As the Men of Iron began appearing en masse on the ground battlefields, the Orks' offensives were quickly checked.
But with the Orks opening up so many fronts, Iax also discovered that his available forces seemed somewhat insufficient.
Against the Tyranids, Iax had been able to deploy his troops to eradicate them swiftly. Now, however, each battlefield had only a few thousand to ten thousand combat machines, while the enemy not only rivaled those Insects in numbers but, more troublingly, possessed technological capabilities.
The Mechanical Legion was powerful. Even its most basic Sentinels were far stronger than standard Astartes, but a single machine facing over a thousand Ork Shootas could still be destroyed.
After all, the caliber of an Ork Shoota was not much smaller than that of the Bolt Weapons wielded by the Astartes.
Crude though they were, they were utterly ferocious, making up for poor accuracy with sheer volume of fire.
Almost every destroyed Sentinel was reduced to a few mechanical components buried amid a mass of bullets.
Even repairs using nanomachines took time. But the Orks' frenzy far exceeded anything Iax had imagined.
Damaged Machine Bodies kept losing pieces of themselves.
Most of those missing parts had been stolen by Gretchin scurrying all over the battlefield.
After all, gleaming silver bodies were far too rare a find.
Then Iax soon discovered that weapons from some of those Machine Bodies had begun appearing on certain Orks' junk weapons.
Even the long blade in one Ork Warboss's hand shone with the particle oscillation field unique to the Men of Iron.
These devices, far more devastating than Imperial weapons, quickly amplified the Orks' destructive power.
Although the Orks' fighting techniques were crude, their combat instincts were exceptional.
Before long, Sentinels were engaging Orks in melee, drawing on fighting techniques stored