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Basically they've yet to win an even fight. Almost all the major battles that I can think of have involved them having overwhelming numbers and the complete element of surprise. Calth is perhaps the most extreme case of this where its literally half a book of the Word Bearers nuking Calth and shooting Ultramarines in the back who are under orders not to return fire. At Istvaan 3 they virus bomb the loyalists and kill most of them. At Istvaan 4 they have 9 legions vs 3 and the element of surprise. Horus tactics completely relied on the other legions defecting to his cause.

After this there really isn't a major legion on legion conflict. The writers seem to be actively avoiding this because they know that the traitor legions need to be intact for the battle of terra but can't kill anymore loyalists because that makes the Imperials winning increasingly unbelievable. So the books are in this weird place where, for example, the Shadow Crusade happens without any intervention from the loyalist legions despite the close proximity of the Ultramarines, Dark Angels and Blood Angels with their Primarches. They're using the warpstorm McGuffin to explain the lack of any Imperial counter attack but it means that the traitors accomplishments appear unimpressive because they simply haven't been allowed to have an even fight against more than remnants since the initial battles.

It gets even worse in Vengeful Spirit and on Armatura where the writers try to sell the strengths and danger of the traitor legions and the military genius of Horus; but they're fighting the Imperial army. How on earth is that a challenge. Its been hammered into readers of the HH repeatedly that normal armies cannot stand against space marines. Much less a full legion, much less two full legions and even less two full legions led by their Primarches. It becomes quite laughable when we're told that a world is being assaulted by 50000 space marines plus all their supporting compliments and expected to survive.

So, rather than have an actual good fight like Gulliman plus a large Ultramarines army against Horus or Russ and the Wolves against Angron they seem determined to have situations where its hundreds of thousands of traitors against millions of guardsman or a few thousand or even hundred loyalists. This to me just makes the traitors seem kind of weak in the Horus Heresy. They've yet to win when the odds were stacked against them and the writers need to learn that I am not impressed that Horus can defeat the Imperial army; no matter how many zeroes you add on their body count.

"Only the dead fight fair"

You have to remember that space marines never fight fair anyway. They always use blitzkrieg and shock tactics to cripple the opponent sometimes not even sticking around for the actual battle. Whether its Raven Guard striking from the shadows, Blood angels zooming in on fast tanks or Ultramarines dropping from orbit.

The day they arrange a date, line up opposite an opponent on an open field and march towards each other is when they loose whoever it is cause they don't have the numbers to compete like that.

No general, especially Horus, wants a "good, honourable battle", they want a slaughter where the enemy is killed with as few casualties as possible.

So why would Horus fight fair?

What about the Battle for Prospero?

I also want a straight up legion on legion fight, I'd also like it to be 2 legions we wouldn't expect to interact, death guard vs ultras or sons of horus vs dark angels, if written well the later would be epic

I think the fact Horus was able to get so many fights with the odds stacked in his favour (or even get loyalist legions to fight each other) is impressive.

I think he always was doomed to be betrayed by Chaos at the siege of Terra as the 40k blurb always describes the emperor being on the golden throne 'by the will of the gods' and goes on to say the imperium is in a state of constant war and stagnation 'to the laughter of dark gods' or similar.

Taffy17 wrote:"Only the dead fight fair"

You have to remember that space marines never fight fair anyway. They always use blitzkrieg and shock tactics to cripple the opponent sometimes not even sticking around for the actual battle. Whether its Raven Guard striking from the shadows, Blood angels zooming in on fast tanks or Ultramarines dropping from orbit.

The day they arrange a date, line up opposite an opponent on an open field and march towards each other is when they loose whoever it is cause they don't have the numbers to compete like that.

No general, especially Horus, wants a "good, honourable battle", they want a slaughter where the enemy is killed with as few casualties as possible.

So why would Horus fight fair?

Because a two year old can press a button and drop a virus bomb on Calth or Istvaan. Because anyone can win if he outnumbers a surrounded opponent by three to one. Because Horus doing this didn't require any strategy beyond him knowing that those legions would support him. Because it creates obvious contradictions. If we can orbital bombard and destroy the Ultramarines at Calth then why didn't the loyalists do this at Istvaan? A two year old could order his two legions of space marines to kill guardsmen with lasguns. Vengeful Spirit really wants to sell to you that Horus is this great threat to the Imperium and a brilliant leader; but hes fighting the Imperial army. This defeats the object. Give him a worthy opponent and an actually dangerous opponent. Like, I don't know, another Primarch and legion that isn't Mcguffin shot in the back.

Its not a question of honour. Its a question of there not being any evenly matched fighting. The battles are shockingly one sided with the traitors always having the deck stacked in their favour with frankly McGuffin logic of "well news of Horus hasn't reached them" or "Oh the Ruinstorm..." etc etc. Being outnumbered because of manoeuvre is one thing.

At Calth for example, you expect me to believe:

* That chaos can infect and disable all mechanical devices. Okay, why hasn't chaos already won and why do they not attempt this in 40k?

* That the forces of chaos can have Gal Vorbak and blood cultists walking in front of the marines without them thinking something was up.

* That one ship crashing into a space station would do that much damage.

* That Gulliman had no ships on full power and didn't anticipate such an attack when he is on a war footing with the Orks and expecting them to invade.

* That nobody realised the Word Bearers fleet was at full power.

* That nobody realised the Word Bearers armies were armed, powered up and ready to attack on the ground; often within eyesight of the Word Bearers.

* That Angron and Lorgar fight the battle of Istvaan 3 and 4. Yet are able to make their way to Macragge across the galaxy without any message being sent to Ultramar.

The list really does go on. But, honestly, why go with such an outrageous set up instead of a straight up fight? From a storyline perspective its just a rehash of the betrayels of Istvaan 3 and 4; which has been done. Surely by this stage the betrayel should have been revealed instead of nuking 150,000 Ultramarines because we need to explain why Gulliman doesn't do anything for the rest of the Heresy.


Normandy, Stalingrad, etc these are not noble or heroic battles. They're bloody grim and terrible things. But they are tough match ups between roughly evenly matched opponents. This is not what we get in the Horus Heresy. We either get loyalists being McGuffin surprised to death or we get a few hundred marines vs millions of traitors.

Thairne wrote:What about the Battle for Prospero?

The Thousand Sons aren't traitors then and they still aren't fully traitor until Crimson King comes out. It's a different beast.

Formosa wrote:I also want a straight up legion on legion fight, I'd also like it to be 2 legions we wouldn't expect to interact, death guard vs ultras or sons of horus vs dark angels, if written well the later would be epic

Exactly. But the writers are really going out of their way to prevent this by deliberately splintering and scattering the legions or allowing the traitors to act with apparent impunity because "ruinstorm".



BTW I really do find the ruinstorm a joke. How come this isn't a thing in 40k? Warpstorms are random phenomena that accompany great slaughter in a limited scale, you can't target entire fleets and shut down the entire galaxy. If you could then chaos would have already won. They had better have a dam good excuse for how the Imperium stops the ruinstorm and why this is never attempted again by the forces of chaos. Plus, these things are just as dangerous to chaos fleets as they are to Imperial fleets because the gods are capricious. In the HH they represent it as a calculated strategy by Lorgar which can be applied mathematically. Plus its the constant go to excuse for why the loyalists haven't made any moves against the traitors since Istvaan.


Really though I am getting so tired of them writing book after book where Horus betrayel is news. Its like ground hog day.



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nareik wrote:
I think the fact Horus was able to get so many fights with the odds stacked in his favour (or even get loyalist legions to fight each other) is impressive.

I think he always was doomed to be betrayed by Chaos at the siege of Terra as the 40k blurb always describes the emperor being on the golden throne 'by the will of the gods' and goes on to say the imperium is in a state of constant war and stagnation 'to the laughter of dark gods' or similar.

He relies entirely on Loken thinking its impossible that his leader would go insane and try to kill his own men.

He relies entirely on the dispositions of his brother primarches to join him. Horus had no part in them joining him. If anything, Lorgar had more to do with that.

A general who always goes to war with the deck stacked in his favour is an impressive general though.

Battle of Paramar, the entire Alpha Legion versus a Grand Battalion of loyalist Iron Warriors and loyal mechanicum. AL wins.

*Says traitors are not impressive*
*forgets about perturabo's 'iron cage' that pwned the imperial fists*

A general who always goes to war with the deck stacked in his favour is an impressive general though.

Only if it was stacked by that General, not just pure luck or manipulation of someone else.

Taffy17 wrote:A general who always goes to war with the deck stacked in his favour is an impressive general though.

I think somebody else beat me to it, but Horus doesn't stack the deck. He simply gets the best cards given to him everytime; cards being all the traitor legions and the ruinstorm.

Col. Dash wrote:Battle of Paramar, the entire Alpha Legion versus a Grand Battalion of loyalist Iron Warriors and loyal mechanicum. AL wins.

I am referring specifically to the Black Library novels, not the Forgeworld books which, usually, by their very nature have to highlight large scale battles and are outside the Black Library canon.

commander dante wrote:*Says traitors are not impressive*
*forgets about perturabo's 'iron cage' that pwned the imperial fists*

That's the Scouring. Not the Horus Heresy.

Horus never won a single battle/war that we know of without an overwhelming material and logistical advantage.

We also know he's tactically inept, as seen when he was looking for his demon gate and he got half his legion (the whole thing, not just some small force that was with him) vaporized by walking straight into a gunline when his advisers all had better plans.

Also, this whole new fluff on Calth is something that should really just be ignored. Calth happened AFTER the Heresy. The entire reason the Ultramarines were the bulk of the Second Founding was because they weren't involved in the Heresy at all. They didn't even know it happened.

The battle at Calth was post-Terra when Lorgar was just trying to get his heat back. Also, it was a colossal failure. The Ultramarines still had no idea there was such a thing as a traitor marine (the new heresy series is correct on that), but they dominated the Word Bearers. The Ultramarines surviving the Heresy unscathed is why everything is descended from Ultramarines now. The new series makes no sense.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
Horus never won a single battle/war that we know of without an overwhelming material and logistical advantage.

We also know he's tactically inept, as seen when he was looking for his demon gate and he got half his legion (the whole thing, not just some small force that was with him) vaporized by walking straight into a gunline when his advisers all had better plans.

Also, this whole new fluff on Calth is something that should really just be ignored. Calth happened AFTER the Heresy. The entire reason the Ultramarines were the bulk of the Second Founding was because they weren't involved in the Heresy at all. They didn't even know it happened.

The battle at Calth was post-Terra when Lorgar was just trying to get his heat back. Also, it was a colossal failure. The Ultramarines still had no idea there was such a thing as a traitor marine (the new heresy series is correct on that), but they dominated the Word Bearers. The Ultramarines surviving the Heresy unscathed is why everything is descended from Ultramarines now. The new series makes no sense.

I think you're referring to the bit in Vengeful Spirit where he sends his legion to storm this beach where the Imperial army is aiming several thousand artillery pieces. Yeah. they're described as losing a few hundred land raiders, but he doesn't lose half his legion. Wrecked vehicles doesn't equal dead astartes and they're very ambivalent about how large the imperial force they 're fighting is. The implication is that its on the order of millions backed up by super heavies and knights. Which is irrelevant because he has a legion and this automatically means that any non astartes opponent is a joke not worth considering. This is a salient point of the entire book series and 40k in general; its why the Emperor conquered the galaxy so easily and so quickly. In fact the battle is described as purely being against their opponents super heavies and knights' barely acknowledging the presence of the infantry. Basically theres no threat to the traitors in the entire battle. Compare it to something like Storm of Iron where the chaos army is on the ropes more than a few times.

The later battle where the loyalists actually roll out some titans including an Imperator is ridiculous because suddenly the writer realises that he'd lose most of his legion if he threw it against an Imperator so we suddenly have the millions of Imperial army outnumbered by zerg rush cultists who literally come out of nowhere.

Wasn't there a BOLS article a while back about why Chaos will never win?

Found the link while typing. I don't recall the exact reasons they gave but maybe it'll help the OP.

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2015/01/40k-deep-thought-chaos-will-never-win.html

Well, he did lose in the end.

Anyway, why would Horus want a fair fight? The point of being a good strategist is to stack the odds in your favour in any engagement.

a battle with a 50/50 odds of victory is a strategic failure.

 Totalwar1402 wrote:

Taffy17 wrote:A general who always goes to war with the deck stacked in his favour is an impressive general though.

I think somebody else beat me to it, but Horus doesn't stack the deck. He simply gets the best cards given to him everytime; cards being all the traitor legions and the ruinstorm.

Col. Dash wrote:Battle of Paramar, the entire Alpha Legion versus a Grand Battalion of loyalist Iron Warriors and loyal mechanicum. AL wins.

I am referring specifically to the Black Library novels, not the Forgeworld books which, usually, by their very nature have to highlight large scale battles and are outside the Black Library canon.

commander dante wrote:*Says traitors are not impressive*
*forgets about perturabo's 'iron cage' that pwned the imperial fists*

That's the Scouring. Not the Horus Heresy.

You make it sound like the traitor legions and the ruinstorm had nothing to do with Horus and they just sort of showed up. that was true in some cases but Horus managed to bring others on side himself. The Iron Warriors went traitor becuase of Horus, for example

 Asmodai Asmodean wrote:
Well, he did lose in the end.

Anyway, why would Horus want a fair fight? The point of being a good strategist is to stack the odds in your favour in any engagement.

a battle with a 50/50 odds of victory is a strategic failure.

Its not about Horus wanting a fair fight. its about writing interesting stories people want to read. The OP is saying that these stories aren't interesting because there's very little tension or fear of loss. The deck is always stacked in Horus's favor. Which isn't any fun to read about. That's the point he's making.

Not saying I agree with it, as I stopped reading the novels at Flight of the Eisenstein (I think that's the name). So I don't really know how the rest of the novels turned out quality wise.

Col. Dash wrote:
Battle of Paramar, the entire Alpha Legion versus a Grand Battalion of loyalist Iron Warriors and loyal mechanicum. AL wins.

Wasn't quite the entire Legion. It was "just" the forces under Armillus Dynat.

Could have sworn the Primarch(s) were present as well. Ill have to go back and look.

Read Deliverance Lost.

Horus doesn't need to take the whole Imperium - just Terra. If he overthrows the Emperor, the Imperium is his.

He came very close to doing just that. It was a moment of madness - maybe vanity, maybe a part of the loyal Horus fighting back against his possession, perhaps desperation at the impending arrival of the surviving loyalist legions - that caused him to lower the shields on the Vengeful Spirit and invite the Emperor to challenge him personally.

If you think all these tactical errors are unlikely, you don't know your history. Thank the stars for mad dictators.

I think the series would be better if the other loyalist legions didn't arrive in Terra because Horus either crippled them in battle or radically out maneuvered them. Aside from the DA (who already had a reason to not get involved ) that should have happened to every legion not on earth. Random SM casualties don't mean anything in the big picture so the writers could have Horus shattering legion after legion until he gets to Terra and as long as all the primarchs that are supposed to survive, it's nbd. Really a missed opportunity

Taffy17 wrote:
"Only the dead fight fair"

You have to remember that space marines never fight fair anyway. They always use blitzkrieg and shock tactics to cripple the opponent sometimes not even sticking around for the actual battle. Whether its Raven Guard striking from the shadows, Blood angels zooming in on fast tanks or Ultramarines dropping from orbit.

The day they arrange a date, line up opposite an opponent on an open field and march towards each other is when they loose whoever it is cause they don't have the numbers to compete like that.

No general, especially Horus, wants a "good, honourable battle", they want a slaughter where the enemy is killed with as few casualties as possible.

So why would Horus fight fair?

This is not true; each Legion had very specific style of strategy and tactics they used throughout the Great Unification and Great Expansion by the Emperor. When the Legions were broken post heresy and Roboute Guilliman wrote the Codex Astratus, that all changed. That volume dictated the style of warfare described above. Technically, none of the Chapters were big enough to carry out the style of campaigns they used to as a Legion.

Horus planned his campaign for a long time and had a few key Legions on his side. He also managed to divert, confuse, and stall the loyalist chapters that could have stopped him while he completed his real objective- slay the Emperor and become the new Emperor (maybe; there is very little about what Horus planned to do after he killed the Emperor...). The main objective was to assault Terra and kill the Emperor. Everything else was a distraction or delay tactic until he could complete that objective. He was about to win when the Emperor (that is, bring down the final defenses of the Imperial Palace and over run it) went all out to stop him.

A Legion vs. Legion straight up battle, with both sides evenly matched, no initial advantages for either side (surprise, logistics, terrain, etc.), would be glorious destruction of both Legions and the battlefield they are on.

* That chaos can infect and disable all mechanical devices. Okay, why hasn't chaos already won and why do they not attempt this in 40k?

Chaos has always been able to do this, it's called Scrap Code, and it's why the Ademch now wards all of their technology to prevent this. And it's still not foolproof.

* That the forces of chaos can have Gal Vorbak and blood cultists walking in front of the marines without them thinking something was up.

You do realize that possessed don't look like the Thing from Campbell's book 24/7? They're werewolves. They only change when entering a fight to feed the bloodlust of the daemon bound within their bodies. After this they return to normal.

* That one ship crashing into a space station would do that much damage.

Imperial ships are powered by miniature stars. You're lucky that the mass of said stars is low enough that there is even life left on all planets in proximity.

* That Gulliman had no ships on full power and didn't anticipate such an attack when he is on a war footing with the Orks and expecting them to invade.

Orks don't sneak unless they're Kommandos. Any Ork attack would be learned of well in advance and given them more than enough time to fully power up.

* That nobody realised the Word Bearers fleet was at full power.

You almost get the impression that space is big, surprise attacks disorientate military intelligence, and that the Word Bearers probably were running magical interference through blood rituals like they always do.

Welcome to 40k where the traitor legions only exist to serve as punching bags for GW's favorite cash cow, er faction.

Gentlemen of France, would you care to fire first?

-Lord Hay, British General, Battle of Fontenoy



Warfare is not composed of even battles and the proper measure of a general or a fighting force's entitlement to respect is not based on their ability to fight even battles. It is more the measure of their adaptability and resultant effectiveness when commanded or commanding competently in the field.

You wouldn't say that Crecy and Agincourt weren't impressive feats on Edward III's and Henry V's parts just because they mercilessly exploited the superiority of the English Longbow and that was unfair on the French as they weren't ready for it and underestimated it. boo hoo.

You can tell Horus is a good general, outside of maybe a few obscure pieces of fluff that I'm only just now hearing about (no idea what this daemon gate stuff is about @DarknessEternal) since as others have said, he almost always fights battles he can win. Istvann V is objectively a significant victory for Horus because he managed to near absolutely annihilate, cripple even the fighting strength of multiple legions whilst not compromising his own traitor vanguard- ultimately his lapse in judgement in the final battle of Terra is arguably the deciding factor in loyalist victory.

Yes, often the books have the traitors slaughtering the Imperial Army, and that's because there are an awful lot of them to go through and the loyalist legions don't exactly go out of their way to fight pitched battles against the traitor legions, partly due to their weakened numbers.

If you want to read about Legion vs Legion warfare where the odds are ambiguous and there is no real surprise involved, read Scars. It's about the swinging pendulum of Jaghatai's loyalty to the Emperor, the Warmaster and his Legion, and involves a rather wicked set of fleet battles.

Am I wrong in thinking that Horus is meant to lose?

I get that the Chaos gods tell him that they want him to rule the Imperium, but given their near prescient knowledge, it was my understanding that they fully intended Horus to lose. It struck me as more amusing to these gods to have spun the Imperium from an utopian golden age into an age of Chaos-fearing timidity.

IMO, post-Horus, the Imperium becomes chaotic (though not Chaotic) and the slow decline, stalled by a barely functional corpse (to whom the Chaos gods have a gripe with) only adds to their enjoyment.

 PandaHero wrote:

A general who always goes to war with the deck stacked in his favour is an impressive general though.

Only if it was stacked by that General, not just pure luck or manipulation of someone else.

And yet they are always burdening by having to wear the idiot ball. The more HH novels are written the dumber and less believable the entire story gets. Authors aren't generals and so instead of seeing some truly inspired thinking most battles are won by luck/ gritting teeth/ unbelievable stupidity of the designated villain.

Yisou wrote:
Am I wrong in thinking that Horus is meant to lose?

I get that the Chaos gods tell him that they want him to rule the Imperium, but given their near prescient knowledge, it was my understanding that they fully intended Horus to lose. It struck me as more amusing to these gods to have spun the Imperium from an utopian golden age into an age of Chaos-fearing timidity.

IMO, post-Horus, the Imperium becomes chaotic (though not Chaotic) and the slow decline, stalled by a barely functional corpse (to whom the Chaos gods have a gripe with) only adds to their enjoyment.

I don't think the Chaos Gods operate on the basis of goals, at least not as we know them. They are powered by basic instincts. They probably wanted Horus to rebel, gave him the tools to do so, and shrieked when it did not work out.

I don't know. I've come to believe that the Chaos Gods plan on making Failbaddon continue to have an infinite amount of 'victories' for all eternity. He and his traitor legions are just a mere side effect of the Warp and not the real threat. But with the Emporer stuck in the Golden Throne the Imperium isn't equipped to deal with the real threat of the Warp and for now has to settle with dealing with the side effects.

Horus is required to be terrible because the HH series is telling you a story we already know the ending to. Nothing can change the Siege of Terra. It's just spinning wheels until it's forced to get there.