Alpharius love

[Phiasco]

So I want to put a question out there and see what ya'll think:
 
Would giving Alpharius' weapon the fleshbane rule bring him up to par with the other primarchs, or make him op?

[Memento Of Prospero]

He doesn't contribute enough just by being on the board?

[Calas Typhon]

He doesn't contribute enough just by being on the board?

Especially when he is actually every model on the board.

[Runefyre]

I'd say he's good enough as is. He's already really good in combat against anything non-eternal warrior.

 

Plus he's an outstanding army buffer.

[Memento Of Prospero]

Yeahm... I should have wrote, somewhere on the board ;

[civsmitty]

Alpharius is an army-buffer, not a combat-god.

[IronDrake28]

He doesn't really need Fleshbane...and Instant Death means he can slay multi-wound models effectively enough with S6. As has been said before, he's more of a buffer than a chopper.

[m0nolith]

Alpharius is an army-buffer, not a combat-god.

This.

All Primarchs lie on the spectrum between army buffing to being fully combat oriented. Alpharius lies somewhere closer to the former.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

He should probably just avoid melee.

[Fallen11]

Yea, we all know how it ended when he faced Dorn in combat...

[Phiasco]

So, the question was if it would make him op in terms of game mechanics, not if it should happen or not.

[Memento Of Prospero]

Semantics?

 

If people dont think it should happen, the #1 reason would be that it is OP.

[Phiasco]

Fair enough

[LostAlone]

It's worth remembering that, even on a board that you can reasonably expect to include :cuss-kicker combat primarchs on a regular basis; even then games are relatively short and mostly primarchs aren't going to kill each other within the time frame of a single game. Yes, Alpharius is pretty weak sauce compared to the others, but unless you let him get caught up with the other primarchs very early in the game then he's unlikely to die before thee game ends. He doesn't need to be killier just to survive. 

 

Second to that, most primarchs will shred so many non-primarch units in combat that you can be reasonably confident of getting your money's worth. Against 1 wound models Alpharius' performance will be similar enough to anyone else that you shouldn't be worrying too much about making him killier. Extra special rules are always nice but, well, in the end it's not going to make a huge difference. You already got instant death and good strength and AP1. That's pretty damn leathal. Sure, more so against multi-wound models, but even against regular dudes you'll do just fine. Adding flesh bane would be nice, obviously, but not huge. 

 

In a wider sense; I absolutely love Alpharius. The buffs he gives are aweomse and potent and he's a killing machine as long as you don't let him get tied down by something that can kill him. I think that having a primarch like that is actually a benefit. If you take two kinda middle-ability primarchs that are good but not awesome then you have a game where neither side is super keen to engage the other primarch anyway because a deadlocked combat isn't a great strategy. Alpharius has that 'fleet in being' value, that increases because you never know where he is, as well as providing some awesome buffs. 

 

In short; what's not to like?

 

Yeah, don't get him bitchslapped by Horus (or Russ or Sanguinius when they show up) but the buffs are good and that multiplies the more units there are in the game.