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The fall of Badab Primaris.

Some awesome Space Marine vs Space Marine fighting at the Palace of Thorns, plus the Carcharodon's very generous interpretation of Culn's orders to attack infrastructure and prevent a resistance from forming.

And Huron got his face melted by a reserve captain, which is always amusing.

The battle of the Iyanden vs Waaagh! Rekkfist
Craftworld Iyanden had to attack the orks to protect Iyanden.
Though the eldar had initially crippled the orks, they counter attacked in force. The Iyanden had to re-awaken MANY soldiers as wraithlords etc.
The Eldar were almost defeated when Dark Eldar burst out of the webway and drive out the orks.
It turns out the dark eldar only got involved because they admired the Iyanden's necromnancy.

Also not really a battle but the last act of Lord Korscht
he randomly guessed a Dark eldar attack and had huge defenses when they arrived.
They soon left with nothing, but nobody could find Korscht.
his rooms are investigated, until in his library he was found spread across every page of each tome
Pretty gruesome, but why i love Dark eldar

Big Toof River and Orks Drift (I think, the farm siege one) as they marked the birth of the praetorian guard.

Such cool battles with well thought out backgrounds, characters and so forth. Very cool.

The Battle for Hive Hades. Ghazzy at his best

I gotta say The Siege of Helsreach Hive. For obvious reasons.

The ones in the Gaunt's Ghosts books seem to do a great job of not playing fanboi, so I'll go with those. I like believable underdog stories, and Abnet does a great job with it in these novels.

Istvaan III for now.

Invasion of Hydra Cordatus (*Described in Storm of Iron)

The novel had everything from squads of guardsmen trying, in vain, to hold bunkers from the Iron Warriors to two rival Titan Legions turning the battlefield into a crater strewn wasteland. It was brutal, awesome, and had everything Chaos and The Imperium could throw into the slug fest.

Siege of Vraks, especially with dark angel help. Finally they do something besides fallen sulk. Trying to capture an alpha legionnaire for the fallen, sure, but they had to get help from the Angels of Absolution, my other favorite part!

Siege of Badab was also pretty good. Lots of marine on marine action. The Red hour is my close follow up for it.

The Battle for Medusa V with the imperium doing the rare thing and evacuating all the civilians before the planet got sucked into the warp.

Fall Of Shadowbrink, best part of the new nids codex

Hmm, probably a toss up between the Purge of Nuceria and that concert the Emperor's Children held which turned into a demon summoning, blood orgy.

Battle of Calth in the Horus Heresy probably, Know No Fear by Abnett chronicles it excellently.

THE BURNING OF PROSPERO!

Such emotions, such power, such character development, such a plot impacting battle.

Always loved the original version of the invasion of Tyran.
Such a feeling of impending doom and fear.

Its cheating but the 3rd Armageddon War, if you count battle to more mean campaign. Such great fluff and showed exactly how to run a global event. It also won me over to the Orks who I'd always been iffy about being in the 40k universe.

My favorite little snippet is from part of the third war of armageddon: specifically that fluff note where they talk about an entire battle happening in a single factory.

I love the idea that there's an assembly line building chimeras, and a dozen factory workers are desperately riveting the vehicle together as fast as they can while guardsmen on top are shooting down off the top of the half-finished hulks at orks rushing in to hack apart the workers. The multilaser just gets added to the turret and a guardsmen gets into the half-armored cage twists around and starts hammering down on the orks as a small WAAUGH sends dozens of greenskins after them. The workers try to drown out the noise, desperately trying to connect up the heavy flamer before it's too late. One turns and freezes in panic, just before a towering nob with a slugga smashes his face open. Guardsmen from atop the chimera open fire down at the nob, wounding some of the workers, but bringing down the nob as the enraged ork tries to lift himself up to hack them apart.

After thirty minutes of brutal fighting, they finally make it to the end of the assembly line more or less finished. The surviving guardsmen hop in, and commandeer one of the remaining workers to operate the heavy flamer. With a thunk the ten ton vehicle crawls off the conveyor belt and is already directly inside the largest battle in the imperium. The commander gives the desparate order to drive. Drive forward. Drive anywhere. This thing has got to move!

 Ailaros wrote:
My favorite little snippet is from part of the third war of armageddon: specifically that fluff note where they talk about an entire battle happening in a single factory.

I love the idea that there's an assembly line building chimeras, and a dozen factory workers are desperately riveting the vehicle together as fast as they can while guardsmen on top are shooting down off the top of the half-finished hulks at orks rushing in to hack apart the workers. The multilaser just gets added to the turret and a guardsmen gets into the half-armored cage twists around and starts hammering down on the orks as a small WAAUGH sends dozens of greenskins after them. The workers try to drown out the noise, desperately trying to connect up the heavy flamer before it's too late. One turns and freezes in panic, just before a towering nob with a slugga smashes his face open. Guardsmen from atop the chimera open fire down at the nob, wounding some of the workers, but bringing down the nob as the enraged ork tries to lift himself up to hack them apart.

After thirty minutes of brutal fighting, they finally make it to the end of the assembly line more or less finished. The surviving guardsmen hop in, and commandeer one of the remaining workers to operate the heavy flamer. With a thunk the ten ton vehicle crawls off the conveyor belt and is already directly inside the largest battle in the imperium. The commander gives the desparate order to drive. Drive forward. Drive anywhere. This thing has got to move!

Sounds awesome, where was that? I don't remember it.

I swore I heard about this earlier, but the only hard example I could find is in the current guard codex p. 19.

...So massive was the factory that entire battles were fought within, with Leman Russ, Chimeras, and Basilisks maneouvering and firing as they would in the open expanses...

... At one point, the 339th held a front line demarcated by a long conveyor belt along which vital components for Leman Russ Battle Tanks trundled even as the battle raged all around. At the height of the battle, the entire regiment was mounted up in Chimeras that had just rolled off the production line and had not even had a coat of primer applied.

There's so many cool ones, it's hard to pick a best.
Battle for the Fang vs Bucharis and half his armies; First War for Armageddon; UM First Company's last stand vs the Nids.
The Mordian's finest hour on their homeworld.

The Sabbat worlds stuff for scope and depth of world building and character development, and generally emotional attachment. My especial favorites were Necropolis, Honour Guard, and Sabbat Martyr.

Mine is a simple one with no real bearing for any factions, though the eldar could lose some memory stones. The battle of Iyanden, the way it was written in the codex was just incredibly interesting to me. The heroic sacrifice didn't hurt.

I really like the battle for Mu'Gulath Bay/Agrellan as well as the one in White Dwarf 286 where the inquisitor leads his retinue and the Cadian 8th "Firebrands" onto a Necron tomb world; the whole last stand with the Cadians was just awesome.

Calth it istvaan 3

The Iron Cage incident was awesome I think.... very troll-tastic on the Iron Warriors part.

Octarius War is just kinda silly almost.

Armageddon War was... grand if anything else.

have to say both seige of fenris and the battle for the scars flag ship as the Kahn is on prospero.

The Badab War. Spehss Mehreens! Spehss Mehreens everywhear!

The Iron Cage is definitely up there.

The razing of Prospero.

The final battle in the First War for Armaggedon.

Helsreach.

Probably a few more.

FIrst battle of Damnos.

Space Marines kick butt, but even so are getting socked up good by the Necrons. Eventually the SM realize they can't win and cut and run while they could.

Octavius war, I like the idea of the ork hordes and the nid swarms fighting each other non-stop, just wish that gw would go into a bit more detail about the war.

The Octarius War is 40k in it's purest form.

Two incredibly physically implausible but wickedly over the top armies with endless reserves of manpower and materiel, with no concept of war exhaustion or "civilians", both possessed by a love affair of close quarters combat, all slamming against each other again and again with even small skirmishes hosting millions of troops.

And in this endless war of attrition, a nightmare for most modern military strategists where the only way forward is throwing your soldiers through an endless meat grinder; both sides are as happy as can be.