WARHAMMER GUNS! What they do, and how to tell them all apart | Warhammer 40k Lore

hi gang so the Imperium in warmer 40,000 uses a huge range of different weapons Technologies ranging from things we might recognize from the present day to Crazy science guns and when you're assembling your first model kits or just trying to recognize things from the law it can be pretty difficult to know which is which so in this video I'm going to run through all the most common weapons in 40 K's Imperium explain how they're meant to work what they do and how you can recognize them on your models so that you can tell your heat Rays from your laser [Music] [Applause] beams so in the Grim darkness of the 41st Millennium there are loads of different guns 30,000 years of slow technological development has left the Imperium with a range of different weapons from simple slugthrowers to radiation guns and they all work differently and and importantly look different if you've just got into Warhammer 40K then you're probably aware that it's kind of important which teeny tiny weapons your teeny tiny soldiers are carrying especially for your opponent so that they know who they should shoot first thankfully the horrible factions of The Nightmare future have been pretty considerate when designing their weapons and there are some key design features on all their technologies that allow us the players to easily tell them apart on the battle field so in this video I'm going to go through all the main types of weapon you're going to encounter at least the Imperial one since that does cover most of the factions explain what they are and how they work what they're used for in the game and how you can easily tell them apart oh and also I'm not American I don't know anything about guns but don't worry about that in the Grim darkness of the far future weapon design doesn't exactly make sense anyway we'll be fine let's start with the most famous of Imperial weapons the Bolter bolt weapons are an ancient Terran design used mostly by the elite forces of the Imperium the Space Marines sisters of battle and adeptus custodes rather than bullets the bolts they fire are more like tiny self-propelled missiles with their own propellant that ignites when the bolt leaves the barrel these bolts have an armor-piercing tip but an explosive core designed to explode within the target causing hor Ric damage and that's considered a feature bolt guns are Terror weapons Hightech but deliberately brutal designed during the Great Crusade for use by the Space Marine Legions superhuman Warriors whose effect was as much psychological as anything else they're noisy and short ranged and cause visible Overkill perfect for shock troops like the aartis and because of that association with the Space Marines within the Imperium they're considered a holy weapon a symbol of the imperium's strength there are downsides though Bol gun ammo is relatively expensive to supply and the guns themselves need a good deal of Maintenance all things that are fine when the Army has the infrastructure and training to support that but outside these Elite military forces bolters can be somewhat rarer in the other Imperial militaries bolt guns and bolt pistols are considered Prestige weapons sidearms for inspiring offic offers or commissars and outside the military they're the sort of guns gang leaders would carry impressive expensive and intimidating weapons like all the guns we're going to look at the basic Bolter technology has been adapted into a number of different formats the standard bolt gun and bolt rifle used by the Marines and the sorors have been developed into a number of marks over the years each with their own strengths and weaknesses many scal down for use by regular humans bolters are often added to other weapons to form a Combi weapon or doubled up to form rapid firing storm bolters and Combi bolters the heavy weapon version The Heavy Bolter is frequently found mounted on Imperial vehicles or on support carriages in astrom militarum heavy weapon teams both of which make its great weight much more manageable and there are also even more esoteric and technically Advanced versions of the technology like the lastrum bolt weapons used by the custodes and the Mora bolt cannons found on mechanic and robots in most games bolt guns are depicted as a rapid firing basic infantry weapon with a higher strength than most comparable guns they're ridiculously effective against low toughness low armor infantry and have a good chance of hurting the bigger and scarier creatures of the 41st Millennium heavy bolters are much the same guns with a high rate of fire that are good against heavy infantry and even some lighter Vehicles how scary they actually are depends on the game you're playing in LGE large war games like 40K bolt weapons are just pretty strong rapid firing anti-infantry weapons in games like Imperium maledictum or necromunda set far away from the battlefield where the biggest threat is an enemy ganger a bolt gun is a terrifying weapon though very hard to maintain and prone to jamming or running out of ammo as you probably guessed from all these images so far bolt weapons are pretty visually distinctive they're easy to recognize by their boxy shape their old chunky rectangles and they've got very little visible Barrel they've just got this muzzle poking out the end really wide and with a large hole drilled through it these features are common across all bolt weapons once you know what to look for it's easy to recognize them next up if bolters are the prestige weapon of the Imperium then the most ubiquitous is the humble L gun the most common weapon technology in the Imperium L guns are laser guns they fire an explosive blast from a rechargeable power pack it's unclear clear exactly what they fire in some media Las guns fire a tiny beam from point to point but in most cases it's like a laser bolt that travels like a bullet and causes surface damage from heat famously cauterizing the wounds as it causes them when they fire L guns make a distinctive whip-like cracking sound in the Imperium these are a proven military technology they have more than enough stopping power to put down an unarmored human which is mostly what Imperial Defense Forces fight they robust reliable and easy to resupply and given the lack of recoil they require little training to use so as well as being the default weapon of the astrarium they're also a very common weapon amongst settlers Travelers underhive dwellers and private security forces just like with bolt technology Laz weapons come in a massive variety of different shapes and sizes on the smaller end of the scale LZ pistols LZ guns and LZ rifles are all various sorts of basic anti-in infantry weapon used against low armored infantry but maybe a little underpowered against anything bigger but L technology is pretty versatile Hot Shot LZ guns hell guns and longl sniper rifles all use variations on a massively overcharged power pack to punch through enemy armor on the much heavier end of the scale L Cannon and Laser destroyers have much bigger capacitors and are primarily designed for punching through enemy tank armor AAS Cannon is one of the most common anti-tank weapons in the imperium's Arsenal these uses remain pretty consistent across all the different 40K games L guns are light but relatively low powerered rapid firing weapons whereas LZ cannons are singleshot anti-tank weapons but in games where it matters LZ weapons are also about the most reliable weapons you can get they don't jam and it's hard to ever run out of ammo famously in world power packs can be recharged just by throwing them in a fire for a while like with many Imperial weapons LZ weapons can be recognized by their muzzle L guns come in a massive variety of styles but generally they have long visible barrels and a distinctive diagonal cutaway on the muzzle sometimes with a sight on top the larger laser destructors and L cannons might also have coils around the base of the barrel to focus all that energy but it's the diagonal line that really tells you it's a LZ weapon okay we got space laser guns and brutal Terror weapons but what about just you know normal guns that fire bullets well 40K recognizable 20th century weapons come in a few different flavors almost as ubiquitous as the L gun is the auto gun a Catal term for a solid projectile automatic weapon the equivalent of the sort of weapon modernday militaries might use but obviously more advanced in various ways this is a huge category ranging from something we might describe as an assault rifle or a submachine gun to heavy vehicle mounted Cannon the important thing is that it fires some sort of solid ammo in the Imperium auto guns are really common using proven and simple technology but they're not often used by the military L guns are just way better for logistical purposes since they don't require Expendable ammunition instead auto guns tend to be used by militia or gang forces by revolutionaries and cultists by less well supplied planetary Defense Forces or just on planets with a lower tech level than would be needed to make LZ technology this changes though when we get to the heavier weapons autoc Canon come in various sizes and are very common on Imperial Vehicles especially those used by the astr militarum and other lower Tech forces where the weights and ammo requirements are way less of an issue how all these work in game depends on the game you're playing in the bigger Battlefield games auto guns and auto pistols are basically identical to LZ guns and LZ pistols the differences just aren't big enough to be noticeable but in the smaller scale skirmish games auto weapons tend to have a higher rate of fire than L weapons at the expense of being a bit less Reliable Auto cannons tend to be the same across everything though multiple shot heavy weapons that are strong enough to penetrate light vehicle armor a Midway point between the rapid firing heavy Bolter and the dedicated anti-tank of the LZ cannon on the models auto guns and auto Cannon can generally be recognized by their muzzle break which usually includes some sort of slot shaped vents this is common amongst Auto pistols auto guns and auto Cannon and auto guns always lack that diagonal cutaway that LZ guns have however as we said Tech levels vary massively across the Imperium and many older designs of projectile weapons still persist stub guns are by 40K standards simple hand guns of a 19th or 20th century tech level that fire solid bullets the term stub gun covers CS everything from a 19th century revolver to a modern automatic and they're often found amongst gang Fighters and local police forces or as sidearms to less well supplied Defense Forces their big brother the heavy stubber is akin to any number of older pattern machine guns I guess spraying out a hail of bullets unlike the regular stub gun though heavy stubbers are common additions to Imperial military vehicles often as pintle mounted defense weapons to keep enemy infantry away in game terms all of these are just relatively low strength weapons usually the lowest strength guns you can get with the heavy stubber usually able to fire lots and lots of shots stub guns are often the cheapest simplest sort of weapon you can buy in the smaller skirmish games and Orit invisible in the big Battlefield games and while we're here the Imperium also make use of other weapons we might recognize shotguns are relatively common pretty much the same as today's though Imperial military forces make use of this boxy design of combat shotgun these are the signature weapons of the adeptus rbts and are also often used by Naval armsmen since their low velocity rounds won't pose a danger to a ship's hole and of course the Imperium also make use of grenade launchers and missile launchers there are a dizzying selection of grenades and missiles depending on what game you're playing but the most common are frag a generic name for any explosive fragmentation device that covers a large area and track an implosive or charge that's designed to penetrate armor in a small area right those are all the simpler and more common weapons used by the Imperium but there are also a lot of more specialist Technologies Humanity have developed or just kept around over the years the simplest one of these is flamethrowers or flamers as they're known 40K weapons that spray burning fuel over a large area in the Imperium flamer weapons use promethium a sort of catchall term for various organically derived refined combustibles and those are stored compressed in some sort of tank either a small flask attached to the bottom of the weapon or a bulky back-mounted version flamers are primarily anti-infantry weapons designed to flush large amounts of enemies out of cover but within the Imperium they also have quite an important ritual use within the Imperial cult the idea of burning Heretics is pretty popular so flamers see use all over the place as Weapons of cleansing as well as actual useful Battlefield tools unsurprisingly the sisters of battle consider the flamer one of the Holy Trinity of weapons along with the Bolter and the other heat based weapon the melag gun in various games these weapons are usually low strength but affect quite a wide area often using a template rather than needing to roll to hit anything the weapons themselves again start small like the hand flamers used by the sisters of battle and grow to absolutely huge sizes like The Inferno Cannon used on various vehicles but all of them can be recognized by the vented cowl over the front of the barrel and usually a little pilot light thingy at the front older designs of flamers though can look quite different flamers from the older games are recognizable by this distinctive nozzle at the front but all of them always tend to feature a storage tank somewhere around the model these old flamers can easily be confused with our next sort of weapon the grav or graviton gun grav Weaponry utilizes the graphitic reaction principle used to power the various anti-grav IES used by the Imperium when fired they project a stream of particles that affect the local gravitational field near the target area either increasing or decreasing the gravity they were originally designed for use in Low Gravity environments possibly even as non-lethal Weaponry since they can be used just to slow down a Target but at higher settings the field generated by grav weapons can Crush bones and rupture organs which as you can probably guess tends to be how the Imperium used the technology grav weapons most effective when deployed against heavily armored infantry or targets like Vehicles where the target's own weight can be used against it in the 41st Millennium grav Weaponry is like many Technologies barely understood during the time of the great Crusade graviton weapons were relatively common but in the 41st Millennium grav weapons are relics used by either the Space Marines or repurposed from industrial or mining technology you don't see them in that many games graph weapons can be identified by the nozzle on the front which as mentioned can be pretty confusing but they also tend to have rows of valves and sci-fi focusing nodes studded down the side of the gun all right next up melter weapons melter weapons are also called Fusion guns and they work by initiating a small scale fusion reaction in a compressed gas that's then projected as a superheated beam that cooks melts or vaporizes the target the gun itself makes no sound when it fires but the beam often produces a roaring the air in the beam super Heats melt technology is very reliable and used all over the Imperium often as industrial cutting tools but also as Weapons they're particularly useful against really heavily armored targets like vehicles and buildings the disadvantage being that they're also quite short- ranged and their effects get a lot more potent the closer you can get like everything they come in a number of sizes the most common being the melter gun and the heavier multim melter but pistol versions do exist confusingly those are called Inferno pistols and Inferno is also a name we give to bigger flamer weapons all of these in pretty much every game are short range support weapons total Overkill against any humanoid Siz fighter but by far the most useful tool for getting rid of vehicles and cutting through doors like everything they're recognizable by their Barrel melter barrels are tubular with horizontal vents on them and the bigger weapons like multim melters just have multiple barrels they can look a bit like a heavy flamer sometimes but they lack the nozzle shape or the pilot light plasma weapons are an old and pretty unstable design of weapon dating back to the Dark Age of Technology but they're very popular they work by converting gas or liquid fuel into an energized packet of matter called plasma the same material found in reactor cores or in stars and then propelling that packet forward through magnetic acceleration plasma weapons are a pretty common specialist weapon in the imperium's militaries despite the fact that they're kind of a lost technology and usually dangerous as a result they're pretty bulky weapons designed for use against enemy heavy infantry or particularly tough and heavily armored troops but the downside is that plasma weapons take a long time to recharge and overuse can lead to overheating and the cooling process which usually involves expelling super heated gas can be pretty horrific for the operator in game plasma weapons are really strong specialist weapons that tend to be very good against High toughness enemies with the added bonus that they can rapid fire they often have a choice of power levels can fire them at with the obvious danger that at the higher levels they might overheat and kill your own models which is of course the only level you should choose in every game plasma weapons within the Imperium come in all shapes and sizes from plasma pistols up to plasma cannons but can all be recognized by the magnetic acceleration coils on the back and by the distinctive oval firing Hood dotted with vents for the escaping gases plasma weapons have been around for a while so there are a few different designs older plasma weapons tend to have a more more of a circular shape and there are some chaos ones with no protective cowl there are also tainted versions of plasma weapons usually called warpfire weapons which used dark and spooky plasma but they're still pretty recognizable vit's weapons we're getting weird now are an ancient design of weapon manufactured by the mechanicum on Mars in the days of the great Crusade they were briefly one of the standard weapons of the Legion as aartis before they switch back to the more reliable Teran Bolter there a sort of radiation-based thermal weapon another sort of heat ray That Could set the target's flesh Al light and whose energies could bounce through closely packed enemies however they were a lot more difficult to maintain than the other options and during the Horus heresy they kind of fell out of favor until in the 41st Millennium they're quite rare only really used by the occasional Space Marine or much more commonly by the tech Priests of the adeptus mechanicus in game volite weapons are usually short-ranged guns that fire a lot of shots but which aren't very good at penetrating armor they usually have a mechanic that allows those Rays to bounce around the target Squad like lightning the more models you kill the more are then hit by secondary shots volite weapons come in a number of sizes all of which have crazy old-fashioned gun names from the pistols siiz sepenter to the rifle siiz charger and caliber up to huge weapons like the vehicle mounted volkite Demi culverin or volite kavil found on the night styrix they can be recognized ized by two distinctive features first the rows of power coils that are always present on the sides of the weapon and then this sort of rectangular muzzle or port on the front from where the Martian heat rays are emitted getting even stranger needle weapons are an exotic Imperial technology that's rarely seen on the battlefield needle weapons fire a tiny sliver of solidified toxin embedded in a low power carrier beam of laser energy the intent is that the laser pierces any clothing or armor and delivers the toxin straight into the target they're a delicate and hard to manufacture technology but completely silent which makes them perfect for stealth troops or assassins they're also famously expensive in the Imperium these aren't often military weapons and needle pistols or needle sniper rifles are much more likely to be carried by wealthy Nobles or their agent since you don't see them that often in the game the depiction of needle weapons can vary quite a lot but most featur a sort of long thin Barrel that puts you in mind of a syringe which is kind of understandable for a weapon that fires solidified poison and then finally right on the weird end of the scale conversion beam weapons are an ancient and very rare technology a conversion beam projector fires a high-intensity energy beam that converts matter into Pure Energy I feel like I've said some variation of that 10 times already in this video anyway the denser the target is and the longer the range the more matter is converted which makes conversion beam weapons better the further away you are and very useful against very heavy targets however they're an ancient and extremely temperamental technology requiring a high degree of skill and finesse to focus and use so by the 41st Millennium they're only really found on Relic vehicles or in the Armory of the odd Tech Marine though technically conversion beam technology comes in different forms they're almost always extremely heavy weapons standard SE Beamers are vehicle or dreadn mounted technology and variants like the conversion beam Cannon or conversion distillator and Knight and Titan grade weapons and there are of course a million other weapons in the Imperium often ones that exist only on one specific model but that's all the main Technologies as you can see once you know what to look for they do look pretty distinct there are really obvious design cues on most of them so that you and your opponent can tell the difference from a table away which is of course the point now these aren't the only weapons we could do a video like this for melee weapons are also pretty distinct and each of the non-human factions have even weirder Technologies out there but hopefully you should be able to tell your heat ray from your heat ray from your heat ray thanks for [Music] [Applause] watching and if you'd like to find out more about the weird equipment of the 41st Millennium there should be a video just popping up there to the right or you can like And subscribe and if you'd like to support the channel there's a link to the patreon in the thing below where you can join in with our tayor 4 Gamers buildon and get early access to some of the videos see [Music] you

Channel: Arbitor Ian

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Length: 23min 18sec (1398 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 11 2024