Know your Tarantula!

Is it a spider? A Rogue Trader-era gravitic weapons platform or a Horus Heresy-era utilitarian weapons platform, or of all of these? Find out in ‘Know your Tarantula!

So I was very pleased to see another remaster of a classic unit, again for Warhammer: The Horus Heresy (the last one being the Saturnine Terminators, which I wrote about here). This time they have revisited a classic support weapon, the Tarantula! What is the Tarantula? Its first appearance was in White Dwarf 99 (pg. 62), where is is described thus:

The Tarantula has three basic components, a mobile gravaitic powered base, a body including auto-aim and targerter systems, and armament. It is, in effect, a romotic weapon mount controlled by a crewman who can move the Tarantula from place to place and select targets.

Then followed the rules. Basically you could add any 2 heavy weapons to it and it could, like all heavy weapons in 40K Rogue Trader at the time, either move or fire. It was an efficient way of giving some extra fire-power to an Imperial Guard unit, which is what the accompanying operator model was from. Here’s how it looked:

(Image - The Tarantula robotic weapons mount, from WD 99, pg.63)

I must assume that with its four legs/feet and the 2 weapons, each of which stuck out front and back of the mount, it kind-of had 8 ‘appendages’ and so looked very spider-like. Plus the Tarantula spider is cool and scary looking. It also means that either records a group of large and also hairy spiders of the family Theraphosidae, either survived 40,000 years into the future or the actual creatures did. But hey, that is not that uncommon as Cyanobacteria have been around for like 3.5 billion years.

Here’s my helpful identification guide to the actual spider (Type A, the Rogue Trader version (Type C) and the new version (Type B):

(Image - the three types of Tarantula, image credits in the picture)

While googling images for this article I also came across this cool painted version on ebay:

(Image - Games Workshop Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader Imperial Guards Tarantula, eBay link here)

Here is how the new re-master of the classic weapon is described:

Tarantula Sentry Guns are utilitarian weapons platforms, often used to bolster exposed flanks or rear line positions to free up the Adeptus Astartes troops. Little more than a sturdy base with a mobile turret, they are designed to mount several different weapons as needs demand. Though simple, they are effective when deployed well.

(Image - the remastered Tarantula key art. Source - Warhammer Community)

The weapon platform would also pop-up in a bunch of other places and if you wanted a more indepth look, then check out here.

Thanks for reading!

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