I raised the question of what would even hypothetically counter Manticore back in one of the other threads about it, and nobody bothered to answer. My problem with Manticore, now as much as before, is that it’s so versatile, that every weakness is covered, or focusing on one weakness still leaves it the opportunity to exploit its other strengths. Drain and deny it mana? It only takes 9 to fill, so in a turn or two, it’s full again, and you’ve gained nothing. Misdirect it, and it still receives a monstrous attack boost, leaving you vulnerable to skulls, and you no closer to responding. Impervious flat out denies using status effects like entangle and freeze to counter its strengths.
Yes, Manticore can be countered if you’re skilled, lucky, or both. But the margin of error is very slim. You need to very carefully manage the board and your own mana, all to counter an ultra-rare troop, and if you get a bad board, you don’t necessarily have a choice which troops get mana.
I think it’s far easier to imagine possible counters to Bone Dragon. Troops with most of their skill budget in life, and no armor, would be useful as counters both to BD and True Damage. A spell to preemptively steal your own troops’ armor to power an attack or life gain would eliminate the skull spam. Pull to front + entangle would be a great counter, if they could actually make it work reliably. Removing or converting brown is good counter to the Deep Borer part of the chain.
All that said, here’s my current counter team. I’m sure it’s terrible, and could easily be improved, but it is working for me.
Abyssal Banner
Sylvasi
Lady Anariel
Spirit Fox
Succubus
Since Manticore is immune to entangle, as well as almost everything else via Impervious, and the attack boost gives me so much trouble, I went looking for a focused attack drain. Nobend Brothers are too unreliable, as well as anything that targets a random skill, like Ghiralee. Owlbear’s attack debuff is a non-scaling 2, and Ghoul’s a non-scaling 1. Warhound and Sylvasi are basically the only reliable, viable source of attack debuffs.
Sylvasi has Stealthy, a natural counter to a targeted drain like Manticore, can steal his attack boost, and converts blue to purple, giving him the ability to power other troops and gain an extra turn, if the board is amenable, providing an opportunity to counter-attack. His primary weakness is that he’s a fragile lead with no skull-damage-reduction trait. Putting him behind something may be a good strategy, particularly since he has Avenger, but the more you cast his spell, the more likely the lead isn’t going to die. I decided to look for life gain, and since Anariel takes purple, and generates green, she seemed like a good fit. It’s not a particularly good loop, however, because Sylvasi converts away one of the colors Anariel generates, reducing the chances of an extra turn, and increasing the risk of handing the enemy a lot of green.
Spirit Fox covers preventing Manticore from casting by simultaneously draining most of its mana, and removing one of its colors from the board. Needing and creating green for both Sylvasi and Spirit Fox is a liability, however, as that’s Manticore’s other color, so it still has plentiful opportunities to charge.
Succubus is there mostly as filler, to absorb extra red and purple, and to drain and potentially kill Bone Dragon. I considered several others to fill the slot:
Dark Song for extra targeted damage on Manticore
Faunessa is a natural counter to high attack troops, or attack buffs
Ferit would fill a very similar role as Succubus, draining and damaging Bone Dragon in the last slot
Keeper of Souls to maximize the use of Sylvasi’s stolen attack
Summoner for more life, as well as replacing Sylvasi if he dies
I went with Succubus for the flexibility, because having a second drain is useful when there are so many dangerous targets.
When the team works, it works very well, maintaining control over the board, keeping all your spells ready to fire, and mowing them all down with skulls, while being relatively safe from retaliation. However, it’s slow, has poor color coverage, and the board can be awfully uncooperative for either Sylvasi or Anariel’s spells, causing you to either hold off on casting, or losing control.