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They needed a fluff excuse for them both to get new models. It was this or some other mcguffin that still winds them up in a stalemate, because neither can die.

I'm not an ork player, but I was also a little bit disbelieving that Ghaz lost to Ragnar. If there were some special circumstances I could buy it, but they way they just kind hand waved it was very disappointing.

Ork players should take note that for the rematch Ragnar admitted he'd not be able to beat Ghaz and thus opted to try dropping a space station on him

 Daedalus81 wrote:
They needed a fluff excuse for them both to get new models. It was this or some other mcguffin that still winds them up in a stalemate, because neither can die.

Why? We do we need an excuse for new models? New models are awesome. I don't see why we need lore reasons to support the toys.

Regardless, you cannot tell me "have them kill each other then both get resurrected! wave hands fast enough and it'll be cool!" was really the best they could come up with.

Again though, I know that a sufficiently skilled human can make up some of the difference to a marine or assassins wouldn’t be a thing, but the point still stands that historically Ghazkhul’s main rival has been a largely unaugmented elderly commissar.

changemod wrote:
Again though, I know that a sufficiently skilled human can make up some of the difference to a marine or assassins wouldn’t be a thing, but the point still stands that historically Ghazkhul’s main rival has been a largely unaugmented elderly commissar.

Though i'm curious now. Did they ever fight face to face? The closest I can remember is Yarrik being run over by a battlefortress (Probably a baneblade chassis) then being captured and tortured for a bit.

Whaaat? People so underrating Ragnar here. He's one of the greatest, most savage fighters the Imperium has to offer. Someone said but he's not even the leader of the Space Wolves. No but he'd kick Logan's ass in combat. I have no problem that he's more than capable of taking out Ghazzy too.

changemod wrote:
Again though, I know that a sufficiently skilled human can make up some of the difference to a marine or assassins wouldn’t be a thing, but the point still stands that historically Ghazkhul’s main rival has been a largely unaugmented elderly commissar.

Why do people keep bringing this up? They're rivals as leaders of opposing factions, not in fisticuffs. As far as I'm aware they've never even fought each other one-on-one in the lore.

 argonak wrote:
I'm not an ork player, but I was also a little bit disbelieving that Ghaz lost to Ragnar. If there were some special circumstances I could buy it, but they way they just kind hand waved it was very disappointing.

This is where I am at. Yeah, I know it is Ragnar not just any Space Marine, but Ghaz is -the- big bad Orks have to offer. It would be like Abaddon getting killed by Jain Zar. I think what would have made a much better fight would be Ghaz charging into Ragnar's honor guard, slaughtering them but taking some damage, then getting the two-way kill with Ragnar. Meanwhile no Orks intervene because Ghaz said he'd krump em if they did. This way GW gets the double-kill they need for the new models and Ghaz gets to be a badass but also taken down by a classic Ork weakness (lack of tactics).

Heck, maybe they will ret-con it to that one day. I can hope.


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 catbarf wrote:

changemod wrote:
Again though, I know that a sufficiently skilled human can make up some of the difference to a marine or assassins wouldn’t be a thing, but the point still stands that historically Ghazkhul’s main rival has been a largely unaugmented elderly commissar.

Why do people keep bringing this up? They're rivals as leaders of opposing factions, not in fisticuffs. As far as I'm aware they've never even fought each other one-on-one in the lore.

I think people miss that the rivalry is as -commanders- not a personal, physical rivalry. Which TBF can be easy to miss if one has not read into the fluff; just looking at the model one might assume Yarik's power klaw is about making himself better in melee, for example.

I don't really doubt Ragnar Blackmane being a viable candidate to face Ghazskull, that said, I'm honestly really disappointed that they went Ghaz vs. Ragnar instead of Ghaz vs. Yarrick or Ghaz vs. Helbrecht.

Yarrick is Ghazskull's true archnemesis. Ragnar is important to the collective Imperium, but in the narrative of Ghazskull and the Orks, it feels like Yarrick or Hellbrecht, people who actually have in some way been seeking/heading for a confrontation with Ghazskull, should have been Ghazskull's box opponent.

Koorland killed one of the Prime-Orks that were collectively known as 'the Beast' so having one killed by a bog-standard space marine in combat isn't unprecedented anyway.

Especially since while Ghaz is considered the Beast's second coming, he's supposedly still en route to becoming something comprable to even the weakest of those hab block sized super-greenies.

 argonak wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
They needed a fluff excuse for them both to get new models. It was this or some other mcguffin that still winds them up in a stalemate, because neither can die.

Why? We do we need an excuse for new models? New models are awesome. I don't see why we need lore reasons to support the toys.

We don't, but GW feels like they have some purpose with driving a story line bit by bit, so, here we are.

There are several Avatars of Khaine just sitting on the sideline of this conversation, annoyingly tapping their foot as they glare at marines with folded arms.

This is 40K. Ghaz got lucky he didn't behead himself with his own chainsaw by tripping over a grot.

"In this age of darkness, you are one of billions - and should you die, you will not be missed."

Is Ghaz actually dead?

Look GW decided that IOM, or more specifically Space marines are for all intents and purposes Goku.

Could 40k exist without the IOM?
Does IOM needs to be Goku if it is to continue existing..?

The trouble is that Its just one kaioken x100 after another kaioken x100 for Goku isint it.. I love goku but man does that get a bit stale after a while lol.

Take the latest pariah lore from PA:

Yeah, as everyone said already, Ragnar isn't any rando SM Captain, so he's definitely in the upper tiers of Imperium characters that can give a proper fight. I personally dislike the mutual KO, but given how GW basically wrote themselves into a corner by having an excuse for Ragnar to become a Primaris but also not wanting him to look like a chump, they wrote what we got. I was initially pretty unhappy but at this point Ghazzy even staying alive at all is better than what xenos usually get when they get involved with marines. At least Orks didn't get shafted as hard narratively as Eldar did in Blood of the Phoenix.

 fraser1191 wrote:
Is Ghaz actually dead?

No

Yeah, yeah, your warboss is super important, and the Space Wolves greatest non-dread hero is a random human..... I agree it was poorly written. However it doesn't matter how well it was written, people would still be bitching. My hero lost to your hero, waaaaa. Well tied, since neither died. Because in 40k no named character can die these days (In past times Tycho and maybe a few others did actually die). Eldrad is still around despite his death.

Every faction save maybe the Guard says it is the most powerful faction. It's heroes, strategies, wargear, or whatever trump other factions crap. Its sneaky boyz are the sneakiest or whatever. Almost all of it written poorly.

 fraser1191 wrote:
Is Ghaz actually dead?

no he just lost his head and had ity stitched back on. honestly the material left me with the distinct impression this was all a "just as planned" moment by Gork and Mork designed to give Ghaz a moment of Apotheosis.

The part of the story where a bunch of nobs found some grot dragging Ghaz's head away and they took it to Grotsnik only to be chopped apart to make the new body for Ghaz was pretty damn fun though.

Hey, at least they sent a marine captain after your guy. Jain Zar, basically a demigod of the Phoenix King, has been forced to flee the field by a random commissar. They were kind enough to send Calgar himself to punch our war god into pieces though.

I do kind of agree with the OP here. Ragnar is a big deal; definitely not some nameless human schmuck. But if we pretend that orks have the same gravitas as other factions and that Ghaz is the scariest ork you can face, getting KO'd by Ragnar is a bit insulting. The fact that they basically krumped each other means that they can be considered to be roughly the same level of threat. Which means anyone that can handily deal with Ragnar can handily deal with Ghaz too.

Now, that's not a very long list. Ragnar both mechanically and narratively at least as big a deal as most non-primary heretics, phoenix lords, commanders, etc. But like, Magnus could probably magic Ragnar to death in a couple seconds, right? And Ragnar probably can't win a fight against any of the other daemon primarchs. He definitely can't win against Guilliman.

So this story kind of indicates that orks on the whole can't currently concentrate more ninjutsu into a single guy than they have with Ghaz meaning there's no one model more lethal in all of orkdom except maybe for some kind of superheavy war machine.

Then again, the whole point of this story was to give an excuse for both Ghaz and Ragnar to get their facelift/powerup. So you could make the argument that he *wasn't* primarch-tier before but maybe possibly is now?

*shrug* If orks can't field a character more powerful than a named marine captain/chapter master, then they're basically in the same boat as the rest of us xenos.

Uh, Ghazghkull won that fight with Ragnar. What is this thread about?

Sure Ghazghkull got decapitated, but that's happened before, and he doesn't really need a head anyway.

That's a fair point. Ragnar was fighting against old model Ghaz technically, that old block of metal. He certainly is a bit more killy and a lot more tough than before. Indeed in a rematch it likely wouldn't go the same That klaw is bigger than Ragnar for goodness sakes.

Wyldhunt wrote:
Now, that's not a very long list. Ragnar both mechanically and narratively at least as big a deal as most non-primary heretics, phoenix lords, commanders, etc. But like, Magnus could probably magic Ragnar to death in a couple seconds, right? And Ragnar probably can't win a fight against any of the other daemon primarchs. He definitely can't win against Guilliman.

Someone may need to correct me here, but didn't Ragnar defeat Magnus - though not necessarily kill him - in one of the novels?

I have to say, I wouldn't mind a sparring scene between Guilliman and Blackmane, pre-Primarising, probably from Roboute's perspective - could make for an interesting assessment.

In a setting that is increasingly about its Biggest and Baddest characters, I think it's reasonable for ork players to be a bit stung by their B&BC getting laid low by someone who is at the end of the day one of many, many tier two space marines. You'd never see Guilliman get outsmarted by Imotekh, and that would be less egregious because Imotekh was the biggest Necron character before the Silent King returned.

BrianDavion wrote:
Ork players should take note that for the rematch Ragnar admitted he'd not be able to beat Ghaz and thus opted to try dropping a space station on him

Yes, and he failed doing that because Thrakka saw it coming and was waiting for him. Ragnar clearly didn't feel like he was able to defeat Ghaz second time, especially not after Grotznik's newest improvement and withdrew (ran away! ).

I haven't read the novel (I'm not even sure which one has the duel), but in the Prophecy of the Wolf booklet, the whole fluff starts with Thrakka having fallen down multiple levels of the hive and somehow having lost his head(it doesn't even explicitly say that it was cut off), while Ragnar has been slashed in half by wounds that seem to match Thrakka's old klaw, surrounded by the corpses of his entire squad.

Maybe someone who has read the novel could shed some light on how Ragnar actually managed to behead Thrakka, or if he did it at all.

Some people complain about Ultramarines while ignoring Space Wolves have much more offensive fluff.

BrianDavion wrote:
didn't we have this argument 6 months ago?Ragnar is basicly the "original space wolves hero" he's been around as long as Ghaz has (if not longer) and is basicly the "Face" of the space wolves. Notice that the default Space Wolves company is his?

how would i know if we did? i started 3 months ago with warhammer tabletop

At least Space Wolf fluff reads like an over-the-top metal music video, while Ultramarine fluff is closer to an episode of MLP.


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Beardedragon wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
didn't we have this argument 6 months ago?Ragnar is basicly the "original space wolves hero" he's been around as long as Ghaz has (if not longer) and is basicly the "Face" of the space wolves. Notice that the default Space Wolves company is his?

how would i know if we did? i started 3 months ago with warhammer tabletop

Step 1: Google Ragnar Blackmane
Step 2: Spend the rest of the day reading https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/Ragnar_Blackmane