With Codex: Astra Militarum out soon and the new Astra Militarum DLC for Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector occupying our time at the moment, we’ve got lasguns on the brain. There are a lot of myths that surround the humble lasgun, so we had a chat with the Warhammer Studio about how they work and just how great they are. Here’s what we learned from the folk who made them up.
Let’s start with the basics – lasguns are the standard weapon of the Astra Militarum, and have seen service in every war in the Imperium’s history, from the Unification Wars to the Great Crusade, through the Horus Heresy all the way up to the Age of the Imperium and into the Era Indomitus. They are easily manufactured,* easily maintained and the perfect armament for supplying the largest army ever to exist.
And yet, they also have a reputation of being, well… how to put this diplomatically? A bit underwhelming. We all know the jokes and the memes: people call them ‘torches’ or ‘flashlights’, and they jest that lasguns are only good for stripping the paint off ceramite.
But is that fair? Let’s consider the evidence.
Environmental reliability
Lasguns are reliable in almost every environmental condition: cold, hot, wet, dry… it doesn’t matter. They are even fully functional in the hard vacuum of space, more so than the soldiers who wield them.
Functional under duress
This is a big one, but lasguns almost never jam or misfire because they have very few moving parts – which means fewer problems caused by dirt or liquid (or blood and gore), and it certainly creates less wear and tear on components. It’s not for nothing that the overwhelming bulk of the armies the Emperor sent out from Terra to reconquer the galaxy were armed with las weapons; when the chips are down, they just keep shooting.
A logistical dream
Power packs are almost endlessly rechargeable, so lasguns simplify Imperium-wide logistics somewhat (a major consideration when planning galactic conquest) by having ubiquitous and interchangeable ammunition. Lasguns also hold range more accurately than autoguns, which is why they have largely replaced them, even though autoguns** are generally more lethal than modern real-world weapons.
Every power pack can be recharged fairly quickly and easily with the right technology. Astra Militarum regiments, even those poorly equipped and supplied (of which there are a great many) take to the field with a supply chain that enables regular recharging of cells.
STC technology ensures that most fortifications, and even armoured vehicles, have the facility to charge power packs. Even more impressive is the fact that, in absolute extremis, a las power pack can be (carefully) recharged over an open fire.*** This tactic is sometimes used by forward elements of the Astra Miltarum, besieged troopers without power supply and, of course, gang members across the Imperium.
A lasgun power pack weighs about 1lb (just under half a kilogram), and even at the low end, a 40-shot pack has a greater capacity than a comparable ballistic weapon. Less time reloading means more time killing the foes of the Emperor!
Accuracy and recoil
A principle advantage of the lasgun over autoguns is its accuracy – they’re laser accurate (the skill of the firer not withstanding). This is in part due to its almost total lack of recoil. A lasgun doesn’t have the same jolt caused by gunpowder rounds detonating, reciprocating bolts, shell ejections and all that malarky you get with ballistic weapons.
Firing a lasgun, even rapid firing, causes almost no kick. Many Regiments – such as the Cadian Shock Troops and Mordian Iron Guard – are trained to take advantage of this feature by deploying in disciplined firing lines from where they can lay down punishing and near-continous volleys of fire.
Endless variation
Las weapons come in basically every shape and size: las pistols, lasguns, long-las rifles, las carbines, multi-lasers, lascannons, turbo-lasers, turbo-laser destructors… the list is far from exhaustive, and for each entry there are multiple iterations, patterns and models.
And that’s not to mention special configurations such as hotshot las weapons. There is, by design, a las weapon for every task and purpose the Imperium might have a need for. Now they’re not always in the right place at the right time, but that’s more of an indictment of the Imperium’s monstrous bureaucracy than the technology under discussion.
Art imitates art
Lasguns have been a part of Warhammer 40,000 lore since its earliest days. The distinctive angled barrel and boxy chassis can be seen on miniatures and art dating back across four decades.
Their depiction has been remarkably consistent: they fire discrete, pale white-yellow bolts, not visually dissimilar to the tracers of the hard-round guns they replaced. You can see that lasguns do have a type of muzzle flare – not a flame like gunpowder weapons, but more a flash of light. More recently, we’ve also started to see them pop up on our TV screens and gaming devices with varying examples of what they look and sound like in action.
Of course, some variance in colour is explained by the energy interacting differently to different sorts of atmospheric conditions, not to mention the many patterns and variations in use across the vastness of the Imperium.
Care to see an example of lasguns in action? Check out these images from the Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector Astra Militarum DLC, which has been thoughtfully modelled in line with the above specifications.
So there we have it, lasguns are rad. Used by soldiers across the length and breadth of the Imperium, they are easy to make, easy to maintain, easy to use and (in spite of the memes) very dangerous indeed. In fact, the only reason they induce chuckles at all is that they are often unfairly compared to the most iconic weapon in all of Warhammer 40,000: the bolter. And THAT is a very different beast indeed.
You can deploy your own massed volleys of las fire by playing Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector via Steam – using the new Astra Militarum DLC.
* Owing specifically and exclusively to the mysterious technology known as STCs.
** “Autogun” is actually a catch-all term that covers a range of solid-slug firearms, roughly equivalent to modern day weaponry.
***: Sometimes known as the “Rite of Enduring Light”, recharging a power pack in this manner is risky: not only does it erode the capacity of the pack, rendering them useless in the long-term, but explosions are also not uncommon.
