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How do!

With the Fellblade Super Heavy finally coming to plastic and up for pre-order today (yes I have), it starred me thinking about the now Relic Tanks of the Astartes armoury.

Loyalist or Traitor, they’re essentially leftovers from the Great Crusade, and for some relatively specific patterns, the Horus Heresy.

They’re typically described as more advanced than their contemporaries, and either lost technology, or difficult to manufacture. Notably, and this is where my interest was piqued, none seem especially well suited to the changed role of Astartes.

Consider the Fellblade and its variants, the Cerberus and Typhon, the Mastodon and so on. All are utter bruisers. Aggressive as suits any incarnation of Astartes forces, but not suited to rapid raiding or shock and awe alpha strikes, where precision and speed seem the order of the day.

Their continued existence and maintenance in select Chapter armouries do of course illustrate they still have a place, but are only deployed when absolutely called for. Which, as I’ll elaborate on in a bit, those don’t seem to be massively common occurrences.

So what were once the backbone of a Legion, are more “nice to have” items for existing Chapters. They can make certain missions a lot easier, but are by no means required within your order of battle.

Now, there are exceptions. I don’t think any can honestly look at a Sicaran and see, resources aside, where a Predator is seen as the better option. Especially when you’re looking at notably smaller forces taking to the field. Except for one thing. The Sicaran is a chassis and design entirely unto itself. The Predator however uses ubiquitous Rhino chassis, albeit upgunned and unarmoured, with presumably associated upgrades to its sensor array and that. But, for the most part? Any Rhino variant is going to have a strong commonality of parts across the Rhino range. Which means you need to stock fewer special parts and that.

Even if all existing Chapters were supplied relatively centrally? As an effort you’re not really making all that many. Which is why most (possibly all?) Chapters have their own manufactorums. And that is another factor in the wider picture?

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking “oh god what the eff is he whimbriling (yeah, whimbriling) on about now. Surely he’d be making some kind of point by now”. And so I’ll get to it.

I believe that the loss of those technologies is directly linked to the scaling back of Astartes forces, to suit a more specialised and specific role within the Wider Imperium.

Rather than being the tip of the spear, leading mankind across the stars in search of lost worlds and wonders? They’re Trouble Shooters. Intended for rapid ingress and egress. You need heavy firepower? That’s what the truly vast number of Imperial Guard are for. They’re the lads and lasses you turn to for a siege, protracted or not. Because when you’ve only 1,000 or so Brothers At Arms? They’re wasted manning artillery and doing other pretty inglorious and time consuming tasks.

That leads me to suspect that The Imperium actually does still have the plans for the fancier Astartes Tanks of yore. But the demand for them just isn’t sufficient to support any dedicated Manufactorum. Especially not when it could be churning out Baneblades and its variants for the Guard in much larger quantities. It also spares resources. Sure, the Imperium’s resources are mind bogglingly vast, but they’re still not infinite. Even more finite is the number of Adepts who have clearance to study such advanced instructions and that. So the plans are only technically lost, as in they got filed away 10,000 years ago, so do still exist. But best of British in finding them ever again.

This brings me back to the Sicaran. Modern Astartes rarely rest for terribly long. Sure, there’s travel time between engagements. And that’s when I’m confident the majority of maintenance and repair is undertaken. But again, you’ve the finite resources issue. So whilst the Sicaran and its variants absolutely, 100%, beyond shadow of a doubt suit modern Astartes tactics and strategies? Sticking to Rhino derived support vehicles is the sensible choice in terms of maximising your time and resources due to inevitably shared parts. Whereas if you used the Rhino for basic transport, the Sicaran for battle tank and Typhon for anti-materiel? That’s triple the basic knowledge needed, and of course a separate supply/production line for each chassis.

And so the Relics remain. A super specific tool might not be used often, but you keep it because one day it’ll be exactly what you need. And that your Techpriests can still bang out the dents and polish its focussing array is a matter of pride and perhaps even snobbery. But in the general run of things? They’re just not suited to how you wage warfare.