The power-hungry veterans known as Chosen are amongst the most experienced and ruthless fighters of the Heretic Astartes. Granted – or having seized – their warband’s most powerful weapons, these warriors undertake the most glorious and dangerous missions, and are the bane of all that lives.
With outlawed knowledge of the deeper mysteries of the machine, Warpsmiths maintain their warband’s arsenal of armoured vehicles, empowering engines with utterances of corrupted code. Fused with a writhing nest of semi-sentient mechatendrils, they seek not only to employ technology for their diabolical ends, but to subjugate it entirely.
Dark Communes are the pooling evil at the head of any Chaos Cult, led by Cult Demagogues who preach insidious mantras cunningly laced with promises of power. These infernal priests command a retinue of devoted followers – the fanatical Blessed Blades, tasked with guarding against interlopers, the Iconarchs, who carry foul sigils infused with malefic influence, and Mindwitches, unsanctioned psykers whose powers comes at a terrible cost.
Chaos Cultists are the mortal devotees of the Dark Gods, ordinary men and women fallen to promises of temporal power. Under the command of mighty heretic warlords, such fanatics take to the field in huge Cultist Mobs. This blasphemous militia charges headlong into battle with a motley collection of improvised, stolen and makeshift weapons, overwhelming even determined enemies through sheer weight of numbers.
For ten thousand years, the Chaos Space Marines have waged near-constant war on the galaxy that cast them out. Once the defenders of humanity, the Heretic Astartes have pledged themselves to the Dark Gods. Led by maniacal leaders such as the fanatical Dark Apostle, bitter warbands of Chaos Space Marines roam the battlefield, armed with an array of vicious weapons. Barricades and defenders alike are torn asunder by the devastating heavy armaments wielded by Havocs – and the frenzied swipes of a lumbering Helbrute.
The world’s first paratroopers to be used in large numbers, the German Fallschirmjager were at the tip of the spear when war broke out in 1939. They led daring assaults on strategic targets, such as the fortress at Eben Emael, enabling the following panzers to overrun Europe.
There are few fighting forces that can rival the fearsome reputation of the United States Marine Corps. Indeed they can trace their ancestry back to the Revolutionary War in the 18th Century, serving all over the globe up to the present day.
From their role in the ill-fated Operation Market Garden to the crossing of the River Rhine and the push into the German homeland these battle-hardened fighting men have been immortalised in film and television.
One of the best-equipped armies in the world at the time, the Americans took on, and beat, their German, Italian and Japanese adversaries.
Superbly equpped and trained, the German soldier in the early years of World War II was a formidable opponent.
With trademark red beret and armed with Sten and Bren Guns the British Airborne were determined and tenacious, as only the British Tommy can be.