Superheavy Battle Tanks of the Legiones Astartes (Warhammer 40,000 & Horus Heresy Lore)

During the Hian years of the Great Crusade, the Legion estardis marched into battle alongside a vast array of armored fighting vehicles. Many of these tanks and machines persist within the chapters of the modern adeptus estardes, but many more are lost to history. Relics of an era long by gone. From antigraph light vehicles to super heavy tanks, the legions of terror supported their shock assaults with whatever technology the rapidly expanding Imperium could furnish them with. Constantly shifting tactical face of the crusade required adaptability from its soldiers, but often presented them with problems that required wholly new devices and weaponry to solve. Recovered technology was rapidly assessed by the mechanicum of Mars with military applications prioritized above all others. Such were the legacies of the lost dark human past combed through for anything that could assist in the conquest of the human future. With the greatest technological minds of the age bent to overcoming their mysteries. Know then that this is a record of such technologies of war machines that embody the astart's tenants of overwhelming force and destruction. A record of the super heavy tanks of the Legion Aartis. One of humanity's most enduring legacies will forever remain the standard template construct or STC. Created in the dark past of the age of technology, the systems were born across the human galaxy by colonists and indeed revolutionized that particular chapter of humanity's stellar exodus. Within each was held the design schematics for effectively every device or piece of technology these colonists would need. From comms arrays to vehicles to atmospheric converters to portable shield webs and innumerable other examples. STC's provided every colonial effort with anything settlers could require to establish themselves and adapt to their new surroundings without the need to pack the colony ships full of redundant or useless technologies just in case. They could additionally respond to the demands and requirements of the colonists themselves, producing new devices based upon combinations of or iterations upon the blueprints their data cores held. STC's ensured that when human colonies interacted with one another, they did so with the same systems of communication, of space flight, of resource extraction, all along standardized lines. Discoveries or developments in technology produced by STC's were likewise completely transferable to other STC's. A compatibility that allowed for a staggering almost exponential level of technological discovery and progress out of what was initially a simply very robust and basic system. With the coming of the age of strife and the sundering of humanity's worlds from one another, many civilizations were forced increasingly to rely upon their STCs, even if the destruction of supply chains hampered their effectiveness. Others moved away from their use, adapting to their situations on their own or incorporating xenos technology into their societies. yet more tragically lost their STC's through accidents or simple loss of functionality. Yet endure through old night, the STC's did, and with the coming of the Imperium and the Union of Terror and the Mechanicum of Mars, the devices found a new position of primacy in mankind's rising status quo. The greatest strengths of the technology produced by STC's was ever their reliability and ubiquity. The power plants they produced, for example, could power an astonishing array of devices and systems and were likewise adaptable to multiple fuel sources. Likewise, armor plating for vehicles could be constructed with locally available materials. The STC having focused on building resilience through design rather than the natural qualities of specific metallic compounds. Standardization of components was likewise a boon. Spare parts were always available and if needed could be scavenged or cannibalized from damaged or destroyed equipment. These combined factors placed STC derived technology at the highest level of desiraability for the Imperium of Man. The Emperor, after all, had a galaxy to conquer, and he clearly intended to do so as quickly as possible. The unification of Terror and the preparations of the Great Crusade scaled up the Imperium's requirements for arms and armor by orders of magnitude. And in their efforts to match capabilities with demand, the Emperor and his war council brought what STC systems Terra possessed to the four. It was however not until the Treaty of Olympus, the accord conducted between Terara and Mars, that the needs of the Imperium could truly be matched. Prior to the Accord, the STC's possessed by Terra were few and while robust, often incomplete, meaning that the throne world's technological base could only ever scale so far. Mars, of course, changed this, bringing a whole array of STC patterns previously lost to Terra into the picture, complemented by the Mechanicum's massive industrial production capabilities. While some were relatively minor, others were of extreme note, such as the armored fighting vehicle named for the technoarchchaeologists that discovered it, Land's Raider. As the Crusade expanded beyond the light of Saul, yet more systems were discovered. with both the Imperium and Mechanicum ensuring that the intact recovery of STC's was granted extreme priority. Some were handed to the priests of Mars gladly, a delighted gift for their reunion with long-lost kin. Many others, of course, were only pride out of their keeper's hands with blood and violence, the cost of defiance against the emperor's compliance. Some, indeed, were damaged or destroyed during compliance operations. each a potentially massive loss for humanity, yet considered by the emperor the high price for ultimate victory. Ultimately, the crusade was a period of staggering technological advancement for humanity. And given the nature of the imperial regime, almost all of this advancement was turned to military means for the imperial army and more predominantly the legion estates. During the early Crusade years, the term superheavy was a designation that covered a wide array of armored fighting vehicles. It was not technical as there was no strict limit on tonnage a tank had to exceed before the term was used, but the colloquialism nevertheless found its way into common military parlance out of necessity, as the army and the estates both required a term to refer to the heaviest armor marks available to them. Initially the purview of heavy armor was largely governed by the exertus Imperialis. Given how the military role of the early legion estates had developed the task of heavy armor support was comfortably granted to baseline humans who did not require specially designed vehicles to accommodate their stature or abilities. Early trial operations with certain legions in the use of the Malcador or Baneblade Superheavy tanks, two of the most robust and common examples of vehicles from the dark age of technology, were determined to lack the flexibility, speed, and durability to adequately support the type of warfare that Aardis engaged in. Rapid deployments, spear tip operations, and shock assaults were often conducted at speeds that the lumbering bane blade could ill manage, meaning the estates required vehicles designed and adapted for their purposes. This they possess in smaller, lighter, or transport forms. The Predator, Landraider, andRatos main battle tanks were main stays of early Legion heavy armor, but the discretion to deploy heavier and more powerful and better equipped tanks was still frequently demanded by certain primarchs. Emerging to fill this void was a figure of Argonos crown, a mechanic magos based on the forge world of Feton. The forge had persisted through the age of strife despite frequent existential level threats, making its culture bellose and stubborn traits shared by both its tagmata and attendant Titan Legion, the Legio Osid. The independent streak combined with fat and status as the second most productive forge in the Imperium after Mars frequently set it at odds with the demands of the cinnid on the red planet. But Major's Crown represents its most storied example of collaboration after the creation of the Leman Russ battle tank for the Imperial Army. A member of the Macrotech order, tech priests whose persuasions lie in the creation of massive artififices and gigantic devices, Crown was renowned for the development of armored fighting vehicles of particular potency, admirably serving the needs of Fatan's Tagmata. Following the forg's hard one submission to the will of Mars, the crown would often accompany expeditionary fleets of the 16th Legion Luna Wolves to better field test their latest creations, earning the respect of the legion and its primarch, Horus Lupal. They were soon appointed to lead a conclave of magi drawn from several forge worlds with the mission of developing new superheavy vehicles for the legions exclusively constructed for the use of a startis transhuman physiology. Records surrounding this conclave are incomplete. We know little of Crown's contemporaries, save for curious appendices that note several suspicious deaths occurring during the initial intake of appointees. As for the fate of Crown themselves, as we have no record at present on which side of the heresy they would ultimately fall on, we can only speculate. Nevertheless, the work of this conclave is responsible for the development of many of the Legion Startis most devastatingly effective superheavy tanks, behemoths of war that would go on to dominate the field of battle across the galaxy during the Great Crusade and the subsequently the Horus Heresy. The fell blade superheavy battle tank was the result of some of the macrote conclaves first efforts and a product of its early political tensions in the crusades middle years when the need for a heavier armor mark than the mainstay Kattos tank currently filled had fully emerged. Major crown was tasked with gathering the greatest armor designers in the Imperium. Having been awarded the lead role in the conclave by the mechanicum itself, an appointment likely a token thrown to Feton from Mars. Opposition to Crown's appointment from four other major forges, each proposing their own Majos macrotech to lead the conclave provided an opportunity in and of itself. The deadlock and endless political bickering, could be broken by a simple design challenge. The Magi would be tasked with producing a superheavy battle tank that eclipsed theratos in durability, firepower, and most importantly, versatility. Through assessment of the most advanced technologies the Mechanicum currently possessed, combined with what the Imperium had on hand, the process was fraught with infighting. Two of the competing leaders died under extremely suspicious circumstances, and there were clear examples of sabotage across a dozen research laboratory accidents, although no charges were laid or perpetrators discovered. Three designs were ultimately submitted, a trio of prototypes, all revolving around the same core principle of utilizing existing tank chassis. Through the personal intervention of fabricator general Kelbore Hal, the proposal submitted by Majos Crown was selected. Based on the venerable Baneblade chassis, the resulting fell blade was in some ways difficult to differentiate from its predecessors, but the decision provided a stable base upon which to iterate and one to scale to full production rapidly and galaxywide. Around the mainblade chassis, Crown developed a metaclass alloy shell, layered and sloped in a manner to match the tank's already formidable durability, but weighing less than half of its progenitor's tonnage, massively reducing the weight of the vehicle and allowing for a commensurate increase in speed and maneuverability. Its power plant was replaced by an automantic arc reactor, a variant of the power plant found at the heart of the most advanced Aardis war machines, affording the tank a functionally infinite operational duration, limited only by the needs of the crew themselves or the need to rearm and repair critical systems. Crucially, while the operations of the subsystems and those commonly shared with the Baneblade were made comprehensible to Legion Tech Marines, the secrets of manufacture and maintenance of the most advanced systems were retained as proprietary by the Mechanicum. A blatant move, yes, meant to ensure the reliance of the legions upon the magi continued, but one brushed aside by the Imperium for the sake of political expediency. The Felblad's iconic primary twin accelerator cannon main weaponry was developed by the forge world of Tigris based on ancient STC patterns contained within their data looms. Accelerator weaponry wielded a complex system based upon the principles of vacuum to create an overpressure effect that propelled shells through the barrels at speeds impossible to manage for conventional cannon. This in turn meant a significantly reduced need for chemical propellant in the charge, meaning each shell could carry far more explosive payload. This in turn meant the lack of explosive force mitigation within the barrel itself produced far greater stability making the guns phenomenally accurate especially over long distances where legionnaire estee battlefield acumen as well as advanced targeting systems could provide rapid and devastating firing solutions. The 10th Legion Iron Hands, for example, were early adopters of the Fellblade and during the Horus Heresy had developed the experience of their tank crews to such a degree that they could score pinpoint hits on the cockpits of traitor titans at maximum range. This was further augmented by an advanced munitions loading system, allowing for rapid selection of shell type and loadout against foes with inhuman levels of mobility, such as the Aldari. The startis commanders could now select and fire the appropriate ammunition type in the split seconds they had to engage the foe. The fell blade mounted several other weapon systems, any of which would have counted as the main weapon on a smaller vehicle. Lower on the hull below the main accelerator cannon turret was a demolisher cannon typically seen on the Vindicator variant of the Rhino chassis. Often wielded as a siege weapon, the forward-mounted firing arc it commanded on the fell blade provided a potent secondary punch to the efficacy of the main turret. While close engagement fire was permitted by twinned heavy bolters for anti-infantry engagements. The Fellblade sponsson weapons afforded a battlefield commander a degree of flexibility as they could be retrofitted and swapped out for several weapon marks depending on the role the individual tank had been selected to fulfill. The default option was the quad laz cannon mounts designed to supplement the armor killing potential of the accelerator cannons finishing the job the main turret had started. Should extreme range not be counted upon, these could be traded for laser destroyers. Sacrificing the range of the last cannon for increased potency, and against an infantry focused enemy, Gravis heavy bolter arrays would defend the tank against swarming foot soldiers. These weapon options combined with its main systems saw the Fellblade initially deployed as an infantry support vehicle, a single superheavy tank to supplement the firepower and lethality of a startis divisions, as well as providing insurance in the event of the emergence of an especially armored opponent. As a great crusade proceeded, the increased quantity of the tank amongst many of the legions allowed their deployment in whole squadrons, typically as part of a larger armored fighting company. Such formations were relied upon for their ability to fill almost any role demanded of them and to overcome nearly anything ranged against them. The Dave Superheavy special weapons tank was initially one of the early Conclave prototypes that was rejected. Despite the capabilities the blueprints promised and the political boon of mounting and displaying the height of the mechanic's proprietary technology, it was deemed too unwieldy and demanding for early consideration. The near entirety of these issues sprung from the impressiveness of its main weapon, the Vulite Carinade, a massively upscaled version of the Martian heat ray weapons that had themselves once been in consideration as the main weapon for the startis legions. The Vulite Carinade was stricken with the same issues its smaller iterations possessed. While it boasted phenomenal killing power, it required significant maintenance by those with specialized knowledge. Additionally, the power requirements for such a weapon, and the need of such systems to be contained within an armored tank made it unwieldy and slower than the Fellblade. It was originally deemed unsuitable for the rigors of the Great Crusade, but thanks to the massive success of the Felblade, the blueprints were reopened for consideration. Several legions, notably the 18th Salamanders, Fourth Iron Warriors, and First Dark Angels, expressed the need for a Fellblade variant that was specifically designed to combat infantry, and the Conclave bent their efforts to fulfilling this. Once again, Majos Crown personally strove to adapt the fellblade chassis to the Glaive proposal. Thanks indeed to the Metaplas alloy developed for the first Superheavy, the weight considerations of the original Glaive pattern were solved almost immediately. The demolisher cannon was removed thanks to data provided during initial field tests with the Salamanders. It was unnecessary, the Legion remarked, for the role the new tank would perform, and the additional space provided allowed for a reorganization of the internal crew compartments for better targeting. It likewise allowed for the installation of advanced and redundant capacitors and cooling systems, reducing the risks of issues caused by the intense flow of power required for the Vulkite weapon. The reduced space did mean the amount of solid shot ammunition for the heavy bolter was reduced, but this was deemed of little concern given that that system was a weapon of last resort against whatever infantry somehow survived the lethal energy beams of the main battery. The distinctive domed turret was maintained with the accelerator cannon's ammunition storage exchanged for primary vulkite capacitors. The most significant change to the turret was the wholesale removal of the command Capola that allowed the tank commander to observe the battlefield while riding the vehicle. The levels of heat and radiation around the carinade were so intense that even an estartis would suffer, meaning glaive crews would only be able to target the enemy by sensors, augers, and targeting cameras. The provision of the vulite carinade for an estates vehicle was in itself a significant political victory for the imperium. Early in the great crusade and only after intense negotiation by the emperor himself did the mechanicum relent in sanctioning its use. Fears remained within the mechanicum that only vulite technology could rival the terran bolter and thus it must be protected for their use only. In reality the circumstances were wholly different. Despite the exponential expansion of the Imperium and Mechanicum's resources, Vulkai technology remained stubbornly costly and difficult in both manufacturer and maintenance. Nevertheless, the Carinade mounted on the Glaive was staggeringly effective in its lethality. By far the largest weapon of its kind outside those mounted on Titanass god engines and having a similar efficacy. With a reinforced focusing panel running along the length of the barrel, the carinade projected a direct beam of vulkite energy between itself and the target, one that could be maintained for some time depending on how much charge was contained within its capacitors. During this time, the gunnery crew were both able to traverse the turret and adjust its elevation, allowing them to syam through whole formations of infantry and squadrons of light vehicles. This combined with the deflagration effect shared by all vulkite weaponry caused organic matter to simply combust, often spreading the resulting fire to those unfortunates nearby. The dlave was initially deployed during the latter half of the great crusade following the overwhelming success of the fell blade. said deployments being restricted to where they could be the most effective owing to the vehicle's rarity and difficulty of manufacture. Notably, their first recorded battlefield action was upon the death world of Katachchan to combat that world's apex predators, the xenos known as Katachai Diabolum, or Katachchan devils colloquially. Subsequently, their use was prioritized against orc empires, where even the relative biological toughness of that particular xenos breed was of no use against vulite beams, and the orcs possessed little in the way of armor that could defend against them. In this, they were staggeringly effective, with several notable instances of a single glaive decidedly swinging battles in the favor of the Estartis Legion that deployed them. During this period, the moniker special weapons tank had come to be used to describe them, as they were often appended to squadrons of fell blades as a supplementary and specialized firepower addition, deployed to locations where they could cause the most damage. During the Horus Heresy, this policy was relaxed by sheer necessity. The desperation of the battles of the age of darkness often called for all weapons to be used indiscriminately against targets of opportunity. The Glaive would prove nearly as effective against Imperial power armor as it had against Xenos flesh, decimating whole formations of Aardis, as well as lighter tanks, jet bikes, and speeders. On the other end of the weapon specialtity spectrum from the Glaive, the Falcon Superheavy tank destroyer was initially developed quite separately from the two tanks previously discussed. In a way, it represents an early attempt at what the Fellblade was also attempting to accomplish. The utilization of already available technology to develop a new battlefield role. While as discussed, the Fellblade began with the Bane Blade as a base, the Faladin was an attempt to iterate upon the Imperial Army's Shadow Sword. This tank had seen heavy use in the early Crusade eras against macroscale Xenos creatures and war machines when the Exertus could not readily count upon the deployment of the Titan legions. The shadow sword mounts the famous volcano cannon typically only seen on warlord class god engines and the falcon was intended to fulfill a similar position for the legionist. Development was begun in the crusades first century but plagued by problems from the get-go. For one, they originally mounted volcano cannons themselves with only a handful of these original tanks surviving past the great heresy. The difficulty of that weapon's maintenance, as well as the pace of Imperial expansion, meant early Falconian prototypes were relegated to workshops far more often than the battlefield, with Legion commanders rapidly losing patience with the tank and its creators. This changed with the discovery of the STC pattern for the neutron wave cannon in the later crusade years. Seeing an opportunity, the Macrotech Conclave drew up its plans to retrofit the existing Falians with the new weapon, thanks to the success of the Fellblade and the Glaive. Significant revisions to the Falcon's core components were undertaken, all of which were heavily influenced by the developments of the previous two super heavies. While this was a massive undertaking, it marked the point where the Falcon ceased to be an appendix in the Legion's armor pool and became fully incorporated into their armored warfare doctrines. Crown's revolutionary Metaplas alloy was once again decisive in improving the vehicle's efficacy. Original Falcons were unwieldy in the extreme, effectively relying on ambush tactics to lure targets into their field of fire. Freed entirely from this constraint, Falcon commanders were now able to seek and engage targets, especially ones that presented more mobile threats. They were still, however, limited. The neutron wave cannon of the tank was not turreted, as the Vulite carnade on the Glaive was. The Falcon's mainline weapon was fixed in place, running the full length of the vehicle from barrel mouth to the massive capacitors in the rear. While traditional neutron weapons in the Imperium's arsenal fired single energy beams, the wave cannon was altogether different. Firing instead alternating pulses of neutrons that bombarded the target with overwhelming levels of destructive energy, pummeling even the strongest armor plating and creating massive electromagnetic shock pulses. Any electrical systems not physically destroyed by the initial impact would thus be rendered inert by the side effects of the wave cannon barrage. Unless they were incredibly hardened against E-mag attacks against biological matter, the effects of the neutron wave cannon were no less destructive. The wave pulses disrupted the bonds of flesh itself, pulping it into awful. Those not killed outright would suffer debilitating radiological effects that were no less lethal. The effects of this were not limited to the foe. The crew of any vehicle mounting neutron weaponry were at significant risk of radiation poisoning. This was somewhat mitigated by the material used in the refitted Falads, but not wholly. A startis crews of these tanks had marketkedly higher rates of augment reconstruction as the effects of the main battery atrophied even their genhanced limbs. It is noted that out of all the legions, the fourth iron warriors and 10th Iron Hands were the least likely to cycle Falian crews often enough to mitigate this. During the Great Crusade, the Falian operated in much the same way as the Glaive, its deployment dictated by situational exigencies and strategic need as opposed to being part of a standard role of battle. These specific situations were typically dictated by the presence of macroscale threats such as xenos megapona or titanra war machines that could pose a threat to all other legion assets or against tanks and armor the traditional estarti's anti-armour weaponry had proven ineffective against in this capacity and with the legion force taking a typically offensive role individual falcons would act as roving hunter killers engaging targets of opportunity without prejice. This perhaps inevitably changed with the advent of the heresy with the enemy transforming from xenos species and weward human regimes. The Falcon was now an extremely valuable asset against the forces that now possessed their own Aardis heavy armor. Not only that, but Imperial Army super heavies, knights of the Qutoris Familia, and Siege Automata of the Mechanicum of Mars. The overabundance of super heavy war machines meant Falconian crews were never bereff of targets, but were also themselves targets of extreme priority. As such, their role transformed from being a special weapon tank to being the fulcrum around which armored divisions would operate, accompanied by significant infantry support to ward off close attacks. While this chronicle has not been a wholesome accounting of the entire armored warfare capabilities of the Legion Azistard, nor even accounting for the proclivities and cultures of the legions themselves, the Felblade, Glaive, and Falian are fascinating case studies in the unique period of technological development that they represent. The Great Crusade was an ever evolving sprint of necessity to discovery to iteration with the species unshackled from historical restraints pouring its full energy into devices and machines of conquest and slaughter. Each of the patterns discussed herein owes much to humanity's past, but all were nevertheless armored beasts for a new age and phenomenally effective at their jobs. As of the 41st millennium, they are all but unknown. The arts of their construction to any degree of scale have long since been lost, being now the sole purview of the most specialized of forges. They have been at cliffs not in potency but in role. The legion estates are no more. Role of the adeptuses is vastly different to their crusade era forebears. As of early M40, less than 100 fell blades were recorded as having been manufactured over the preceding five centuries. What tanks remain extant are hallowed relics of a chapter's past, committed to battle only in the direest of circumstances and only with the appropriate revenants. They stand, as do all technologies, of an era by gone, as a reminder of glory's past. Painful memories of what was and what now will never be again. A imperator. Gloria in excelsis terror. This video and this channel were made possible thanks to the very kind donations and support from my Patreon subscribers. If you'd like to help support the channel, head on over to patreon.com/oculousimperia. If you'd like to receive more updates about the channel and any future videos, you can contact me or follow me on Twitter @ Oculusmperia. Otherwise, please like, subscribe, comment, let me know your feedback, and as ever, thank you very much for watching. Hallelujah. We are me. Israel. She We