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I was wondering how fast Primarchs are able to run? Can they achieve F1 car speeds of a few hundred km/h.

Difficult question, as some are likely going to be better than others. Setting some goalposts and expectations, I expect that the current human fastest today to a primarch would be at best a warm-up, something they could keep up indefinitely. Running at full sprint, I would expect that a primarch could reach maybe reach 80-90km/h given their physique easy.

I don't think we really have the data to do a Death Battles style analysis of the top speed of a primarch. Even in scenes where they do jog around, we don't usually get solid measurements of things. I doubt there's a novel out there that gives exact dimensions of the pillars in a hallway and the space between them and then describes exactly how many pillars a primarch sprinted past with an accompanying time measurement.

Going off of game stats, they're apparently less fast than a marine on a bike.

I honestly think this has never been mentioned before lol.
I’d assume (and it’s just an assumption) that they would be able to run pretty quickly but nothing stupid.

They are insanely athletic and don’t really have any limits.

I wouldn’t say they are F1 speed though.
If they were then some wouldn’t rely on jump packs for high speed attacks.

All are very fast but it very much depends on the writer.

The two extremes of the scale are Dan Abnett and Graham McNeill. Abnett writes his Primarchs as being head and shoulders above any Marine physically in all ways including speed, but still to a fairly grounded level. A weapon that kills Marines would merely somewhat wound a Primarch, and I imagine that though they'd be faster than a Marine they wouldn't be able to run laps around them.

McNeill writes his Primarchs as being demigodlike mythical figures given flesh, able to crush armies of Marines and crumbled mountains with their might, and in A Thousand Sons Leman Russ spent the battle of Prospero basically running through the Thousand Sons wherever he went. I wouldn't be surprised to see him write them as being capable of flash stepping from a Marine's perspective.

Neither portrayal is better or worse, and every other writer more or less falls somewhere in-between. Aaron Dembski-Bowden's Primarchs are more as strong as the plot needs them to be, both capable of being badly wounded by bolters or capable of surviving attacks from Titans.

There would definitely be a limit. theres always a trade off between mass, acceleration and speed. someone more scientifically minded than me could probably provide a more detailed hypothesis. of course then someone would come along and go well its science fiction. so, as fast as you want basically.

Are you talking Williams or Mercedes F1?

When Garro informs Dorn about Horus' betrayal he is said to have moved across the room faster than Garro could react and slap him in the face such was Dorn's anger at hearing what he thought were lies.

Now considering a Marine can do that to a human means for a mortal fighting a primarch it would be like fighting frickin superman! I think the fight against Zod in Man of Steel did it quite well where to the humans the would almost vanish and then reappear.

It’s never explicitly stated, even for regular Astartes. But they are described as being faster than peak fitness humans - and able to maintain their pace for hours at a time.

For comparrisson? Usain Bolt, easily the fastest man to have lived, has a top speed of 27mph.

It seems to me that being far superior to mere humans, a Primarch must surely be faster, even before we take their greater height and therefore stride into account.

Also worth bearing in mind is that Power Armour is said to actually enhance their speed and endurance.

So at a flat out sprint, ala Usain Bolt, I’d say probably no less than 40mph.

For endurance? The world’s fastest Marathon runner is one Eliud Kipchoge, who ran the 2018 Berlin Marathon in a time of
2h, 1m 39s. As a Marathon is 26.1 miles, that’s an impressive 13mph, give or take.

That’s around half the mph of Bolt’s record breaking sprint. So it seems reasonable to say a Marine (let alone a Primarch) could probably endurance run in the region of 20mph.

And that’s an important thing to remember about Space Marines. Even clad in mighty Power Armour, they’re far, far faster than any human.

For a better, wordier explanation?

Age of Darkness wrote: Transhuman dread. Aximand had heard iterators talk of the condition. He’d heard descriptions of it from regular Army officers too. The sight of an Adeptus Astartes was one thing: taller and broader than a man could ever be, armoured like a demigod. The singularity of purpose was self-evident. An Adeptus Astartes was designed to fight and kill anything that didn’t annihilate it first. If you saw an Adeptus Astartes, you knew you were in trouble. The appearance alone cowed you with fear.
But to see one move. Apparently that was the real thing. Nothing human-shaped should be so fast, so lithe, so powerful, especially not anything in excess of two metres tall and carrying more armour than four normal men could lift. The sight of an Adeptus Astartes was one thing, but the moving fact of one was quite another. The psychologists called it transhuman dread. It froze a man, stuck him to the ground, caused his mind to lock up, made him lose control of bladder and bowel. Something huge and warlike gave pause: something huge and warlike and moving with the speed of a striking snake, that was when you knew that gods moved amongst men, and that there existed a scale of strength and speed beyond anything mortal, and that you were about to die and, if you were really lucking, there might be just enough time to piss yourself first.

This is a sentence from The Eye of Ezekiel.

The Eye of Ezekiel wrote:The ten-kilometre walk towards the capital took the biologically enhanced Space Marines, and mechanically augmented tech-priest, less than ten minutes. Many things happened during that time.

Now if we take the sentence at it's literal word and assume that they're not running, but doing the the Marine equivalent of a power walk or at the very least, walking with a purpose and not simply strolling along at a leisurely pace then that means that marines can "walk" ~60kms in an hour.

According to wikipedia, the speed of power walking is between 7 and 9 km/h. If we be generous and round it up to an even 10 km/h and assume the person in question is incredibly fit and very good at power walking, then that means that they can "walk" 10km's to the marines' 60km's.

So that's an average marine out walking an elite human by 50km/h.

Now this is where my math fails me. I don't know the necessary things to covert height/leg length into gait and distance covered and yadda yadda yadda. But given how much a Primarch outstrips a marine in terms of everything, in the same way a marine out strips a human, then I think it's fairly safe to say that a Primarch could probably sit still at blistering speeds, let alone walk or Emperor forbid, run!
And once you factor in a marines supreme economy of movement and their armour boosting their natural abilities and the like, then who the hell knows what we'd be dealing with for a Primarch.

There's also plenty of evidence that Primarchs and marines can in fact move faster then the human eye can process. Hell, faster even then an marine eye can process. In Savage Weapons, the Lion draws his sword (which isn't short) and runs the Night Haunter through with it before the surrounding marines realise what's happened. I know there are others too but I can't think of them off the top of my head.

 Snrub wrote:
This is a sentence from The Eye of Ezekiel.

The Eye of Ezekiel wrote:The ten-kilometre walk towards the capital took the biologically enhanced Space Marines, and mechanically augmented tech-priest, less than ten minutes. Many things happened during that time.

Now if we take the sentence at it's literal word and assume that they're not running, but doing the the Marine equivalent of a power walk or at the very least, walking with a purpose and not simply strolling along at a leisurely pace then that means that marines can "walk" ~60kms in an hour.

There's no taking that seriously. Why bother having bikes or transports? Why would they not out-pace beast units in the game? Why would they have the same movement characteristic as a Guardsmen, then? They're not going to be "walking" at 60kph. Imo that line is trying to describe a full sprint, and is just a bit sloppy at it.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Snrub wrote:
This is a sentence from The Eye of Ezekiel.

The Eye of Ezekiel wrote:The ten-kilometre walk towards the capital took the biologically enhanced Space Marines, and mechanically augmented tech-priest, less than ten minutes. Many things happened during that time.

Now if we take the sentence at it's literal word and assume that they're not running, but doing the the Marine equivalent of a power walk or at the very least, walking with a purpose and not simply strolling along at a leisurely pace then that means that marines can "walk" ~60kms in an hour.

There's no taking that seriously. Why bother having bikes or transports? Why would they not out-pace beast units in the game? Why would they have the same movement characteristic as a Guardsmen, then? They're not going to be "walking" at 60kph. Imo that line is trying to describe a full sprint, and is just a bit sloppy at it.

I find that hilarious, personally. Picturing an army power-walking at the speed of a galloping horse is just beautiful.

You can bet "Yakety Sax" was playing on their vox the whole way.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Snrub wrote:
This is a sentence from The Eye of Ezekiel.

The Eye of Ezekiel wrote:The ten-kilometre walk towards the capital took the biologically enhanced Space Marines, and mechanically augmented tech-priest, less than ten minutes. Many things happened during that time.

Now if we take the sentence at it's literal word and assume that they're not running, but doing the the Marine equivalent of a power walk or at the very least, walking with a purpose and not simply strolling along at a leisurely pace then that means that marines can "walk" ~60kms in an hour.

There's no taking that seriously. Why bother having bikes or transports? Why would they not out-pace beast units in the game? Why would they have the same movement characteristic as a Guardsmen, then? They're not going to be "walking" at 60kph. Imo that line is trying to describe a full sprint, and is just a bit sloppy at it.

Lore isn't rules. Marines could walk at 100mph and it wouldn't mean a thing ingame.

That said I agree that's just poorly written. Personally I think they're just trying to say it's a 10km distance the Marines travelled in under 10 minutes. After all a 10km walk and a 10km run are the same distance.

Lore and rules aren't the same, but they do have to have some relation. Space Marines aren't significantly faster enough to warrant a faster move characteristic than humans in the way that Eldar have one. The rules are heavily abstracted, mind you, so theres plenty of room for slop. Marines can still be faster than humans, just not as fast as Eldar or many Tyranids.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Snrub wrote:
This is a sentence from The Eye of Ezekiel.

The Eye of Ezekiel wrote:The ten-kilometre walk towards the capital took the biologically enhanced Space Marines, and mechanically augmented tech-priest, less than ten minutes. Many things happened during that time.

Now if we take the sentence at it's literal word and assume that they're not running, but doing the the Marine equivalent of a power walk or at the very least, walking with a purpose and not simply strolling along at a leisurely pace then that means that marines can "walk" ~60kms in an hour.

There's no taking that seriously. Why bother having bikes or transports? Why would they not out-pace beast units in the game? Why would they have the same movement characteristic as a Guardsmen, then? They're not going to be "walking" at 60kph. Imo that line is trying to describe a full sprint, and is just a bit sloppy at it.

Eldar are only barely faster than humans on the tabletop, yet every bit of fluff surrounding them dictates that they are substantially faster than Marines, much less humans.

Or to put it another way, planes that are explicitly faster than the speed of sound are only like six times faster than guardsmen on the tabletop.

Lasguns have a maximum range on the tabletop of like a hundred feet by the scale of the game, which is laughably shorter than effective range of cheap assault rifles IRL.

The game is not representative of the actual fluff.

How fast can Primarchs run?

Yes.

Also Tabletop never matched lore due to Plot Armour.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Snrub wrote:
This is a sentence from The Eye of Ezekiel.

The Eye of Ezekiel wrote:The ten-kilometre walk towards the capital took the biologically enhanced Space Marines, and mechanically augmented tech-priest, less than ten minutes. Many things happened during that time.

Now if we take the sentence at it's literal word and assume that they're not running, but doing the the Marine equivalent of a power walk or at the very least, walking with a purpose and not simply strolling along at a leisurely pace then that means that marines can "walk" ~60kms in an hour.

There's no taking that seriously. Why bother having bikes or transports? Why would they not out-pace beast units in the game? Why would they have the same movement characteristic as a Guardsmen, then? They're not going to be "walking" at 60kph. Imo that line is trying to describe a full sprint, and is just a bit sloppy at it.

Eldar are only barely faster than humans on the tabletop, yet every bit of fluff surrounding them dictates that they are substantially faster than Marines, much less humans.

Or to put it another way, planes that are explicitly faster than the speed of sound are only like six times faster than guardsmen on the tabletop.

Lasguns have a maximum range on the tabletop of like a hundred feet by the scale of the game, which is laughably shorter than effective range of cheap assault rifles IRL.

The game is not representative of the actual fluff.

The game does relate to the fluff, however. They aren't completely divorced. The main thing to bear in mind is that Black Library is usually telling the story of extraordinary events. The characters are essentially rolling hot as the plot requires. The abstraction of the tabletop also allows this. Movement rate doesnt mean a steady run from place to place, but a combat advance troops are offering covering fire, grabbing cover, etc as they move forward. So game doesnt equal lore, but it is definitely related to it and informative.

 Tiennos wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Snrub wrote:
This is a sentence from The Eye of Ezekiel.

The Eye of Ezekiel wrote:The ten-kilometre walk towards the capital took the biologically enhanced Space Marines, and mechanically augmented tech-priest, less than ten minutes. Many things happened during that time.

Now if we take the sentence at it's literal word and assume that they're not running, but doing the the Marine equivalent of a power walk or at the very least, walking with a purpose and not simply strolling along at a leisurely pace then that means that marines can "walk" ~60kms in an hour.

There's no taking that seriously. Why bother having bikes or transports? Why would they not out-pace beast units in the game? Why would they have the same movement characteristic as a Guardsmen, then? They're not going to be "walking" at 60kph. Imo that line is trying to describe a full sprint, and is just a bit sloppy at it.

I find that hilarious, personally. Picturing an army power-walking at the speed of a galloping horse is just beautiful.

You can bet "Yakety Sax" was playing on their vox the whole way.

And this is a perfect example of why sci-fi authors should avoid real-world numbers at all costs.