Shotgun

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A shotgun is a large caliber smoothbore firearm which is designed to fire a cluster of small projectiles (once commonly lead pellets but for environmental reasons steel is more common, either way they're known as shot) in one shot, though most shotguns can also accept solid slugs. The cluster of bullets spread out to cover a wide area after exiting, taking some of the burden off of aiming and causing considerable damage to an unprotected body. It comes at the expense of hitting power and precision at long range due to the sheer spread. The earliest shotguns were large caliber muskets known as blunderbusses. Today shotguns remain widely used by police, hunters and sport shooters and see some use as a secondary weapon by soldiers. Modern-day shotguns are extremely reliable, fairly accurate (for what they are) and relative simple to produce and operate, while being devastating in close combat. The "gauge" used to measure the size of the shot used in a shell. 12 gauge means that it takes 12 lead balls of the diameter of a 12-gauge shotgun to equal one pound in weight. So 16, 20 and 28-gauge take 16, 20 and 28 lead balls of the diameter of a matching shotgun to equal one pound. This means that the higher the gauge, the smaller the shot is. 12-gauge is the most commonly used in combat, with the smaller gauges being used when hunting small prey. when in doubt, carry two. If you still have doubts, attach two to your fists and two to your boots, then carry two in your hands again.

Notable shotguns

A pair of SPAS-12 Shotguns. The lower has a fixed stock and a shorter magazine tube, while the upper has a longer tube and its signature folding stock unfolded.

• Double Barrel: One of the most common shotguns available, the double-barrel is a very basic, no-frills firearm that, instead of having any sort of magazine or ammunition tube, simple has two barrels with one shot each. This simplicity and the generally low price tag makes it popular with farmers and hunters. The double-barrel is typically used for hunting and can come in side-by-side or over-and-under configurations, the latter being popular in sports shooting. Rare triple-barrel shotguns exist, but at this point you're getting a heavy hunk of metal. Double-barrels are sometimes chopped down to create a nice personal defense weapon, though this modification is oftentimes illegal.
• Winchester 1887: The shotgun made famous by Terminator 2, this is a 10-gauge lever-action shotgun, giving it a strong Old West vibe to it. Firing it one handed is not recommended unless you really are a terrifying robot assassin. A trick associated with this weapon is spinning it around to chamber a new shell, but unless you have an extra-wide lever that is at least as wide as two fingers you're only going to break your fingers trying to do this. Not to mention that this is very dangerous.
• Remington 870: Pretty much the pump-action shotgun. Used by everyone from hunters and sports shooters to police and elite special forces units. Tough, durable and simple to use; there's a good reason the Remington is as popular as it is. Because of this there are oodles of aftermarket parts available so that you can make your shotgun as tacticool as you want.
• Mossberg 500: The Pepsi to the Remington's Coke. The two are very similar and arguments between fans of the two are sources of major skub amongst firearm enthusiasts. In practice they are pretty much the same, with the Mossberg being lighter and cheaper than the Remington, but it does not come in as many different gauges.
• Benelli M4: Made by the Italian Benelli corporation, the M4 is famous for its wedge-shaped stock and being the spray-and-pray stick in Counter-Strike. While used by civilians it is more commonly used by special forces units and police.
• Saiga 12: A Russian-made shotgun derived from the popular AK layout. It is a semi-automatic shotgun loaded via a detachable box magazine unlike the two above. Used by Russian security forces it is also popular amongst hunters because the required licence is far easier to obtain than that for a rifle. Factory-made box magazines go up to 8, but aftermarket parts include magazines for 12, 20 and even 30 shells, but the latter is very heavy, expensive and bulky.
• USAS-12: Built by a subsidary of the Korean Daewoo (the car manufacturer) based on the AA-12, the USAS-12 is an automatic combat shotgun exclusively used by militaries. A semiautomatic version was put on the American market in the early 90's, but it was declared as to "having no sporting purpose" and was branded a "destructive device", immensely limiting its potential buyers. It has a nice 400+rpm rate of fire, allowing it to empty a 20-round drum in 3 seconds or less.
• AA-12: The Atchisson Assault Shotgun is a fully automatic shotgun most famous for its low recoil: through some clever engineering the user gets only 10% of the recoil they'd normally feel from a 12-gauge shell. This makes the AA-12 highly controllable even with its 300rpm rate of fire. It has also been associated with the FRAG-12 round, a miniature grenade the size of a 12-gauge shell. While the FRAG-12 fits in any 12-gauge shotgun, there is something alluring about being able to hold your shotgun on target while shooting 20 grenades at it in 4 seconds flat.
• SPAS-12: A shotgun with a capital SHOTGUN. It is a big honkin' piece of metal capable of double-action: it is both a gas-operated semi-automatic and a pump-action shotgun at the same time. This allows it to both act as a semi-automatic weapon with lethal shells and a pump-action weapon capable of firing bean bags, tear gas and other less-lethal shells that do not generate enough pressure to cycle the action. This is also how they are used in movies because blanks are too light as well. Movies and games almost always show the shotgun with its bulky folding stock folded in on top of the weapon. While no longer in production the SPAS-12 retains its reputation as a big, menacing son of a shotgun and fetches quite a bit on the second-hand market, even with its failure-prone safety.

In Warhammer 40k

Your typical generic weapon found in almost every genre, the Shotgun is a pump-action weapon utilised by the Imperium of Man. It is a short-ranged anti-personnel weapon, and easily fired accurately on the move thanks to its wide spread of fire. Regularly employed by the Adeptus Arbites, the shotgun (also referred to as a scatter gun), have been around since before M3. 38,000 years later the biggest improvement is the addition of 50 pounds of metal, allowing it to be used as a club so that after shooting a pissed off Genestealer you have the option of boinking it on the head. Probably the longest lived weapon in the Imperium (right after anything sharp or heavy), it has appeared on nearly every Imperial world and battlefield.

It is also commonly employed by Space Marine Scouts and Imperial Guard Veterans, although the Space Marines are equipped with more powerful "Manstopper" rounds. Its hail of shot can shred through flesh, but its low velocity causes it to be ineffective against armoured enemies. The Imperial Navy uses them when boarding a ship or putting down mutinies because the nature of its rounds make it unlikely to pierce the hull of the ship, which is a good thing. The Deathwatch have their own shotguns, mainly for the specialist ammunition they use to take down many different types of Xenos at close range.

Imperial shotguns also can use a wide variety of different ammunition, including all types of bolts for maximum firepower (though less effective than an actual bolter), web charges for non-lethal takedowns, blazerer charges, that turn a shotgun into a nerfed flamethrower, talk charges for breaking doors, and really about anything you can fit inside the barrel, making it a great utility weapon in any FFG game.

• Range:12 | Str:4 | AP:- | Type:Assault 2 (Space Marine version)
• Range:12 | Str:3 | AP:- | Type:Assault 2 (Imperial Guard version)