Manticore Riders - How to counter them?

[Caridor]

I'm on the second campaign level and Manticore Riders seem to cut through anything and it's practically impossible to get a reasonable trade against them, even with Horned Gods.
The only thing I've found that works are the Serpents from summon gargatuan beast or simply overwhelming them with sheer numbers.
Is there a unit available to me that actually stands toe to toe with the bastards?

[Captain Deadpool]

have you used the call lighting skill of the horned gods? it does AOE damage and you can use it from very far

[Malaficus Shaikan]

Focus fire.

[Agamemnon-Hellmapper]

I used lightning on groups of two or more. Then overwhelm them one by one, stunned ones first, with lots of flying Tier3 units. And use flanking attacks whenever possible.

[NIKENIT]

Snakes. You can summon them pretty easily with 3rd level summon spell. Snake + beast enrage(hero magic) can kill 2-3 manticores without even healing. Also, monster-hunter hero skill.

[Azunai]

ther orc sorcreer hero can get a stun chance with all his ligthning attacks (ranged attack, chain lightning spell). on the western end of that map, two high elven towns join you when you get there. the high elf tier 2 priest unit (storm sisters) has a stun touch attack; you faction leader in this scenario is an archdruid; archdruid T3 support units (shaman) also has some sort of stun attack.
when a unit is stunned, it can't fight back and all attacks count as flanking.
other than that, brute force works if you have the numerical advantage. they can only retaliate a maximum of 3 times per turns, so eat the retaliation with some tanky unit(s) and then kill them with flanking attacks from multiple units.
also, on that map you can get T4 gold dragons that are about equal to manticore stat wise, so they can basically stand toe to toe with them.

[Undead Llama]

What Nikenit said; snakes will destroy a force of manticores. Horned Gods are equally as effective, but the drawback to fielding a large number of them is the high mana upkeep they have, which can eat into your overall income quite quickly.

Personally, I'd recommend also taking the Theocrat hero along your combat force; when Theocrats hit ~lv11, they can give all their units resurgance (think Phoenix; revive if they died during a combat you ended up winning)

[MURDER BONER]

We'll I was gonna say what Nikenit and mkunz2 said. Lightning snakes are the best I've found but all snakes can soak a bit of damage. Then you get dragons. But stuns/panics are your friends in this: Snake stuns, hero stuns, Storm sisters. I'f the army is very large (I'm talking 8+ Manticores here) I like to run some low level unicorn away from my main force to make some of them give chase. And for the love of god steal their killing spree buff asap in case something goes down. Orc Priest curse also works nice with the armour debuff. Even if it fails the unit you cast it on will have half move points so probably you will get some cheap shots at it before it reaches your main line. The one thing though that pisses me off about the manticores is the number they come in. It's like they never stop coming. It seems there are always at least 4 flying around trying to cap my unguarded towns.

[Mitth'raw'nuruodo]

I was just playing the second campaign mission, and pretty much had to rely on Horned Gods spamming to destroy the hordes of Manticore Riders the AI threw my way.

[Azunai]

depends on how fast you get there (and the difficulty level obviously). i played it on medium difficulty (default) and got to the warlord's realm around turn 40; at that point he had only a handful of manticores and i just recently summoned in my first 1-2 horned gods. wasn't that hard to deal with - i think i had to kill a grand total of 5 manticores on that map. the orc was defeated within ~10 turns. i guess if you get there later (or play on hard difficulty) it gets a lot harder.

[MURDER BONER]

Yeah it gets harder the longer you let the ai develop but it really doesnt help that they can train units much faster either. For every one unit I can train the ai trains 4. Playing on hard btw maybe thats why the ai cheats. Or maybe it's a class perk.

[GAME OVER]

I rushed hardcore on that map and I don't remember any manticores. I killed the orc and goblin fairly quick while teching up to spam horned gods asap and pump out fire immune dragons to finish.

I imagine they're hard as shrines of smiting. Those things suck when the opponent spams them.