Legion Arquitor Bombard

Its like the vehicular version of those Shotas with a ginormous Dick.

"With its reinforced chassis and brutal short-range firepower, the Legion Arquitor Bombard is called upon to break the most stubborn enemy fortifications or annihilate massed troops and armour. Deployed alongside infantry squads, the Space Marines know that these artillery pieces will see them through the most ferocious of firefights."

– GeeDubs description.

The Legion Arquitor Bombard is a new artillery tank used by the SPESS MEHREEN LEGIONS of yore during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy.

The back of the Legion Arquitor Bombard, a vehicle that is 50% gun. One must wonder just where the fuck it stores its engines.

Overview

The Arquitor is obviously based on the chassis of the Sicaran Battle Tank, except turned backwards and stripped of much of its armour so it could mount guns as big as it is. Because it's hauling around such colossal weaponry, it loses a lot of speed, which was the main advantage of the Sicaran chassis (although it may partially be due to moving backwards). The range of these weapons are pitifully short for a dedicated artillery piece, but they pack a serious punch.

Its graviton-charge cannon is the first of its three weapon options. The cannon can lob blobs of weaponized gravity in an arc, making it one of the most potentially trolltastic weapons ever used by the Imperium. However, the sheer amount of power required to fire the thing meant that it had shitty range. Even so, it could crush enemy fortifications and crumple tanks like tinfoil, making it a brutally effective siege weapon. Seeing as how graviton and other grav weapons are far more effective against objects that are extra THICC such as vehicles, super heavies and TEQs, blasting a graviton wave against a giant wall seems to be the next logical conclusion. Walls have to be big y'all to be truly effective, so it makes sense to use the wall's very own size and weight against it; stressing the foundations until the wall itself could no longer take the amplified weight before crumbling down like the Berlin Wall. In classic FW fashion they previewed this option first before actually releasing it out of the blue with a totally different weapon option — the unfortunately named Spicula Rocket System.

The Spicula rockets are an MLRS system used to clear out infantry formations, as opposed to the fortress-cracking graviton cannon or the Morbus Bombard. In design and conception they look a bit like the Exorcists fielded by the Adepta Sororitas, though of course in-universe they predate those vehicles by several millennia.

The Morbus Heavy Bombard is a big fuck-off cannon able to wreck even the most heavily armoured of enemies. It can shoot what are essentially Demolisher cannon shells, or poisonous, acidic and overall nasty Carcass shells that melt infantry into a goo (sometimes literally) and horrify the survivors into hunkering down. Apparently, old Morty was impressed, because its cannon looks just like the one on his Plagueburst Crawler daemon engines.

Unfortunately, the short range of its primary weapon options kind of makes this baby Minotaur a bit too risky to field, given how rare and expensive Grav-Weaponry is in the 41st Millennium. Present day Space Marine Chapters who still own these artillery pieces are therefore quite hesitant about rolling them out on the battlefield. The vehicle can carry either two sponson-mounted heavy bolters or Autocannons as secondary weapons, but those don't really matter much, since they can't hit shit while the main gun is shooting, as all three options of main guns have killer recoil.

Gallery

• 

  Legion Arquitor Bombard with Spicula Rocket System. Sadly the rockets aren't fired by a Space Marine unleashing epic keyboard solos.

• 

  Legion Arquitor Bombard with Morbus Heavy Bombard. It's Morbin' time.