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 Engine of War wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
No, all 40k material is on the same level of canon.

Its a kind of "Schrodinger's Canon". Its both Canon and Non-canon until you open the box.

It's more like real-life religious canon. There's a massive body of material which is confusing and contradictory if taken as a whole, so different groups pick different bits of it to ignore or assign extra importance to. There may be bits everyone (or almost everyone) agrees on but most of it varies depending on who's telling it.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

Ashiraya 709book 9038715 34ee7daab1a43d92d2efb4d1a30cff9e.png wrote:

Spoiler:

A Salamanders Librarian flew into space and sliced a starship in half with his force sword in the Salamanders series.

Really?

*headdesk*

Please can we just shut down BL? Mat Ward is nothing compared to these guys.

I am not joking. It was the final book and the librarian is named Dak'ir. It was supposed to be some kind of supersaiyan-esque climax to the series. It is absolutely nuts, way too nuts even for me. But it did happen whether we like it or not.

I would say"i wonder how he gets to keep writing books" but apparently Nick Kyme is black llibrarys commisioning editor so gets to decide who writes what book. Which may explain why no-one has quietly explained that he's not a whole lot better than c.s. "multilasers" goto.

A Salamanders Librarian flew into space and sliced a starship in half with his force sword in the Salamanders series.


Really?

*headdesk*

Please can we just shut down BL? Mat Ward is nothing compared to these guys.



I am not joking. It was the final book and the librarian is named Dak'ir. It was supposed to be some kind of supersaiyan-esque climax to the series. It is absolutely nuts, way too nuts even for me. But it did happen whether we like it or not.

For the love of
How does this sort of stuff get by editors/reviewers?

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:

Spoiler:

A Salamanders Librarian flew into space and sliced a starship in half with his force sword in the Salamanders series.

Really?

*headdesk*

Please can we just shut down BL? Mat Ward is nothing compared to these guys.

I am not joking. It was the final book and the librarian is named Dak'ir. It was supposed to be some kind of supersaiyan-esque climax to the series. It is absolutely nuts, way too nuts even for me. But it did happen whether we like it or not.

Ugh. This is just terrible.

My personal headcanon for this sort of thing is that the majority of BL stories are recounted to you by a random drunkard/lunatic you met in the pub.

There may well be a grain of truth in what he's saying, but the more unrealistic things are the ravings of a wasted madman:

Random drunk bloke, starting a conversation without any invitation: 'Didjuknow, thish one time myy mate met a bloke from deffwotch who shaid that hish kill team onsh shtopped Eldude Ulfran or sumfink from draining all eldude shoulss into sum planet to reshurrect their god or sumfink...'

You: 'Yes random stranger, that sounds completely believable. Can you leave me alone now because you smell like urine'.

Makes me feel a lot better

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Also, the orbital bombardment idea is stupid. If orbital bombardments were any good against Primarchs, I am sure someone would have tried it. Orbital bombardments are way too clunky and unreliable to use against such tiny targets as a Primarch (yes, compared to planets and spaceships, Primarchs are pretty tiny). It would be like trying to kill a fly by using a battleship...

Who cares if the primarch is tiny? This is the "vaporize the entire continent the primarchs are standing on" solution to the problem. You don't need precision targeting with guns that make real-world nuclear weapons look pathetic.

Yeah pointing a macro-cannon at the continent the Primarchs are on is probably quite a neat solution.

Another option would be dropping an Ork Rok/Space Hulk onto their heads

 JNAProductions wrote:
Well, let's see. Each Primarch is something like 6 wounds on average, right? With a 2+ Armour and a 5+ FNP. (I know some have worse than that, but I'm just averaging them out.)

So that's 108 wounds. 5+ FNP makes that effectively 162. 2+ Armour makes that 972. And BS4 makes that 1,458 bolter rounds, fired in one round, or (assuming one third of them are in rapid fire range) 13,608 points of Tactical Marines.

So mathammer-wise, 1 SM chapter armed entirely with bolters could kill the Primarchs in one turn.

In one of the books angron and the word bearers primarch took a couple blasts from a warhound titan and survived. So orbital strike might not be the instant death it would be to others.

 Rotary wrote:
In one of the books angron and the word bearers primarch took a couple blasts from a warhound titan and survived. So orbital strike might not be the instant death it would be to others.

A Warhound titan, as powerful as it is relative to normal infantry, is still armed with flashlights compared to a battleship's main batteries. A Warhound can annihilate a tank with a single shot, the battleship can destroy entire continents. The weak stuff you see on the tabletop is toned down by many orders of magnitude relative to the fluff for the sake of game balance. A fluff-accurate orbital bombardment would simply remove all models and terrain from play and end the game. No mere infantry, no matter how badass, survives that.

Plus, the whole "primarch survives a direct hit from a Warhound" thing is almost certainly plot armor, and plot armor isn't relevant in scenarios like this.

 Rotary wrote:
In one of the books angron and the word bearers primarch took a couple blasts from a warhound titan and survived. So orbital strike might not be the instant death it would be to others.

There's an order of magnitude between the power of a Warhound Titan's weaponry and that affixed to a starship.

The missiles fired by starships take a slave crew of thousands to load into the torpedo tubes. It'd be like being hit by a missile the size of a Warhound titan itself.

0 Astartes, as Cato Sicarius would come in.

If given time to prep I'd say the primarchs could devastate most forces aligned against them. With Corax and Curze scouting it would be very hard if nigh impossible to catch them by suprise, Perturabo and Dorn building fortifications would probably only be rivaled by the imperial palace itself. The technologies, weapons, defenses, developed by Vulkan and Ferrus would probably be on par with all but the oldest and most esoteric pieces in the imperial armory. Gulliman, Horus and The Lion working as tacticans, Sanguinius, Leman, and Angron vanguard fighters, Fulgrim, Alpharius, and the Khan using hit amd run attacks, Mortarion as the indefatigable sternguard with Magnus working his warp shenanigans.

Oh and Lorgar providing moral support over the Vox

 Arktyranus wrote:
0 Astartes, as Cato Sicarius would come in.

Mission Successful! I, Cato Sicarius, .....

Let's just remember that Lorgar was almost outright killed by 2 shots from a warhound titans plasma blastgun. 1 volcano cannon, 1 macro cannon, an earthshaker battery. Take your pick. Primarchs are powerful but heavy ordinance will bury them in moments


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Rotary wrote:
In one of the books angron and the word bearers primarch took a couple blasts from a warhound titan and survived. So orbital strike might not be the instant death it would be to others.

A Warhound titan, as powerful as it is relative to normal infantry, is still armed with flashlights compared to a battleship's main batteries. A Warhound can annihilate a tank with a single shot, the battleship can destroy entire continents. The weak stuff you see on the tabletop is toned down by many orders of magnitude relative to the fluff for the sake of game balance. A fluff-accurate orbital bombardment would simply remove all models and terrain from play and end the game. No mere infantry, no matter how badass, survives that.

Plus, the whole "primarch survives a direct hit from a Warhound" thing is almost certainly plot armor, and plot armor isn't relevant in scenarios like this.

You say that yet plenty of Astartes survived an exterminatus and virus bombing on Istaavan III. With sufficient forewarning there's every chance that the primarchs would do the same. But they don't stand a chance in the open

Virus bombing=/=orbital bombardment. There are different kinds of exterminatus. Why Horus didn't just keeping hitting Istaavan with lance strikes until the planet's surface was molten magma? I don't know. Maybe the Sons of Horus were facing budget cuts or something.

 Xenomancers wrote:

Engrenages wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
One. A Raven Guard scout hidden on a hill several miles away calls in an orbital bombardment, and the primarch problem is solved.

And then Magnus stops the orbital bombardment, Perturabo's armour systems locate the comm signal, Corax uses his jetpack to go on-site, find the scout with his surnatural senses and experience, one shot him. And indeed, problem solved.

One does not simply stop an orbital bombardment - this is the stuff of fairy-tales. Also - if one can stop an orbital bombardment - one can most like do anything within the realm of imagination and the other 17 aren't required.

A Primaris Psyker could do so in Dark Heresy: Ascension through clever use of his/her powers.

Now, Astartes librarians aren't typically that powerful, but Primarchs certainly would be, and Magnus likely far more powerful than that.

All Magnus would need to do is create a disc (or bowl) of stopped time to capture the force of the orbital bombardment above his brothers. By Dark Heresy rules, a region of stopped time is utterly invulnerable to all attempts to effect it, nothing can pass through it and it cannot be harmed, passed through by anything-- energy or matter-- or stopped by any means until it fades at the end of its duration.

Magnus pointed out he could crush an attacking fleet before they made it out of the warp so I wouldn't count on orbital. How does old Vulkans hammer teleporter work? Can he aim that? How high into orbit could kurz and Corax fly? Against straight up marines on planet I'd want to know how long Magnus could keepup a kine shield.

Didn't Magnus turn the size of a titan and stomped around for a bit? And in the recent Wrath of Magnus book, something about just grabbing the fleet above Midgardia or Fenris and wiping them out with mind bullets?

The reason Primarchs are powerful isn't because they're uber-combatatants, it's because they command legions of superhumans in gigantic planet-killing fleets. The primarchs themselves make good leaders because they are hyper-capable and inspiring individuals, but the fact that they can swing a sword better than the next guy is pretty useless in the grand scheme of things.

Psychic powers are the only thing that changes the equation, really. Otherwise, the only way they can really achieve anything is starting from scratch and building up an army again, or doing something covert like performing some sort of raid-by-superhuman.

Get them to planet -> blow the planet up -> Profit

I am sure there are plenty of ways to blow up the planet in 30k..

Given I took 3 wounds from curze with over watch fire from 10 marines.... I'd say I theory 1 20 man blob per primarch could do it, they could also die to sweeping advance on the first round of combat...