the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was making everyone think his name was alpharius, then making everyone think hes omegon, then making everyone forget he existed
GW has no idea about numbers. With the scale of 40k you could have billions dying in battles in the imperium every day and it would be more than sustainable. Humans are really good at replenishing population, Rome lost like 10% of its people in one battle during the punic wars and was fine
"Welcome to Vraks, gentlemen. I will not lie: the chances of your survival are small. Some may be given atonement as corpses. But you have my word, that I will use every shells to ensure your bodies are given unto The Emperor."
It's really not well emphasized how immensely fortified Vraks is. As an armoury world it was also built to make damn sure no one took those supplies. For I don't know how long since Vraks became a thing, these defensive have been built, improved and expanded. This isn't a couple ditches, fences and some heretics in a trench. We're talking immense complexes of bunkers, hardened artillery positions, underground barracks and causeways to savely harbour and move troops, innumeours reinforced pillboxes with interlocking fields-of-fire, vast minefields, etc. pp.. Hardpoints so heavily reinforced that even heavy artillery can't bring them down unless you concentrate and throw absurd amounts of ordinance on a specific fort. Think the opening scene from 'Saving Private Ryan' except the defenses are even tougher to crack, more lethal and it's just one of the many lines of defense in a huge system that constitutes a singular defensive mainline of the three that surround Vraks. And the closer you get, the more sophisticated they become.
Exactly The trenches aren't just some plywood and corrugated iron ditches They're concrete, proper plumbing, multiple landlines buried deeply, auspex/radar, every square inch pre-sighted, every bunker in overlapping fields of fire of eachother, massive underground tunnels with which the heretics could move infantry and tanks unimpeded by artillery
^This. Vraks's defenses were designed to be idiot-proof. You don't need to be a military genius to put up a defense. The Imperium of Man did all the thinking and preparation for you. You just need dudes with guns to man the defenses that are already in place. There's a reason most Space Marine chapters took one look at Vraks and balked at attacking it. It's _designed_ to be a meat-grinder.
@@logangrimnar3800 if you have a decent sized lawn/grassy area around your house that no one walks one Dig some small 'rabbit holes', big enough for a foot, but cover it with a thin layer of grassy dirt, kept together by the grass roots When they come, if they step on the grass, they'll risk breaking ankles, misfiring weapons and worse
It's the Simpsons meme: Brothers and sisters are natural enemies Like the Empyrium and xenos Or The Empyrium and the ruinous powers Or The Empyrium and other Empyrials Damn Empyrials they ruin everything! GLORY TO THE EMPEROR!
It's the Simpsons meme: Brothers and sisters are natural enemies Like the Empyrium and xenos Or The Empyrium and the ruinous powers Or The Empyrium and other Empyrials Damn Empyrials they ruin everything! GLORY TO THE EMPEROR!
To quote my favorite power metal band.. "A man of the 15th, a man of Can Do. Friends fall around him and yet he came through. Let them fall face down if they must die, making it easier to say goodbye!" -Sabaton.
Kriegsmen Care about the life of their soldiers the same way a gambler cares about Cent coins. They are to be used to gamble for win and expended by the scores
5:22 DK: they should dig a tunnel underneath the walls and put bombs under there and stuff Krieg when they’re assaulting the third defensive line: creating an an underground explosive mine so large it’s seen from orbit Also krieg: we may not take the third defensive line boys but we will change the geography
@@ImperialGuardsman2It came from a real quote in WW 1 "We may not change History tomorrow boy but we will change the geography." Because even back then, undermining was ineffective for both the British and the German against deep lines of trenches and machine guns that can be quickly redeployed on both sides. The tactic soon became ineffective just one year after the introduction. But it made lots of big holes though. Some of those mine craters on Verdun were as big as lakes even after decades of erosion. They certainly didn't change History because it didn't make a dent to the defensive lines on both sides but they sure would make imprints on the ground that will last for centuries.
There's a part in a Gaunt's Ghosts book where they engage in trench warfare, and the fighting has been going on for so many decades on this planet that there are entire sedimentary levels of dead that they continuously excavate while digging trenches.
Also really cool to see the Imperial Guard roll up on a planet they outmatch to begin with. It was neat seeing a guardsman with a lasgun be regarded as a man from the future, since all the locals were still using far lesser tech than the humble Tanith-pattern Maglight. It didn't last long as the heretics got offworld support in short order too, but it was nice for a while.
The siege would've gone even worse...maybe the alpha legion would've shot down the thunderhawks trapping the Lamenters in the starport, forcing the Imperial guard to send whatever help they could, but since the bridges are destroyed, it'd have to go the long way around, or maybe an imperial navy ship would have to be called in to provide support, taking damage or being shot down by the planetary defences Any number of things could go horrifically wrong BECAUSE they're Lamenters
@@ragnarianI don't know they seem to sometimes act as a lightning rod for bad luck they would have died miserably but everyone else probably would have been fine possibly wondering how they are suddenly doing so much better than before
This is one of the stories where people say that the Alpha Legion are still Loyal. If it wasnt for them it wouldn't have come to mind for the Imperium to send more help and take this seriously.
41:16 Do they know of the time of a company of Salamanders was fighting with the Krieg and their lack of caring for life as well as friendly fire against them which did nothing to them besides make them furious? This caused the Captain to go to the officers and for once in the modern Kriegsmen's history, there has been Kriegsmen showing fear in their faces.
I think the Alpha Legion was loyal in this fight. Thoughts as to why: 1. They played a strictly defensive role 2. They really only slew a liability to the Imperium (Dark Angels) 3. They exposed their presence needlessly in allow Kriegs to see them while demonstrating amazing stealth skills against the DA. 4. [Spoiler: they caused the destruction of a Titan legion] 5. [Spoiler: they baited Chaos space marines and then trapped them on a world with a big fleet in orbit]
So I think bricky made a bit of a fucky wucky here because the 15 losses is not accurate. Those 15 losses were those reported on the 3rd day of the dark angels advance, however by the end of their assault on the starport they lost 200 of the 500 dark angels who were sent to vraks. Also their mission was always to destroy the starport not to take it because they didn't want the defenders to receive more reinforcements from the starport. Really the dark angels succeeded in 2/3 goals and just failed to capture the traitor Astarte's they wanted.
@@wanderingursa8184 Remember that the Dark Agels (my beloved) Always. Fucking. Lie. I believe that they, just like the Black Templars, constantly misinform the Admininistratum about their real numbers. However, that's still a massive blow to their numbers and combat capabilities
While that is true, I see and read several accounts of the siege of varks and every single one thought that have the space intact was more important to the imperialism efforts than destroy it. Especially at that point.
I really like Alpha Legion's war ship Anarchy's Heart. Albeit, they left enough ambiguity on what Arkos' true intention was (either to directly help Xephon's force or to get other Chaos warband to get killed by Imperium).
Imagine how much damage the hundreds/thousands of chaos Astartes, the millions of cultists, the greater Daemon and the warships they brought later on couldve done if they had joined abbadons black crusade Ambiguous is an understatement They fucked over this war, but may have fucked over abbadon even more!
@@theberserker987 In any event, the final main character on the Imperium side, Lord Inquisitor Hector Rex of Ordo Malleus have yet make his appearance (thus far this thing is run by Ordo Hereticus and Lord Militant). That guy almost warrant his own video.
Vraks: *gets progressively worse* Alpha Legion: *surrounded by Death Guard and dying Kriegers* “Hi, I am Alpharius and welcome to Jackass!” *gets crushed by World Eater drop pod*
you failed to mention how bad ass a Kriegsman has to be to have an actual NAME. Most are like A186125, an alphanumeric sequence instead of a name. A name in the death korp is earned. Also, it wasn't a PDF against the guard. It was a volunteer army that was gathered by Xyphon as a fraternal militia, with basically a penal legion to back it up since they opened up the prisons on Vraks and used them to build and man the defenses. the penal legion was trained, up to the start of the battle, with wooden replicas and only given real weapons when the siege started. Mamon taught the defenders chaos runes, that he said were protective symbols of the emperor, and since they put them everywhere they got corrupted by them. Bricky also bypassed one of the greatest artillery barrages in the history of 40k. Back at (I think) the first defensive line they brought up as many guns as they could along the entire front and started shooting each and every one as fast as they could for days on end. when one gun broke down, it was taken off the line as fast as possible and another was slammed into it's spot. It was a logistical masterpiece to acquire the guns and shells.
On the bright side, at least this point onward the loyalist space marines (besides the Gray Knights) are all lesser known successor chapters. So nice of them to get a bit of love
Damn it Bricky, you forgot that 400 Dork Angels came to Vraks and only around 200 of them left! They were humiliated at Vraks, Lion would be pissed and I hope he finds out what Azrael did there!
Kreig had a better chance of the Alpha Legion helping them because they just do weird shit than the Dark Angels doing anything beneficial for the actual war efforts.
I've got to say, right up until the alpha legion popped up I was expecting this to be a gene stealer cult situation. Mamon was feeling like their flavor of saboteur.
21:07 Oh yeah- he was forgiven by the Emperor! Personally! And then Celestine kissed him and the Emperor psychically cleaned up his homeworld and he was awarded the golden trench-shovel for courage against heretics, and then the morphine wore off and he was in a field hospital bed with his leg amputated and he was ordered back to the front line and the weird nightmare he’d been hallucinating was thankfully over - giving him a second chance to die for the Imperium 😊
DK this episode: "It's guard vs guard" "Open the gates" "Oh wait there's space Marines now" "Close the gates" "They're alpha legion" "Open the gate a little"
Not sure if any have mentioned that the Azeral mentioned here is not the current Azeral. The seige of Vraks happened over 100 years before the current Azeral became Master of the Deathwing in 917.M41. So this means the Dark Angels had two chapter masters with same name within 100 years which is kind of funny.
For art for this reference Otto Dix he was a machine gunner in WWI his "Die Krieg" or "The War" series was based on drawings he did in the trenches guys eating rations with bodies coming out of the trench walls and guys stuck in barb wire.
Arriving, losing a bunch of Marines to lowly rebel Planetary Defense grunts, and leaving after having just capturing the spaceport. And all of this after the Krieg have been literally years into the meatgrinder. Well played, Dark Angels, well played. BTW Bricky, if you want more genuine Imperial grimdark war stories to tell, I suggest an episode on the Rophanon Rebellion. Safe to say, it doesn't end particularly well for anyone involved.
Bricky got it wrong. The fighting in the bridges was against Vraks militia grunts (and even some Ogryns IIRC) and resulted in minimal loses for the DA (less than 15 I think). But the main battle in the spaceport was against Alpha Legionaries, and then the DA suffered great loses and Azrael barely survived his duel with Arkos.
Talking about marines falling to humans, let's not forget a bunch of backwater humans with pointy sticks somehow took down CUSTODIANS in the First Heretic.
Ehhhh. If I remember correctly, the Word Bearers were the ones to kill the Custodians. But even there, the Word Bearers almost lost with Lorgar helping them. At another point, one of the Word Bearers was mentioned to have died because he had a spear shoved into his neck.
Yup the DA were just there for rumors of Fallen. When Azrael learned it was just Alpha Legion, he ordered a dumbass assault on an obvious trap, lost hundreds of men, and decided to leave without explaining. Azrael is everything wrong with 40k Dark Angels. Glad the Lion and Risen are back to fix the utter incompetence.
Meanwhile a Dark Angels successor, the Angels of Absolution, get involved later and are way way way more effective. Probably because they are the one successor chapter who are like "we don't have to feel guilt fot shit. Like we'll help you guys hunt the Fallen, but we atonned long ago" and thus don't act like insane morons
I remember in the third Caiphus Cain book, Cain manages to 1v1 a Khorne beserker in melee. Granted the beserker was heavily, heavily wounded and Cain had Jurgen and a squad of guardsmen hosing it down with lasfire. Still a cool guard moment.
Lost 200/500 Dark Angels to Alpha Legion ambushes and took out a major Spaceport the enemy used to resupply their forces. Space Marines aren't best used in a siege or major battlefield. They're shock troops meant to hit key targets and then pull out.
I personally think Fields of Verdun, if you read your history the French "Blue Devils" are VERY similar to the Death Kore cause they had some blue balls of *STEEL!*
Actually you can very often see the sigma symbol in the Alpha Legion besides alpha and omega, further hinting at triplet primarchs. On the other hand, maybe it symbolizes the Astartes to sum (hehe) the legion up as a whole.
Crazy concept I thought of to break the lines way quicker for the Imperium: Go off world and find about 6 or 8 damn good Valkyrie Fighter/Bomber pilots. The Siege ain't going anywhere anytime soon. Then take those pilots to a secret location and practice bomb throwing with their aircraft towards a target zone. Come in low and fast, arm your bomb for air burst. Get pilots to practice and then head back to Vraks. Load said aircraft with tactical nukes thanks to the Mechanicus or some inventory long forgotten across the Imperium. Make sure nukes work and can be rigged up to deploy. Have three pilots come from the three different fronts, have Kriegsman and Artillery keep the traitors at bay until the first three pilots get close then order a full retreat to predesignated safe zones and hunker down. Pilots come in fast and low, then at a designated zone have them "Throw" their Nuke Payloads by pulling up hard and release, thus given the first three pilots time to get away from the blast zone while Hans Zimmerman Time plays until the nukes find their mark. Airbrust will mitigate radiation and fallout in immediate area but Kriegsman aren't scared of that. Move up to mop up survivors. Find positions again across the first line and repeat with next three pilots for second line, dial in Artillery to keep second line heretics down. Rinse and repeat. Then last two pilots perform third line run. Bam, you're on the enemy's doorstep with massive enemy casualties and can still take the fortress and Xaphen.
19:55 that’s the “cool” thing about flamethrowers in small confined spaces. Fire consumes oxygen, so if you shoot that shit off inside, you are almost certainly going to suffocate the people inside before they actually burn. Very common in the pacific theatre
DK mentioned digging tunnels and putting bombs under the enemy fortifications. Both sides would be doing that actually, digging tunnels and counter-tunnels, while at the same time trying to destroy each other's tunnels. there's basically another war happening under the first
It was actually interesting,, a historian friend whos also into 40k explained that the Krieg are actually based on French soldiers and tactics iirc, the name is deceptive but their uniforms and starts are closed to french ones than they are German
Yea they're mainly French with a splash of German thrown in the mix. The long coats are French, the gas masks/helmet German and their footwear/puttees are British. Even the colours of those garments on the GW box art are similar to how they would have been to their respective forces.
@@redecterthomsonshadowascen5177 ? Both were experts at trench warfare, both dug trenches, krieg is mainly french tactics and equipment influence with German influence for its names and such.
@@redecterthomsonshadowascen5177 strange, I don't remember Germany winning that one :3 Nah I'm joking, but really, the only reason they were "better" (better constructed) was because after a certain point they were wholly on the defensive, where they had an advantage by default and could afford to make better trenches, while the allies had to make new ones as they *very* slowly advanced, kreigs tactics mirror french tactics during the war more often from what I can see. Saying "x was better than x" especially in this context doesn't quite work considering the standing of the war and what each side could and couldn't afford to do, both were good and bad at many things, the German trenches were better I can say that for sure, but you have to consider what they were trying to do, which was force a stalemate after it became trench warfare, their trenches were given more time and effort because they needed to hold for as long as possible with the advantage they had (usually built on high ground usually with a lot more concrete), the french and British were on the offensive. Krieg uses mixed tactics that pull mainly lot on the allies (usually french) side but also keeps the German theme to it. It's the WW1 regiment, just like the steel legion is the ww2 regiment, or catachan is the Vietnam regiment. I wouldn't go as far to say one was better when the motives behind why they were are different. Besides, both sides of ww1 used trenches both preemptively or in a reactionary method bc of how deadly war had gotten so the point is kinda moot :p. Just take em for what they are, funni shovel people. the original comment was just bc people assume the German flavor means it's all German when it wasn't, not to say they don't have german influence at all tactically, they do, but it's a lot more french based than people even know about. Oh, I hope u have a great day! ^^(or night idk what time zone ur in :p)
as much as DK keeps saying "here comes Chaos like a wrecking ball", with all the "THE CREAM" references, I'd prefer BY THE EMPEROR, HERE COMES CHAOS WITH THE STEEL CHAIR
If Alpharius/Omegon were triplets, what the third one would be called then, Sigmarion? ...Wait, shit, they are triplets, one of them just got lost a little more that the other.
Vraks, Vraks, we are Vraks Here to celebrate another battle clash **Tyborc** earned a promotion today Let's all get together and say hooray And **Tyborc** has been fighting so hard this year See yourself to the infirmary while we all cheer
I went ahead of y'all and studied vraks, and omg! The sheer amount of escalation that takes place. (Wait till you see)..... See what? (What a man can do to another man)....
One additional piece of lore missed. The Krieg in order to breach the second line commenced a 3 day long bombardment that did not let up until the start of the actual attack.
Need Ferrus to come back so we can have the Leader, The Faithless, Leader of the Faithless vs. Iron Hands, Leader of the Iron Hands (he has Iron Hands) duel
the artillery cannon is the Earthshaker, the Basilisk is the name of the vehicle that carries one. the Kreig however mostly use towed earthshaker guns, so no tank hull, just two big wheels and a tow hook, with a big tractor thing to pull them.
4:54 This reminds me of a tactic in WW1 that was attempted by multiple nations but failed except for one. The tactic involves marching across no man's land while artillery shells fired a few feet away from the troops as they marched. The issues were the either the men marched too fast or the shells were fired too close/at a slower rate getting the men hit by the shells, or, the men marched too slow or the shells were fired too fast giving the enemy time to recover after the fact then gun the men down. The only nation that was able to perfect this and was also known by their enemies for their war crimes and brutality on the battlefield was the Canadians. I remember in my AP World History class in high school we read some letters from German soldiers talking about their fear of the Canadians.
@@JV-iv9ml There's accounts of Canadians throwing food into German trenches for a few days at a similar time each day so the Germans became accustomed to it. Then one day they threw grenades in instead.
I've heard that during the end of WWI, they kept shelling even after the attack, it's just that the artillery had became precise enough to shell a few hundred meters away from the attack and would provide cover that way. And the attack was not a mad dash across the no man's land, it was more a cautious and slow attack, under the protection of artillery ^^
Bricky missed the part where the Dank Angels brought 500 Astartes to Vraks. They brought HALF, of the entire chapter on the off chance that there “might” be Fallen. They have zero chill.
the duel between the astartes was great cause they werent fighting to kill him, so he was bodying them all...then the chaplain shows up and is like 'if the emperor wants him to die, he dies' and fucking whomps his ass full force lol.
I started playing like the death corps in bf1 and even war thunder arguably, bombing my own positions and shit when getting rushed, artillery being shot by 20 players in a line while I’m getting orders out. I have seen an uptick in won matches, when I survive long enough. honestly even if I don’t win it still makes it more fun
The krieg version of a Chuck E. Cheese would be grenade traps for skeeball, dodging landmines for dance dance revolution, and mud and razorwire inaide of shell craters (unexploded ordinance included) for the ball pit. Reply if you have anything else to add.