Though lacking in any subtlety or elegance, this tactic was undeniably effective, and many crew had developed a dark notoriety for their skill at reckless low altitude strafing runs, leaving great swathes of the enemy's lines aflame with each pass.īefore the Horus Heresy began, the Anvillus Pattern Dreadclaw Drop Pod was one of the most advanced assault boat in service with the Space Marine Legions or the fleet of the Imperial Army during the Great Crusade. Indeed, many Legions favoured using the Dreadclaw in this role instead of the more common Storm Eagle, dropping from the sky like a flaming comet and employing the craft's thermal jets and melta cutters to scorch the landing zone clean before disembarking the assault troops contained within. Unlike some earlier boarding craft, which were incapable of returning their cargo to friendly ships, the Dreadclaw was also fully capable of operating as an independent dropship.
#40k drop pod assualt series
As such they had a minimal profile and a heavily armoured hull designed to survive fire from smaller ship-based close defence weaponry, while a series of melta cutters allowed it to slice through a ship's outer hull and deliver its cargo into the heart of a vessel. The Anvillus Pattern Dreadclaw Drop Pod was initially designed during the Great Crusade to insert Legion Space Marine boarding forces onto enemy void-craft in the midst of battle.
Unlike Imperial Drop Pods, the Dreadclaw is an assault boat, which means that it is fully capable of lifting off and leaving a planetary atmosphere or a warship's surface again, so that it can be used to extract Chaotic troops from a planetary surface or boarding operation as well as deliver them. The four claws then extend, driving the Dreadclaw's armoured bulk upwards and revealing its deadly contents, who begin combat operations in their typically savage fashion. Once on the ground, the assault boat's main hatch irises open and the squad or Chaos Dreadnought steps out on the surface. The Dreadclaw does not extend its main claw arms until it has landed and is ready to begin deploying its troops, since the arms' mechanisms are delicate and could be damaged by the impact or the heat of atmospheric entry.
During a planetary assault, it hurtles through the atmosphere like a man-made meteor until at a certain pre-determined altitude, its retro-rockets kick in and slow its descent to a speed survivable by Astartes (though not necessarily by normal humans). The Dreadclaw operates much like its present Imperial counterpart. The Dreadclaw is intended as an all-purpose assault boat that can deliver either a squad of up to ten Chaos Space Marines, up to five Chaos Terminators, or a single Chaos Dreadnought to combat for both ground assaults and ship-to-ship fleet actions.
The Dreadclaw is also intended for use in ship-to-ship boarding actions and is outfitted with two sets of grappling claws that allow the Dreadclaw to securely attach itself to the hull of an enemy starship, after attaching it begins cutting through the ship's hull with a ring of powerful melta-cutters located inside the machine's maw.Īfter cutting through the hull, a process that takes only solar minutes, the Dreadclaw opens its air-tight iris hatch and allows its cargo of Chaos Space Marines passage into the enemy ship. These starships will usually bombard the landing zone before the Dreadclaws touch down, clearing them of any opposition. The Dreadclaw assault boats are usually deployed from Chaos Battleships and Cruisers engaged in a planetary assault. Dreadclaws, like the Loyalist Space Marines' Drop Pods, are used to rapidly deploy squads of Chaos Space Marines onto a planet's surface from orbit. The Chaos Dreadclaw may be a variant or descendant of the Anvillus Pattern Dreadclaw Drop Pod, that was widely used during these times. The Chaos Dreadclaw is an ancient assault boat design very much like the current Drop Pod that was used by the Space Marine Legions during the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy and is still in service among the Chaos Space Marine Traitor Legions during the late 41st Millennium. Chaos Dreadclaws of the Skulltakers warband entering a planet's atmosphere
0 kommentar(er)
