The 40k Lorecast - Episode 43 - The weapons of the imperium

Episode Date: July 15, 2024

On Today's cast we are covering another request from the Discord, the weapons of the Imperium. We go through all of the most commonly produced weapons utilized in the Imperium's war effort. We start off with ranged combat. From the Lowly bolt gun (which is actual a marvel of technology and power, but does not show at all on the table top) to the mighty Las-cannon. We then dive into melee weapons such as the chain-sword, power-fist and thunder-hammer. Does john go on a rant or two about these things? yes, very much so. PatreonMerchandiseDiscord Link:Our WebsiteRetro RecallOur Sponsors:* Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com* Check out Pebl: https://hellopebl.com* Check out Pebl: https://hipebl.ai* Check out Shopify: https://shopify.com/loreAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to the 40K lore cast. Welcome to the 40K lore cast. It's me, John Barcotti and Bradchester. This guy. On today's cast, we're diving into the weaponry used by the Imperium on the battlefront. But before we go, as always, follow and comment in the podcast. Well, positive comment. Positive.

Oh, yeah. It was implied. But if you're new to the cast and you don't like what you're hearing, turn off. Anyway, so just saying, like, none of it off. Don't tell anyone. Anyway, if you're looking for a place to interact, if you like this cast and you like lore, please join our Discord. The link is in the show notes.

This episode came directly out of the Discord. We cannot encourage you more when you guys hear this. You say, hey, we like what you guys are up to. But could you cover this? Ask us in Discord. If I think it's a terrible idea, I will tell you no. But usually I say, yeah, and I add it to our list of things we have to cover, which is... And we are a super serial about this.

The thing is, we really want you to tell us where to go. Because we talked about this last episode, a 40K universe is, holy shit, big. We would love some guidance about the next thing you want to hear because we have plans for forever. We're on cast 700. Yeah, we have the luxury of being on episode 43 right now, and I can off the top my head list the next 200 that we're going to do. Yeah. It's pretty easy.

But that being said, what I find interesting, what you find interesting are different. And an episode of this, the weapons of the Imperium, it was always in the back of my mind. And enough people asked about it. They were like, yeah, let's just do that now. Also, I would have never thought to do this. It's super interesting. Yeah, it's super interesting. I would have never thought unless the people in Discord asked us about it.

So really, you guys are guiding us towards what we want to do. Also, tons of fun stuff happens in our Discord. I know I'm shamelessly self-promoting, but it is a fun discord. It's a very fun Discord. We've got memes. We've got literature discussion. We've got general 40K. You'd have gameplay discussion.

If you're kind of like, oh, I've always loved 40K, but how do you play it? That's also in there. And it's not just Brad and I. There's a whole community in there, which is, again, why it's free, you jackasses who charge for Discord access. I yell that's so much for this, by the way. I'm just so mad about that.

Everybody goes, you should charge. I'm like, or I can be less of a dick. I'm happy to charge people for access to things that cost me money, but a thing that costs me no money to charge someone for it just feels like a dick move. Anyway, skipping that. Charging. We do have Patreon, no.

So if you do like what we're doing and you want to help us out, we have a Patreon. Please come on in. We have filter. Yeah, we actually We bought pop filters because of the Patreon. We bought new mic stands

because the Patreon. I actually upgraded our audio software because of the Patreon. Sorry. Does that even matter? It might not. But we look at it. It looks mildly fancier than I did before.

So is that? Lastly, though, for Brad's sake, Brad does do 40K coaching and I always want to bring it up to everybody. If you're newer to the game, not new to the game, a veteran of the game, whatever it is,

and you want to get better at the game. For those that don't know, Brad has been in the top five of all 40K players. the last basically decade-ish. I'm all right. Yeah, he's pretty good at this game, but nice thing about Brad is he's not just a competitive player,

as you can tell, he's kind of a lore bunny. So if you don't, if you don't have to go to him like, well, hey, I was going to go play this like, please, thousand person tournament. No, please, no. I'm so, I actually like more when I have to put together something that's

lore friendly or funner and explaining to be the best and also be the best space. or Tau or whatever, you know, be the... Ravengard Centurion Devastators? Sometimes you get things nerfed. And I've done it a couple times. But, and if you're not nice to me, I will play your faction and get it nerfed. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. If you really want to get good at the game, if you have a fax that you hate, you really hate and you want out of the game, convince Brad to play that faction a lot. And he asked a spacehole players about how they feel with Brad. What? Doesn't happen. Anyway, on to the weapons of the Imperium. Hold on.

Old man, Brad, 40K at gmail.com. There's nothing I like more than yelling that email out and watching John's face fall. You're yelling an email address. Just say 1, 2, 3,4 at gmail.com would actually be more effective. Anyway, on to the weapons of the Imperium. So today, we'll be diving into all the weapons, whether carried by troops or mounted vehicles, by space, Marines, Imperial Guard, sisters of battle. We're going to leave out Gray Knights,

Admec, and Custodes, and Knights, because their weapons are, actually really, we'll do some night weapons in this. Their weapons are a little bit specific to need. These are the ones that the idea is, this is the stuff of the Empire. They're also a huge version. With the Knights, they have a lot of specific two knights because they're all vehicle

mount, not even just vehicle. Knight mounted. Night mounted weapons. The idea of this was to talk about stuff that the Imperium is kind of producing en masse. Stuff like the sisters carry, Space Marines, carry, the guardsman carry. Gray Knight weapons are secret. You know, custodians, there's not that many of them.

And then ADMEC will cover the ADMEC's psychotic weapons and the ADMEC task because they're out of their damn minds. True story. So yeah, last canons, plasma, uh, melta, bolters, but we're going to skip like cyclonic melta lances, analysts, auto canons, some of the really specific ones. Nah. So let's jump in and let's jump into the, we'll start with ranged weapons for all you people who actually like to do that.

Let's talk about my least, I gotta get my chee together for this. I'm really psyching up here. Yeah. There isn't another weapon that in the lore is more disappointing of a son than bolt weaponry for sure. I'm gonna argue Melta, but we'll get there. We'll get to Melt in a bit.

You know, maybe, but only because of the hitting. Yeah, that's because Melt is you're shooting. Bolt weapons in the game are low strength, low AP, one damage. I guess if you go heavy bolter, you two damage, but like, as a whole, pretty much, meh. Let's talk about what a bolt actually is. A bolt weapon is, it's a, I mean, it's a weird round. So it's not necessarily a bullet. It is a rocket propelled.

It's an RPG. Gee. Yeah, because, yeah, it actually is. It's a rocket propelled grenade. Each bolt sits in a shell. When the user pulls the trigger, it launches the shell out of the barrel. As it comes out of the barrel, the rocket ignites. It goes right towards its target.

Then when it senses... It's a smart weapon. Then when it senses it's entered some sort of not air, it then explodes. So, yeah, it's a little mini-R-PG. and a gun. And it's also huge. Yeah. The Marines are firing what?

Like, they're more than 50 cow. They're huge. They're gigantic. Their handheld weaponry is bananas in the size of it. And in the game, it is vanilla of nothing weapons. In the game, it's going to wound less than half the time. You're shooting a rocket propelled grenade at. something. You're not even firing a rocket

pill grenade. You are firing automatic RPG launcher. Yeah. And sometimes it does damage and sometimes it doesn't. This would destroy the warfront of anybody. I think what the

important thing about Bolters is that the, it is the most diverse weapon in the game. There's small variant, a rapid fire variant, heavy variant, mass fire variants, even Titans have them. True, but when I think about the The bolter effectively says... Let's start with what I called Old Bessie.

Yeah. It's the bolt gun. The bolt gun is... But it is the space marine. It is their holy weapon. Yeah. To Brad's point earlier, it's a 25... It's about a 25 millimeter round or one inch in diameter.

Which doesn't... If you like guns, you know what I'm talking about it. If you don't worry about it, it's not important. These are... It's supposed to be this highly accurate round that can blow through arms. It'll blow through a wall. It'll do anything. This is the go-to.

This is the weapon that the emperor said. This is the weapon. This is what we're going to take back the galaxy with. This was the go-to. Yeah. And it's so destructive that I'm going to give it to each and every one of my sons. All of the Marines are going to have a holy bolter. Yeah.

And they're all going to wound on fours if they're lucky. A fours? Yeah. Maybe. If they're lucky. And it has no armor penetration whatsoever. It's an explosive round. This thing should be destroying shit.

It's because the armor is really good. If it had poison, it'd probably kill more people. It'd be great. It actually, I do laugh. Mowed out Marines at that point in time. I'm more laughing what it does to a guardsman, which is they save. And so there's a few different variations of this. First, obviously, the smallest is going to be your bolt pistol, which is just a...

Bolt pistol makes sense to me. Yeah. Because effectively what we're saying, when we say bolt, is effectively it is a standard gun. Yeah, the term bolt is, it's just standard. Exactly. It just means that you have a stock ammunition. You have a magazine.

You're, I mean, you're shooting something. So the bolt pistol, I'll give this to it. The bolt pistol lure to tabletop isn't that much difference because the bolt pistol is supposed to be a significantly smaller version. Well, given the bolt pistol has the same rules as the bolt gun on the tabletop. just with less range. Yeah, the bolt pistol holds up to lure. The bolt gun fails misery.

Because in the lore, when you're reading the books, somebody shoots their bolt pistol. Yeah, they're killing this and that. You know, we've read it in the Inquisitors and everything like that also. So is someone unarmed and it blows them apart. Exactly. You know, that's what they're doing. But the bolt pistol is a sidearm.

Yeah. It is a sidearm. It is not a main weapon. The next one is the bolt rifle, which was an advent of eighth edition. So the Primaris Marines, Call creates them. They're larger. So he gave them a bigger gun that actually had AP this time.

Heavy intercessors have a significantly better weapon. I mean, it's not even significant. It's holy shit. In the game, it's wildly different. It is. The issue I had with this was like at one point, the bolt rifle, and the intercessors first came out was a lot better. And then all the firstborn, we got super upset.

So they had to roll it back. Yeah. But anyway. But the bolt rifle is, is the bolt gun, a little bit larger, slightly higher caliber with better armor penetration. This one actually makes more sense to me. The bolt rivals with a bolt gun always should have been. Correct.

By the way, 100%. I like this. I think that all Marines should have had. This the entire time. Yeah. The rules feel better. The lore feels better. Everything jives a little bit better.

Maybe GW found their mojo 30 years in. So I like this significant. significantly better on this. The next one I hate. The next one is, as much as you talk about how the bolt gun is a disappointment on the tabletop, not compared to the storm bolter. The storm bolter breaks my soul.

The storm bolter is two bolt guns strapped together. It's an autumn, it's also automatic. Yeah, so it's a double barrel automatic gun. It's supposed to be putting out a withering rate of fire. That's the hope terminators have storm bolters, and they come down and they just carpet. Yeah.

Everything in front of the air. Every story you read in the lore about a Terminator is just wrecking shop. It's usually because in one end was a storm bolt or a power of force. And just went, yeah, I'm going to go ahead and wreck everything. And they're just laying down this cover fire of just whatever's over there is getting ruined

because we're putting out this volume of fire. And in the game, to be honest, the storm bolter isn't bad at all because it does put out a good volume of shitty fire. Doing nothing, just bouncing off stuff. Again, 20 Terminators took out, what was it, 10,000 nuclear cults? They'd killed worlds before. Yeah, and not in this. But anyway.

But also it's supposed to, a good point on this in the notes, the storm bolter was one of the things that it was made for is boarding actions. Yeah. because the storm bolter puts out just a, I don't know what's over there. I will just shoot everything over there, and it will just die because I put down 7,000 rounds and two seconds from the unit, and that goes in. In the game, does it translate?

No. Does it translate in Space Hulk? Kind of. Yeah, Space Hulk, it works. I mean, that's the thing. So I like it a lot in the lore because to your point, a Terminator going down a hallway, just wrecks shut. That's what it does.

Kill team the bolter feels better too. That's it, okay, yeah. So fair enough. It's just, that's where it's supposed to excel on the tabletop. It's very disappointing. Yeah. We're going to talk about a lot of different weapons. I don't get me wrong.

I'm doing a cast about it. I love 40K. But man, the bolt weapons from when I read them to seeing them on the table. Yep. I'm telling you, when we get to Melt it, you'll, you're going to hear my anger come out. It's just, well, this is a dual thing for me because this was a, my first unit I ever bought was a unit of Terminators. Yeah. Terminators came with the boulder, but also they got shot by guardsmen.

And the combination of these two was my, what the hell, man? Come on. Yeah. So the next level up, though, from the boulter is the heavy boulter, which is about 25% bigger than a regular. This is the 50. The 50. Yeah. Yeah.

And the heavy boulter is meant for, all right, I've got my boulter, it's bouncing off that opponent. Bring the heavy boulter. It's supposed to be significantly longer range. Heavy boulter, obviously not up to the lore, but I'd say that heavy boulter, for the entirety of the time that I played the game, which is 25 years now, the heavy boulter has been, sorry everybody, I'm making my usual sports reference that no one will get because it's also an old man reference. heavy boulter is the Cal Ripkin Jr. of weapons. Exactly. What I'm saying is it's been consistently okay for 25 years. Heavy boulter in the game has actually been quite good.

Heavy boulter's cool because they're increased size. They're usually deployed as a heavy weapons team if you're regular guardsmen. Longer range. Yeah, very special space marines. It can carry one of the Gaunt's ghosts that actually carries one around, which is kind of badass. Which is a huge deal for a regular. human because it's a huge gun. So the heavy boulter serves its purpose, as Brad said.

You got a bigger opponent, the heavy boulter will drop it. You got an orc invasion. You bring out the heavy boulter. It's going to drop them. Heavy boulter stats on the table should be irregular boulders. I'm not that. The heavy boulter just does okay. One of the, I've actually, you know what's funny as I'm going through this, you know who

the most disappointing of the boulter weapons is to me? The hurricane boulter. Because, so the hurricane boulter is, whereas, The Storm Bolter is two guns strapped together. The Hurricane Volter is six. And there's a really good land raider that's got two of these on it that looks amazing. And most players get sucked into building one of these. I'm one of them.

And you put in the tabletop because this giant tank with all of the guns. Hey, double shot. It's got to be amazing. Double shots beneath a thin rapid fire range. Yeah, that thing was awesome. And it doesn't do shit. But anyway, in the lore. the Hurricane Bolter just removes.

Well, let's talk about the lore because this is one of my favorites. Because he's talking about the crusader version of the tank. Because the reason is this tank exists is the hurricane bolters put out such a volume of fire that it basically made everybody get down. So the guys inside would assault out of the tank, out of the front of the tanks. The guns are on the sides of it, shooting forward. and then the opening is in the front. So it'd be an assault platform, and the Hurricane Bolter was putting out such a huge volume of fire

that there's no way people could prepare for the hand-to-hand melee assault that was coming out of there. Which was actually Terminator is coming out of it too. So it was like this was a tank armored transport combo that pulls up, puts out thousands of shots at the same time, and then the front door opens while it's shooting, and Terminators with Storm Bolters come running out. Yeah.

Remove the problem. It's badass. Yeah. In the lore, this thing ruins stuff. In the game, I'm going to have to say, I know you said you didn't like the Hurricane Bolter on it, but like the combination of Hurricane Bolter and Terminators is pretty iconic and kicked ass for a long time. Yeah.

I mean, it's flavor style. The thing is, if someone rolls up on you with Terminators and Hurricane Volters. I mean, now. You're like, oh, okay. But for a long time, thank you very much. It was a really iconic combo. It was, and it should always be an iconic combo, was my issue with it.

So the Redeemer Land Rader didn't exist for a long time. Thank you very much. Now, they kind of conclude bolt weapons. Are they cool? Yes. Are they devoid of any value in the tabletop? Eh, kind of. I mean, they're not, but they are.

They're just not. Not compared to what they are. You know what I mean? It's one of these areas where they're not, bad in the tabletop, but just in the lore. It's just in the lore, especially if you've ever watch, if you go to Hammer and Bolter on the GW website, or the

I guess it would be, what is the... Warhammer Plus. Warhammer Plus, sorry. If you go to the Warhammer Plus and you watch some of the videos of them laying down a hail of Bolter fire, that's what it's supposed to be on the table. It's just, it's not. Are they the worst? Absolutely not.

They're not the worst. They're just not. This falls, where you're going to say, Melta, I really think that that bolt weapons are the farthest from lore to tabletop. I think the farthest from the story lore, I think from a, like, this is where I'll give you, we'll get to Meltta later.

What I'll give you is when you read the stories, you read the Black Library, you read any story in 40K, the Bolter is this amazing weapon that just wrecking it. It just kills so many people. I'm talking about what a multer is versus what a melt is. It's like, I'm like, man. I can do it.

You know, we'll debate that when we get to Malta. But I just, for me, the bolt weapon is, is so far off from the story, I guess. Yeah, it's drives us. But after bolts, let's move on to lasers, because lasers are cool. Lasers are cool. So the cool part about lasers, I like this game,

is that the following things are all lasers. And we're going to start at the very base of it, which is the last gun. Whoa, whoa, John. Did you recite your litany before you try to say such heiress? It's true. If you recite your litany, the Las Gun is the greatest weapon that exists.

Clearly, we talked about this. two different casts. Yeah, it is, the lasgun is both accurate, it is devastating, penetrates any armor. And you can hit things with it. So, lasguns are cool. Always works. It's your fault if they don't.

And I actually took some time on this to learn what a lasgun is, so actually how they all work. So what they all do is, it's an energy core that just takes your photons and agitates them and then has a chamber. It's going to spiral and they're going to shoot the It effectively has a mirror, by the way.

It's all mirrors. It's all mirrors. It fires the photons out, and that's why it's called a laser. Lasgun. Yes, I am doing pinky up and a fat. I like these things a lot for a number of reasons. One of them is I actually work in dental manufacturing, so CAD, Cam, and CNC is a big part of my life.

So they're super cool. None of those acronyms mean nothing to me. It's fine. And then I also do want to point out one of the little note. The very first ever in the history of the history of, sci-fi appearance of the Lasgun was in Dune. Well, I mean, here's the thing, man. No one's ever referenced or stolen anything from Dune,

probably ever in 40K. Yeah, this is about the only time. The first time that they ever just stole stuff. The Lasgun, though, the Laskan does have the next layer up from the Laskins is what they call the hot shot Laskin, in which case they just take the original Lasson and add an extra backback.

for more enters. I'm sorry, but like, why I'm getting my tree together right now, everyone. What the hell isn't every Lasgan, a hot shot last gun? There's too many guardsmen. It doesn't even make sense. Some of them are just there to die. It's plug in an extra battery. That is literally a hot shot Lasga.

Yeah. It is, hey man, you know how to make your Lasgun better? Plug the cable in to another battery. Boom. Technology. Double the power. Yeah. It's like, what?

Yeah, the Hot Shot Lascon is primarily used by Kassarkin, Sions, also in the Special Forces, and the Skittari Rangers actually had as well. Hot Shot Lasgan also used to kill you. Yeah, the hot shot, like, oh, I forgot they used to explode. Yeah. No good reason, by the way. No, absolutely no reason. Yeah, they never explained.

It's the exact same technology as the Lasgan. Which doesn't explode. Now, have no chance of exploding, but if you plug it in twice. I guess that makes sense, you know. No, it does not. streams. Don't cross the streams. I have nothing for that.

Just continue. This is my favorite weapon. Yeah, it's moving into the, oh, God, you've done everything. You can get this weapon nerve. I love this.

So the last cannon. So the last gun, cool. The hot shot last gun, a little bit cooler. What if we bring a generator and hook it onto the last gun, then what do you get?

Now you get a last cannon. It's awesome. Yeah. The Las Canon, it's one of the more iconic weapons of 40K. It punches through armor. Yeah. The last gun is carried. Imperial Guard, you put it on vehicles.

They have special weapons team. Devastator squad. Space Marines walk around because their badassery is untold. The last cannon was made to shoot down knights. That's what it was for. It's a vehicle killer. And it legitimately punches whole. through them.

It doesn't even just blow shit up. I mean, it's just, it punches a hole through it. Yeah. And the way the last, the only thing is annoying about the last canon in the lore is the way a last can't is supposed to function is you have a very large charge pack that you put in it. It then consumes the entire charge pack, which you then throw away and put a new one.

That's true because no one, no one's changing out. Yeah, logistically, that would be impossible. Well, in some of the stories, they do a good job of it. And on the tabletop, they do terrible. Because in the lore, you have servitors and shit, like that, that are constantly just reloading your gun as you move up. Yeah, the way a last cannon should function, you should have a last cannon,

then you should have like a generator behind it. That's a, that's charging packs. Each time you fire you put a new pack, you basically have somebody reloading you. It makes no sense as a mobile weapon is what I'm getting at. It makes sense of a tank weapon. It's a tank weapon. Because you just keep loading it inside.

Or it's like a fixed position weapon. No, but the Marine weapon. No, it makes no sense, but it's awesome. It also is hell. It looks cool as shit because the last canon, especially on the old firstborn Marines, is significantly bigger than the model. Yeah. Like, their cannon is so much bigger than the actual guy.

And the cool thing with the last canon is that effectively, because all it is is just energy transfer. So the more energy you put in, the more power you get. So what you see is the last cannon has the one we talk about space marines and guard carry them, some big or something. But you get to Magnalazcanon. Las Talons and Solex heavy Las Canons, which are these monstrosity lascanons.

I mean, they put Las Canons on Imperial Knights, which will punch a hole in a almost planet. Yeah, it's pretty big. In fact, the Imperial Navy uses them. They will punch a hole in another spaceship through a gun shield. One of the big things is that they, and they've, this is a lot of the small short stories, and they teach the guys with the last canons,

and the variations of the last canons, that they're not supposed to just shoot willy-nilly because they're just putting holes and stuff. They're supposed to be shooting at their reactors and things of that nature. It'll blow the reactor up. In theory, Alaska tank could cut the leg off of an imperialite walking. But you don't want to just put holes in something. You want to hit reactors, hit main systems.

So they're taught to pinpoint. So a Lascanon is weird because it's not just spraying the earth with a heavy, you know, heavy bolter, you're accurate, but you're shooting at the target. Exactly. Las Canning, you're supposed to be almost sniping the target. That's a great way to put it out. I was about saying it's almost a sniper weapon, exactly, for vehicles.

It's kind of useless in Horde. If you had, like, you get attacked by a thousand termagons, the Las Canon guys, like, kills one guy. Yeah, I'm going to grab my pistol. It's actually significantly. A lot better. One of my favorite ones, though, of those. variants we spoke about, is the volcano cannon.

This. Because it has a cool story behind this one. It's also, it's slightly dumbed down that it used to be. But man, this thing still does damage. Like, oh, and a shadow sword? Yeah. Oh, just any of them. I mean, the cast one's got this.

Yeah. All of the yes. Yeah. So there's a special variant of the Bainblade called a shadow sword that has one of these on it. The volcano cannon is designed to take out an imperial knight. And by take it, I mean, just blow a hole in it. Oh, it is.

Yeah. The law is the lore behind it. So every last canon has focusing. Anyway, so every last canon has focusing crystals as to shoot through. So they're manufactured, just like you'd make a fake diamond. Or like a lightsaber? Yeah, or a cybers. Yeah, that's how they did it. So the volcano cannon comes from a planet named Sindaris.

Oh, I'm sorry. For cinders. My name wasn't that much dumber than what that is. This story is cool where it was a site where I, it's all like about it. Cinderis, there was a psycher rebellion for Cinderis. And at the end of the rebellion, it was all put down. They took all the psychers and dumped them into the lava rivers all around the planet. This is so, but this is like super messed up on.

But I always say, this is super mess because they literally made psychic lava soup. Yeah. Yeah, they just shoved all the psychers into the lava pits, whatever, they'll be fine. It's real. They started harvesting the psychic crystals that happened when apparently, you boot a dead siker into a lake of lava

you can just fish out magic crystal of dead guy yeah and so they harvested these crystals which is funny because when they fire the lance through the phogizing crystals it gives off the sound of psychers

screaming and the idea is this is their punishment is their souls are trapped in these crystals and they're being tortured to death. And remember everybody, the Imperium are of the good guys. Exactly. We'll be right back after a quick break.

Now we'll go into one of the more controversial ones in the game. Plasma. I'm sorry. Did you mean to say the Tao weaponry of choice that's better than the Imperium? Oh yeah. I mean, plasma is, okay, so let's go through what plasma is. It's just superheated energy, just hydrogen fuel that

uses Magnus to shoot it out. Kind of like Gauss, if that was a thing that GW knew how to name correctly. The idea of plasma is that you affect if you're shooting a sun at an opponent. The problem is that the amount of energy required, if you're in the Imperium, means that it may explode. Well, you can, the best, I got to get my cheat together on this one again. My favorite part about plasma in the Imperium is you can shoot your plasma weapon as is. No problems.

or you can turn that shit up to 11. And it's like, right, because if you shoot this normal, no explosion. If you over, if you overcharge it, like for those of us who build computers, if you overclock it, then yeah. You might die. Just straight die. Oh, what?

It's just annoying to me because the Imperium has never mastered it, but the tower just like, instantly figured it out. Yeah, like this is not a problem to us at all. Instantly figured out plasma, Imperium, consistently blowing themselves up. Yeah, and they make the argument if you read the lore about the way that the Imperium uses plasma, it disrupts the containment field and the containment field overloads, and then the plasma explodes, and blah, blah, blah. I blacked out for a minute. Did you just say don't cross the streams?

Yeah, it was basically. Yeah, okay, I just want to make sure we were saying that. Plasma is fine. because it is. It's just superheated energy fired out at something. And the towel were like, well, yeah, just, I don't know, make sure the magnetic field around it doesn't fail. And then there's no issues. And the Imperium went, I'm not putting that much effort in. Great. They at least have fixed the rules a little bit.

Because I would have one hazardous would take out a vehicle. Yeah. That was dumb. Also, also, yeah. Yeah, that was dumb. Of course, back to kind of regular guns, there are sniper rifles in the game. sniper rifles in the game and the lore are equally awesome. Sniper rifles, number one thing, lure to game. Yeah.

Fight me. I think it's the best translation. Sniper rifles are great at taking out characters. They've got a good strength. They've got a good AP and killing ratio. And the lore actually lines up with them pretty well. Yeah. The thing about, I like about sniper rifles is that what they did was it's a bolt gun.

That's all it is with better aim and is mostly used by the child soldiers of the space marines. God damn. I don't know. all those scouts. Fucking Jesus. But what they did was when they wrote in the lore about the rough sniper rifles is they made it so they're just incredibly accurate with a really good scope. So you're actually aiming and trying to hit the gaps of the armor, which is what makes it so powerful. And if you remember back to our coverage of the space marine of the evolution of space marine armor, there were gaps.

It's one of the challenges of the armor. For multiple sets. Yeah. There are gaps in the armor. So if you've got someone who's, you know, maybe a very small child with very, small fingers. As a soldier, I'm kidding. But if you take some as a very good shot and you give them a gun, it's incredibly

accurate, the scope that's got great distance, then they can dial in and they can hit those gaps and therefore exploit it to make the bolt actually work correctly. There are a few other variants to it, which is funny. One is the long Las, which is the same thing, but a Las Gun. Another one is the Las Fusel, which is a Las Canaan, and the same thing. Which is why those... Primaries Marines for the win.

Oh, yeah. Well, I guess Gravis armor at the win of that. Another one I do like is the needler, which just shoots poison needles. So we know who that's for. There wasn't even a reason to put this in. There's like three weapons in the entirety of 40K that have ever had this rule. Yeah. And I'm going to point out of the...

Of course. The needle gun that can poison you. They have low AP, but then you... It had no AP. And then you die. And then my favorite one, which we're going to do on the assassin cast, which is the exodus rifle, which is, whoof.

That's a significant gun. Yeah, the exis rifle will, I mean, it can take out. The Vindicare is not screwing around. Yeah, the Vindicare. The Vicar hits you. Also, another thing on Morehammer Plus,

that episode with the Vinnaker. Yeah. Also, pretty worthwhile to watch. You know what I mean? Here's my thing. Get a subscription, watch all of it,

and do whatever you want. I don't want to, I eventually want to get sponsored. GW, give me some money. I'll keep telling you stuff. Yeah. So they still haven't given us any money, John? Nope.

Haven't reached out yet. Weird. I wonder if it's the, I'll be making fun of some of their models. Probably not helping. Oh, look. They copy and paste the same story and changed two names.

I was making fun of that. And every one of your emails is answered by the guy that wrote the towel book. I don't know. When we do the Eldar cast, I think we might get some love because it's going to be, that's going to be some fanboying. The next one, I'm going to cover real quick, are just missile launchers. It's a missile launcher. I don't hate the missile launcher.

Yeah, it shoots a missile. It shoots a missile. They did add a few different ones, frag, crack, you know, gas, virus. I swear to God, if you go into the gas one. It's a poison missile. It's a poison missile. God damn it. They also, I like the rad missiles.

Oh, and the virus missile, that also might get them, too, because they wouldn't be able to stop that one. Can't stop the poison. I do like a vortex and haywire. That was old school, though. Vortex. Oh, these are all long gone. Yeah, vortex. These are long gone.

And haywire. What was the, um, psychout? Yes, like I was, gray nights. Yeah. So what I was,

I was doing the research for this way, I did discover is that if you go to Lexicanum, which is one of the better sites for kind of, when I start writing the cast, I usually start at Lexiccanum to kind of figure out some sources and that kind of stuff. They have a cool bibliography too. Yeah. So it's their bibliography is helpful with me because I'll go to Lexicanum,

And then that basically tells me what I have to go reread to make sure I'm ready for it. On Lexingtonon, there are 25 missile variants for the missile launcher. God damn it, I should have looked that so. I don't want to know because I was thinking of, in my head, I'm thinking of all the missiles I've ever shot in the game. I actually, I still think snipers are number one, lower two game. Yeah. But missiles don't miss the mark that back.

It was the mark at all. The issue with the missiles is just that in the, there's a lot of them in the stories that don't exist in the tabletop, which makes sense. I don't really want. Well, they have, they have single. Yeah, well, they also have like a bunch of single type. Yeah. Every time, to be fat, no, because when someone has to shoot a specific missile to take out X thing,

they shoot a missile. You know, I'm actually like you brought up because I would have totally forgotten about that. In the lore, they will actually customize missiles for opponents, which is really cool. Well, they have that shield breaker missiles and things of that, which are still in the game, actually. But like, they've had a lot of different specific missiles for whatever. Yeah, the missile becomes a vessel of delivery for whatever the enemy is. So if they're fighting someone who's like, except a little poison, for example, can't imagine who that would be. Or more importantly, they actually would have like warp missiles that would be, or they'd be effectively anti-warp.

But you know, some works, they had stopped that would affect kind of the way the orcs would communicate. These are all things that they have developed and the missile launcher becomes a delivery method. Yeah, it's just, you're firing a, what is the, what is the, the bomb, basically, that we're setting off. Yeah, that would. And they'd, that's a pretty high-tech, cool things. In the stories, there's been a lot of things that they shot at opponents that dis, there's a lot of disruption. Either they've also done the, yeah, they had the high-bind disruption missile.

That was actually something that's been shot multiple times. Oh, you're right. Yeah, I forgot about that one. Yeah, where they cut off the synapse. Yeah, and they were able to, yeah. And these are things in the lore that are awesome, obviously, just on the tabletop. Be cool if they did. How cool with that?

You know what? That would be awesome if Death Watch had access to multiple missile types? Yes, they've just a... They got the ammunition, but... Death Watch are always, like, Death Watch are... They should have that, though. Nothing to do what we're doing here, but let's talk about it real quick. Death Watch, I think, are the ones the GW's most afraid to write rules for,

because the Death Watch rules should make them auto win against Zs. Oh, 100%. And they're like, uh... That's all they do is just have weapons that screw up. with Zeno's. I mean, they lost the special weapons that would like stop Necron reanimation.

That was a cool one. They had a ton of, they have everything that the, the Imperium has figured out. They used to have, or at least in the lore. Yeah. Even tabletop.

Yeah. But anyway, that's, from there, let's jump into Flamers, which are a yin-yang for me. Are they cool? Yes.

Do they have a bit of lore that's stupid? Also, yes. So let's party. They can do mortal ones. Yeah. The Flamers are, it's a flame, throwing. And the question I had when looking at these, where it's like, well, what's the fuel

source on this? Because, as we said, there's stories where a terminator of the heavy flamer took out a thousand. All I have to say is salamanders. How do you transport this? So they use something called Prometheum. And this is going to give me an aneurism in a second, but we'll get there. All right. So talking about the next time you're going to have to talk about unattainium? Well, no, because we'll get there in a second. So Prometheum. in the lore is a special fuel that when it's exposed, the air ignites and burns. I think this is meant to be, there's a few elements that actually will do this. It'll be exposed in the air.

They actually will combust. Some of the sodium and water, et cetera. That being said... Yeah, but this sets like stone and a room. Yeah, it does. The problem is that Prometheum's a real thing, Brad. There's an actual element called Prometheum. Yes, much like the GW even naming after Prometheus.

who stole fire from the gods to give the mankind. The problem is that Prometheum, the element, is just highly radioactive. That's all it does. It doesn't ignite. It just gives you cancer. Look, man, radioactive element, guy that could have done anything. Look, the guy that stole fire from the gods and absolutely nothing bad happened to him.

So the hawk ate his liver for all of eternity. Every day. Every day. But what I'm getting is like, this drove me nuts because the GW wrote it. And so then my, so I always want to give GW the credit. This is why they won't sponsor us, by the way. But I'm going to get them the credit.

I'm like, okay, well, maybe is Prometheum a newer element? Is it one of the ones that we made? Nope, 1902. We can be sitting on Easy Street right now. If you'd quit badmolding the goddamn overlords of our souls. Yeah, no. Anyway, so Prometheum is a real thing.

Much like the Necron Gauss, GW just decided it takes them that exists, and give it a new name and move all with their day. You know, well, we're not talking about this because it's the Imperium, but, like, after we talked about Necron Goss, it bothered me so much of my right home. They're like, yeah, they didn't, they just, I was like, it, that does already exist.

And I know about it. Exactly. And you're just like, yeah, it's a Gauss weapon. And you're like, hey, that's the thing. They just, they took a thing that existed and then just went with it. And that's how Prometheum is. But let's dive into the one that we're foreshadding a little bit of flameters. Meltas.

Melt it is a combination of a flamer and a plasma. Yeah, with a fusion reactor. So they take a, it's a portable fusion reactor that uses the... This is legitimately the Ghostbuster gun. Prometheum, in this case, I'm going to go with them and say they're right in the Prometheum. It's a radioactive isotope that you then take, it mixes together, and by the Pyram is made up. They use one that exists and one that doesn't exist. But these two mix together and it shoots an active sun out the barrel at something.

Yeah, but it shoots a liquid. Yeah, well, liquid, it's the sun. It's plasma. It was, it's literally. An actual plasma. Yeah. Not a made up energy plasma. Right.

I'm saying it's a plasma. That's what it is. It's a superheated plasma. You know what I mean? It is a fusion reaction. And for 70% right. And then I know that somebody's going to just destroy me. And then my fucking comments about that.

But it is also the Ghostbuster gun. Yeah. Well, no, the Ghostbuster gun's more. Well, it has a beam, yeah. Yes, Jim. But yeah. If the Ghostbuster gun shot out one beam and that was it, that's what Melt is. Yeah, so what Melton does, it kind of shoots out, it's like beams like chunks.

It's like a section of like. Yeah. It's literally a blob. Yeah. It's a blob of superheated. You shoot out a mini sun at something. It will melt anything. Ceramite, Plastasil, necrodermis.

Also, how are you missing with Melton when you shoot a vehicle? Well, it's the Talarn. They're really quick. I mean, Melta is amazing. Melta should hit things and whatever it hits just is gone now. I mean, okay, ready? Pull out of two people sitting in a basement. What is underrepresented, wraith cannons or melta guns?

All right, cannons are worse. Because wraith canons just take a part of you and make you go to the warp. Yeah. Writh cannons are worse. We'll get them. Okay. Writh canons are worse. I mean, we're kind of this intentionally where we're kind of shitting on all of the space marine and the Imperium stuff first because we get to Eldar.

Oh, Jesus. Namely just the solitaire. Well, any of their weapons should kill, instantly kill everything in the game. It is remarkable. No save, strength 1,000. Yes. And they've had them a couple of times. They let them have those rules a few times.

True. I mean, D weapons did exist. I've got some cannons in the closet in there. There was a little. period of time in ninth edition. Melt a gun should kill what they shoot because you don't have a defense against a melting gun. Yeah, I mean, I take that back.

Unless you have like a void shield, if you have something of that nature. Even that, I mean, melt it is a no, because it's done at something. But I'm saying, like, our armor doesn't, it doesn't matter how thick your armor is. How about that? Yeah, like, it's all about how you want to find shields. If a shield is a piece of energy

that uses energy to stop whatever's coming in. If you're deflecting, yes. But I'm saying, like, if you just have a heavy hole, which usually stops bolter fire, last guns, things of that nature. None of that shit should stop a melty gun. Yeah, melted guns are incredible. And my favorite melting gun is actually the blood, and I don't even play Blad Angels. I love the fact that the Blad Angels went like, what did I make that a pistol?

How far can it shoot? I don't know, how far can you touch? Yeah. It's effectively punch range. Yeah. The Blood Angels melted pistols combined with their chains swords to go, yeah. It's so crazy. If you're close to me.

Inferno pistol is one of my favorite weapons. Yeah. Because they're shooting something that, again, is firing a small sun, and they're firing it at about jab range. Yeah. Yeah. If they were missed, they take their foot off. Yeah. It's a really cool weapon.

And, yeah, Melta, unfortunately, is lower strength than most vehicles in the game. Yeah. Yeah. Has it ever been stronger? Now, Meltta's used to, well, I'm going to go way back in the day. Thank you very much. Meltzer used to get 2D6 for vehicle penetration.

Oh, that's right. And also Meltta back in the day used to get a D12 plus a D20 second edition. I went back a little bit. We should do a cast on second edition. And they're like, hey, guys, here's how my dice used to have to bring. Yep. And templates. That was 26 years.

ago? Yeah, you'd bring a backpack to go to games for all the extra stuff. Oh, you'd have everything. It was cool as hell. Anyway, but yeah, Melta just disappoints in my mind, brutal in tabletop because it should be, I shoot you with Melta. Fine, maybe I miss. But if I hit, yeah, you're wounded and you're dead. That's what it should be every day. I mean, instead it's a, oh, yeah, I kind of, it was a glancing blow. No, it was a, yeah, I hit you with a sun. It glanced. Yeah, the sun's, it was not good to me. Yeah, I was wearing SPF. 80 million. And so your son does nothing. I'm totally good. I took a wound. I shugged it off. So after them,

when we moved on to kind of a more common one. You know what? I got to get my cheat back together. And I said this a couple times, but this is definitely another cheat time because we just went from harnessing the power of the sun to auto canons. To an auto canon.

Boards. Auto canons are real. That's the best way. They're real. We have them today. It's just a rapid fire gun that shoots a large caliber. It also functions really well on the table. Yeah, it's a very...

The auto cannon versus heavy boulter is not that significant. They're pretty similar weapons. That's the best way to explain. The auto canons almost a bigger heavy bulletin. Yeah, I mean, the auto canon, to be honest with you, again, to be fair, auto canons, fantastic to come. Lour to tabletop bottle cannons and auto can. You know what I mean?

It does well. It can take out tanks. It can take out infantry. It just, it does what it is. It's a bunch of big slugs fire to people. What I do laugh at is actually, really next to the heavy stubber, which actually does the inverse.

The heavy stubber performs better on the tabletop that does in the lore. Yes. The heavy stubber is a 50-call machine gun. It's just a, it's a large machine gun. That's all it is. In the lore, it's effectively useless, except for unarmed masses. It should. It's, you've got it.

That's weird because now that... The planetary defense forces use them for, like, crowd control. Yeah, because I was to say, they're the T-shirt guns of that. On the game, it's actually heavy stubbers are vehicle mounted most of the time. Yeah. Well, I laugh because in the lore, and it closes out in the lore, a space marines armor is immune to a heavy stubber round. Yeah, it just basically hits the armor and dissipate. And everyone who's played the game is going, no, I died to all the time.

Yes, you did. I have them on all of my guard. Also, in the game, in the lore, they are these shoot randomly in the crowds. Wildly inaccurate. It's a garbage machine gun in the lore. It shoots things, and everything's on arm. Highly accurate. And they're all massed together.

You'll take a few of them out. But if you're playing in the game, it's like, oh, yeah, I've got massive range, incredible accuracy, and I'm killing space marines routinely with it, even Terminators. So, yeah, I don't actually understand why they're as good as a business. Is this the only gun that's better? It might be. I was thinking about anything else. You know what?

I'm going to dwell on that while we're talking. It might be the only one that's better on the tabletop than it is in the lore. You know, let's talk about a cool gun, though. What? Grav cannons. Grav cannons? Grav cannons are awesome. You know why?

Because they're wildly made up, and it's fantastic. So Grav cannons come from the dark age of technology. They're not made anymore. So every Grav cannon in the game, unless you're Brad and you're playing a drop pod full of them, multiple drop pods. Grab cans are incredibly ripped. If a soldier carrying a Grav cannon, Space Marine, carrying a grab cannon is killed, you have to pick that Grav cannon up because you can never make it again. Whoa, whoa. So you could make it sometimes.

How? if you had to put one on a vehicle, for instance. That's what, okay, that is the weird. Grav cannons are the same as the grab drives. So right now, Admec has no problem making semi-flying vehicles. A ton of Grave powered things. Yeah. All the grab gun is kind of like when in a video game,

when someone takes a mining laser and then turns it into another weapon. Yeah. That's like you literally, You switch two wires. And all of a sudden, it does this. So, yes, to Brad's point, the Imperium has no problem making grab vehicles, but a grab gun is impossible. Now, let's know what a grab gun is, though, because it's actually super cool.

It's awesome. So it shoots a gravity well at a target. Whatever it hits, it then makes a gravity well, so it's a mini black hole and crushes everything in that area down into a tiny little spot. It's also not fast. Yeah. Yeah. It's a sucky way.

It could turn a space marine into a ball. It's a space marine in armor into a ball. And it crushes you down while it's doing it. Yeah. They are one of the most devastating weapon in the lore. They're one of the most devastating weapons. They're used actually in siege weapons because they could pull a wall down. Imperial ships use them to actually shoot at other imperial ships to crack them into pieces.

they are amazing guns that have had garbage rules. Yeah, the second to this rules are cool as shit. Yeah, that was... Their actual rules right now are not bad. I like that they have anti-vehicle two. Yeah. So they... I just feel like there should be...

I like the idea of this sustained weapon where, like, you hit something and it just... I like in the tabletop that they're anti-vehicle. They should be anti-vehicle, anti-vehabilical, anti-building, but we don't really have building rules. But they're anti-veical. Yes, they do wildly less to people than they should. But I do like at least their damage weapon.

It should have been, we're about to do my favorite weapons. They should have been like more of a devastating one immortal wound type thing. It's what I'm saying. It should just kill it. That's what I'm saying. I was to say, yes, you're not wrong. Because if they did lore in the game, it should do all or nothing. You should just do devil wounds or nothing.

Yeah, it's like if it's a vehicle, maybe it's damaged you. But if it's a walk, if it's infantry, it's... Yeah, but the Devlin still covers that. They should just do Dev wounds. I agree. So now we'll move on to what is actually my favorite weapon in the game, Volkite. Volkite comes from the dark age of technology, but we still can produce it. They actually still know how to make them.

Cool side note on Volkite, it actually was the original weapon for the Great Crusade. The Imperium... And then the Emperor made so many troops. He had to move the Bolters because they couldn't make enough Volkite. If you go into Horace Heresy, a ton of the walkers have Volkites. Yeah. Volkite are, it's actually funny because it's like, it's just a ray gun. That's what it is.

It's just a ray gun. But when it hits something, if it hits organic matter, it sets off a chain reaction and combusts it. So it creates and just, yeah, your whole body just combust to the point where if it hits a gap in your armor and hits your body, you will disset. will disintegrate inside of your own army. I think the Volkites are one of the runners up here to be the best lore versus tabletop.

Yeah, because the Volkite should just, again... Well, I'm saying, but it's low strength, and it's devastating most. Oh, you're saying the best, the best representation. Right, because it's again, one of the all-enough weapons. I think the problems will get to the melee weapons and the melee weapons are actually pretty close. No, I'm saying, as far as there range so far.

Oh, yeah, you're right. Volkites, probably the best. Yeah, they fire, they do very, very similar in lore to what they do on the table. I wish they were damaged too. That's my thing. I wish Volkine is dangerous too. That way just because

once you fail yeah, once you fail a save, a Marine should die. Yeah, that's like Volkite because idea is that. Yeah, if you're affected, you're just dead. You're dead. You either didn't get it hit and affected or you just did. In Volkites, I mean, there

has been something incredibly broken models over the years with Volkite on them. Looking at you, Leviathons. But now anyway, a lot of you who play Blood Dangerous Spacewolves are just really confused about this first half of our cast about all these things we've been talking about. Hey, we sent Inferno pistols.

I've never seen those. I don't know what you're talking about. One of these coward weapons? Yeah. Oh, the thing that cowards use? No. What if I want to fight like a man? Well, good news. 40K has some incredible melee weapons that if you have a degree in physics, you're going to be mad. Just turn this off now.

Just go ahead, turn this off now. Hold on. I appreciate you as a listener, and I want to keep you as one, and I don't want you to have any- I'm not even going to look forward on the notes. Are we going to start with your favorite weapon? Why are you such a big fan of the chainsword, John? The chain sword, okay. The chain sword, I'm assuming, came from evil dead.

That's where I assume their idea came from here of like, what if we put a chainsaw in someone's hand, they hit people with it? No. How about a sword? But it's got to be a sci-fi sword. Well, we'll put a chainsaw on the sword. It is the least practical weapon I could ever imagine. So a chain sword is a sword.

So you have a halt and you have a bolt. and you have a giant chainsaw coming out the top of it. The teeth are only exposed on one side because you wouldn't want to cut yourself with it, obviously, like a sword, which is pointing on both sides. But I digress. The teeth are made of seramite, and they're sharpened to a level where they're impossibly shook.

So they're supposed to be able to tear through anything they encounter with absolute ease. But you're chopping. You'd have to chop, push the button. Yeah. And then continue to go. This is where, and again, I don't know if any of our listeners have used a chainsaw, if not used a chainsaw, but if you've ever used the chainsaw,

not the ones that the weird lumberjacks use and Bumble F nowhere to cut down a tree. The one that all the normals have. Seriously, imagine holding a chainsaw out. As a straight arm, hold a chainsaw. The reason I hate this is that, first off, the weight distribution on this is insane. It is just a broken wrist. That's insane. They're space brains.

They're very strong. Yeah, I mean, there's no amount of hydraulics you could put in a wrist to make this thing actually wieldable. But that's not even the dumbest part. But the weight would be everywhere. Yeah, the weights, the other piece is that the way a chainsaw works, the chainsaws work, they're linear. They go down, they make contact and they cut in one angle the hallway through. But it doesn't slice. If you've ever used, yeah, if you ever use the chainsaw on a tree, and you're cutting the tree,

the weight of the tree comes back onto the chainsaw, it actually, the teeth stop moving. It jams it. I do love the fact that we are really focused on the actual real-life technology of a chain. The reason the chainsword I like, I'm going to give them credit. The reason the chainsword is funny me is that from a physics standpoint, it is no sense. I mean, we're beyond. No. Because this is a personal pet peeve of it.

If you're going to do sci-fi, go all the way. You do stuff like Grabgos, you know, Volcano all the way. I can't argue against them because it's so beyond the realm of reality, I don't care. But when you play in the realm of reality, I get to kind of have some questions here. And my issue with chainsworts is, I love the aesthetic of what if we made a sword out of a chainsaw? That's objectively awesome. But it would never work in a million years.

It would constantly get stuck, then you get stabbed. That's what would happen with a chainsaw. You'd take the chainsword to someone's armor. It would get stuck in their armor. he would look at you while it's stuck in his armor and punch you in the face. So that's my issue with the chain sword. It's got a cool weapons. Yeah.

Let's have some fun. Let's skip it. I don't want to talk about chain weapons anymore because it's dumb. Just do power weapons. We'll be right back after a quick break. Power weapons. And this is great because exactly what I just talked about. My issue with a chain sword was they tried to make an explanation of how the chain

cell actually functional. Power weapons, you know how they explained it? Nanotechnology. baby. There's an energy, the catch-all for every sci-fi. I love power weapons. Why does this work?

Because screw you, that's why it works. How's the power weapon? Well, it takes a, you take a normal, like, a weapon and then we put an energy field around it.

What's the energy field do? It makes it better. It's, you know, how does that function? Shut up. Let me give you a counter argument, John.

Science. Be quiet. So power weapons are coolest out. And we'll start with the first one, which is, again, stupid but all. awesome, the PowerFist. I love it.

Oh, the PowerFist is... It's wildly anane, and it's one of my favorite weapons. It's a hand. It is, for those of us who've ever bought Hulk hands, that's what it is. Yeah. It's a Hulkcan. It's a Hulkcan covered by lightning and nanotechnology. So Space Marines, Terminators, a couple random guardsmen all have these things.

Calgar is the best of them all who has two of them. Countlets of Ultramar, thank you very much. And what they do is when I have my power fist on and I punch something with my power fist. You power it up first. True. With now technology. And then when it makes contact, the energy explodes out and it hits harder. Because it's a power fist.

Yeah. Not just a fist, my friend. A power fist. I like power fist. I'm actually with Brad on it. Is it not? It's awesome. Is it dumb?

Yeah, but it's amazing. Yeah, it's super stupid. I actually prefer. I love it. I prefer the next one, which is the chain fist. Because it takes all the joy, the power fist, and adds a chainsaw underneath it. Yes. So a chain fist is legitimately a power fist, and they strapped underneath the power fist.

So you still have a power fist. A power fist. And then you have a chain. A chain sword under it. And it's also a special. done up chain fist that's specifically designed to

cut through metal because of not just nanotechnology but monofilament. They use the word monofilament randomly. Yep. Because it literally cuts through armor because it goes through between the atoms.

I will be honest, the aesthetics are cool and the lore is actually much more functional than a regular chain sword because it is, first, it's attached to you. So the whole thing of just breaking your wrist is gone. It's actually underneath your forearm. So it does make a bit, it just can be heavy, but it just is harder to wield.

And I also can't talk show on it because of space wolves use them in a way that's just the most balanced. Space was used them in the best way ever, which is they didn't believe, well, in the back in the day. Yeah. They didn't trust that newfound crazy technology like teleportation. so they would board other space vehicles by shooting Terminators with chain fist, like bullets at the vehicles, cut a hole through,

and then beat the shit out of everybody inside. That's right. The way that they use my life more because it also make more sense, where they basically is almost like having a Swiss Army knife underneath this. They would, they land on something, cut a hole in it, go through the hole, and then use the power fist to punch everything in the hole. I was going to say the chain fist actually I like because for me, the chain fist is used as the utility thing. Yeah.

And then the power fist is what you actually use to fight with. Exactly. It makes more sense. And then if you hit a tank, you would stick the chain. I jump on the tank. I cut a hole in the tank. I jump in the tank and I power fist everyone inside the tank. I like the chain fist.

Chain fist is one of my favorites. Yeah, change fist is cool as hell. Rules have been messed, but they've been pretty good. One I don't like is the power sword just because it felt like they were phoning it in. Yeah. That's all my issues. It's fine. It's the same concept.

And there are levels to power swords. I'm going to caveat that. The standard power sword is just a sword with an energy field around it that makes it sharper. Nanotechnology. Right. Now, there are levels to power swords. There are some, like, you know, relic power. The cool of the power source is there are, like, relic power swords.

Let me say it that. Well, the problem is, is that power enter blank. Yeah. is they're wildly different. Right. Eisenhorn's power sword is amazing. Well, it's also a demon weapon. But yeah, fair.

But so the power swords, they are pretty cool. It's just, there's a little bit of phoning it in where it's like. It's a catch-off. Yeah, we want to have swords in our game. Yeah, but that doesn't make any sense. But remember, the why they're so different is some are demonic weapons, some are more powerful. But the thing is, is that all of these weapons that used to be. if I hit you with this and you don't have an invulnerable save,

you didn't get a save. That's the mechanic in the game. And that's the way it was supposed to be. And these extra power, some of these are powered elements where it's an energy field. Some of them are demonic. Well, the power field is, again, air quotes, because it was powered by something.

Something. And it was all different for each one. One of the things that does make power swords cool, though, is that because they have an energy field, you can turn it on and off. So the idea of power of swords, I think, was that a spaceman could become really adept at it, like Lucius, who could practice. Because you could practice with a power call. But you could go full go.

Yeah, and you wouldn't hurt anybody. Right. Because they're in armor. Because the swords are dull, because it's the power that actually makes them sharp. So these guys are in, they can make them full go. So you get some cool stories of these incredible duelsmen who are in their proficiency with a power of swords incredible. blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

She just say blah, blah, blah, blah, and some of the greatest swordsmen in the entirety of the, not even just the Imperium, the game. If you have Disney Plus, you can go to Disney Plus. You can click on Raiders of the Lost Ark. You can fast forward to, and I check this, minute 40, second 25,

and you'll discover the value of the sword. You know what? I mean, that's a cool scene. It's a great scene. Also, it was because Harrison Ford was sick. Look it up. You say, oh, yes, it's true. Yeah, there was supposed to be a sword fight.

They did instead and it's one of the best scenes in cinema. So go down. But also, there's some pretty cool swordsmen. Yeah. With power opens. All right. You're selling him short. This is one of my, I mean, you're going on one of my favorites.

Yes. So lightning clause. The only knock on lightning clause is there's no lightning. I mean, there kind of is. In some of the novels, they have lightning crackling off. They do. And in some of the codexes, they do not. And by some of the sum of them, I mean, all of them.

All of them. Yeah. All ever in the history of codexies. If you read, like, for instance, Abidon's bodyguard regiment, when they talk about them. Oh, they're just there. Lightning was crackling. Crackling. The Talons of Horace. Yeah, none of that happens in the game. I've read it numerous times. I've never shot lightning

out of them ever. So, but lightning clause are the function of G. G.W. writing lore and reading Marvel and being a big fan of Wolverine. Well, the thing that they're supposed to be that they do a bad job of is they're a weapon that was supposed to pass through because it was, again, the monofilament type deal. That's why they worked on vehicles and people is they just passed through because of their

field. The lightning field was supposed to punch through armor, punch through. It makes no sense. You've got. Yeah, it's sci-fi. You've got claws that are just going to get full of things. They're not. It's going to be like a kebab at the end of it.

It's going to be an armor kebab. Why do you hate on the end of your hand? Why do you hate nanotechnology so much? My issue with lightning clause is just that they don't make sense to me. Like you don't really want to have your melee weapon be that close to your body. And slashing at things like you're an angry cat is just not that functional. The idea in the lore, though, does make sense. sense. It's supposed to be a silent weapon. You could sneak up on people while wearing space

marine armor. What's that? Hold on, guys. I heard something. Lightning claw. Yeah. They're dumb. Anyway, they're actually cool. They look sick as far. They're inverse for me. I don't like what they're supposed to be. I love my models having. Yeah, they look awesome. When I had Space Marines, I had Vanguard vets with jump hacks and lightning claws. It's just a good look. Some other kind of fun power weapons on that is they've turned everything into power weapons. You can do it to anything. True. It's power. You know what? I'll read down the list.

Power mall, power axes, power maces, power flails. There's power, yes. Just put it on. It could be power stick. It'd be power anything. It could be had power rock. That being said, there is one more.

Oh, you mean the greatest weapon? This one in the game. Fully aligned on as the best weapon in the entire game. And that is the Thunderhammer. Yeah. So remember a power fist? What if instead of a fist,

we made a hammer? Full of lightning. It doesn't shoot out. I don't care, but it's at least on the weapon and modeled sometimes. It is modeled at sometimes. And it's a two-handed hammer

with an energy field that can stop a tank dead-knit strikes. They're so good. Yeah. I mean, and I'll be honest, this has been, from a weapon standpoint. If you're playing in 10th, they're okay.

If you're playing in any other edition, holy. Thanks, Brad. That's all I'm going to say. I had so many of them. How many did you run at the end of the ninth of your Space Force? 15, 20, 25, 40? 40, yeah, 40 Thunderhammers.

They were good. They were really good. Weird, now they're not good anymore. A lot of people didn't magnetize their models, Brad. They shoot them. As soon as they saw me play, yeah, I should have.

Oh, so, but, the Thunderhammer is just utilized by cool units. Space Wolves just sort of carry them.

Also, characters are known for Thunderhammerers. Yeah. The Thunderhammer does work. It is awesome. It is awesome when they, they do it in the anime-type deal. The Thunderhammer is actually, I think,

the best weapon, lord a tabletop, because in the Black Library novels, it's amazing. In the animations, it's amazing. In the Codex stories, it's amazing. On the tabletop, it's amazing. There is no time, even like 10thage, but Thunderhammers aren't that good.

They're still really good. But they also look cool as shit. Oh, Terminator's, assault Terminators carrying a Thunderhammer and a Storm Shield looks cool. Or characters with a heavy Thunderhammer with a huge Thunderhammer on it. Oh, super good. Thunderhammer is rock. The prime marks carry them. Great scope, too, because a lot of them have the,

some of the characters have the lightning on the thunderhammer in the sculpt. Perfect. It's just, it looks cool. They are insane. And what makes it, the reason it called a thunderhammer is because the energy in it, when it makes contact, gives out the sound of a sonic boom. Yeah. On contact.

It legitimately is a thunder clap. Yeah. It is cool as hell. This one, GW, nailed it. A single strike from a Thunderhammer can kill a space marine, even though it won't go through the arbor, by the way, because the force is so much, it'll actually basically liquefy them on the inside.

They can kill Harnifax and a single shot. That's the heavy Thunderhammer. It's the big versions, basically, of it, because they hold more power. Exactly. And they are cool as hell. Space wolves, yeah, Brad. Yep.

Also, they made the weapon weapons so bad that I had so many of those. Now, there is one more melee weapon that we haven't discussed, and it is possibly the greatest melee weapon in the entire game. It is imbued with the power of the emperor of mankind. It creates fear in any enemy that sees it and envy by other soldiers who see you with it. And that is the imperial shovel. Modeled on all creed models. It can dig.

It can slash. It can bash. And you can cook with it and eat with it. It is, unfortunately, unique to only the luckiest the imperial guardsman who can have it. But I do want to, I would be remiss if I didn't. Did not talk about it? Yeah.

If I didn't talk about the greatest of all the weapons, which is the imperial shovel. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I'm sorry, but you should collect Imperial Guard, Death Corps, or Greig, because it's amazing. And they all have a show. They all have a shovel. They at one point had rules for the shovels. They don't anymore, which is too bad because it was a better, it was a better time. But with that, that feels like.

like a good enough coverage of weapons of the Imperium. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Next week. Next week we're going to take off Brad's muzzle. It's time. It is time. We are going to begin. Are we doing Bruce Buffer or Michael Buffer on this? It's

time. The one who didn't get the sexual assault charges. Going with Bruce Buffer on that. So doing a heavy side of this, I also love Eldar, which is why this is going to be tough. We're going to start next week. The plan next week is to go into the Eldar gods and the creation of the craft worlds.

And then from there to start really diving hard into this. We're probably going to do some Eldar. Then we'll move away from Eldar and come back to more Eldar later because I don't want to give you guys nine straight episodes of Eldar, which there's so much stuff to talk about. And hopefully, we still get a good response. And we continue to do this because I'm super excited about upcoming. You don't even know how excited I get. Eldar is Brad's, like, real happy. I am so pop to talk about this.

Orcs are mine. I love orc. Eldar, I find awesome. They're more cool to me. Brad, the story is just a direct show. I'm so excited. So, anyway, next week, we're doing Eldar. So buckle up.

Anyway, with that, this has been John Barcati and Bradchester. This guy. See you guys next week.