Lascannon

The lascannon is the Imperium's workhorse anti-armour laser, a long-barrelled beam weapon that spits a searing lance of coherent light hot enough to punch clean through a battle tank's hull. Where a lasgun merely stings, the lascannon obliterates, boring a glowing tunnel through armour and crew alike and often slaying everything in a line behind its first victim.

A lascannon is heavy and hungry for power, so it is mounted on vehicles and bastions or shouldered by two-man weapon teams who lug its bulk and power packs across the battlefield. When it fires there is a blinding flash and a crack of superheated air, and something that was armoured a moment before is left as burning wreckage. Its beam needs no windage or lead; it strikes the instant the trigger is pulled.

It is a mainstay of the Astra Militarum and of Space Marine heavy squads, valued for the same reasons as every good las-weapon: it is rugged, endlessly repairable, and needs only a charged cell to kill. A single team, well sited on a ridge or in a ruin, can hold an entire flank against enemy armour, picking off tank after tank until either the foe withdraws or the last cell runs dry. For all its bulk and its greed for power, no Imperial commander facing armour would willingly go to war without a battery of them ranged along his line, waiting patiently for the enemy tanks to come within reach.