40k Lore, The Imperial Lasgun!

greetings and salutations friends and welcome to the animal warhammer 40k lore today we're going to talk about the ubiquitous laz gun there are of course tons of variations of this weapon but before we get into any of those let's start with the basics first and foremost what is a last gun well it is they standard issue small arms for the imperial guardsmen on some planets they do issue other small arms but it's very very very very very very rare essentially for a regiment to be issued with anything but a lazar gun it's going to have to have a very very good reason to do so some technically imperial guard regiments that have been on extended garrison duty for example might be issued with locally produced gear instead of last guns and we're talking about gas duties that last into the hundreds if not thousands of years and eventually the regiment simply is not a priority for resupply of laskans and power packs which might force the regiment to adopt locally produced weapons like auto guns for example now if the regiment is then called back into active service efforts will be made to resupply the regiment and bring the back up to current standards but the administration of the imperium being what it is that is not always possible it is avoided whenever possible because well the regiment is going to be a hell of a lot less useful in most cases but still it does happen there is for example one regiment that was mentioned in the gantt's ghost's books this regiment had essentially gone back to using so-called laz locks which are extremely simplified versions of last guns using charged pellets to fire a single last shot before then needing to reload the weapon these things are archaic to say the absolute least they're big they're heavy and they look pretty much like good old-fashioned 18th century muskets nice and heavy and they're good for bashing people over the head with but as ranged reppin well they do leave something to be desired on the other hand it is a hell of a lot easier and cheaper to produce which means it could be produced on the local world and the world although it did have an active resistance force of sorts they were essentially step nomad barbarians the guards regiment in question would essentially fight them by forming archaic square formations and fire at them in volleys using bayonets to keep the horses away it worked perfectly fine as long as they were on the planet but well sending them out into more modern warfare could prove slightly problematic the good old-fashioned square formation is pretty damn useful against cavalry but it does have some problems when it comes to repulsing tanks and as for the weapon itself it is the preferred weapon of the imperial guard because of a variety of factors the most important of which is the relative ease of manufacture both of the weapon and its ammunition the weapon itself is remarkably robust and is good for over 10 000 shots with just simple cleanings and basic administration and a prayer or two after 10 000 shots the focus lens of the weapon needs to be replaced by a proper tech priest but 10 000 rounds for a rifle is not bad additionally the weapon has virtually nothing in the way of moving parts which means that the weapon is incredibly reliable it will practically never jam and it's very very hard to break an imperial lasgen can be safely used as a club with virtually no risk of actually breaking the weapon granted the weapon is not particularly heavy and as such using it as club might be somewhat detrimental especially if you've got a nice old bayonet instead but hey some feral world regiments just don't like using sharp pointy objects they prefer their weapons blunt and hefty in fact there is even an example of a feral world regiment that incorporated axe heads into the weapons stock now this was on the side that pointed downwards made the weapon somewhat uncomfortable to use surely and it made it a hell of a lot heavier but it was now essentially a functioning axe i'm not entirely sure that this in any way really increased the capacity of the weapon so they decreased the range capacity but on the other hand it is now an axe that fires lasers so you can't really argue and speaking of lasers the imperial last gun is indeed a laser weapon it fires a highly focused directed energy beam which lasts for something along the lines of a tenth of a second once this impacts upon a target it causes a rather catastrophic chain reaction you see the laser beam naturally is ridiculously hot and when it strikes unprotected tissue it will essentially vaporize said tissue it will literally boil the blood in a nanosecond causing a little bit of an explosion it is a very effective weapon when it comes to unarmored personnel in fact just a basic las bolt will be able to blast someone's arm off in addition to this the weapon is extremely quite literally pinpoint accurate even at the maximum extent of its range in fact the only real limitation to alaskans range is the range at which the bolt is starting to dissipate in the planet's atmosphere basically a las bolt or any laser can only travel so far before most of its heat energy dissipates into the world around it so that is the only real ranged limitation it doesn't have to worry about gravity or drop off although the effects of you know the earth's surrounding would still have an effect on it because it just goes in a straight line which means that extreme range shooting can actually be pretty complicated if you're used to a ballistic weapon essentially you might naturally be trying to compensate for a drop off that no longer exists which is why while most imperial guard regiments are of course levied from the pdf they are then given extensive retraining it would in fact not be an exaggeration to say that once a pdf unit is turned into an imperial guard unit it is essentially retrained from the bottom up as all of their old gear is now outdated the old system of squad vox casters for example will be replaced by individual walk speeds and the weapons as mentioned are very very different the tactics also are in most cases very different most pdf units are expected to deal with no more than local civilian riots or hold fortifications it's the worst case scenario but even that pediatricians are generally speaking not expected to fight the enemy if anything they are expected to do nothing and die while doing so if an enemy were so inconsiderate as to dump down on their particular doorstep there is however one small problem while the last gun is extremely effective against unarmored targets it does struggle with armor now imperial standard issue flak armor will provide a fair bit of protection against lazabolt at the very least it is likely to take the first hit although after that the armor is literally going to be well destroyed so you better not get hit again but still it's got a pretty good chance of saving your life the first time around more advanced types of armor like for example carapace armor can take several hits but again this is relatively light imperial guard standard issue armor it's not particularly tough it'll stop a couple bullets it'll stop a couple last blasts but this is nowhere near the top-of-the-line protection that the imperium has astarte's power armor is virtually impervious to last guns unless it is at extreme close range freola's going to have any real hope of penetrating adaptations power armor it has to be at virtually point-blank range we're talking a couple of meters and the weapon will have to be at the highest power setting possible additionally it's probably going to have to hit a weak spot to guarantee penetration and of course to guarantee killing what's inside even if the astartes was not wearing power armor a las bolt is unlikely to incapacitate a space marine as such you want to be aiming for the head in these cases and then of course there's the fact that you are now trying to kill an adaptive society so in this case probably chaos marine which is way worse at something along the lines of 2 meters while this monstrous creature is hurling towards you something along the lines of 60 kilometers per hour i mean you can try for a headshot but uh i wouldn't [ __ ] trust my luck and neither would imperial guard doctrine basic imperial doctrine for dealing with adaptive societies is bob calling on the adaptive societies or tanks or artillery bombardment but if an imperial guard squad is forced to take on a chaos marine basically the idea is that the unit lines up more or less in a straight line or double ranks if they have the time and all start firing simultaneously good old-fashioned volley fire basically the idea is that even if the troops are in all due likelihood scared out of their [ __ ] minds and therefore not aiming as well as they normally would the hope is that a stray las bolt will hit something vital and hopefully kill the bastard i wouldn't put money on it but well it's better than nothing isn't it but of course chaos space means are relatively rare so it's not that big of an issue orcs on the other hand are not quite as rare and they are quite resistant to las bolts now first and foremost awk armor being essentially armored just because it's really really thick and awks are very strong and can lug an absolute goddamn ton of armor along on them is pretty effective just by sheer good old-fashioned thickness the last bolt might carve out a nice [ __ ] hole from a piece of slab metal however the piece of slab metal is still going to be in one piece in most cases and it's probably going to take two or three more hits before the last bolt has quite literally dug its way through the armor and after that of course you have the small problem of trying to put down an orc with a las bolt now walks are very very tough and they don't feel much in the way of pain and their slab-like musculature is actually quite able to absorb a las bolt now the imperial guard issue las gun will take down an orc with a single headshot with chest shots you're probably looking at something along the lines of four or five hits before you start inflicting real damage if all you've got is a laz pistol well you're gonna need all the luck you can get cause only a headshot directly into the eye socket thereby frying out the brute's brain is really going to stand any chance of saving your ass luckily however the last guns do come with a full auto option which is very much so recommended once fighting orcs you might have to expend something along the lines of a third to half of your magazine's ammunition to stop one and at that point you don't have time for individual shots tyranids can also be a fairly large problem now the smaller gaunt variants are fairly easy to kill with a las bolt but the bigger ones can be nion impossible because they are protected by layer upon layer of natural armor again much like good old-fashioned pieces of slab metal worn by orcs a last weapon will essentially have to dig its way through these multiple layers on protection before getting to anything fleshy and even then you're probably going to have to dig your way through several layers of additional production and muscle and other non-essential tissue before you can actually kill a big tyranid which means that a last rifle is virtually worthless against something like a tyrant guard or hive tyranid it will deal with the smaller bastards fairly easily though so again it's not that big of an issue since hive times are relatively rare but if you see one well you're in for a fairly uncomfortable time unless you've got a heavy bolter at hand however this should not be considered a real drawback of the weapon the simple fact is that anything short of a bolt gun would have a hard time dealing with these enemies and unless you're in adaptive societies you're going to have a very hard time firing one without breaking most of the bones in your upper body so that's kind of out of the picture an auto gun wouldn't really do all that much better it might be slightly better at very very long ranges assuming you've got a high powered weapon something along the lines of a 50 caliber weapon or something but again it's not really going to benefit you that much in the long run and as i've already said alas gun is fantastic against lightly armoured infantry against regular chaos cults tips or even blood pack troops for example one or two hits will almost certainly be enough to kill and in fact one hit will almost certainly be enough to at the very least incapacitate the target and take him out of action and in told you honesty the real advantage of the last gun is not its killing power although alaska's killing power against unarmoured and even lightly armed human targets is considerable the true advantage of the last gun comes in its ammunition the last gun uses a power packs these things are fantastically useful and they are the primary strength of the last gun it might sound a bit odd to think that a weapon's primary advantage is its ammunition but think about this first and foremost these last guns are extremely compact your average guardsmen can carry dozens of these things and each of them packs something along the lines of 100 to 200 shots depending on its size there are variations in size for example the most common is the size 2 while other heavy regimens often use the size 4 which is tweaked in such a way that it doesn't provide any real additional ammunition but it practically doubles the effectiveness of each individual las bolt this increase in power naturally plays absolute havoc with the weapon itself and you can probably assume that it's only going to last something along lines of 4 to 5 000 rather than the regular 10 000 shots but the extra killing power is highly valued by regiments that are essentially expected to fulfill a stormtrooper role if you're going to be storming into an enemy bunker complex with virtually no warning of when an enemy is going to be popping around a corner you want that [ __ ] to be dead in the first not the second round there is however relatively few varieties when it comes to power packs you've got your standard size 1 which is used in laz pistol the standard size 2 which is the most common used in imperial guard allows guns the size 3 which is used in highly specialized weapon for example the legion drop troopers use size 3. it gives them extra ammunition per power pack for only a small increase in the overall size this is very useful for drop troops because there's no guarantee that they're going to be resupplied on time if they're going to be resupplied at bloody all as such an additional 50 rounds per magazine is highly valued and of course the aforementioned size 4 that trades ammunition capacity and reliability for extra killing power this all of course has the advantage of letting the imperial guard supply officer concentrate on requisitioning one or two types of ammunition in fact entire crusading forces will often be able to make do with only two types of power packs which means that all imperial guard regiments can essentially draw their ammunition from the same stockpile this means that no space is wasted and it also means that ammunition can be sent to the regiments that are in the most in need of it without having to dig out a specific pattern in the worst case scenario a larger expedition might have to supply four types of ammunition for specialized troops which is pretty damn rare an additional and technically not entirely legal benefit is that it allows many regiments to become virtually self-sufficient when it comes to ammunition imperial guardsmen being soldiers will scrunch up any last piece of ammunition they can get their hands on and hopefully they will not be using all of it as generally speaking if the soldier is fighting to the last las pack he's in deep [ __ ] [ __ ] and has considerably more important things to worry about than whether or not he's going to have enough ammunition for the next engagement this means that most regiments are going to slowly but surely build up a considerable surplus of ammunition now in all due technicality imperial guard quartermasters will usually request the return of ammunition so that they can keep their books nice and tidy but well let's just say that some ammunition will be returned and the rest of the power packs will unfortunately have been broken during the fierce fighting of the last few days regardless of whether or not there's actually been any fighting recently luckily the power pack is fairly easy to produce and in fact it is usually produced within the fleet itself even small expedition fleets will usually have one adaptus mechanicus fabrication vessel along with it whose primary duty is to keep the units supplied with replacement last guns and power packs large air forces will have several such ships to make sure that the imperial guard troops are always well equipped with ammunition and especially large troop movements or even indeed crusades will have specialized manufacturing ships that can create pretty much anything from heavy boulders to stubborns to tanks to ammo packs to last guns to missiles to rockets to virtually anything generally speaking however the standard fabrication ship will produce basic ammunition and the rest is expected to be ferried in unless there is a particular need for it for example artillery regiments will usually have a specialized manufacturing ship that produces all of their ammunition as well as any and all spare parts that may be required it is after all fairly pointless and extremely wasteful to have to request spare parts from a planet that could be months if not years away not to mention completely and utterly impractical you can't simply take a gun out of service for six months because it needs a new [ __ ] gear additionally you can't just carry along all of the replacements because that shed weighs a lot and it takes up a [ __ ] enough space as well whereas unprocessed metal well the weight is about the same but the space requirements are vastly different but that's still not all in addition to being extremely versatile easy to produce and quite reliable the power pack can also be recharged generally speaking an imperial guardsman will be issued with something along lines of three to six power packs at the beginning of the campaign and those power packs are expected to last the guardsmen throughout the entirety of the fighting upon the conclusion of the campaign the power packs will be handed over to the regimental supply officer who will send them on to the mechanicus who will fix them up as of course over the course of multiple recharges the battery will slowly but surely start to lose some of his potency and this is one of the few occasions in which you can trust an imperial guardsman to actually hand over his power pack what basically happens is that an imperial guardsman will just happen to find an old power pack lying somewhere near his bunk for example that just happens to be pretty old and holds something along the lines of half its previous charge and seeing as he just happened to find it after having accidentally lost it earlier or no no he didn't lose it someone else must have misplaced it and out of the goodness of his heart he has now come to the regimental quartermaster to hand over this long lost power pack as it must certainly be missing its family very much at this point in time and speaking of recharging they can be recharged by any real power source for example they have little solar panels on top of them so they can simply just be put out in the sun and they will be recharged and in an emergency the power pack can be placed near to slightly inside of a fire the power pack will be able to draw quite a lot of energy from this although it is of course going to damage the power pack quite a bit this is obviously a measure of last resort the weapon can be recharged like this but don't expect it to be holding the same amount of charges nor the same amount of shots and definitely don't expect to be able to do this too many times lastly let's touch briefly upon one of the major modification of the last gun as i mentioned previously there are a ton of legal and less legal modifications and even quite a lot of differences within the patterns of the last gun the most common being the m35 galaxy while you also have some crazy [ __ ] like the literally hand crafted last weapons of the australian firstborn but we are now talking about the general purpose weapons and there is one modification of the weapon that can be considered general purpose and that is the imperial long lass as the name suggests this is a sniper variant of the standard issue last gun it uses specialized ammunition in the form of so-called hotshot packs that have a far smaller ammunition capacity just 10 to 20 shots but they deliver many many many times the energy the increase in raw energy also of course means that the weapon's effective range is considerably lengthened as it takes far longer for the bolt to lose all of its lethal force to aid the wielder in long range sniping the weapon is also occurred with a high powered scope which is quite a rarity within the imperial guard a basic lens gun will only really be equipped with something like a small scope or a reflex sight if it comes from a fairly advanced world or if it is a regiment that is considered particularly important generally speaking the standard issue imperial last gun comes equipped with a good old fashioned iron sight and very little else but that is not the only difference between a long last and a standard issue last gun it also comes with a few additional nifty mechanical nonsense pieces and it is considerably longer than a basic last weapon specifically the barrel is longer the barrel can also easily be removed from the weapon by an unlock function it can essentially just be screwed straight out this is important because the weapon's increased power outage means that a basic barrel will only last something along the lines of 30 to 50 shots depending on of course the rate of fire the expertise of the wielder etc and any available coolant you could potentially get a barrel up into asmr to 60 shots with an available source of coolant be it for example snow or something but at that point the barrel will be dangerously warped and might just simply rupture which is a bit of a problem due to the weapons considerably higher power yield it is also considered to be slightly more unstable than the basic glass weapon now it's still very unlikely that anything bad is going to happen to it but hotshot packs do contain a far greater charge than normal power packs as such any malfunction is likely to be uncomfortable again it's not very likely to explode but not very likely to explode and will not explode whatsoever it's still a difference that is worth mentioning additionally the weapon itself is considered to be extremely precious and imperial guard regiments put a lot of love and effort into their sniper detachment every single sniper has the rifle stock custom crafted to fit his body for example and it is considered a status symbol to be issued with a long last in return however imperial regard regiments will tend to um expect quite a lot in return for their quote-unquote investment in their sniper rifles snipers are often requested to cover retreats of entire regiments leaving them the last sons of [ __ ] to try and get out of a hairy situation and they're often also asked to do ridiculous things like could you please wander over to that hill over yonder and see if you could kill the enemy commander for me etc and some imperial guard officers that coming from old fashioned aristocratic worlds often consider the sniper rifle to be a bit of a borish weapon without any honor you're not facing your enemies straight up in honorable combat you're sneaking around in the bushes taking pot shots at commanders and proper people and this can lead to a rather uncomfortable life for the sniper and simply not having snipers is technically not allowed by the administratum although considering the shall we say turnover rate in regiments in which snipers are not welcome they do tend to become rather scarce rather quickly and so that has been my video on the imperial guard laz gun i'm probably going to have to do one with some variations later on some of the different patterns although most of the major patterns will be covered in peril guard regiment videos for example the illusion drop troopers i will definitely mentioning their specific pattern of lesgun but there are some variants that are less common and in fact some which are downright illegal modifications like for example the shot lass which is a triple barrelled laz gun which essentially functions as a shotgun it's pretty damn demonstrating at short range but you're not going to be winning any sniping contests with it so until next time i have been arch thank you very much for watching and i do hope to see you all again soon have a good day [Music] you

Channel: Arch

Views: 533,695

Keywords: Arch, Lasgun, Imperial Guard, Warhammer 40k, 40k, Lore, 40k Lore

Id: myaHqVXisQc

Length: 28min 5sec (1685 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 02 2016