How many Maneaters?

So another question (told you there would be more). I have three Rakham Maneaters, and the Ninja (my least fav GW Maneater model). How many would you play? I heard of a list somewhere using up to six of them, is that reasonable? I have the stuff to make two more out of bulls doing modifications.

I have had recently gotten a lot of mileage out of 4 maneaters with AHW running around and smashing things. Its a solid unit by itself. 21 Str5 attacks (possibly plus impacts, plus stomps, maybe plus posion) is burly.


6 is good if you ever want to try sniping (its about where you need to be to have any chance of sniping a 2 wound character or just as a stronger attack for.

More than six gets... really expensive really quick

I've run a unit of 12 to great effect. front row has Brace of pistols, second row has GWs, and the third row is naked. The unit has heavy armor and full command.

Expensive as all get out, but it sure clobbers heads. I give them Scout and Stubborn.

The unit took on an entire Daemon army basically by themselves. They killed 30 Daemonettes, herald of slannesh, a unit of 30 bloodletters, herald of khorne, and a horde of 50 Bloodletters before finally being destroyed by a LoC.

I never bothered with the GW maneaters. I used a converted Golfag model for my Maneater Champ and the rest were just converted ogres.

Ok,so if I were to make as many as ten that would be useful. I have seven on sprue bulls I could convert.

10 seems like a good number. However any maneaters after the second rank should be naked, no point paying for equipment that cant be used and die first.

My unit of 8 with FC has 4 xhw front rank and second rank has 2 great weapons middle and naked on the sides.  That's 21 attacks from front rank 6 great weapons attacks and 6 regular attacks.

I use stubborn which speaks for it self and swiftstride to increase the chance of not only making the charge but gives about a 30% chance of an ogre charge. When run with Dragonhide banner they are devastating.

It really all depends on what you want the unit to do - I know, thats a very generic advice but I'll try to break it down into the decisions I tend to have for ME.

First, they compete with leadbelchers and mournfangs for special point and space in the army. LBs tend to favor shooty/defensive styles of play or small units to support the offensive style play. MFs are pure combat and fast. ME tend to fall in between those two units in functionality (and price).
In my armies I use ME for support (scouting or sniping or poison) to fill particular roles. I think the forum is almost full of older ME threads on the roles they can fill, so if you got time looks them through, they are worth reading : ) Everybody seem to have a different opinion on the unit - they rock, thats for sure and the conversion work is fun : )

I think, that I have never used more than 8 models total in 2400~pt games (4 scouting + 4 vanguarding). my models are home-converted using bits from mournfangs mainly and (like the stonehorn/tusk thread) I would personally proxy my ME models, so eg. if I go for brace of handguns not all models would have that as you would them need 20+ types of ME models and that's just silly : ) I try to fill the front rank of the ME unit with the models with the given weapons (either Braces o' guns or ahw).

As said above, GW options are rare due to the price - they are after all max T4 W3 with heavy armor (and potentially magic), so keep them save or go all out for a unit of 10.

Naked is for casualties? Why not equip the two side guys with great weapons and get the additional attacks?

Because maneaters are made of glass and you are more than likely going to lose some to any shooting/early rounds of combat. You'll find saving points on giving equipment that just gets wasted on the way in is usually benefical

I'm converting 9 of them so in large games I can run a unit of three with BoP and a unit of six with 3xAHW and 3xGW. I don't see myself needing much more then that. You could always throw extra ogres into the back ranks for "vanilla" maneaters.

-GL

I always look into what combats my ME can handle and try to emphasize the Ini3 rather than ini2 of the rest of the lazy ogres... if you can hit before(!11!) or at least at the same time as the opponent you will greatly increase the damage output. Anything else is suicide for the ME.