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 buddha wrote:
Ferris Manus for sure. In straight fist fight his fists are freaking living metal.

As much as I'd like to say Russ I think Ferrus has the best shot in straight fist-fighting and his fury is renown. I could see Ferrus and Angron go blow for blow until they both collapsed.

I could wrap my fists in chains, doesnt mean I'd be able to beat a professional fighter in my weight class.

If Magnus gets to use his psychic powers, he wins, hands down. He can crush a titan with his mind, and would make short work of the other primarchs (with the possible exception of Russ due to psychic resistance).

Otherwise, Angron. Melee combat was the red angel's thing, he lived and breathed it nonstop for his entire life.

I disagree with the assessment that allowing Psyker abilities for Magnus and Lorgar would automatically result in their uncontested victory.

Against anything EXCEPT a being as compact, warp-resistant, strong, and fast as a primarch, they're an I Win button because they're so versatile and can bypass so many defenses.

Against a primarch, however, by the time even a psyker as masterful as Magnus can bring their effects to bear, they've got an angry primarch throwing concentration-destroying punches at or through their heads/hearts/spleen.

By no means would they be unable to use them at all (even if warp-resistant, they'll still hurt or maim if given the chance), but they're not even close to an I Win button.

They do certainly jump a few tiers in effective capability, though, given none of the primarchs can soak up a balefire blast or the like with their armor.

Not enough to win, but enough to be better contenders than they used to be.

I'm partial to Angron, Sanguinius, Ferrus, Leman, and Lion contending for the top spots, with the psykers, Vulkan, Kurse, and Horus close behind.

There's definitely some Rock-Paper-Scissors going on, but those 5 will be winning the most 1v1s.

Agreed on Unusual Suspect's argument. IIRC, due to the Emperor's method of creating them, all of the Primarchs were psychically active to an extent, even Angron. Perhaps not "psykers" but certainly enough that with their strength of will they could resist a psychic attack.

I agree. Abilties like Corax's invisibility or Curze's precognition don't seem to be like conventional psychic powers but I am pretty sure they are warp-based.

In my head-canon, psychic powers are skills that a psyker learns how to generate and manifest using their innate psychic strength. Most of the Primarch's abilities seem to "static". They are hard-wired abilities that they do not have to learn how to use. They just happen. The flip-side is that they cannot learn new psychic powers like a true psyker.

You can add in Russ's howl as another sorta psychic ability that the various primarchs seem to have.

We can't really ever say "X beat Y so X will always beat Y" combat is so full of factors, terrain, mental motivation, what the fighters had for breakfest as well as changing levels of skill etc. there's also a little bit oif blind luck

This thread has gotten me imagining a BlazBlue style fighting game with the primarchs as the fighters.

Magnus. The others all show up without their gear/weapons. Per OP, Magnus still has the Warp.

So he'll be slinging around laser beams and eldrich fire, while the others are throwing punches.

Bharring wrote:
Magnus. The others all show up without their gear/weapons. Per OP, Magnus still has the Warp.

So he'll be slinging around laser beams and eldrich fire, while the others are throwing punches.

Wouldn't that obviate the scenario as a fistfight? If magnus is using mental powers, then Kurze is just planting a 10 ton blockbuster and showing up conveniently late...

And if we're going that route, can you really win a fistfight against a big strong dude who can't ever permanently die?

"Wouldn't that obviate the scenario as a fistfight? If magnus is using mental powers, then Kurze is just planting a 10 ton blockbuster and showing up conveniently late..."
I would agree, generally. But in this thread, specifically, Magnus's powers are in but no gear is in:

From the OP:
"To keep the question specific, I'll impose the following parameters:
- No armour, no weapons, birthday suits only.
- [...]
- Certain character defining characteristics are allowed, even if they seem to contradict the first parameter, meaning things like Magnus's psychic prowess and Ferrus Manus's arms."


Automatically Appended Next Post:
"And if we're going that route, can you really win a fistfight against a big strong dude who can't ever permanently die?"
Again, the specifics have been set in the OP as:
"With respect to Vulkan, I'm only looking for whom kills whom first, so he still loses even he's not permanently dead."
So yes, someone can win vs Vulkan.

Bharring wrote:
"Wouldn't that obviate the scenario as a fistfight? If magnus is using mental powers, then Kurze is just planting a 10 ton blockbuster and showing up conveniently late..."
I would agree, generally. But in this thread, specifically, Magnus's powers are in but no gear is in:

From the OP:
"To keep the question specific, I'll impose the following parameters:
- No armour, no weapons, birthday suits only.
- [...]
- Certain character defining characteristics are allowed, even if they seem to contradict the first parameter, meaning things like Magnus's psychic prowess and Ferrus Manus's arms."


Automatically Appended Next Post:
"And if we're going that route, can you really win a fistfight against a big strong dude who can't ever permanently die?"
Again, the specifics have been set in the OP as:
"With respect to Vulkan, I'm only looking for whom kills whom first, so he still loses even he's not permanently dead."
So yes, someone can win vs Vulkan.

Fair enough. Thanks.

If magnus is using powers, then it's not a fist fight. Surely the clue is in the name.

If you want to interpret the question as "who's the fiercest pre-heresy brawler" then I'm pretty sure Leman Russ and all of the other primarchs would agree that it's Horus. He was always big brother compared to the rest. Curze and Angron may rank highly due to crazy points, while Lion and Russ do well with their renowned might and savagery, but in terms of actually going the distance and winning? It's Horus. He's the only one with the ambition and the strength to act on it.

As far as we know, who was the first primarch to actively try to kill another? Was it Kurze vs. Dorn?

 Gordon Shumway wrote:
As far as we know, who was the first primarch to actively try to kill another? Was it Kurze vs. Dorn?

If we're discounting Russ vs the Mysterious Two, wouldn't it also be Russ and Angron? I am pretty sure Angron doesn't ever NOT actively try to kill anything he fights.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Gordon Shumway wrote:
As far as we know, who was the first primarch to actively try to kill another? Was it Kurze vs. Dorn?

If we're discounting Russ vs the Mysterious Two, wouldn't it also be Russ and Angron? I am pretty sure Angron doesn't ever NOT actively try to kill anything he fights.

I fully refuse to believe the second legion's primarch is dead. GW saved it for conversions initially, and when their stock is in dire straits, they will come up with somnew army for it. When was the first Russ Angron fight? By my reckoning, Kurze v. Dorn was about twenty years before the heresy, a few years after Kurze was first let in on the Grand Plan.

Russ vs Angron was also pre-heresy. Russ was genuinely worried about the increasing level of needless violence caused by the World Eaters and came to tell Angron to stop that crap. Angron outright asks Russ if he's been sent to kill
him by the Totally Not A God Emperor. Russ says no, not yet anyway, and asks Angron to come to Terra to get the Butchers Nails removed and to get his head fixed. Angron told Russ that the Emperor was just another slavemaster, and that he might go to Terra and try and kill daddy.

Needless to say, Russ did not take that very well.

Angron won the fight against Russ, and had Russ as his mercy, but wasn't so far gone as to take the Double Kill since he had a large chunk of Space Wolf legion pointing guns at him. Needless to say I doubt that at no point during that fight Angron would not have been trying to kill Russ.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Russ vs Angron was also pre-heresy. Russ was genuinely worried about the increasing level of needless violence caused by the World Eaters and came to tell Angron to stop that crap. Angron outright asks Russ if he's been sent to kill
him by the Totally Not A God Emperor. Russ says no, not yet anyway, and asks Angron to come to Terra to get the Butchers Nails removed and to get his head fixed. Angron told Russ that the Emperor was just another slavemaster, and that he might go to Terra and try and kill daddy.

Needless to say, Russ did not take that very well.

Angron won the fight against Russ, and had Russ as his mercy, but wasn't so far gone as to take the Double Kill since he had a large chunk of Space Wolf legion pointing guns at him. Needless to say I doubt that at no point during that fight Angron would not have been trying to kill Russ.

Is there a novel that that story is told in? I ama bit behind in my reading of HH (for the love of all that you consider holy, if you haven't read The Three Body Problem trilogy, you are doing yourself a disservice t sci fi.) so I probably missed it.

 Gordon Shumway wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Russ vs Angron was also pre-heresy. Russ was genuinely worried about the increasing level of needless violence caused by the World Eaters and came to tell Angron to stop that crap. Angron outright asks Russ if he's been sent to kill
him by the Totally Not A God Emperor. Russ says no, not yet anyway, and asks Angron to come to Terra to get the Butchers Nails removed and to get his head fixed. Angron told Russ that the Emperor was just another slavemaster, and that he might go to Terra and try and kill daddy.

Needless to say, Russ did not take that very well.

Angron won the fight against Russ, and had Russ as his mercy, but wasn't so far gone as to take the Double Kill since he had a large chunk of Space Wolf legion pointing guns at him. Needless to say I doubt that at no point during that fight Angron would not have been trying to kill Russ.

Is there a novel that that story is told in? I ama bit behind in my reading of HH (for the love of all that you consider holy, if you haven't read The Three Body Problem trilogy, you are doing yourself a disservice t sci fi.) so I probably missed it.

The novel is "Betrayer".

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
If magnus is using powers, then it's not a fist fight. Surely the clue is in the name.

It doesn't matter, that is the parameters the OP has laid out. Magnus throwing around warpfire, breaking primarch's spines with telekenesis and opening black holes is going to beat the other primarchs in their "birthday suits" easily.

I would say that second place would be Lorgar for the same reasons, but as OP specified we are only to consider pre-daemonic ascension versions of the primarchs.

Sorry, no way even Angron with just his fists is going to beat Magnus with his full psychic might. The only person who possibly could is Russ, and that is because Russ is stated in lore to have an "unusually high" resistance to psychic attacks, as in unusually high for even a primarch.

Heh, it's sort of like asking religious scholars to define something. Every example of something has an equal example of something else. Good on GW for making the lore of the gods of the stars similar to the gods of the earth.

w1zard wrote:
Sorry, no way even Angron with just his fists is going to beat Magnus with his full psychic might. The only person who possibly could is Russ, and that is because Russ is stated in lore to have an "unusually high" resistance to psychic attacks, as in unusually high for even a primarch.

Angron is also a pretty powerful latent psyker the same way the Russ is. He fistfought a Titan and won you know.

Psychic tomfoolery also makes angron more angry, as it interferes with the nails.

 Gordon Shumway wrote:
Heh, it's sort of like asking religious scholars to define something. Every example of something has an equal example of something else. Good on GW for making the lore of the gods of the stars similar to the gods of the earth.

Part of the magic of 40k is there's something for everyone. And the writers have generally been good at keeping it this way.

 Gordon Shumway wrote:

Is there a novel that that story is told in? I ama bit behind in my reading of HH (for the love of all that you consider holy, if you haven't read The Three Body Problem trilogy, you are doing yourself a disservice t sci fi.) so I probably missed it.

It is referred to as the "Night of the Wolf" and is in the nivel "Betrayer". Russ tried to teach Angron a tactical lesson in the only language he seemed to understand. In going for the kill, Angron left himself and his legion exposed. Angron refused to learn the lesson, arguing that the kill was all that mattered. He had Russ at his mercy and that meant, as far as he was concerned, he had won.

Angron later recounted this story to Lorgar who basically face-palmed at Angron's sheer bloody-mindedness.

By allowing psychic powers, even if he can only use it to amp himself, Magnus would win, and no other choice is worth entertaining.

Put it this way: we have seen how the Primarchs handle being punched by one another. Ferrus Manus, both one of the physically strongest and imposing Primarchs as well as having hands made out of a living metal that is so ridiculously durable he can shape weapons with his bare hands, was only able to slightly bruise Fulgrim with a punch to the face.

Magnus, when amplifying his punch with his psychic power, was able to shatter Leman Russ' breastplate and puncture one of his hearts. And this against a Primarch who canonically has exceptional psychic resistance among his brothers, and while holding back the entire Space Wolves legion along with the Custodian Guard and, get this, Sisters of Silence, while he was meanwhile channeling a spell to save his entire Legion.

Other Primarchs are quicker, more adept at brawling, or even physically stronger, but that suddenly is no longer true once Magnus taps into his psychic power. He would be able to physically maim his brothers. They wouldn't be able to guard a punch because it would shatter the bones and pulp their organs.

There is a reason why when Magnus was released he was hilariously overpowered, and rather than nerfing his power they opted to just make him like 175 points more expensive than any other Primarch.

Because Magnus is the most powerful Primarch, full stop, and even with the plot on his side Leman Russ barely pulled through.

Angron would GnP Magnus into the floor before he could even think of thinking up a spell.