Wow, I can still barely believe it! From the beginning of me getting hooked into the hobby of Warhammer 40,000, and quickly starting to build a Tau Empire army (being my pride and job and largest army I have), I often looked at the pages for the Tau Manta on the Forge World website, dreaming of ever owning one of these beauties.
So at Games Day 2010 and after much fighting with myself to justify the decision, I finally had the pleasure in picking up two large boxes from the Forge World stand.
Again, being the geek that I am, I spent time at home unpacking all the components and checking against the inventory listing. For a good number of nights I ended up filing, sawing and cleaning up each component. The place was a mess of resin dust and clippings!
Finally, getting the chance and pleasure to sit down and built the monsterous craft, it was worth every moment of effort and every penny (even though it still stings a little!).
It's now all sprayed up, with some of the interior painted (the Command Centre and crew had to be painted before assembly). So it will take a while before I start to paint it fully, but it's still looking good sat on the gaming table in all it's glory :-D
Here's the blurb from the Forge World website:
The Manta measures 630mm/25 inches long and has a wingspan of 860mm/34 inches! Weighing in at 12.5 kilos/28 pounds, it weighs six times as much as a Thunderhawk Gunship, and that is before we put all the tanks and Battlesuits inside.
The Manta has been designed to have a fully working and detailed interior and has two decks: the upper deck is where you will find forty-eight seated resin Fire Warriors and six Gun Drones, overseen by a seated Tau Ethereal. They exit through doors that retract into the walls and then down to the landing zone via the hidden extendable ramp. On the lower deck are eight Tau Battlesuits, two Devilfish troop carriers and two Hammerhead battle-tanks. This whole deck drops down so the vehicles and Battlesuits can disembark and deploy rapidly. Further forward, towards the nose, four Air-Caste systems operators and two pilots control the prodigious amount of firepower that the Manta can bring to bear on the enemy: sixteen Long-Barrelled Burst Cannon, six Long-Barrelled Ion Cannon, two Heavy Rail Guns, Missile Pods and battery of Seeker Missiles as well as a Networked Markerlight turret. The kit includes two Devilfish, two Hammerheads, eight Battlesuits and six Gun Drones.
