Not really. On Tsagalua an entire Legion appears out of nowhere to ambush a grounded and unprepared one. On Calth part of a Legion suddenly betrays part of another. The Night Lords face a threat to the very existance, the Ultramarines 'merely' face one to their strength. The Ultramarines are on their home turf and well prepared to defend it, the Night Lords aren't either. Indeed defending Tsalgua goes against their battle doctrine.
In all honesty, I don't see how this is a valid comparison, or how it aids your position.
The Night Lords were ambushed by a known enemy in a war that they had turned into a giant game of cat-and-mouse. While ambushes by rule preclude one from knowing when they will be ambushed, the Night Lords had no reason to be lax in their readiness. Their conduct over the previous two years confirms this. The battle against the Dark Angels led to them losing of a fourth of their Legion. Their reaction to this was to scatter to the four winds. That Sevatar wanted them to do so - due to his own lack of interest in mutual loyalty and similar ethics - doesn't diminish the fact that the majority of the Night Lords
were prepared to abandon him to begin with.
By contrast, the Ultramarines had no way of knowing they were about to be attacked. By the time they were even able to fire back in any meaningful fashion, they had lost fully three quarters of their force. Their morale and cohesion was never affected, though. There was never a question of their fleet running for it, for instance.
That there is a fundamental difference in the way those two Legions reacted to the adversity of seemingly imminent defeat cannot be denied. I honestly struggle to see why you're denying this very obvious fact, or another, equally obvious one: that the difference in their mentality is due to the different factors that shaped their respective Legions. The Night Lords were recruited from the worst scum of Terra and Nostramo. They are callous, unconcerned about the well-being of their "battle-brothers", and at the very least appreciate the "value" of treachery and sadism. By contrast, the majority of the Ultramarines (we don't know about the Terrans) were recruited from a regimented, disciplined, militaristic meritocracy that valued loyalty, honour, and personal valour.
Huge surprise: the Ultramarines performed more dependably under duress!
That Angron had beaten and would kill Russ. That Angron death is not certain. That Russ' death would devistate the Wolves moral. That Angron's death would have no effect on the World Eaters. And that the World Eaters were causing more casualties then they were receiving.
I... can't fathom how you arrived to this conclusion from reading
Betrayer.
“And when he rose, he had you surrounded. He could have killed you.’
‘He tried and failed.’
‘His men, Angron. His Legion could have killed you. Whether the Emperor ordered it or not, Russ spared your life. He didn’t retreat in shame, you arrogant…’ Lorgar sighed. ‘He was probably lamenting your thick skull all the way back to Terra, hoping you’d heed a rather consummate lesson in brotherhood and loyalty. Look what happened. Yes, you beat him in a duel. Yes, your men took down more of his than his of yours. And yet, who won the battle?’
‘The World Eaters,’ Angron said without hesitation.
Lorgar just stared at him for several seconds. ‘I appreciate that every living being must, by the nature of perception, understand and process life in a different way. But even for you, brother, this is achingly obtuse.”
Excerpt From: Aaron Dembski-Bowden. “Betrayer.” iBooks.
Emphasis mine. Mind you, in the preceding paragraphs, Lorgar inwardly doubts that the World Eaters killed more than they lost.
So, the Word Bearers are motivated to behave differently than the other Legions. Is that motivation greater? Are they more motivated to make worlds super-compliant through religion than the Ultramarines are to make the super-compliant through other means? Their loyalty makes them more likely to do things they don't necessarily agree with, but it doesn't mean they will be more driven to do those things.
That's pretty much what the story says, MEQinc:
“No Astartes is as loyal to their primarch as the XVII are to Lorgar. No Imperial warrior believes in their father’s righteousness with as much faith and ardent devotion.
Argel Tal swallowed. It felt cold, and tasted sour. ‘Our loyalty is bred into our blood?’
No. You are sentient creatures with free will. This is no more than a minor divergence in an otherwise flawless code. Your gene-seed enhances the chemicals in your brain tissue. It gives you focus. It grants you unbreakable loyalty to your cause, and to Lorgar Aurelian.”
Excerpt From: Aaron Dembski-Bowden. “The First Heretic.” iBooks.
You might feel that because this information comes from a daemon, it could all be lies. I'll simply remind you that the daemons have thus far been guilty of twisting the truth when revealing things to Astartes - not of telling lies. I'll also remind you that this concept of gene-bred loyalty directly follows the pre-existing concept from
Deliverance Lost.
Also, see directly below.
1) You're twisting words and themes just as much as I am.
No, MEQinc, I'm not. What I'm doing is citing specific parts of specific novels and novellas that spell out the patently obvious. Not all the Legions were the same. There isn't even room for hypothetical arguments like whether or not the Emperor
wanted them to be the same to begin with: we
know that's not the case. We know for a fact that, because of the different factors that shaped them, certain Legions are more loyal, more cohesive, and more disciplined. We know that these traits don't just achieve better results in the real world,
but that these traits enabled certain Legions to achieve better results than others in this series.
Your counter-points have more often than not focused on personal interpretation of various general topics, like whether "superior motivation and loyalty will make someone more driven to do their master's bidding" -
as if that was ever in question.
2)Its not flat-out stated that the Wolves are superior to the other Legions. That goes against the themes of all the Legions, as well as many of the other themes of the Great Crusade.
...
I won't agree to let various Legions be slandered though.
What slander? Are you kidding me now? At best, we're talking about the comparative merits and flaws of fictional organizations. Relax, take a breath, and realize that the twenty Legions were never carbon-copy clones created in the exact same environment and operating under the exact same conditions. Given this very basic fact, it was impossible for them to be the same, and it would thus be impossible for them to achieve the same results.
Because the fact that the Wolves say they're the Executioners a) doesn't actually make it so and b) doesn't make them good at it.
So what is your proposed alternative? That they're just lying and playing make-believe and that the other Legions tolerate them? That when Angron himself references Russ as an executioner he's just doing so randomly? That when other Primarchs anticipate Russ being unleashed for another sanction that this is another random selection? And, meanwhile, it's just happenstance that the
actual executioners are
never, ever referenced?
Thanks.
That's what I thought I remembered. The Iron Warriors are specualted to feel less pain then other Legions. I'm unclear on why you think that's a bad thing, or otherwise represents an intentional weakening of the Legion.
Please read the citation more carefully, then. It provides you with (more) evidence that the Emperor did not intend for his Legions to be the same, and that in at least some cases he
did provide built-in advantages. Loyalty, resistance to pain, and superior senses are three examples. You will also note that the same citation proves that the Emperor also built-in certain
deficiencies.
No but intent gives a baseline for what the intended results are. The intended result was for the Legions to be differnet but equal, it then becomes your responsibility to show that some Legions are superior to others across the board. I don't feel you've done that.
You don't? Please re-read the citation from
Deliverance Lost, then.
Where in real world history do you see evidence that expressing less shock at the nature of a foe leads to future long-term success against that foe?
To begin with, are we seriously arguing whether a force conditioned to fight a certain foe will get better results than if they were not?
Assuming this was the case, right off the top of my head, Hellenistic-era historians on both the Roman and Greek side commented on the phenomenon of an inferior side eventually achieving victory by virtue of having to fight superior opponents. If you really want me to provide a specific citation, it will take me some time. I can't remember if it's Livy, Polybius, or someone else, or whether they're talking about the Spartans fighting other Greeks or not.
I'm not going off implication, I'm going off what we are directly shown. We are directly shown that the Wolves are not superior to the World Eaters.
No, we're not. For the sake of both our times, I suggest you wait until you get your books back and have the opportunity to re-read through the pertinent chapters. The inefficiency of the World Eaters' assault tactics is qualified. Their lack of cohesion and discipline is qualified as the reason why the World Eaters would have lost their Primarch.
While they enjoy some success against the Sons the deck is stacked heavily in their favour and removing just some of those benefits (several of which were brought about by circumstances the Wolves had no control over) makes their victory far from certain. Further, they fail to eliminate the Sons, kill Magnus or bring him in for judgment.
You're still just arguing against points that you - not me - are inventing. For some reason, you keep projecting on my points the idea that "the Space Wolves are the best Legion". I didn't say that. Ever. What I said is that, of all the Legions, they appear to have possessed the right temperament/psychology/motivation/whatever for the job.
Don't have my books so this is all from memory.
I'm not trying to be rude, but trust me when I say that you need to wait until you get your books back.
Oh. So you mean cohesion then?
Unit cohesion is a byproduct of loyalty.
Sanction is an inevitable contingency, ...
No, not necessarily. That's conjecture - even I admitted as much. Either way, though, the Great Crusade was a full-time campaign. Sanctions were only going to be anomalies. It makes zero sense to focus on the anomaly rather than the status quo. That's not to say that you shouldn't prepare for the anomaly, and the Emperor appears to have done so: he appears to have designed a Legion that combined predatory ruthlessness with superior loyalty. It's kind of an apples-and-oranges comparison, but he basically made himself some Minotaurs.