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So what single fight is the biggest to date in the 40k universe?

Im thinking most units on either sides.

Either the Battle for Terra or the war against gharkul blackfang.

So far? The War in Heaven. Or was it War of Heaven?
But the biggest battle will be the last one.

Battle of Terra, war in the heaven, Waaagh the Beast, current battle between Hive fleet Leviathan and the huge ork empire they've run into (basically just unending nids slaughtering generation after generation of Ork hordes in one continuous fight).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Actually screw it, battle of Terra wasn't even very large. The defenders forces were minimal until the relief force arrived. I guess the scouring was pretty big if you count all the legions vs each other as one battle and measure "biggest" in terms of abilities of the force

The battle for terra went on for years. It was massive mate.

Errr any evidence of that? I haven't seen anywhere that it lasted any more than a month. There as a 30 day orbital bombardment of that I know. Any hard evidence?

The grey knights codex. I'll find the quote when I get home.

The bombardment was followed by a long invasion. There are details about it in the nightlords trilogy as well.

And length doesn't really determine the size of the battle. Battle of Terra was Ofc pivotal conflict but biggest in the universe? I think not. Istavaan saw more troops fighting

The numbers at Isstvan changed dramatically when the novels were released. The same will happen when the series reaches terra. It will involve pretty much every imperial faction aside from a couple of legions to their fullest. The war for terra will be about 1/3 to a 1/4 of the entire series of novels.

You can't use hypothetical releases as evidence. Even then it still wouldn't be close to the forces involved in the war of the heavens/Waaagh Beast

Only hypothetical from an outside perspective, but I know quite a bit about what is coming as ex staff. And I never said it was the biggest, only corrected your comment that it wasn't a very large conflict.

I mean proportionally to the whole setting. To the HH the imperial siege was arguably the most important battle. To the galaxy as a whole not even close

Perhaps, we'll see what happens. If I remember rightly it's about a three year battle, most battles in the fluff aren't anywhere near that long. The hh was a short war by comparison to others, but as for individual battles? Terra was a very long one.

HH was 7 years as of current fluff I believe

I think it was 7-9 years between Isstvan 3 and arrival at Terra. Then another three years fighting on Terra before the Emperor is on the vengeful spirit.

Largest battle? Ullanor (planet-wide conflict wherein an entire WAAAGH!!! was exterminated by elements of virtually every Legion and millions of Auxiliaries).

Largest war? War in Heaven. It included literal Gods duking it out with an entire species of demi-Gods; doesn't get any bigger than that.

BaconUprising wrote:
Battle of Terra, war in the heaven, Waaagh the Beast, current battle between Hive fleet Leviathan and the huge ork empire they've run into (basically just unending nids slaughtering generation after generation of Ork hordes in one continuous fight).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Actually screw it, battle of Terra wasn't even very large. The defenders forces were minimal until the relief force arrived. I guess the scouring was pretty big if you count all the legions vs each other as one battle and measure "biggest" in terms of abilities of the force

I believe that story was resolved in WAAAGGHH ghazy supplement. Ghazy and his boyz joined the war (which the orks were stated to be losing), and killed the Nids/are killing them at this point in time. So due to Ork interference its an Ork victory.

They killed the whole of hive fleet leviathan???

BaconUprising wrote:
They killed the whole of hive fleet leviathan???

Not 100% sure, but as I recall WAAAGGHHH Ghazy beat the gak out of the main Tyranids and are in the process of totally destroying them as Ghazy waits for the Imperial forces to arrive/more Orks. Its been a while sense I read through the supplement though. I could be totally wrong.

BaconUprising wrote:
They killed the whole of hive fleet leviathan???

The war in Octarius is between the Orks and a splinter fleet, so no, they didn't kill the entire hive fleet, but they won.

 JamesY wrote:
I think it was 7-9 years between Isstvan 3 and arrival at Terra. Then another three years fighting on Terra before the Emperor is on the vengeful spirit.

Never have I seen 'years' attached to the Siege of Terra, both Realms of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness and Space Marine 1st edition stated that the traitors reached/breached the Inner Palace on the '55th day' of the Siege.

 Gashrog wrote:

 JamesY wrote:
I think it was 7-9 years between Isstvan 3 and arrival at Terra. Then another three years fighting on Terra before the Emperor is on the vengeful spirit.

Never have I seen 'years' attached to the Siege of Terra, both Realms of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness and Space Marine 1st edition stated that the traitors reached/breached the Inner Palace on the '55th day' of the Siege.

Back when Zoats, squats and slann freely travelled the stars, and gw didn't own an in-house publishing branch? When the novel series reaches Terra, it will be a very long fight, requiring many books to properly document...

Nah they'll release 1 Forgeworld book for each of the 55 days..........

I'd say Third war for Armageddon. Ghazzy planned for 5 decades, but it still hasn't fallen.

I doubt they'll change the plot of the siege itself. Black Library have already published a version of it in the Horus Heresy artbooks: They may have expanded the details but it was also clearly started from a copy-paste of the classic Bill King story originally published in Realms of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned. A lot of the changes to the Heresy have been a case of *returning* it to it as it originally was back in 1st edition, most obviously with the change from Istvaan (spelling used in 2nd edition onwards) to the original spelling of Isstvan. Hell, Forge World's 3rd Horus Heresy book includes 8 pages devoted to the First Battle of Paramar, this was a bit of a shocker as Paramar has only been mentioned once before: A 2-page Adeptus Titanicus/Space Marine 1st edition diorama in White Dwarf 25 years ago..

Right now. 40K largest fight is right now. The Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy were huge wars until you compared them to everything else that followed.

 Mantorok wrote:
So far? The War in Heaven. Or was it War of Heaven?
But the biggest battle will be the last one.

This irritates me.

Why do people keep acting as if the War in Heaven was a single big ball-up?

It was a [war. Many battles, lots of different fights. The first Eldar Empire didn't fall in a day.

 Furyou Miko wrote:

 Mantorok wrote:
So far? The War in Heaven. Or was it War of Heaven?
But the biggest battle will be the last one.

This irritates me.

Why do people keep acting as if the War in Heaven was a single big ball-up?

It was a [war. Many battles, lots of different fights. The first Eldar Empire didn't fall in a day.

We know it was a war, but it's still a very reasonable assumption to assume it had much bigger battles then anything yet seen in the Reign of Man. I mean, i believe the Necron codex states within (all, including in active) Tomb Worlds there are enough Necrons to out number the Humans. The Orks used to be the K'rok, about as wide spread as they are now but with Necron level Tech (Tech Mekboys use are just genetic memories of those used by the K'rok) and Gods and C'tan duked it out (Khaine vs the Nightbringer is probably the biggest Clash of Titans ever within realspace), it was basically Galaxy wide war.

Remember, The War in the Heavens within the Eldar Codex is told through Mythic Cycles, those are just bastardized tales of what actually happened between the Old Ones and the C'Tan. So it's safe to assume the battles between these much more powerful factions were bigger then anything we get in the modern 30K-40K.

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:

 Mantorok wrote:
So far? The War in Heaven. Or was it War of Heaven?
But the biggest battle will be the last one.

This irritates me.

Why do people keep acting as if the War in Heaven was a single big ball-up?

It was a [war. Many battles, lots of different fights. The first Eldar Empire didn't fall in a day.

We know it was a war, but it's still a very reasonable assumption to assume it had much bigger battles then anything yet seen in the Reign of Man. I mean, i believe the Necron codex states within (all, including in active) Tomb Worlds there are enough Necrons to out number the Humans. The Orks used to be the K'rok, about as wide spread as they are now but with Necron level Tech (Tech Mekboys use are just genetic memories of those used by the K'rok) and Gods and C'tan duked it out (Khaine vs the Nightbringer is probably the biggest Clash of Titans ever within realspace), it was basically Galaxy wide war.

Remember, The War in the Heavens within the Eldar Codex is told through Mythic Cycles, those are just bastardized tales of what actually happened between the Old Ones and the C'Tan. So it's safe to assume the battles between these much more powerful factions were bigger then anything we get in the modern 30K-40K.

I think that he was referring to the fact that we don't actually know anything about individual battles in the War in Heaven. We just know that mind-shatteringly powerful forces were involved in it.

 dusara217 wrote:

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:

 Mantorok wrote:
So far? The War in Heaven. Or was it War of Heaven?
But the biggest battle will be the last one.

This irritates me.

Why do people keep acting as if the War in Heaven was a single big ball-up?

It was a [war. Many battles, lots of different fights. The first Eldar Empire didn't fall in a day.

We know it was a war, but it's still a very reasonable assumption to assume it had much bigger battles then anything yet seen in the Reign of Man. I mean, i believe the Necron codex states within (all, including in active) Tomb Worlds there are enough Necrons to out number the Humans. The Orks used to be the K'rok, about as wide spread as they are now but with Necron level Tech (Tech Mekboys use are just genetic memories of those used by the K'rok) and Gods and C'tan duked it out (Khaine vs the Nightbringer is probably the biggest Clash of Titans ever within realspace), it was basically Galaxy wide war.

Remember, The War in the Heavens within the Eldar Codex is told through Mythic Cycles, those are just bastardized tales of what actually happened between the Old Ones and the C'Tan. So it's safe to assume the battles between these much more powerful factions were bigger then anything we get in the modern 30K-40K.

I think that he was referring to the fact that we don't actually know anything about individual battles in the War in Heaven. We just know that mind-shatteringly powerful forces were involved in it.

it says in the 5th edition necrom booking the final days (a few months let's satay for a war that lasted melenia) billions of necrom immortals were killed. that's the immortals, throw on that warriors and the races necroms were slaughtering, that's a lot of bloody battles, espiacally for only a few months of fighting, something like that would devastate the imperium. an immortal is a space marine equivalent, imagine billions of marines been killed in a few months of fighting, and there isn't even a billion marines no where near that number, a million at most. it also states entire suns and systems were wiped out, now that would be 1 battle for a system and the damage caused is bigger than anything seen in 40k