Numbers

The entire strength of the Dark Angels Chapter, close to nine hundred Space Marines along with the various bikes, speeders and personnel carriers that had survived the war above, stood alongside eighty of their Grey Knights cousins.

The infantry of the Imperial Guard could comfortably march through fifty abreast, but with two hundred and fifty thousand souls, along with artillery and armour rolling in support, to get into position the going had been slow.

Hundreds upon hundreds of tanks.

The rumble of tanks was overwhelming, not only the noise but the nauseating bass rumble that heralded their coming. Scores of vehicles were rolling into the landing zone with many more behind them in an armoured column stretching back as far as Strike could see. Baneblades, Shadowswords, Leman Russ, Hellhounds, Vanquishers, Executioners, tanks of almost every pattern currently in service with the Imperial Guard.

Intermingled with the infantry were the tanks and artillery, mobile fortresses and mobile missile platforms ready to rain death down upon the daemonic host that awaited them.

An entire Cadian armoured division, supported by two mobile artillery divisions followed behind the remaining Catachan tanks, along with a similar sized detachment of Vostroyan tanks. Interspersed among the countless Leman Russ variants were the pride of any armoured regiment, the super-heavy tanks. Many sported the colours of the Cadians, Catachans and Vostroyans but by far the bulk of them were in the livery of the First Palladius armoured company, nicknamed ‘The Thunderers’ on account of their exclusive deployment of Baneblades, Doomhammers and other gargantuan armoured vehicles. The only things larger on the battlefield were the Warhounds striding along at their flanks.
In the skies over the tanks and walkers, high above the low-lying fog from the cooking off of the swamps, flew close to a thousand Valkyries ready to deliver infantry directly to the frontline.

Behind the bass fanfare marched the six Warhound Titans in the black and white of Legio Crucius.