concerning baneblade variants

[shaolin saiyan]

would there have been any of these new baneblade variants rolling around ruining peoples days during these times? iknow of the fellblades and in already have one, but i want to include a stormlord in my army.

[Grand Master Tyrak]

shaolin saiyan Posted Today, 03:06 PM

would there have been any of these new baneblade variants rolling around ruining peoples days during these times?

 

We know the Shadowsword has been around then from the quote "As long as there has been the Baneblade, there has been its sister, the Shadowsword". Other than that I don't think any other variants were present, seeing as they essentially all come from battlefield conversions of damaged Baneblades/Shadowswords with whatever replacement armaments are available. With much greater technological understanding, I doubt such hotch-potch repairs would have been necessary in the Great Crusade. You could get away with it by the latter days of the Horus Heresy though. Just treat all variants of the Baneblade/Shadowsword as being 0-1, and that would be fairly accurate.

[Pacific81]

Yes I agree.

 

Apparently, there are 'baneblades' and then there are 'Baneblades'. Reading the FW Imperial Armour pt1, the destructive capabilities of the super heavies are such that they are requested by nearly every imperial guard regiment. As a result, some forgeworlds offer there own 'baneblades' as incentives to imperial guard regiments to get lucrative contracts for their forges. However, only a few main forgeworlds (inlcluding Mars and some others) have the actual STC data to produce a 'proper' Baneblade. The imitation baneblades, while still formidable, often lack some of the extremely advanced engines, damage control systems (sometimes subbing in a battlecannon for the demolisher cannon etc.) Obviously compounding this, as time goes on, there are less and less of the 'original' spec Baneblades, as the technology to produce them is lost.

 

So, as GM Tyrak says, alot of the super heavies in the 40k timeline were formed as a result of subbing in other weapons systems for those which are not easily replaceable - the stormsword for example uses a plasma cannon, rather than the obviously more elusive volcano cannon.

 

I wouldn't say 'no, you definately can't take a stormlord in your pre-heresy force' (the whole field is pretty open ended after all, and we haven't been told no yet specifically), but for me it doesn't really fit in with the whole ethos of great-crusade era super heavies. They didn't need Stormlords, stormswords, hellhammers or any other weapons combinations, the Baneblades and Shadowswords that they had were far more effective at what they had to do, and from what we have read would have been more powerful than their descendants we know in the 40k universe.