Predator Annihilators in the Horus Heresy

[Calibanite Knight Angel]

Hey all, I seem to remember the Predator Annihilator (the one with twin-linked lascannons) being established in the lore as not entering service until much later than the Horus Heresy. However Horus Heresy 2nd edition (as well as Legions Imperialis) seems to retcon that with twin-linked lascannons being a turret option for Predators. Has this seeming retcon ever been directly addressed?

 

Personally, I preferred when the Legions of the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy didn't have everything that the later chapters had, however I get the impression that they were introduced with Horus Heresy moving from being a wargame of what is historical within the setting (1st edition) to being historical in a meta sense, in that it is the place for "classic" space marines as they are phased out of the main 40k game (e.g. it provides players a place to take their Predator Annihilators which may soon be phased out of 40k, and whereas 1st edition mainly saw patterns of Space Marine power armour considered old within the lore, 2nd retconned the Mark VI into being front and centre as it is the oldest model of power armour as far as the models existing for 40k in the real world go).

[Xenith]

Tricky one, as I recall the space wolves came up with the 'new' pattern they dubbed the annihilator, and were weirdly surprised however well lascannons fit into predator turrets, however they earned the censure of the mechanicum, who said it was sacrilege, until they discovered an lost record of the twin last predator turret and cooled off.

 

I think it probably means the twin las pattern was probably rare, and most/all were destroyed by the end of the heresy/scouring.

Edited 20 hours ago by Xenith

[lansalt]

Like several other pieces of space marine gear/vehicles, it was supposed to have been introduced in M36. But when Forgeworld released the Deimos Predator for the Badab war they added a Annihilator variant, and then they reused it for the HH dioramas (Isstvan V, Calth) and background art even if initially had no rules.
Eventually they decided to ignore/retcon the previous lore and added it to the game. As Xenith said, the usual fan explanation is that in-universe the pattern was forgotten or deliberately restricted by the AdMech until the Space Wolves decided to revive it.

 

 

 

Edited Sunday at 09:29 AM by lansalt

[Blissful Brushes]

I think that with HH particularly you can pretty much pick and choose what you want to believe. With innovation being a murderable offence it makes sense that the vast majority of tech available now was available during the HH era and may have been rediscovered later, or mass production being initially based off surging examples of said tech.

 

Personally I think that sticking pretty much any weapon system on a tank chassis that fits and would be useful would have been a fairly common thing in the GC/HH eras.
 

IMO MKVII+ and primaris stuff is virtually the only stuff that’s off the table. I imagine that across a galaxy’s worth of war there are multiple groups making the same innovations independently of each other

[Doghouse]

23 hours ago, Xenith said:

Tricky one, as I recall the space wolves came up with the 'new' pattern they dubbed the annihilator, and were weirdly surprised however well lascannons fit into predator turrets, however they earned the censure of the mechanicum, who said it was sacrilege, until they discovered an lost record of the twin last predator turret and cooled off.

 

I think it probably means the twin las pattern was probably rare, and most/all were destroyed by the end of the heresy/scouring.

 

Yeah this is spot on, they created it during the Skarath Crusade using lascannons from Long Fang units. The only real anomaly is the naming because it was discovered to be a part of the original STC design so the name Annihilator must have come once the Ad-Mech established it as a design as a throw back to the predators of the Great Crusade.

So while this was created before the Heresy was really a strong setting it does nicely dove tail into the lore with the Space Wolves rediscovering it rather than inventing it themselves and as a testimony to the versatility of the STC templates.

 

Other vehicles have actually been retconned such as the Sabre and the Vindicator from being created during the Heresy originally but now were used in the Great Crusade itself.

 

The Mk VI being used as a main armour of the Heresy is a throw back to the original Epic Space Marine game set during the Scouring. At the time Mk VI was pretty much the only armour we had back in the days of Rogue Trader with the other marks coming later towards the very end of first edition so it's more of a nod to that era.

It was during this time in the late eighties that the armour marks came into being for the first time and MK VI became a late Heresy entry. I don't have any insider information but my personal theory is that the other marks were supposed to be concepts for what would become Mk 7 in much the same way the first two terminator armours were released along with the Artificier variants that were also released. Famously the very first Primarch model, Leman Russ, also wore Mk VI.

 

I think in the modern lore before Heresy 2.0 it was established that the Legions were testing the Mk VI before the Heresy actually happened, possibly decades before.

 

 

  

Edited 20 hours ago by Xenith
Typos in quoted post