Horus Heresy/Awesome

"This is a dynamic combat shift. This is the game changed. Hesst would approve. Guilliman would approve."
 * The opening book, Dan Abnett's Horus Rising has Garviel Loken rush in and avenge his senior commander Sejanus. After killing tons of invisible baddies, he meets the "false Emperor" who proclaims that the Imperium is wrong in its doings. But Loken rebuts it perfectly by pointing out that the Imperium had before tried reasoning with the planet.
 * Loken himself is just full of awesome. One memorable moment:
 * Whilst in a sparring match with a Lucius (the proud sword-fighting member of the Emperor's Children). Loken beats him by grabbing his sword hand and punching him to the floor.
 * Which is not to say that Lucius doesn't have his moments. Also, during heavy combat with the, Lucius picks up a limb of one of the fallen, and uses it as a weapon.
 * Saul Tarvitz (who eventually befriends Loken) survives an attack by bladed-spiders and vicious birds.
 * A particularly interesting moment. Tarvitz accidentally destroys the source of the transmission jammer when he uses explosives on trees because he didn't like the way the body's of soldiers were hanging on them.
 * Nero Vipus slices off his arm after it was injured saying that he "threw it away"
 * In Legion a soldier named Dinas Chayne, head of a special bodyguard squad, manages to STAB Alpharius with an unpowered sabre, through his power armour, and causes him to bleed a little. Of course Alpharius simply cuts him in half lengthwise after that, complete with a pithy one-liner.
 * Can we just clear this up: a Badass Normal fences a post-human demigod to a standstill, but then gets his sword stuck in his opponent's Nigh Invulnerable power armour whilst injuring him - an opponent who can shrug off blows that would liquify Chayne. Fucking badass. Unfortunately, futile.
 * While still unrelentingly badass, Chayne actually wounded
 * Iacton Qurze yes he was treated like a doddering old fool of a space marine but he was actually a lot smarter than he looked and on his own managed to break the back of a megarachnid invasion wave.
 * The sheer Magnificent Bastardry of Alpharius' meeting with the
 * Three words: "For the Emperor."
 * At the climactic naval battle, an entire Imperial Fleet is desperately fighting a single Alpha Legion battle barge. After losing dozens of vessels to this single threat, the commanders try to escape. Cue another Alpha Legion ship.
 * “That’s another barge,” said Van Aunger in a low voice. That’s another fugging battle-barge!”
 * In Graham McNeill's Mechanicum, the Emperor himself gets one, although it's told second hand. In the 11th century, the Emperor manages to defeat and BIND the Void Dragon. It ought to be mentioned that the Void Dragon is the most powerful of the C'Tan star gods (just to put it in perspective, a weaker C'Tan, the Nightbringer, was capable of defeating the collective Eldar race and their actual Gods in combat). All the more reason why the Emperor is a walk Moment of Awesome.
 * Of course this is after the Void Dragon got hit by some planet destroying super-weapons that weakened it a bit.
 * That's just an excuse the Void Dragon tells the Tech Priest he now hangs out with.
 * It gets better. While the Emperor's paranoia and arrogance hand him the Idiot Ball on various occasions afterwards, here he's in perfect Magnificent Bastard form. He knows, by prescience, that many technically-oriented people will come to Mars in the millennia to come. So he binds the Void Dragon there, in a place few will go, just constricted enough that its technology-focused influence will inspire great works of engineering and seed the idea of a Machine-God without enough contact to make the resulting Machine Cult actually loyal to the Void Dragon.
 * The last words of Huron-Fal, the Death Guard dreadnought in Flight of the Eisenstein. so what does he do? What any good Space Marine would do, of course!
 * Battle for the Abyss Fifty loyalist Space Marines aboard a small fleet of ships
 * After De'shea is in its entirety a Moment of Awesome for Kharn. And it's not his martial prowess he earns it with, but his brain. After Angron, freshly brought to his flagship from a Last Stand that killed all of his old comrades, in the grip of guilt and rage, killed the first seven Captains of the War Hounds, Kharn (the 8th Captain) manages to get through to him and convince him to accept the War Hounds as his legion and to reverse his opinion of the Emperor. While being flung around like a rag doll and being beaten within an inch of his life and never fighting back. All the more impressive because while they talk the same language, Angron grew up on a primitive world as a gladiator slave - and as such doesn't understand most of the concepts Kharn takes for granted. And Kharn manages to bridge the cultural difference and translate. While every bone in his body is being shattered.
 * The First Heretic gives us our first view of Corax in combat. Beating down a dozen he proceeds to almost kill.
 * To complement that moment we have Lorgar ignoring the words of his tutors and rushing off to save his Space Marine sons form being slaughtered by  and unleashing . Doubless as a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming.
 * Incarnadine's Big Damn Hero moment near the end.
 * "I always hated you,
 * Let's give some context for this one. AWESOME.
 * So, how many characters do you know who have set a whole planet on fire? Because I only know of one: Horus mother****ing Lupercal.
 * The end of Prospero Burns when, cutting its way through the Space Wolves, only to be stopped by Bear.
 * Iron Within is Moment of Awesome for Warsmith Dantioch.
 * Let's mention how
 * At the end of the Age of Darkness, Lion El'Jonson faces off against Konrad Kurse, who explains Jonson's response is to calmly ask Konrad's forgiveness,   Then followed up by the most Badass line by a Space Marine:
 * The Priest in The Last Church  He knows   better in a space of an hour than others do in years.
 * Know No Fear is absolutely crammed with this:
 * Roboute Guilliman vs Kor Phaeron:
 * The horrific but amazingly demonstrated effect of what an accelerated ship alone is capable of.
 * The last chapters of Know No Fear is one gigantic Heartwarming Moment for the Ultramarines, the Imperial Army, and the loyalist forces of the Mechanicum, culminating with this single line:


 * This is preceded by a vanguard of Ultramarines, Mechanicus Skitarii, Imperial Army soldiers and assorted armour
 * A special shout out goes to Ultramarine Sergeant Thiel, who singlehandedly organised survivors on Guilliman's flagship . It should also be mentioned he is awaiting censure and discipline for  . Thiel's censure markings are then repurposed- as the markings of Sergeants and section leaders for easy identification.
 * The escape of the Raven Guard from the Isstvan system in Deliverance Lost.