Tantalus, discuss

The rules are leak, iw ill try to be vague to not get in trouble, if i over step let me know.


S7, T7, 18 wounds, 3+ save

Guns, x2 Assault 6, S8 Dis cannons

Night shields, Hover, Enhance Aethersails, Open top,
Scything Charge: If it charged, ends movement, roll a D6 for each unit within 1", on 4+ that unit takes D3 mortal wounds
Chariot of Torture souls: If Warlord is embarked all units within LOS (not in cover) uses his Leadship
Explode (9" not 6" lol and D6 mortal wounds)

Cost: 2 Ravagers with Dis Cannons

Ok, imo i love this model and the rules are good enough to take with the cost, i would take this over 2 Ravagers, but i wouldnt put anything to costly in it to not make it more of a threat than it already is, i honestly was thinking of just my WL and some cheap Court or Kabal unit.

For me 12 S8 shots in INSANE !!!!!, sense its only 2D each tho, but on average you are doing 8 wounds per gun (6 shots, 5 hits, 4 wounds 2d each).


Options to use it:

Only WL to make it less threat
Trueborns x2 for 4 DL's or Scourges for 4 DL's make it a HUGE gunboat
Grots large unit 6-7 man size with HQ
Beast Master for Large Beast pack units (i want to try this lol)

Thoughts?

amishprn86 wrote:

The rules are leak, iw ill try to be vague to not get in trouble, if i over step let me know.


S7, T7, 18 wounds, 3+ save

Guns, x2 Assault 6, S8 Dis cannons

Night shields, Hover, Enhance Aethersails, Open top,
Scything Charge: If it charged, ends movement, roll a D6 for each unit within 1", on 4+ that unit takes D3 mortal wounds
Chariot of Torture souls: If Warlord is embarked all units within LOS (not in cover) uses his Leadship
Explode (9" not 6" lol and D6 mortal wounds)

Cost: 2 Ravagers with Dis Cannons

Ok, imo i love this model and the rules are good enough to take with the cost, i would take this over 2 Ravagers, but i wouldnt put anything to costly in it to not make it more of a threat than it already is, i honestly was thinking of just my WL and some cheap Court or Kabal unit.

For me 12 S8 shots in INSANE !!!!!, sense its only 2D each tho, but on average you are doing 8 wounds per gun (6 shots, 5 hits, 4 wounds 2d each).


Options to use it:

Only WL to make it less threat
Trueborns x2 for 4 DL's or Scourges for 4 DL's make it a HUGE gunboat
Grots large unit 6-7 man size with HQ
Beast Master for Large Beast pack units (i want to try this lol)

Thoughts?

Sounds fantastic against necron vehicles! The special rule makes it great for razorwing beast spam! With guns that good I'd use it as a gunboat not as an assault transport.

You forgot about his strongest rule.

With those aethersails when Tantalus advances it doubles it's movement.

Even just for that I'm buying it. It is amazing!

It can hit very hard but I'd expect every enemy anti-tank gun to be aimed at it and I think 18 wounds is on the lower side given that fact. Would be good to support it with reapers, ravagers and our flyers so that their anti-tank gets overwhelmed.

As for uses put a Succubus with splintermind in there and we now have a leadership 10 army.

It's just awesome, you can zoom it into enemy lines pretty much wherever you want with a 32" range and still shoot since weapons are assault. I wouldn't be too shy about its use, fill it with grots, sslyths or whatever it's your flavour and drive it like a wedge in your enemy. If, and it's still a big if with T7 and a 5++, it goes down then you are face to face with whatever enemy units you wanted in your next turn, otherwise multicharge using the massive size to your advantage, eat overwatch and follow up with the troops. Sure it will attract a lot of fire but you have to commit to take it down in one turn, if it happens I'm pretty sure you'll still have a few ravagers/razorwings/whatever to take it from there.

I wouldn't use it as a gunboat since you can do it cheaper and lose a lot of potential, shoot, deliver, assault, fall back and shoot some more.

I've always wanted an excuse to buy it, now I definitely have one.

I said it has Aethersails

I like the keep it cheap way.

Does anyone happen to own one? If so, would they be able to give me some dimensions? The FW sculpt is great, but there is a great conversion opportunity (all of my crap is converted, to one degree or another) to be had.

I was thinking the bottom 3/4 of a Raider on each side , and combine the back 1/4 of both raiders (with some other platforms) to make a bulky "bridge". Eldar Nightspinner Doomweaver guns (DE'ed up) would probably make good bases for the guns.

If you can't get the dimensions before I'm home in 14 days I'll tell you. But let me say it's bigger than you expect.

RoadRageRob666 wrote:

Does anyone happen to own one? If so, would they be able to give me some dimensions? The FW sculpt is great, but there is a great conversion opportunity (all of my crap is converted, to one degree or another) to be had.

I was thinking the bottom 3/4 of a Raider on each side , and combine the back 1/4 of both raiders (with some other platforms) to make a bulky "bridge". Eldar Nightspinner Doomweaver guns (DE'ed up) would probably make good bases for the guns.

You've probably seen, but the FW page for it shows a size comparison with a raider and also states that it's about 11" long. When you see it in the cabinet at the FW shop it looks roughly the size of two raiders side-by side with an extra u-shaped bit added to the back, and the blades hang almost to the ground on a standard flying base.

I just played this bad boy in a tournament today.. and boys, lemme' tell you.. it's great.

During all 3 games I played today, my opponents shot almost literally everything at it until it died (or in 2 games in which it survived all the way to the end).  But it tanked so many shots, it was almost unbelievable.  For the points, it's a great fire magnet that has a little less survivability than a Wraithknight, but with more utility in my opinion.  

Here's the pro's as I see them..

1.) Great firepower
- Whatever it looked it, it killed, or grievously wounded.  On turn one of my first game, I shot everything into a Stormsurge, crippling it with 8 wounds and then doing a further 8 with my Reaper, making it almost combat ineffective.
- The fact that it has a good rate of fire and that it's weapons are assault, allow it to move incredible distances, and still lay down a wealth of pain.  It's easily one of the most mobile gun-platforms in the game. (Seeing the look on someone's face when it literally advances half-way across the table and then unloads 12 shots of serious pain into someone, was pretty hilarious)
2.) Very little degradation with damage
- Even after having sustained a good amount of damage, it doesn't become terrible.  It's movement is always good, BS is always decent, and always has a good amount of close combat attacks. No matter how damaged it is, it's in the fight til the bitter end.
3.) Moderately good close-combat
- It's not the best at close-combat, and the dire scythe blades leave a little to be desired in the damage section.  I kind of wish they made them do more than a single wound, but even then.. Because it has the fly key-word, it can still swoop in and do some decent extra damage to a Leman russ or the like, and thus force it to have to fall-back from combat and not shoot next turn (at the penalty of eating over-watch.)
-Even it's close-combat skills don't degrade nearly as bad as our other options, and gets way more attacks than any of our vehicles.
4.) Survivability
- It has the highest toughness and best armor save compared to all of our vehicles.  And believe me, it'll tank some shots.
5.) Transport capacity
- Last edition, having 16 slots was pretty useless unless you planned on fielding a big kab squad, a big court, or a super best friend's club.  In this edition, you can mix and match what's occupying it.  So you could have 3 squads of blaster-born (a little pricey this edition), or maybe 6 splinter cannons on trueborn, or hell.. why not 3 squads of 5 incubi and Drahzar along for the party?  My point is.. the high transport capacity makes this model infinitely more valuable now.


Cons

1.) Pricey as frak.  
- It dishes out some good shots, but it can be hard to justify
It's big and bulky, but that just makes it easier to allow for disembarkation options, especially considering that you don't use the model's base.

2.) The melee weapons are a little lacking.
- Sure it hits hard with a high strength, decent AP, and the chance for a few mortal wounds when you charge.. But it's definitely not going to be scrapping enemy knights or other targets.  


All in all.. I really like the new Tantalus.  It truly feels fluffy, and honestly makes me wish that all of our boats could advance like this thing does.  It's actually.. "blisteringly fast", which makes it awesome.  Hopefully I'll get a few more games in for them, but here's a few pictures from today's tournament. (It was an allies tournament 2v2's with a friend, and my buddy decided to bring his Krieg, seeing as how the dex just dropped for it Friday as well.  We placed 3rd out of 8, namely due to the fact that everyone ranked our army fluff/theme as utterly terrible, which I can live with.) Hope you enjoyed!

Apologies for the partially painted models, these are still a long way from completion!  But hopefully I'll have them there soon!

TYVM for the info. Cant wait for mine to come in this week or next (i ordered last week)

Also... a Haemonculus makes the Tantalus T8.. making it even more survivable against massed bolter fire and such.

I'd love to read the battle reports of that tournament

Thanks for the write-up, Arani. Cool to see the Tantalus is as potent in theory as in practise. Reading that makes me want to try a triple Tantalus list that I wrote for fun on the tabletop:

Spoiler:

The theory is pretty simple - deploy with the Haemonculus outside of the transports but within 6" of all three in order to boost their toughness for alpha-strike protection against knights or in case you get seized on (you should go first most of the time, but as far as I can tell there's no penalty for starting on the table and embarking T1 provided he's sufficiently covered against shooting).

Turn one the Haemy jumps in and you boost across the table to put three super-tough transports in the opponent's face. 40 S8 shots bombard anything tough and threatening while the missiles and splinter cannons soften up hordes.

Turn two three big squads of Wyches can jump out and have a very good shot at charging whatever they choose. Generally they'd go after horde units or try to tie up as much shooting as possible with no escape depending on the opponent's army.

That's the theory, anyway. Unfortunately I don't have the models to test this for real, but I might look at working towards it because it looks like it'd be both fun and powerful.

i was thinking running one with 2 squads of trueborn and a squad of incubi with an archon

So i know there was another post about this but for some reason i looked at it a and thought of the following things.

Threads merged. If there's a recent, existing thread please use it - Count Adhemar

- keeping our leader on board lets us run beast packs without a leader (although the leader til helps)
- we can run MSU squads and still have a chance to go first.
- there's a place for our archon/succubus/or other leader
- the thing is pretty tough with a 3+/5++ and 18 wounds not going down easy
- and advance the battlefield


these all seem like huge bonuses to our army the things i wish was made with the initial release of the index.  idk at least it fits my play style much better than what DE was changed into. Im sorry still not happy with our raiders costing more and being harder to kill really liked the glass hammer style.  (not saying that this is a glass hammer but it does help us go first with MSU style play that i liked)

Thoughts?

Beastpacks are much better with Beastmaster Rerolls IMO.

Tantalus is great but its tricky as you tend to put too many eggs in one basket...

i was thinking it would last a turn or 2 enough to get you to go first and have great positioning. even so its 4 deployments at once

I ordered one from FW. I think it will be a great distraction carnifex. It will either wreck face or get focused down quickly either way helps me out.

It represents A LOT of your AT, its not there to last 2 turns and go POW! Thats its biggest problem. Its a transport AND gunboat. By shooting it, the enemy damages your AT, your delivery method and your overall speed for everything inside.

Its a priority target while you do not want to be a priority target. Its 15 lance 30 overcharged plasma shots to bring it down, so its not THAT tough to bring down. Less than LR actually, but its deffo better than LR.

I bought two... definitely worth the points, moving 32"? hell yeah, you can snipe characters behind enemy lines with some shenanigans. 12 S8 shots that are assault? hell yeah. Smashing it multicharging things due to the sheer size and actually killing something? hell yeah.
And raiders are awesome, what's not to like? If they were cheaper we would be spamming the crap out of them... previous editions the DE were glass cannons without the cannon, now things still die easily but definitely bite viciously.

Snipe characters? Have you seen how big it is? I doubt that you will be able to fit it behind enemy lines to snipe stuff. But otherwise yea. Its a great boat.

Just the tip.

Drugo wrote:

Just the tip.

Yup. Just jking.

The Tantalus is incredibly survivable. During my first 8th edition tournament, mine took an entire 2000pt army's worth of shooting during turn one, and only after all of it did the thing finally die. But not before shredding a Tau Stormsurge down to a quarter of it's wounds. For the points, it's definitely worth it. It's the closest thing we have to something with a Knight stat-line, offers the most transport capacity, some of the best killing power, the most movement (besides Flyers), and it just looks amazing.

My only gripe with the Tantalus this edition, is the lack of damage it's dire scythes do. Don't get me wrong, with 6 attacks at S8, you're easily tearing a few things apart.. But just 1 damage a piece?