So I've been using it a bit. I admit even with the change making the hero/barracuda/manta combo impossible I'm still all for dropping them. The general performance has been either excellent game long performance if used at the end of turn 1, but the rest of the army suffering more and coming appart quite a bit against enemy war engines. Or fantastic turn 1 destruction if dropped at the start but nearly always broken by end of turn one and often destroyed by end of game.
So some thoughts.
It can be made into 2 seeker missiles for no increase in points. Really it feels silly having the same seeker capacity as a piranha. Its got massive banks of missiles!
I would ask that it is considered to change the profile to 10dc and not fearless. Currently I drop it without fear of what happens when i break, it allows me to be very aggressive with it. I think it shouldn't be such an easy choice to drop it into the middle of the enemy army to take out the key threats to it, safe in the knowledge that breaking when surrounded is no great shakes. With this change I think it would actually be a tougher choice of when to drop. It would also make conventional deployment more attractive as currently, compared to say a Reaver that takes at least 28 hits to destroy, or a phantom that takes 27 hits to destroy - both of whch can be in cover and get -1 to hit - a manta goes down in 27 hits and of course gets hit a lot more due to not being in cover. Alsoo gives a different feel from the type of warengine other races use and adds int eh modern sensibility of preserving itself and a young race managing a very complex bit of kit in an environment that it wasn't designed for.
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