Dealing with the Tau XV107 R’varna Battlesuit

[Jolemai]

You are about to plat a 1250 match against a Tau opponent. You already know that this Tau player will use Forgeworld's Tau XV107 R’varna Battlesuit and a regular riptide at 1250 points. How do you respond?

 

Would you tweak your regular list to beat it?

Would you ignore the riptides and focus on everything else?

Would you focus on either riptide until it was gone?

 

Generally, how do you handle riptides and/or the R'varna?

Forgeworld's Riptide has its experimental rules here.

[SlickSamos]

You buy LOS blocking terrain...

[BrotherCaptainArkhan]

That's a fairly big chunk of points at 1250. Understand the effect such an investment will have on his list and try to predict the strategy he's going to build around those two units. He may not have a lot of scoring units and he may not have a lot else that poses massive threat at that points level.

 

You can obviously take advantage of the above by fielding a lot of scoring units and also fielding efficient counters to his Riptides. You can kill two birds with one stone here with grav-gun equipped bike squads. I run a very biker-heavy list and it is the bane of Riptides and Wraithknights, although good Tau/Eldar players know that our bikes pose a massive threat and will try to take them down early. Unfortunately, this is easy for Tau as they have Pathfinders which can set up their Riptides to breeze past our jink saves. The Tau player will expect grav-equipped units and will target those units which can threaten his Riptides very early on.

 

You can counter his counter by doing two things: firstly, try to oversaturate him with threats. Don't throw all your eggs in one drop podding basket of Sternguard and expect that to nuke a Riptide on turn 1. It won't. It will get interceptored to death and in all likelihood give up First Blood. Three or four bike squads (I would prefer four or five if you can field them), a (small) unit of Sternguard and maybe Centurions (not the most points efficient unit on their own though) will be a lot for him to deal with, and will also let you contest objectives quite well at that points level.

 

Secondly, plan for the long game and target his scoring units. You can do this really well with cheap-as-chips Thunderfires, which can nuke the hell out of his Pathfinders and Fire Warriors and all the while be hidden behind LOS-blocking terrain. They also pose a small threat to Riptides as they can get all four shots on target if the first hits, thanks to the Riptide's huge base.

 

Before I ramble on, I'll cut myself short as I don't know what you have access to in your list. I do know that 2 Riptides at 1250 is very beatable however if you have the right toolset. I haven't mentioned Allies, but a Space Wolf Rune Priest with Jaws in a pod will give your opponent conniptions. If you want to take the mick, remember that gravs are Concussive, so you can knock the Riptide down to I1 and then Jaws it so it only survives on a 1-2 rather than the usual 1-3 (This is hilarious against Wraithknights). I also haven't mentioned the fact that the regular Riptide is the far (far) greater threat as the R'varna no longer has access to AP3. On this basis alone you should kill the regular 'tide first. Depending on how the R'varna performs you may want to simply evade it and target his scoring units. Also remember that once the Pathfinders are dead the Riptide is much less of a threat than usual.

 

Ultimately, 40k is won by scoring objectives, and sometimes it's more efficient to try and win the scenario rather than kill the enemy army. Hope something in this late-afternoon ramble is useful.

 

Arkhan

[Brother Casman]

I've gotta ask: what's the setting/context - Tournament? Friendly game?

[hallodx]

First, kill those marker light. We have a saying goes here : Tau is half losing without marker lights.

Second, you need whatever fast or can claim saves against them, say LotD, bikes, BA VV, whatever, or something simply fire at long range, say IG stuffs.

Third, or forget the two above, field Titan with D pizzas. Add some void shield generators for it.

Forth, praise the dice god.

 

Ok ok, I stop joking

I play bike army that can outflank, for Q1.

Kill marker lights, say pathfinders with TFC if possible. Some just don't field pathfinder but hammerhead(?) to shoot marker light...but that's more points so be happy your opponent is somewhat friendly. It's for Q2

And for Q3, that depends on enemy army structure. If his list is balanced, with proper size of troops and proper size of fire support and maybe one or two riptides, I would kill the rest of army first. But if he just spam as many riptides as possible, of course I must kill tides first for they will eat my army like fast food in front of a HUGE guy.

[Jolemai]

I've gotta ask: what's the setting/context - Tournament? Friendly game?

 

Either/or. However, my idea of a friendly game might be different from yours!

 

Basically, a friend of mine got tonked by this list and I want to know from your experience what pitfalls to avoid should I ever come up against either that Riptide or a dualtide list.

[Iron Father Ferrum]

Take off and nuke the entire site from orbit.  It's the only way to be sure.

[Jolemai]

So, kill the Markerlights then little dudes and get/or get in the Riptide's face?