Editing Battle of Phall (section)

==Post Match Analysis==
Because GW doesn't like traitor marines to have too many nice things, Pert's own postmortem analysis showed that he would have lost if the battle continued despite the fact he had the larger fleet, the biggest and mostest guns, and more tactical assets. The Imperial Fists were better equipped (being in the same system as [[Mars]] after all and having shit like vortex missiles) and could punch above their weight, and Polux's stratagem enabled the Fists to adapt quickly to the Iron Warriors' attack (Perturabo had the Iron Warriors charge into the Imperial Fists in a jagged cone formation, which was apparently less effective at countering the Imperial Fists revolving sphere formation; also, the slower Battleships drew fire and the faster ships pulled off hit and run attacks.)

No wonder Pert is pissed off all the time.

===What If?===
A lot can be said about the fate of the Retribution Fleet:

For starters, if they had arrived at Isstvan as intended then the better part of an additional legion and one of the largest fleets ever seen might have tipped the scales at the [[Dropsite Massacre]] and changed the whole course of history. Indeed, when put into context with the short story ''The Board is Set'', there was an early opportunity for the "Invincible Bastion" - assumed to be Rogal Dorn due to being held in reserve on the Emperor's [[Terra|home space]] - to outflank and defeat the [[Horus|Lord of Hearts]] immediately before the [[Vulkan|Anvil]] is defeated and resurrected for the first time, which one assumes must be at or around Isstvan, though this move causes the [[Omegon|blue Twin]] to switch sides and be wide open for Terra. This avenue is never explored, but certainly goes to show how different things could have been if the Retribution Fleet had arrived or if their Primarch had been anywhere other than Terra.

Instead the retreat from Phall was a shambles and cost the Imperial Forces ships and men that might have been put to better use elsewhere. Furthermore, while some of the Imperial Fist ships got back to Terra, Polux himself and some other of the retreating forces [[Fail|never made it back to Terra at all]] and instead arrived in [[Imperium Secundus]] - further compounding the failure of the retreat by not even achieving their purpose for departing.

While it seems unlikely they would have killed Perturabo himself (fate tends to favour Primarchs) if they had fought on to victory, they might have taken the bulk of the Iron Warriors out of the war and could have potentially have changed the outcome of the entire Horus Heresy, especially if fewer sons of Perturabo were laying siege to the walls of the Imperial palace.

It's worth reiterating that as much as Polux had no idea what was going on in the larger galaxy, Rogal Dorn similarly had no idea of the fate of the Retribution Fleet and had been calling out for months for their return to base. It is posited in HH3 that the timing of the astropathic message was not by chance, but by the will of Horus and his allies, possibly in response to the imminent loss of the battle, using the Imperial Fists own nature against them and turn the tide of battle at the last moment.

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[[Category: Warhammer 40,000 Battles]]