The sight of BattleMechs lumbering across the terrain is a familiar one across the worlds of the Inner Sphere. Nevertheless, the sight of an Atlas still manages to make even experienced MechWarriors break out in sweat. The Atlas was designed as a last-ditch attempt to ensure the superiority of the Star League's regular army over the growing armies of the House Lords. General Kerensky himself set down the specifications for the Atlas, calling for "a Mech as powerful as possible, as impenetrable as possible, and as ugly and foreboding as conceivable, so that fear itself will be our ally".

Ugly and foreboding are two apt descriptions for the Atlas. Considerable effort went into making the Atlas' weapons as visible as possible, giving an opposing MechWarrior plenty of opportunity to see that he is out-gunned and to decide he is not being paid enough to die. Designers spent an entire year fashioning the head and cockpit to create a perfect merging of function and gruesomeness. The result was a complete success, and so MechWarriors nicknamed the Atlas "Death's Head".

The AS7-K Atlas of 3050 is a formidable new design that incorporates an extra-light engine, CASE, and an impressive array of weapons that include a Gauss rifle replacing the AC/20.