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For me, it is the world engine. It's what we could now call a classic, dating back to the 5th, and it full of awesomeness, from a necron spaceship the size of a planet and the boarding of a full space marine chapter to the ultimate sacrifice of the chapter master and his last followers in melta bombing of doom.
Even after the battle, the Ultramarines retrieve the Astral Knights battle barge to turn it into a memorial, guarded by volunteers of 15 chapters. That's so Chad and so honourable. Even in death do the Astral Knights rock.
What is your favorite battle or short story and why ?
Let's share !

(My close second would be the battle of Maccragge, for obvious reasons)

I can't say which one is my favourite, but the second Chaos Codex for 3rd edition had several very good ones.

- The one where Abaddon's chosen are introduced as targets for a team of assassins.
- The one where a Chaos Space Marine had his journey over several hundred years to become a Daemon Prince
- The one where a primitive tribe was fighting against invaders which turned out to be White Scars I think. Fighting was part of their tradition to get selected for initiation into a Chaos warband iirc.

All of them portrayed the danger, reach and influence of Chaos on the Imperium very well for me.

 godardc wrote:
For me, it is the world engine. It's what we could now call a classic, dating back to the 5th, and it full of awesomeness, from a necron spaceship the size of a planet and the boarding of a full space marine chapter to the ultimate sacrifice of the chapter master and his last followers in melta bombing of doom.
Even after the battle, the Ultramarines retrieve the Astral Knights battle barge to turn it into a memorial, guarded by volunteers of 15 chapters. That's so Chad and so honourable. Even in death do the Astral Knights rock.
What is your favorite battle or short story and why ?
Let's share !

Unfortunately Counter was allowed to write about the World Engine, and any redeeming qualities the story might have had were soundly ruined.

For me it's a story in the 2nd ed nids codex. It starts with a lictor stalking an infantry squad and ends with nids attacking the guardsmen's base. Such an awesome story, I've reread it a lot over the years.

Definitely, The Last Church.

The story is quite thought provoking, and quite atypical of 40K literature.

Classic story: heretics or xenos attack some stuff, space marines comes and destroys them . The end. Inquisition approved.

Just watch Astartes. Superior to anything GW has put out in 40+ years

My favorite is probably the Christmas vigil held by a Librarian, a Chapter Ancient in a Dreadnought, and another whose identity I have forgotten.

It's a really short story, but showed that not all in the IoM has given up on hope.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Just watch Astartes. Superior to anything GW has put out in 40+ years

I've seen it, visually it's beautiful, it looks great, but the story is so thin and no-existant that you can't really say that seriously.

BrianDavion wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Just watch Astartes. Superior to anything GW has put out in 40+ years

I've seen it, visually it's beautiful, it looks great, but the story is so thin and no-existant that you can't really say that seriously.

You see now the low bar that GW have set.

 harlokin wrote:
Definitely, The Last Church.

The story is quite thought provoking, and quite atypical of 40K literature.

Yes. Seconded.

Written in a setting where the character trying to stamp out all religion becomes the central figure of history's greatest religion, which arguably 10,000 years later is one of the key pillars keeping mankind from extinction, gives it additional flavour.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Just watch Astartes. Superior to anything GW has put out in 40+ years

I've seen it, visually it's beautiful, it looks great, but the story is so thin and no-existant that you can't really say that seriously.

You see now the low bar that GW have set.

Not really. Off the top of my head I can think of three things that GW have done I'd take over Astartes.

The Horus heresy sevatar shorts are good. I also liked virtues of the sons, which is about amit and azkaellon of the blood angels.

Splog wrote:

 harlokin wrote:
Definitely, The Last Church.

The story is quite thought provoking, and quite atypical of 40K literature.

Yes. Seconded.

Written in a setting where the character trying to stamp out all religion becomes the central figure of history's greatest religion, which arguably 10,000 years later is one of the key pillars keeping mankind from extinction, gives it additional flavour.

Eh, I really didn't like it. While the idea is great, execution is terrible - there are hundreds better arguments Emperor could have made, from every possible perspective. Ethical, moral, religious, scientific, name it, instead, it looked like he wasn't even trying in that discussion. And why destroy everything instead of placing the art in the museum, again?

Then there is the fact he could have pull instant win card from old lore - "You see, I was Moses/Jesus/Buddha/whatever, and none of what you people wrote in your books is even remotely true. It's all a lie". I'd guess GW was really afraid of shitstorm it would have caused in some countries though...

Yes, Last Church doesn't stand up to close analysis. The concept is great but the execution is poor.

Each to their own.

The Last Church has one of the (or the?) earliest set of glimpses and 'on stage' time of the Emperor, insights into the Emperor's past, the near pre-Imperium and the Emperor's consolidation of power and authority, the Thunder Warriors, and one of the better portrayals of the gross asymmetry between the Emperor's gene-hanced warriors with their 'terror weapons' versus baseline humanity. It is quite different to other HH books.

There's a lot to like.

It has a reasonable whistle-stop tour of typical apologetic and counter-apologetic positions targeted at belief in miracles, personal religious belief, scriptural interpretation, and societal utility of religious belief. I've seen this aspect dismissed on some forums, but in a whistle-stop format it is no great departure from contemporary apologetics and philosophy of religion on those topics. Made more interesting through having to consider them in the context of the 40k setting, and the Emperor's viewpoint.

And we have the Emperor, publicly denying all gods and that he himself is divine, while performing 'miracle healings' as a 'golden figure of light' paraphrasing Catheric scripture.What is he doing? What is his motivation? Is he really trying to stamp out any notion of him being a divine figure, or is he trying to foster it? Is he just unable to help himself from doing so? Which in-setting religious beliefs and myths were (deliberately or otherwise) inspired by the Emperor?

Are novellas short enough to fit the definition of 'short story'? If so, Prince of Crows might take my #1 spot.

Tuska Daemonkilla.

 greyknight12 wrote:
Tuska Daemonkilla.

What is it about ?

Recency bias but the best 40k short story I've read was "Ordo Sinister" because as an AT fan I'm now making a psy-titan. I would've loved more background into the other chambers because it's super grimdark and shows just how far the Emperor went playing with fire as the Heresy began to blow up.

Best GW short story I ever remember reading was one of the Gotrek stories where he gets hit the head, loses his memory and fighting ability, gets abused by some locals in a pub, Felix has to defeat the enemy, gets his memory back, then Felix takes him back to a certain pub to celebrate. The end... /giggle

That story where 5000 cultists lose to 30 Black Templars.

Moral of the story

An army of sheeps led by a lion will always defeat an army of lions led by a sheep.

 Fajita Fan wrote:
Recency bias but the best 40k short story I've read was "Ordo Sinister" because as an AT fan I'm now making a psy-titan. I would've loved more background into the other chambers because it's super grimdark and shows just how far the Emperor went playing with fire as the Heresy began to blow up.

Best GW short story I ever remember reading was one of the Gotrek stories where he gets hit the head, loses his memory and fighting ability, gets abused by some locals in a pub, Felix has to defeat the enemy, gets his memory back, then Felix takes him back to a certain pub to celebrate. The end... /giggle

I loved that story. A shoutout to the beastmen who thought Gotrek was faking being dumb, pointed out they knew that and then left. If they'd been a bit smarter Chaos would have done so much better in the world.

There are loads of shorts I love, but a couple that stand out are the Alpha Legion attack on an asteroid and the one where the planetary governor refuses to bend the knee to Horus and is talking with his second in command