Baneblade

Pew pew, bitches.

"IT IS THE BEEEEEINNNBLEEEEHHDDDEEEE!" ~ Captain Diomedes of the Blood Ravens.

The Baneblade is a big fucking Imperial tank Warhammer 40,000 universe, known generally for an impressive arsenal (OF GUNS), and disappearing en masse. Besides looking totally kickass, it stomps a lot of ass too. It is supposedly one of the oldest and largest tank designs used by the Imperium, despite that it's actually medium-sized according to the old Epic fluff. Then again, the "big" tanks in Epic were closer to moving, gun-mounting cathedrals. This is an actual tank. A manly tank. The manly tank.

Origins

The Baneblade first appeared in the Space Marine edition of Epic, where it was the Imperial Guard's standard super-heavy tank (it says a lot about the universe that there's such a thing as a "standard" one). This version was armed with a turret-mounted Battle Cannon (with the same stats as the one on the Leman Russ Battle Tank, despite the turret being the size of a Leman Russ), two Lascannons, and a bunch of dice worth of "Bolters" to deal with swarms. Despite obviously having a big gun on the lower hull, there was no representation of it in the tank's rules. Fluff described the hull as the size of a city block.

Being a standard version, there were variants at that point, and only three:

• The Stormhammer was effectively a moving fortress, and the precise armament is hard to say given the odd way the game treated "Bolters;" anything from an officer's Bolt Pistols to both a Leman Russ' Heavy Bolters was one attack dice with the same stats. This means this particular monster might have up to 24 Heavy Bolters in addition to two turrets with two battle cannons each. Basically, you park it a place and then forget about that place, since it is now Defended.
• The Shadowsword was one of two Titan-killing variants, armed with two Lascannons and some "Bolters" like the Baneblade, but with the rear hull built up into a giant casemate mounting a fixed Volcano Cannon, a giant laser weapon normally mounted on Titans.
• The Stormblade was a second variant of the fixed-weapon hull, and proof of how incredibly fucking HUEG the old Epic fluff made the Baneblade chassis; no fruity Lascannons for this one, the sponson weapons were a rack of missiles and a fucking Battle Cannon. Your main gun was a Titan-grade Plasma Blastgun with a Hellion anti-Titan missile slung on the top. Potential drivers had to produce written proof that they were bad enough dudes to save the President before they'd even be considered. Forge World makes a Stormblade, but it just sits there (eating an entire sack of dicks) because it knows it will never be cool enough to have a sponson-mounted Battle Cannon.

The Chaos legions have their own version called the Decimator, which is, in fact, an early pre-production model super-heavy tank that would later lead to the development of the Baneblade. It has replaced its bolters with lots and lots of Reaper Autocannons, resulting in it being far nastier against medium armor, though its main cannon is not turreted, meaning the entire tank has to turn to fire it.

Standard Template Construct

Two fun facts about the mighty Baneblade:

The first is that when the Adeptus Mechanicus discovered a STC printout with the designs for a Dark Age of Technology tank, the design was classified as a 'light battle tank.' In other words, the super heavy moving fortress of rape and death that we know as the Baneblade was basically the equivalent of a Leman Russ Battle Tank and that there might be an STC for an even more powerful tank lying around somewhere.

The second is that at the time of the Great Crusade, there used to be entire companies of Baneblades; nowadays, regiments with anywhere near a hundred Baneblades are virtually unheard of. Any regiment can count itself lucky to have just one Baneblade in their possession, and any regiment unlucky enough to lose a Baneblade will be unlikely to get a replacement, ever.

When people say that the Imperium is now but a shadow of humanity's past glory, they ain't kiddin'.

Warhammer 40,000

Scratch-built Baneblade models with homebrew (read: unfair) rules have been kicking around since roughly ten minutes after it was introduced in Epic, but it wasn't until Forge World that Games Workshop ever considered releasing an official model. The Baneblade is now available as a plastic kit from GW itself, along with a six-option kit for the casemate fixed-hull variants. The modern Baneblade mounts what's known as a "Baneblade Cannon" (representing belated recognition that the thing in the turret is really huge and so probably not a Battle Cannon) with a coaxial Autocannon, the same two Lascannons it always had, two Twin-linked Heavy Bolters in each sponson and another two on the hull front, and a Demolisher Cannon where the Mysterious Not-A-Weapon was once mounted. This leads to the well-known ELEVEN BARRELS OF HELL, though the vehicle has options for two more sponsons to be mounted (each with another Lascannon and Twin-linked Heavy Bolter) which raises the bar to seventeen. This option can only be taken on the GW plastic kit, as the old Forge World models were shorter, sillier-looking, and had no place for them. These were given their own pattern in the fluff, and thrust upon an unsuspecting Forge World (the other kind) to make and produce for all eternity.

The Baneblade is so awesome Commissar Yarrick uses a customized, "commandeered" Baneblade as his own transport. It's known as THE FORTRESS OF ARROGANCE and it makes Heretics and Xenos wet themselves. Although Yarrick did leave the thing parked on a world of Orks by "accident".

There are currently nine official variants, with the names being a nightmarish jumble of "Bane," "Sword," "Storm," "Shadow," "Blade" and "Hammer" to the point it's difficult remembering which is which. The Storm Hammer has apparently been forgotten somewhere along the line, most likely because GW would either need to make a separate twin-turret hull for a single model, or think of even dumber names for another six variants.

• The most common one, the Baneblade, uses the massive Baneblade Cannon capable of turning entire armies to soup with a single blast of its 10" template.
• The Hellhammer uses the shorter, but no less deadly Hellhammer Cannon which strikes harder but on a smaller area, giving exactly zero fucks about the cover in between.
• The Banehammer fields the Tremor Cannon, a weapon that can turn a huge segment of the battlefield into a patch of flying rubble, slowing down the enemy long enough for the rest of the army to destroy them. It can also carry around up to 10 models.
• The Banesword is a siege tank: its Quake Cannon can be fired as a barrage weapon at a massive range to destroy up to 15' away, use this to troll the WFB players on the next table.
• The Doomhammer is a tank-killer. With a modest 5" blast but stats befitting a tank hunter, the Magma Cannon can reduce all but the largest of titans to scrap. Can also carry 10 men.
• The Shadowsword is a titan-killer. With a D-strength Volcano Cannon, and the ability to upgrade its BS, the Shadowsword has a very good chance of bringing down even the biggest of titans. This guy is your friend.
• The Stormlord is designed with but one purpose: to skullfuck MEQs. With the most dakka seen in Imperial armies (hell, ANYWHERE) in the form of a Vulcan Mega-Bolter, the ability to have up to 20 of its 40 passengers fire from its fighting platform and the option to have four lascannons, this tank WILL FUCK SHIT UP. Point at something that's un-fucked, and the Stormlord will fuck it. With its massive cannon. And NO lube.
• The Stormsword excels at city fighting. Able to turn entire building blocks to dust with a single shot, the tank's main weakness is the short range on its Stormsword Cannon.
• The Forge World Stormblade is armed with a dumb-looking Plasma Blastgun and can go fuck itself a plasma-hurling death weapon that eats MEQ's, hordes, hordes of MEQ's, and even light tanks for breakfast. With better range than the Stormlord and a blast radius so big that Plasma Siphons feel even worse about existing, it excels at killing hordes of anything in Apocalypse. Even vehicle hordes.

Dawn of War series

DoW I

In the Dawn of War PC game the Baneblade is the IG super-heavy unit, equivalent to the Chaos Bloodthirster Daemon, or Eldar's Avatar of Khaine. Only it's better because instead of a winged Daemon cow or a big flaming homosexual in a loincloth, it's a fucking giant tank. It is literaly the best of these master units in the game, and it will go toe-to-toe with any other such unit and kill them before they kill it. Every time.

Its a well known fact that the crew members of Baneblades are chosen exclusively on the grounds of how big their balls are. This makes them able to shout "Failure is the weakness of the enemy!" "Releasing ELEVEN barrels of hell!" and "All guardsmen, Follow ME to GLOOREEEEY!" and being the only badass non-Hero unit in the entire Imperial Guard.

DoW II

The Baneblade was introduced in DoWII's latest exapnsion: Retribution, as the Imperial Guard's super heavy unit and one of the superunits, a title it shares with the Swarmlord, the Great Unclean One, the Avatar of Khaine once more (notably, the Avatar along with the Baneblade are the only returning superunits from the first Dawn of War series), and the Land Raider Redeemer (which is a different variant from the one in Dawn of War). It makes a centerpiece appearance in the second mission of the campaign where a renegade one chases your characters around while the crazy Scottish driver yells "IDDACARE WHOO YOU ARE! FELL DA MIGHTA'DA BANEBLADE!!" It then gets sodomized by rudimentary anti-armour turrets. On the upside, if you're playing space marines, you get to watch the Emperor's Fury running around a jungle path being chased by a giant tank (Benny Hill music optional, but encouraged).

It's still a moving fortress of rape that can decimate multiple tanks at a time and blow hordes of enemy units to bits. The main difference is that while its main weapons systems (the BEHNBLADE cannon and the Demolisher Cannon) do much more damage than before, they also require manual targeting to fire, have a longer cooldown, and cannot be fired at targets within minimum range. On top of that, this Baneblade has only TEN BARRELS OF HELL: the co-axial autocannon is there but is non-functional, which considerably reduces the overall firepower of this beast. Needless to say, the Baneblade requires a ton of support to use effectively, or otherwise it will be taken down in melee/at close range by just about anything.

The Baneblade has achieved a bit of a mini-meme status because of Captain Apollo Diomedes of the Blood Ravens, who has this tendency to scream: "EET IS THE BEEEEHHHHNNNBLLADDDE", in the most awesomely hilarious voice possible, whenever he sees one.

Fellblade

The Fellblade Super-Heavy Tank is a Space Marine tank based on the Baneblade chassis, used during the Horus Heresy. Like the Predator Tanks of that era, it has an unusual bubble-top turret, though it also built with a more durable internal structure and power plant (apparently, it took nearly thirty thousand years to get the secrets of arc reactor technology from Stark Industries).

Model and Rules

Games Workshop first released rules for Space Marine super-heavy tanks in a White Dwarf expansion to Space Marine (the game that later became Epic); these were the Glaive, the equivalent of the Baneblade, and the Falchion, a Shadowsword equivalent.

The Fellblade name first appeared in the Horus Heresy collectible card game, around the year 2005, though it would not receive rules until after the release of Apocalypse in 2007; inspired by the inclusion of Baneblades and other super-heavy vehicles in 28mm-scale Warhammer 40,000 games, Bell of Lost Souls wrote a datasheet for the Fellblade, based on the Baneblade datasheet. It was generally well-received.

Around 2010, some guy called Machinator wrote updated rules for four Fellblade variants - the Glaive, the Lance (anti-tank las/plas variant), the Broadsword (anti-infantry/fast dakka/flamer variant), and the Warmaul (anti-fortification giant Demolisher Cannon variant). He did this partially because it's cool, and partially to sell bits from his eBay store.

In 2012, Forge World released a line of books and models tying into the Horus Heresy era, and the Fellblade is part of their first wave of models, coinciding with the release of the first book, Betrayal. It looks like a Baneblade with smooth sides and a larger engine (presumably representing the ceramite armor and arc reactor, respectively), topped with a monster Deimos Predator Tank turret with a twin-linked rape cannon on the top. Marine fanboys everywhere wet their pants.

External Links

• Russia made a scaled-up RC variant. Makes me wonder what the US did wrong not to get one too.

Gallery

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  General Sturn likes it hot and heavy.

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  ALL GUARDSMEN!

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  FOLLOW ME TO GLORY!

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  Make a compensation joke at your own expense.

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  The track is broken and the sponson turret has a beef with the driver. This is an official image, by the way.

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  Yarrick's fortress of WHERE ARE MY PRUNES

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  13 Barrels of Hell for Marines.