

1 - they can't be intercepted (as the Sternguard will most likely have to drop pod to get close enough)

2 - they are Relentless so always fire to full effect with the Grav guns (Salvo)

3 - they are manoeuvrable thanks to being bikes

4 - they can be combined with Khan for scout shenanigans

5 - they come with a built in cover save so the Tau player has to decide between Ignores Cover and +X BS with his markerlights.

 

Just adding my own thoughts into this.

1 - Only an advantage if you can get within range of a riptide on the first turn otherwise your no better off than someone receiving interceptor fire. (Already made my points about how little of an advantage interceptor is in the grand scheme of things.)

2 - By far the biggest advantage of bikes. If you make range on the first turn you have more shots than a similar sternguard squad (who need to take combis after the second grav gun)

3,4 - Tie back into 2. Speed and Scout only adds to the advantage of being relentless and helps ensure you get at least one turn of shooting in before the riptides go nuts.

5 - Not actually as good as you think due to Tau being able to take a lot of markerlights very easily. It takes 5 hits to make a riptide a terrifying unit, thats at least one pathfinder squad worth of shooting (assuming large teams). If you run command squad bikes you can be sure they will be one of the first targets so unless you take storm shields as well you can probably count on them getting toasted early on unless you hide them well. Also they can run a commander suit who can simply attach to a riptide and give him ignores cover and twin-linked on all weapons.

 

 

To re-iterate my point on interceptor fire not actually being that big of a deal is that this is a Tau army, they excel at long range. It is not uncommon for them to get a good turn or two of shooting before the bulk of an army can be brought to bear. In fact their Entire tactical doctrine is built around this idea of bringing massive amounts of firepower to bear against key targets very quickly. The Drop pod is the wrench that breaks this entire plan. Now not only can they not dictate range, their biggest advantage has now gone entirely out the window. Interceptor is only a small remedy for such things, and takes up a very important slot on suits with very few slots and too many options. When someone fires via interceptor they lose all the advantages that make them Tau, no markerlight support is available, the Tau commander can't use either upgrade for boosting shooting, none of his infantry can fire, nor will most of his suits be able to (unless he bought interceptor on every single one of them), and the icing on the cake is that if you go first you can strike before he can even attempt a nova roll meaning his riptides will only be hiding behind a 5++. Don't forget you are now in his half of the table, and can literally deploy your men almost anywhere. This is where you drop as close as possible to any and every unit he has, place them so they are all within an inch of an enemy model so he can't use his overcharged IA or other blast weapons. Use his own men and the terrain to gain cover. Any weapon he then fires can now not be fired in the next turn when he gets all his synergy back, and now his riptides will need to waste their precious nova roll (assuming they pass it) to attempt to get away from your men because even a tactical squad is an effective weapon against a riptide in CC, and if he wastes it on the 3++ then he's not going to be able to escape, especially when you have even more pods coming in to ruin his day. You could also then just tie it up with aforementioned tactical squad that cares little about a 3++ save since they'll just use krak grenades. Also since you'll be in control of what pods show up first any pathfinder teams he runs can easily be dealt with by small bolter flamer teams thus removing his most likely way to remove cover saves. If you did take a bike command squad you could hide them behind some serious terrain and bring them out of hiding when the pathfinders go down making them much more deadly than before.

 

Sorry rant over.

[Gentlemanloser]

Can't you do all of that with Scout + Bike Move, or GK Shunt (taking it you got First Turn) anyway?

 

Without even triggering Interceptor.

[Lysere]

Can't you do all of that with Scout + Bike Move, or GK Shunt (taking it you got First Turn) anyway?

 

Without even triggering Interceptor.

 

Except if he has first turn he can simply move outside of your threat range, on top of it being much harder to get bikes up next to a Tau line in a single turn unless you turbo-boost. I think a mix of a few well placed bike squads with scout or some such shenanigans and the rest in pods would make for a very interesting Tau counter list. Also again the biggest thing is if he does use interceptor he gets none of the major bonuses that make riptides and Tau in general incredibly strong, against bikes he will always be able to throw in all their makerlights and other assorted buffs.

[W0lfie]

An interesting (and shamelessly tailored) counter list (heavy on the FW [in case you guys haven't realised by now, I love FW])

 

Chapter Tactics: IH (for the vehicles) or RG (for 2+ cover saves for both tac squads first turn guaranteed [bolster defences+stealth])

 

HQ:

 

Brayarth Ashmantle, lucius pod-315

Armenneus Valthex-145

 

Elites/Heavy Support:

 

4x Ironclad Dreadnoughts, Assault Launchers, Chainfists, Lucius Pods-780

1x Thunderfire-100

 

Troops:

 

Tactical Squad, ML, Hellfire Rounds, Grav Gun-170

Tactical Squad, ML, Grav Gun-170

 

Allies:

 

HQ:

 

Coteaz-100

 

Elites:

 

Vindicare-145

 

Troops:

 

Henchmen: 75

     3x Crusaders

     6x Warriors w/ Boltguns

 

The vindicare chills and removes Riptide Shields, or peels wounds off them really quickly, snipes ethereals etc. while the dreads start dropping first turn, and pummel Riptides in assault right away (even if they don't kill the riptides, they lock them in combat).  Next turn, more dreads drop down.  If the riptides get aggressive, they'll have to deal with an entire tactical squad that will wound it on two's with every single weapon they posses, as well as torrents of fire from the other squad and the henchmen squad.  The second his infantry come on from reserves, smush them with the thunderfire.  Henchmen can also be used to bubblewrap the thunderfire, or soak wounds for Valthex while he plugs away with his conversion beamer.

 

As I said, it's shamelessly tailored and Forgeworldy, but if you're just looking to crush riptides this will be doing it right from turn one in probably the most nightmarish way possible, for tau.  The other really silly way is to use enfeeblement (Loth has a 100% chance of getting it, so that's a safe choice.  Tiggy too) and drop orbital bombardments/demolishers shells on it.  One failure removes it from the table.

[Lysere]

Last I heard the Lucius pods had their rules changed to you can't actually assault the turn you come in anymore. Why I will never know.

[Kaedes Nex]

I think it may have to do with GW removing assault from deep strike from vanguards. Ymgarl will probably lose the rule too. Maybe FW either got the notice from them or felt like toning down the unit as it really was one of the best in FW, our book, and possibly the game.

 

But I don't have much sympathy for people who cry cheese just because I manage to tie up his Riptides on the first turn.

[Lysere]

I think it may have to do with GW removing assault from deep strike from vanguards. Ymgarl will probably lose the rule too. Maybe FW either got the notice from them or felt like toning down the unit as it really was one of the best in FW, our book, and possibly the game.

 

But I don't have much sympathy for people who cry cheese just because I manage to tie up his Riptides on the first turn.

 

Especially sine he can still attempt to intercept and then overwatch. Still having a drop pod that takes up its own FoC slot and now making it mostly if not entirely useless just seems like an odd move.

[Cain21]

Lotd are great at killing riptides b/c their save is also an inv. Dont forget that

[W0lfie]

Lotd are great at killing riptides b/c their save is also an inv. Dont forget that

Especially if you use them in a Tyberos list, so they can swap their bolters for chainswords and have yet another attack.  Also, he gives furious charge with potential rage army wide, so you could have your LotD putting out 5 S5 attacks each on the charge, with the sergeant having 6 at WS5, possibly with a PW.  On average, they could (without a PW) deal 2 W on the charge, the riptide is very unlikely to score any wounds, and you SHOULD be able to sweep it.  Also, if it has any drones that is more wounds you can deal and even tougher a Ld test at the end of combat.  3.44 wounds without drones if the damned sergeant has an axe.

[Cain21]

Well I was talking about for 155 you get 5 lotd with a mm, mg, and a combi grav then put a pf or something on sarg and once in cc they will beat a riptide considering you should have already caused a few wounds just from shooting. And under vulkan that squad is all the better b/c both those melta are twin linked, and the grav gun is master crafted.

 

Edit* sry sarg's combi grav is mc

[Molokai]

Unfortunately lotd don't benefit from chapter tactics so the sarges combi grav can't gain mc.

[Lysere]

Unfortunately lotd don't benefit from chapter tactics so the sarges combi grav can't gain mc.

 

Well the Master Crafting wouldn't be there, but Vulkan's rule isn't chapter tactics so the meltas would still get mc.

[Molokai]

Correct :)

[Cain21]

Donthave the codex with me but if I recall correctly that tactic says models in this detachment and says nothing about models with "chapter tactics"

[Butters]

As a Space Marine player you have access to Tiggy.....  Just take him and get invisibility then attach him to a big group of Assault Terminators and Thunderhammer the crap out of those things.  Gotta find some way to get them close fast so possibly a Land Raider which can then have Invisibilty cast on itself while they are inside!!! meaning he can only shot the Fusion Blaster at you and thats only got 18" Range!!! nothing else can hurt you because its blast and you cant "snap" blast.  

 

The extra kicker is that you can take your Land Raiders as Blood Angels allies and then I believe they are fast so you get a 12" move!  

 

If you take some Thunderfire cannons you can limit the range of the riptides using the subterrain blast so they cant run away while you chase them down. 

[FishFuzz99]

Blood Angels Land Raiders are not fast. You can still move 18 inches the first turn and then 6 on the second, disembark 6, and charge 2d6 though.