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I stumbled upon this piece of fluff yesterday.

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Astral_Knights

The World Engine - The World Engine was attacked by fifteen Space Marine task forces plus elements from the Imperial Navy, and even the mightiest weapons the Imperial forces could bring to bear could not harm it. Drop Pods and torpedoes could not penetrate its shields and it was impossible to lock on to with teleport beams. The Imperial task force tried twelve times to overwhelm it through sheer valour and firepower and was rewarded with a string of destroyed and crippled starships and millions of casualties. The World Engine destroyed a third of an entire Imperial Navy Battlefleet before the Chapter Master of the Astral Knights decided to ram the World Engine with his Battle Barge. It was only when the enormous Space Marine starship collided with the Necron consruct's shields that they finally failed, allowing the Imperial forces to approach their target. The entire Astral Knights Space Marine Chapter deployed from Drop Pods onto the Necron vessel's surface. For 100 hours the Astral Knights fought against tens of thousands of Necron warriors and destroyed every flux generator, weapon forge and command node they came upon. Only after the Chapter had been reduced in size to the Chapter Master, Arthor Amhrad, and five Battle-Brothers did they succeed in their quest. Amhrad detonated melta-charges that destroyed a vast Necron tomb complex that housed many of the World Engine's command arrays which brought down the vessel's void shields. This allowed the Imperial Navy's starships to destroy the World Engine with cyclonic torpedoes.

Leaving aside the blatant SM glory boys attitude that GW inevitably give all who wear power armor, do you think this assault was possible?
Bear in mind it was the entire ACs Chapter, so assuming some losses aboard their battle barge from the space fighting, they may have numbered say 800? (speculative?)
Backed up then by Dreads/vehicles etc.
An entire Chapter in coordindation during a battle, led by their Chapter Master is a rare thing and surely would pack an enormous punch.

However some issues arise:
100 hours fighting - this is a little over 4 days. Not sure even a full Chapter could reach and destroy every key node of the World Engine in 4 days? (Does anyone have a definite size for the WE? Ive read planet/Death Star sized but this is wholly unconfirmed)

Tens of thousands of Necrons - surely the Necrons would have a more substantial defense force then this aboard?
One doubts the Necrons "pulled a Deathstar" and got arrogant, ignoring potential weaknesses, from their other fluff, they seem overly efficient and technologically sound.
Having said that with an entire Chapter in coordination, speed, surgical strikes, movement and feints might well have got the job done?

In short could one Chapter do so much damage?
Note: they didnt actually destroy the WE, just crippled it so the Imperial Navy could finish it off.

Ps I found the piece fascinating, the very idea immediatley grabbed my interest.

Well, the only thing I can think of is that it says once the Astral Knights Battle Barge rammed the WE, the shields failed. Then, the AK podded down etc. However, I would imagine that the rest of the Imperial fleet took to the attack also, bombarding the surface.

It seems unlikely that they went "Oh wow, those Astral Knights got in there, and hey, the shields are down too! Well, lets give 'em a few days and see what they can do."

Thats my take on it, at least

Yeah, I'm guessing that the Imperial Navi launched plenty of boarding parties too.

Otherwise, even if it's a full chapter, tens of thousands of necrons aren't going to be defeated, especialy not on their own vessel that most likely could just keep switching it's troops around and teleporting them all over the place as much as it wants.

I think the necrons had the boarders beat in both mobilty and firepower in this case...

If the AC's utilized ambush/hit-and-run tactics they could have maybe avoided the "tens of thousands" of Necrons in major engagements and accomplished their objective, is still doubtful though.

But very rarely does an entire chapter ever engage a single target. It is indeed beyond formidable when that happens.

To clear this up, I will tell you the following.

The WE was a tomb world in space, able to assault planets.
For a long time the IoM and the WE were in a stalemate, but the IoM came to the conclussion that a massive force could destroy it.
As such, the Astral Knights rammed the thing with their ships, disabbeling the shields of the WE, and thus allow the IoM to board it, shoot it etc.
WE destroyed, BA build a shrine for the Astral Knights, day saved.

It doesn't say they wiped out every void shield generator etc, only every one they came across. It sounds more like a suicide charge that got lucky and happened to hit enough vital bits to cripple the WE.

Also a typical battle barge seems to hold about 3 companies. Even if their ship was very large (there's no standard size for a battle barge), they wouldn't have the whole chapter on one ship. I assume the barge took down the shields, and the rest of the fleet followed.

So yeah, maybe mid-hundreds of marines, fighting Necrons who may or may not have even been prepared for a boarding action at all. I mean it doesn't say exactly, maybe the majority of the actual combat units were still asleep in their tombs when things kicked off, and the marines were fighting the janitor Necrons for the first few days. Who knows.

It's a cool story, and plausible I guess.

Necron janitors... I want a necron with a gauss broom now.

Yeah, cleaning would be so much easier if I could take apart all the dust in the room atom-by-atom...

Ah yes, the World Engine.

First of all, there were a total of seven hundred Marines that boarded it, as stated in the Space Marine codex.

Frankly, I don't even know how they got through shields by ramming it, when cyclonic torpedoes and the continued barrage of the Imperial Navy did nothing. Also, the World Engine was not stalemating the Imperial Navy, it was crushing it.

Personally, I don't see how they lasted so long, Necrons are masters of phase technology, the horde should have been upon them the moment they entered the World Engine.

The battle barge could of got through as if they had chosen area which the navy had battered previously then it would be weakened and they would be going on full power with their own Shields also as the world engine had such powerful Shields then it wouldn't have defensive procedures for boarding so the necrons wouldn't be ready and if three marines could destroy several marines could take down several nodes what would the chapter do also they only had dreadnoughts and things which could be drop poded so armoured support wouldn't happen

I don't understand questions like this. "Is it possible?" It's a fictional story of them doing it. Therefore I'm going to say it's possible in the setting.

There is nothing beyond Marine plot armour.

Hehe, if a hundred Ultramarines can deal with the Necrons in the deeply mediocre Fail of Damnos then surely 700 Spess Muhreens can bend time and space and disable the 40k Deathstar before they get killed by the unimaginable horrors which inhabit it...

Still nothing compared to the GK assault squad taking out the time traveling Tombworld @..@

Azure wrote:Still nothing compared to the GK assault squad taking out the time traveling Tombworld @..@

Iori Delta Tove?

It didn't time travel, it rewrote history.

And for the record, it's not confirmed destroyed.

Void__Dragon wrote:

Azure wrote:Still nothing compared to the GK assault squad taking out the time traveling Tombworld @..@

Iori Delta Tove?

It didn't time travel, it rewrote history.

And for the record, it's not confirmed destroyed.

Thought it also traveled through time, if not then my mistake, I confess having read it awhile back. And while it is true it was never confirmed destroyed I feel like the way they played the situation out is to make us think it gone, as it remains unlikely to be brought back in. But really, who knows? Maybe it'll be an important figure in the next Necron codex

Azure wrote:Thought it also traveled through time, if not then my mistake, I confess having read it awhile back. And while it is true it was never confirmed destroyed I feel like the way they played the situation out is to make us think it gone, as it remains unlikely to be brought back in. But really, who knows? Maybe it'll be an important figure in the next Necron codex

Well the codex says that it is unknown whether it was destroyed or simply phased away.

Keep in mind Iori Delta Tove was also dormant, unlike the World Engine.

And rereading that to find it dormant is kinda key then... '>...>

when the battle barge rammed the WE, the massive sheilding didnt collapse, thats why the imperium had to wait to see what would happen.
as soon as the barge broke threw the sheild all marines on board hopped into their drop dops (so no armoured support, save maybe some dreadnoughts), and decended onto the WE. having a massive battle barge colliding with the WE probably didnt do it any good. there were less than a company of remaining Marines left and so new chapter, the Sable Swords were created to fill the void.

The way i read it it sounded like it traveled time... And it wasnt destroyed no but it hasnt shown up again since the battle...

It's Marines. They aren't allowed to lose in general (though they throw in a few 'losses' in some of the books for the SM players to point to if anyone complains.) The GK has not a single loss in it if i remember right ..

This story reminds me of the story with one last battlebrother reaching the head of the Eversor temple and gunning him down. Presumably he was standing still, facing away from him, with his ipod on and blindfolded..

Ascalam wrote:It's Marines. They aren't allowed to lose in general (though they throw in a few 'losses' in some of the books for the SM players to point to if anyone complains.) The GK has not a single loss in it if i remember right ..

This story reminds me of the story with one last battlebrother reaching the head of the Eversor temple and gunning him down. Presumably he was standing still, facing away from him, with his ipod on and blindfolded..

The Grey Knights lost against Huron Blackheart that one time.

Of course the victory was possible.

To the remarks about a Space Marine Battle Barge being able to force their way through the World Engine's shields when even Cyclonic Torpedos could not: It's a simple matter of physics. The mass and total kinetic energy of an entire, 8+ mile long space marine Battle Barge blowing it's engines full-tilt (ruggedly and sturdily constructed by even the standards of other ships) is far in excess of the explosive forces of cyclonic torpedoes. It's the difference between getting shot with a handgun and getting hit with a car going 70+ miles per hour, a bullet proof-vest will stop the handgun bullet, it will not stop the car. Also, Cyclonic Torpedoes are weapons of mass destruction, designed to strip worlds of life with a single volley, they spread their destruction out over a wide area (by setting a planet's atmosphere on fire and using it to fuel the destruction), not so much for blasting through shields the likes of which the Necrons have access to. I have no problem at all believing that such a desperate and destructive gambit is what it took to overcome the Necron technological edge.

To the remarks that tens of thousands of Necrons should have been able to make short work of 700ish space marines: Check out the fluff for Necrons in Battlefleet Gothic. Boarding actions have always been effective against Necron ships, as while their ability to teleport with impunity and attack pretty much wherever they like makes them seem extremely fast and hard hitting, they are in fact quite slow to react when people take the fight to them off of their own terms. Also, with tens of thousands of Necrons spread out over an entire planet-sized craft, I doubt the highly mobile, well led, and highly disciplined/organized Space Marines ever actually fought large, concentrated forces of Necrons. It's a basic principle of asymmetrical warfare, give a larger, more battle-able opponent no big, hard targets to concentrate his strength against. From the sounds of the back end of the fluff, I think it's fair to assume that the Space Marines did not remain a unified force, that they scattered into small groups, looking for and striking any targets that they could find in an attempt to disable and cripple the vessel at all costs. They weren't trying to conquer it, they weren't establishing a beach-head, they were on a suicide mission to break stuff with melta-bombs and demo-charges. The entire chapter died accomplishing what it did, hunted down, cornered and eventually overwhelmed, and from the fluff they only barely managed to accomplish it, with the last kill team managing to, likely by luck, randomly find the correct thing to break.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a Necron Player, I'm sad that the World Engine died. However, I don't begrudge the boys in Power Armor their victory, it was a pretty cool story, and to my eyes it all made sense.

Keep in mind that cyclonic torpedos don't just blow the planet to bits with raw force, they destabilize the planet magnetically and etc first, weakening it before blowing it up.

Frankly, cyclonic torpedos are far more useful against planets than ships.

Very interesting points Panzerboy26, well made, especially to BFG, I had forgotten about that.

I hadnt considered the fact that the IoM would be sending in landing parties too, good point.

As to the pedantry of posters questioning the topic title/ideas, take a deep breath, as said, its fiction but interesting none the less. I'd profer you contribute or simply ignore the thread.

Where is the fluff for this Iori Delta Tove?

Grey Knights codex?

Colour me interested.

Panzerboy26 wrote:Of course the victory was possible.

To the remarks about a Space Marine Battle Barge being able to force their way through the World Engine's shields when even Cyclonic Torpedos could not: It's a simple matter of physics. The mass and total kinetic energy of an entire, 8+ mile long space marine Battle Barge blowing it's engines full-tilt (ruggedly and sturdily constructed by even the standards of other ships) is far in excess of the explosive forces of cyclonic torpedoes. It's the difference between getting shot with a handgun and getting hit with a car going 70+ miles per hour, a bullet proof-vest will stop the handgun bullet, it will not stop the car. Also, Cyclonic Torpedoes are weapons of mass destruction, designed to strip worlds of life with a single volley, they spread their destruction out over a wide area (by setting a planet's atmosphere on fire and using it to fuel the destruction), not so much for blasting through shields the likes of which the Necrons have access to. I have no problem at all believing that such a desperate and destructive gambit is what it took to overcome the Necron technological edge.

To the remarks that tens of thousands of Necrons should have been able to make short work of 700ish space marines: Check out the fluff for Necrons in Battlefleet Gothic. Boarding actions have always been effective against Necron ships, as while their ability to teleport with impunity and attack pretty much wherever they like makes them seem extremely fast and hard hitting, they are in fact quite slow to react when people take the fight to them off of their own terms. Also, with tens of thousands of Necrons spread out over an entire planet-sized craft, I doubt the highly mobile, well led, and highly disciplined/organized Space Marines ever actually fought large, concentrated forces of Necrons. It's a basic principle of asymmetrical warfare, give a larger, more battle-able opponent no big, hard targets to concentrate his strength against. From the sounds of the back end of the fluff, I think it's fair to assume that the Space Marines did not remain a unified force, that they scattered into small groups, looking for and striking any targets that they could find in an attempt to disable and cripple the vessel at all costs. They weren't trying to conquer it, they weren't establishing a beach-head, they were on a suicide mission to break stuff with melta-bombs and demo-charges. The entire chapter died accomplishing what it did, hunted down, cornered and eventually overwhelmed, and from the fluff they only barely managed to accomplish it, with the last kill team managing to, likely by luck, randomly finding the correct thing to break.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a Necron Player, I'm sad that the World Engine died. However, I don't begrudge the boys in Power Armor their victory, it was a pretty cool story, and to my eyes it all made sense.

This is pretty much all my thinking...

Void__Dragon wrote:Ah yes, the World Engine.

First of all, there were a total of seven hundred Marines that boarded it, as stated in the Space Marine codex.

Frankly, I don't even know how they got through shields by ramming it, when cyclonic torpedoes and the continued barrage of the Imperial Navy did nothing. Also, the World Engine was not stalemating the Imperial Navy, it was crushing it.

Personally, I don't see how they lasted so long, Necrons are masters of phase technology, the horde should have been upon them the moment they entered the World Engine.

Actually, Necrons have a poor reaction time to boarders and their ships are vulnerable to being boarded(Necron Codex)

Necron Ships have very few actual warriors on board as they don't Board in the traditional sense. they usually just extend a teliporter array onto an enemy vessel(the actual Crons doing the boarding are back at the Tomb World)


the World Engine will have a similer, but smaller, problem with poor reaction time. It will have loads of Warriors, but they will still be slow to react.


and lets remember that this wasn't exactly a crushing defeat of the Necron ship. The entire Astral Knights chapter was wiped out and the IN lost hundreds of ships(IIRC)

Void__Dragon wrote:Ah yes, the World Engine.

First of all, there were a total of seven hundred Marines that boarded it, as stated in the Space Marine codex.

Frankly, I don't even know how they got through shields by ramming it, when cyclonic torpedoes and the continued barrage of the Imperial Navy did nothing. Also, the World Engine was not stalemating the Imperial Navy, it was crushing it.

Personally, I don't see how they lasted so long, Necrons are masters of phase technology, the horde should have been upon them the moment they entered the World Engine.

Mighty plot armor laughs at your feeble technology

Panzerboy26 wrote:Of course the victory was possible.

To the remarks about a Space Marine Battle Barge being able to force their way through the World Engine's shields when even Cyclonic Torpedos could not: It's a simple matter of physics. The mass and total kinetic energy of an entire, 8+ mile long space marine Battle Barge blowing it's engines full-tilt (ruggedly and sturdily constructed by even the standards of other ships) is far in excess of the explosive forces of cyclonic torpedoes. It's the difference between getting shot with a handgun and getting hit with a car going 70+ miles per hour, a bullet proof-vest will stop the handgun bullet, it will not stop the car. Also, Cyclonic Torpedoes are weapons of mass destruction, designed to strip worlds of life with a single volley, they spread their destruction out over a wide area (by setting a planet's atmosphere on fire and using it to fuel the destruction), not so much for blasting through shields the likes of which the Necrons have access to. I have no problem at all believing that such a desperate and destructive gambit is what it took to overcome the Necron technological edge.

To the remarks that tens of thousands of Necrons should have been able to make short work of 700ish space marines: Check out the fluff for Necrons in Battlefleet Gothic. Boarding actions have always been effective against Necron ships, as while their ability to teleport with impunity and attack pretty much wherever they like makes them seem extremely fast and hard hitting, they are in fact quite slow to react when people take the fight to them off of their own terms. Also, with tens of thousands of Necrons spread out over an entire planet-sized craft, I doubt the highly mobile, well led, and highly disciplined/organized Space Marines ever actually fought large, concentrated forces of Necrons. It's a basic principle of asymmetrical warfare, give a larger, more battle-able opponent no big, hard targets to concentrate his strength against. From the sounds of the back end of the fluff, I think it's fair to assume that the Space Marines did not remain a unified force, that they scattered into small groups, looking for and striking any targets that they could find in an attempt to disable and cripple the vessel at all costs. They weren't trying to conquer it, they weren't establishing a beach-head, they were on a suicide mission to break stuff with melta-bombs and demo-charges. The entire chapter died accomplishing what it did, hunted down, cornered and eventually overwhelmed, and from the fluff they only barely managed to accomplish it, with the last kill team managing to, likely by luck, randomly find the correct thing to break.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a Necron Player, I'm sad that the World Engine died. However, I don't begrudge the boys in Power Armor their victory, it was a pretty cool story, and to my eyes it all made sense.

This is how a reasonable counter-argument should look like, not just whinging about plot armour as the other posters here tend to.

Anyway, the story in the book sparked my interest with Space Marines and I think it was plausible. What's more important is that it was epic and a symbol of what Space Marines stand for: Duty, Sacrifice and Devotion to Humanity and Victory.