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I didnt know how big the manta is...then I jumped onto the FW website and holy cats, 2 feet long....not to mention a $1500ish price tag. My heart goes out to anyone thats actually had to assemble that monster as I can only imagine how much extra work had to go into it

I know, lol.

I am using Vassal 40K sprites artwork to play my home games of Epic 40K, printed at 6mm scale and attached to craft foam bases, making what are basically 2D Epic paper flats. I can fit two 6mm scaled Mantas on an entire sheet ofUS letter paper if I were to print/field them. If I were to rank up my entire 1000pt Epic SM army, a single Manta would hide them. Of course, it could also nearly carry all of them.

 agnosto wrote:
Yeah. Kind of amazing that ships designed to counter spaceships measured in kilometers are somehow incapable of destroying something smaller than a wraithknight. It's all about the narrative....and forgery... Or was that forging. lol. Easy to say that the war in the skies was a stalemate or other plot handwaving.

Warhounds, while large, are actually fairly maneuverable. And given that the Railguns are fixed on the aircraft that limits the angles they can approach for a strafing run. If the Titan maintains awareness he can quickly sidestep to put him off the attack vector or simply duck behind some cover. Warhounds aren't actually all that big, any decent sized modern building would hide one. Giant space buildings could totally block it.

The fact the Tiger Shark actually managed to kill, much less hit, a Warhound is actually remarkable.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 agnosto wrote:
Yeah. Kind of amazing that ships designed to counter spaceships measured in kilometers are somehow incapable of destroying something smaller than a wraithknight. It's all about the narrative....and forgery... Or was that forging. lol. Easy to say that the war in the skies was a stalemate or other plot handwaving.

Warhounds, while large, are actually fairly maneuverable. And given that the Railguns are fixed on the aircraft that limits the angles they can approach for a strafing run. If the Titan maintains awareness he can quickly sidestep to put him off the attack vector or simply duck behind some cover. Warhounds aren't actually all that big, any decent sized modern building would hide one. Giant space buildings could totally block it.

The fact the Tiger Shark actually managed to kill, much less hit, a Warhound is actually remarkable.

Fluffwise, The tigershark ax-1-0 was specifically designed to take out titans and the Titan-Killer Cadre is specially trained for this one mission alone not to mention that the aircraft has a networked markerlight which would aid in targeting.

That's in a vacuum; I'm sure titans have some sort of anti-air countermeasure or something... Fluff is dandy but the rules of the game are in the Tigershark's favor.

In the actual game's rules, sure i suppose, knights cannot retaliate with anything flashy, in cannon i guess the pilot could use aimbot :p

Nah guys, Heavy Stubbers have totally got this.

Yes. If all else fails, crash into it.

If an ork on a chopper can ride into the head if a Titan and kill it (actual GW fluff), this giant tau ship will certainly kill it.

So how many "Tau aren't strong enough" threads by the OP is this now?

As previously stated both of those weapon systems were designed to kill titans, however its not like Manta shows up, all Titans instantly die. The imperials have a pretty sophisticated ADN (air defense network) especially when the space marines and guard are working together. Long range heavy SAMs (hunter and manticore AA), short range IR SAMs (hyperios) and AAA of all kinds. Plus the fact that the Imperial are no slouches in the Air with many dedicated air superiority fighters and very experienced pilots.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
In Epic 40K (more accurately Epic Armageddon) both the Manta and squadrons of Tigershark AX-1-0's are deployed to wipe out enemy titans - both are quite damn good at it, too.

Mantas are quite a bit more expensive than AX-1-0 squadrons, but then again they have much more firepower output overall. I would prefer Tigersharks, but it's hard to refuse a Manta when while they are easier to damage, they can still take as many raw "wounds" as a Warlord titan before being destroyed. Plus it's easily just as funny to see a Manta model in Epic as in 40K, just for the sheer real estate they cover when deployed- they cover more area than a Warlord Titan model+base.

So in effect, yes a manta can destroy a Knight titan. The ease just varies depending on the rule set. In Epic a single Knight would barely make a Tau player sneeze if they had a Manta to send after it.

Didn't even know Tau were in epic at all.

Even without specialist ion and it transported troops, the manta is such a powerful model it will kill at least 5 knights.

5? More like as many as are being fielded.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Warhounds aren't actually all that big, any decent sized modern building would hide one. Giant space buildings could totally block it.

Giant space buildings are capable of hiding warlord titans.

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Warhounds aren't actually all that big, any decent sized modern building would hide one. Giant space buildings could totally block it.

Giant space buildings are capable of hidingImperator titans.

Fixed that for you.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Warhounds aren't actually all that big, any decent sized modern building would hide one. Giant space buildings could totally block it.

Giant space buildings are capable of hidingImperator titans.

Fixed that for you.

It depends.... Titan size varies depending on your source.

On one hand we have them sometimes shown as being rather modest in size, smaller than even Pacific Rim Jaegers.

On the other hand we have 'Are you fething kidding me' stuff, like here, a Warlord next to a mountaintop.



See the tiny ladder and the door it leads to at the front of the gun, below the barrels? This pic puts the Warlord at at least a kilometer tall if not more.

40K be crazy, mon.

In the future all designs will be based around online FPS engineering principles. It's not enough to have battleship scale weapons. You have have the ability to tea bag your opponents as well.

Back on topic, no, a Knight has little to no chance against a Manta. Their being the "new awesome coolness" does not save them from dedicated titan-hunting firepower from a giant flying war machine.

In Imperial-only terms it would be like matching up a Knight versus a Reaver Titan, or a Leman Russ versus a Baneblade. Not an equal match in the least.

Just for the record:
The Damocles Crusade took place 250 years before the Taros campaign where the Tigershark AX-1-0 was first used.

 Kroothawk wrote:
Just for the record:
The Damocles Crusade took place 250 years before the Taros campaign where the Tigershark AX-1-0 was first used.

I guess that explains why there weren't any there but it doesn't explain the riptides....ah well.

 agnosto wrote:

 Kroothawk wrote:
Just for the record:
The Damocles Crusade took place 250 years before the Taros campaign where the Tigershark AX-1-0 was first used.

I guess that explains why there weren't any there but it doesn't explain the riptides....ah well.

The new Warzone book is about the Tau Third Sphere campaign. Not the actual Crusade itself.

Also, the round from a Heavy Rail Canon is guided by a drone intelligence... Side stepping may not help.

I figured it was the range that made it a bigger issue. Yeah the Warhound may be fast and able to dodge when it sees something pointing it's direction, but if it can't see what's aiming at it then it really can't dodge out of the way.. From what I remember the Tigersharks were just barely visible on the horizon when the scout titan got taken out.

 Kroothawk wrote:
Just for the record:
The Damocles Crusade took place 250 years before the Taros campaign where the Tigershark AX-1-0 was first used.

The Damocles Book does not take place during the Damocles Gulf Crusade. Its the Third Sphere Expansion across the same region of space and in particular focuses on Shadowsun taking Agrellan from the Imperials.

NauticalKendall wrote:
Also, the round from a Heavy Rail Canon is guided by a drone intelligence... Side stepping may not help.

At the speeds the Railcannon is fired at, any guidance is going to be making only minor adjustments before it reaches the target. Anything requiring a major readjustment wouldn't be possible.

 Savageconvoy wrote:
I figured it was the range that made it a bigger issue. Yeah the Warhound may be fast and able to dodge when it sees something pointing it's direction, but if it can't see what's aiming at it then it really can't dodge out of the way.. From what I remember the Tigersharks were just barely visible on the horizon when the scout titan got taken out.

Yep, the fact that every flier has to sit on the same board in game has nothing to do with how the weapons would actually work in reality. I really have no idea what kind of strafing altitude an aircraft would fly at, but it's a good guess that the railgun projectile would move out at about 3,000 m/s (seriously, railgun projectiles move fast. The US Navy is currently testing one that would go about 75% of this speed, so for super futuristic 40k tech my speed is easily believable).

Also to be completely honest the aircraft could just fire the railgun from over the horizon by putting the craft into a climb and firing at a positive inclination. The fact the projectile is actually capable of vectoring its flight to some extent would really help that against a mobile target.

And now I'm really upset at how 40k handles aircraft... Battletech did it much better. You pretty much just had them do a strafing run once per turn and if you wanted dogfights the aircraft had their own map

The original apoc rules for aircraft were pretty good though.

 Grey Templar wrote:

NauticalKendall wrote:
Also, the round from a Heavy Rail Canon is guided by a drone intelligence... Side stepping may not help.

At the speeds the Railcannon is fired at, any guidance is going to be making only minor adjustments before it reaches the target. Anything requiring a major readjustment wouldn't be possible.

This nigh impossible to dodge...maybe an eldar revenant titan would be able to but nothing from Mars would.

 agnosto wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

NauticalKendall wrote:
Also, the round from a Heavy Rail Canon is guided by a drone intelligence... Side stepping may not help.

At the speeds the Railcannon is fired at, any guidance is going to be making only minor adjustments before it reaches the target. Anything requiring a major readjustment wouldn't be possible.

This nigh impossible to dodge...maybe an eldar revenant titan would be able to but nothing from Mars would.

Dreadknights probably could, considering they can teleport.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 agnosto wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

NauticalKendall wrote:
Also, the round from a Heavy Rail Canon is guided by a drone intelligence... Side stepping may not help.

At the speeds the Railcannon is fired at, any guidance is going to be making only minor adjustments before it reaches the target. Anything requiring a major readjustment wouldn't be possible.

This nigh impossible to dodge...maybe an eldar revenant titan would be able to but nothing from Mars would.

Dreadknights probably could, considering they can teleport.

True but they'd have to know the shot was coming. Libby cast prescience on it?

Epic is more realistic at portraying "tabletop" range than 40K scale, even at the truncated length "tabletop" can muster. Things in that game that are using weapons to kill titans (like Mantas with rail weapons) are regularly engaging at distances of 90cm, and that's in a game of 6mm scale.

The longest range a Knight can muster is a glorified battlecannon. When was the last time you saw a Leman Russ in a regular game of 40K take out a flyer- especially one that's a war machine?

Fluffwise anything smaller than a Reaver would have trouble defending against Tigersharks or Mantas without some form of plot armor. It's the same reason that theoretically a tank could hide from a Reaver in a building- but we all know that's not very likely to work.

 agnosto wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 agnosto wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

NauticalKendall wrote:
Also, the round from a Heavy Rail Canon is guided by a drone intelligence... Side stepping may not help.

At the speeds the Railcannon is fired at, any guidance is going to be making only minor adjustments before it reaches the target. Anything requiring a major readjustment wouldn't be possible.

This nigh impossible to dodge...maybe an eldar revenant titan would be able to but nothing from Mars would.

Dreadknights probably could, considering they can teleport.

True but they'd have to know the shot was coming. Libby cast prescience on it?

To be completely fair, depending on the relative heights of the aircraft or the titan (horizon visibility is a complicated subject surprisingly) the projectile could take some time to get on target (on the order of 15-45 seconds). That's absurdly fast considering the distances involved, but it is theoretically enough time to grab cover (assuming there's something titan sized to hide behind closeby).

Just for some perspective: imagine a projectile traveling as far as you can see in this picture in 15 seconds. That's pretty good.