WARHAMMER GUNS! What they do, and how to tell them all apart | Warhammer 40k Lore
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.พ. 2025
- Warhammer 40k is full of weird and wonderful weapons technologies, and once you know what to look for, it's easy to tell them apart. So let's look at the main weapon systems employed by the Imperium, how they're meant to work, and how to recognise them on the tabletop!
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Copyright: Unless noted in the video, all images © Games Workshop 1987-2022. Title music is 'Black Rainbows' by Karl Casey @White Bat Audio
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Important to note that the only reason Conversion Beam Weapons exist in the lore is so GW could make a reference to Blade Runner's greatest line : "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... Time to die."
worth it
Ha, that never occurred to me. Every day is a school day.
25 years of being into 40k and a fan of blade runner my whole life and never made the connection 😂 thanks!
Is that confirmed
Conversion beamers are mentioned in laserburn which I think came out before blade runner I think conversion beamers must be from old sci-fi
I think my favourite 'Imperium weapon trivia' is that according to the original Rogue Trader, Las-cannons are also known as 'Blazoogas'.
'Blazoogas' sounds inappropiate somehow.
@@Baalur Sounds like the kind of thing a guardsman says shortly before a sororitas caves his face in.
Bazooka meets Lazer - ahhh Rogue Trader, you never disappoint with the realistically goofy!
Please please do a complete series of this, all the weapons for all the factions - this is brilliant, I love the combination of lore and "how to tell what weapon your little toy soldier has" 😄
Agreed - would be entertaining AND useful :)
Makes me want to see his reaction of the Orkz guns…. The Shokk Attack Gun just shoots a goblin (it’s usually a snotling, but don’t need to get into that discussion here) through Space-hell, only to hope that the goblin rematerializes inside of the target in a lethal (for the target) way…. Sure it occasionally rips a hole in reality itself, sure it sometimes teleports the Big Mek that shot it, and sure sometimes the goblin appears in midair and instantly splatters anything within 20 feet of it with liquid goblin, but no matter what, the Big Mek’s gonna have a laugh…. Unless the big Mek dies, then someone else has a laugh.
I know it'd be an insane amount of work, but I'd love to see you do a run down of all the main xenos firearms!
Tyranids in particular would be fun, they have some *really* gruesome things available...
I love Tyranids and all of their obviously phallic guns but I pity anyone not into Tyranids to actually try to memorize and recognize them all :)
@@felis1977 so basically, you've got the weird dicks, the weird dicks with spikes on, the weird bitey dicks, the weird veiny dicks, the weird dicks with tentacles, and the spinefist.
I second to this
Tau weapons, you can pretend it's whatever because 90% people don't know
I agree!
It feels weird to be watching a video like this without an appearance by Jonathan Ferguson, Keeper of Firearms and Artillery at the Royal Armouries Museum
In my suggested videos, there is a "Firearm Expert Reacts to Warhammer 40k Darktide's Guns" video featuring Jonathan Ferguson right next to this comment. 😂
@@ahsanzee it’s doubly hilarious because they’re both in the UK
His reaction to space marine 2 guns is also epic
Ps cudos for using his full name 😅
I really enjoy Ian's videos. They are clear, concise, and, most importantly for the grim darkness of the future, comedic.
He is great
This is the kind of thing most 40K TH-camrs skip, but is vital work. Excellent video right here
1:58 Bolters
5:44 Lasgun
8:28 Autoguns
10:45 Stubbers
12:14 Launchers
12:46 Flamers
14:22 Grav Guns
15:40 Melta Guns
17:00 Plasma Guns
18:42 Volkite Guns
20:12 Needler Guns
21:09 Conversion Beamers
My favorite Warhammer gun fact is that quite a few models with heavy stubbers have what is just straight up a real life world war 1 vintage M1919 Browning machine gun.
I just love the notion that design is still in use unchanged 38 thousand years later.
2:30 Remember when a .75 caliber hole isn't a big enough middle finger. Make it explode.
Orks: whatever they've managed to cobble together. Every bullet is fired at a different velocity and there's probably a few random energy blasts coming out of it for good measure. It will almost certainly have a knife strapped/welded to it as well.
Thanks for watching.
If an Ork is holding it, it's probably a gun. If it isn't a gun, it's probably a knife. If it's neither, he's still fully capable of and willing to murder you with it.
So chaos use pretty much the same guns as the imperium so here's the Xenos guns.
Eldar: long, sleek, smooth, and uses some kinda magnet to throw projectlies.
Dark Eldar: long, sleek, uses some kinda magnet to throw projectiles, and are Spikey.
Tau guns: thin, blocky looking laser rifles with a smooth round bit somewhere on them. Looks abit like designer kitchen ware.
Tyranid guns: HR Giger drew a rifle and stuck it on an angry bug. Uses acids or living ammo.
Votann Guns: like space marine guns but smaller.
Necron guns: stripped down, minimalist engery weapons with a green tube in the middle and some type of spike on the end.
Gene stealer cults: the same guns normal humans use.
Ork guns: a pile of scrap cobbled togther to sort of look like a gun. Runs on hopes and dreams.
The Necrons have a really cool Staff Weapon called a ‘Synaptic Obliterator’; it projects gauss plasma through a target into their internals and blows them up from the inside out. Gnarly.
Alternative description: Ork weapons prove Mikhail Kalashnikov to be the greatest weapon designer of all-time.
Bro your description of Tau weapons is so spot on😂😂.
I am so using that to heckle my mate who plays a Tau killteam.
I thought the original lore for shuriken weapons was that they used some form of gravitational singularity to catapult the projectile (hence the weird bulbous sections, particularly on the older models). Sadly GW don't seem to bother with lore like that any more so I can't be sure I have remembered that correctly.
@@samhunter1205 I think the bulbous sections are where the crystal is stored that gets shaved to create the projectiles. Shuriken/splinter weapons work by scrapping off tiny bits of a special crystal, then launching them at high speeds. Since F = MA, the tiny particles are capable of shredding through limbs. But they're smaller than bullets, so they can be difficult to remove or can get between armor plates. The crystals themselves are enough to provide enough ammo for the duration of the weapon's life.
Basically, they're weaponized sandblasters.
"That Guardsman pissed me off..." "What did you do?" "I issued him a Plasma Gun" ;)
I just want to say the way you said "Craaaazy Science Guns" is now my headcanon for Tech-Priests explaining any new weapons to Guard regiments.
I'd say another drawback of the bolter outside the hands of an eight-foot tall super goon is that the projectile they fire is only marginally smaller than a 20mm anti-aircraft shell. So there's some recoil.
Thank you for this video! When I was putting together my first Death Guard minis, I was having conniption fits because I couldn't tell what weapon was what and the packed in material was not very helpful. Please make more of these weapons of the factions videos! informative and entertaining!
“I’m not American. I don’t know anything about guns”. Massive LOL moment 😂
Im gutted you skipped the Assault cannon and though it was in the images, you never spoke about the webber... best 2nd ed surprise weapon ever!
Oh, good take to remark that the boltgun is a terror weapon!
In the middle of a fantasy universe where Napoleonic wars and Mars Attack green laser beams are on the same battlefield, one weapon makes sense. And it's for psychological warfare!
I feel like this whole video was just a set up for that last bit. A+ work, Ian.
10:38 Bullets go here is an excellent caption.
The utter exhaustion by the end. 😂 Thank you, Ian. We appreciate your hard work.
My favorite imperial weapon is the psycannon. Nothing screams imperial like shooting mind bullets
🎵 Wonder booooooy! 🎵
That's Telekinesis Kyle...
The Banesword. Firing shells containing fragments of worlds that have undergone Exterminatus. Death on an unimaginable scale callously weaponized into a fortress-buster.
"How about the power to kill a heretic from 200 yards away! WITH PSYCANNONS!
Thats the power of Bolters brother, the power to move you"
Grey Knights only..
This was great Ian, for a 'non-gun' guy you did a pretty decent job sorting through all the terminology! Well done! 🤘
Yey! ‘Unexpected Arbitor’ video, happy days.
The pointers on the weapon schematics, hilarious 😂😂
I guess if you can see C-beams glittering down from as far as the tanhauser gate, you're going to need better than a 3+ armour save
This was awesome! I really hope you might make this into a series eventually and tell us all about the various horrible hell-guns from the Chaos factions and of course the spooky and weird Xenos guns :D
Your presentation style has developed really nicely, your delivery is much more natural and laid back now. Very easy to watch, cheers
I just love your approach to content creation, it is informative, concise and fun. Thanks!
"you should be able to differentiation from your, heat ray and your heat ray and your heat ray" 😂
This video has given me the urge to get something that comes with a *warpfire cannon,* because that is the most metal weapon name I’ve ever heard.
Very fun video! I've seen other channels doing something similar about specific weapons, but Arbitor Ian's tongue-in-cheeck presentation really works :D
Everyone's been saying I gotta give some of my Sisters meltas, now thanks to this vid I know what they look like
Man I really feel like you would enjoy playing Darktide simply to pull out all the guns and shoot them in the meatgrinder. They are so beautifully done and the way they represented the 15-shot locke pattern bolter - just the sheer heft of the thing and the effect it has - is kind of beautiful. I know games of that kind are less up your street but it really made me happy seeing how they had rendered so much stuff I had just read about or seen in rulebooks in first person and beautifully done at that.
Excellent resource. I’d internalized the design cues without realizing it.
Very informative. Thank you for explaining how the exotic and rare weapons function in game and in the lore. Nice video. Keep up the good work.
I've always felt like there should be a significant difference between the massive bolt guns marines use and the kind used by human troops or that show up in Necromunda.
There is. But the RPGs tend to have a higher granularity to take that into account than the tabletop game.
Well they did differentiate them now with those ugly bolt rifles that Primaris wield.
@@Yurt_enthusiast7they are not ugly at all
@flonkplonk1649 nah they're way to oversized for me, looks like the caricature of a bolter.
@@Yurt_enthusiast7 of course they are oversized for you, you're not a Primaris Astartes 😁
Volkite gun : a microwav gun that turn the ennemy's rank into giant barbecue ! Congrats for the 100k by the way !
Great idea for a video, I’d love to see more vids like this for the other factions, I remember starting my dark eldar army and not having a clue which weapon was which, a vid like this would have been super helpful
Same. It's especially difficult when collecting older Dark Eldar models, where the designs might have changed. And Drukhari are a fairly niche army, even by Xenos standards, so tracking down the information on their weapons is a lot harder.
Ah yes. Do you want the jaggedy spiky gun or the spiky jaggedy gun?
@@ArbitorIan yeah exactly, with for example orc guns what yer shoota is and yer rocket launcha is fairly obvious, but what the hell does a sadist elf blaster look like?
The old raider box used to have the dark lance and disintegrator cannon mislabelled. So even gw don't know what our guns look like
Great video. Love to see the melee and the xenos vids too!
While you've missed out the smallest version of a lot of those technologies (the digi-weapon), that's understandable, as something small enough to fit into a ring or other piece of jewellery, is usually too small to be worth sculpting as an option for a model (off the top of my head, the only models with digi weapons actually physically represented were the Rogue Traders from the 54mm Inquisitor game, and the 2nd edition Captain Tycho).
However, going one step up from a digi-flamer, but smaller than a hand flamer, there's another option, which did actually get models carrying it: the exterminator cartridge. This is a little miniaturized one-shot flamethrower, shrunk to the size of a tacticool accessory you could mount on another weapon, turning it into an ersatz combi-weapon. Unlike a standard combi-flamer, the exterminator wasn't limited to being fitted to a bolt weapon, oh no. You could mount one on ANY weapon, even melee.
And that's why the exterminator was one of my favourite flamers, because nothing says "fanatical devotion to the God-Emperor" like a chainsaw greatsword that shoots fire...
Lmao at there being wearable flamer rings. If you see a guy who has no hair on his knuckles on one of his hands, beware.
Would love to see melee and alien!
I have to say my least favourite weapon for distinctiveness is the Hot-shot volley gun on the Kasrkin. Basically identical to the standard hot-shot gun, except it has a slightly different end of the barrel. Totally indistinct at table top distances. As you say, they have generally managed to make weapons actually quite identifiable, but they ballsed it up with that one.
Loved this. Would really like to see a similar video on xenos armament, but I feel like that's gonna be a LONG one considering just how many things you'll have to go through with just the Tau. XD
Great video! A video about Chaos and Xeno weapons would be neat too!
Really interesting video!! I'm a Necromunda player and I base all of my gangs around a spine of lasgunners. Good range, never run out of ammo and strength 3/D1, which isn't that punchy but they do just enough to dominate the table if you have height and fields of vision.
"I'm not an American, i don't know anything about guns" 😂🤣😂
But what about Jonathan Ferguson, the keeper of firearms and artillery at the Royal Armouries Museum in the UK, which houses a collection of thousands of iconic weapons from throughout history?
Next Video Idea: melee wepaons in 40k, Like Power wepaons, swords, knifes, Hammers, all the Things you can equip in tabletop
Always enjoy your content, but is next level. Hope you do more of these types of shows. The lore vids are great, but this mix of fluff, explanation and description is quite unusual. Awesome work!
Humanity in 40K:
“We have anti gravity powering our speeders and some tanks.”
Mechanicus: “yeah we can weaponize the crap out of that.”
Imperium: “cccccooooooolllllll”
This video reminded me of the countless hours i spent reading the second edition wargear book as a kid!
I really like the use of all the Necromunda art.
The bolter is a lot like the real world Gyrojet, interesting weird little development
Surprised you didn’t cover the mechanicus radium and arc weaponry including their lightning guns and digital lasers.
The point of this video was to sort of cover all the most common Imperium weapons, that cross faction lines. Radium guns are really just an AdMech thing.
But Assaultcannon, Onslaughtcannon, Reapercannon? So the Gatlingguns! They are common!
Awesome vid as ever! "Martian Heat Ray(TM)" had me giggling much to hard...
22:34 Honestly, I could use a primer on t'au weapons. Many variants of them that are decently rapid fire and can punch through some armor. And that's ignoring all the fancy high-tech names they have too...
I wish you would do a similar video for Xenos and Chaos weapons as well.
Or at least another like this one for melee weapons! 😊
What they do: NOT ENOUGH DAKKA. That's for sure.
A couple of things, this isn't an ACKSHULLY though its more of I like sharing cool stuff, first being las weapons are not _exclusively_ laser weapons. Las is a catchall term for directed energy weapons but laser based weapons do make up the majority. Secondly is that volkite beams don't bounce, they explosively vaporise the targets bodily fluids causing them to detonate and its the flying shards of bone and armour that cause the secondary damage, very much a weapon in line with the purpose of the Astartes. It is my head canon (and therefore official!) that they sound like the heat rays from the 1953 version of The War of The Worlds including the pulsing charge cycle.
See in my headcannon they are 100% Mars Attacks guns. Ack ack ack!
7:43 yay, my Lascannon. Three days ago it literally decapitated a necron Lord. I love my lascannon and my deathwatch corebook]
Love your informative videos! Thanks for continuing to make cool stuff, man.
Good to see you referencing the FFG table top RPGs! I recognize those illos
I've been a big SFF nerd and a gun owner since the late 60's. I've even fired a Gyrojet, the only firearm ever built that actually shoots rockets. 40K firearms are absurd and make no sense and in most cases are downright silly. That's what I love about them!
You should do this again for some Xenos Factions, would love to see you cover something like Necrons
Absolutely brilliant video Ian. Thank you so much
You should do this for other factions too. It took me way too long back in the day to understand witch one was the deveourer and witch was the fleshborer.
Cracking video as ever, my favourite had always been the Heat Ray, no, not that one, the other one.
Vulkite Demi-Culverin?
Waiting for Ian to tell us about the Conversion Beamer - my favorite example of Rogue Trader overkill.
Lol with that "PRIMUS" marque on the grav, I know it means something else but sometimes I like to think some marines pray to Les Claypool.
18:07 Back when orks also used plasma weapons.
And I was going to complain about the lack of Mechanicus weapons, but considering that most of them fall in the "only exist on one specific model" range, that's understandable.
Ork Weapons would particualrly intrigue me for a future video idea...
Awesome vid thank you! Melee weapons next?
L O V E seeing all these retro shoulder mounted heavy weapons, very fun video, keep on keeping on
1:51 that is hilarious. A bullpup combi bolter that couldn´t possibly get a round from the magazine into the chamber 😆
Awesome 👌🏻
I am certain in 1996, I had some conversion beam armed space marines. They actually had individual C weapons. I definitely remember it! I just can’t find the minis in amongst all of my legacy models. 😢
That bullpup combi/ plasma bolter is one of the most cursed 40k guns. Who designed that...
Inferno Pistols are named that because of a pun.
The Inferno Pistol was originally a unique weapon carried by the Blood Angels Chapter Master, Commander Dante.
Thus, it was _Dante's Inferno_ Pistol.
This was a good bit of fun!
the issue with stubbers is that GW forgot they are suppose to be lowtech by 40k standards weapons and now we have the high tech ironhail stubbers for space marine tanks
Would LOVE one of these for tau weapons, I've always had a hard time remembering which is which 😅
Another great video Ian, many thanks.
I remember reading a Horus Heresy novel (not which one) where a character used a Volkite gun and there is sounded really OP and rare. Something about it disintegrating people on a molecular level or some such.
Ouch being called out for our insane gun culture right off the bat ❤ u Ian :)
Started building terminators last night and literally had a mind blank on all weapons because they're not labeled feels like you need a PhD is 40k to know what they are
Sounds like they're going with the way they've done books for Middle Earth, which I think is the ideal way to do it.
Huh. While the thruster only igniting after the round leaves the barrel makes approximately zero sense, that DOES technically explain why bolt rounds have casings. Presumably contains a charge strong enough to get the round out of the barrel, which would conceivably improve rate of fire compare to existing gyrojet ammunition.
Canon lore shows them having a kicker charge to accelerate the Bolt to a high muzzle velocity before the bolt rocket motor ignites.
They'd be useless at point blank range otherwise.
many missile use stagger charge to propel then rocket engine for the rest like ww2 stumtiger rocket mortar
and casing are just preprepared ammo you could probly use different charge for different range like naval artillery ...
Ian you forgot Phased plasma rifle in a 40 watt range.
I can't believe you forgot to mention the most well-known of all Imperial weapons: The Web-guns! 😀
good to know that standard bolter round is basically a grenade encased in a bullet
As a new player this is super useful!
Las weapons actually sound more like photon weapons. Get a camera flash and flash it against a white paper. You get a snap like the one Ian describes. Also if you have a soap bubble, it will burst if hit by a light flash, like from a reflection. Light is both matter and radiation energy.
RPG writer here, appreciate the shoutout to Imperium Maledictum!
I'd love to know how the Chaos Space Marien Boltgun fed by a belt of Boltgun shells through the magazine well works 😂
Same as any feed-though machine gun I’d guess?
Maybe through the feed pawls of a feed cover but not through a magazine well designed to be fed by a magazine not a belt 😂
All boltgun magazines are just boxes to hold the belts
I'm not sure what it says about me that with all the crazy technology, magic technology and literal magic that happens in 40K, the only thing that I really roll my eyes at is the silliness of the lasgun recharging descriptions. Nothing good I'm sure! Orcs breathing in space because they don't know there's no atmosphere? Awesome! Recharging a lasgun pack in a fire? Madness!
I've always liked the laspack in the fire thing. It makes sense to me from a chemical reaction perspective. Its also considered a bad idea in the lore as it shortens the life of the cell, so it can get guardsmen in trouble if they're caught doing it.
Throwing lasgun packs in fires can also cause the packs to straight-up explode. You may as well drop a grenade in the middle of your encampment. And not all packs are capable of recharging like that, either.
The only time you do see guardsmen resort to the fire recharging technique is when they're completely out of ammo and expect to keep getting attacked against enemies like Orks or Tyranids.
@@nekrataali Yeah, I think it was just the coginitive dissonance of this laser weapon that can blow holes in an orc, being able to be recharged from some random low power source. It's Warhammer, I should not be nitpicking something so minor! 🤣
Id kill for a version of this but for common vehicals
As a Cawdor player in Necromunda thanks for the shoutout to flamers lol
So, the descriptors on the schematics, are those the official designations?
If anyone wants an idea of what happens to some poor sod who gets hits by a bolter round its best not to, whilst the actual damage caused by the explosion is actually rather small, it’s no less devastating whenever it hits a target where even something as stupid as say a glancing hit or something similar such as a bolter round hits a Spartans shoulder plate and it barely hits the Spartan, there’s both the kinetic energy behind said bolt round which is powerful enough to cause space marines to stagger, but even if the Spartan hasn’t been thrown off his feet, having a small explosion to suddenly happen with the explosive power of a large firecracker going off next to him is more than enough to kick the Spartan on his ass and that’s if he’s lucky enough not to be directly hit, since bolters by their nature are armor piercing as well as hyper velocity which in turn means that both the initial damage and subsequent explosion of being hit by something equal to that used to take down an elephant is going to cause significant internal damage only to have a large firecracker go off a microsecond afterwards which if it didn’t cause massive amounts of internal bleeding and hemorrhages as your organs and bones are being pushed apart, not only that but bits of bolter fragments are sent flying everywhere with similar effects as to being hit by a fragmentation grenade as bits of shrapnel and bones are sent flying everywhere case even more internal damage, which is why it’s best to describe the effect as a small explosion or popping effect and that’s just a body shot, if it’s say as limb or what not then all that’ll be left is a bloody and messy stump as the rest of their limb is simply blown away.
Sorry for the graphic depictions but in all fairness and in the words of arch warhammer
It’s basically firing flack rounds
And that’s the least graphic depictions I could give as to the overall horrifying nature of bolt weapons where as even being grazed by a bolt round is enough to result in significant damage let alone the sheer amount of trauma inflicted by such a weapon making any and all wounds nearly impossible for anyone to recover or treat, that being unless they’re able to regrow limbs or body parts like Deadpool or wolverine or is magical and can use magic to heal the victim, the only real medical solution for being hit by even just a glancing shot by a bolter is being given the emperor mercy and that’s about it. Anything else is pretty much useless.