Quote Originally Posted by bluntpencil View Post
Say what you will about the Dark Mech guys, but they can't even take care of the armour of their greatest leader.

The Heretic Astartes are very probably the greatest warriors in the galaxy, but that is obviously limited by logistical concerns.
This has always been true, as far back as I can remember. The Heretic Forces do have SOME industry in the form of Heretek Forgeworlds, but they're just as factional and suspicious of each other as the Astartes Legions are of them, and trade tends to occur only during tense and highly ritualised circumstance where backstabbing and duplicity is the norm.

That, and the Heretic forces are always WAY more interested in turning people into hideous daemon-engines and the likes, rather than simply making new boltguns. Their poor prioritising means that its usually easier to launch a raid on an Imperial planet, steal what you need and recycle your own dead guys' equipment, than it is to try and secure a stable supply of goods from a lunatic who is running a Dark Mechanicus facility and who will probably be attacked and looted by your other rivals in short order.

Really great examples of this are in The Talon of Horus and the Night Lords trilogy.
In ToH, the protagonist Khayon recounts how he has had to barter his resources and service in exchange for what he needs, often entering indentured servitude for nearly a decade at a time to afford some old technology - and that is from a Dark Mech. Magos who really likes him.
The Night Lords, meanwhile, are amazing books that nonetheless are mostly a list of ways in which a small warband tries to screw over their rivals while getting screwed over themselves. They loot their own dead with enthusiastic scavenging and generally getting more and more broken down until they're forced into dangerous positions of servitude under people like Huron Blackheart, who is powerful because he has access to materials and resources that he can spare in return for 'favours'.

That's partly the reason as to why Black Crusades only come along every millennia or so; it takes that long for Team Heretic to get its act together and ready itself each time.

Also, Abaddon's armour and weapons are Crusade-era equipment, from a time when technology was developed by the Emperor and his immediate assistants. It's generally just better quality than the stuff produced in the 41st millenium, so even if it looks a bit shabby and beaten-up its well worth hanging on to rather than downgrading for something that hasn't been scratched and chipped for 10,000 years.