This is something I've wanted to do for a while, and finally have the energy to do.
There's an awful lot of whining about primarch feats and wankery and how it doesn't belong in scifi like 40k.
There was a thread awhile back that hilariously stated that a "single sister of battle with a melta could kill a primarch if they shot him in the face". They're still flesh and blood right?
Well, quite wrong actually.
The Emperor created Primarchs with massive quantities of stolen power from the Chaos Gods. As such Primarchs have a massive pool of energy from the warp inherent in their anatomy similar to the amount of power possessed by a star. This dramatically enhances their already blatantly inhuman physiology. They are capable of taking and giving off far more punishment than any thing composed of matter their size should ever be capable of due to this. And they can further subconsciously draw power from the warp.
Lets go over some feats shall we
-Horus didn't immediately glass Isstvan because he thought that Angron would not only survive the rapid glassing of Isstvan, but would be pissed at him. And apparently furiously swim through space to crash into his ship and murder him. Yep.
-Angron, who was almost dead, armorless, and relatively calm managed to stop a Warhound titan giving it all it had to crush him. For about 45 seconds. It's likely if he was fully in a rage, fully healed, and had his armor he would have thrown it off him, sending the titan dozens of feet in the air. Betrayer.
-Fulgrim who was being tortured managed to go from charred bone to the beginnings of feet in a matter of minutes.
-Magnus grew to the size of a Warlord Titan to beat a titan to death with his bare hands. This is more psychic stuff though. This was mentioned in A Thousand Sons.
-Magnus was completely serious in threatening to drag a Space Wolves strike cruiser (assuming STC 3 km in length) from high orbit onto the heads of some very scared puppies. A Thousand Sons.
-Magnus completely stopped the advance of a 1000 Custodes, 100,000 Space Puppies, A Titan Legion and a Large number of Sisters of Silence. In a matter of seconds. A Thousand Sons.
-Kurze flipped a Land Raider, and set it on fire. Yep. Flipped a tank. the way tanks are I think it'd be far easier to deadlift one than to flip one.
This is ignoring some of the sillier stuff (even by my standards) like Vulkan surviving being hit by a macrocannon. As in actually touched by the round.

Primarchs have always been insanely powerful from the days of Index Astartes. IIRC, they've actually been nerfed. Tales of the Primarchs from IA had them wrecking entire mountains/producing shockwaves, whereas now they're "merely" ripping apart MBT's or tearing down Warhound Titans.

It really, maybe more than anything else, depends who's writing them. Lorgar survived being shot with a Titan plasma weapon in Betrayer. Guilliman almost got killed by bolter fire in Unremembered Empire.

They are tough as nails, beings of immense power, the sons of the Emperor

He still oblieterated those would-be Assassins, not to mention depending on the bolter ammunition, they could have posed a threat to virtually anything capable of fitting in that room.

 Wyzilla wrote:
He still oblieterated those would-be Assassins, not to mention depending on the bolter ammunition, they could have posed a threat to virtually anything capable of fitting in that room.

Yes I know. But he still came close to dying to small arms fire, while Lorgar survived a Titan gun.

Ferrus Manus lifted a mountain.

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
He still oblieterated those would-be Assassins, not to mention depending on the bolter ammunition, they could have posed a threat to virtually anything capable of fitting in that room.

Yes I know. But he still came close to dying to small arms fire, while Lorgar survived a Titan gun.

Guilliman is a bitch primarch though.
Angron is pretty consistent in what i've read of the HH (maybe because ADB mainly deals with him) in that he's nigh unstoppable.

 ThePrimordial wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
He still oblieterated those would-be Assassins, not to mention depending on the bolter ammunition, they could have posed a threat to virtually anything capable of fitting in that room.

Yes I know. But he still came close to dying to small arms fire, while Lorgar survived a Titan gun.

Guilliman is a bitch primarch though.
Angron is pretty consistent in what i've read of the HH (maybe because ADB mainly deals with him) in that he's nigh unstoppable.

Guilliman is not a 'bitch Primarch'. He held his own against both Angron and Lorgar in Betrayer for a while. Why is he a 'bitch Primarch'..?

 ImAGeek wrote:
Why is he a 'bitch Primarch'..?

Edgy Ultramarines hate.

 j31c3n wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:
Why is he a 'bitch Primarch'..?

Edgy Ultramarines hate.

Mm probably. Should've guessed.

 ImAGeek wrote:

 ThePrimordial wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
He still oblieterated those would-be Assassins, not to mention depending on the bolter ammunition, they could have posed a threat to virtually anything capable of fitting in that room.

Yes I know. But he still came close to dying to small arms fire, while Lorgar survived a Titan gun.

Guilliman is a bitch primarch though.
Angron is pretty consistent in what i've read of the HH (maybe because ADB mainly deals with him) in that he's nigh unstoppable.

Guilliman is not a 'bitch Primarch'. He held his own against both Angron and Lorgar in Betrayer for a while. Why is he a 'bitch Primarch'..?

Not both of them really. At the same time anyway.
He knocked Lorgar out of the fight almost immediately, and was falling apart against Angron.
I don't really mean bitch seriously.
He still had his flagship blown apart and was completely fine and punching dudes in space.
Angron is a primarch built to inspire his men with his insane feats on the front lines. Guilliman is more built to do that with rousing speeches.

 ThePrimordial wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:

 ThePrimordial wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
He still oblieterated those would-be Assassins, not to mention depending on the bolter ammunition, they could have posed a threat to virtually anything capable of fitting in that room.

Yes I know. But he still came close to dying to small arms fire, while Lorgar survived a Titan gun.

Guilliman is a bitch primarch though.
Angron is pretty consistent in what i've read of the HH (maybe because ADB mainly deals with him) in that he's nigh unstoppable.

Guilliman is not a 'bitch Primarch'. He held his own against both Angron and Lorgar in Betrayer for a while. Why is he a 'bitch Primarch'..?

Not both of them really. At the same time anyway.
He knocked Lorgar out of the fight almost immediately, and was falling apart against Angron.
I don't really mean bitch seriously.
He still had his flagship blown apart and was completely fine and punching dudes in space.
Angron is a primarch built to inspire his men with his insane feats on the front lines. Guilliman is more built to do that with rousing speeches.

Angron wasn't built that way at all, and nor does he act that way. He spends the entirety of Betrayer isolated from his men because he just rushes off and leaves them in the dust.

I think it's heavily implied Lorgar only survived being shot by a titan gun because of chaos sorcery.

that said, the thing to remember about Primarchs? They're basicly Greek gods. I don't mean that they're analogues to gods or anything, but rather they're presented in the same way, larger in life greater then humanity in all regards, including their flaws. The Horus Heresy is best viewed through that lens IMHO. and most certinly NOT as hard sci-fi

BrianDavion wrote:
I think it's heavily implied Lorgar only survived being shot by a titan gun because of chaos sorcery.

that said, the thing to remember about Primarchs? They're basicly Greek gods. I don't mean that they're analogues to gods or anything, but rather they're presented in the same way, larger in life greater then humanity in all regards, including their flaws. The Horus Heresy is best viewed through that lens IMHO. and most certinly NOT as hard sci-fi

Well chaos sorcery healed him quickly... I may have picked a bad example but my point still stands that the toughness of the Primarchs depends entirely on who's writing them and what they need from the scene.

The whole 40k universe is more fantasy in space than science fiction. I like the analogy of the Primarchs to Greek gods.

 ImAGeek wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
I think it's heavily implied Lorgar only survived being shot by a titan gun because of chaos sorcery.

that said, the thing to remember about Primarchs? They're basicly Greek gods. I don't mean that they're analogues to gods or anything, but rather they're presented in the same way, larger in life greater then humanity in all regards, including their flaws. The Horus Heresy is best viewed through that lens IMHO. and most certinly NOT as hard sci-fi

Well chaos sorcery healed him quickly... I may have picked a bad example but my point still stands that the toughness of the Primarchs depends entirely on who's writing them and what they need from the scene.

The whole 40k universe is more fantasy in space than science fiction. I like the analogy of the Primarchs to Greek gods.

it really does make a lot of sense. everything about the Greek gods was magnified, their virtues yes, but also their vices. And I think we see this in the Primarchs as well

 ImAGeek wrote:

 ThePrimordial wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:

 ThePrimordial wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
He still oblieterated those would-be Assassins, not to mention depending on the bolter ammunition, they could have posed a threat to virtually anything capable of fitting in that room.

Yes I know. But he still came close to dying to small arms fire, while Lorgar survived a Titan gun.

Guilliman is a bitch primarch though.
Angron is pretty consistent in what i've read of the HH (maybe because ADB mainly deals with him) in that he's nigh unstoppable.

Guilliman is not a 'bitch Primarch'. He held his own against both Angron and Lorgar in Betrayer for a while. Why is he a 'bitch Primarch'..?

Not both of them really. At the same time anyway.
He knocked Lorgar out of the fight almost immediately, and was falling apart against Angron.
I don't really mean bitch seriously.
He still had his flagship blown apart and was completely fine and punching dudes in space.
Angron is a primarch built to inspire his men with his insane feats on the front lines. Guilliman is more built to do that with rousing speeches.

Angron wasn't built that way at all, and nor does he act that way. He spends the entirety of Betrayer isolated from his men because he just rushes off and leaves them in the dust.

He was built for that.
The whole crux of Angron's character is that he's a broken god. He's dealt with so much gak that even as a Primarch, a hero above all others, he's been broken. Of course he doesn't work as intended.

They are basically completly inviscible to anything, but the most powerful psychic or «magic» powers. To my knowledge, only a Primarch or the Emperor have ever been hable to kill or simply defeat a Primarch (possible exception for the anathema and Horus).They can survive plasma weapon blast, tank shells, space vacuum, etc and destroy armored tanks with their bare hands.

epronovost wrote:
They are basically completly inviscible to anything, but the most powerful psychic or «magic» powers. To my knowledge, only a Primarch or the Emperor have ever been hable to kill or simply defeat a Primarch (possible exception for the anathema and Horus).They can survive plasma weapon blast, tank shells, space vacuum, etc and destroy armored tanks with their bare hands.

Abbaddon, debatably killed a Primarch.

Curze was killed by a Callidus assassin.

The Night Haunter wrote:"Your presence does not surprise me, Assassin. I have known of you ever since your craft entered the Eastern Fringes. Why did I not have you killed? Because your mission and the act you are about to commit proves the truth of all I have ever said or done. I merely punished those who had wronged, just as your false Emperor now seeks to punish me. Death is nothing compared to vindication."

But he allowed it. (And she may have been armed with a C'tan phase blade.)

 j31c3n wrote:
Curze was killed by a Callidus assassin.

The Night Haunter wrote:"Your presence does not surprise me, Assassin. I have known of you ever since your craft entered the Eastern Fringes. Why did I not have you killed? Because your mission and the act you are about to commit proves the truth of all I have ever said or done. I merely punished those who had wronged, just as your false Emperor now seeks to punish me. Death is nothing compared to vindication."

But he allowed it. (And she may have been armed with a C'tan phase blade.)

May have? Callidus assassins are famed for the use of Necron Phase Blades. Not to mention that previously Curze IIRC had walked off hits from power weapons. All of the Primarchs are demigods, not even remotely related to mortals save humanoid form. Hell Corax just walked off lascannon shots that penned his armor.

Guillaman is t6, he was wearing no armour, the alpha legion guys were probably vets so let's give them sniper, if I remember there was 5/6 of them so 10/12 shots, 3 to hit, 4 to wound, no armour save for wearing no armour, so yeah they probably could kill him... And any other non armoured primarch, that's fluff and rules gelling pretty nicely, how often does that happen?

I think there were 8 guys. Probably more.
In the middle of the struggle Bobby G said 7 were dead.

there you go then, no armour, toughness is wont matter either, so yeah, I can see why he thought they could kill him.

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
He still oblieterated those would-be Assassins, not to mention depending on the bolter ammunition, they could have posed a threat to virtually anything capable of fitting in that room.

Yes I know. But he still came close to dying to small arms fire, while Lorgar survived a Titan gun.

Yes, but Bolters detonate INSIDE of the target. That's like when Jack Sparrow shoved a cherry bomb into the skeleton guy right before he turned human again and blew up. The Bolter is a .75 Calibre (which is enough to make a human explode, even without detonating) explosive round with a detonation similar to a 32 MM grenade. It was designed to defeat monstrous creatures and infantry.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ImAGeek wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
I think it's heavily implied Lorgar only survived being shot by a titan gun because of chaos sorcery.

that said, the thing to remember about Primarchs? They're basicly Greek gods. I don't mean that they're analogues to gods or anything, but rather they're presented in the same way, larger in life greater then humanity in all regards, including their flaws. The Horus Heresy is best viewed through that lens IMHO. and most certinly NOT as hard sci-fi

Well chaos sorcery healed him quickly... I may have picked a bad example but my point still stands that the toughness of the Primarchs depends entirely on who's writing them and what they need from the scene.

The whole 40k universe is more fantasy in space than science fiction. I like the analogy of the Primarchs to Greek gods.

Personally, I find it easier to swallow when you just imagine it all as propaganda told from the perspective of whichever faction the protagonist belongs to. That way, I get to have my own little version of 40k that actually makes sense and is logical.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Formosa wrote:
Guillaman is t6, he was wearing no armour, the alpha legion guys were probably vets so let's give them sniper, if I remember there was 5/6 of them so 10/12 shots, 3 to hit, 4 to wound, no armour save for wearing no armour, so yeah they probably could kill him... And any other non armoured primarch, that's fluff and rules gelling pretty nicely, how often does that happen?

Guilliman's only Toughness 6? I feel like he should be Toughness 8 with a 3++ Invulnerable save.

Except Primarch armor is more or less superficial then truly functional. Corax, Angron, Fulgrim, etc all wade through fire without giving a damn, and are able to tank the blows of each other (which rip apart tanks and space marines) and only receive mild bruising of the flesh. Plus every single weapon that has killed a Primarch has been either supernatural or outright ignores durability. Curze, Sanguinius, Manus, and Horus all fell to such weapons.

Also, excuse me as I laugh my ass off at any idea of 40K being remotely "realistic" and not blatant fantasy. The very concept of space marines and melee even existing is firmly centered in fantasy.

 Wyzilla wrote:
Except Primarch armor is more or less superficial then truly functional. Corax, Angron, Fulgrim, etc all wade through fire without giving a damn, and are able to tank the blows of each other (which rip apart tanks and space marines) and only receive mild bruising of the flesh. Plus every single weapon that has killed a Primarch has been either supernatural or outright ignores durability. Curze, Sanguinius, Manus, and Horus all fell to such weapons.

Also, excuse me as I laugh my ass off at any idea of 40K being remotely "realistic" and not blatant fantasy. The very concept of space marines and melee even existing is firmly centered in fantasy.

The way I like to think of it is that after millenia of ballistic warfare beings the primary means of killing people, ballistic armour evolved to the point that melee became viable again, since bullets and lasers were barely doing diddly squat.

 dusara217 wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
Except Primarch armor is more or less superficial then truly functional. Corax, Angron, Fulgrim, etc all wade through fire without giving a damn, and are able to tank the blows of each other (which rip apart tanks and space marines) and only receive mild bruising of the flesh. Plus every single weapon that has killed a Primarch has been either supernatural or outright ignores durability. Curze, Sanguinius, Manus, and Horus all fell to such weapons.

Also, excuse me as I laugh my ass off at any idea of 40K being remotely "realistic" and not blatant fantasy. The very concept of space marines and melee even existing is firmly centered in fantasy.

The way I like to think of it is that after millenia of ballistic warfare beings the primary means of killing people, ballistic armour evolved to the point that melee became viable again, since bullets and lasers were barely doing diddly squat.

Except not only is that clearly not the case, but armor evolving would not suddenly bring back melee weapons, it would make them MORE ineffective, because they would generate less kinetic energy then a gun. Suddenly having better armor doesn't mean swords come back, it means people start using bigger guns with more efficient ammo loads at penning targets.... like what happens in real life. Especially chainweapons, which are fething stupid in absolutely every way and have no right to penetrate armor at all. Were your theory true, nothing besides power weapons would exist in 40K, except even that wouldn't make sense, as there's still plasma guns, meltas, grav guns, railguns, gauss guns, etc.

By that logic, tanks would be ramming each other opposed to developing HEAT and Sabot rounds and increasing cannon sizes to 100mm+ as armor advanced over WWII and simple solid slugs no longer did the job. Or early firearms would have been completely abandoned due to their inability to penetrate fully armored Chevaliers instead of adding more gunpowder.

"Armor advanced to such a degree" is an idiotic excuse that does not work at all in practice. If armor truly advanced to such a degree, then no weapons would work, because melee is even further lacking the kinetic energy of bullets, or the raw thermal energy of lasers and plasma. And that's clearly not the case at all in 40K. Hell, people in 40k can regularly carry weapons the size of a rifle that can melt an MBT down to a warped pile of scrap metal.

40K is pure fantasy. There's no form of logic to get around this. It has always been just Warhammer Fantasy in Space, and are best could be called a fantasy space opera or "science fantasy", although that word combination is of itself an oxymoron.

 Wyzilla wrote:

 j31c3n wrote:
Curze was killed by a Callidus assassin.

The Night Haunter wrote:"Your presence does not surprise me, Assassin. I have known of you ever since your craft entered the Eastern Fringes. Why did I not have you killed? Because your mission and the act you are about to commit proves the truth of all I have ever said or done. I merely punished those who had wronged, just as your false Emperor now seeks to punish me. Death is nothing compared to vindication."

But he allowed it. (And she may have been armed with a C'tan phase blade.)

May have? Callidus assassins are famed for the use of Necron Phase Blades. Not to mention that previously Curze IIRC had walked off hits from power weapons. All of the Primarchs are demigods, not even remotely related to mortals save humanoid form. Hell Corax just walked off lascannon shots that penned his armor.

I only say may have because I don't know what date the Callidus temple started using the phase blades.

 ImAGeek wrote:
It really, maybe more than anything else, depends who's writing them. Lorgar survived being shot with a Titan plasma weapon in Betrayer. Guilliman almost got killed by bolter fire in Unremembered Empire.

Which pretty much makes them kinda like Space Marines.

They're invincible when the author needs them to be, and made of tissue paper when not.

 Wyzilla wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
Except Primarch armor is more or less superficial then truly functional. Corax, Angron, Fulgrim, etc all wade through fire without giving a damn, and are able to tank the blows of each other (which rip apart tanks and space marines) and only receive mild bruising of the flesh. Plus every single weapon that has killed a Primarch has been either supernatural or outright ignores durability. Curze, Sanguinius, Manus, and Horus all fell to such weapons.

Also, excuse me as I laugh my ass off at any idea of 40K being remotely "realistic" and not blatant fantasy. The very concept of space marines and melee even existing is firmly centered in fantasy.

The way I like to think of it is that after millenia of ballistic warfare beings the primary means of killing people, ballistic armour evolved to the point that melee became viable again, since bullets and lasers were barely doing diddly squat.

Except not only is that clearly not the case, but armor evolving would not suddenly bring back melee weapons, it would make them MORE ineffective, because they would generate less kinetic energy then a gun. Suddenly having better armor doesn't mean swords come back, it means people start using bigger guns with more efficient ammo loads at penning targets.... like what happens in real life. Especially chainweapons, which are fething stupid in absolutely every way and have no right to penetrate armor at all. Were your theory true, nothing besides power weapons would exist in 40K, except even that wouldn't make sense, as there's still plasma guns, meltas, grav guns, railguns, gauss guns, etc.

By that logic, tanks would be ramming each other opposed to developing HEAT and Sabot rounds and increasing cannon sizes to 100mm+ as armor advanced over WWII and simple solid slugs no longer did the job. Or early firearms would have been completely abandoned due to their inability to penetrate fully armored Chevaliers instead of adding more gunpowder.

"Armor advanced to such a degree" is an idiotic excuse that does not work at all in practice. If armor truly advanced to such a degree, then no weapons would work, because melee is even further lacking the kinetic energy of bullets, or the raw thermal energy of lasers and plasma. And that's clearly not the case at all in 40K. Hell, people in 40k can regularly carry weapons the size of a rifle that can melt an MBT down to a warped pile of scrap metal.

40K is pure fantasy. There's no form of logic to get around this. It has always been just Warhammer Fantasy in Space, and are best could be called a fantasy space opera or "science fantasy", although that word combination is of itself an oxymoron.

and what if that armour advanced to the point that even advanced weaponry could not dent it, or advanced at a pace that ranged weaponry could not match, theoretically speaking this could warrant a kind of come back of weapons that are designed to be used at extreme short range to punch through this armour, or close combat weapons to take advantage of weak points that ranged weapons don't have the accuracy to hit.

there is also the shock factor to consider, its pretty awful seeing your mates blown apart next to you, its even worse to see that your weapons are doing nothing and the armoured behemoth is now punching people to death, it also clears out buildings etc much faster knowing that the enemy cannot effectively hurt you and they know the same.

just because in our current age such things are "impossible" and "stupid" doesn't mean that it cant and wont happen, go back to the 1800's and tell someone that we will be able to destroy cities from the other side of the planet with flying machines and wars will be fought with giant metal boxes that are immune to rifles, you would be laughed at.

dusara217 wrote:Yes, but Bolters detonate INSIDE of the target. That's like when Jack Sparrow shoved a cherry bomb into the skeleton guy right before he turned human again and blew up. The Bolter is a .75 Calibre (which is enough to make a human explode, even without detonating)

Maybe. It's all about energy transfer. A .50 machinegun round is projecting a 42-45 gram round at a muzzle velocity of around 3000 feet per second (900m/s).

A .50 AE is only 21 grams and traveling at 470 m/s. Half the weight, half the velocity, same projectile diameter. It's going to put an unpleasant hole in somebody, but it's not going to be removing any limbs.

Without knowing the specifics of its grain weight and muzzle velocity, it's rather difficult to tell what a bolter round would do on its own. It's safe to say it would be a good way to put somebody down, but making a human "explode" on its own might be a stretch. Fortunately, the round itself explodes which should usually make its ballistic qualities moot so long as it can penetrate the armor.

 Formosa wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
Except Primarch armor is more or less superficial then truly functional. Corax, Angron, Fulgrim, etc all wade through fire without giving a damn, and are able to tank the blows of each other (which rip apart tanks and space marines) and only receive mild bruising of the flesh. Plus every single weapon that has killed a Primarch has been either supernatural or outright ignores durability. Curze, Sanguinius, Manus, and Horus all fell to such weapons.

Also, excuse me as I laugh my ass off at any idea of 40K being remotely "realistic" and not blatant fantasy. The very concept of space marines and melee even existing is firmly centered in fantasy.

The way I like to think of it is that after millenia of ballistic warfare beings the primary means of killing people, ballistic armour evolved to the point that melee became viable again, since bullets and lasers were barely doing diddly squat.

Except not only is that clearly not the case, but armor evolving would not suddenly bring back melee weapons, it would make them MORE ineffective, because they would generate less kinetic energy then a gun. Suddenly having better armor doesn't mean swords come back, it means people start using bigger guns with more efficient ammo loads at penning targets.... like what happens in real life. Especially chainweapons, which are fething stupid in absolutely every way and have no right to penetrate armor at all. Were your theory true, nothing besides power weapons would exist in 40K, except even that wouldn't make sense, as there's still plasma guns, meltas, grav guns, railguns, gauss guns, etc.

By that logic, tanks would be ramming each other opposed to developing HEAT and Sabot rounds and increasing cannon sizes to 100mm+ as armor advanced over WWII and simple solid slugs no longer did the job. Or early firearms would have been completely abandoned due to their inability to penetrate fully armored Chevaliers instead of adding more gunpowder.

"Armor advanced to such a degree" is an idiotic excuse that does not work at all in practice. If armor truly advanced to such a degree, then no weapons would work, because melee is even further lacking the kinetic energy of bullets, or the raw thermal energy of lasers and plasma. And that's clearly not the case at all in 40K. Hell, people in 40k can regularly carry weapons the size of a rifle that can melt an MBT down to a warped pile of scrap metal.

40K is pure fantasy. There's no form of logic to get around this. It has always been just Warhammer Fantasy in Space, and are best could be called a fantasy space opera or "science fantasy", although that word combination is of itself an oxymoron.

and what if that armour advanced to the point that even advanced weaponry could not dent it, or advanced at a pace that ranged weaponry could not match, theoretically speaking this could warrant a kind of come back of weapons that are designed to be used at extreme short range to punch through this armour, or close combat weapons to take advantage of weak points that ranged weapons don't have the accuracy to hit.

there is also the shock factor to consider, its pretty awful seeing your mates blown apart next to you, its even worse to see that your weapons are doing nothing and the armoured behemoth is now punching people to death, it also clears out buildings etc much faster knowing that the enemy cannot effectively hurt you and they know the same.

just because in our current age such things are "impossible" and "stupid" doesn't mean that it cant and wont happen, go back to the 1800's and tell someone that we will be able to destroy cities from the other side of the planet with flying machines and wars will be fought with giant metal boxes that are immune to rifles, you would be laughed at.

This. Such armour that would be almost immune to any kind of small arms fire would be exceedingly expensive and only used by the specialist of Special Forces (see: Space Marines, Sisters of Battle, Inquisition). In my headcanon, Power Armour is immune to everything but Plasma and similar weaponry, which can be deflected by Terminator and Artificer Armour. Why? Because technology and alloys have advanced to the point that only the hottest of materials can weaken them enough to be penetrated (It's been forty fething thousand years, look at how far we've come in just the last 500, and you think that's impossible?). And this is now why we have assault marines and the like, because a.) psychological effect of seeing a monster smashing an entire squad without taking a scratch using a friggin knife and b.) The only way to penetrate this armour is at extremely close range, where the accuracy necessary to hit those joints and other weak spots is available.

 dusara217 wrote:
In my headcanon, Power Armour is immune to everything but Plasma and similar weaponry

A stub pistol can kill a Space Marine.

 Formosa wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
Except Primarch armor is more or less superficial then truly functional. Corax, Angron, Fulgrim, etc all wade through fire without giving a damn, and are able to tank the blows of each other (which rip apart tanks and space marines) and only receive mild bruising of the flesh. Plus every single weapon that has killed a Primarch has been either supernatural or outright ignores durability. Curze, Sanguinius, Manus, and Horus all fell to such weapons.

Also, excuse me as I laugh my ass off at any idea of 40K being remotely "realistic" and not blatant fantasy. The very concept of space marines and melee even existing is firmly centered in fantasy.

The way I like to think of it is that after millenia of ballistic warfare beings the primary means of killing people, ballistic armour evolved to the point that melee became viable again, since bullets and lasers were barely doing diddly squat.

Except not only is that clearly not the case, but armor evolving would not suddenly bring back melee weapons, it would make them MORE ineffective, because they would generate less kinetic energy then a gun. Suddenly having better armor doesn't mean swords come back, it means people start using bigger guns with more efficient ammo loads at penning targets.... like what happens in real life. Especially chainweapons, which are fething stupid in absolutely every way and have no right to penetrate armor at all. Were your theory true, nothing besides power weapons would exist in 40K, except even that wouldn't make sense, as there's still plasma guns, meltas, grav guns, railguns, gauss guns, etc.

By that logic, tanks would be ramming each other opposed to developing HEAT and Sabot rounds and increasing cannon sizes to 100mm+ as armor advanced over WWII and simple solid slugs no longer did the job. Or early firearms would have been completely abandoned due to their inability to penetrate fully armored Chevaliers instead of adding more gunpowder.

"Armor advanced to such a degree" is an idiotic excuse that does not work at all in practice. If armor truly advanced to such a degree, then no weapons would work, because melee is even further lacking the kinetic energy of bullets, or the raw thermal energy of lasers and plasma. And that's clearly not the case at all in 40K. Hell, people in 40k can regularly carry weapons the size of a rifle that can melt an MBT down to a warped pile of scrap metal.

40K is pure fantasy. There's no form of logic to get around this. It has always been just Warhammer Fantasy in Space, and are best could be called a fantasy space opera or "science fantasy", although that word combination is of itself an oxymoron.

and what if that armour advanced to the point that even advanced weaponry could not dent it, or advanced at a pace that ranged weaponry could not match, theoretically speaking this could warrant a kind of come back of weapons that are designed to be used at extreme short range to punch through this armour, or close combat weapons to take advantage of weak points that ranged weapons don't have the accuracy to hit.

there is also the shock factor to consider, its pretty awful seeing your mates blown apart next to you, its even worse to see that your weapons are doing nothing and the armoured behemoth is now punching people to death, it also clears out buildings etc much faster knowing that the enemy cannot effectively hurt you and they know the same.

just because in our current age such things are "impossible" and "stupid" doesn't mean that it cant and wont happen, go back to the 1800's and tell someone that we will be able to destroy cities from the other side of the planet with flying machines and wars will be fought with giant metal boxes that are immune to rifles, you would be laughed at.

Except it's already happened. And it didn't result in weapon technology regressing, but surprise surprise, ballistic weaponry instead advanced to meet the new required conditions and made armor of the time obsolete. I also don't think you even understand exactly how hilarious your claims are, because we are never going to advance to a point where armor renders ballistic weapons almost obsolete- it merely leads to ranged weapons becoming more powerful. It doesn't matter if your armor stops something from penetrating- you merely develop a ballistic weapon that delivers enough concussive force to turn the person inside the armor into jelly. The strength of the armor merely further scales up the weapons used, possibly even to the level of the Davy Crockett.

No realistic force is ever going to return to using swords as a viable method of war. It doesn't matter if it's an effective terror weapon against enemy morale, or armor takes some "incredible" leap forward, melee warfare in a civilian on our level of tech or further is quite simply fething stupid- there's no other way to describe it. You may see the occasional melee charge bayonet charge once in a blue moon, but stuff like Assault Marines, the Black Templars, Khorne Zerkers, Orks, etc would never work. If 40K were truly realistic, with its level of technology, the Imperium would be defended by a self replicating swarm of Von Neumann drones armed with laser weapons capable of fighting in orbit and on the ground that drown everything in shear numbers and firepower. Hell combat in 40K shouldn't happen at all because a thing called orbital superiority exists.

And again, it's not immune to small arms fire. Literally every single goddamn faction in 40K has weapons that can be wielded by basic infantry that will turn anyone wearing power armor into a smoking piece of ash. Weapons that fire globs of plasma that burn at over twenty million degrees are not only usable by infantry, but COMMON. Not to mention that melee weapons wouldn't do jack gak against somebody wearing power armor unless they were hilariously strong or had something like a power weapon. Instead, chain weapons are among the most common weapons in the galaxy, despite being the singular dumbest, outright impossible weapon design in all of 40K.

You have to either be living under a rock or have some really straaaange view of warfare to think 40K makes even a lick of sense. Wake up you two. It doesn't. 40K is silly as feth and makes about as much sense as a turtle in an Abraham Lincoln costume riding on top of a unicycle. We're talking about the universe where TITANS and IMPERIAL KNIGHTS exist, when they should be instantly killed as soon as they're deployed by either a massive lance strike from orbit or several cruise missiles. 40K isn't realistic at all. It's Warhammer Fantasy set in space. It's how its started out and how it will always be unless it cuts almost all of the factions in the game.

If your armor is so good that it can tank plasma guns or bolters, melee weapons aren't doing jack gak. Ever heard of something called energy density? Yeah. A bolt is focusing a lot more energy into a much finer area then a chainsword or normal blade ever will. Seriously, are you even both self aware of how crazy the stuff you're saying is?

 j31c3n wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:
In my headcanon, Power Armour is immune to everything but Plasma and similar weaponry

A stub pistol can kill a Space Marine.

Depends where you hit. Repeated hits to the eye socket? Possibly.

Astartes have displayed the ability to shrug off massed lasfire and similar on multiple occasions.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 j31c3n wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:
In my headcanon, Power Armour is immune to everything but Plasma and similar weaponry

A stub pistol can kill a Space Marine.

Depends where you hit. Repeated hits to the eye socket? Possibly.

Astartes have displayed the ability to shrug off massed lasfire and similar on multiple occasions.

Yeah, if they keep rolling that 3+ save, sure.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 j31c3n wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:
In my headcanon, Power Armour is immune to everything but Plasma and similar weaponry

A stub pistol can kill a Space Marine.

Depends where you hit. Repeated hits to the eye socket? Possibly.

Astartes have displayed the ability to shrug off massed lasfire and similar on multiple occasions.

On the subject of realism, that's why god gave 'Murica the FGM 418 Javelin.

Hell combat in 40K shouldn't happen at all because a thing called orbital superiority exists.

by that logic infantry combat today should never exist because of nukes. no matter the level of airpower, you will need boots on the ground at some point or another if you need to take targets intact

So my question is what makes them so resilient? Say if a Vindicare Assassin had his rifle trailed on Angron's helmet-less head and put a round right into his eye ball, would the round explode his head like it would almost anything else or would it bounce off his eye-ball Man of Steel style? Because to me, that just seems silly, it's perfectly OK to have these larger then life characters doing amazing feats, but if someone shoved a Melta Gun (Say some Sister of Battle...) down a Primarches throat and fired, why wouldn't they at least be down for the count for a good while? Knowing how Melta guns are supposed to work, if fired off inside a Primarch i'd like to know what would happen.

BrianDavion wrote:

Hell combat in 40K shouldn't happen at all because a thing called orbital superiority exists.

by that logic infantry combat today should never exist because of nukes. no matter the level of airpower, you will need boots on the ground at some point or another if you need to take targets intact

Or you just use precision strikes from high orbit. Lance batteries are largely dial-a-yield, doing anything from cutting up continents to dropping precise shots on small targets from very far away. Ground troops wouldn't be that useful is the enemy is capable of wiping them off the map quite literally, with no fear of annoying things like fallout radiation or Geneva conventions. It'd be the 40k version of a cruise missile, only a hell of a lot more effective with literal laser precision.

Plus if you're capable of making planetoid sized space stations like the Imperium, you don't need planets anymore except for raw materials.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
So my question is what makes them so resilient? Say if a Vindicare Assassin had his rifle trailed on Angron's helmet-less head and put a round right into his eye ball, would the round explode his head like it would almost anything else or would it bounce off his eye-ball Man of Steel style? Because to me, that just seems silly, it's perfectly OK to have these larger then life characters doing amazing feats, but if someone shoved a Melta Gun (Say some Sister of Battle...) down a Primarches throat and fired, why wouldn't they at least be down for the count for a good while? Knowing how Melta guns are supposed to work, if fired off inside a Primarch i'd like to know what would happen.

Considering Corax took lascannon shots and survived, they're probably lose an organ. Which they can walk off and either replace with a transplant or bionics. Horus for example had part of a ship fall on him and "just" suffered a punctured lung, and Angron had several tonnes of rocks dropped on him- neither really doing any damage.

Of course, Primarchs have more in common with Greater Daemons then humans.

What makes Primarchs so resilient, in my opinion, is the warp juice inside them. Pair that with the finest armour and the unnatural gene science of the Emperor and you have a tough sob.

If it weren't for the warp juice, they wouldn't be quite so hard to take down. More than likely about as tough as a Custodian on a par with Valdor maybe?

Like Wyzilla says, more like Greater Daemons than humans.

They have a very different biology even to Space Marines. When Curze is almost dead in Prince of Crows it says he has over 100 wounds that would kill a space marine, and the Apothecaries can't make enough sense of his biology to actually do much. I imagine they have lots of ablative organs, extra hearts, lungs etc as back ups, generally tougher skeleton, very very fast healing capacity, maybe like valves that shut off to stop blood loss, basically all the extra stuff a SM has over a human but more so.

They are as tough as the plot needs them to be - no more, no less.

RG was nearly killed by a Alpha Legion hit team armed with nothing more than Bolters IIRC in Unremembered Empire...................others have took incredibly powerful hits and not flinched.

Its 40k, It depends.

 Pilau Rice wrote:
What makes Primarchs so resilient, in my opinion, is the warp juice inside them. Pair that with the finest armour and the unnatural gene science of the Emperor and you have a tough sob.

If it weren't for the warp juice, they wouldn't be quite so hard to take down. More than likely about as tough as a Custodian on a par with Valdor maybe?

Like Wyzilla says, more like Greater Daemons than humans.

Not surprising either. Their creation was inherently magical and probably involved the Emperor stealing knowledge from the Chaos Gods to learn how to create souls. Hell they're stronger then Greater Daemons even, what with Sanguinius making a habit of breaking Bloodthristers in combat. Stronger then Daemon Princes as well. It's a shame we so rarely see the Daemon Primarchs actually take to the field- Magnus pretty much broke the Space Wolves upon his mission of vengeance.

 Wyzilla wrote:

Not surprising either. Their creation was inherently magical and probably involved the Emperor stealing knowledge from the Chaos Gods to learn how to create souls. Hell they're stronger then Greater Daemons even, what with Sanguinius making a habit of breaking Bloodthristers in combat. Stronger then Daemon Princes as well. .

He still died. Couldn't be that tough.

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

Not surprising either. Their creation was inherently magical and probably involved the Emperor stealing knowledge from the Chaos Gods to learn how to create souls. Hell they're stronger then Greater Daemons even, what with Sanguinius making a habit of breaking Bloodthristers in combat. Stronger then Daemon Princes as well. .

He still died. Couldn't be that tough.

He died to Horus though, who was also a Primarch so as tough as Sanguinius normally, and also amped up with Chaos power on top of that. I mean, Horus almost destroyed the Emperor...

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

Not surprising either. Their creation was inherently magical and probably involved the Emperor stealing knowledge from the Chaos Gods to learn how to create souls. Hell they're stronger then Greater Daemons even, what with Sanguinius making a habit of breaking Bloodthristers in combat. Stronger then Daemon Princes as well. .

He still died. Couldn't be that tough.

He was killed by a being able to permanently cripple the Emperor of Mankind himself, the single most powerful psyker in the 40K universe. Sanguinius was extremely powerful and tough.
It's been suggested that perhaps only a Primarch can kill another Primarch, while it is not true (Konrad Curze and to some extend Horus and Vulkan). But considering just how convoluted the methods and how sophisticated the tools involved in mortals killing a Primarch, the authors of the Horus Heresy might be driving the point that Primarchs are tough because they are Primarchs.

Wasn't Dorn killed by sheer weight of numbers of IW at the Iron Cage? Or was he actually killed by Perturabo?

 ImAGeek wrote:
Wasn't Dorn killed by sheer weight of numbers of IW at the Iron Cage? Or was he actually killed by Perturabo?

Lexicanum says Dorn is missing, presumably killed, after an assault on a Chaos Battleship during a Black Crusade.

Rogal Dorn is missing and presumed dead after attacking a Black Crusade fleet with a vastly outnumbered force. Seeing the importance of attacking the enemy fleet while they were still preparing he relied on hit-and-run attacks until his reinforcements could arrive. Dorn went missing on board the Despoiler Class Battleship Sword of Sacrilege after leading a desperate attack on its bridge. Only his hand was recovered which is kept in stasis by his chapter.

I'm pretty sure Dorn was alive and well after the Ultramarines came to the Imperial Fists' rescue. Although I vaguely remember reading he getting killed in the Iron cage on Lexicanum.

Weird, I always thought he died at the Iron Cage for some reason, and all the IF could recover of him as they retreated was his hand.

 dusara217 wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
Except Primarch armor is more or less superficial then truly functional. Corax, Angron, Fulgrim, etc all wade through fire without giving a damn, and are able to tank the blows of each other (which rip apart tanks and space marines) and only receive mild bruising of the flesh. Plus every single weapon that has killed a Primarch has been either supernatural or outright ignores durability. Curze, Sanguinius, Manus, and Horus all fell to such weapons.

Also, excuse me as I laugh my ass off at any idea of 40K being remotely "realistic" and not blatant fantasy. The very concept of space marines and melee even existing is firmly centered in fantasy.

The way I like to think of it is that after millenia of ballistic warfare beings the primary means of killing people, ballistic armour evolved to the point that melee became viable again, since bullets and lasers were barely doing diddly squat.

Except not only is that clearly not the case, but armor evolving would not suddenly bring back melee weapons, it would make them MORE ineffective, because they would generate less kinetic energy then a gun. Suddenly having better armor doesn't mean swords come back, it means people start using bigger guns with more efficient ammo loads at penning targets.... like what happens in real life. Especially chainweapons, which are fething stupid in absolutely every way and have no right to penetrate armor at all. Were your theory true, nothing besides power weapons would exist in 40K, except even that wouldn't make sense, as there's still plasma guns, meltas, grav guns, railguns, gauss guns, etc.

By that logic, tanks would be ramming each other opposed to developing HEAT and Sabot rounds and increasing cannon sizes to 100mm+ as armor advanced over WWII and simple solid slugs no longer did the job. Or early firearms would have been completely abandoned due to their inability to penetrate fully armored Chevaliers instead of adding more gunpowder.

"Armor advanced to such a degree" is an idiotic excuse that does not work at all in practice. If armor truly advanced to such a degree, then no weapons would work, because melee is even further lacking the kinetic energy of bullets, or the raw thermal energy of lasers and plasma. And that's clearly not the case at all in 40K. Hell, people in 40k can regularly carry weapons the size of a rifle that can melt an MBT down to a warped pile of scrap metal.

40K is pure fantasy. There's no form of logic to get around this. It has always been just Warhammer Fantasy in Space, and are best could be called a fantasy space opera or "science fantasy", although that word combination is of itself an oxymoron.

and what if that armour advanced to the point that even advanced weaponry could not dent it, or advanced at a pace that ranged weaponry could not match, theoretically speaking this could warrant a kind of come back of weapons that are designed to be used at extreme short range to punch through this armour, or close combat weapons to take advantage of weak points that ranged weapons don't have the accuracy to hit.

there is also the shock factor to consider, its pretty awful seeing your mates blown apart next to you, its even worse to see that your weapons are doing nothing and the armoured behemoth is now punching people to death, it also clears out buildings etc much faster knowing that the enemy cannot effectively hurt you and they know the same.

just because in our current age such things are "impossible" and "stupid" doesn't mean that it cant and wont happen, go back to the 1800's and tell someone that we will be able to destroy cities from the other side of the planet with flying machines and wars will be fought with giant metal boxes that are immune to rifles, you would be laughed at.

This. Such armour that would be almost immune to any kind of small arms fire would be exceedingly expensive and only used by the specialist of Special Forces (see: Space Marines, Sisters of Battle, Inquisition). In my headcanon, Power Armour is immune to everything but Plasma and similar weaponry, which can be deflected by Terminator and Artificer Armour. Why? Because technology and alloys have advanced to the point that only the hottest of materials can weaken them enough to be penetrated (It's been forty fething thousand years, look at how far we've come in just the last 500, and you think that's impossible?). And this is now why we have assault marines and the like, because a.) psychological effect of seeing a monster smashing an entire squad without taking a scratch using a friggin knife and b.) The only way to penetrate this armour is at extremely close range, where the accuracy necessary to hit those joints and other weak spots is available.

What a stupid logic....anything that close combat can do... Range can do better. If you were to suggest that special diamond tip chain sword can cut armor...then they can make a saw weapon with the same diamond tip that can shoot out like a catapult....

Human muscle can't never beat ballistic projectile....strength

Unless it is something like Dune shield...where fast moving will be block out....so slow hand held knife can penitrate THe shield....oh wait..they even have slow bullet or missile thAtteavel so slow that it can penetrate the shield.

 ImAGeek wrote:
Weird, I always thought he died at the Iron Cage for some reason, and all the IF could recover of him as they retreated was his hand.

Nah, that's never been the case as far as I can recall. The Index Astartes states that the Iron Warriors could have wiped them out at any time of their choosing but that Perturabo enjoyed tormenting them too much. Then the UM came to the rescue and they withdrew because they didn't want to fight two legions at once. The missing hand thing happened later, as Icmiracle said.

david choe wrote:
What a stupid logic....anything that close combat can do... Range can do better. If you were to suggest that special diamond tip chain sword can cut armor...then they can make a saw weapon with the same diamond tip that can shoot out like a catapult....

Human muscle can't never beat ballistic projectile....strength

Unless it is something like Dune shield...where fast moving will be block out....so slow hand held knife can penitrate THe shield....oh wait..they even have slow bullet or missile thAtteavel so slow that it can penetrate the shield.

Power weapons in melee might make sense in this context in that they might be too difficult to manufacture or impractical to use in a projectile form (they need to be attached to a power source as well I think). They'd probably be ridiculously expensive if you were spending them in projectile form.

God knows where I got that from then!

 ImAGeek wrote:
God knows where I got that from then!

Nah, it's an easy to make. It's probably because the Iron Cage is much more memorable than some random Black Crusade.

Would've fit better if Dorn really did perish there. If I could I'd change it to nearly all IF going to the Iron Cage, with Sigismund and some others left behind as a precaution or sent on some mission. Then he'd come to the rescue like a boss but only find the remains of his Primarch. Both tragic and awesome

 ImAGeek wrote:
It really, maybe more than anything else, depends who's writing them. Lorgar survived being shot with a Titan plasma weapon in Betrayer. Guilliman almost got killed by bolter fire in Unremembered Empire.

This and a wide variety of inconsistencies make me think the Primarchs have at least an unconscious part in how they die. If they truly are beings of the warp, their emotions play into their physical attributes. Guilliman was a sad sack piece of crap when this attack happened. It's possible that matters, but again...these insane inconsistencies are what seems to define Primarchs.

david choe wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
Except Primarch armor is more or less superficial then truly functional. Corax, Angron, Fulgrim, etc all wade through fire without giving a damn, and are able to tank the blows of each other (which rip apart tanks and space marines) and only receive mild bruising of the flesh. Plus every single weapon that has killed a Primarch has been either supernatural or outright ignores durability. Curze, Sanguinius, Manus, and Horus all fell to such weapons.

Also, excuse me as I laugh my ass off at any idea of 40K being remotely "realistic" and not blatant fantasy. The very concept of space marines and melee even existing is firmly centered in fantasy.

The way I like to think of it is that after millenia of ballistic warfare beings the primary means of killing people, ballistic armour evolved to the point that melee became viable again, since bullets and lasers were barely doing diddly squat.

Except not only is that clearly not the case, but armor evolving would not suddenly bring back melee weapons, it would make them MORE ineffective, because they would generate less kinetic energy then a gun. Suddenly having better armor doesn't mean swords come back, it means people start using bigger guns with more efficient ammo loads at penning targets.... like what happens in real life. Especially chainweapons, which are fething stupid in absolutely every way and have no right to penetrate armor at all. Were your theory true, nothing besides power weapons would exist in 40K, except even that wouldn't make sense, as there's still plasma guns, meltas, grav guns, railguns, gauss guns, etc.

By that logic, tanks would be ramming each other opposed to developing HEAT and Sabot rounds and increasing cannon sizes to 100mm+ as armor advanced over WWII and simple solid slugs no longer did the job. Or early firearms would have been completely abandoned due to their inability to penetrate fully armored Chevaliers instead of adding more gunpowder.

"Armor advanced to such a degree" is an idiotic excuse that does not work at all in practice. If armor truly advanced to such a degree, then no weapons would work, because melee is even further lacking the kinetic energy of bullets, or the raw thermal energy of lasers and plasma. And that's clearly not the case at all in 40K. Hell, people in 40k can regularly carry weapons the size of a rifle that can melt an MBT down to a warped pile of scrap metal.

40K is pure fantasy. There's no form of logic to get around this. It has always been just Warhammer Fantasy in Space, and are best could be called a fantasy space opera or "science fantasy", although that word combination is of itself an oxymoron.

and what if that armour advanced to the point that even advanced weaponry could not dent it, or advanced at a pace that ranged weaponry could not match, theoretically speaking this could warrant a kind of come back of weapons that are designed to be used at extreme short range to punch through this armour, or close combat weapons to take advantage of weak points that ranged weapons don't have the accuracy to hit.

there is also the shock factor to consider, its pretty awful seeing your mates blown apart next to you, its even worse to see that your weapons are doing nothing and the armoured behemoth is now punching people to death, it also clears out buildings etc much faster knowing that the enemy cannot effectively hurt you and they know the same.

just because in our current age such things are "impossible" and "stupid" doesn't mean that it cant and wont happen, go back to the 1800's and tell someone that we will be able to destroy cities from the other side of the planet with flying machines and wars will be fought with giant metal boxes that are immune to rifles, you would be laughed at.

This. Such armour that would be almost immune to any kind of small arms fire would be exceedingly expensive and only used by the specialist of Special Forces (see: Space Marines, Sisters of Battle, Inquisition). In my headcanon, Power Armour is immune to everything but Plasma and similar weaponry, which can be deflected by Terminator and Artificer Armour. Why? Because technology and alloys have advanced to the point that only the hottest of materials can weaken them enough to be penetrated (It's been forty fething thousand years, look at how far we've come in just the last 500, and you think that's impossible?). And this is now why we have assault marines and the like, because a.) psychological effect of seeing a monster smashing an entire squad without taking a scratch using a friggin knife and b.) The only way to penetrate this armour is at extremely close range, where the accuracy necessary to hit those joints and other weak spots is available.

What a stupid logic....anything that close combat can do... Range can do better. If you were to suggest that special diamond tip chain sword can cut armor...then they can make a saw weapon with the same diamond tip that can shoot out like a catapult....

Human muscle can't never beat ballistic projectile....strength

Unless it is something like Dune shield...where fast moving will be block out....so slow hand held knife can penitrate THe shield....oh wait..they even have slow bullet or missile thAtteavel so slow that it can penetrate the shield.

When you travel to the future can you bring me the lottery numbers, as you clearly know everything that can possibly happen, must be quite the gift.

We know that NOW with our current understanding that it is silly, what we don't know is what could happen, how can we?

in a thousand years time ballistic tech might be utterly obsolete, personal weaponry might become the norm and then the future version of you might pop on the future version bof dakka and say "don't be stupid, why would we use guns when we have the butter knife 5000 and we can melt armour with that better than some guns, stupid newbs"

Let's simmer down here and get back to discussing why a titan shot didn't kill Lorgar but bolter shells almost killed Guilliman.

Didn't the book say he put up a shield that deflected most of it?

 Formosa wrote:
When you travel to the future can you bring me the lottery numbers, as you clearly know everything that can possibly happen, must be quite the gift.

We know that NOW with our current understanding that it is silly, what we don't know is what could happen, how can we?

in a thousand years time ballistic tech might be utterly obsolete, personal weaponry might become the norm and then the future version of you might pop on the future version bof dakka and say "don't be stupid, why would we use guns when we have the butter knife 5000 and we can melt armour with that better than some guns, stupid newbs"

I remember reading a post on this forum stating how no matter how far technology for armor advanced, there's just no way EVER that a Space Marine wearing power armor would be able to withstand a shot from a modern tank. That kind of thinking seems pretty naive to me.

So yea, I'm at least willing to entertain the idea that a lot of things that don't make sense now might make sense in the future, especially since we can't foresee future developments in technology and warfare. Plus a lot of the beings we're discussing couldn't even be considered human nor would they follow the same rules (what with the Warp and all).

Lorgar is a psyker, RG is not. He probably just cast invisibility on himself so the Titan couldn't hit him (no snap shooting blast weapons.)


But seriously, at this point he has unleashed all of his power, so he could probably shield the blow.

It probably really does just come down to different writers.

Also, did the bolter rounds incapacitate Guilliman in any significant way? He might take damage but recover quickly, as Primarchs seem to do.

 Formosa wrote:
Didn't the book say he put up a shield that deflected most of it?

Supposedly, but the shield broke and he was still flash-fried in plasma.

 EngulfedObject wrote:
It probably really does just come down to different writers.

Also, did the bolter rounds incapacitate Guilliman in any significant way? He might take damage but recover quickly, as Primarchs seem to do.

I don't think they hit him, it was more 'if they hit me, I'll die' kinda thing.

 ImAGeek wrote:

 EngulfedObject wrote:
It probably really does just come down to different writers.

Also, did the bolter rounds incapacitate Guilliman in any significant way? He might take damage but recover quickly, as Primarchs seem to do.

I don't think they hit him, it was more 'if they hit me, I'll die' kinda thing.

I think this just adds to the idea that a Primarch only dies from what we would call "average old stuff" if they believe they will.

 ImAGeek wrote:

 EngulfedObject wrote:
It probably really does just come down to different writers.

Also, did the bolter rounds incapacitate Guilliman in any significant way? He might take damage but recover quickly, as Primarchs seem to do.

I don't think they hit him, it was more 'if they hit me, I'll die' kinda thing.

Didn't he get hit by several and very nearly died before he killed all the AL? They were apparently well up for the job..............

 Mr Morden wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:

 EngulfedObject wrote:
It probably really does just come down to different writers.

Also, did the bolter rounds incapacitate Guilliman in any significant way? He might take damage but recover quickly, as Primarchs seem to do.

I don't think they hit him, it was more 'if they hit me, I'll die' kinda thing.

Didn't he get hit by several and very nearly died before he killed all the AL? They were apparently well up for the job..............

He was hit, but this can hardly be the first time he's taken enemy fire. I think it being one of his first encounters with traitor marines made it significant and made him believe his life was in danger.

 ImAGeek wrote:

 EngulfedObject wrote:
It probably really does just come down to different writers.

Also, did the bolter rounds incapacitate Guilliman in any significant way? He might take damage but recover quickly, as Primarchs seem to do.

I don't think they hit him, it was more 'if they hit me, I'll die' kinda thing.

Oh. Well maybe he just thought he would die, having too much of a sense of self-preservation to ever have tested how much he could withstand.

 EngulfedObject wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:

 EngulfedObject wrote:
It probably really does just come down to different writers.

Also, did the bolter rounds incapacitate Guilliman in any significant way? He might take damage but recover quickly, as Primarchs seem to do.

I don't think they hit him, it was more 'if they hit me, I'll die' kinda thing.

Oh. Well maybe he just thought he would die, having too much of a sense of self-preservation to ever have tested how much he could withstand.

This seems the more likely.

Honestly, it's infuriating that Vulkan is the Primarch we've seen take the most damage and the information from that ordeal is virtually worthless simply BECAUSE it's Vulkan.

 Mr Morden wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:

 EngulfedObject wrote:
It probably really does just come down to different writers.

Also, did the bolter rounds incapacitate Guilliman in any significant way? He might take damage but recover quickly, as Primarchs seem to do.

I don't think they hit him, it was more 'if they hit me, I'll die' kinda thing.

Didn't he get hit by several and very nearly died before he killed all the AL? They were apparently well up for the job..............

If he did it wasn't anywhere vital. He didn't have a helmet or anything on, a headshot was probably what he was worrying about. Need to reread it.

 Formosa wrote:

david choe wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
Except Primarch armor is more or less superficial then truly functional. Corax, Angron, Fulgrim, etc all wade through fire without giving a damn, and are able to tank the blows of each other (which rip apart tanks and space marines) and only receive mild bruising of the flesh. Plus every single weapon that has killed a Primarch has been either supernatural or outright ignores durability. Curze, Sanguinius, Manus, and Horus all fell to such weapons.

Also, excuse me as I laugh my ass off at any idea of 40K being remotely "realistic" and not blatant fantasy. The very concept of space marines and melee even existing is firmly centered in fantasy.

The way I like to think of it is that after millenia of ballistic warfare beings the primary means of killing people, ballistic armour evolved to the point that melee became viable again, since bullets and lasers were barely doing diddly squat.

Except not only is that clearly not the case, but armor evolving would not suddenly bring back melee weapons, it would make them MORE ineffective, because they would generate less kinetic energy then a gun. Suddenly having better armor doesn't mean swords come back, it means people start using bigger guns with more efficient ammo loads at penning targets.... like what happens in real life. Especially chainweapons, which are fething stupid in absolutely every way and have no right to penetrate armor at all. Were your theory true, nothing besides power weapons would exist in 40K, except even that wouldn't make sense, as there's still plasma guns, meltas, grav guns, railguns, gauss guns, etc.

By that logic, tanks would be ramming each other opposed to developing HEAT and Sabot rounds and increasing cannon sizes to 100mm+ as armor advanced over WWII and simple solid slugs no longer did the job. Or early firearms would have been completely abandoned due to their inability to penetrate fully armored Chevaliers instead of adding more gunpowder.

"Armor advanced to such a degree" is an idiotic excuse that does not work at all in practice. If armor truly advanced to such a degree, then no weapons would work, because melee is even further lacking the kinetic energy of bullets, or the raw thermal energy of lasers and plasma. And that's clearly not the case at all in 40K. Hell, people in 40k can regularly carry weapons the size of a rifle that can melt an MBT down to a warped pile of scrap metal.

40K is pure fantasy. There's no form of logic to get around this. It has always been just Warhammer Fantasy in Space, and are best could be called a fantasy space opera or "science fantasy", although that word combination is of itself an oxymoron.

and what if that armour advanced to the point that even advanced weaponry could not dent it, or advanced at a pace that ranged weaponry could not match, theoretically speaking this could warrant a kind of come back of weapons that are designed to be used at extreme short range to punch through this armour, or close combat weapons to take advantage of weak points that ranged weapons don't have the accuracy to hit.

there is also the shock factor to consider, its pretty awful seeing your mates blown apart next to you, its even worse to see that your weapons are doing nothing and the armoured behemoth is now punching people to death, it also clears out buildings etc much faster knowing that the enemy cannot effectively hurt you and they know the same.

just because in our current age such things are "impossible" and "stupid" doesn't mean that it cant and wont happen, go back to the 1800's and tell someone that we will be able to destroy cities from the other side of the planet with flying machines and wars will be fought with giant metal boxes that are immune to rifles, you would be laughed at.

This. Such armour that would be almost immune to any kind of small arms fire would be exceedingly expensive and only used by the specialist of Special Forces (see: Space Marines, Sisters of Battle, Inquisition). In my headcanon, Power Armour is immune to everything but Plasma and similar weaponry, which can be deflected by Terminator and Artificer Armour. Why? Because technology and alloys have advanced to the point that only the hottest of materials can weaken them enough to be penetrated (It's been forty fething thousand years, look at how far we've come in just the last 500, and you think that's impossible?). And this is now why we have assault marines and the like, because a.) psychological effect of seeing a monster smashing an entire squad without taking a scratch using a friggin knife and b.) The only way to penetrate this armour is at extremely close range, where the accuracy necessary to hit those joints and other weak spots is available.

What a stupid logic....anything that close combat can do... Range can do better. If you were to suggest that special diamond tip chain sword can cut armor...then they can make a saw weapon with the same diamond tip that can shoot out like a catapult....

Human muscle can't never beat ballistic projectile....strength

Unless it is something like Dune shield...where fast moving will be block out....so slow hand held knife can penitrate THe shield....oh wait..they even have slow bullet or missile thAtteavel so slow that it can penetrate the shield.

When you travel to the future can you bring me the lottery numbers, as you clearly know everything that can possibly happen, must be quite the gift.

We know that NOW with our current understanding that it is silly, what we don't know is what could happen, how can we?

in a thousand years time ballistic tech might be utterly obsolete, personal weaponry might become the norm and then the future version of you might pop on the future version bof dakka and say "don't be stupid, why would we use guns when we have the butter knife 5000 and we can melt armour with that better than some guns, stupid newbs"

Dude, the point is anything that is powerful as a hand weapon, you can launch it as a missile weapon.

Example...in Star War. light saber... a hand held laser sword. Guess what... you have laser blaster.

A powersword is like a Plasma gun or a Meltagun....

You don't get it. Once your tech base pass using your muscle... hand held weapons is never as powerful as range because why get close when you can shoot. If your armor is so tough... you need a sword to open up.. think of that logic. A bomb or grenade or a powerful gun can't crack it?

Just stop with this stupid argument...it is just a game and rule of cool wins. Don't defend the concept of rule of cool with your logic.. it just makes it dumb and annoying.

You seem angry, David

 Shidank wrote:
You seem angry, David

more like annoying

david choe wrote:

 Shidank wrote:
You seem angry, David

more like annoying

Watch those suffixes, mang.

 Shidank wrote:

david choe wrote:

 Shidank wrote:
You seem angry, David

more like annoying

Watch those suffixes, mang.

What are you talking about?

david choe wrote:

 Shidank wrote:

david choe wrote:

 Shidank wrote:
You seem angry, David

more like annoying

Watch those suffixes, mang.

What are you talking about?

You mean 'more like annoyed'.

Thanks, buddy.

 Shidank wrote:
Thanks, buddy.

really? six posts to talk about grammar? This is how flame starts.

david choe wrote:

 Shidank wrote:
Thanks, buddy.

really? six posts to talk about grammar? This is how flame starts.

Technically, 3 over grammar, one being polite, one correcting your assertion of how flames start, and then your irritated response asserting that this is how flames start.

Should you need to continue, I invite you to PM me so that we don't take up any more of the thread.

david choe wrote:
really? six posts to talk about grammar? This is how flame starts.

Well I learned something! Thanks! There's a valuable lesson here. Gotta watch those suffixes.

Also, I think it's best to cut to the last or at least last few posts when quoting someone. Your post could have filled half the page! I think it did!

 Shidank wrote:
Should you need to continue, I invite you to PM me so that we don't take up any more of the thread.

Was I really being this rude in that other thread? Hmm, got something to think about then. Maybe a more neutral tone for my posts is in order.

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:

 EngulfedObject wrote:
It probably really does just come down to different writers.

Also, did the bolter rounds incapacitate Guilliman in any significant way? He might take damage but recover quickly, as Primarchs seem to do.

I don't think they hit him, it was more 'if they hit me, I'll die' kinda thing.

Didn't he get hit by several and very nearly died before he killed all the AL? They were apparently well up for the job..............

If he did it wasn't anywhere vital. He didn't have a helmet or anything on, a headshot was probably what he was worrying about. Need to reread it.

just reading it - he gets hit in the:

Shoulder, lower back, right hip, left side, chest, left hip, head

not all fully penetrate but: - at one point "he fell, he couln't get up. ......he couldn't see"

 Shidank wrote:

david choe wrote:

 Shidank wrote:
Thanks, buddy.

really? six posts to talk about grammar? This is how flame starts.

Technically, 3 over grammar, one being polite, one correcting your assertion of how flames start, and then your irritated response asserting that this is how flames start.

Should you need to continue, I invite you to PM me so that we don't take up any more of the thread.

Thanks for your condescending remarks... but don't bother to PM me. I don't like trash in general... not saying you are one.. just to be on the safe side. Please don't derail the thread.

david choe wrote:
don't bother to PM me. I don't like trash in general... not saying you are one.

Yeahhhhhhhhhh...

 Mr Morden wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:

 EngulfedObject wrote:
It probably really does just come down to different writers.

Also, did the bolter rounds incapacitate Guilliman in any significant way? He might take damage but recover quickly, as Primarchs seem to do.

I don't think they hit him, it was more 'if they hit me, I'll die' kinda thing.

Didn't he get hit by several and very nearly died before he killed all the AL? They were apparently well up for the job..............

If he did it wasn't anywhere vital. He didn't have a helmet or anything on, a headshot was probably what he was worrying about. Need to reread it.

just reading it - he gets hit in the:

Shoulder, lower back, right hip, left side, chest, left hip, head

not all fully penetrate but: - at one point "he fell, he couln't get up. ......he couldn't see"

Worse than I remember then. I would say that's enough to kill a Primarch but Curze survives over 100 wounds that would kill a space marine, so who knows haha.

1) He was just pointing out that you were calling YOURSELF annoying!

2) RULE #1 - Right now.

And all the time.

While on the subject of what they can survive, what about their strength in proportion to their durability? Vulkan broke chains used to lift Titans and was declared the strongest by Curze. He even said that he always held back for fear of hurting someone by accident(sort of plays into the gentle giant image).

Let's look at some feats of strength:
Curze ripped apart terminator armor with brute strength when escaping the Phalanx
Angron stopped a Warhound foot from crushing him
Vulkan snapped unsnappable chains
Mortarion hooked a Fire Raptor that was shooting him while he PULLED IT TO HIM
Russ kicked in the sarcophagus of a dreadnought
Perturabo backhanded one of his captains so hard it killed him(Mallory Archer'd him)
Sanguinius overpowered Ka'bandha, one of Khorne's most powerful servants
Horus picked up an Ork warlord that could(feasibly) have lived for thousands of years and grown to colossal proportion and threw it off a tower

Ferrus Manus and the Emperor reportedly fought so hard it shattered mountains when they met on Medusa, and some really old fluff once implied that Ferrus literally picked up an entire mountain.

 j31c3n wrote:
Ferrus Manus and the Emperor reportedly fought so hard it shattered mountains when they met on Medusa, and some really old fluff once implied that Ferrus literally picked up an entire mountain.

Even if it wasn't written, I think we can all agree that if Manus wanted to pick up a mountain, he'd have done it.

Ferrus Manus sometimes reminds me of Frank Costanza celebrating Festivus. "The celebration isn't over until someone pins the Head of the Legion!" I wonder if Ferrus would air grievances to the clans.

david choe wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

david choe wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
Except Primarch armor is more or less superficial then truly functional. Corax, Angron, Fulgrim, etc all wade through fire without giving a damn, and are able to tank the blows of each other (which rip apart tanks and space marines) and only receive mild bruising of the flesh. Plus every single weapon that has killed a Primarch has been either supernatural or outright ignores durability. Curze, Sanguinius, Manus, and Horus all fell to such weapons.

Also, excuse me as I laugh my ass off at any idea of 40K being remotely "realistic" and not blatant fantasy. The very concept of space marines and melee even existing is firmly centered in fantasy.

The way I like to think of it is that after millenia of ballistic warfare beings the primary means of killing people, ballistic armour evolved to the point that melee became viable again, since bullets and lasers were barely doing diddly squat.

Except not only is that clearly not the case, but armor evolving would not suddenly bring back melee weapons, it would make them MORE ineffective, because they would generate less kinetic energy then a gun. Suddenly having better armor doesn't mean swords come back, it means people start using bigger guns with more efficient ammo loads at penning targets.... like what happens in real life. Especially chainweapons, which are fething stupid in absolutely every way and have no right to penetrate armor at all. Were your theory true, nothing besides power weapons would exist in 40K, except even that wouldn't make sense, as there's still plasma guns, meltas, grav guns, railguns, gauss guns, etc.

By that logic, tanks would be ramming each other opposed to developing HEAT and Sabot rounds and increasing cannon sizes to 100mm+ as armor advanced over WWII and simple solid slugs no longer did the job. Or early firearms would have been completely abandoned due to their inability to penetrate fully armored Chevaliers instead of adding more gunpowder.

"Armor advanced to such a degree" is an idiotic excuse that does not work at all in practice. If armor truly advanced to such a degree, then no weapons would work, because melee is even further lacking the kinetic energy of bullets, or the raw thermal energy of lasers and plasma. And that's clearly not the case at all in 40K. Hell, people in 40k can regularly carry weapons the size of a rifle that can melt an MBT down to a warped pile of scrap metal.

40K is pure fantasy. There's no form of logic to get around this. It has always been just Warhammer Fantasy in Space, and are best could be called a fantasy space opera or "science fantasy", although that word combination is of itself an oxymoron.

and what if that armour advanced to the point that even advanced weaponry could not dent it, or advanced at a pace that ranged weaponry could not match, theoretically speaking this could warrant a kind of come back of weapons that are designed to be used at extreme short range to punch through this armour, or close combat weapons to take advantage of weak points that ranged weapons don't have the accuracy to hit.

there is also the shock factor to consider, its pretty awful seeing your mates blown apart next to you, its even worse to see that your weapons are doing nothing and the armoured behemoth is now punching people to death, it also clears out buildings etc much faster knowing that the enemy cannot effectively hurt you and they know the same.

just because in our current age such things are "impossible" and "stupid" doesn't mean that it cant and wont happen, go back to the 1800's and tell someone that we will be able to destroy cities from the other side of the planet with flying machines and wars will be fought with giant metal boxes that are immune to rifles, you would be laughed at.

This. Such armour that would be almost immune to any kind of small arms fire would be exceedingly expensive and only used by the specialist of Special Forces (see: Space Marines, Sisters of Battle, Inquisition). In my headcanon, Power Armour is immune to everything but Plasma and similar weaponry, which can be deflected by Terminator and Artificer Armour. Why? Because technology and alloys have advanced to the point that only the hottest of materials can weaken them enough to be penetrated (It's been forty fething thousand years, look at how far we've come in just the last 500, and you think that's impossible?). And this is now why we have assault marines and the like, because a.) psychological effect of seeing a monster smashing an entire squad without taking a scratch using a friggin knife and b.) The only way to penetrate this armour is at extremely close range, where the accuracy necessary to hit those joints and other weak spots is available.

What a stupid logic....anything that close combat can do... Range can do better. If you were to suggest that special diamond tip chain sword can cut armor...then they can make a saw weapon with the same diamond tip that can shoot out like a catapult....

Human muscle can't never beat ballistic projectile....strength

Unless it is something like Dune shield...where fast moving will be block out....so slow hand held knife can penitrate THe shield....oh wait..they even have slow bullet or missile thAtteavel so slow that it can penetrate the shield.

When you travel to the future can you bring me the lottery numbers, as you clearly know everything that can possibly happen, must be quite the gift.

We know that NOW with our current understanding that it is silly, what we don't know is what could happen, how can we?

in a thousand years time ballistic tech might be utterly obsolete, personal weaponry might become the norm and then the future version of you might pop on the future version bof dakka and say "don't be stupid, why would we use guns when we have the butter knife 5000 and we can melt armour with that better than some guns, stupid newbs"

Dude, the point is anything that is powerful as a hand weapon, you can launch it as a missile weapon.

Example...in Star War. light saber... a hand held laser sword. Guess what... you have laser blaster.

A powersword is like a Plasma gun or a Meltagun....

You don't get it. Once your tech base pass using your muscle... hand held weapons is never as powerful as range because why get close when you can shoot. If your armor is so tough... you need a sword to open up.. think of that logic. A bomb or grenade or a powerful gun can't crack it?

Just stop with this stupid argument...it is just a game and rule of cool wins. Don't defend the concept of rule of cool with your logic.. it just makes it dumb and annoying.

And if the sword that doesn't need any extra kinetic force or ammunition is better at cutting amour I.e power sword or light saber, then you can warrant using close combat, if you have 2 weapons that can penetrate armour and one is a gun, then sure use that, and keep the sword as back up, if the gun can't do it and your sword can, use that, use the tools you have, not the make believe idea you have that "cos guns exist, close combat is stupid" tell you what, go shoot a tank with your m4, come back to me and tell me what happens.

Your the one making the assumption that it will always be impossible for ballistic weapons to beat any armour, I'm saying you can't make that assumption, and I could be possible that cc would make a comeback if it proved to be more effective.

Let's calm down a bit on the weapons, please.

How are we on determining how much of a Primarch's durability is based on their connection to the warp?

I've always thought of it as a fairly linear scale (remember marines were originally +3 shock elite humans /aka "champions")

This is (/was?) the scale in the RT era:
1) humans
2) adeptus astartes (humans +3 shock elite) {+1ws +1bs +1 I}
3) adeptus custodes (marines +3 shock elite) {same}
4) primarch (adeptus custodes +3 shock elite)
5) emperor

I know this is a background question but these are all part of the 1980's canon rogue trader era and certainly the first two steps in my chart were adamantly implmented (except that in 1992 marines became T4 overnight due to balance issues) and I think since this was warhammer shock elite emulation incarnate it would make sense that a marine champion was "meant (fluffwise)" to be about the same as an adeptus custodes (and so on)

So, my point? I see no evidence this "linear shock elite logic" wasn't DIRECTLY implicit in the design from day one, just not developed.

So, a primarch is a champion custodes who is a champion marines who is a champion human.

 Shidank wrote:
Let's calm down a bit on the weapons, please.

How are we on determining how much of a Primarch's durability is based on their connection to the warp?

Most of it isn't a connection.
The vast star of energy the primarchs draw from is their own.
Psychic primarchs (most of the primarchs are psykers to some extent) obviously have an ability to draw further power.
But with Angron (the most physically powerful primarch) who isn't a psyker I always got the feeling he simply has a much larger pool to draw from.

 ThePrimordial wrote:

 Shidank wrote:
Let's calm down a bit on the weapons, please.

How are we on determining how much of a Primarch's durability is based on their connection to the warp?

Most of isn't a connection.
The vast star of energy the primarchs draw from is their own.
Psychic primarchs (most of them to some extent) obviously have an ability to draw further power.
But with Angron (the most physically powerful primarchs) who isn't a psyker I always got the feeling he simply has a much larger pool to draw from.

That would explain Russ and, possibly, Vulkan.

Russ was able to walk through a veritable flamethrower of psychic energy, after all.

 ThePrimordial wrote:

 Shidank wrote:
Let's calm down a bit on the weapons, please.

How are we on determining how much of a Primarch's durability is based on their connection to the warp?

Most of it isn't a connection.
The vast star of energy the primarchs draw from is their own.
Psychic primarchs (most of the primarchs are psykers to some extent) obviously have an ability to draw further power.
But with Angron (the most physically powerful primarch) who isn't a psyker I always got the feeling he simply has a much larger pool to draw from.

I would argue at Angron being the most phisically powerful of the Primarchs. Fulgrim stated that Perturabo was the mightiest of them all in Angel Exterminatus. At the same time, Ferrus Manus is taller than most of them by a head and also described as being hugely powerful, and is said to be the only one able to match Mortarion endless brute force and toughess. In his turn, Vulkan is said to be physically peerless among his brothers. Almost every Primarch has had his own moment of glorious description, some more objective than others, so it may be difficult to draw a precise chart for them, especially when these pictures are drawn by different authors (who can have their own moment of fanboyism), but I don't think Angro can be referred as the most powerful of them, even though he is IMO the best blend of speed, strength and stamina of the primarchs, hence making him one of the most effective in battle, or even the most (even though that is also subject to controversy).

Angron is actually one of the smallest Primarchs, iirc. I definitely wouldn't say he's the most physically powerful.

 ImAGeek wrote:
Angron is actually one of the smallest Primarchs, iirc.

D'awwww Angwon da Wittlest Pwimarch. He so angwy! :3

 ThePrimordial wrote:

 Shidank wrote:
Let's calm down a bit on the weapons, please.

How are we on determining how much of a Primarch's durability is based on their connection to the warp?

Most of it isn't a connection.
The vast star of energy the primarchs draw from is their own.
Psychic primarchs (most of the primarchs are psykers to some extent) obviously have an ability to draw further power.
But with Angron (the most physically powerful primarch) who isn't a psyker I always got the feeling he simply has a much larger pool to draw from.

I still don't understand what this 'Star Energy' is, or why it makes them so resilient. Someone mentioned Corax tanking a Las-Cannon shot, did he have armour on? If not, then how did he survive? Is there skin literately that tough? If a Vindicare assassin shot a Primarch dead in the eye ball what would happen? I mean would it re-grow or would it not even phase him?

I wish primarch's made more sense, some Primarch's are fine while others have feats riding on ridiculous, it makes there characters seem rather dull.

 Manchu wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:
Angron is actually one of the smallest Primarchs, iirc.

D'awwww Angwon da Wittlest Pwimarch. He so angwy! :3

The epitome of small man syndrome.

 ImAGeek wrote:
The epitome of small man syndrome.

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:

 ThePrimordial wrote:

 Shidank wrote:
Let's calm down a bit on the weapons, please.

How are we on determining how much of a Primarch's durability is based on their connection to the warp?

Most of it isn't a connection.
The vast star of energy the primarchs draw from is their own.
Psychic primarchs (most of the primarchs are psykers to some extent) obviously have an ability to draw further power.
But with Angron (the most physically powerful primarch) who isn't a psyker I always got the feeling he simply has a much larger pool to draw from.

I still don't understand what this 'Star Energy' is, or why it makes them so resilient. Someone mentioned Corax tanking a Las-Cannon shot, did he have armour on? If not, then how did he survive? Is there skin literately that tough? If a Vindicare assassin shot a Primarch dead in the eye ball what would happen? I mean would it re-grow or would it not even phase him?

I wish primarch's made more sense, some Primarch's are fine while others have feats riding on ridiculous, it makes there characters seem rather dull.

And it"s interesting to observe that while there is quite the fashion in despising the Ultramarines for they are depicted as perfect, an example for every other chapter, insert random Matt Ward quotes here, Rawbutt Girlyman is actually the one least cursed by ridiculous feats like surviving a Titan plasma blast, holding that same Titan's leg after having been buried under tons of rubbles, recovering from a sniper perfect headshot, etc..

 Formosa wrote:

david choe wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

david choe wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
Except Primarch armor is more or less superficial then truly functional. Corax, Angron, Fulgrim, etc all wade through fire without giving a damn, and are able to tank the blows of each other (which rip apart tanks and space marines) and only receive mild bruising of the flesh. Plus every single weapon that has killed a Primarch has been either supernatural or outright ignores durability. Curze, Sanguinius, Manus, and Horus all fell to such weapons.

Also, excuse me as I laugh my ass off at any idea of 40K being remotely "realistic" and not blatant fantasy. The very concept of space marines and melee even existing is firmly centered in fantasy.

The way I like to think of it is that after millenia of ballistic warfare beings the primary means of killing people, ballistic armour evolved to the point that melee became viable again, since bullets and lasers were barely doing diddly squat.

Except not only is that clearly not the case, but armor evolving would not suddenly bring back melee weapons, it would make them MORE ineffective, because they would generate less kinetic energy then a gun. Suddenly having better armor doesn't mean swords come back, it means people start using bigger guns with more efficient ammo loads at penning targets.... like what happens in real life. Especially chainweapons, which are fething stupid in absolutely every way and have no right to penetrate armor at all. Were your theory true, nothing besides power weapons would exist in 40K, except even that wouldn't make sense, as there's still plasma guns, meltas, grav guns, railguns, gauss guns, etc.

By that logic, tanks would be ramming each other opposed to developing HEAT and Sabot rounds and increasing cannon sizes to 100mm+ as armor advanced over WWII and simple solid slugs no longer did the job. Or early firearms would have been completely abandoned due to their inability to penetrate fully armored Chevaliers instead of adding more gunpowder.

"Armor advanced to such a degree" is an idiotic excuse that does not work at all in practice. If armor truly advanced to such a degree, then no weapons would work, because melee is even further lacking the kinetic energy of bullets, or the raw thermal energy of lasers and plasma. And that's clearly not the case at all in 40K. Hell, people in 40k can regularly carry weapons the size of a rifle that can melt an MBT down to a warped pile of scrap metal.

40K is pure fantasy. There's no form of logic to get around this. It has always been just Warhammer Fantasy in Space, and are best could be called a fantasy space opera or "science fantasy", although that word combination is of itself an oxymoron.

and what if that armour advanced to the point that even advanced weaponry could not dent it, or advanced at a pace that ranged weaponry could not match, theoretically speaking this could warrant a kind of come back of weapons that are designed to be used at extreme short range to punch through this armour, or close combat weapons to take advantage of weak points that ranged weapons don't have the accuracy to hit.

there is also the shock factor to consider, its pretty awful seeing your mates blown apart next to you, its even worse to see that your weapons are doing nothing and the armoured behemoth is now punching people to death, it also clears out buildings etc much faster knowing that the enemy cannot effectively hurt you and they know the same.

just because in our current age such things are "impossible" and "stupid" doesn't mean that it cant and wont happen, go back to the 1800's and tell someone that we will be able to destroy cities from the other side of the planet with flying machines and wars will be fought with giant metal boxes that are immune to rifles, you would be laughed at.

This. Such armour that would be almost immune to any kind of small arms fire would be exceedingly expensive and only used by the specialist of Special Forces (see: Space Marines, Sisters of Battle, Inquisition). In my headcanon, Power Armour is immune to everything but Plasma and similar weaponry, which can be deflected by Terminator and Artificer Armour. Why? Because technology and alloys have advanced to the point that only the hottest of materials can weaken them enough to be penetrated (It's been forty fething thousand years, look at how far we've come in just the last 500, and you think that's impossible?). And this is now why we have assault marines and the like, because a.) psychological effect of seeing a monster smashing an entire squad without taking a scratch using a friggin knife and b.) The only way to penetrate this armour is at extremely close range, where the accuracy necessary to hit those joints and other weak spots is available.

What a stupid logic....anything that close combat can do... Range can do better. If you were to suggest that special diamond tip chain sword can cut armor...then they can make a saw weapon with the same diamond tip that can shoot out like a catapult....

Human muscle can't never beat ballistic projectile....strength

Unless it is something like Dune shield...where fast moving will be block out....so slow hand held knife can penitrate THe shield....oh wait..they even have slow bullet or missile thAtteavel so slow that it can penetrate the shield.

When you travel to the future can you bring me the lottery numbers, as you clearly know everything that can possibly happen, must be quite the gift.

We know that NOW with our current understanding that it is silly, what we don't know is what could happen, how can we?

in a thousand years time ballistic tech might be utterly obsolete, personal weaponry might become the norm and then the future version of you might pop on the future version bof dakka and say "don't be stupid, why would we use guns when we have the butter knife 5000 and we can melt armour with that better than some guns, stupid newbs"

Dude, the point is anything that is powerful as a hand weapon, you can launch it as a missile weapon.

Example...in Star War. light saber... a hand held laser sword. Guess what... you have laser blaster.

A powersword is like a Plasma gun or a Meltagun....

You don't get it. Once your tech base pass using your muscle... hand held weapons is never as powerful as range because why get close when you can shoot. If your armor is so tough... you need a sword to open up.. think of that logic. A bomb or grenade or a powerful gun can't crack it?

Just stop with this stupid argument...it is just a game and rule of cool wins. Don't defend the concept of rule of cool with your logic.. it just makes it dumb and annoying.

And if the sword that doesn't need any extra kinetic force or ammunition is better at cutting amour I.e power sword or light saber, then you can warrant using close combat, if you have 2 weapons that can penetrate armour and one is a gun, then sure use that, and keep the sword as back up, if the gun can't do it and your sword can, use that, use the tools you have, not the make believe idea you have that "cos guns exist, close combat is stupid" tell you what, go shoot a tank with your m4, come back to me and tell me what happens.

Your the one making the assumption that it will always be impossible for ballistic weapons to beat any armour, I'm saying you can't make that assumption, and I could be possible that cc would make a comeback if it proved to be more effective.

And what both of you seem to be so utterly thick that you are incapable of realizing it- ranged warfare is not limited to goddamn ballistic weapons, and you don't need to pierce armor to kill.40K is already FILLED with commonplace weapons that utterly negative and vaporize power armor. And in real life, in some absurd, asinine, impossible scenario that armor progressed further then ballistic weapons could, then you simply switch over to railguns, lasers, missiles, artillery, etc. We already have armor capable of defeating .50 caliber rifles- it isn't used because it's pointlessly heavy, and anyone hit is still turned to jello by the velocity and mass of the round hitting the plate that it cracks ribs and bursts organs.

Or do you even realize that armor isn't just about stopping rounds from penetrating? If armor becomes a problem, you merely switch over to railguns and launch objects at hypersonic speeds that turn anyone hit by the things into goo. And no, armor is NEVER going to make ranged weapons useless- such events happened in the past, ranged weapons merely advanced. Plus armor has a hard cap on durability, as unlike 40K, adamantium is physically impossible to exist in our universe, as it would break the periodic table. The strongest material is Carbon Nanotubes, however even those will do jack gak against high velocity ammunition.

(Besides, the main purpose of armor in modern warfare isn't even to stop bullets- you're fethed if you get shot with an AK in the chest for the most part. Rather, armor since the development of modern warfare is to stop shrapnel from killing you, which is the number one cause of casualties these days- be it from RPG's, mortars, or howitzers.)

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
Except Primarch armor is more or less superficial then truly functional. Corax, Angron, Fulgrim, etc all wade through fire without giving a damn, and are able to tank the blows of each other (which rip apart tanks and space marines) and only receive mild bruising of the flesh. Plus every single weapon that has killed a Primarch has been either supernatural or outright ignores durability. Curze, Sanguinius, Manus, and Horus all fell to such weapons.

Also, excuse me as I laugh my ass off at any idea of 40K being remotely "realistic" and not blatant fantasy. The very concept of space marines and melee even existing is firmly centered in fantasy.

The way I like to think of it is that after millenia of ballistic warfare beings the primary means of killing people, ballistic armour evolved to the point that melee became viable again, since bullets and lasers were barely doing diddly squat.

Except not only is that clearly not the case, but armor evolving would not suddenly bring back melee weapons, it would make them MORE ineffective, because they would generate less kinetic energy then a gun. Suddenly having better armor doesn't mean swords come back, it means people start using bigger guns with more efficient ammo loads at penning targets.... like what happens in real life. Especially chainweapons, which are fething stupid in absolutely every way and have no right to penetrate armor at all. Were your theory true, nothing besides power weapons would exist in 40K, except even that wouldn't make sense, as there's still plasma guns, meltas, grav guns, railguns, gauss guns, etc.

By that logic, tanks would be ramming each other opposed to developing HEAT and Sabot rounds and increasing cannon sizes to 100mm+ as armor advanced over WWII and simple solid slugs no longer did the job. Or early firearms would have been completely abandoned due to their inability to penetrate fully armored Chevaliers instead of adding more gunpowder.

"Armor advanced to such a degree" is an idiotic excuse that does not work at all in practice. If armor truly advanced to such a degree, then no weapons would work, because melee is even further lacking the kinetic energy of bullets, or the raw thermal energy of lasers and plasma. And that's clearly not the case at all in 40K. Hell, people in 40k can regularly carry weapons the size of a rifle that can melt an MBT down to a warped pile of scrap metal.

40K is pure fantasy. There's no form of logic to get around this. It has always been just Warhammer Fantasy in Space, and are best could be called a fantasy space opera or "science fantasy", although that word combination is of itself an oxymoron.

and what if that armour advanced to the point that even advanced weaponry could not dent it, or advanced at a pace that ranged weaponry could not match, theoretically speaking this could warrant a kind of come back of weapons that are designed to be used at extreme short range to punch through this armour, or close combat weapons to take advantage of weak points that ranged weapons don't have the accuracy to hit.

there is also the shock factor to consider, its pretty awful seeing your mates blown apart next to you, its even worse to see that your weapons are doing nothing and the armoured behemoth is now punching people to death, it also clears out buildings etc much faster knowing that the enemy cannot effectively hurt you and they know the same.

just because in our current age such things are "impossible" and "stupid" doesn't mean that it cant and wont happen, go back to the 1800's and tell someone that we will be able to destroy cities from the other side of the planet with flying machines and wars will be fought with giant metal boxes that are immune to rifles, you would be laughed at.

Except it's already happened. And it didn't result in weapon technology regressing, but surprise surprise, ballistic weaponry instead advanced to meet the new required conditions and made armor of the time obsolete. I also don't think you even understand exactly how hilarious your claims are, because we are never going to advance to a point where armor renders ballistic weapons almost obsolete- it merely leads to ranged weapons becoming more powerful. It doesn't matter if your armor stops something from penetrating- you merely develop a ballistic weapon that delivers enough concussive force to turn the person inside the armor into jelly. The strength of the armor merely further scales up the weapons used, possibly even to the level of the Davy Crockett.

No realistic force is ever going to return to using swords as a viable method of war. It doesn't matter if it's an effective terror weapon against enemy morale, or armor takes some "incredible" leap forward, melee warfare in a civilian on our level of tech or further is quite simply fething stupid- there's no other way to describe it. You may see the occasional melee charge bayonet charge once in a blue moon, but stuff like Assault Marines, the Black Templars, Khorne Zerkers, Orks, etc would never work. If 40K were truly realistic, with its level of technology, the Imperium would be defended by a self replicating swarm of Von Neumann drones armed with laser weapons capable of fighting in orbit and on the ground that drown everything in shear numbers and firepower. Hell combat in 40K shouldn't happen at all because a thing called orbital superiority exists.

And again, it's not immune to small arms fire. Literally every single goddamn faction in 40K has weapons that can be wielded by basic infantry that will turn anyone wearing power armor into a smoking piece of ash. Weapons that fire globs of plasma that burn at over twenty million degrees are not only usable by infantry, but COMMON. Not to mention that melee weapons wouldn't do jack gak against somebody wearing power armor unless they were hilariously strong or had something like a power weapon. Instead, chain weapons are among the most common weapons in the galaxy, despite being the singular dumbest, outright impossible weapon design in all of 40K.

You have to either be living under a rock or have some really straaaange view of warfare to think 40K makes even a lick of sense. Wake up you two. It doesn't. 40K is silly as feth and makes about as much sense as a turtle in an Abraham Lincoln costume riding on top of a unicycle. We're talking about the universe where TITANS and IMPERIAL KNIGHTS exist, when they should be instantly killed as soon as they're deployed by either a massive lance strike from orbit or several cruise missiles. 40K isn't realistic at all. It's Warhammer Fantasy set in space. It's how its started out and how it will always be unless it cuts almost all of the factions in the game.

If your armor is so good that it can tank plasma guns or bolters, melee weapons aren't doing jack gak. Ever heard of something called energy density? Yeah. A bolt is focusing a lot more energy into a much finer area then a chainsword or normal blade ever will. Seriously, are you even both self aware of how crazy the stuff you're saying is?

Honestly, the logic doesn't faze me. This kind of universe is entirely possible, even if it's in another dimension. Now, while I agree with much of what you say, the fact of the matter is that melee combat will NEVER become obsolete. Why?

Civilian world: knife fighting, club fighting, even sword fighting (see: cane with a sword in it) will always be prominent in civilian fighing as fights among civilians involve as much improvisation as possible (a stick, a sandbag, a jagged piece of metal, etc.), and a knife on your person makes winning a fight that much easier. A sword hidden inside of your cane that you use to make it not hurt to work will easily allow you to defeat an opponent who attacks you on the street with a knife or with fists.

Military world: melee combat actually happens all the damn time. You enter a building, turn a corner and come nose-to-nose with an Al-Quaeda member. You have an M16 out, with no room to fire. What do you do? bash his fething face in, knee him in the nuts, engage in a struggle for life or death and do your best to keep that terrorist from bringing his weapon to bear. Second scenario. You're behind enemy lines, and ammunition is running short. You take refuge in a small house with a storm cellar, and an enemy platoon searches the house. You hide in the cellar with your last mag for your un-suppressed pistol and your last magazine. Three enemy soldiers enter the cellar and begin to search it. Now, do you pull your knife and begin killing them, or do you start taking pot shots and alert the other fifteen soldiers of your presence. You pull your knife, you slit one man's throat, you stab another in the kidney, his death cry alerts the final soldier of your presence. Do you take a shot and risk alerting the rest of the platoon of your presence? NO! Logic dictates that you disarm him or kill him immediately in order to keep him from alerting his buddies of your presence - a knife to the face, rip his gun out of his hand, bash his face, cut his eye out, cut his throat, melee combat.

Engrenages wrote:

 ThePrimordial wrote:

 Shidank wrote:
Let's calm down a bit on the weapons, please.

How are we on determining how much of a Primarch's durability is based on their connection to the warp?

Most of it isn't a connection.
The vast star of energy the primarchs draw from is their own.
Psychic primarchs (most of the primarchs are psykers to some extent) obviously have an ability to draw further power.
But with Angron (the most physically powerful primarch) who isn't a psyker I always got the feeling he simply has a much larger pool to draw from.

I would argue at Angron being the most phisically powerful of the Primarchs. Fulgrim stated that Perturabo was the mightiest of them all in Angel Exterminatus. At the same time, Ferrus Manus is taller than most of them by a head and also described as being hugely powerful, and is said to be the only one able to match Mortarion endless brute force and toughess. In his turn, Vulkan is said to be physically peerless among his brothers. Almost every Primarch has had his own moment of glorious description, some more objective than others, so it may be difficult to draw a precise chart for them, especially when these pictures are drawn by different authors (who can have their own moment of fanboyism), but I don't think Angro can be referred as the most powerful of them, even though he is IMO the best blend of speed, strength and stamina of the primarchs, hence making him one of the most effective in battle, or even the most (even though that is also subject to controversy).

Has anyone playtested the Primarchs with the Forgeworld HH rules (as far as they have been revealed in the Isstvaan trilogy) to this point? Who comes out on top?

This past summer I was in a GW shop and they did a Horus vs Curze fight, and Horus smashed him--the Horus "Debilitating Strike" rule (or whatever it's called) which forces his opponent to lose skill as the fight progresses is brutal.

But I would be interested to do it for Vulkan vs. Mortarion, Angron vs. Dorn, etc. etc. Maybe I will. (Just dice, of course) and will update this thread later.

Also, there is a clear claim in some of the HH books that "Only a Primarch can kill a Primarch". Obviously that's not true with Curze, but...interesting in the toughness realm.

 pantheralegionnaire wrote:
Has anyone playtested the Primarchs with the Forgeworld HH rules (as far as they have been revealed in the Isstvaan trilogy) to this point? Who comes out on top?

Horus without a shadow of a doubt. Lorgar used correctly is a solid #2 on the tabletop, because he can just pick his powers (and you should pick Invisibility of course). Angron is basically tied for #2 with Lorgar, but is many times easier to use (assuming you can get him to assault). Perturabo is immensely powerful as well. I'd put him in the crowded #2 slot with Lorgar and Angron, especially if you give him Forgebreaker. Fulgrim hits like a trainwreck with Fireblade. Vulkan is nearly unkillable (and is amusingly completely immune to plasma weapons).

Amusing how the wreckingest Primarchs are traitors.

Well I would put the psyker version of Lorgar at a definite #2 slot, with no contenders or ex aequo since there isn't much Angron nor Perturabo can do against him in close combat. But that's only talking "duel-wise" between Primarchs. If we're talking about leadership and army, Alpharius offers some damn interesting possibilities at recreating the Alpha Legion meme on the tabletop, while Lorgar makes your Word Bearers the most brave army in the game (outside fearless forces like tyranids) and Horus is what he is supposed to be, the Warmaster. So for me Horus and Lorgar are by far the best overall.

Engrenages wrote:
Well I would put the psyker version of Lorgar at a definite #2 slot, with no contenders or ex aequo since there isn't much Angron nor Perturabo can do against him in close combat. But that's only talking "duel-wise" between Primarchs. If we're talking about leadership and army, Alpharius offers some damn interesting possibilities at recreating the Alpha Legion meme on the tabletop, while Lorgar makes your Word Bearers the most brave army in the game (outside fearless forces like tyranids) and Horus is what he is supposed to be, the Warmaster. So for me Horus and Lorgar are by far the best overall.

Too bad the tabletop isn't like the fluff, with Sanguinius and Angron as #1

Does Sanguinius even have rules out, yet?

Angron is an absolute beast, the only models that can touch him are Horus and Lorgar with the right psychic powers. And the only reason Lorgar is so good is because Invisibility is currently broken.

 j31c3n wrote:
Does Sanguinius even have rules out, yet?

Angron is an absolute beast, the only models that can touch him are Horus and Lorgar with the right psychic powers. And the only reason Lorgar is so good is because Invisibility is currently broken.

No Sanguinius doesn't have rules yet.

 dusara217 wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Formosa wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:
Except Primarch armor is more or less superficial then truly functional. Corax, Angron, Fulgrim, etc all wade through fire without giving a damn, and are able to tank the blows of each other (which rip apart tanks and space marines) and only receive mild bruising of the flesh. Plus every single weapon that has killed a Primarch has been either supernatural or outright ignores durability. Curze, Sanguinius, Manus, and Horus all fell to such weapons.

Also, excuse me as I laugh my ass off at any idea of 40K being remotely "realistic" and not blatant fantasy. The very concept of space marines and melee even existing is firmly centered in fantasy.

The way I like to think of it is that after millenia of ballistic warfare beings the primary means of killing people, ballistic armour evolved to the point that melee became viable again, since bullets and lasers were barely doing diddly squat.

Except not only is that clearly not the case, but armor evolving would not suddenly bring back melee weapons, it would make them MORE ineffective, because they would generate less kinetic energy then a gun. Suddenly having better armor doesn't mean swords come back, it means people start using bigger guns with more efficient ammo loads at penning targets.... like what happens in real life. Especially chainweapons, which are fething stupid in absolutely every way and have no right to penetrate armor at all. Were your theory true, nothing besides power weapons would exist in 40K, except even that wouldn't make sense, as there's still plasma guns, meltas, grav guns, railguns, gauss guns, etc.

By that logic, tanks would be ramming each other opposed to developing HEAT and Sabot rounds and increasing cannon sizes to 100mm+ as armor advanced over WWII and simple solid slugs no longer did the job. Or early firearms would have been completely abandoned due to their inability to penetrate fully armored Chevaliers instead of adding more gunpowder.

"Armor advanced to such a degree" is an idiotic excuse that does not work at all in practice. If armor truly advanced to such a degree, then no weapons would work, because melee is even further lacking the kinetic energy of bullets, or the raw thermal energy of lasers and plasma. And that's clearly not the case at all in 40K. Hell, people in 40k can regularly carry weapons the size of a rifle that can melt an MBT down to a warped pile of scrap metal.

40K is pure fantasy. There's no form of logic to get around this. It has always been just Warhammer Fantasy in Space, and are best could be called a fantasy space opera or "science fantasy", although that word combination is of itself an oxymoron.

and what if that armour advanced to the point that even advanced weaponry could not dent it, or advanced at a pace that ranged weaponry could not match, theoretically speaking this could warrant a kind of come back of weapons that are designed to be used at extreme short range to punch through this armour, or close combat weapons to take advantage of weak points that ranged weapons don't have the accuracy to hit.

there is also the shock factor to consider, its pretty awful seeing your mates blown apart next to you, its even worse to see that your weapons are doing nothing and the armoured behemoth is now punching people to death, it also clears out buildings etc much faster knowing that the enemy cannot effectively hurt you and they know the same.

just because in our current age such things are "impossible" and "stupid" doesn't mean that it cant and wont happen, go back to the 1800's and tell someone that we will be able to destroy cities from the other side of the planet with flying machines and wars will be fought with giant metal boxes that are immune to rifles, you would be laughed at.

Except it's already happened. And it didn't result in weapon technology regressing, but surprise surprise, ballistic weaponry instead advanced to meet the new required conditions and made armor of the time obsolete. I also don't think you even understand exactly how hilarious your claims are, because we are never going to advance to a point where armor renders ballistic weapons almost obsolete- it merely leads to ranged weapons becoming more powerful. It doesn't matter if your armor stops something from penetrating- you merely develop a ballistic weapon that delivers enough concussive force to turn the person inside the armor into jelly. The strength of the armor merely further scales up the weapons used, possibly even to the level of the Davy Crockett.

No realistic force is ever going to return to using swords as a viable method of war. It doesn't matter if it's an effective terror weapon against enemy morale, or armor takes some "incredible" leap forward, melee warfare in a civilian on our level of tech or further is quite simply fething stupid- there's no other way to describe it. You may see the occasional melee charge bayonet charge once in a blue moon, but stuff like Assault Marines, the Black Templars, Khorne Zerkers, Orks, etc would never work. If 40K were truly realistic, with its level of technology, the Imperium would be defended by a self replicating swarm of Von Neumann drones armed with laser weapons capable of fighting in orbit and on the ground that drown everything in shear numbers and firepower. Hell combat in 40K shouldn't happen at all because a thing called orbital superiority exists.

And again, it's not immune to small arms fire. Literally every single goddamn faction in 40K has weapons that can be wielded by basic infantry that will turn anyone wearing power armor into a smoking piece of ash. Weapons that fire globs of plasma that burn at over twenty million degrees are not only usable by infantry, but COMMON. Not to mention that melee weapons wouldn't do jack gak against somebody wearing power armor unless they were hilariously strong or had something like a power weapon. Instead, chain weapons are among the most common weapons in the galaxy, despite being the singular dumbest, outright impossible weapon design in all of 40K.

You have to either be living under a rock or have some really straaaange view of warfare to think 40K makes even a lick of sense. Wake up you two. It doesn't. 40K is silly as feth and makes about as much sense as a turtle in an Abraham Lincoln costume riding on top of a unicycle. We're talking about the universe where TITANS and IMPERIAL KNIGHTS exist, when they should be instantly killed as soon as they're deployed by either a massive lance strike from orbit or several cruise missiles. 40K isn't realistic at all. It's Warhammer Fantasy set in space. It's how its started out and how it will always be unless it cuts almost all of the factions in the game.

If your armor is so good that it can tank plasma guns or bolters, melee weapons aren't doing jack gak. Ever heard of something called energy density? Yeah. A bolt is focusing a lot more energy into a much finer area then a chainsword or normal blade ever will. Seriously, are you even both self aware of how crazy the stuff you're saying is?

Honestly, the logic doesn't faze me. This kind of universe is entirely possible, even if it's in another dimension. Now, while I agree with much of what you say, the fact of the matter is that melee combat will NEVER become obsolete. Why?

Civilian world: knife fighting, club fighting, even sword fighting (see: cane with a sword in it) will always be prominent in civilian fighing as fights among civilians involve as much improvisation as possible (a stick, a sandbag, a jagged piece of metal, etc.), and a knife on your person makes winning a fight that much easier. A sword hidden inside of your cane that you use to make it not hurt to work will easily allow you to defeat an opponent who attacks you on the street with a knife or with fists.

Military world: melee combat actually happens all the damn time. You enter a building, turn a corner and come nose-to-nose with an Al-Quaeda member. You have an M16 out, with no room to fire. What do you do? bash his fething face in, knee him in the nuts, engage in a struggle for life or death and do your best to keep that terrorist from bringing his weapon to bear. Second scenario. You're behind enemy lines, and ammunition is running short. You take refuge in a small house with a storm cellar, and an enemy platoon searches the house. You hide in the cellar with your last mag for your un-suppressed pistol and your last magazine. Three enemy soldiers enter the cellar and begin to search it. Now, do you pull your knife and begin killing them, or do you start taking pot shots and alert the other fifteen soldiers of your presence. You pull your knife, you slit one man's throat, you stab another in the kidney, his death cry alerts the final soldier of your presence. Do you take a shot and risk alerting the rest of the platoon of your presence? NO! Logic dictates that you disarm him or kill him immediately in order to keep him from alerting his buddies of your presence - a knife to the face, rip his gun out of his hand, bash his face, cut his eye out, cut his throat, melee combat.

Nobody is disagreeing with you about sidearm of cc weapon. The guys above are talking as if the CC weapon troops will exist. Why the hell would there be cc with pistol troops? In game terms.. we see benefit. In real life... there would be none. Anything that a chainsword, sword, axe, or club can do... a bolt pistol or las pistol can do better to the power armor. You want to stab a guy in power armor with a knife to his joint part... stick a pistol there and fire at point blank will do more damage. This is what we are saying. UNLESS YOU AR OUT OF AMMO... there is no point running around with a pistol and a sword hitting anything. Use your pistol and shoot it.

DEAR ALL - PLEASE Stop with the giant quote blocks!

Either don't do it, do it selectively or put them in <spoiler> tags to hide them - PLEASE!

Thanks!

Okay, this is going to sound a bit unlikely but I'm going to throw it out there anyway to see if it holds any water...

So, the Primarchs are basically near immortal for all practical purposes... but after the Heresy, all the loyalists seem to either die off a lot easier or disappear (or in one instance, end up in a coma).

What if their toughness was somehow connected to the state the Emperor is in? As in, maybe they each carry a part of his essence and their power waxes and wanes with his.

At the end of the Heresy, the Emperor ends up effectively crippled forever, with his power greatly reduced. Dorn ends up dying/disappearing with a missing hand in a random Black Crusade, Corax goes off on a suicide mission into the Eye of Terror, and the rest of the Primarchs slowly fade away and disappear. Could there be some connection? Maybe that's why the Lion hasn't awakened in ten thousand years?

Yea, it sounds like a bit of a stretch...

Oh and the traitor Primarchs are now fueled by Chaos so I didn't bring them up.

Angron is average for a primarchs height wise.
He's also among the heaviest due to his build. Did you see him without armor in Butcher's Nails? Yep.
He has by far the best feats strength and toughness wise. >That's not debatable.

 EngulfedObject wrote:
Okay, this is going to sound a bit unlikely but I'm going to throw it out there anyway to see if it holds any water...

So, the Primarchs are basically near immortal for all practical purposes... but after the Heresy, all the loyalists seem to either die off a lot easier or disappear (or in one instance, end up in a coma).

What if their toughness was somehow connected to the state the Emperor is in? As in, maybe they each carry a part of his essence and their power waxes and wanes with his.

At the end of the Heresy, the Emperor ends up effectively crippled forever, with his power greatly reduced. Dorn ends up dying/disappearing with a missing hand in a random Black Crusade, Corax goes off on a suicide mission into the Eye of Terror, and the rest of the Primarchs slowly fade away and disappear. Could there be some connection? Maybe that's why the Lion hasn't awakened in ten thousand years?

Yea, it sounds like a bit of a stretch...

Oh and the traitor Primarchs are now fueled by Chaos so I didn't bring them up.

The way I like to think of it is that their his Archangels/ Daemon Princes, only not matured yet. So this makes total sense to me, what with the Emperor basically being a God waiting to happen.

 EngulfedObject wrote:
Okay, this is going to sound a bit unlikely but I'm going to throw it out there anyway to see if it holds any water...

So, the Primarchs are basically near immortal for all practical purposes... but after the Heresy, all the loyalists seem to either die off a lot easier or disappear (or in one instance, end up in a coma).

What if their toughness was somehow connected to the state the Emperor is in? As in, maybe they each carry a part of his essence and their power waxes and wanes with his.

At the end of the Heresy, the Emperor ends up effectively crippled forever, with his power greatly reduced. Dorn ends up dying/disappearing with a missing hand in a random Black Crusade, Corax goes off on a suicide mission into the Eye of Terror, and the rest of the Primarchs slowly fade away and disappear. Could there be some connection? Maybe that's why the Lion hasn't awakened in ten thousand years?

Yea, it sounds like a bit of a stretch...

Oh and the traitor Primarchs are now fueled by Chaos so I didn't bring them up.

I assume the Lion is kept asleep because even the Watchers don't want him in charge. Don't get me wrong, the Lion is my favorite Primarch, but even I can recognize he would sacrifice 90% of mankind if it meant all of our enemies were killed with them. That kind of guy needs a check and balance.

 ThePrimordial wrote:

He has by far the best feats strength and toughness wise. >That's not debatable.

Wha...?!?

It is absolutely debatable!

It is all a matter of...perspective.

 Alpharius wrote:

 ThePrimordial wrote:

He has by far the best feats strength and toughness wise. >That's not debatable.

Wha...?!?

It is absolutely debatable!

It is all a matter of...perspective.

Agreed. Vulkan snapping out of some of Curze's traps proved he was stronger than Angron has ever been shown to be, so how is Angron still the more impressive?

 dusara217 wrote:
The way I like to think of it is that their his Archangels/ Daemon Princes, only not matured yet. So this makes total sense to me, what with the Emperor basically being a God waiting to happen.

Yea, that could be a possible explanation for why their power is connected to the Emperor's. Well

 Shidank wrote:
I assume the Lion is kept asleep because even the Watchers don't want him in charge. Don't get me wrong, the Lion is my favorite Primarch, but even I can recognize he would sacrifice 90% of mankind if it meant all of our enemies were killed with them. That kind of guy needs a check and balance.

Oh, I haven't convinced myself of my theory yet, I just cooked it up for the purpose of this thread and as a possible explanation how powerful the Primarchs are.

Personally I believe the Watchers are just biding their time for when the Dark Angels will need the Lion the most and are using Cypher (who I like to think is Zahariel, since they spoke to him directly) as their agent to lead the DA to fight Chaos (as his actions tend to end up strengthening both the Imperium and the Unforgiven). IA fluff seems to indicate he's slowly making his way to Terra so that might give the Star Child theory some credence. And the Lion waking just in time to fight the 13th and final Black Crusade would make a lot of sense.

 EngulfedObject wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:
The way I like to think of it is that their his Archangels/ Daemon Princes, only not matured yet. So this makes total sense to me, what with the Emperor basically being a God waiting to happen.

Yea, that could be a possible explanation for why their power is connected to the Emperor's. Well

 Shidank wrote:
I assume the Lion is kept asleep because even the Watchers don't want him in charge. Don't get me wrong, the Lion is my favorite Primarch, but even I can recognize he would sacrifice 90% of mankind if it meant all of our enemies were killed with them. That kind of guy needs a check and balance.

Oh, I haven't convinced myself of my theory yet, I just cooked it up for the purpose of this thread and as a possible explanation how powerful the Primarchs are.

Personally I believe the Watchers are just biding their time for when the Dark Angels will need the Lion the most and are using Cypher (who I like to think is Zahariel, since they spoke to him directly) as their agent to lead the DA to fight Chaos (as his actions tend to end up strengthening both the Imperium and the Unforgiven). IA fluff seems to indicate he's slowly making his way to Terra so that might give the Star Child theory some credence. And the Lion waking just in time to fight the 13th and final Black Crusade would make a lot of sense.

Star Child theories make my butt hurt.

The Lion waking up in time to butt heads with the largest incursion of chaos does make legitimate sense though.

 Alpharius wrote:

 ThePrimordial wrote:

He has by far the best feats strength and toughness wise. >That's not debatable.

Wha...?!?

It is absolutely debatable!

It is all a matter of...perspective.

Has another primarchs not only supported the weight of a Titan but resisted its attempts to crush him, while all kinds of messed up?
I'm telling you those are the biggest numbers thrown up by a primarch.

 ThePrimordial wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:

 ThePrimordial wrote:

He has by far the best feats strength and toughness wise. >That's not debatable.

Wha...?!?

It is absolutely debatable!

It is all a matter of...perspective.

Has another primarchs not only supported the weight of a Titan but resisted its attempts to crush him, while all kinds of messed up?
I'm telling you those are the biggest numbers thrown up by a primarch.

You're right that we don't have as obvious an example in the HH books to refer to(save Vulkan snapping the chains in Curze's trap), but I think this holds the other Primarchs up rather than elevates Angron above them.

For those of you that remarked on Guilliman almost getting killed by a Bolt, he was shot in the face twice, his body took dozens of hits, AND he was stabbed in the back by a Gladiusthat penetrated up to the hilt, and all of the rounds that he was shot with were explosive Bolts. That's pretty damn tough that he survived at all, let alone making a full recovery.

Generally portrayed as extremely powerful, but it varies according to writer, with some consistency being shown with who writes Primarchs at any given level of power.

I find that Graham McNeill generally writes the most powerful Primarchs. His Primarchs are capable of toppling mountains (Angron in False Gods, Magnus cites doing so while sparring with his brothers in A Thousand Sons). Aaron Dembski-Bowden is a bit inconsistent, with some showings having his Primarchs approaching McNeill tiers of power, but many showings being considerably less. I'd attribute this to ADB's lack of consistency personally. For example, in The First Heretic he writes Corax as being capable of withstanding a lascannon to the chest with no injury. In Betrayer, Lorgar's hand is destroyed by a single bolter round. Dan Abnett, on the other hand, tends to write his Primarchs as being somewhat weaker than average, though still far more formidable than a Space Marine. Horus, for example, took only a superficial wound to the arm from an Interex bowcaster. These same weapons punched through two Space Marines and impaled the wall behind them.

For specific feats when talking about Primarchs, it is important to distinguish between feats performed physically and those that were performed with psychic powers. Magnus, for example, has devastated entire worlds with his sorcery, and has showings far above any of his brothers when drawing on such powers. Even Lorgar, generally thought of as one of the weakest Primarchs, was easily able to subdue Angron with sorcery (enuncia, specifically) and could even telepathically dominate Horus. Sorcery really does appear to be the one thing capable of reliably downing a Primarch (along with powerful Daemons), with Kor Phaeron actually managing to defeat Roboute Guilliman in Know No Fear.

 ThePrimordial wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:

 ThePrimordial wrote:

He has by far the best feats strength and toughness wise. >That's not debatable.

Wha...?!?

It is absolutely debatable!

It is all a matter of...perspective.

Has another primarchs not only supported the weight of a Titan but resisted its attempts to crush him, while all kinds of messed up?
I'm telling you those are the biggest numbers thrown up by a primarch.

Yes but that doesn't mean he's the strongest nor the toughest. The HH series is not a DC or Marvel serie, whe doesn't have tens or even hundreds of feat for every character to compare them.

 Shidank wrote:

I assume the Lion is kept asleep because even the Watchers don't want him in charge. Don't get me wrong, the Lion is my favorite Primarch, but even I can recognize he would sacrifice 90% of mankind if it meant all of our enemies were killed with them. That kind of guy needs a check and balance.

I'd accept that trade.
Kill 90% of our own population to kill 100% of our enemies? That's just a golden deal. Our species would effectively be guaranteed to survive at that point simply because the 10% would regrow the numbers over time and would have no enemies to kill them off.

To put that in perspective, in a 1v1 duel to death, would you rather -
1. Take grievous wounds and be hospitalized for a while, but you will survive and your opponent will be dead. 100% chance of living.
2. Choose not to take the wounds at that time and fight on, not knowing whether or not you'll win in the long run. Unknown chance of living.

 Otto Weston wrote:

 Shidank wrote:

I assume the Lion is kept asleep because even the Watchers don't want him in charge. Don't get me wrong, the Lion is my favorite Primarch, but even I can recognize he would sacrifice 90% of mankind if it meant all of our enemies were killed with them. That kind of guy needs a check and balance.

I'd accept that trade.
Kill 90% of our own population to kill 100% of our enemies? That's just a golden deal. Our species would effectively be guaranteed to survive at that point simply because the 10% would regrow the numbers over time and would have no enemies to kill them off.

To put that in perspective, in a 1v1 duel to death, would you rather -
1. Take grievous wounds and be hospitalized for a while, but you will survive and your opponent will be dead. 100% chance of living.
2. Choose not to take the wounds at that time and fight on, not knowing whether or not you'll win in the long run. Unknown chance of living.

And that's why you're not in charge of humanity when the aliens invade

 j31c3n wrote:

 pantheralegionnaire wrote:
Has anyone playtested the Primarchs with the Forgeworld HH rules (as far as they have been revealed in the Isstvaan trilogy) to this point? Who comes out on top?

Horus without a shadow of a doubt. Lorgar used correctly is a solid #2 on the tabletop, because he can just pick his powers (and you should pick Invisibility of course). Angron is basically tied for #2 with Lorgar, but is many times easier to use (assuming you can get him to assault). Perturabo is immensely powerful as well. I'd put him in the crowded #2 slot with Lorgar and Angron, especially if you give him Forgebreaker. Fulgrim hits like a trainwreck with Fireblade. Vulkan is nearly unkillable (and is amusingly completely immune to plasma weapons).

Amusing how the wreckingest Primarchs are traitors.

Thanks man. Has anyone seen the new Forge World book yet? Does it have Ultramarines in it? (Or is that the still-to-arrive next one?) I would be curious to see how Guilliman looks, and then I am definitely interested to find out about Sanguinius. In "Fear to Tread" (and maybe elsewhere too?) it indicates that Sanguinius would be a major threat to Horus in a fight. Before he gets all Chaos-ed up, of course... And plus we know the outcome, so apparently not.

Anyway, the Khan sounds like he could kick butt too--a swordsman to rival Fulgrim, according to "Scars." I'm kind of disappointed they only have "Alpharius" in the book, not both twins--it would have been cool to have two models. Since there are two of them, after all.

Anyway, getting back to the OP, I think all of them have a common starting point, with the "Primarch" special rule, which includes "It will not die" and "Eternal Warrior." So think they are at least trying go get across the idea that all of the Primarchs are tough as nails. Unless they get stabbed with a magic fork, like Vulkan, evidently.

By the way, Lion el'Jonson rumors and Cypher and the 13th Crusade get me really excited. I am super keen for them to bring some of these Characters back to life. Some are dead, dead, dead (Horus included, it might be noted, which is pretty significant!) but a lot of the others could still be called back for a final battle (or new game context).

I think they could even weasel and retcon a plausible resurrection for characters like Ferrus or Sanguinius (especially the latter, considering the Sanguinor already existing).

But that's probably just my inner Iron Hands fanboy showing.

 pantheralegionnaire wrote:

 j31c3n wrote:

 pantheralegionnaire wrote:
Has anyone playtested the Primarchs with the Forgeworld HH rules (as far as they have been revealed in the Isstvaan trilogy) to this point? Who comes out on top?

Horus without a shadow of a doubt. Lorgar used correctly is a solid #2 on the tabletop, because he can just pick his powers (and you should pick Invisibility of course). Angron is basically tied for #2 with Lorgar, but is many times easier to use (assuming you can get him to assault). Perturabo is immensely powerful as well. I'd put him in the crowded #2 slot with Lorgar and Angron, especially if you give him Forgebreaker. Fulgrim hits like a trainwreck with Fireblade. Vulkan is nearly unkillable (and is amusingly completely immune to plasma weapons).

Amusing how the wreckingest Primarchs are traitors.

Thanks man. Has anyone seen the new Forge World book yet? Does it have Ultramarines in it? (Or is that the still-to-arrive next one?) I would be curious to see how Guilliman looks, and then I am definitely interested to find out about Sanguinius. In "Fear to Tread" (and maybe elsewhere too?) it indicates that Sanguinius would be a major threat to Horus in a fight. Before he gets all Chaos-ed up, of course... And plus we know the outcome, so apparently not.

Anyway, the Khan sounds like he could kick butt too--a swordsman to rival Fulgrim, according to "Scars." I'm kind of disappointed they only have "Alpharius" in the book, not both twins--it would have been cool to have two models. Since there are two of them, after all.

Anyway, getting back to the OP, I think all of them have a common starting point, with the "Primarch" special rule, which includes "It will not die" and "Eternal Warrior." So think they are at least trying go get across the idea that all of the Primarchs are tough as nails. Unless they get stabbed with a magic fork, like Vulkan, evidently.

By the way, Lion el'Jonson rumors and Cypher and the 13th Crusade get me really excited. I am super keen for them to bring some of these Characters back to life. Some are dead, dead, dead (Horus included, it might be noted, which is pretty significant!) but a lot of the others could still be called back for a final battle (or new game context).

Book V due in May has the Ultramarines. I'm looking forward to seeing what FW do with the Scars too. In terms of Omegon, the way the FW books are written, they're more like a history book about the Heresy. Omegon was not common knowledge, no one outside the AL really knew he existed, so it makes sense that he isn't talked about. There's hints and rumours that 'the Alpha Legion sometimes even appear to have more than one Primarch' and stuff, and Exodus COULD be Omegon; he has a pretty beefy stat line and IWND special rule.

 j31c3n wrote:
I think they could even weasel and retcon a plausible resurrection for characters like Ferrus or Sanguinius (especially the latter, considering the Sanguinor already existing).

But that's probably just my inner Iron Hands fanboy showing.

Ferrus Manus does

 Pilau Rice wrote:

 j31c3n wrote:
I think they could even weasel and retcon a plausible resurrection for characters like Ferrus or Sanguinius (especially the latter, considering the Sanguinor already existing).

But that's probably just my inner Iron Hands fanboy showing.

Ferrus Manus does

Spoiler:

Get resurrected, numerous times in fact, by Fabius. But then killed again. He might get to come back for good later in the series, who knows!

If this keeps up, 40K will be just as bad as Marvel.

Well, it's not unheard of in 40k is it. After the Heresy



So he had to practice somewhere.

 ImAGeek wrote:

 pantheralegionnaire wrote:

 j31c3n wrote:

 pantheralegionnaire wrote:
Has anyone playtested the Primarchs with the Forgeworld HH rules (as far as they have been revealed in the Isstvaan trilogy) to this point? Who comes out on top?

Horus without a shadow of a doubt. Lorgar used correctly is a solid #2 on the tabletop, because he can just pick his powers (and you should pick Invisibility of course). Angron is basically tied for #2 with Lorgar, but is many times easier to use (assuming you can get him to assault). Perturabo is immensely powerful as well. I'd put him in the crowded #2 slot with Lorgar and Angron, especially if you give him Forgebreaker. Fulgrim hits like a trainwreck with Fireblade. Vulkan is nearly unkillable (and is amusingly completely immune to plasma weapons).

Amusing how the wreckingest Primarchs are traitors.

Thanks man. Has anyone seen the new Forge World book yet? Does it have Ultramarines in it? (Or is that the still-to-arrive next one?) I would be curious to see how Guilliman looks, and then I am definitely interested to find out about Sanguinius. In "Fear to Tread" (and maybe elsewhere too?) it indicates that Sanguinius would be a major threat to Horus in a fight. Before he gets all Chaos-ed up, of course... And plus we know the outcome, so apparently not.

Anyway, the Khan sounds like he could kick butt too--a swordsman to rival Fulgrim, according to "Scars." I'm kind of disappointed they only have "Alpharius" in the book, not both twins--it would have been cool to have two models. Since there are two of them, after all.

Anyway, getting back to the OP, I think all of them have a common starting point, with the "Primarch" special rule, which includes "It will not die" and "Eternal Warrior." So think they are at least trying go get across the idea that all of the Primarchs are tough as nails. Unless they get stabbed with a magic fork, like Vulkan, evidently.

By the way, Lion el'Jonson rumors and Cypher and the 13th Crusade get me really excited. I am super keen for them to bring some of these Characters back to life. Some are dead, dead, dead (Horus included, it might be noted, which is pretty significant!) but a lot of the others could still be called back for a final battle (or new game context).

Book V due in May has the Ultramarines. I'm looking forward to seeing what FW do with the Scars too. In terms of Omegon, the way the FW books are written, they're more like a history book about the Heresy. Omegon was not common knowledge, no one outside the AL really knew he existed, so it makes sense that he isn't talked about. There's hints and rumours that 'the Alpha Legion sometimes even appear to have more than one Primarch' and stuff, and Exodus COULD be Omegon; he has a pretty beefy stat line and IWND special rule.

Well Exodus statline is similar to a Praetor's, while Alpharius has S6/T6 etc. It wouldn't make sense if Exodus was Omegon to be that inferior to his brother.

 dusara217 wrote:

 Otto Weston wrote:

 Shidank wrote:

I assume the Lion is kept asleep because even the Watchers don't want him in charge. Don't get me wrong, the Lion is my favorite Primarch, but even I can recognize he would sacrifice 90% of mankind if it meant all of our enemies were killed with them. That kind of guy needs a check and balance.

I'd accept that trade.
Kill 90% of our own population to kill 100% of our enemies? That's just a golden deal. Our species would effectively be guaranteed to survive at that point simply because the 10% would regrow the numbers over time and would have no enemies to kill them off.

To put that in perspective, in a 1v1 duel to death, would you rather -
1. Take grievous wounds and be hospitalized for a while, but you will survive and your opponent will be dead. 100% chance of living.
2. Choose not to take the wounds at that time and fight on, not knowing whether or not you'll win in the long run. Unknown chance of living.

And that's why you're not in charge of humanity when the aliens invade

Reasonably, any pragmatic person would. The problem would be that the Lion could absolutely live with those losses.

Engrenages wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:

 pantheralegionnaire wrote:

 j31c3n wrote:

 pantheralegionnaire wrote:
Has anyone playtested the Primarchs with the Forgeworld HH rules (as far as they have been revealed in the Isstvaan trilogy) to this point? Who comes out on top?

Horus without a shadow of a doubt. Lorgar used correctly is a solid #2 on the tabletop, because he can just pick his powers (and you should pick Invisibility of course). Angron is basically tied for #2 with Lorgar, but is many times easier to use (assuming you can get him to assault). Perturabo is immensely powerful as well. I'd put him in the crowded #2 slot with Lorgar and Angron, especially if you give him Forgebreaker. Fulgrim hits like a trainwreck with Fireblade. Vulkan is nearly unkillable (and is amusingly completely immune to plasma weapons).

Amusing how the wreckingest Primarchs are traitors.

Thanks man. Has anyone seen the new Forge World book yet? Does it have Ultramarines in it? (Or is that the still-to-arrive next one?) I would be curious to see how Guilliman looks, and then I am definitely interested to find out about Sanguinius. In "Fear to Tread" (and maybe elsewhere too?) it indicates that Sanguinius would be a major threat to Horus in a fight. Before he gets all Chaos-ed up, of course... And plus we know the outcome, so apparently not.

Anyway, the Khan sounds like he could kick butt too--a swordsman to rival Fulgrim, according to "Scars." I'm kind of disappointed they only have "Alpharius" in the book, not both twins--it would have been cool to have two models. Since there are two of them, after all.

Anyway, getting back to the OP, I think all of them have a common starting point, with the "Primarch" special rule, which includes "It will not die" and "Eternal Warrior." So think they are at least trying go get across the idea that all of the Primarchs are tough as nails. Unless they get stabbed with a magic fork, like Vulkan, evidently.

By the way, Lion el'Jonson rumors and Cypher and the 13th Crusade get me really excited. I am super keen for them to bring some of these Characters back to life. Some are dead, dead, dead (Horus included, it might be noted, which is pretty significant!) but a lot of the others could still be called back for a final battle (or new game context).

Book V due in May has the Ultramarines. I'm looking forward to seeing what FW do with the Scars too. In terms of Omegon, the way the FW books are written, they're more like a history book about the Heresy. Omegon was not common knowledge, no one outside the AL really knew he existed, so it makes sense that he isn't talked about. There's hints and rumours that 'the Alpha Legion sometimes even appear to have more than one Primarch' and stuff, and Exodus COULD be Omegon; he has a pretty beefy stat line and IWND special rule.

Well Exodus statline is similar to a Praetor's, while Alpharius has S6/T6 etc. It wouldn't make sense if Exodus was Omegon to be that inferior to his brother.

Well I said could be he has IWND, that was the main thing. More his story hints to it a little too, I think it mentions the Effrit Stealth Squad that Omegon is the leader of. Iirc.

 Shidank wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 Otto Weston wrote:

 Shidank wrote:

I assume the Lion is kept asleep because even the Watchers don't want him in charge. Don't get me wrong, the Lion is my favorite Primarch, but even I can recognize he would sacrifice 90% of mankind if it meant all of our enemies were killed with them. That kind of guy needs a check and balance.

I'd accept that trade.
Kill 90% of our own population to kill 100% of our enemies? That's just a golden deal. Our species would effectively be guaranteed to survive at that point simply because the 10% would regrow the numbers over time and would have no enemies to kill them off.

To put that in perspective, in a 1v1 duel to death, would you rather -
1. Take grievous wounds and be hospitalized for a while, but you will survive and your opponent will be dead. 100% chance of living.
2. Choose not to take the wounds at that time and fight on, not knowing whether or not you'll win in the long run. Unknown chance of living.

And that's why you're not in charge of humanity when the aliens invade

Reasonably, any pragmatic person would. The problem would be that the Lion could absolutely live with those losses.

Now that's a qualifier I can accept. After making that decision I'd have to live with it forever but the Lion wouldn't bat an eyelid.

And this is why the Lion made many people uneasy.

Thanks @Imageek--I look forward to seeing the new book in May too then! That's not even that far away...

@Engrenages, that's really interesting about Exodus. Very cool, too--not being sure fits right in with the idea and ethos of Alpha Legion.

Eventually, I am assuming they will do the Emperor and the Custodes and Null Maidens and stuff--I am interested to see how the Emperor's Stat Line works out. Has to be good enough to kill Horus, but weak enough to still basically be killed. And Custodes...will they be superior to regular Space Marines?

How about Thunder Warriors? I just finished reading the HH novel "Outcast Dead" and that Thunder Lord sounded pretty bad a**.

Thunder Lords are awesome. Bigger, stronger and better than Astartes but they basically only live as long as humans. I guess he had to tone them down to give them longevity and create Astartes.

 Otto Weston wrote:
Thunder Lords are awesome. Bigger, stronger and better than Astartes but they basically only live as long as humans. I guess he had to tone them down to give them longevity and create Astartes.

They were very unstable too and kindof insane. Much more brutal than even the Space Marines are.

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Otto Weston wrote:
Thunder Lords are awesome. Bigger, stronger and better than Astartes but they basically only live as long as humans. I guess he had to tone them down to give them longevity and create Astartes.

They were very unstable too and kindof insane. Much more brutal than even the Space Marines are.

The way I saw it, they were only more brutal because of their training and indoctrination. They had their own honour and their own code, if they had been brought up with Astartes ideals I believe they would have been fine in that regard. From what I've read of the Thunder Warriors though, I don't believe they were unstable or insane - they were simply the wrong tool for the job because they didn't have the longevity to conquer the stars as the Emperor needed.

 Otto Weston wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Otto Weston wrote:
Thunder Lords are awesome. Bigger, stronger and better than Astartes but they basically only live as long as humans. I guess he had to tone them down to give them longevity and create Astartes.

They were very unstable too and kindof insane. Much more brutal than even the Space Marines are.

The way I saw it, they were only more brutal because of their training and indoctrination. They had their own honour and their own code, if they had been brought up with Astartes ideals I believe they would have been fine in that regard. From what I've read of the Thunder Warriors though, I don't believe they were unstable or insane - they were simply the wrong tool for the job because they didn't have the longevity to conquer the stars as the Emperor needed.

I didn't mean unstable mentally, I meant their genetic make up was unstable. They burnt out, developed cancers etc.

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Otto Weston wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Otto Weston wrote:
Thunder Lords are awesome. Bigger, stronger and better than Astartes but they basically only live as long as humans. I guess he had to tone them down to give them longevity and create Astartes.

They were very unstable too and kindof insane. Much more brutal than even the Space Marines are.

The way I saw it, they were only more brutal because of their training and indoctrination. They had their own honour and their own code, if they had been brought up with Astartes ideals I believe they would have been fine in that regard. From what I've read of the Thunder Warriors though, I don't believe they were unstable or insane - they were simply the wrong tool for the job because they didn't have the longevity to conquer the stars as the Emperor needed.

I didn't mean unstable mentally, I meant their genetic make up was unstable. They burnt out, developed cancers etc.

Ah okay, in that I agree. They were basically humans and suffered human problems but they had been enhanced to have strength and toughness even beyond that of an Astartes. It appears the Emperor had to sacrifice some of the strength and toughness in order to have a more stable platform, one that had the capability to last long enough to take war to the galaxy.

Thanks for the responses. It is interesting that the HH books are bringing them back into the story at least to some degree, and if only to bring us around to that unanswered question: "what was the intended purpose for the Primarchs or Astartes after the Crusade?" I guess we'll never know, but it's clear that the Thunder Warriors were indeed the wrong tool for the Grimdark 40k job that the Space Marine chapters do.