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Welcome back to my Primarch Series! Last time I tackled Dorn, and today I'm tackling the Bearer or the Word - Lorgar.

Another interesting challenge. Lorgar is one of the Primarchs I cared least about, but reading his story made me understand him a little bit better, but didn't help me understand the way he fights. In fact, from what I've read, Lorgar fights very little, and never really learned martial prowess. He instead preferred to let his words and ideas do the fighting; and in that, he was supremely effective. Reading through all his deeds, and you see that Lorgar has formed the basis of most of what we know about the Imperium today. Lorgar, in a sense, conquered the Imperium's faith already, and if he ever starts coming back to "fight" again, I would fear for the Imperium that a new cult could swiftly and violently sweep through them.

In my imagination of this, Lorgar's time spent in isolation for the past 10,000 years has brought with him a new scripture; the already alluded-to Book of Lorgar. Lorgar's main power is to walk around talking, and you do not want to let him finish. The abilities start at fantastic, and quickly become absurd. By the end of turn 2, if Lorgar's in your ranks, you could see whole portions of your army leave your cause and join your opponent's. Horde lists beware! However, he's much slower than his winged brothers, so you'll have a bit more time and space to keep away from him. This power is unique in the game, and it's insanely potent. However, Space Marines, and anyone with troops costing 11 points per model or more are safe until Turn 5. If you don't deal with Lorgar by then, then all your troops, and some army's HQ's (looking at you Astra Militarum!) will start turning to the cause of Lorgar as well.

Combat wise, Lorgar is a mess. He's the only Primarch that hits on 3's instead of 2's, but this does change come turn 3, when he'll start hitting better. Still, going down to potentially hitting on 5's for turns 1 and 2 if your opponent takes him down quickly means that he can be a real slouch in combat, even if he harms the weak willed very easily with his special Crozius Arcanum, Luminarum. Yeah, this guy forms so much of the Imperium, a staple of office of the Space Marines still use the weapon of choice, by design, of Lorgar. You're all heretics for taking one.

Lorgar
Points: 384 Power Level: 20

Lorgar is armed with Illuminarum and an Archaeotech Pistol.

M 8"
WS 3+
BS 3+
S 7
T 7
W 18
A 6
Ld 10
Sv 2+

5-9 wounds: WS 4+, BS 4+, S6
1-4 wounds: WS 5+, BS 5+, S5

Weapons:
Archaeotech Pistol - Pistol 1 - 12" - S6 - AP -3 - Damage 2 - Double the number of shots this weapon makes at targets under half range.
Illuminarum - melee - S+2 - AP -2 - Damage D3 - Any wounds inflicted by this weapon against units with a Ld of 9 or less inflicts a mortal wound in addition to its normal damage.

Wargear:
The Armour of the Word: Lorgar has a 4+ Invulnerable save. Additionally, if Lorgar would lose a wound as the result of a psychic power or an attack made by a Daemon or Psyker, roll a d6. On a 4+ that wound is ignored.

Desecrated Lecticto Divinitatus: <Word Bearers> within 12" of Lorgar automatically pass Morale tests, and their Death to the False Emperor special rule instead triggers on rolls of 5+.

Special Rules:
Death to the False Emperor

The Book of Lorgar: At the end of each of your turns, Lorgar speaks a verse from the Book of Lorgar. Note the turn, and apply the following effects. The effects of each turn are cumulative.

Turn | Effect
1 - If a <Word Bearers> charges, is charged, or makes a Heroic Intervention, they gain +1S and +1A until the end of the subsequent charge phase.
2 - At the end of each of your turns, including this one, your opponent rolls a dice for each enemy unit within 12" of Lorgar with models in it that cost 10 points per model or less. On a 4+, that unit leaves your opponent's army and joins yours. It loses the Imperium faction keyword if it has it, and gains the Chaos faction keyword if it doesn't have it.
3 - Chaos units in your army gain +1 to their hit rolls.
4 - You do not need to pay reinforcement points to add <Daemons> to your army if they were summoned by a <Word Bearer>.
5 - Replace the turn 2 effect with " At the end of each of your turns, including this one, your opponent rolls a dice for each enemy unit within 24" of Lorgar with models in it that cost 50 points per model or less. On a 4+, that unit leaves your opponent's army and joins yours. It loses the Imperium faction keyword if it has it, and gains the Chaos faction keyword if it doesn't have it.
6+ - You may choose the result of the dice roll to determine if the game ends.

Primarch of the XVIIth: You may reroll hit rolls of 1 for friendly <Word Bearer> units within 6" of Lorgar. Additionally, you may choose the result for such units rather than rolling when using the Chaos Boon stratagem.

The Urizen: Lorgar adds 1 to his psychic tests and deny the witch rolls. He may manifest Smite any number of times per turn, instead of just once.

=Keywords= Character, Monster, Daemon, Primarch, Psyker, Lorgar
=Faction Keywords= Chaos, Heretic Astartes, Word Bearers

Psyker:
Lorgar can attempt to manifest three psychic powers in each friendly Psychic phase, and attempt to deny two psychic powers in each enemy Psychic phase. He knows the Smite power and two powers from the Dark Hereticus Discipline.




Next up: I'm gone for the weekend, so no new entries in this series until next week, but then I'm going to howl at the moon.

There's really no reason for him to not hit on a 2+ like the rest of the Primarchs.

The stealing units ability is absolutely bonkers insane.

Agreed on the 2+ WS/BS

I think some of the turn/effect things are way too clunky to be used. Lorgar convincing Tyranids to join him? Makes no sense. Those two need...to honestly be completely removed.

 JNAProductions wrote:
The stealing units ability is absolutely bonkers insane.

Yes, that is waaaayyyyy to strong i think. It is fluffy in making up the lore that he is the strongest priest for imperium at first then turned to Chaos to continue and makes up for the high cost of Lorgar and gaining neither the killy power / speed / toughness of Magnus or Mortarion.

But base on fluffy, I suggest base on leadership, the lower the leadership, the more likely those units get swayed into Lorgar's side

As others have pointed out, the unit stealing power is probably a little problematic. It's fluffy, sure, but it's also a very feels bad rule for your opponent. Not only are you flipping a coin for them to see if they lose a unit, but you're also reintroducing a more extreme version of the old "don't touch my models" powers like Lash of Slaanesh. Additionally, I don't think your points per model limitation actually achieves what you seem to intend for it to. Sure, space marines are more expensive than ork boyz, but 30 orkz are a much larger chunk of a player's army than 5 tactical marines. This ability also synergizes a lot with the "free demons" rule. Imagine having several characters that you've kept protected until the late game suddenly summoning squads of daemons every turn (word bearers get bonuses to that, right?) while simultaneously converting your opponents points into your own points.

As an alternative, I suggest giving him an effect similar to that rule you gave Fulgrim where models "turn traitor" and make an attack against their own unit. Or perhaps have it function similarly to the GSC mind control psychic power.

You could even have a "joint custody" situation where those affected by Lorgar are actively resisting his mind control but intermittently succumbing to his will. Perhaps on a 4+, the unit does not leave your opponent's control but instead makes a shooting or melee attack against a target of your choice. That way, your opponent is only losing whatever models you attack, can take steps to mitigate friendly fire through positioning, and never has to let you touch his models. This would basically turn Lorgar's offense into the offense of whomever he rolls a 4+ for.

Also, this is a much more minor thing, but 3 smites in a turn along with a melee weapon that does mortal wounds is an awful lot of mortal wound generation for a guy who's supposedly not that great at murdering stuff compared to his brothers. Considering almost every non-character unit in the game other than necrons are leadership 9 or less, and considering that leadership debuffs are easy to ally in, you'll basically be inflicting mortal wounds every time you attack. 6 attacks hitting on 3's and rerolling 1s is still roughly 5 hits, and that's assuming you don't take the advice of others to up his WS to 2+. At strength 9, he'll be wounding on 2s and 3s against basically everything. So I think we can safely assume he'll do 4 mortals in melee on top of his other damage plus 4 or 6 mortals in the psychic phase (depending on if he whiffs on a smite) for a total of 8 mortal wounds. That may or may not be reasonable for a guy of his points cost, but I get th eimpression that may be a bit more killy than you intended for this particular primarch.

I'm not really sure that Lorgar swaying people MID-BATTLE with his oratory is very logical, unless you're leaning heavily into him being a daemon prophet. However as others have said, taking control of enemy models is both problematic and extremely overpowered--every model swayed is essentially worth twice its points, because your opponent lost it and you gain it as well. That sort of mechanic doesn't really belong in 40K.

There is a mechanic in 40K that can fill a similar thematic role though--morale. Morale losses represent people running off, being incapacitated, or perhaps turning traitor in this case. Even forcing your opponent to repeatedly check morale on all of his units could add up very quickly.

And free Daemon Summoning is just a bad idea, we've already seen where that leads. I'd look at creating Daemon synergy between them and Word Bearers units instead.

I have to agree with people - stealing troops is fun if done right, but yeah, it's really hard. I think I have to agree with folks and take that part out. Okay, it's official - Lorgar is going to get a re-do before this series is done.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, doing it based on Ld doesn't work, because there's some REALLY powerful stuff that has a low Ld (Tank Commanders anyone?). Basing it on points per model, to me, tended to make more sense. But yeah, I think it might be a once-off ability, rather than turn after turn.

Okay, I couldn't do another until I mixed this guy up. I got rid of the unit stealing abilities, but I'm keeping the free-summoning abilities. He needs to survive until Turn 4 to use this, which is very difficult in the game. Even then, you need to spend your whole turn summoning, so it's unlikely to really take off; but if you can still keep him alive on Turn 5 and 6, you'll be able to just choose to keep going if need be to gain the free unit's benefits.

In the meantime, the Urizen is fantastic at scaring the "little people" of the game. He won't do much against Ultramarines or anyone else that's naturally Ld9 or better, but the chaff units get demolished by him in close combat, if he gets into that. Also, enemy units can't automatically pass morale while close to the bringer of the word. Again, it's another benefit for Ld based stuff outside Night Lords, but preventing your opponent from using command points to just hold or avoid losing big swathes of units is a potent ability.

Lorgar
Points: 384 Power Level: 20

Lorgar is armed with Illuminarum and an Archaeotech Pistol.

M 8"
WS 3+
BS 3+
S 7
T 7
W 18
A 6
Ld 10
Sv 2+

5-9 wounds: WS 4+, BS 4+, S6
1-4 wounds: WS 5+, BS 5+, S5

Weapons:
Archaeotech Pistol - Pistol 1 - 12" - S6 - AP -3 - Damage 2 - Double the number of shots this weapon makes at targets under half range.
Illuminarum - melee - S+2 - AP -2 - Damage D3 - Any wounds inflicted by this weapon against units with a Ld of 8 or less inflicts a mortal wound in addition to its normal damage.

Wargear:
The Armour of the Word: Lorgar has a 4+ Invulnerable save. Additionally, if Lorgar would lose a wound as the result of a psychic power or an attack made by a Daemon or Psyker, roll a d6. On a 4+ that wound is ignored.

Desecrated Lecticto Divinitatus: <Word Bearers within 12" of Lorgar automatically pass Morale tests, and their Death to the False Emperor special rule instead triggers on rolls of 5+.

Special Rules:
Death to the False Emperor

The Book of Lorgar: At the end of each of your turns, Lorgar speaks a verse from the Book of Lorgar. Note the turn, and apply the following effects. The effects of each turn are cumulative.

Turn | Effect
1 - Enemy units within 12" of Lorgar cannot automatically pass Morale tests.
2 - If a ><Word Bearers> unit charges, is charged, or makes a Heroic Intervention, that unit gains +1S until the end of the subsequent charge phase.
3 - Chaos units in your army gain +1 to their hit rolls.
4 - You do not need to pay reinforcement points to add Daemons to your army if they were summoned by a friendly <Word Bearers> unit.
5+ - You may choose the result of the dice roll to determine if the game ends.

Primarch of the XVIIth: You may reroll hit rolls of 1 for friendly <Word Bearers> units within 6" of Lorgar. Additionally, you may choose the result for such units rather than rolling when using the Chaos Boon stratagem.

The Urizen: Lorgar adds 1 to his psychic tests and deny the witch rolls. He may manifest Smite any number of times per turn, instead of just once.

=Keywords= Character, Monster, Daemon, Primarch, Psyker, Lorgar
=Faction Keywords= Chaos, Heretic Astartes, Word Bearers, Undivided

Psyker:
Lorgar can attempt to manifest three psychic powers in each friendly Psychic phase, and attempt to deny two psychic powers in each enemy Psychic phase. He knows the Smite power and two powers from the Dark Hereticus Discipline.