Primarchs ranked, with Mathammer

[Urriak Urruk]

So I got bored, and wondered how the Primarchs stack up against each other. Since they don't all have the opportunity to fight each other in the fluff, I used the rules sections from 1d4chan to make this chart.

 

 

NOTES:

- This doesn't include Psychic powers, so if you add those Magnus obviously jumps way higher, right into the top tier with Leman and Horus (which makes sense, he nearly beat Russ and the wolf is undefeated)

- Lorgar also jumps up significantly but he's harder to measure considering he's never truly beaten another Primarch in the fluff

- Russ is undefeated, which probably doesn't make sense considering Horus mortally wounded the Emperor. The rules have Horus pre-warp-steroids, so it's safe to say that Horus post-Molech can beat Russ

- I couldn't find matchups of Magnus against Guilliman or Horus. Without psychic, its safe to say Magnus loses both. With, Guilliman loses, Horus will probably lose (pre-Molech Horus though)

- Alpharius is truthfully the worst, not Lorgar because he can draw on psychic. Considering Alpharius lost a fluff fight with Dorn, who is also a low-tier Primarch, this makes sense (Alpharius is also described as the size of a large Astartes, so not very intimidating)

- This doesn't include the Lion, Sangiunius, or the Khan as they don't have rules yet. The Lion fought Russ into a close tie in the fluff, so he should be top tier (perhaps better than pre-Molech Horus)

- Sanguinius isn't really on record fighting any Primarch except post-Molech Horus, which could probably kill any Primarch. Still, he's awesome so probably middle-tier at least

- The Khan has beaten Mortarion in the fluff, which means he's probably mid-tier at least, though I doubt he's on the same level as Leman Russ

 

Anyway, maybe people will find this interesting!

Edited July 20, 2017 by Urriak Urruk

[Tyberos the Red Wake]

I'm surprised Russ is above Horus and Fulgrim. It actually fits his lore, but the novels do a good job of making him look like a punk and people rarely give Russ the respect his position as executioner deserves. I always knew he was one of the stronger Primarchs, he would have to be, logically speaking. But above Lion, Fulgrim, Horus, etc? Surprising. Can't wait for Sanguinius.

[helterskelter]

Sanguinius fought Curze briefly, he was unarmoured, Curze had armour on, but sang has wings so speed isn't an issue. No outcome as Curze did the usual Night Lords thing and cheated by dangling azkaellon (I can't remember at the moment?) Out of a window.

[Dreagher]

For a primarch whos only thing is fighting Angron ranks way worse than he is portrayed in the novels...

[DuskRaider]

For a primarch whos only thing is fighting Angron ranks way worse than he is portrayed in the novels...

 

They got a lot of it wrong with the rules, especially with the first 4 Primarchs (perhaps barring Horus, but even then he should be able to best Russ). Once the series kicked off and became popular, they went more crazy with the rules. Fluffwise, both Angron and Mortarion should be higher up the warrior power scale than they actually are.

[Joe]

Angron could certainly do with an overhaul, although I'd imagine the next update we'll see for him is when he becomes a Daemon Prince.

[chapter master 454]

call me inept but how do we read that chart as it seems half filled...might just be I am brain farting hard but the chart seems incomplete. Someone help me here

[Aeternus]

call me inept but how do we read that chart as it seems half filled...might just be I am brain farting hard but the chart seems incomplete. Someone help me here

Pick the primarch you want to read the results of (on the top row), and read down their column until you hit the X. Then read from the X to the right.

 

Fights before the X are fights against primarchs to the left of their column, fights to the right of X are pretty easy to read at that point (row, column, intersection).

[Urriak Urruk]

I'm surprised Russ is above Horus and Fulgrim. It actually fits his lore, but the novels do a good job of making him look like a punk and people rarely give Russ the respect his position as executioner deserves. I always knew he was one of the stronger Primarchs, he would have to be, logically speaking. But above Lion, Fulgrim, Horus, etc? Surprising. Can't wait for Sanguinius.

 

Yeah, I was surprised by how insane Russ is. He is literally the Primarch killer. But he's not actually on record being tougher than the Lion, as the Lion doesn't have rules yet. Considering they had their famous duel (with the Lion sort-of winning) it's possible the Lion will actually get the best rules.

 

 

Sanguinius fought Curze briefly, he was unarmoured, Curze had armour on, but sang has wings so speed isn't an issue. No outcome as Curze did the usual Night Lords thing and cheated by dangling azkaellon (I can't remember at the moment?) Out of a window.

 

I forgot about that. It certainly supports Sangy being at least mid-tier, though he's probably higher.

 

 

For a primarch whos only thing is fighting Angron ranks way worse than he is portrayed in the novels...

 

Yeah Angron is firmly middle of the pack. He's definitely tough, it's just he loses narrowly to both Ferrus Manus and Vulkan. To get in to that final level of top tier you really need to start winning nearly every fight, and both Ferrus and Vulkan are tough in their own right.

 

Personally, I'm really glad to see that a total of 5 Primarchs tie for 4th place. It means that their rules are actually very good at countering each other, and if you have a middle-tier Primarch it is very dependent on who your facing.

 

Side-note, Ferrus can actually beat Fulgrim if depending on what weapons they use. If Fulgrim gets Forgebreaker and Ferrus gets the Fireblade, its an easy win for Fulgrim (just like in the fluff!)

[Walter Payton]

I like that Fulgrim can beat Angron.  The "peerless duellist" aspect of Slaanesh worship isn't emphasised enough in the lore or in the fandom, far too much "Slaanesh is just cocaine and hookers" nonsense.

[Jarka]

I may be wrong, but I think that Angron beat Russ quite hard once (while he was still techically loyal)..even if Russ was maybe not use all is skill

[Firepower]

Unless I'm reading it wrong, the chart says Fulgrim loses against Ferrus...

Edited July 22, 2017 by Firepower

[Urriak Urruk]

Unless I'm reading it wrong, the chart says Fulgrim loses against Ferrus...

 

You're reading it wrong, but it is a confusing chart (even though I made it I don't know how to make it simpler).

 

So you pick a Primarch from the top, in this case Ferrus. You then read down until you hit X (since Ferrus has a "Lose" matching Fulgrim, it means he lost).

 

Once you hit the X, you read to the right of it for the remaining Primarchs. So for example with Angron, it is to marked as a "Lose," meaning Angron lost against Ferrus.

[Firepower]

Generally you should get the same answer whether navigating by row or collumn, and having Win/Lose written there is problematic because it depends on reading from one rather than the other.  You'd be better off just putting the name of the winner in the boxes.

 

But maybe I'm the only one who sees it as problematic. :teehee:

Edited July 22, 2017 by Firepower

[Urriak Urruk]

Generally you should get the same answer whether navigating by row or collumn, and having Win/Lose written there is problematic because it depends on reading from one rather than the other.  You'd be better off just putting the name of the winner in the boxes.

 

But maybe I'm the only one who sees it as problematic.

 

Haha that is the crux of the issue. Win/Lose always refers to the column Primarchs, not the rows.

 

If I did it by name, it would look even worse as it would be a mess of completely different names all over the chart.

[bluntblade]

I wouldn't say Angron beat Russ hard. They were brawling in the dirt, having broken each other's weapons.

 

The Khan didn't beat Mortarion. Mortarion withdrew to preserve his fleet; at that stage the duel would've been decided by whether the Khan could make a perfect killing strike under his brother's guard, with no guarantee that he could.

[Walter Payton]

Unless I'm reading it wrong, the chart says Fulgrim loses against Ferrus...

1d4chan actually has a section on this for the Primarch's page for Fulgrim:

 

 

 

Its worth noting that in the fluff during this duel Ferrus was fighting with Fireblade and Fulgrim with Forgebreaker. Here's how well that goes: against a primarch Fireblade is only a little better than just using his bare hands, though against most Primarchs Ferrus still wounds on a 2+ so it's all right for him. For Fulgrim though Forgebreaker is a HUGE upgrade. He goes from wounding of 4+ to 2+ thanks to strength 10. Most importantly Ferrus will no longer have Concussive to mitigate Fulgrim's sublime swordsman rules so he still get's more attacks. Even worse is that since Fulgrim can concuss Ferrus down to initiative 1, sublime swordsman will generate SEVEN additional attacks whenever concuss hits and hitting so much means it should be every turn. And even worse is that since Ferrus is down to initiative 1 a lot of the time, Blind is much much more likely to hit. It doesn't even matter if we make Forgebreaker unwieldy in Fulgrim's hands because unwieldy doesn't actually reduce initiative, it just makes you fight at that initiative step, and putting out so much more damage means striking at the same time simply doesn't matter. In the first turn Fulgrim should get that first unsaved wound to concuss and after that it gets disgusting. Once Fulgrim concusses Ferrus he gets 12(!) attacks (since sublime swordsman doesn't limit the bonus attacks it can give) hitting on 3+ (8 hits) wounding on 2+ (5.3 wounds) which is a frankly disgusting 3.5 wounds after saves. IWND will take that down to 3.177 but holy   is Ferrus screwed. He dies after 3 rounds of combat and quite frankly he gets wrecked like a  . With Forgebreaker there's a reasonable chance that Fulgrim could take on Horus simply because the combination of sublime swordsman and concussive is just so powerful (it becomes a matter of where or not Horus fails his 3+ save against stat penalties before the claw cripples Fulgrim enough - and odds are against Luperkal in it). Turns out Fulgrim WAS the better smith, after all.

 

[bluntblade]

We could reasonably say that Ferrus' mind was clouded by his hatred.

[Dreagher]

I wouldn't say Angron beat Russ hard. They were brawling in the dirt, having broken each other's weapons.

Wasn't it so that Angron could have killed him and russ even said so, but if he did he would be shot at by the surrounding space wolfs?

[Runefyre]

 

I wouldn't say Angron beat Russ hard. They were brawling in the dirt, having broken each other's weapons.

Wasn't it so that Angron could have killed him and russ even said so, but if he did he would be shot at by the surrounding space wolfs?

 

Not to derail the thread, but Laurie Goulding himself had a great explanation of the Night of the Wolf incident (from an extensive conversation on the topic in the Black Library subforum):

 

 

I think that's the thing that people can't grasp - there was no winner. (Ironically, it's exactly the same as arguing on the internet... the moment you do, you've lost. Everyone loses.)

Russ went in all bolshy and throwing his weight around, looking to reprimand or humble Angron. But that's like a red rag to a bull.

Angron would have fought TO THE DEATH over something that Russ intended as a demonstration of authority (when he didn't really HAVE total authority, or sanction to do it). He initiated a fight, then realised that his deranged brother would be like a rabid dog, and gladly self-destruct rather than back down.

This isn't intended to show which primarch is stronger. It's supposed to show how upsetting mental illness can be.

Angron (and I say this as one of the biggest World Eaters fans ever) was a brain damaged, irrational monster. Russ wanted to put this upstart in his place, but instead kicked off a fight that should never have happened. When he realised this, and he saw how much damage his ill-thought-out actions could have, he walked away.

So Angron thinks he "won". Russ could have killed all of the World Eaters and their primarch, but decided not to... mainly because he realised that he himself had been a bit of a dick about it. A moral victory, but definitely a shoddy situation that he himself initiated.

Russ should be ashamed, and Angron should be muzzled. There's no victory here.

 

-Laurie Goulding

Edited July 23, 2017 by Runefyre

[Firepower]

 

 

I wouldn't say Angron beat Russ hard. They were brawling in the dirt, having broken each other's weapons.

Wasn't it so that Angron could have killed him and russ even said so, but if he did he would be shot at by the surrounding space wolfs?

 

Not to derail the thread, but Laurie Goulding himself had a great explanation of the Night of the Wolf incident (from an extensive conversation on the topic in the Black Library subforum):

 

 

I think that's the thing that people can't grasp - there was no winner. (Ironically, it's exactly the same as arguing on the internet... the moment you do, you've lost. Everyone loses.)

Russ went in all bolshy and throwing his weight around, looking to reprimand or humble Angron. But that's like a red rag to a bull.

Angron would have fought TO THE DEATH over something that Russ intended as a demonstration of authority (when he didn't really HAVE total authority, or sanction to do it). He initiated a fight, then realised that his deranged brother would be like a rabid dog, and gladly self-destruct rather than back down.

This isn't intended to show which primarch is stronger. It's supposed to show how upsetting mental illness can be.

Angron (and I say this as one of the biggest World Eaters fans ever) was a brain damaged, irrational monster. Russ wanted to put this upstart in his place, but instead kicked off a fight that should never have happened. When he realised this, and he saw how much damage his ill-thought-out actions could have, he walked away.

So Angron thinks he "won". Russ could have killed all of the World Eaters and their primarch, but decided not to... mainly because he realised that he himself had been a bit of a dick about it. A moral victory, but definitely a shoddy situation that he himself initiated.

Russ should be ashamed, and Angron should be muzzled. There's no victory here.

 

-Laurie Goulding

 

 

I agree, but the underlined bit sort of undermines his opening statement.  "There was no winner, there wasn't supposed to be a winner, but if he actually wanted to, Russ would've won everything and got the girl, too" :teehee:

Edited July 23, 2017 by Firepower

[Runefyre]

 

 

 

I wouldn't say Angron beat Russ hard. They were brawling in the dirt, having broken each other's weapons.

Wasn't it so that Angron could have killed him and russ even said so, but if he did he would be shot at by the surrounding space wolfs?

 

Not to derail the thread, but Laurie Goulding himself had a great explanation of the Night of the Wolf incident (from an extensive conversation on the topic in the Black Library subforum):

 

 

I think that's the thing that people can't grasp - there was no winner. (Ironically, it's exactly the same as arguing on the internet... the moment you do, you've lost. Everyone loses.)

Russ went in all bolshy and throwing his weight around, looking to reprimand or humble Angron. But that's like a red rag to a bull.

Angron would have fought TO THE DEATH over something that Russ intended as a demonstration of authority (when he didn't really HAVE total authority, or sanction to do it). He initiated a fight, then realised that his deranged brother would be like a rabid dog, and gladly self-destruct rather than back down.

This isn't intended to show which primarch is stronger. It's supposed to show how upsetting mental illness can be.

Angron (and I say this as one of the biggest World Eaters fans ever) was a brain damaged, irrational monster. Russ wanted to put this upstart in his place, but instead kicked off a fight that should never have happened. When he realised this, and he saw how much damage his ill-thought-out actions could have, he walked away.

So Angron thinks he "won". Russ could have killed all of the World Eaters and their primarch, but decided not to... mainly because he realised that he himself had been a bit of a dick about it. A moral victory, but definitely a shoddy situation that he himself initiated.

Russ should be ashamed, and Angron should be muzzled. There's no victory here.

 

-Laurie Goulding

 

 

I agree, but the underlined bit sort of undermines his opening statement.  "There was no winner, there wasn't supposed to be a winner, but if he actually wanted to, Russ would've won everything and got the girl, too"

 

Not really, killing Angron and his legion wouldn't have been a victory (the HH hadn't started yet). Russ knew that, hence why he ceded the fight.

 

Plus there are no absolutes in war, there's never a guarantee that x will always beat y (especially with Primarch duals imo). I was merely attempting to clarify that the Night of the Wolf can't truly be used as a case study for Primarch duals, as Russ wasn't fighting to kill (and Angron even stood down at the end, which is uncharacteristic for him).

Edited July 23, 2017 by Runefyre

[bluntblade]

Russ would have taken horrendous losses had he given the order to kill Angron. The main takeaway for me is that everything that happened on that field proved Angron was more damaged than anyone had imagined.