Yeah, I have to agree that the DG have this one in the bag. They have better coordination, the advantage of numbers, are able to recruit (zombify) the enemy dead, have better leaders (Typhus), and many superior war machines such as the Termina Est. The Termina Est a lot of people like to forget is a unique ship that the entire despoiler class was based off of, and defeated the Raven guard flagship to start off Isstvan. Also, the DG don't have to deal with teamkilling fucktards like Kharn and "Lol wuts tactics" people like the majority of their leadership.
Id figure both would lose in this scenario. Both don't really care about pain and wounding, so world eaters would butcher and then the horrible plagues in the marines would kill off the others (if they are susceptible to nurgle.)
Khorne doesn't care from where the blood flows. On the other hand, Nurgle's love is eternal. Nurgle followers are much more likely to survive confrontations. Deathguard wins imo.
I wouldn't underestimate Mortarion either. Of all the Daemon Primarchs it's said he was the closest to kill Abaddon and the Black Legion with his plagues. That's gotta be worth something.
I guess where all forgetting about all the other successful actions they have accomplished? -Siege of Sarum -Liberation of Alpha Shalish -Destruction of the Auretian Technocracy Not to mention Angron and his Legion are the only other Traitors(Black Legion) to successfully accomplish a massive blow to the Imperium by themselves(Dominion of Fire). World Eaters I feel are just all around superior to Death Guard. Both have a good war record, tho World Eaters accomplishing somthing more noteworthy post-heresy then Death Guard. Both where said to sustain high causalities and also able to replenish those causalities relatively easy. We could argue endlessly about which is a better warrior individually. The tie breaker for me is the Dominion of Fire, if where trying to be non-biased(which is kinda hard IMO since almost all Legions are "about" equal in every department.)
While the Death Guard may be as good as immortal, their gene-seed no longer works. Every Chaos Space Marine they loose in battle is gone forever. And... at the start of the Legion-Wars (post-HH) an already battered and bruised World Eaters-legion took on a well-established Emperor's Children-legion, plus their Traitor Guard allies, plus their Slaanesh Knight allies. When it comes to a war of attrition, the World Eaters win.
Actually the DG can replenish their numbers and get new troops just not with gene-seed.(There is a ritual/spell thingy that turns normal marines to plague marines)
I think people are seriously underselling the World Eaters' abilities here. I can certainly see why given some of the sources cited, but for every benefit brought up in favour of the Death Guard (and rightfully so) there are several major ones being overlooked which benefit of the World Eaters. For starters, some here have claimed that the Death Guard have superior numbers of cultists backing them up. Debatable admittedly, but let's say it's true for a moment. The World Eaters were a legion made to cull entire populations purely by chain-axe and bolt pistol, and you honestly couldn't ask for a better foe than swarms of fodder for them to engage. They'd go through them like a scythe to wheat, and by the time they directly hit the Death Guard themselves, they would have more than a few friends with them. People have cited here that Khorne famously does not care where blood flows from, and that's certainly true indeed. The thing is though, he does care about blood flowing and tends to favour those spilling it in his name. More than a few World Eaters warbands have been represented as daemonkin, allied so closely to Khorne that their very acts of violence and sheer rage serve as an anchor for Khorne's daemonic servants. Everything from flesh hounds to full blown bloodthirsters can be drawn to them, and given that the Death Guard would be presenting them with plenty of fresh new sacrifices, i'd be surprised if An'ggrath or Skarbrand himself didn't take the time to show up. It would certainly give them an edge in direct battle to be sure, and would allow their power to snowball as they fought onward. Sticking with the subject of daemonkin and berserkers, it's been noted that these warbands basically serve as daemon prince factories. Their rampage can only end in one of two ways - Complete annihilation, or the ascension of a few chosen. One particular conflict famously ended with a multitude of surviving berserkers being elevated to daemonhood simultaneously, and this is something Nurgle doesn't have to match them. It would most likely allow Khorne's worshippers to have greater backing within the Warp itself, so if it took place inside the Eye then they would have an absolute field day. Even without that fact, the blood god also has more than a few of his own unique engines of war to call upon, certainly quite a few more than Nurgle. The Lord of Skulls is the most infamous one, but just compare this list of each one quoted from Lexicanum: Khorne: Lord of Battles Cauldron of Blood Tower of Skulls Death Dealer Blood Reaper Doom Blaster Brass Scorpion Blood Slaughterer Blood Throne Skull Cannon Lord of Skulls Kytan Nurgle: Nurgle Plague Tower Contagion Plague Hulk Blight Drone Even if we accept one side might have titans and the other would not (though we have seen Khornate titans more than a few times in the lore) that's still a much more versatile force to fall upon the Death Guard. Plus, as for the Terminus Est and its threat, we do know that the Conqueror is still about and was last seen under the command of a World Eaters force. That means there's still a Gloriana Class Battleship - with all the benefits and advantages Chaos can provide - ready to combat it. As for the subject of casualties, well, that's where things get a little murky. The Death Guard and World Eaters tend to retain their numbers via the same methods - corruption of existing marines. As the gene-seed of both of them has become corrupted beyond replication, they instead turn to traitors. What's interesting though is that, while Nurgle has been depicted as having forces aligned and seperated from the Death Guard, just about every berskerker cult in the galaxy has taken on the World Eaters' traditions, from the Nails themselves to the parted archway design of their helms. If we were truly gathering the entirety of each legion to one place, one isn't going to have so vast a numerical advantage over the other if we're counting ideology and culture over basic gene-seed. This is also not to mention the fact that, well, Khorne does have this habit of resurrecting his favoured warriors more often than Nurgle. Kharn is the most famous of course, but I can think of certain others ones suggested in Black Library books, and even then the most blood-crazed of their number tend to have a very unique sort of luck on their side during battle (notably Uzas, who was noted to repeatedly emerge from horrific situations completely unscathed.) Speaking of Aaron Dembski-Bowden's works, well, people have brought up the Shadow Crusade as a point against this legion. Now, I won't dispute the quality of that book or the events there, but author bias does need to be brought up. Bowden does have this habit of sticking to certain biases in his works: The Emperor was utterly wrong (and apparently completely incompetent) according to his books, the Imperium will be annihilated no matter what, the Ultramarines can cripple/crush/annihilate just about anyone else in an honest fight, and Khorne's warriors are utter jokes. Most of Betrayer bent over backwards to have the World Eaters repeatedly lose over and over again, to the point where Kharn himself is almost trampled to death under a band of unarmed civilians. It's quite the lasting impression to be sure, and I can see why it would leave others thinking that they would easily lose this fight, especially given how uncoordinated and ill focused a force they were presented as there. However, even accounting for Betrayer, many other books have presented them in a far better light. The aforementioned Dominion of Fire saw them scour multiple worlds and royally ruin the Imperium's day. The First War for Armageddon was barely lost only at the last minute, and left such a lasting impact that it was still being felt during the Third War, and bathed the Imperium in such a tide of blood that it's ranked up there with a Black Crusade. The Bloodtorrent War was such a victory that an entire manifactorum world was "ground to a halt, its workings clogged with the mangled remains of over a thousand pulverised corpses." Finally, the opening act to the Battle of Skalathrax featured a few World Eaters first beheading a major figure among the Emperor's Children, and then hijacking their flagship during the ensuing fight. That last point, Skalthrax, is notable for more than one reason. Yes, it led to the legion fracturing, but you have to consider what directly led to that. Even in the grip of the Nails and suffering from internal disputes, they battled as a unified force against the Emperor's Children until they could not directly fight any more. It wasn't the battle itself which broke them, but one of them turning upon the others once they were given no direct enemy to combat. With the Death Guard right in front of them, I can't see that same infighting becoming a problem here. Now, this isn't to say that I think the World Eaters would win outright. However, after some consideration, I honestly don't think either side would win. If they were truly all gathered in one place, were all truly united and threw everything they had at one another, the chances are they would grind one another to dust. One side might walk away, but they would be a shadow of their former shelves and the legion itself would cease to exist. Because of this, i'm voting for the World Eaters to try and create a tie.
