Crew: 9 (1 commander, 3 gunners, 2 loaders, 2 tech adept, 1 driver)
Known Patterns/Subvarrients: I-XI (Mars-Stygies)
Armament:
Main Armament:Gatling AntiMatter Conversion Beamer, Hull mounted 203mm "Demolisher" Cannon (15-20 rounds)
Secondary Armament:Pintle mounted Storm Bolter or Heavy Stubber (1000-5000 rounds), 4 Sponson-Mounted Heavy Bolters (500 rounds each), 2 hull-turret mounted Heavy Bolters (500 rounds each), 2 Sponson Mounted Lascannons (1000 shots each)
Mobility:
Max Speed:28 km/h
Traverse: 360 degrees (Main turret), 180 degrees (Sponson turrets) and 6 degrees (hull turret)
Elevation:-2 to 25 degrees
Powerplant:MR507 V18 Multi-Fuel engine
Dimensions:
Weight:291 Tonnes
Height:6.3 metres
Width:8.4 metres
Length:13.5 metres
Ground clearance:1.2 metres
Armour:
Superstructure: 200/200/200mm Faramite Alloy Plate
Hull: 200/200/200mm Faramite Alloy Plate
Gun Mantlet: N/A
Turret: 220/220/220mm Faramite Alloy Plate
Lore: Among superheavies, there are few that inspire quite the same level of terror and awe as the Doomblade. Very few of its cousins promise quite the same level of destruction as the tank that can turn whole regiments or bunker complexes into a rolling cloud of violent explosions, rightly earning the name 'Detonator'.
The origins of the Doomblade go back to the days of Horus Heresy. When the Solar Axillary and the Imperial Army began development on a new generation of SuperHeavy tank killers, capable of laying waste to anything that may give pause to the Imperial Crusades across the galaxy. The chosen weapon was a piece of Achano-Tech known to the Imperium as an Anti-Matter Conversion Beamer. This energy weapon produced a beam that somehow converted matter into antimatter, reversing the charge and polarity of the atoms in a target to be the opposite of its surroundings, causing the target to be annihilated on the atomic level. The particularly violent detonation of this unfortunate target also proved very unhealthy for any units caught in the blast radius, as the shockwave smashed apart concrete structures and turned flesh and bone to a fine red mist.
However, the limitation of such a weapon was the heat generation of such a device, and the catastrophic event of a weapon failure would spell certain doom for anything equipped with it. Normally causing the weapon to only fire in short bursts, with a long cooldown period between each burst, making an equipped vehicle highly vulnerable between salvos. To solve this problem the Doomblade was fitted with a gatling assembly of the conversion beamers, 6 barrels in a rotary case that pumped coolant directly over the barrel during firing. Allowing the weapon to be fired continuously, with ludicrously destructive results.
However, the Doomblade had a fatal flaw: reliability. Although the coolant and separated firing chambers meant the antimatter converter was unlikely to explode and destroy the vehicle, the gatling assembly had an infuriating habit of jamming, and the beamers simply failing to fire. This critical weakness in the design meant that as many as a half of the Doomblades during the horus heresy were rendered combat ineffective before they fired even a single salvo from their main weapon, critical weapon failures being the most common cause for a Doombalde's destruction. To try rectifying this error in design, later patterns were refitted with a demolisher cannon and sponsons, usually achieved by removing the turret from older Doomblades and fitting it to Baneblade hulls. This change made the later tanks much larger and heavier, reducing mobility, but allowed Doombaldes with compromised main weapons to still serve valuable battlefield rolls as a mobile weapon base. Able to lay down heavy suppressive fire with its many Heavy Bolters, wipeout buildings and vehicles with its Demolisher Cannon and provide anti-tank support with its twin lascannons.
Despite the poor reliability, and rarity, of such tanks: the sheer destructive potential of the Doomblade is enough to make it a firm favorite of the Adeptus Mechanicus and Imperial Guard. Absolutely nothing the enemies of man can field is able to withstand the unrivaled firepower of the gatling antimatter conversion beamer, and even in the event of a malfunction the left over tank can easily be used as a very effective assault platform or mobile hardpoint.