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When was the Godwyn pattern bolter introduced?


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Ok, so in the current range of plastics we have the MKIII Godwyn pattern Bolter, for pre-Heresy and during Heresy we have Umbra and Phobos pattern bolters.

 

My question is:

 

when was the Godwyn pattern introduced? Was it during or post-Heresy? Did it arrive with MKV or MK VI/VII suits of armour?

 

Also some evidence to support your reply would be greatly appreciated :D

 

Thanks

Thanks for your reply LostBritain, I was curious to find out if there was any documented reports of when Godwyns were adopted, rather than the usual codex fluff of "currently used".

 

i had spent a long time searching the intermcweb way to find an answer and didn't get anything definite - I know those of us B&Cers that love a bit of Heresy modelling have been spoilt rotten in recent years with all the Heresy armour variations, heavy weapons and bolter variations, but... if Godwyns WERE adopted during the heresy, it'd be nice to include the odd one now and again in the force (just as you can, if you're not doing pure post-crusade/pre-heresy, use MKVI armour)

 

:P

I think it safe to say that they didn't appear until at least well after the mk7 suit was introduced as they were first used to equip the plastic minis of the current mk7 era. Prior to that the mk7 metal minis were equipped with something that was like a beefed up umbra with a wire stock, the bikes still have them I believe.
Horus Heresy: Collected Visions has several pictures of marines carrying Godwyn pattern bolters even in as early as mk4 armour.

It also has land speeders which according to the codex weren't around until after the heresy, I'm dubious about using everything in that book as canon. It has a lot of mk7 armour in it, even a bit of mk8 and also has the deoodorant bottle speeder in it. It's like Ibram Gaunt is described as a blonde man in the books yet every painting of him on book covers and the like shows him as dark haired.

 

Browsing through the book it would seem that the answer, well a possible answer, to my question is that it is a mk4 bolter.

Horus Heresy: Collected Visions has several pictures of marines carrying Godwyn pattern bolters even in as early as mk4 armour.

It also has land speeders which according to the codex weren't around until after the heresy, I'm dubious about using everything in that book as canon.

 

Thats a retcon of the current codex which post-dates the artbooks, Imperial Armour volume 2 stated that they entered service towards the end of the Great Crusade - Land Speeders being so named because they were developed from the STC fragment Arkhan Land discovered on the same expedition where he discovered the Land Raider STC (the latter factoid having first appeared in the Land Raider IA article).

 

As regards to boltguns if you treat the Godwyn as the retconned replacement for the previous design rather than an in-universe replacement then it makes sense to have it around pre-heresy, as the design sketches in the RT power armour article showed the Mk 5 & 6 with the umbra style whilst the Mk4 was shown with the same gun as the Mk7.

If Land discovered the speeder at the same time as the raider then the speeder would have been around since the beginning of the crusade as that seems to be when the raider started to be used and no one has said this. If the speeder was discovered at the end of the Heresy or even during it, it means that the raider was not used during the crusade which is not the case. It seems that he spent a lot of time scouring the archives and that the speeder and raider were discovered at different times. He was later killed down there suggesting that he made many trips to seek out lost lore in the underground archives.

 

I see your point with the bolter being a retconned proxy, though in this case the MK4 is closer to the umbra than the godwyn. Speaking of which, what is an ultima pattern because in the IA books it (and others) look like a godwyn. Would that suggest that godwyn refers to a more specific origin like a forgeworld rather than a basic pattern?

If Land discovered the speeder at the same time as the raider then the speeder would have been around since the beginning of the crusade as that seems to be when the raider started to be used and no one has said this. If the speeder was discovered at the end of the Heresy or even during it, it means that the raider was not used during the crusade which is not the case. It seems that he spent a lot of time scouring the archives and that the speeder and raider were discovered at different times. He was later killed down there suggesting that he made many trips to seek out lost lore in the underground archives.

 

The write-up in the Land Raider IA was that he was killed on his second trip to the Librarius Omnis, the Land Speeder and Land Raider STC's were both recovered during the first three year expedition however unlike the Land Raider which was near complete the Land Speeder STC was only a fragment - hence the centuries difference between the two going into production.

  • 3 weeks later...
Horus Heresy: Collected Visions has several pictures of marines carrying Godwyn pattern bolters even in as early as mk4 armour.

It also has land speeders which according to the codex weren't around until after the heresy, I'm dubious about using everything in that book as canon. It has a lot of mk7 armour in it, even a bit of mk8 and also has the deoodorant bottle speeder in it. It's like Ibram Gaunt is described as a blonde man in the books yet every painting of him on book covers and the like shows him as dark haired.

 

Browsing through the book it would seem that the answer, well a possible answer, to my question is that it is a mk4 bolter.

 

 

Land Speeders wee also in the "Tales of heresy" story involving the Word Bearers on the tech planet, so they do seem to have existed per-heresy.

I remember the previous pattern being .75 caliber and the Godwyn being .998 caliber. I'm sure it appeared post heresy. I have no sources to quote.

 

No, the Godwyn pattern is still .75 :/

 

 

The Bolter is a large, .998 calibre assault rifle.
LINK

 

The standard-issue .998 Godwyn pattern Bolter is the most characteristic weapon in the Space Marine arsenal
LINK

 

Variants

 

.998 Godwyn pattern (Current Space Marine pattern)

LINK

 

standard-issue .998 Godwyn pattern Bolter.
LINK

 

It was also described in WD as .998 But to be fair I could also link juat as many quotes saying that ".998" refers to the Model year/mark much like an M1911.

I happen to like thinking that a massive astartes weapon that reputedly weighs over 35kg could easily fire a 25.3492mm shell. But I'm a weapons tech and I can justify its possibilty in my mind :D

don't know where this .998 thing has come from, most likely used as a year designation and misinterpreted by other sources. Bolters have always been .75 calibre.

 

Your first link is the only one that mentions calibre, and describes a bolt as a "solid slug" then goes on to describe it being designed to "penetrate the target and then detonate." So I dont trust a link that contradiicts itself within the space of a couple of paragraphs.

 

Darkchild

It's like Ibram Gaunt is described as a blonde man in the books yet every painting of him on book covers and the like shows him as dark haired.

 

I've always found that ironic. The Ghosts series is a fairly very obvious analogue to the Sharpe series. Sharpe is described as having dark hair but is played by the blonde Sean Bean, and Gaunt is described as blonde-haired but is always portrayed as being dark-haired.

It's like Ibram Gaunt is described as a blonde man in the books yet every painting of him on book covers and the like shows him as dark haired.

 

I've always found that ironic. The Ghosts series is a fairly very obvious analogue to the Sharpe series. Sharpe is described as having dark hair but is played by the blonde Sean Bean, and Gaunt is described as blonde-haired but is always portrayed as being dark-haired.

I'm not the only one to notice the similarities between the Ghosts and the Rifles then ;)

 

I've always assumed that the Godwyn is post-heresy as it most closely associated with Mk.VI and Mk.VII power armour.

While Phobos is definitely Pre-Heresy ,Umbra was the norm during Rouge Trader days.

In reality they updated the bolter when they switched from the RT models to the plastic sprue we know today.

The newer stuff was able to hold alot more detail,so they made the bolter look more modern.

The original Umbra bit was awful in detail.

So to make it fit in my make believe world I think of the Umbra coming out first when the loyal Martains who were evactuated from Mars set up shop on Terra while working on the Mk7 suit.

After the seige and when they were back on Mars they put the plans for the updated Godwyn in Production on Mars.

Later on without the Emperor to inspire them to inovate the Mechanicus went with Godwyn and stopped producing the Umbra once the Machines that made them wore out.

Which would be why you see alot of them in the RT era 36m and not alot in 41m.

I'm not sure either way.

It's possible that there are Godwyn Pattern Bolters that fire bigger rounds.

I have a theory that maybe there was a time when a Bolter was a Bolter was a Bolter, and they were all .75 calibre weapons, but now we know that's not true anymore.

All Bolters aren't the same. An Astartes Bolter is much more powerful than a human Bolter. Where Bolters are concerned, this can pretty much only be attributed to the Bolt being fired.

It's possible that a human Bolter is .75 while an Astartes Bolter is .998. That would account for the difference between them.

*shrug*

 

Maybe the "Godwyn Pattern" is literally just a pattern and they make it in two different sizes...

  • 4 months later...

Sorry for this thread revival, but came across it while doing some googling and found myself wanting to say a few words. With no offence to brother LostBritain, but all those sources aren't exactly official.

 

However, if everyone would turn to pg. 11 of your Codex: Space Marines, 4th ed., you'd see a little man in the top corner, oiling up a bolter, and next to it it says, "998. model bolter: Godwyn pattern with ammo counter." Now, please note the fact that it's "998." and not ".998". "998." like a date ("998.M39," for example), and not like a caliber (which is stated as .75 in the same piece of text). Only case of seeing .998 in any official context is in the game Space Marine, where the bolter is called, ".998 Godwyn pattern bolter," while the manual gives both the bolt pistol and storm bolter, "standard .75 cal bolts." So, I'd personally chuck it up to someone mistyping it into the game, but that's just me.

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