All dread the coming of the Blades of Khorne – an unholy alliance of mortals and daemons for whom war is an act of worship. These maddened warbands leave no survivors in their wake, making them instead an offering to their bloodthirsty god. In return, Khorne grants them strength and resilience so that they may reap even more skulls for his Skull Throne.
Realmgore Ritualists curse both the enemies of Khorne and the land itself. These bloody-handed mystagogues lay blasphemous hexes upon the foe to sap their strength, and carve bleeding runes into the very earth, invoking gorey miracles and auras of rage that drive their allies to commit relentless acts of sacred violence.
Howling like maddened beasts, the Blades of Khorne hurl themselves upon their prey. These savage killers seek to honour the Blood God by drowning the Mortal Realms in a tide of gore. Armies of scarred and wild-eyed mortals fight alongside daemons born of primal fury, surging forth as one vast and unstoppable red tide. Those in the path of this calamity are swiftly hacked and hewn apart, their severed heads held aloft as offerings to the Lord of Skulls.
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.
Hitler was confident of a short campaign as his German army crashed over the Russian border in 1941. Heroic defence by the massive Soviet armies slowed the Nazi advance. The brave, solid, and loyal Soviet soldiers endured dreadful battle conditions and their equipment was unsophisticated but functional, much like the troops themselves. What they lacked in quality they made up for the sheer numbers in their troops and equipment available to them – as Josef Stalin famously said “Quantity has a quality all of its own.”