NetEA Tau Manta test weekend.

         Off to CT to play with the New England group. They are about 25 strong. 11 are playing this weekend. I am the only one coming up from the PA group.

          I will be the testing monkey for the Tau. The Manta is a giant beast of a mini. It is rare and expensive toy to own. Manta sucks badly. The beast is hardly ever fielded. It is so bad, I won't take it any more.
        Now I did try and make it work. To make something work. I played it for 2 months, including a weekend with the New England group and it went to the Fall In tourney.
        The 650 points never earns back its value. It is too slow for Tau. It suffers from a weapon system mismatch. Instead of having a defined role, it tries to be a jack of all trades. Long dong silver MW, x4 AA, mid range AT, short range AP. What range is it really deadly at? 90, 75, 45? It ain't fucking 30, because your going to give away 1 point! BTS. The purposed change is to reduce points 575 and give it 2 MW+3 shot instead on the 1.

Weapon Range Firepower Notes

Twin Heavy Railcannons 90cm MW2+ Fixed Forward Arc, Titan Killer (D3)

3 Heavy Ion Phalanx 75cm AP3+/AT4+ Fixed Forward Arc

4 Twin Manta Burst Cannons 30cm AP5+/AA6+ -

Twin Missile Pods 45cm AP5+/AT6+ Fixed Forward Arc

2 Seeker Missiles 90cm AT6+ Guided Missiles

        The purposed change is to reduce points 575 and give it 2 MW+3 shot instead on the 1. Then there is a whole list of upgrades. I am not interested in upgrades. The beast is too expensive. Why would you voluntarily make it more expensive?

Original Fall In list

 Adjusted Fall In list

        My thoughts regarding the toy are based on my experiences with Fall In and the primer games for it. I will take the same list. The point savings to spread around to make shit meaner. 

        Other differences.  Skyways as units of 3, I am not a fan of any more. It is gone. The skyways points are upgrades for skyways. Rail heads for Ion heads.

I got IG in the first game. The IG had death strike launchers. Can you guess how that went? I teleported Stealth suits on top of them. They were blasted off by manticores. The retain saw the Death Strike double launch the Manta off the table. (blew up on crits)

Second game was Dave orange Eldar, ghosts in suits. This game went down to the last activations in turn 3. Dave blew up the Manta in the bottom of two. It held up but never moved off the Blitz. The best performance came when he was silly enough to march up into marker light range. It took four activations to down it.

So........it is too slow and still too expensive. It will earn its points back if someone is dumb enough to feed units to it. I am thinking it should be made into an aircraft or allowed to planetfall without a space ship. If allowed to planet fall without a space craft, it could became a variable landing craft. (a thunder hawk)