Super-heavy Tank Laansbreig II

The Laansbreig II from the Hettic Vehicles Standalone Pack by Sofa

4x 8mm Machine Guns

The formerly "Battalion Tank" (known as the "Super-heavy Tank" now) is a concept developed in the late 5th century.

## Conception and History

During the Third Spat, Chergarian officers felt the need for a new kind of armored vehicle to support infantry formations and perforate enemy lines. A project was launched but the war was over when the first units were available. However, these new tanks, known as the Laansbreig I, joined the Chergarian Imperial Army. Even if it never saw the action on the battlefield, an upgraded variant was created in 510 to replace it: the Laansbreig II. The classification of the machine also changed a few years later, and switched from "battalion tank" to "super-heavy tank".

Unlike its predecessor, the Laansbreig II was engaged in conflicts, such the Chergarian invasion of Syrvania. But its low speed and heavy maintenance requirements restricted it to defensive missions.

After the end of the war, the few remaining units were sold to the Hettic Home Army which used them during the Second Leersog War, instead of scrapping them.

## Characteristics

With a heavy weight of 84 tons, it was slower than a man and had a tendency to sink on the soft surfaces. Furthermore, it was very difficult to find a flatcar or a bridge that could support it. When some Laansbreig II were shipped to Hetland by the Chergarian Empire, in 523 and 524, to prepare the invasion of Syrvania, most of them were dismantled and transported by ship. This resulted in mechanically deficient tanks.

Moreover, these war machines were not invincible and very exposed to airstrikes.

Its disastrous speed and thin skin made it nearly useless.

The Laansbreig was conceived by Chergaria at the end of the Third Spat, as an implementation of the "Battalion Tank" concept - a massive, heavily armed vehicle meant to brush aside enemy defenses and break a stalemate. Only a handful of these vehicles were built before changing circumstances demanded a series of revisions, yielding its successor, the Laansbreig II, of which twenty six were built.

Armed with three machine gun turrets, a frontal howitzer, and an anti-tank gun in the main turret, the vehicle's size posed a number of problems, which first manifested during their deployment in the invasion of Syrvania. In order to be shipped to Hetland, they had to be broken down into sections and reassembled locally, and only a small amount of local railroad infrastructure could properly transport them to the front. Mechanical unreliability, sluggish cruising speed, and a knack for sinking into soft ground relegated them to a defensive role. Relatively thin armor, owing to their already significant mass, rendered them vulnerable to aerial attack and anti-tank weapons encountered later in the campaign. When one was destroyed, Chergaria withdrew the four survivors back to Hetland, where they would join the remaining three held in reserve there, only to be sold to the Hettic Home Army after the signing of the Treaty of Pansk.

The Home Army's eventual decision to press the vehicles into active service, rather than scrap them, was a point of contention among the nation's leadership. It especially soured relations between more forward-thinking Home Army officers, who viewed the vehicles as a waste of manpower and resources, and Hetland's ruling aristocracy, who were, in the words of Ifan Litcwermenn, "Wowed by the sheer spectacle of those ponderous lumps of scrap".

When the Second Leersog War broke out, most of the tanks were nowhere near the front and were not deployed until Labuwn was threatened. First deployed to help mop up the Ludow pocket, they were very effective on the flat open ground, but suffered when on any rough terrain. The few that survived were destroyed in the Ilast Valley counter-offensive.

Their in-game design is probably based off the Soviet T-35 and the French Char B1 heavy tanks.