Hello folks! This question has been in the back of my mind for a while now, so I thought some of you could help me puzzle it out. The fire selector description states that up to three clips can be added to the weapon. This wording can be interpreted as allowing four clips total, but that's not the main question. I've been trying to picture this. I've been a 40K fan since the late eighties, and have seen many renderings of space marines (art & mini). The bolters they carry invariably have massive magazines attached to them. So that's my problem. I simply cannot picture a bolter with three (or four) magazines loaded at one time without it looking like some crazy ork contraption. What do you think?

This has been a recurring discussion all the way back to the release of Dark Heresy, where you get the same sort of sillyness with autopistols, autoguns and other weapons.

The inspiration for this piece of equipment is probably the Judge Dredd movie with Stallone, where he voice-activates different firing modes on his lawgiver. Quite cool, but we houseruled this to allow for different bullets, but without increasing the total number of rounds that could be loaded.

I still don't see how this could be engineered, but there you are

I just joined this site this year, so didn't realize I was re-hashing ancient history (although I probably should have reailized that something like this would have already been discussed). In any case, thanks for the thoughts. Did your group figure out a way to explain how the rounds are shuffled within the clip? Thanks again!

Alpha Chaos 13 said:

Two at the bottom, one to the side?

Alex

It really gets crazy when you realize the Storm Bolter can be fitted with the fire selector, too. This is one of those things that, if you use it as written, you'll just have to let your suspension of disbelief take over. Maybe basic bolter clips are like bags of chips - mostly air.

It's just another (albeit small) case of silliness by simplification .

I can see why, instead of writing a whole additional paragraph's worth (or more) of rules for the fire selector they went with something nice and uncomplicated.

In the old Inquisitor book, pictures of Battle-Brother Artemis' Bolter shows that it has blocky attachments on either side of his bolter, where small magazines could be inserted, though they were only enough to hold 3-5 rounds each.

Since we don't have the stats for that in the game, you could just imagine it looks like that anyway, it's what I do (I also get pistol mags too, since I find I rarely need full clips of the special rounds).

Mainly the Fire Selector is an abstraction like most of the combat related rules and has no visual reference.

There are some old illustration in the W40K universe which show clips sticking out of different angles of a weapon, strangley these depict mostly Chaos Characters. Based on these old drawings and the usual Deathwatch Bolter our group envisoned the feeding chamber has 3 openings which can be open/closed as needed and the lower ports (II) on each side are slots which can be used for 2 additional clips, but are rarley used because of the tendency of 41st Millenium weapons to jam and losing all remaining ammo. As most DW characters will choose the Rapid Reload Talent it is more economic to invest half an action than losing up to 84 rounds in one turn! So additional clips are only loaded shortly before there is any need for alternate ammo.

Alternatively you can imagine a system with the appearance of a Ready Mag with 3 clips side by side,. This looks much cooler, but would mean more feeding problems than with the angled version. A lot of people on this forum favor an ammo-drum, but this would make changing different clips impossible and is the most impractical version!

As mentioned earlier this can also be seen as an abstraction and reflects a combination of the SM's ability to store up to 2 clips on an easy to reach locations on his webbing gear and a modified clip-ejection-system, which speeds up changing clips. This last version altough the most abstract interpretation is the only one for all weapon types including Storm Bolters.

.

There we go, should have just found a picture in the first place.

Take it all with a grain of salt, since that is an old Index Astartes pic, but the Boltgun on the cover of the RPG core book looks just about the same...

Anyway, those small gunmetal rectangles on the side are supposed to be the magazines for the special rounds, tiny I know, which backs up what I was talking about.

So yeah, the game rules don't really model the artwork all that well, but does it really matter? Nah...

I think when they mean 'three clips added' the rules mean 'to an empty gun', resulting in a total of 3, not a total of 4!

@ Blood Pact - Thanks for the picture, good stuff!

@ Siranui - I agree that it is supposed to be three total. I was pointing out that the wording could be interpreted to mean four. I'm a bit of a fanatic when it comes to stuff like that!

@ everyone else - Thank you for your input. I can suspend disbelief when I have to, but I'm a science guy at heart. I'll just chalk this up as one of the mysteries of the Omnissiah!

DW is not contract boiler-plate. There are a dozen rules that you can break the game with. Best to pretend you didn't notice them.

For me, the selector is an external system fitted to standard bolt-guns. It's slips into the magazine well, and from here feeds to three seperate magazines that can be switched between, and which are all vertical (so stupid magazines sticking out on all sides, please!). Sure: This means that there are a couple of rounds in the feed, even after you flick to a different magazine, but it's an abstraction.

I've houseruled that Stormbolters can't have fireselectors beacuse it would lokk incredible silly. None of my players have an issue with that ruling.

I don't think any sensible player would. Although I'd be ok with a Storm Bolter -toting player buying a fire selector that effectively split the 60 shot magazine into three 20 shot ones.

Siranui said:

That really works for me. The bolter's profile would be sort of like if it had a drum mag. Thanks!

Alpha Chaos 13 said:

Profile as in silhouette, not statistics.

I reworked it. I imagine that the buttons on the side each hold a burst worth of rounds. The Marine hits the button, it chambers the first round, and allows him to fire up to a burst of said ammo, at wich point, it goes back to the actual magazine. I think it makes more sense. I also ruled it is for bolters only.

The Nazis had a device that let you load two magazines in to an MP40:-

You fire from one, and when it is empty slide the other across.

Similarly, you can get magazines fitted so they clip together for faster changing:-

I imagine a bolter fitted with a selector switch looks rather like that, with a wider magazine well covering all three mags.

AluminiumWolf said:

Fixed that for you

Siranui said:

Fixed that for you

I didn't say it was a good idea. But this is 40k. Kewlness is generally in the ascendant, and I'm pretty sure everyone jungle tapes their magazines.

--

Here we see a typical van Rand pattern Deathwatch bolter:-

In addition to the selector mechanism allowing feed from three separate magazines, this pattern features a rail system to allow the attachment of sights, sensors and other accessories. The Deathwatch armourers have fitted the weapon shown here with a reflex sight block, but vertical foregrips, close combat attachments and religious fetishes are also common additions.

All boltguns in the AW verse have shoulder stocks, just because they allow for far cooler looking firing stances.

looking in the Inquisitor page.....

Brother Artemis has:

5 rounds of kraken; 5 of helfire; 5 of Stalker and 5 of "don't remember"......

so, the bolter has the standard curved clip plus 4 magazine.

each magazine contain 5 rounds......

if you want to use the 3 magazine, I suppose the lateral magazine was put in a "T" mode with central extractor......

AluminiumWolf said:

It doesn't. The fire selection, in-fluff, doesn't let your load full-sized magazines in to the gun.

The rules do let you do that simple for the sake of simplicity. Which is good, because the Bolter with three magazines jutting out under it is stupid-ugly.

Blood Pact said:

Even in-fluff a Bolter with fire selection wouldn't work at least under the official (in-fluff) Deathwatch Bolter design, or is the DW using caseless bolt rounds?

There is no ejector!

Blood Pact said:

I kinda like it. Similar sort of feel to a Beta C-mag.

Anyway, what do people think of fitting bolters with picatinny like rails for mounting accessories? Nifty huh? The guns that people carry around with lots of bolt on bits look The ****, so we should be getting them in 40k.

AluminiumWolf said:

There are people who see a similarity between a Beta C-Mag drum on a gun and the balls between men's legs.

Just joking.

Mounting picatinny rails on Imperial weapons is a heretical act, because they enable the normal soldier to customise his weapon at will, something which needs to be approved by the Mechanicus first.

Kain McDogal said:

Guns firing caseless ammo would still need an ejector port, only for removing dud rounds though. It wouldn't need to be in the same position as normal but you know how the mechanicus do things.