Baneblade
The Baneblade is a big fucking Imperial tank. Known for an impressive arsenal (OF GUNS), and disappearing en masse.
The Baneblade is a super-heavy tank fielded by the Imperial Guard in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Besides looking totally kickass, it stomps a lot of ass as one of the bad-assest machines of war in the Imperial armories. It is supposedly one of the oldest, and largest tank designs used by the Imperium, simply because it kicks that much ass. Baneblade models for WH40k Tabletop have been available from Forge World for some time, but recently, GW has released a model of the Baneblade for the new Apocalypse expansion of the tabeltop. No modern Baneblade is more than a pale shadow of the manliness of the old Epic Baneblade, however, when Baneblades were so HUEG that a Stormblade had a battle cannon as a sponson weapon and they were described in fluff as being the size of city blocks. So there.
Besides being ECKSMETALBAWKS HUEG, the Baneblade is renowned for its shootiness; it can deliver death to the enemies of the Imperium from any of its weapon mounts including: a turret main cannon (causes much rape and rage) and coax autocannon, a secondary hull-mounted demolisher cannon, 2 turreted lascannons and 6 (well, 3 twin-linked) heavy bolters in side sponsons brings the grand total of ELEVEN BARRELS OF HELL for smiting enemies. And if that's not enough some fa/tg/uys like to add 2 more sponsons which would bring it up to 17 weapons of mass rape turning the Baneblade into a mobile fortress with no less than FOUR LASCANNONS BITCHES!!!!. If you didn't understand any of that, it means lots of death to go around.
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 deamon cow or a big flaming homosexual in a loincloth, it's a fucking giant tank.
This thing is so awesome Commissar Yarrick uses a customized, "commandeered" Baneblade as his own transport. It's known as THE FORTRESS OF ARROGANCE.
The chassis of the Baneblade, like all Imperial Guard tanks, has eight different variations. There are two main patterns, the Baneblade (as described above) and the Shadowsword, which forgoes a hull-mounted Demolisher Cannon for bigger, deadlier weapons. The Baneblade has two (Baneblade and Hellhammer) variations, and the Shadowsword has six (the rest).
- 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 with 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.
If you still don't get it, the Sword class generally sports weapons that normally go on titans; this also means that the super-heavy Baneblade STC and all of its variants are manly as all hell. They made this thing a super unit in DoW for a very good reason. A problem that the Baneblade faces is that most of its patterns have very similar names (the words Bane, Sword and Hammer are used in three patterns and Storm in two), meaning that you'll often look up which tank is which.
Its a well known fact that the crewmembers 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.
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.
