lot of things comes in to consideration depends on the commander:- Perturabo Vs Lorgar the location:- Space, hive world, death world, demon world, forge world, paradise world, agri world, feudal world, feral world, etc idividual Legion Manpower the amount of resources:- Demons, cultists, Vehicles, Supper Vehicles, Spaceships etc the Battle scenario:- basic Defensive or Offensive ground battles Fleet battle, etc the Battle scale:- Region Scale, Planetary Scale, Subsector Scale, Sector Scale, Segmentum Scale utilized tactics amount of time consumed:- weeks, months, years, decades, etc there are lot of possibility s but overall many of them are once which Iron Warriors will win (this is only my humble opinion)
This. IW are much better technologically and have not only better warmachines and more of them, but a better Primarch when it comes to direct confrontations. However, the Daemonic resources of the WB are immense. If its in the eye, the IW can't really do anything about all the daemons. Elsewhere...I'd say that the IW are likelier to win of the two.
Leaning heavily towards Iron Warriors because they're the more tactically minded and siege fighters, but it still does kinda depend heavily on terrain, who strikes first, and how much warp fun party time energy is floating about. Also I suppose weather or not the chaos gods beef up the Word Bearers or not.
In this case, i am going to argue for the Iron Warriors. - Heavy emphasis on heavy firepower - Pre Heresy strength was approx 180.000 marines with an avarage death rate of 70-80% per campaign. its not a stretch to saying Perts finest keep this up in the Post Heresy. - Warsmith Honshou who runs for most evil Marine in the Galaxy - OBLITERATORS (which seem to originate with the IW) - large park of Demon engines and artillery Word Bearers - Deamons - maintained a organisation - Faith - Possessed
I believe it bears keeping in mind that the Word Bearers also have their own Titans as well as a demonic Forge World in the Maelstrom, so they've got plenty of daemon engines as well. We can asume that Iron Warriors have more, but it's hard to say by how much. I personally don't think that it would be a huge difference. We have a rough estimate of how many Word Bearers there are in 40k, about 1/10th the size of the Black Legion, so if we can figure out how many marines Abbadon has then we know how many Word Bearers there are.
Though I'm rather a fan of the Iron Warriors, I have to say that the Word Bearers would win this one: 1. The Iron Warriors are great at defence, but even they acknowledge that every fortress will fall one day. 2. Their paranoia prevents the Iron Warriors from working too close with each other or allies. 3. The Word Bearers have an extensive network of allied Chaos-Cults. This gives them the large numbers of cannon-fodder and slaves/sacrifices they need to ensure daemonic support.
