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As we all know, in the first half of M41 Angron finally unfethed his legion following Kharne's shenanigans and loaded into a space hulk with every berzerker, daemon, vehicle, daemon engine, traitor guard, mutant, and cultist he could find with the intent of reliving his favorite activity; mindless violence.

Due to what was probably chance, he appears over armageddon. Cue the single largest chaos incursion outside of a Black Crusade in Imperial history since the Horus Heresy.

To make a long story short, the world was saved by the Space Wolves and Grey Knights, only for the Imperium to decide to kill everyone anyway and ship in new people.

Now, it's stated that the losses the world eaters suffered were absolutely catastrophic, and if big red himself is deploying, he'd probably be bringing the overwhelming majority of the legion.

How are the World Eaters still a functioning fighting force in any significant numbers after suffering the kinds of losses the Steel Legion, Space Wolves, and Grey Knights inflicted on them?

After the losses suffered in the Dominion of Fire campaign, Skalathrax, and then Armageddon the legion should be a tiny, broken thing struggling to keep it's numbers up given how slowly new astartes are made.

Secondly, given that this was damn near an entire legion of angry red supermen, how could just every space wolf Logan could get his hands on really swing the tide when there would be at least a ten to one numerical advantage for the World Eaters? And shouldn't the halls of Fenris be plastered with this victory given that they helped the Imperium triumph against virtually the entirety of a traitor legion lead by it's fallen Primarch?

Thirdly; why out of all the Daemon Primarchs, has only Angron emerged from the eye of terror recently? Are the rest just lazy?

Fourthly: When the ragged brotherhood deployed, every lesser daemon, puny human, or "mere berserker" who got in their way got slaughtered like so much chaffe. I thought Khornate Bezerkers would at least be a speed bump to Grey Knight paladins, but from all I've gathered, the finest warriors of the World Eaters may as well have been basic mooks. How?

Finally I found a nice short story by Graham McNeil. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?449288-The-First-War-for-Armageddon

1) the World Eater are no Legion anymore after Skalathrax.
2) Angron took a crapton of followers of khorne , not neccessarily all of them World Eaters.
3) berserkers aren't always World Eaters.
4) A world like Armageddon with billions of people can suffer a lot of damage and has so many meatshields, to tie those insane minions of khorne up, a single Demon Primarch isn't enough for an easy autowin.
5) yes, only Angron is Angry enough to get his ass moving. The rest is busy doing chaosy things in the realm of chaos.
6) Space Wolves operate clever where World Eaters have only their insanity driving them on. Guess who is better off? Discipline or berserk fury?
7) Grey Knights. They have the power of " Ward-ing ".... ok, back in the day they had not. From a force of a hundred only so few lived... Pre-Draigo era is the golden past I say.

Well only the bloodthirsters and Angron managed to kill any of the ragged brotherhood, the Bloodletters, Cultists, Guardsmen, Heralds, Crushers, Hounds, and Berzerkers got cut down like a scythe through wheat when the Grey Knights made their final charge towards Angron. I guess they were caught off guard by the GKs just popping out of thin air though.

I wonder if Kharne, Skulltaker, and Skarbrand were there though.

 Kain wrote:
I thought Khornate Bezerkers would at least be a speed bump to Grey Knight paladins, but from all I've gathered, the finest warriors of the World Eaters may as well have been basic mooks. How?

Finally I found a nice short story by Graham McNeil. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?449288-The-First-War-for-Armageddon

Story seems to cover it really: The Grey Knights teleported into the midst of Angron's daemonic horde, presumably in order to bypass the surrounding hordes of World Eaters. That's kind of the point of Grey Knights teleporting.

As for the numbers, if you go by the Chaos Attack expansion for the Armageddon boardgame - which really you should since that's what the 1st and 2nd Armageddon war fluff was originally written for - then the Space Wolves seemingly outnumbered the World Eaters 3:2. The total Khornate horde outnumbered the Space Wolves, but they were countered by the Imperial Guard & PDF. Once Angron was banished the Khornate hordes were left leaderless and in true chaos fashion devolved into bickering warbands leaving them at the mercy of the unified Imperial war machine.

SerQuintus wrote:

 Kain wrote:
I thought Khornate Bezerkers would at least be a speed bump to Grey Knight paladins, but from all I've gathered, the finest warriors of the World Eaters may as well have been basic mooks. How?

Finally I found a nice short story by Graham McNeil. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?449288-The-First-War-for-Armageddon

Story seems to cover it really: The Grey Knights teleported into the midst of Angron's daemonic horde, presumably in order to bypass the surrounding hordes of World Eaters. That's kind of the point of Grey Knights teleporting.

As for the numbers, if you go by the Chaos Attack expansion for the Armageddon boardgame - which really you should since that's what the 1st and 2nd Armageddon war fluff was originally written for - then the Space Wolves seemingly outnumbered the World Eaters 3:2. The total Khornate horde outnumbered the Space Wolves, but they were countered by the Imperial Guard & PDF. Once Angron was banished the Khornate hordes were left leaderless and in true chaos fashion devolved into bickering warbands leaving them at the mercy of the unified Imperial war machine.

Later fluff seems to have the World Eaters massively outnumber the Space Wolves.

Actually you are wrong about the Primarches being lazy (not for the most part), but unfortunately I wish you were right as that's preferable to them being humiliated. Ragnar uses Magnus as Target-practice while Kaldor uses Montarion as tattooing-practice (it's a lot easier accepting Ragnar using Gugne (the spear of Odin I mean Russ) at Magnus, than Kaldor taking everything without a hitch.

Well I thought they listed the number of Terminators Logan had. That would be different than just the number of actual Space Marines thrown at the enemy, plus the earlier meatshields firing meltaguns, artillery and what not would have put a dent in the demonic forces.

And if anyone are the primary raiders of the 40k.-universe, then it is the Space Wolves, that blunted the tactics of the World Eaters who had to give chase only to end in ambushes.

Notably, the only Primarchs to have emerged from the EoT following the heresy are those from mono-god legions. It's probably just a coincidence but it's an interesting one.

But I'd expect that Ragnar would have had his ears bent to listen to tales of how the Sons of Russ saved Armageddon and helped to defeat a legion of traitors lead by one of the fallen Primarchs themselves.

I was sad to see so little mention of Armageddon in the space wolves books.

Yeah the Primarches seems like a bunch of lazy bums not malevolent demigods, and when they emerge from the EOT they only get humiliated.

Ragnar has a spear that always hits it mark, which is a pretty good equalizer if you ask me.

As for the codexes, they are rulebooks first and foremost. The overblown stories are just how they recount them nothing else, and I don't expect anything from a codex so I'm never disappointed when I read one. But Armageddon is there, including that Ulrik the Slayer spoke Logan down, and as for Ragnar getting his ear filled up with that legend, that doesn't need to be written down, it's just there unstated.

As described in the background material, the chaos invasion was hampered and lost momentum because every once in awhile they had to stop and build altars to the chaos gods. The altars and rituals were needed so the demons could stay on armageddon, these pauses gave time for imperial forces to be reinforced.

Doesn't that actually contradict fluff, as it's explisity stated that Khorne really doesn't like people building monuments to him as opposed to go and kill something?

But on the other side it make sense, I mean demons would likely get wobbly from the massive shelling they are bound to receive from the Imperial Guard, nevermind the hit and run tactics employed by the Space Wolves.

Chaos rituals and monuments attract the energy of the warp. Daemons need the energy to maintain their mortal forms. Angron had to resort to this because the original warp storm that sustained his daemons was weakening, so it was that or have his daemons evaporate back into the warp. Why did the warp storm fade at such a bad time? No reason given but the Chaos gods are powerful but not omnipotent and the warp still does its own thing.

The need for energy is also why the Daemon Primarchs are so seldom active in realspace, because the amount you need gets greater the more powerful a daemon you are. That is why it is relatively easy to summon a daemonic beast, then a lesser daemon. By the time you get to greater daemon, you need either possession (which only lasts until the vessel is eventually destroyed) or a constant stream of a lot of energy such as that from numerous sacrifices and rituals.

Yeah and even if they are powerful enough to do that Empy is able to close warp-rifts and block out the power as I imagine him as very powerful despite his corpselike state, but then again I'm a total fanboi of Empy as I basically have him ranked as the most powerful being ever invented in any fantasy fluff.

Cool read from McNeill!

 Gryamauch wrote:
Cool read from McNeill!

ADB also made a story that takes place in the First war, although it focuses more on the months of shame for some reason.

 Kain wrote:

 Gryamauch wrote:
Cool read from McNeill!

ADB also made a story that takes place in the First war, although it focuses more on the months of shame for some reason.

Probably because the Grey Knights weren't able to respond in time for the initial early assault on Armageddon by Angron due to their one Prognosticar being blinded from seeing their invasion by apparently the Chaos Gods ala Palpatine clouding Yoda's farseeing abilities. As a result by the time they got there the Space Wolves had already entrenched themselves in and most of the battle had already been fought with them holding the line long enough for the Grey Knights to swoop in with the element of surprise on Angron and his retinue. After Angron and his daemons were banished, the ensuing mop-up of the remnants of the Chaos forces were clearly not done by the Grey Knights considering the 100sh knights sent there only came out with barely 3-5 people who survived. So it's not really surprising on the lack of coverage for the more early details of the war considering this was really the only part that the Knights had a true stake in. It was during the Months of Shame that they were again actively involved with the situation handling the defiance of the Space Wolves. That plus ADB has a tendency to try and humanise marines (for better or for worse) in his stories so he obviously wanted to use the Wolves as a way to display this even for marines as inured to emotions like the Grey Knights.

Well, we can still hope for a story that shows things from the Wolves' perspective. I'd like to see Logan in particular, to get inside his head and see how he becomes proud of the Steel Legion and Space Wolves he commands to defeat a traitor primarch, and then his outrage when all his efforts turn out to be for nothing in the end because the Imperium goes and does what Angron set out to do anyway.

1st things 1st, thanks for raising this subject. I re-read the article for the 1st time in probably a decade. It came out at the peak of my interest in 40k, so this has a special place in my heart.

 Kain wrote:
How are the World Eaters still a functioning fighting force in any significant numbers after suffering the kinds of losses the Steel Legion, Space Wolves, and Grey Knights inflicted on them?

As mentioned in above posts, it wasn't just World Eaters. There were cultists, renegades, daemonhosts, etc. The World Eaters were just the tip of the spear...the small yet most terrifying part.

The evidence I have was not quoted in that article. It was in a mini-wargame by Jervis Johnson, that was spread over 2 issues of White Dwarf (back when it was really awesome). It actually gave you counters for the armies. I still have the game in my London home, somewhere. I distinctly remember how Angron and the World Eaters were played up, then looked at the counters, and realized they were actually the minority of the army. There were like 4 or 5 "companies" of World Eaters, which were like successor warbands. They were the best of the Chaos lot, but they were just part of the force. There were many other troops and daemons.

It's like the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, like in the comic book/movie/meme, right? There were also 3,000 other Greeks that didn't get attention, perhaps because they didn't have cool one-liners.

Moreover, just a reminder, the number of World Eaters out there is huge...and actually unknown. They were a Legion from the Heresy era compared to the 41st millennium's Chapters of 1,000. Then that Legion went on to spread. Whereas loyalist Space Marines had very orderly, controlled ways to recruit new members, the Chaos Legions had a lot more freedom to bolster its ranks. We read in other sources how Fabius Bile, Iron Warriors, & co. just cloned whole armies. They cared less about the purity of their geneseeds or, indeed, their recruits. And whereas loyalists had that cap of 1,000, the Legions had no such limitations.

In conclusion, it wasn't all the World Eaters, just 4 or 5 companies of them...and there's a lot more wandering the stars.

 Kain wrote:
Secondly, given that this was damn near an entire legion of angry red supermen, how could just every space wolf Logan could get his hands on really swing the tide when there would be at least a ten to one numerical advantage for the World Eaters? And shouldn't the halls of Fenris be plastered with this victory given that they helped the Imperium triumph against virtually the entirety of a traitor legion lead by it's fallen Primarch?

I love this point, Kain! I had not even thought of this point, yet I think you are right, but I still can imagine why Logan Grimnar won't celebrate this war.

It's because while they won against the Chaos forces, they did not win the war against the Inquisition in the Months of Shame afterwards.

To recap, the Inquisition basically castrated and worked to death the people of Armageddon, for fear that knowledge of the war would get out.

Logan Grimnar and his Space Wolves, though Space Marines, considered these men their battle brothers, who fought with them despite not being supermen.

Thus, any monument about their victory over Chaos is also a reminder of how they failed to protect their friends, which to Logan remains a pain point.

 Kain wrote:
Thirdly; why out of all the Daemon Primarchs, has only Angron emerged from the eye of terror recently? Are the rest just lazy?

I recall Perturabo came out recently to spread the Technovirus of Toil, but yeah, it looks like the Daemon Primarchs like staying in the Eye of Terror.

Maybe there's all sorts of infighting between the Chaos Legions, and it's all the Daemon Primarchs to spend their time controlling their own people.

Also, if you do emerge and lead a Black Crusade, there's a good chance they end up being humiliated like Abbadon or Angron in this case. So why bother?

 Kain wrote:
Fourthly: When the ragged brotherhood deployed, every lesser daemon, puny human, or "mere berserker" who got in their way got slaughtered like so much chaffe. I thought Khornate Bezerkers would at least be a speed bump to Grey Knight paladins, but from all I've gathered, the finest warriors of the World Eaters may as well have been basic mooks. How?

IIRC, most who faced the World Eaters got messed up royally. The Grey Knights, as mentioned above, just teleported in and directly took care of Angron.

Also IIRC, the one that really got mention was Ulrik the Slayer, who slew World Eaters that took down HIS Wolf Lord. It was just Ulrick's sheer awesomeness.

The fun detail (and where I do love GW fluff at times) is how his ferocious vengeance won a salute from the Chaos Lord of that warband...and here's my interpretation.

IMHO, the Chaos Lord's gesture was a back-handed compliment. It's like, "You there, Space Wolf, I salute you as a berserker...just like one of us. Welcome, brother."

---

But what was the big thing with me on the 1st War of Armageddon? This is just me, I'm not trying to assert my perspective on you, my friends.

It's just for me, when I was a kid reading this when it came out, and what was later called the Months of Shame, I finally realized the joke.

What the Inquisition did after this otherwise awesome war...the Imperium weren't necessarily the good guys, as the Space Wolves discovered.

It's like, that was the punchline for me, when I still thought of things in terms of good vs. evil. It's like this made me understand grimdark.

I like to think that Angron had a hearty laugh from within the warp as the Imperium engaged in what he wanted to do anyway. Mass slaughter.

 Kain wrote:
I like to think that Angron had a hearty laugh from within the warp as the Imperium engaged in what he wanted to do anyway. Mass slaughter.

You might well be right. Khorne welcomes all blood, theirs or their enemies'. And Angron was ultimately pitting 1 Space Hulk vs. a whole planet and did a lot of damage. But in the end, you're right. The Imperium won the war, but to Khorne, just having a war is a victory.

Unless its been retconned the survivors weren't massacred in a Khorne-sating display of blood - they were sterilised so as to not be able to breed and then sent to forced labour camps to be worked to death.

SerQuintus wrote:
Unless its been retconned the survivors weren't massacred in a Khorne-sating display of blood - they were sterilised so as to not be able to breed and then sent to forced labour camps to be worked to death.

There's still a great deal of Irony to be had in expending so much to stop him, only for his goal of making everyone on Armageddon suffer critical life failure to be done for him.

 Kain wrote:

 Gryamauch wrote:
Cool read from McNeill!

ADB also made a story that takes place in the First war, although it focuses more on the months of shame for some reason.

Something that was FAR more entertaining then the standard "I slay Daemons in the name of the Emperor" spheil. It was actually an exciting look at inter-Imperial politics and even some morality.

ADB spent the correct amount of time on Armageddon. The GK's got there at the last minute, and were only fighting for several hours at most. You also get a good idea of what went down: All 100+ Terminators teleported into the middle of Angron's horde and surrounded him/his 12 Bloodthirsters. They made more or less a mad dash for Angron, trying to get to him before they could get overwhelmed from all sides, thus ignoring everything going on around them. Most of the GK's were killed battling through the Bloodthirsters/Berzerkers/Daemons that were in their way, Hyperion shattered Angron's Black Blade, and was banished back to the warp when Brother-Captain Taremar Aurellian sacrificed himself. All but 13 died.

I'm hoping we get a book from the Space Wolves' side of things then.

Space Wolves are literate?

 Psienesis wrote:
Space Wolves are literate?

The Space Wolves novels confirm that much.