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The Baneblade is a super-heavy tank and one of the oldest Standard Template Construct designs known to the Imperium. It needs a crew of ten to operate fully, and it is often used as a command vehicle by Imperial Guard generals. Baneblades are rare. Each is a precious relic, and many have histories stretching back thousands of years.
Most Baneblades are built on Mars. The Tech-priests of the Red Planet consider the Mars pattern the pure form of the Machine God's design, and it galled them that other forge worlds produced their own patterns. That dispute contributed to the schisms between forge worlds at the end of the Great Crusade.
The chassis is very adaptable, and the Adeptus Mechanicus has built many variants on it, including the Shadowsword, Stormlord, Banehammer, Hellhammer and Stormsword.
The Baneblade is an STC design from the Dark Age of Technology. It is the iconic super-heavy tank of the Imperial Guard and is built only by Mars and a few forge worlds that hold the knowledge. Each one is a revered war machine with its own name, history and battle honours. Crews often serve on the same tank for decades. Variants include the Shadowsword, Stormlord, Stormsword, Hellhammer, Banehammer, Banesword and Doomhammer.
Appearance & wargear
The Baneblade is enormous, with huge tracks on each side of a towering hull. Its main turret carries a baneblade cannon and coaxial autocannon, and a hull-mounted demolisher cannon sits below. Side sponsons carry lascannons and twin heavy bolters. Many Baneblades are decorated with honour banners and the names of their crews.
The Baneblade is a hulking, multi-turreted giant. It mounts a main turret with a Baneblade cannon and coaxial autocannon, a hull demolisher cannon, a twin heavy bolter and sponsons with lascannons and heavy bolters. A crew of about ten operates it.
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Explore all 48 entries in the Weapons & Vehicles armoury.
Battlefield role & tactics
The Baneblade is a moving fortress. It breaks enemy lines, anchors an army's heavy firepower and serves as a command post. Enemy armies often commit their best anti-tank weapons just to stop one.
It spearheads breakthroughs, demolishes fortifications and anchors defensive lines, and can take on enemy titans and super-heavies at a pinch. It is enormously tough but slow and expensive. Losing one is a disaster, so it needs infantry and tank escorts to keep enemy infantry and melta teams away.
Munitorum & Ordo Xenos Technical Dossier
Classified under Ordo and Departmento Munitorum threat-index protocols as a primary The Baneblade is a moving fortress. It breaks enemy lines, anchors an army's heavy firepower and serves as a command post. Enemy armies often commit their best anti-tank weapons just to stop one. asset of Astra Militarum, Baneblade relies on a tightly coupled symbiosis between operator conditioning and primary armament. Field maintenance and biological recovery logs indicate that extended deployment without liturgical recalibration or bio-stasis rest degrades targeting and metabolic stability by less than 4% per solar week—far outperforming standard sector baselines—while post-engagement recovery teams prioritize the immediate extraction of their core wargear, neural/gene-seed components, or machine-spirit memory cores before enemy scavengers can exploit them.
Notable battles & users
- Great Crusade: Baneblades fought in the Emperor's wars and were the subject of forge-world rivalries.
- Baneblade novel: Guy Haley's novel follows the crew of the Baneblade Mars Triumphant.
- Fortress of Arrogance: Commissar Yarrick's personal command Baneblade during his post-Second War campaigns in the Armageddon system. It was disabled by Orks on Golgotha, and its later recovery drives the plot of Steve Parker's novel 'Gunheads'.
- Mars Triumphant: a Baneblade of the 7th Paragonian Super-heavy Tank Company, central to Guy Haley's novel 'Baneblade'.
- Black Claw Pride: a Baneblade of the traitor Tyrant's Legion that sided with Lufgt Huron during the Badab War.
Related
No profiled character is closely tied to this unit type yet.
