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Good evening, this will be my first post on these forums, so here goes

With the advent of the new codex, I have been very interested in the new IG artillery options, specifically the Manticore. With its high strength and multi-pie plate goodness, I have been trying to come up with new uses for it. This post will specifically deal with how well it handles killing a single Land Raider.

The Manticore's initial shot was determined to have a 57.5% chance to hit a Land Raider sized target. This was determined by first adding its scatter percentage for all dice rolls that summed 5 and under (representing less than 2" of scatter, 27.8%) and the chance for a 3" scatter to hit on a 226 degree arc (8.6%), then the sum of the two values were multiplied by .66 (representing the chance to roll scatter arrows). Then 33% was added onto the value, representing a hit roll with the dice. (27.8+8.6)*.66+33.3=57.5



A manticore shoots d3 rockets a turn, which can be averaged to two shots per turn. The second shot has roughly a 45.1% chance to hit. This % was determined similar to the method above, except the sum of arc percentages for all dice rolls 10 and under were used (less than 7" of scatter).



With two shots, that gives us an average of 76.7% chance to have a Manticore hit a Land Raider. With the Reroll for being an ordinance weapon, we get a 38.3% chance to get a penetrating hit, and a 19% chance to get a glancing hit, assuming we accept the glancing hit on the first roll. (Aiming for purely penetrating hits, we have a 42.6% chance for a penetrating hit, and a 11% chance for a glancing hit).

This is a very VERY powerful realization, as I do believe this makes the Manticore the single best ranged Land Raider/Monolith killer for the points. The other benefit to using a Manticore, is because it is a Barrage weapon, the vehicle Obscurity rule does not apply (unless it is using smoke launchers or a Disruption Pod).

Ordnance isn't a reroll to penetrate. Roll 2d6 at the same time and pick the highest result. That should bump your numbers up a little.

This is the first time I've ever seen anyone try to work out the scatter geometry in such detail.

Make that a 42.6% chance for a Penetrating hit, and a 14.9% chance for a glancing hit then

Damn you got math skillz, yo!

Ok, what if the first shot scatters wildly, then the second shot has a very minor chance to hit.

I think that you make a good point though.

But, a 5 man command squad jumping out of a Valk or a Chimera and hitting a LR with 4 meltas at close range is still the best bet. It lacks the reach of the Manticore to be sure.

I will have to try this out. Now to just buy a gak ton of forgeworld tanks!

Also nice that the ordinance rules allow you to ignore cover saves, too. Useful against horde, MEQs and armor, which is handy...it's a tempting buy. Moderately expensive and only AV 12, which isn't so great.

I've been thinking of this and other ordinance-type weapons. The griffon, for example, is cheap, effective, and actually has a good chance of hurting light vehicles, as it can avoid cover saves, front armor and gets the reroll to penetrate.

Reecius wrote:Damn you got math skillz, yo!

Ok, what if the first shot scatters wildly, then the second shot has a very minor chance to hit.

I think that you make a good point though.

But, a 5 man command squad jumping out of a Valk or a Chimera and hitting a LR with 4 meltas at close range is still the best bet. It lacks the reach of the Manticore to be sure.

I will have to try this out. Now to just buy a gak ton of forgeworld tanks!

The meltaunit is going to have a hard time wiping out a 30 man ork squad in one shot though. God damn the manticore is overpowered. It's amazing in every aspect, especially given it's "drawback" hardly matters in actual games of 40k. It's going to be great against nob bikes too.

It's kind of an omniunit.

Reecius wrote:Ok, what if the first shot scatters wildly, then the second shot has a very minor chance to hit.

That was taken into consideration. All scatter ranges of 11-12" were considered misses for both.


I should mention that the Manticore does NOT ignore cover if models are in Area Terrain. It only ignores cover against vehicles, as vehicles do not get cover saves from area terrain. However, if a vehicle is 50% obscured, the Barrage rule allows us to ignore its cover save.


I should also note that the above percentages for the second shot were assumed that the first shot scattered directly towards the short side of the Land Raider, and thus show minimum percentages.

Reecius wrote:But, a 5 man command squad jumping out of a Valk or a Chimera and hitting a LR with 4 meltas at close range is still the best bet. It lacks the reach of the Manticore to be sure.

Correct. But it a) costs more, and b) cant do it from 120" away.

You're assuming that you get to subtract 3" from your scatter roll for having LOS to the Land Raider.

I was going to criticize you for this, but actually, it's not a terrible plan. A Manticore is not open topped; screen it behind a Chimera and you have a decently survivable vehicle.

One thing I see in my neck of the woods is people with transport heavy armies (mostly CSM and SM) that huddle rhinos behind terrain to start out, often getting 3+ cover for the only ones you can see.

The Manticore doesn't allow that kind of deployment. If they huddle up vehicles to get mutually supportive cover saves, whether from terrain or just from other vehicles, the Manticore will brutalize them.

If you hit, you stand a good chance of hitting side or rear of another vehicle with the Manticores S5 blast, if you miss, you'll have plenty of nearby targets, and if you get multiple barrages and hits, you can assign blasts to different vehicles if they are bunched up close enough, all of which have a not-unreasonable chance of glancing nearby vehicles with S5 splash damage.

Long story short, if you're facing a Manticore, spread your vehicles out.


I just thought of something else. Does the Manticore have a weapon that can only fire four times, or does if have a 4 one-shot weapons? If the latter it makes it incredibly resilient to weapon destroyed results.

Biophysic wrote:I just thought of something else. Does the Manticore have a weapon that can only fire four times, or does if have a 4 one-shot weapons? If the latter it makes it incredibly resilient to weapon destroyed results.

One weapon that fires four times. The storm eagle rockets are a single weapon with the limited ammunition special rule. The is in contrast to the Hellstrike and Hellfury missiles, which are stated to be a pair of weapons that each have the one shot only rule.

I'd also like to applaud your scatter geometry analysis - I've done it pretty back-of-the-envelope style before and it's not terribly hard to get some rough estimates - but your analysis is very nicely laid out. Great job!

As for the effectiveness of this, though - okay, you get a penetrating hit 42.6% - but with the vehicle damage table, you're only destroying the vehicle 1/3 of the time - 14.2%. And since the Manticore is AP4, glancing doesn't do anything to destroy the Land Raider. That's less than a 1/7 chance - meaning that in a 7-round game, if you're firing at the same target each round, odds are that you will destroy the Land Raider. Except for the fact that you can only fire for 4 of those 7 rounds due to the Manticore's limited ammo capacity. That's cutting your chances almost in half again. That's just not very reliable, by my account.

I can very much appreciate the desire to kill AV14 tanks at a distance. But for my money, I'll stick with melta squads.

Immobilization can be just as good, which improves your odds of an effective shot. Honestly, though, I'd have both the Manticore and Melta squads. It's not like the Manticore sucks vs. Non-heavy armor.

Death by Monkeys, read the Manticore rules. The Manticore has 4 shots I.E. fires for 4 turns, but each of those shots has multiple hits, so on average you're firing 8 STR10 AP4 Pie plates a game, how often do games go on 8 turns? The damage output of a Manticore is impressive to say the least.

Death By Monkeys wrote:As for the effectiveness of this, though - okay, you get a penetrating hit 42.6% - but with the vehicle damage table, you're only destroying the vehicle 1/3 of the time - 14.2%. And since the Manticore is AP4, glancing doesn't do anything to destroy the Land Raider. That's less than a 1/7 chance - meaning that in a 7-round game, if you're firing at the same target each round, odds are that you will destroy the Land Raider. Except for the fact that you can only fire for 4 of those 7 rounds due to the Manticore's limited ammo capacity. That's cutting your chances almost in half again. That's just not very reliable, by my account.

I can very much appreciate the desire to kill AV14 tanks at a distance. But for my money, I'll stick with melta squads.

I totally, 100% agree. I apologize if it seemed like I was preaching that a Manticore was sufficient to reliably kill a Landraider. The point of the first post was just to show that it CAN kill a Land Raider, and is a very versatile platform. Considering it takes 18 Lascannon shots to reliably kill a RL, if you absolutely MUST bring that Land Raider down right now, a Manticore is a far better option than anything short of a Melta.

The way I see it, it's really nice if you manage to destroy tanks from long range. If your long range attacks bounce off or are busy killing light vehicles then your meltas come out.

Dexy wrote:Death by Monkeys, read the Manticore rules. The Manticore has 4 shots I.E. fires for 4 turns, but each of those shots has multiple hits, so on average you're firing 8 STR10 AP4 Pie plates a game, how often do games go on 8 turns? The damage output of a Manticore is impressive to say the least.

No, no - I understand the Manticore rules just fine. And Liquidwulfe's calculations takes those multiple hits into account in his analysis, so you're still only talking about four turns of shooting with it. The damage output is impressive, but it certainly has it's trade-offs.

Liquidwulfe wrote:I totally, 100% agree. I apologize if it seemed like I was preaching that a Manticore was sufficient to reliably kill a Landraider. The point of the first post was just to show that it CAN kill a Land Raider, and is a very versatile platform. Considering it takes 18 Lascannon shots to reliably kill a RL, if you absolutely MUST bring that Land Raider down right now, a Manticore is a far better option than anything short of a Melta.

And I really don't mean to slam your analysis at all - it's totally solid. I recently ran the tank-killing numbers for most of the new IG's toys, thus my interest in the subject - I just wanted to take take the analysis out a little further. The Manticore is a very versatile platform, I agree - and considering that IG lascannons just suck these days when it comes to killing AV14, long-distance tank-killing is a major problem for the Guard. But the relatively high cost for artillery (particularly when compared to something like the Griffon) and ammo restriction keep this from being a must-have unit. Maybe if your local metagame is heavy with Necron Monolith armies it might become a no-brainer (because not only is it good for getting rid of Necrons towards them fading away, but also because the S10 is better against the Monoliths than meltas).

I'm not trying to rain on your parade - I'm just increasingly of the opinion that for Guard to kill AV14 in a cost-effective manner, it has to do it close-up with meltas.