World Eaters - Pre-Heresy: Hand-to-hand combat was the XIIth Legion's preferred form of warfare, even before it took the Emperor-given name of the War Hounds for itself. This did not mean that the World Eaters lacked ability and competency in ranged engagements or armoured warfare and supporting artillery attack.Indeed, no lesser luminary in the arts of mechanised warfare than the Iron Hands' Primarch Ferrus Manus praised the War Hounds' armoured assault at Aldabaran Septus as the "epitome of iron-clad rage given form," but for the War Hounds such things were a tactical means to an end.That end being successfully delivering the killing force of the Legion, its Space Marines, where they could inflict the most harm and come to grapple with their foe at close quarters. The War Hounds had a preponderance of close combat weaponry habitually carried by its rank-and-file.In addition to the use of the ubiquitous Combat Knives or Gladius, even Legionaries attached to reconnaissance squads and vehicle crews commonly carried chainblades, flay-cutters and mono-serrated bayonets, back-up knives, hatchets and cleavers. In dedicated assault units this profusion of bloody killing tools was added to by a weapon that dated back to the techno-barbarian tribes of Terra, the broad-bladed Chainaxe.With the coming of Angron as their commander, the XIIth Legion's predilections for hand-to-hand bloodletting reached even greater heights, as the master-gladiator taught his warriors new weapons and new ways to kill, and what can only be described as a cult of personal combat took hold of the Legion at a fundamental level.The Chainaxe was further refined under Angron's direction, and such was the reputation it gained, that its use spread to several other Legions. But in the abstract the weapon could be seen as a symbol of the World Eaters themselves -- brutal and savage, remorseless and unsubtle, a machine with but one purpose -- to kill.When the XIIth Legion launched a planetary assault, they did so in a most unusual matter. Upon reaching a planet's surface, the World Eaters would burst from drop pods and charge down the assault ramps of their gunships, rapidly established security perimeters at their respective landing zones. Recon squads ranged out and lines of communication were solidified between adjacent units as companies organised and cohered. Once fully assembled on the ground, the order was given to advance.It has been widely recorded, both in the recounting of Remembrancers during the Great Crusade and within each Legion's own archival histories, how Space Marines made battle. When the World Eaters made war, they did not enter combat in silence like the Iron Hands, their minds devoid of any distraction and focused entirely on the cold, clinical violence they were poised to deliver. Nor did they deploy like the Space Wolves or the Great Khan's get, joining the fray in a blistering charge, laughing as they leveled bolter and blade.Since the day of the War Hounds' founding, whether the foe before them was xenos, machine, or even the Emperor's own Thunder Warriors, the XIIth commenced hostilities according to their own fashion. Theirs was the only method more terrifying to an enemy than the sight of a legionary sprinting towards the, light gleaming from their raised weapon, with a bellow tearing from their throat.The War Hounds, and the World Eaters they became, reached the range of their blades walking. No robotic silence or hysterical shouts rang out from their ranks, but rather the calm, even tones of bonded brothers, spoken as though they were strolling to the training pits and not into the teeth of their foes. Rare were the times when an assaulting centurion sped his phalanx to meet the enemy at a trot, and almost never at a run.They simply marched, imbued with an easy, natural aggression, and did not alter their stride as they struck, rolled through, cut and crushed any foe that dared stand against them, relentless and indomitable as the fall of shadow over the land at nightfall. By this tactic had the Legion defeated countless enemies before they had even engaged them, such was the fear sown by this inhuman calm.It was only when the enemy broke, all morale and cohesion shattered as they turned to flee, that the XIIth quickened their pace. In the final pursuit, running down and executing a routed enemy, the Legion was in every way the hounds of war to match their former title, and later, just as fittingly, those who devoured whole planets.Following the implantation of the Butcher's Nails, the World Eaters no longer deployed in the organised and disciplined matter they once displayed. Gone was the phalanx, the measured march of the shield wall. Now, the World Eaters ran to get to grips with the foe as soon as they made planetfall, and they ran faster as they caught sight of their enemies and savored the coming slaughter that would inevitably follow.When they finally clashed with the foe, the enemy could not slow or stand against any of the enraged World Eaters as the warriors hacked and tore their way through them. With their minds aflame with the Butcher's Nails, not one legionary would stop to admire their kills, sprinting forward and killing anything that came within reach.They would run in loose packs at first, but this didn't last long. Each World Eater became his own army, going wherever the Nails led him as he surged down the avenues of a doomed city and butchered everything he saw. Their vox would come alive with an endless disjointed chorus of laughing and spitting and screaming, all set to the throaty roar of active chainblades.Eventually, they would deplete their ammunition, each World Eater relishing the dry click as the chamber of their Bolter ran hollow. The Nails set a fire within their skulls, and they celebrated it as they threw their boltguns aside, forgotten, focusing solely upon killing by hand.The slaughter would continue as the Butcher's Nails propelled the World Eaters to untold heights of brutality. Like heathen marauders of Old Earth, the legionaries tore down the entrance to their enemy's holdfasts, swarming within and laying waste to all they found, until nothing remained but a bloody abattoir to mark their passing.