Editing Baneblade (section)

==Design==

[[File:Baneblade_Variants.jpg|400px|right|thumb|Just 13 more spaces to fill. 18 now.]]

Here are a few fun facts about the mighty Baneblade:

*At the time of the [[Great Crusade]], there used to be ''entire <s>companies</s> battalions'' of Baneblades (it was described as being the "mainstay" of the Imperial Army). Nowadays, regiments with [[Vance Motherfucking Stubbs|anywhere near a hundred Baneblades]] are virtually unheard of, and any Imperial Guard force can count itself lucky to have just one in their possession. The Mechanicus gets a special ability to commission (read - pressgang) crew from guard regiments, using a vague prognostic algorithm to select those that show promise). If a Baneblade gets lost in combat, chances are that the Mechanicus will throw a bitchfit and pull out all stops to recover the hulk. This was the case seven years before the Third Armageddon War, when an entire Imperial Guard Army Group of approximately 30,000 men were deployed to Golgotha to retrieve Yarrick's Fortress of Arrogance and a bit of STC teleporter tech (although guard didn't know about that last part). From two tank battalions, lead by a Shadowsword tank called Angel of the Apocalypse and supported with a full mechanized battalion of elite Kasrkin Storm Troopers, only a pair of tanks and couple of hundred men survived. Except not really; the Mechanicus were really after the STC and the purpose behind recovering Yarrick's Baneblade was mostly for morale and propaganda purposes rather than the fact that the tank had an inherent value. If not for the STC on Golgotha, Yarrick would probably have been supplied with another Baneblade and Imperial propagandists would have invented the rest.

If you need some kind of analogy to more fully appreciate the awe-inspiring/pants-browning nature of Baneblades and their variants, then consider that a vanilla Baneblade sits somewhere between 300-400 tons. Imagine, then, putting one of the smaller WWII-era destroyers on treads with a near impossibly good suspension and ground pressure distribution. Because it must resist any form of weaponry it might encounter, go ahead and thickly encase it in the best armor you've got; then, because armor is heavy, be sure to add a power plant that will gladly burn any fuel while providing an incredible power to weight ratio. Once you've done that, ''then'' toss in an electronics and fire control suite that is more advanced than almost anything else the Guard uses. And yet, even with all these advantages the Baneblade is still is more heart-stoppingly terrifying than the sum of its parts. The closest real-world equivalent would probably be a scaled-down [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreuzer_P._1000_Ratte Landkreuzer P.1000 Ratte] that actually works, and also has lasers. Any way you look at it, it is an awe-inspiring, terror-inducing weapon.

As an added bonus, this is one of the few Imperial Guard tanks that doesn't look like a WWI castoff.