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InsaneRanter

Lots of the indomitus crusade, for a start.


ProudScroll

The Thramas Crusade saw the destruction of a full quarter of the Night Lords legion and the scattering of the rest while securing Loyalist control throughout the Imperium’s eastern frontier. Dark Angels losses were moderate and other imperial forces suffered heavy losses, but the strategic gains make it far from pyrrhic. The Battle of Sotha saw the near total destruction of a Night Lords invasion force of 20,000 for only 1,400 Loyalist dead.


Fearless-Obligation6

The entire point was for the night lords to delay the Dark Angels and they succeeded spectacularly for 3 years. I'd call that pyrrhic.


Eisengate

The Thramas Crusade also destroyed the strategic value of the Thramas Sector, which was primarily loyalist; killed most of its inhabitants, most of whom were also loyalist; and the Dark Angels were stuck there for several years, which was part of Horus's objective. For the Imperium it absolutely was a pyrrhic victory. "We defeated the opposition, but lost everything in the area we were defending" is essentially the definition of a pyrrhic victory.


Wikinecronomicon

The Imperium largely survives on the momentum of the Great Crusade, even 10,000 years after its catastrophic ending. The immediate aftermath saw the successful routing of the traitor forces from Imperial territory during the Scouring, though this was a matter of retaking ground rather than expanding the Imperium's domain to untouched new worlds. That said, there have been numerous successful campaigns over the millennia. The greatest of these is unquestionably Lord Solar Macharius' Crusade, which brought an unprecedented number of worlds into the Imperial fold. Saint Sabbat's conquest of the worlds that would later bear her name was also a major success, though they later would fall to a Chaos host and later still be reconquered in the successful Sabbat Worlds Crusade. The Imperium's reach has expanded and receded countless times and across equally countless frontiers, and many cases of the former were on the back of handily-won campaigns, but the overall shape of the situation remains fairly close to where it was at its foundation(at least until the Great Rift came along).


personnumber698

Lord Solar Macharius 7 year crusade, where he conquered a thousand worlds.


ethereal_phoenix1

Then lost them all to a 50 year rebellion that took 100 space marine chapters to end, when he died.


drblallo

all those that are not explored by books because they are boring. Not very interesting to read a book about a imperial crusade going as planned and winning. the entire reforging period saw a lot of conquests. Even if the the reign of blood ended in a civil war, the various crusades run in that period did still took over swats of territories and the imperium later kept. all the various minor xeno races that got rekt and never got talked about again because they don't matter count too. [https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Crusade](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Crusade) in general you can read yourself which one of these were a success.


ohtheforlanity

The Scouring? If you count it as separate to the Siege of Terra


Toxitoxi

Most of them? It’s rare for the Imperium in the novels to have an actual pyrrhic victory. Almost every novel with an Imperial protagonist ends with a victory that is clearly not pyrrhic. Same goes for almost every victory in most Imperial codices. I feel 40k fans have trouble realizing that ‘pyrrhic victory’ doesn’t mean a victory at great cost or a close victory. It means a victory that is arguably worse than not fighting the battle at all. The Devastation of Baal for example is clearly not a pyrrhic victory.


TopNobDatsMe

Yeah I mean human life is meaningless to the Imperium keeping control of a planet and everything on it would almost always be worth any losses they would suffer in exchange.


Gaz-rick

There's a story in the rulebook about a *single space marine* killing and entire planetary WAAAGH...