How to deal with 3x Riptides ?

[sp4rky]

Hi guys,

 

I've been playing this little list at my local club for some time and one of my regular opponents has turned up recently with a new Tau with allied Space Marines list, something like this...

 

Tau:

Aun'shi, 10 fire warriors, Devilfish

10 fire warriors

10 sniper Kroot

3 Riptides (!!!!  each has feel no pain, 2 have interceptor and the third has skyfire)

 

Iron Hands:

Chapter master with burning blade (or whatever it is), eternal shield (gives eternal warrior, adamantium will and 3++), bike

5 bikes with 2 grav guns

 

 

He don't think he's lost a game yet and I want to show him what it's like to lose!  But I have no idea how to deal with 3 riptides.

 

 

The list I've been using lately is roughly this:

 

Dante

Honour Guard (jump packs, 4x plasma guns)

Sanguinary guard (infernus pistol, chapter banner, 2 axes, 2 swords, 1 power fist)

10 Assault marines (2 meltaguns, power sword and meltabombs)

10 Assault marines (2 meltaguns, power fist)

Stormraven (Assault cannon, multi-melta, hurricane bolters)

Furioso with Talons

 

I should say, we play at 1,500 points as we travel to Throne of Skulls a lot.

 

 

So I would like to ask the question... how would you deal with it?

[Jolemai]

Just out of interest, how is your current list doing against other opponents and what else do you have at your disposal?

[ianj253]

Ignore the Riptides, play the objectives and kill his troops.  I play against dual tides a lot and I just ignore them and will have Mephiston deal with them when he gets close enough. If you have the los blocking terrain at your store utilize it! 

 

I think your list would also stand a decent chance if you were playing DOW deployment and got first turn. If you put the pressure on you can be assaulting turn 2 or 3 at the latest. Riptides without marker/farseer support or nowhere near as scary. They have a sub par ballistic skill and you should be getting cover saves every turn.  I think the CM and Bikes may give you more trouble than the riptide but that's jsut my 2 cents. 

 

Even if you don't have ideal deployment he's so weak on scoring your storm raven could come make quick work of his nanny fish warriors. 

[irwit]

Agree,  don't waste any shots on the riptides until all his soft troops are gone.  Those riptides can only take out so much of your troops and with cover saves and such you should have most of his troops dead by turn 2 hopefully.   

 

Id also maybe say go flamers instead of plasma on the command squad.  The sooner to take out his troops the better.  Find points for a fist in both assault squads and take out the riptides in combat later down the game.  

[knife&fork]

So I would like to ask the question... how would you deal with it?

 

Allies.

 

Eldar (d-weapons, shooting in general) or space wolves (jotww). Massed gravgun whitescars or ravenwing if you want to do regular marines.

 

If you want to play pure BA you are gonna have to cut down on the toys. Dante, the sanguinary guard and honor guard take up an insane amount of points at 1500 while not being that hard to take out.

[Calnus]

Double up on the Stormravens.  He has exactly one anti-air unit, and Riptides are sub-par at killing AV12 flyers.  Like everyone else has said, focus on killing his troops first and avoid the riptides.

 

And I'd suggest spreading out and combat squadding, so you can hide as much as possible.  Probably going to be playing to win in turn 4 rather than trying to wipe him in assault turn 2-3, so you can keep your troops out of the fire while picking off any of his that stick their heads out.

[Lysere]

He has no marker lights, therefore his riptides will be performing terribly all game. I'm assuming they all pack the long range fun gun that can wipe out terminators? If so use cover and get them tied up in assault, and when you can focus fire on his bikes to wipe them off the table. His captain is expensive but will die to massed fire just as well as most marines. Also his allies aren't very well planned out. Gravguns are only good at shooting, and the burning blade is only good in assault. Either way if he runs them together one will always be doing less than it could be.

[irwit]

He still has 3 of them so 3times more chance of one hitting.  Are they bs 3 standard?   I think the bikers are your biggest threat,   they have good cover saves and basic saves so again you just want to cause as many wounds as possible.  Bolters,  flamers,  assault cannon etc.  even with a storm shield you suffer 1 wound in 3.  So 12 wounds and he is gone,  that flamer command squad can probably cause a lot of those by themselves although they would probably be better suited for the tau hiding in cover. 

[Lysere]

He still has 3 of them so 3times more chance of one hitting.  Are they bs 3 standard?   I think the bikers are your biggest threat,   they have good cover saves and basic saves so again you just want to cause as many wounds as possible.  Bolters,  flamers,  assault cannon etc.  even with a storm shield you suffer 1 wound in 3.  So 12 wounds and he is gone,  that flamer command squad can probably cause a lot of those by themselves although they would probably be better suited for the tau hiding in cover. 

 

Well if he has the Ion Accelerator he will probably overcharge it because then its a large blast (Get's Hot), but without markerlights he can't up his bs or ignore cover. If he ever Nova charges it then he's pretty much wasted the bonus if you only have infantry or Land Raiders. Also yeah Riptides are the same BS as most tau so if he isn't overcharging he has very little chance of hitting with more than a shot or two, and then it's only S7.

[librisrouge]

Find the 35 points to fit in a drop pod for that dread. Then give it a Frag Cannon. Come down on the bike squad and kill a grav weapon or two. Hell, even if you just keep the talons the pressure it puts on an enemy coming down turn 1 means you will likely get that turn to just advance on the enemy without being otherwise harassed. 

[Chaplain Admetus]

Find the 35 points to fit in a drop pod for that dread. Then give it a Frag Cannon. Come down on the bike squad and kill a grav weapon or two. Hell, even if you just keep the talons the pressure it puts on an enemy coming down turn 1 means you will likely get that turn to just advance on the enemy without being otherwise harassed. 

Won't necessarily work as it can be intercepted out by the riptide with a single shot, and all you've accomplished there is give away first blood. So if you're trying it, be careful.

 

What will work (this is potentially loading up on hilarious cheese) is to take librarians with fear of the darkness. In multiples. Maybe stick one in a pod with some sternguard or something. Heck, even take it on librarian furiosos if possible. If you feel like allying in some imperial guard with a psyker battle squad to weaken resolve things, even better.  Just start making his army fall back. If it rallies, it can only snap-shoot (so no pie-plates off the riptides). Everything's testing on leadership rubbish enough that it's likely to fail with the -2 modifier. If he turtles and deploys back, it's really likely that he'll just run straight off the table.

 

What have you got to lose? If it works, it's hilarious... take down his entire army without causing a single wound :P

[Lysere]

To counter the riptides interceptor simply place the dreadnought as close to the bikes as possible, if he overcharges he can't place it on you since it'll hit bikes, and if he doesn't overcharge he only has a slight chance to glance. Seriously Intercept on riptides is terrible against drop pods if you deploy them aggressively, it's more useful when used on things that aren't arriving via a deepstriking transport, like terminators.

[t4play]

sorry but I'm glad someone else is having trouble with these . . . only difference i can see is my sons tau have tons of marker lights too ;-(

[Toomanyprojects]

Melta fire. Lots and lots of melta.

 

Plus, with markerlights, multiple riptides and a decent HQ there are not many points left for troops. When five out of six missions need you to seize objectives, that's a massive vulnerability

[irwit]

What is melta going to do to an mc with a 3++? You could have 10 combo meltas and you wouldn't kill a riptide and you've wasted a lot of points and good shooting. Surely you concentrate on what you can kill easily first.

[Toomanyprojects]

What is melta going to do to an mc with a 3++? You could have 10 combo meltas and you wouldn't kill a riptide and you've wasted a lot of points and good shooting. Surely you concentrate on what you can kill easily first.

High strength and low AP has done the job for me in the past. I'm just saying what has worked for me multiple times on the battlefield

[Lysere]

Librarian with a power axe can also work well. It can't challenge you and all you need is to get a single wound past it's Invuln save and it's dead.

[Ushtarador]

LoS-blocking terrain helps tremendously (not an absolute must-have as he does not have markerlights, but still). Then 2 stormravens, as his anti-air is rather lacking, try to kill the riptides that did not get the 3+ invul (at least one should fail, or maybe he overcharged instead). Fragiosos are very good at taking out his bikers, as they put a lot of wounds on the unit and are also able to wipe out his kroot and devilfish. Hell, if he doesn't have meltas on his riptides, you can even hunt those with the dreads ;)

[sp4rky]

Hi guys,

 

Thanks for the replies!

 

I have pretty much anything at my disposal, but the list I posted at the top is my preferred setup.   I do reasonably well in most other games, occasionally I get wiped from bad deployment or mistakes but most of the time I win through capturing objectives.

 

The problem I have with these darn Riptides is that he will place them equally in the centre of the battlefield and they always seem to be in the right place at the right time.   The main issue I have is their MC status making them AP2 all the time and their 2+ save makes them hard to deal with in combat.

 

I didn't really want to go down the allies route as I feel our Angels have everything at their disposal already, I just need to work out exactly what that is ;)

 

I'm happy with the strategy of taking down his troops and I can do this easily enough but then I still have 3 Riptides to contend with who are merrily smashing my troops to bits.

 

 

I'm feeling Librarians could be the way forward with a force axe and possibly an infernus pistol to sneak a wound off first.

 

I'll probably play him next week so I'll let you know how it goes!

[Calnus]

When all else fails, hammernators.

 

Probably want to make it either 5 in a Stormraven with a foot priest and foot Lib with axe, or 7 in an LRC with foot priest and foot lib.

 

You will definitely start dropping some Riptides, but whether that translates into winning is going to depend on the game.

[Lysere]

LoS-blocking terrain helps tremendously (not an absolute must-have as he does not have markerlights, but still). Then 2 stormravens, as his anti-air is rather lacking, try to kill the riptides that did not get the 3+ invul (at least one should fail, or maybe he overcharged instead). Fragiosos are very good at taking out his bikers, as they put a lot of wounds on the unit and are also able to wipe out his kroot and devilfish. Hell, if he doesn't have meltas on his riptides, you can even hunt those with the dreads

I'm going to point out that "Overcharging" the ion accelerator does not require the use of the nova reactor. Overcharging is a rule built into all Tau ion weapons. Nova charging just adds another strength to the blast and ordnance. The Gatling burst cannon does require a nova charge for it's boosted statline though.

[Ushtarador]

Yeah well spotted, wrong word. It depends on what he's shooting at, but against vehicles you usually want to novacharge it. Also, never let him forget that overcharged weapons have "gets hot!" :P

[Lysere]

Yeah well spotted, wrong word. It depends on what he's shooting at, but against vehicles you usually want to novacharge it. Also, never let him forget that overcharged weapons have "gets hot!"

Yes, always remind him of that. If they have get's hot, make them roll it. That rare 1 will save countless marines.

[irwit]

Well if he has 3 of them he has a 50% chance of getting hot every turn. 

[Memento Of Prospero]

I will echo ignoring them. They are too tough to bother with - just maul the two fragile scoring units your opponent has. Make sure to not yield first blood and just sit back with the easy win.