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Pretty self-explanatory.

It depends entirely on how you define "won".

100%.

For me, it's about achieving objectives.Chaos' objective was to cause carnage and mayhem and disrupt the IoM. They did so while not suffering any significant losses. IMO, objectives achieved.

The IoM's objective was to return Vraks to "the Emperor's Light". In this they failed, spectacularly.

No VPs for Hector Rex.

In that context, I concur completely. Vraks was a colossal Imperial quagmire, from the Vindicare whiffing on his shot to the bitter end, and every bloody step in between.

Krieg victory. They died in service to the Emperor, while also achieving their secondary objective of retaking the planet.

They didn't retake Vraks. Arguably they took the Citadel, but not the planet.

The IoM withdrew, then the =][= virus-bombed the planet and declared it 'Perdita', IIRC.

EDIT - In fact, the IoM lost the entire Vraks system, not just the planet.

In the years to come the Ordo Malleus would conduct a long review of what had happened on Vraks, and it was Inquisitor Lord Hector Rex's conclusion that the Vraks System should be interdicted. Automated sentry warnings were to be positioned to warn starships away, and periodically Imperial Navy patrols would sweep through, making sure the system did not become a haven for pirates and aliens. But the planet and its star system were no longer of any value to the Emperor, save as a memorial to the valour of those who had fought and died there for the sake of Mankind.

https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Siege_of_Vraks

 Excommunicatus wrote:
They didn't retake Vraks. Arguably they took the Citadel, but not the planet.

Close enough for the krieg. I mean they went there, died, bombed everything, died some more, bombed some more. Solid work all around.

The Siege of Vraks is what I would call a pyrrhic victory.

Yes the Forces of the Imperium completed their main objective and wiped out the remaining Chaos forces. In return they garnered staggering losses and didn't reclaim any of the equipment/stores that they originally hoped to, so really all the Imperium gained was a star system thats now out of bounds to all bar the Imperial Navy.

Munitions manufacturers

That wasn't their objective, though.

The High Master of the Departmento Munitorum could not take this chance. Vraks must be retaken, at any cost

Siege of Vraks Pt. 1, p11

Their objective was to get Vraks up and running and churning out arms once more. They failed.

And most of the Heretics Astartes were no longer on Vraks by the time the Citadel fell. They were in no way "wiped out".

A chaos victory for sure. They accomplished everything they wanted and lost less than the forces of the Imperium did. The Imperium didn't really gain much of anything from the ordeal other than saying they won the fight which didn't really do them any good. They did win from the perspective of not letting it get even worse however so there is that.

 Excommunicatus wrote:


Their objective was to get Vraks up and running and churning out arms once more. They failed.

And most of the Heretics Astartes were no longer on Vraks by the time the Citadel fell. They were in no way "wiped out".

Vraks wasn't manufacturing anything, it was an Armoury World. Basically a one stop shop to equip or requip an IG army with everything it would need before deployment.

So as I implied? the Imperial forces " wiped out the remaining Chaos forces.".

They lost a huge stockpile of weapons.

On the plus side, a fairly powerful fallen recaptured and several traitor titans were destroyed at shatter ridge.

Prev wrote:

 Excommunicatus wrote:


Their objective was to get Vraks up and running and churning out arms once more. They failed.

And most of the Heretics Astartes were no longer on Vraks by the time the Citadel fell. They were in no way "wiped out".

Vraks wasn't manufacturing anything, it was an Armoury World. Basically a one stop shop to equip or requip an IG army with everything it would need before deployment.

So as I implied? the Imperial forces " wiped out the remaining Chaos forces.".

Yeah, I started reading Vraks again yesterday and realized I'd made a mistake. Mea culpa.

Still, though, p11. "[R]etaken, at any cost".

It wasn't retaken. They failed.

---------------------------------------------

Are a handful of Titans significant losses? Not being snarky, don't know much about the subject.

The original objective of retaking the armory world for the munitorum I'd argue didn't fail, but rather was made moot and irrelevant by the much greater issue of demonic invasion that wasn't foreseen at the outset. That greater threat was contained and neutralized successfully, the loss of the planet was relatively minor comparatively.

As for the forces of Chaos, fundamentally trying to pin down victory or objectives is impossible, and that's kinda the point I think. It's pretty much entirely subjective how Chaos ended up. Khorne was likely pleased, though I suspect many of the leaders of various war bands or militias were less than impressed with destruction of their forces.

Who won? Khorne, he ALWAYS wins even when he "looses".

Titans are for certain a heavy loss , especially for Chaos.

Due to not beeing replacable as easily as the IoM. (allbeit both sides have issues procuring them anyways so regardless, losing titans is a loss on the magnitude of CSM warbands and probably whole systems worth of traitor guard formations.)

That said, strategically it was a succsess, and ressource wise, Chaos HAS capabilities to replace titans with substitute units, like brass scorpions etc. Are they as effective? Probably not but ressource investment wise they are certainly more effeicent then the IoM in that regard.

That beeing said, the vast ammount of ressources commited on vraks, were from vraks itslf, including the manpower, meaning that it was in essence a double loss, for one the stockpile is gone for two you needed to waste ressources to make sure that the stockpile is gone.

Out of a logistics standpoint it probably still is therefore a chaos victory.

Meaning that whilest the deathkorp won tactically on the battlefield they did lose strategically in the long run, you can now decide if it was significant enough to be worth the commitment from Traitor titans.


Meaning the only clear winner is khorne indeed.

At the end of the day, there is no longer a massively fortified Chaos armoury world acting as a staging post within Imperial Territory. I call that a win. Also, more importantly, the heresy of Apostate-Cardinal Xaphan did not spread. Remember, there was a real worry of losing an entire sub-sector to that in the beginning.

I think that Vraks could be considered a sucessful, if extremely costly, fire fighting operation. Sure, you lost the one expensive house, but the fire didn't spread to all of the neighbours and the forest.

 Trickstick wrote:
At the end of the day, there is no longer a massively fortified Chaos armoury world acting as a staging post within Imperial Territory. I call that a win. Also, more importantly, the heresy of Apostate-Cardinal Xaphan did not spread. Remember, there was a real worry of losing an entire sub-sector to that in the beginning.

I think that Vraks could be considered a sucessful, if extremely costly, fire fighting operation. Sure, you lost the one expensive house, but the fire didn't spread to all of the neighbours and the forest.

Well its worth pointing out that Xaphon didnt actually start the war off as a choas worshipper. He merely worships a altered version of the imperial creed. Many alterations of the imperial creed exist across the imperium so whether xaphons version spreading would actually have hurt the imperium is extremely debatable. Xaphon only turned to choas cause the imperium forced him too. I feel the whole Vraks incident coulda been handled much better with a diplomatic approach. Not every problem requires a hammer. Some can be solved with words.

One of his chief advisors, Deacon Mamon, was a chaos worshipper. I don't think peace was really an option, things were always going to go a bit daemony...

Based on Lexicanum's short summary, the Imperial Forces managed to reclaim Vraks, but it was under quarantine and kept barren.

So Chaos Forces managed to destroy an Imperial World that was full of Imperial Citizens and materiel. Yes they didn't claim the world, but they didn't lose anything.

The trouble with the summary is that it doesn't say how many casualties the Chaos forces took. And the summoning of Daemons throws things off because Daemons aren't usually final death'd unless they are killed by Sisters of Silence or The Emperor's weapons.

The books reckon the population of Vraks as ca. 8m, IIRC. They all have to be considered as Chaos losses, but I would argue they're utterly insignificant, if not part of the plan.

The Alpha Legion get banged up quite a bit. The Khorne and Nurgle warbands seem to escape mostly unharmed.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
The books reckon the population of Vraks as ca. 8m, IIRC. They all have to be considered as Chaos losses, but I would argue they're utterly insignificant, if not part of the plan.

The Alpha Legion get banged up quite a bit. The Khorne and Nurgle warbands seem to escape mostly unharmed.

TBF, we have no idea how significant it is for the AL:

Then again we have also no idea off the overarching goals of the AL. ( we can pretty safely assume that they do have them , considering their seamless integration if they chose to fight)

Or their numbers. ( not to mention organisation)

Or what they have in terms of operatives. (or not, or sleepers)

Anything really.

The amount of people who believe that Imperium had won and it wasn't a disaster to them is astounding. I believe it is bias of Arch who had skewed results together with that a lot of people do not consider that "winning" means. They see Imperium as liberating planet and consider it as a win against Chaos.

Chaos forces had retreated through numerous portals, including remaining Titan. Huge numbers of space marines were lost utterly, not just killed, but their gene seed lost while inflicting minor loses on Chaos super human element. Titan exchange went out more or less equally. In orbit Imperium only at the end managed to destroy Chaos battleship tipping favor into their side. Yet, most important thing was it had murdered or incapacitated millions upon millions of Krieg guardsmen. One of the most finest soldiers that Imperium produces. Who had killed them? Nothing more, than a third rate militia and later on civilians and Lost and the Damned. Loss of material, time, manpower was immense for the Imperium with so much stuff they could had formed an entire Crusade force elsewhere! The amount of material lost and dedicated to Vraks would had been sufficient to gut out Tau threat for few more centuries by taking few of their Cept worlds from them.

 Ernestas wrote:
The amount of people who believe that Imperium had won and it wasn't a disaster to them is astounding. I believe it is bias of Arch who had skewed results together with that a lot of people do not consider that "winning" means. They see Imperium as liberating planet and consider it as a win against Chaos.

Chaos forces had retreated through numerous portals, including remaining Titan. Huge numbers of space marines were lost utterly, not just killed, but their gene seed lost while inflicting minor loses on Chaos super human element. Titan exchange went out more or less equally. In orbit Imperium only at the end managed to destroy Chaos battleship tipping favor into their side. Yet, most important thing was it had murdered or incapacitated millions upon millions of Krieg guardsmen. One of the most finest soldiers that Imperium produces. Who had killed them? Nothing more, than a third rate militia and later on civilians and Lost and the Damned. Loss of material, time, manpower was immense for the Imperium with so much stuff they could had formed an entire Crusade force elsewhere! The amount of material lost and dedicated to Vraks would had been sufficient to gut out Tau threat for few more centuries by taking few of their Cept worlds from them.

You make it sound like a lot, but to the imperium, it’s a dollar when they are a billionaire; the amount of worlds the imperium conquered, then lost and then retaken is probably in the 100’s per DAY! Considering they have to feed the false emperor 1000 minor psykers to keep him going, how many worlds you must have to maintain that upkeep?

Part of the issue is that you should really divide it into 3 groups. The Imperium, the renegades of Vrax, and the forces of chaos. The renegades of Vrax were completely defeated since their planet was returned to the Imperium. The Imperium won a tactical victory since they held the planet and drove off the forces of chaos. Strategically the Imperium suffered a loss since Vraks no longer supported the Imperial war effort and the battle used up resources that could have gone to other sectors. The forces of chaos suffered a tactical defeat since they were driven from the planet but they achieved a strategic victory. The loss of equipment and the destruction of the fortress could be seen as a shaping operation for the eventual black crusade at the end of M41.

But this is how Empires fall. Many little cuts bleed juggernaut dry and in the end, it becomes just a sick, tired old man waiting to be replaced. In this case, take a look to my given example. If those forces were used to create a Crusade against Tau empire, it would certainly would had struck deep and leave some lasting damage to Tau. This would result in Tau being unable to properly exploit Imperium's weakness and launch so many sphere expansion projects now as they would have a lot less resources to work with and those resources would be needed in retaking first its own major worlds. Because of Imperium screw up, because of its inability to close conflict quickly or even just glass entire place from orbit before commiting, they were unable to use such fine guardsmen in other fronts. Chaos had managed to trade plenty of quite worthless assets for premium assets of Imperium. Some planet's third rate militia and civilians for Krieg guardsmen.

@Ernestas:
You are still writing a novel here about an “weekend” party between the Imperium and Chaos. Dkok may be famous, but they are not the cream of the crop, no guardsmen ever will be. Except maybe Marbo.

Concerning the Tau: maybe they could be an ally of convenience down the future; they are one alien race that will at least negotiate. (Similar thoughts when the Damocles Crusade ended)
Races that do not=(Orks/Chaos/Drukhari/Tyranids/Necron-not accepting that BS fluff between them and BA)

Dark Eldar 100% negotiate you just don't like their terms. Tau aren't exactly diplomatic either considering their diplomacy is largely join or die.

Ernestas does have a point, though, in that everyone calling this a win for the Imperium is doing so by shifting goalposts.

You can toss it off as being a minor, local, thing if you like, but the source material makes it very clear that the loss of Vraks was not a minor, local, thing at all, right from the outset.

The fall of Vraks was a significant loss to the Imperium's defences around the Eye of Terror.

p.11, again.

Vraks remains lost to the Imperium. And in return for what, exactly? 8m pawns whose literal job is to die for their Gods, one Alpha Legion Lord and, like, three Titans.

At the absolute best, the IoM managed to stop a bad situation becoming catastrophic, but they in no way achieved their objective of retaking Vraks. Again, in fact, they lost the entire system.