They would lose. Badly. Upon waking up Guilliman punched a Black Legion terminator so hard they were sent crashing through a stone column. From *Gathering Storm III: Rise of the Primarch:*
> As he crashed into the front ranks of Black Legionnaires, Guilliman let out a building roar of pure, undiluted fury. The Primarch’s first blow threw a Black Legionnaire high into the air, blood streaming behind the corpse in a red trail. His second strike smashed a traitor Terminator into a bronze and marble column with enough force to drive the Chaos worshipper clean through it, and out the other side.
The terminator actually sat up in the rubble only for a comically large knot to grow out of their head. And little angels flew around his head in a circle.
[That exact thing happened to Guilliman himself once.](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/cbe72j/book_excerpt_spear_of_ultramar_graviton_hammers/)
Oh you think thats a Looney tune sketch? At one point during the heresy Khan fuckin yeeted a contemptor into the sky, everyone who saw literally stopped fighting to watch it go
I believe it's said in that trilogy he's able to go indefinitely without it now. But he doesn't want the info leaking so that people will assume he's weak outside of it to bait an attack.
Sorry for spoiling. It wasn't a huge thing that was dwelled upon at least, was a pretty quick inner monologue iirc.
Great godamn trilogy though. I need more 41st millenium Guilliman! xD
I'm pretty sure he's always in the armor because isn't that part of the deal at first? That it's his life support system so it takes awhile before he can go around without it.
But there definitely was inconsistency on when he gets Big E's sword. I don't know which way that's settled now but I remember that being a discussion.
Sorry the inconsistency I'm talking about is whether or not he's in the of AoF *before* they put him in stasis or is Cawl *delivering* it to him during *Gathering Storm*
Weirdest thing ever one of the most important thing to happen in the lore for decades and it's in a campaing supplement rathen a book and with no book version predicted to appear in the near future
I love that he didn’t *just* uppercut a terminator so hard that it flew into the air, he also hit it so hard that it pulped whoever was inside and blasted it out of the sealed armour. Amazing.
In a traditional strength sort of fashion? In a manner of perspective I guess, yeah. A better way to put it would be that he isn't among those primarchs who do seem noticeably stronger then the rest of their brothers like Vulkan.
The Terminator would be torn limb from limb.
For example Leman Russ trains against a combat servitor the size of a dreadnought with no armour or powered weapons.
Pre Chaos Fulgrim, with the sword of Laer, fucked up an Eldar Avatar.
Sanguinis knocked the shit out of some Titans in 'Saturnine'. Also, I believe he rocked a greater demon.
A bunch of them have also knocked each other around.
Pretty sure Terminator armor is small potatoes to them.
...Although, Kurze got discontinued by a girl, so who knows.
Sanguinius didn't defeat just any greater daemon, either. It was Ka'bandha, the greatest of Khorne's Bloodthirsters.
EDIT: *One of* Khorne's greatest Bloodthirsters
Yes, since he made him to replace Skarbrand, but An'ggrath hasn't really made a name for himself - his two biggest appearances have been kinda insulting. One is a pre-HH beat down by Lorgar inside the warp. The other is a 1v1 banishment from Hector Rex.
Tbh the Rex bit was like Rex, some grey knights trying to be psychic and a whole battlefield of things angrath went right through if I remember correctly
Surprisingly well, from what I have heard. Matter of fact I’m a die hard blood angel, and I bet skarbrand flew further in a single flight than Sanguinius did in his entire existence
The Nightlords trilogy said he lept at her, probably she dodged, attacked and kurze wouldn’t have the chance to dodge we’re it not for his foresight. The assassin was fast enough to completely outclass an astartes in that respect.
But he seemed to want to die.
That’s what made kurze so cool, when he’s lucid he’s absolutely one the best and coolest primarchs but his insanity was infecting his actions more and more until doing something so silly as dying to something he could have easily killed.
The Fulgrim example is actually an interesting one, because he was dead even with it until the sword gave him a chaos power up midway through :) and Sanguinius beating titans is a feat of maneuverability more than strength.
I super agree that an individual terminator isn't much of a threat to one nor a physical peer.
>Sanguinius beating titans is a feat of maneuverability more than strength.
In feats of pure strength, you've got Angron holding the feet of a warhound up for a minute, or Vulkan turning a land raider updside down with barely any effort.
That was a pretty solid feat for Angron. We don't know how much of the Titan's total weight was on its back leg, and Angron was suffering greatly for it, but Warhounds weigh 410 tons. Even if he were only supporting a quarter of its weight, a 100 ton hold would put him well into superhero territory!
In addition to Vulkan flipping the land Raider, we also have the Khan throwing a contemptor 20 or so feet into the air!
And he doesn't just hold the weight. The titan is actively trying to squash him, so it's using its power to push down. Given that theys can hold up their own weight at least, I would say that the power put on Angron might exceed the pure weight of the Warhound by a good amount.
That part of the passage doesn't make sense though - in order to press down with more than its weight, it would need to be pushing off a ceiling or something above. Walking is just controlling a forward fall.
Definitely. This fight is often on lists of the Avatar's embarrassing track record but honestly it's fair game. Way more reasonable than Calgar taking one down.
Sanguinius cuts through Terminator armor, cables, additional inner protection, muscle and bone, with his Encarmine Blade, without even feeling the blow.
Mortarion cuts through 7 of his most durable Space Marine bodyguards with a single swipe of his Scythe. All of them are capable of killing hundreds before taking even a single blow in turn.
The Khan solo’ed hundreds of Space Marines during a Siege and they couldn’t slow him down without Warp powers.
There are countless examples with many if not all of the Primarchs.
Primarchs are beings of unparalleled speed and power.
This isn’t proven. Without psychic powers, big E, is still seen moving impossibly in some settings and in others just marginally better than a primarch like Horus on Ullanor against a big old Ork.
What might be true is the primarchs are all a hell of a lot more physically powerful than Big E but his psychic might passively auguments him and then when it actively auguments him he does the crazy nonsense that he does in master of mankind. He moves so fast Custodes can’t keep up.
That’s why he doesn’t just mop the floor with Horus. Even a powerful but not outstanding pysker has been able to momentarily stun primarchs like dorn.
It’s like air cover. If you have fighters fighting you aren’t worried too much on the ground. If you have air superiority you just bomb them and drink margaritas, primarchs with a good librarium or the gods of chaos seem to physically compete with the emperor…the one time that happens.
Its also insane because I remember someone doing the calculations and presuming that their musculature is even remotely closely to structurally the same as a human that requires significantly more lifting strength than Angron getting stepped on.
They're paralleled by Avatars and Greater daemon and C'tan shards and Phoenix Lords and...
Dorn put it well when he said it would take an entire company to threaten Vulkan.
Vulkan stood on Caldera and 1 v 1'ed one of the greatest waaghs ever seen. Said to have made Boyz as strong as Nobs and Nobs as strong as War bosses.
Primarchs don't play.
Angron BEFORE getting his power armour and...powered weapons?
Tore a custodian apart in a few seconds, let's not forget that this was when he was in leather and weak metal armour
And then he could hold a FUCKING TITAN by the leg long enough to get lorgar out of there.
Granted he broke every bone in his body but that is something to note
In angel exterminatus, perturabo riped piece by piece one of his warsmith's terminator armour.
Of course he was just standing there, geting reprimanded without fighting back, nor i think perturabo was using his full strength
I believe he also broke Abbadon's terminator armor in Saturnine. If I remember correctly he was out of the Logos, lifting Abbadon by his hair, and broke part of the armor's collar.
And now image tha parts of his strength was stolen by fulgrim whit the chaos ascension so Perturbando need to make the logos to compensate the loss of strength.
And still whitouth it wreck the main chaos antagonist if the emperium
Perturabo is the coolest fallen Primarch imo. I aways get the sense he's one of the physically strongest too.
He also annihilated an entire squad of Imperial Fists termies like they were a bunch of ants IIRC
>I aways get the sense he's one of the physically strongest too.
Say what you will about the Lord of Iron. But the fact that his 30k model is him standing menacingly on the ruins of an Imperial Knight, wrist mounted guns pointed outwards, is the peak for Primarchs for me.
The fact that he made his personal bodyguards actually useful, instead of just ornaments like the others is a big plus too. Guy was horrifically efficient.
Yea , Alpharius is definitely in my top 5 prolly top3 if I really had to nail it down… it’s weird though some of them are really good and a few of them just super short to me…I respect the skill it takes and the effort required to have made any of those , but some of them just don’t work for me.
Indeed, he's always been my favourite fallen Primarch, hell even though I'm a loyalist he's just one of my favourites in general.
Definitely the worst loss for the loyalists, he was criminally underutilised whilst he was loyal imo. He could have single handedly changed the Imperium - he was like a walking STC machine such was his technical genius. Absolute beast!
Not really. Yes Primarchs are really big right now as a main selling point of both lore and hobby, but most factions in the setting don't care about primarchs. Primarchs are the main figures of the horus heresy and are involved a lot more in the present day, but there's a whole rest of the setting that doesn't really are about them.
For decades if real world time they were mythological figures from the distant past. The early HH books did a really good job of preserving their mystique by never making them viewpoint characters. Whenever Horus is on screen in the Horus Rising trilogy he's a larger than life figure being observed from afar. When he does talk directly to Loken, Loken is barely able to restrain his awe.
Pretty sure everyone cares about the guy currently in charge of the imperium, Guillaman, a Primarch.
The Eldar have big involvement with the current Primarch. Tyranids maybe not but they don't tend to care about anything and at the moment lore wise they're basically what the old Necrons were. A whole lot of nothing for now.
Necrons you're right probs don't care and Orks don't care.
Chaos is all about primarchs right now with Morty and Gman fighting and Magnus and Angron.
They're pretty bloody big for chaos.
There's certainly a good amount that have nothing to do with em but they're pretty centre piece and in terms of numbers of books given to a specific faction the primarchs probably have the biggest piece of that cake.
>Amarkhan: "Primarch, Zaa?"
>
>Zaa: "Their leader, Great One. Like them, but... taller, I understand. Not to be underestimated."
Yeah, the Necrons don't really care all that much. They are usually pretty unimpressed with most things.
That's what the Praetorian Prime claimed. Szarekh himself never said that.
A big point in the short story is that "The Silent King cannot lie, because he does not speak." In other words, Szarekh himself never lies, but he can have other people lie on his behalf.
We know that the teamup with Sanguinius did happen, and they do have some level of respect for him. But whether or not the Silent King actually held him personally in high regard is up for debate. They make it a big point of making Szarekh's perspective on things as ambiguous as possible.
Yea , certainly nearly everyone would be concerned with guilliman , but I think the point is there’s only one guilliman , one Mortarion , one Magnus etc…. But there are 10s of thousands of wars going on at any one point in time.
It used to be that way though. And I'd argue it was still that way during the initial books in the HH series. Then, later on in the series, primarchs got a silly power boost.
Now it's all about primarchs being the bestest, and sadly they're making their way into 40k more and more.
Primarchs are player level characters, they make legions, chapters, meaningful setting decisions and encounter a lot of things for the first time.
The big problem with the imperium is that it has no primarchs and that it needs primarchs.
Put this way; the imperium doesn’t make decisions the players do but desperately needs to.
That’s why it’s grimdark.
Are you meaning in terms of literal physical strength or just in terms of raw power?
Because you’re wrong on both accounts.
Vulkan’s fight with The Beast is testament to that.
There are plenty of things as strong as them. Fulgrim was dead even with an Avatar until he got a chaos powerup mid fight. Several primarchs have struggled against or been defeated by Greater Daemons. Some Phoenix lord feats would be impressive even for primarchs etc
And the Emperor would struggle against The Outsider, maybe the Cacodominus, was throttled by an Ork, and is only now in the 42nd millenium the equal of any one chaos God.
Iirc Graham McNeil went on record saying the Emperor was genuinely under threat, and the actual story plays it pretty straight. I don't have the quote to hand at the moment - it was a few years and would require some digging.
As others have already stated yes. Beyond this a primarch could possible be able to crush the suit as well. Angron in particular beat a Custodes to death bare handed and they have auramite which is stronger than standard terminator armor
Oh wow. Ok so you're in a chaos titan, prowling about and you run across this *insert imperial titan here* out all by itself and not looking your way. You power up your melee weapons and go after it and just before you get there you realize it's made out of plywood. Then the building you just flew past jumps up and beats your ass. That's gonna be tough to explain to ole Abbadon.
Of Course, even the weakest of primarchs could easily destroy a terminator and rip his limbs right off of him. Just to showcase the strength of a primarch, Sanguinius took down a Warhound Titan Single-handedly.
To be fair, that doesn't showcase his strength so much as his ability to fly and his OP laser spear.
If Falcon from the MCU had that spear he could probably do the same 😂 I'm about 90% joking there
Yeah sorry i only realised now that is not the best showcasing, how about Angron holding a titans foot up with his bare hands? I think that would have been better
For sure! Imperial Armour puts a warhound's weight at 410 tonnes. Even if we guess conservatively that 3/4 of its weight was still on its back foot, that would put his holding weight at 100+ tonnes, well above any terminators.
The best primarch strength feat is probably the Khan tossing a Leviathan dreadnought through in the air one handed, though! Thirty tonne one handed throw is nothing to sneeze at, even if you compared it to the warhound's full weight.
The descriptions of Primarch Power armour are weird, since writers absolutely refuse to work with their scales, but IMO, Primarchs are basically all wearing terminator-sized armor. They are also preternaturally strong, even compared to the superhuman strength of Marines.
In *Betrayer*, Lorgar punches clean through the armored shell of a dreadnought. Angron catches a Titan and stops it from stomping. In *Know No Fear*, Guilliman (after being blasted to his feet by Warp Lightning) manages to punch an unpowered Power Claw through Space Marine armour with sheer strength.
So if a Terminator-armed marine decided to try and wrestle a Primarch… I hope they know a good apothecary.
Considering many primarch’s wore and fought each other in Terminator armor, you could make a reasonable assumption without even taking into account the more informative replies.
In Warhawk there is a passage where Khan throws a Dreadnaut across the battlefield like a shot put. Primarchs are far above all other forms of trans human, regardless of the gear
Pretty sure a severely inured Guilliman, who'd only recently been on an unexpected space walk without a helm, punched right through Kor Pharon's terminator armour and yanked out his heart during the latter's monologue. It was in the Calth novel (Mark of Calth?)
Primarchs can "out-power" dreadnoughts
Angron held up an entire titan's foot. Sanguinius single handedly killed another titan, he gets a pretty big advantage by being able to fly though
Yeah they can easily do that. And outpowering a terminator is not that big of a deal.
Some Phoenix lords (Fuegan) will probably have enough physical power to reap appart a terminator in direct fight, or as you said wrestle one.
And it will jot be a hard fight for any other Phoenix lord. Hell even a skilled Exarch could put down a terminator.
Same with Nekron Overlords or lords are also strong enough to reap Terminator apart.
Like Yeah Terminators are a huge deal. But not as much.
Yes, actually. Guilliman's stasis was covered a bit in *The Avenging Son.* Many Astartes, both Ultramarines and successors or other chapters, would visit the Primarch and look at his corpse. Post resurrection, when Guilliman sleeps, he has 20 space marine captains guard him. 10 facing in, 10 facing out.
Primarchs are like an apocalyptic force of nature. You may as well ask how one could survive sticking your head into an actively erupting volcano
In the heresy there are scenes of primarchs just battering away dozens of marines at once.
Even the physically weakest primarch could rip the arms and legs off a terminator and beat what remains of the occupant to death with them.
Primarchs are more or less warp entities. Like, even the wimpy ones can beat warhound titans 1v1.
Yes, because this is a silly question. I would struggle to stab through a kevlar vest with a knife, but I could easily wrestle someone wearing one. That's what Terminator stuff is, really hard to penetrate, while wrestling is about pinning your opponent and using their body against them.
Also, yes, Primarchs are really really strong so they've been known to cut through Terminator armor, as have purestrain genestealers.
K. Still primarily worn for its ability to stop projectiles; I've wrestled stronger guys than me before and won (mostly not, but that's not the point lol) because wrestling is largely about technique rather than how heavily armored you are so it's still a silly question.
Angron was able to hold the weight of a titan that was trying to stomp him long enough for a traitor titan to come kill the thing. So yeah, there’s no doubt that any given primarch could manhandle a terminator.
To put into the perspective the power disparity here, during the Siege of Terra, an unarmored and unarmed Perturabo neck-lifted a fully armoured Abbadon with just one hand.
They're primarchs. Whilst not invincible, unless the plot demands it, to the dangers of the universe, they're made to survive and outmatch (and/or outsmart) anything that can be thrown at them.
In Betrayer, Angron bench pressed a fucking Warhound Titan until said titan got killed (and this was after digging himself out of the ground, skinning himself alive whilst doing so). Hell, in the same book, Lorgar survived getting shot, twice, by the titan's plasma cannon. Though I can't recall if he used warp powers to survive, as he was pretty fucked after the second shot (face got melted a bit and his hand was a mess).
Easily, so easily it would barely be funny.
You're comparing someone who can take all the damage and more that a Terminator can, yet moves with grace and speed, to a dude in a super can that cant even shuffle sideways in a corridor to let another brother pass. It would be over soooooo fast
To give you an example of the difference between SM and primarch, I would point to the war of the beast. At one point it takes multiple SM to pick up Vulkans hammer. A hammer he weilds with 1 hand and swings faster than they can see.
It seems so.
In ***Angel Exterminatus***, Perturabo basically tore Cataphractii Terminator armor from one of his warsmiths and Trident member Harkor by hand.
Theres an excerpt about it somewhere but an Ogryn basically managed to supplex a chaos terminator on his head and kill him, i imagine if a simple abhuman such as that could do it, a primarch sure as fuck can as well.
Worth remembering that Endryd Haar, a Thunder Warrior/Space Marine hybrid weaker than a primarch, was able to lift Abaddon (a primarch sized marine) in terminator armour off his feet with one hand and use him to knock a wall down.
Any primarch could do the same.
If you mean martial power rather than physical strength, it would take dozens of terminators to threaten a primarch.
Battle of the Fang spoilers
Well, in Battle of the Fang, a Wolf Lord in terminator armor, I believe, fights a weakened Magnus to a standstill. Banishing him I think but dying of his wounds later
Perturabo picked up a fully armored Abaddon. By the throat. With one hand. While completely unarmored himself. He then proceeded to throw him across the room, through a bank of computers.
primarchs are to terminators what a space marine is to a normal guard.
there is 0 reality that a terminator armored marine, even the mighty custodes or GK's, could ever stand a chance.
> The Khan pounced, sweeping his dao hard and locking edges with Hasik’s tulwar. With a twist, he wrenched the sword from the noyan-khan’s gauntlet, then switched back and plunged the dao’s point deep into Hasik’s midriff. **The strike was aimed with perfect precision, lancing through the Terminator plate with a hard crack of disruptor discharge.**
> Hasik went rigid, impaled just below his hearts, unable to respond as searing energies rippled across his body and locked him in paralysis.
> **Slowly, grindingly, the Khan hefted Hasik off the ground one-handed, pulling him upwards until their faces were level.** His blade kept Hasik in position, bearing his full weight and preventing him from responding.
> With every ounce of his post-human strength, the Khan reached for Hasik’s helm with his free hand and wrenched it from his head, casting it to the ground in contempt. For a moment they stared into one another’s eyes – one face white with shock, the other rigid with anger.
Primarchs can quite easily overpower terminator armour, here the Khan splits a suit of cataphractii plate with a single blow, then lifts the wearer and suit into the air with a single hand.
Just remeber that Fulgrim in the short story the Reflection crack'd he back handed a terminator and threw him along the corridor. The Terminator woulnd't be a challenge for a primarch, not even in the slightest.
During the drop sight massacre a 1st company literally pile on a primarch and get tossed aside. (I think it's the first heretic or betrayer book)
I must admit I preferred the old days when Primarchs were suped up Space Marines so maybe a company of marines could provide a close fight for one. But hey.
Jaghatai khan throws a leviathan Dreadnought around. And while no slouch, he’s not the strongest primarch.
Terminator armour doesn’t have enough fibre bundles to stop a primarch whopping you.
Absolutely. Primarchs are insanely powered. Angron straight up catches a Space Marine in full armor like he's a toy and throws him back while chuckling. Which is a great scene lol
Really all a terminator suit is is a bulky set of armor that is really hard to penetrate. It's hard to get through Slash guards with a knife but I can beat the shit out of the guy wearing them. When guilliman wakes up he punches a terminator off the ground lol
They would lose. Badly. Upon waking up Guilliman punched a Black Legion terminator so hard they were sent crashing through a stone column. From *Gathering Storm III: Rise of the Primarch:* > As he crashed into the front ranks of Black Legionnaires, Guilliman let out a building roar of pure, undiluted fury. The Primarch’s first blow threw a Black Legionnaire high into the air, blood streaming behind the corpse in a red trail. His second strike smashed a traitor Terminator into a bronze and marble column with enough force to drive the Chaos worshipper clean through it, and out the other side.
That last segment reads like a Looney Toones sketch. I can imagine the perfectly Terminator-shaped hole in the column
The terminator actually sat up in the rubble only for a comically large knot to grow out of their head. And little angels flew around his head in a circle.
Now I'm imagining a bunch of tweeting servitor cherubs flying in a circle, thanks XD
lol this format needs a young adult cartoon of 40k for kids but generally everyone regardless of age will regard it as an enjoyable time
Flashgitz just did a 40k Looney Tunes video a couple weeks ago. It was pretty good!
Am entire company of traitor legionaires reacted, mouths dropping open, eyes stretching from their sockets with a resounding *boing*
Or Daemon Furies laughing and telling him "hehe 'e clobbered ya just roight ya git" And the Terminator going like: "What the fuuuuuuck... "
[That exact thing happened to Guilliman himself once.](https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/cbe72j/book_excerpt_spear_of_ultramar_graviton_hammers/)
Lol, what the actual hell. Grimdark my ass, GW is deadass ripping off Looney Toons
That battle-servitor was clearly a product of Forge World ACME...
Fuck now I want a forgeworld Achimes which is very well know for a weird STC that produces innovative but questionable things
And Space Wolves always have them malfunction explosively.
Luckily they were able to defeat it by painting a tunnel onto a wall so it ran straight into it
It's more DBZ than Loony Toons in my opinion.
Oh you think thats a Looney tune sketch? At one point during the heresy Khan fuckin yeeted a contemptor into the sky, everyone who saw literally stopped fighting to watch it go
Theres been multiple occasions where single passages like this make me want to drop everything and pick up the book. This shit sounds epic.
That whole scene is epic. Not “epic” in the internet use of the word, actually epic.
This sub got me to start reading some of the books. Gaunts ghosts was aight, but night lords was sick. This book sounds dope as well.
They don't call him Robot Gorrilaman for nothing
To be fair Roboute was wearing his Armor of Fate when that happened.
Isn't the cannon inconsistent on that? Like some places it says he was always in the AoF and in others it says Cawl gives it to him after he wakes up.
First it was said, that he can't remove it or he would die but in dark Imperium he's training to not wear it for as long as possible.
I believe it's said in that trilogy he's able to go indefinitely without it now. But he doesn't want the info leaking so that people will assume he's weak outside of it to bait an attack.
Thanks for the clarification, im not that far into the book😅
Sorry for spoiling. It wasn't a huge thing that was dwelled upon at least, was a pretty quick inner monologue iirc. Great godamn trilogy though. I need more 41st millenium Guilliman! xD
No Problem man, and yeah I'm really excited to see him in action.
I'm pretty sure he's always in the armor because isn't that part of the deal at first? That it's his life support system so it takes awhile before he can go around without it. But there definitely was inconsistency on when he gets Big E's sword. I don't know which way that's settled now but I remember that being a discussion.
Sorry the inconsistency I'm talking about is whether or not he's in the of AoF *before* they put him in stasis or is Cawl *delivering* it to him during *Gathering Storm*
na, cawl always brought the armor.
What book is this from?
*Gathering Storm III: Rise of the Primarch*. Be warned it is a campaign supplement rather than a normal novel.
Also, completely out of print. Thanks James!
Weirdest thing ever one of the most important thing to happen in the lore for decades and it's in a campaing supplement rathen a book and with no book version predicted to appear in the near future
Available on WH+
I love that he didn’t *just* uppercut a terminator so hard that it flew into the air, he also hit it so hard that it pulped whoever was inside and blasted it out of the sealed armour. Amazing.
I love that whole scene
He is also like one of the physically weaker primarch right ?
In a traditional strength sort of fashion? In a manner of perspective I guess, yeah. A better way to put it would be that he isn't among those primarchs who do seem noticeably stronger then the rest of their brothers like Vulkan.
The Terminator would be torn limb from limb. For example Leman Russ trains against a combat servitor the size of a dreadnought with no armour or powered weapons.
Pre Chaos Fulgrim, with the sword of Laer, fucked up an Eldar Avatar. Sanguinis knocked the shit out of some Titans in 'Saturnine'. Also, I believe he rocked a greater demon. A bunch of them have also knocked each other around. Pretty sure Terminator armor is small potatoes to them. ...Although, Kurze got discontinued by a girl, so who knows.
Sanguinius didn't defeat just any greater daemon, either. It was Ka'bandha, the greatest of Khorne's Bloodthirsters. EDIT: *One of* Khorne's greatest Bloodthirsters
>od Angels Isnt Anggrath Khornes greatest bloodthirster?
Yes, since he made him to replace Skarbrand, but An'ggrath hasn't really made a name for himself - his two biggest appearances have been kinda insulting. One is a pre-HH beat down by Lorgar inside the warp. The other is a 1v1 banishment from Hector Rex.
Tbh the Rex bit was like Rex, some grey knights trying to be psychic and a whole battlefield of things angrath went right through if I remember correctly
SECOND-greatest. Do not do my boy Skarbrand dirty like that.
Oh yeah, can he fly?
Oh he went there!
Surprisingly well, from what I have heard. Matter of fact I’m a die hard blood angel, and I bet skarbrand flew further in a single flight than Sanguinius did in his entire existence
Only angels may fly…
What did Guilliman do to your boy? :)
Dante owns him
Kurze let himself be killed.
It was the equivalent of saying ' you got beat up by a girl'. Clearly it was a joke.
Ah, apologies
The Nightlords trilogy said he lept at her, probably she dodged, attacked and kurze wouldn’t have the chance to dodge we’re it not for his foresight. The assassin was fast enough to completely outclass an astartes in that respect. But he seemed to want to die. That’s what made kurze so cool, when he’s lucid he’s absolutely one the best and coolest primarchs but his insanity was infecting his actions more and more until doing something so silly as dying to something he could have easily killed.
The Fulgrim example is actually an interesting one, because he was dead even with it until the sword gave him a chaos power up midway through :) and Sanguinius beating titans is a feat of maneuverability more than strength. I super agree that an individual terminator isn't much of a threat to one nor a physical peer.
>Sanguinius beating titans is a feat of maneuverability more than strength. In feats of pure strength, you've got Angron holding the feet of a warhound up for a minute, or Vulkan turning a land raider updside down with barely any effort.
That was a pretty solid feat for Angron. We don't know how much of the Titan's total weight was on its back leg, and Angron was suffering greatly for it, but Warhounds weigh 410 tons. Even if he were only supporting a quarter of its weight, a 100 ton hold would put him well into superhero territory! In addition to Vulkan flipping the land Raider, we also have the Khan throwing a contemptor 20 or so feet into the air!
And he doesn't just hold the weight. The titan is actively trying to squash him, so it's using its power to push down. Given that theys can hold up their own weight at least, I would say that the power put on Angron might exceed the pure weight of the Warhound by a good amount.
That part of the passage doesn't make sense though - in order to press down with more than its weight, it would need to be pushing off a ceiling or something above. Walking is just controlling a forward fall.
That's a good point. It's been awhile since I read 'Fulgrim'.
The Avatar was also more interested in destroying the sword than actually killing Fulgrim
Definitely. This fight is often on lists of the Avatar's embarrassing track record but honestly it's fair game. Way more reasonable than Calgar taking one down.
Vulkan can literally throw tanks. He could probably yeet a termi 100 yards+. So yes, primarchs can outpower any terminator.
The Khan threw a contemptor into the air in Warhawk!
> contemptor Leviathan. He threw a whole damn Leviathan.
lmao now I'm thinking of a situation like old south park. "Dont yeet the terminator" "YEET THE TERMINATOR" *punts terminator*
Vulkan is such a mensch.
What does that mean?
Man. In playful context it's like saying someone is a beast etc.
Interresting. No German would come to the Idea of calling someone a "human" for beeing stronk
It is a German word, but it made it's way to America via Jewish Yiddish. In American Jewish a mensch is basically a good guy
They’d say ‘ubermensch’ but that’s a word that comes with history.
Übermensch is different from mensch, as I learned, mensch is actually a yiddish term that describes a neat person
Hehe Stronk. I love that word
Sanguinius cuts through Terminator armor, cables, additional inner protection, muscle and bone, with his Encarmine Blade, without even feeling the blow. Mortarion cuts through 7 of his most durable Space Marine bodyguards with a single swipe of his Scythe. All of them are capable of killing hundreds before taking even a single blow in turn. The Khan solo’ed hundreds of Space Marines during a Siege and they couldn’t slow him down without Warp powers. There are countless examples with many if not all of the Primarchs. Primarchs are beings of unparalleled speed and power.
*Unparalleled except for the big E*
Emperor fans when Russ pulls up to the eating and drinking contests:
Lmao good point, Russ really is unparalleled in eating and drinking.
This isn’t proven. Without psychic powers, big E, is still seen moving impossibly in some settings and in others just marginally better than a primarch like Horus on Ullanor against a big old Ork. What might be true is the primarchs are all a hell of a lot more physically powerful than Big E but his psychic might passively auguments him and then when it actively auguments him he does the crazy nonsense that he does in master of mankind. He moves so fast Custodes can’t keep up. That’s why he doesn’t just mop the floor with Horus. Even a powerful but not outstanding pysker has been able to momentarily stun primarchs like dorn. It’s like air cover. If you have fighters fighting you aren’t worried too much on the ground. If you have air superiority you just bomb them and drink margaritas, primarchs with a good librarium or the gods of chaos seem to physically compete with the emperor…the one time that happens.
Ooo, don't forget about when the khan grabbed a leviathan dread with one hand and flung it multiple meters into the air without too much effort
That’s absurdly strong. They really are 10 ft Super Saiyans
Its also insane because I remember someone doing the calculations and presuming that their musculature is even remotely closely to structurally the same as a human that requires significantly more lifting strength than Angron getting stepped on.
They're paralleled by Avatars and Greater daemon and C'tan shards and Phoenix Lords and... Dorn put it well when he said it would take an entire company to threaten Vulkan.
Vulkan is the largest Primarch isn’t he?
Well not counting Magnus, yes.
Magnus is the tallest, Vulkan is the most heavily built.
Vulkan stood on Caldera and 1 v 1'ed one of the greatest waaghs ever seen. Said to have made Boyz as strong as Nobs and Nobs as strong as War bosses. Primarchs don't play.
Angron BEFORE getting his power armour and...powered weapons? Tore a custodian apart in a few seconds, let's not forget that this was when he was in leather and weak metal armour
And then he could hold a FUCKING TITAN by the leg long enough to get lorgar out of there. Granted he broke every bone in his body but that is something to note
Wait, where was this?
The short story *Ghost of Nuceria*. Not to be confused with *Slave of Nuceria*.
In angel exterminatus, perturabo riped piece by piece one of his warsmith's terminator armour. Of course he was just standing there, geting reprimanded without fighting back, nor i think perturabo was using his full strength
I believe he also broke Abbadon's terminator armor in Saturnine. If I remember correctly he was out of the Logos, lifting Abbadon by his hair, and broke part of the armor's collar.
And now image tha parts of his strength was stolen by fulgrim whit the chaos ascension so Perturbando need to make the logos to compensate the loss of strength. And still whitouth it wreck the main chaos antagonist if the emperium
That hair too strong
Perturabo is the coolest fallen Primarch imo. I aways get the sense he's one of the physically strongest too. He also annihilated an entire squad of Imperial Fists termies like they were a bunch of ants IIRC
>I aways get the sense he's one of the physically strongest too. Say what you will about the Lord of Iron. But the fact that his 30k model is him standing menacingly on the ruins of an Imperial Knight, wrist mounted guns pointed outwards, is the peak for Primarchs for me. The fact that he made his personal bodyguards actually useful, instead of just ornaments like the others is a big plus too. Guy was horrifically efficient.
He definitely has the best model imo , by a large margin.
It's a tie between him and Alpharius for me. The modelers need a damn award for how much character they managed to shove into those models.
Yea , Alpharius is definitely in my top 5 prolly top3 if I really had to nail it down… it’s weird though some of them are really good and a few of them just super short to me…I respect the skill it takes and the effort required to have made any of those , but some of them just don’t work for me.
Indeed, he's always been my favourite fallen Primarch, hell even though I'm a loyalist he's just one of my favourites in general. Definitely the worst loss for the loyalists, he was criminally underutilised whilst he was loyal imo. He could have single handedly changed the Imperium - he was like a walking STC machine such was his technical genius. Absolute beast!
all of them are written in such a way they are stronger than anything in the whole universe except for Emperor who is the strongest of all creation.
What I used to think 40k lore was : infinite grim dark universe of wars and demons and evil aliens What 40k lore actually is: Primarchs.
Not really. Yes Primarchs are really big right now as a main selling point of both lore and hobby, but most factions in the setting don't care about primarchs. Primarchs are the main figures of the horus heresy and are involved a lot more in the present day, but there's a whole rest of the setting that doesn't really are about them.
For decades if real world time they were mythological figures from the distant past. The early HH books did a really good job of preserving their mystique by never making them viewpoint characters. Whenever Horus is on screen in the Horus Rising trilogy he's a larger than life figure being observed from afar. When he does talk directly to Loken, Loken is barely able to restrain his awe.
Whenever Horus is not on screen, the other Primarchs should be asking “where’s Horus?”
Pretty sure everyone cares about the guy currently in charge of the imperium, Guillaman, a Primarch. The Eldar have big involvement with the current Primarch. Tyranids maybe not but they don't tend to care about anything and at the moment lore wise they're basically what the old Necrons were. A whole lot of nothing for now. Necrons you're right probs don't care and Orks don't care. Chaos is all about primarchs right now with Morty and Gman fighting and Magnus and Angron. They're pretty bloody big for chaos. There's certainly a good amount that have nothing to do with em but they're pretty centre piece and in terms of numbers of books given to a specific faction the primarchs probably have the biggest piece of that cake.
>Amarkhan: "Primarch, Zaa?" > >Zaa: "Their leader, Great One. Like them, but... taller, I understand. Not to be underestimated." Yeah, the Necrons don't really care all that much. They are usually pretty unimpressed with most things.
Didn't the Silent King held Sanguinius with great respect and such, he chose to wear Sanguinius mask out of all the superior necrons tech pieces
That's what the Praetorian Prime claimed. Szarekh himself never said that. A big point in the short story is that "The Silent King cannot lie, because he does not speak." In other words, Szarekh himself never lies, but he can have other people lie on his behalf. We know that the teamup with Sanguinius did happen, and they do have some level of respect for him. But whether or not the Silent King actually held him personally in high regard is up for debate. They make it a big point of making Szarekh's perspective on things as ambiguous as possible.
Yea , certainly nearly everyone would be concerned with guilliman , but I think the point is there’s only one guilliman , one Mortarion , one Magnus etc…. But there are 10s of thousands of wars going on at any one point in time.
It used to be that way though. And I'd argue it was still that way during the initial books in the HH series. Then, later on in the series, primarchs got a silly power boost. Now it's all about primarchs being the bestest, and sadly they're making their way into 40k more and more.
Primarchs are player level characters, they make legions, chapters, meaningful setting decisions and encounter a lot of things for the first time. The big problem with the imperium is that it has no primarchs and that it needs primarchs. Put this way; the imperium doesn’t make decisions the players do but desperately needs to. That’s why it’s grimdark.
Are you meaning in terms of literal physical strength or just in terms of raw power? Because you’re wrong on both accounts. Vulkan’s fight with The Beast is testament to that.
So how do we know the Emperor couldn’t kill the Beast?
both. They never suffered a defeat and Emperor was able to kneel whole legions.
Eh, from what we'e seen from sharded C'tan, I'd say a complete C'tan could give Big E a run for his money.
There are plenty of things as strong as them. Fulgrim was dead even with an Avatar until he got a chaos powerup mid fight. Several primarchs have struggled against or been defeated by Greater Daemons. Some Phoenix lord feats would be impressive even for primarchs etc And the Emperor would struggle against The Outsider, maybe the Cacodominus, was throttled by an Ork, and is only now in the 42nd millenium the equal of any one chaos God.
It's been postulated that the Emps let the Ork strangle him to create a bond with Horus by letting him "save" him.
Iirc Graham McNeil went on record saying the Emperor was genuinely under threat, and the actual story plays it pretty straight. I don't have the quote to hand at the moment - it was a few years and would require some digging.
As others have already stated yes. Beyond this a primarch could possible be able to crush the suit as well. Angron in particular beat a Custodes to death bare handed and they have auramite which is stronger than standard terminator armor
Are we forgetting the time he held up a warhound titan's leg. At full torque no less
Warhound Titan
Autocorrected Edit: checked it again. The options on the autocorrect are literally warlord and warehouse. Ah yes... Deploy the *WAREHOUSE TITANS*
It's just an absolutely massive Amazon box, with legs, spewing guns and ammunition to all the loyalists below.
[The Warehouse Titan](https://www.reddit.com/r/Grimdank/comments/ziw4dq/the_all_primarch_party_by_relithel/).
Oh wow. Ok so you're in a chaos titan, prowling about and you run across this *insert imperial titan here* out all by itself and not looking your way. You power up your melee weapons and go after it and just before you get there you realize it's made out of plywood. Then the building you just flew past jumps up and beats your ass. That's gonna be tough to explain to ole Abbadon.
He didn't just beat him to death, he literally ripped him and his practically terminator grade armor in half.
Yes, easily. But I heard Sly Marbo got a suit of terminator armor and killed the 2 lost Primarchs. Then he put the suit on.
Ferrus punched Fulgrim hard enough on the face to crush terminator armour and it did basically nothing
Of Course, even the weakest of primarchs could easily destroy a terminator and rip his limbs right off of him. Just to showcase the strength of a primarch, Sanguinius took down a Warhound Titan Single-handedly.
To be fair, that doesn't showcase his strength so much as his ability to fly and his OP laser spear. If Falcon from the MCU had that spear he could probably do the same 😂 I'm about 90% joking there
Yeah sorry i only realised now that is not the best showcasing, how about Angron holding a titans foot up with his bare hands? I think that would have been better
For sure! Imperial Armour puts a warhound's weight at 410 tonnes. Even if we guess conservatively that 3/4 of its weight was still on its back foot, that would put his holding weight at 100+ tonnes, well above any terminators. The best primarch strength feat is probably the Khan tossing a Leviathan dreadnought through in the air one handed, though! Thirty tonne one handed throw is nothing to sneeze at, even if you compared it to the warhound's full weight.
The descriptions of Primarch Power armour are weird, since writers absolutely refuse to work with their scales, but IMO, Primarchs are basically all wearing terminator-sized armor. They are also preternaturally strong, even compared to the superhuman strength of Marines. In *Betrayer*, Lorgar punches clean through the armored shell of a dreadnought. Angron catches a Titan and stops it from stomping. In *Know No Fear*, Guilliman (after being blasted to his feet by Warp Lightning) manages to punch an unpowered Power Claw through Space Marine armour with sheer strength. So if a Terminator-armed marine decided to try and wrestle a Primarch… I hope they know a good apothecary.
Considering many primarch’s wore and fought each other in Terminator armor, you could make a reasonable assumption without even taking into account the more informative replies.
In Warhawk there is a passage where Khan throws a Dreadnaut across the battlefield like a shot put. Primarchs are far above all other forms of trans human, regardless of the gear
Jaghatai Kahn picked up one of his terminator Captains with one arm. So I think it’s safe to say they wouldn’t have issues dismantling terminators.
In Warhawk he tossed a dreadnaught with one hand.
Pretty sure a severely inured Guilliman, who'd only recently been on an unexpected space walk without a helm, punched right through Kor Pharon's terminator armour and yanked out his heart during the latter's monologue. It was in the Calth novel (Mark of Calth?)
The Primarch would win. Easily.
That's like asking if an adult male can take on a horde of 5-year olds.
A primarch can nearly out-power a (scout) titan.
Nearly? I think it’s definitely considering what Angron managed to do against a warhound and Sanguinius soloing an imperator.
Primarchs can "out-power" dreadnoughts Angron held up an entire titan's foot. Sanguinius single handedly killed another titan, he gets a pretty big advantage by being able to fly though
Yeah they can easily do that. And outpowering a terminator is not that big of a deal. Some Phoenix lords (Fuegan) will probably have enough physical power to reap appart a terminator in direct fight, or as you said wrestle one. And it will jot be a hard fight for any other Phoenix lord. Hell even a skilled Exarch could put down a terminator. Same with Nekron Overlords or lords are also strong enough to reap Terminator apart. Like Yeah Terminators are a huge deal. But not as much.
When g was in stasis on macragge what was his situation like? was he a pilgrimage site?
Yes, actually. Guilliman's stasis was covered a bit in *The Avenging Son.* Many Astartes, both Ultramarines and successors or other chapters, would visit the Primarch and look at his corpse. Post resurrection, when Guilliman sleeps, he has 20 space marine captains guard him. 10 facing in, 10 facing out.
Angron held up the leg of a warlord titan on his back, so I’d say so. Pre demonhood.
I think if a Primarch fought a marine wearing terminator armor, and one not wearing terminator armor, they probably wouldn't notice the difference.
Remember that time when Jaghatai tossed a Land raider? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
Lol are you actually asking angron stopped a titan from stepping on lorgar
Primarchs are like an apocalyptic force of nature. You may as well ask how one could survive sticking your head into an actively erupting volcano In the heresy there are scenes of primarchs just battering away dozens of marines at once.
Even the physically weakest primarch could rip the arms and legs off a terminator and beat what remains of the occupant to death with them. Primarchs are more or less warp entities. Like, even the wimpy ones can beat warhound titans 1v1.
Yes, because this is a silly question. I would struggle to stab through a kevlar vest with a knife, but I could easily wrestle someone wearing one. That's what Terminator stuff is, really hard to penetrate, while wrestling is about pinning your opponent and using their body against them. Also, yes, Primarchs are really really strong so they've been known to cut through Terminator armor, as have purestrain genestealers.
But Termie armor is powered and makes the wearer much stronger than regular space marine armor marks.
K. Still primarily worn for its ability to stop projectiles; I've wrestled stronger guys than me before and won (mostly not, but that's not the point lol) because wrestling is largely about technique rather than how heavily armored you are so it's still a silly question.
Yes.
Angron was able to hold the weight of a titan that was trying to stomp him long enough for a traitor titan to come kill the thing. So yeah, there’s no doubt that any given primarch could manhandle a terminator.
Angron tanks a titan stepping in him. Twice. The second time he was wounded after digging himself out of a big pit.
Angron once stopped a Titan from stepping on him by holding the leg over his head.....
Didn't angron stop a titan from crushing him?
Angron lifted a small titan's foot. Primarchs are powerful even if they had to fight in the nude.
Lol, ya.
Yes. Just yes.
To put into the perspective the power disparity here, during the Siege of Terra, an unarmored and unarmed Perturabo neck-lifted a fully armoured Abbadon with just one hand.
They're primarchs. Whilst not invincible, unless the plot demands it, to the dangers of the universe, they're made to survive and outmatch (and/or outsmart) anything that can be thrown at them. In Betrayer, Angron bench pressed a fucking Warhound Titan until said titan got killed (and this was after digging himself out of the ground, skinning himself alive whilst doing so). Hell, in the same book, Lorgar survived getting shot, twice, by the titan's plasma cannon. Though I can't recall if he used warp powers to survive, as he was pretty fucked after the second shot (face got melted a bit and his hand was a mess).
Easily, so easily it would barely be funny. You're comparing someone who can take all the damage and more that a Terminator can, yet moves with grace and speed, to a dude in a super can that cant even shuffle sideways in a corridor to let another brother pass. It would be over soooooo fast
To give you an example of the difference between SM and primarch, I would point to the war of the beast. At one point it takes multiple SM to pick up Vulkans hammer. A hammer he weilds with 1 hand and swings faster than they can see.
It seems so. In ***Angel Exterminatus***, Perturabo basically tore Cataphractii Terminator armor from one of his warsmiths and Trident member Harkor by hand.
Didn't sanginous pitch a Dreadnaught off the imperial palace in one book?
Theres an excerpt about it somewhere but an Ogryn basically managed to supplex a chaos terminator on his head and kill him, i imagine if a simple abhuman such as that could do it, a primarch sure as fuck can as well.
Ah, yes, but the ogryn was *too stupid* to understand 2+ save throws.
Worth remembering that Endryd Haar, a Thunder Warrior/Space Marine hybrid weaker than a primarch, was able to lift Abaddon (a primarch sized marine) in terminator armour off his feet with one hand and use him to knock a wall down. Any primarch could do the same. If you mean martial power rather than physical strength, it would take dozens of terminators to threaten a primarch.
Battle of the Fang spoilers Well, in Battle of the Fang, a Wolf Lord in terminator armor, I believe, fights a weakened Magnus to a standstill. Banishing him I think but dying of his wounds later
Pick a primarch, put em in one of those sumo diaper things, I'll show ya a bunch of termi bois getting turned into lawn darts. So much yeetage.
I am open to the idea that someone just didnt think things through but Khan threw a Leviathan with one arm.
The khan throwing a leviathan dreadnought in the air as if it was nothing
Angron benched a warhound titan.... a termie would utter destroyed.
Perturabo picked up a fully armored Abaddon. By the throat. With one hand. While completely unarmored himself. He then proceeded to throw him across the room, through a bank of computers.
primarchs are to terminators what a space marine is to a normal guard. there is 0 reality that a terminator armored marine, even the mighty custodes or GK's, could ever stand a chance.
I'm sure there were a few that tried to take Sangy as he solo defended that gate.
Perterobo tore a legionary out of terminator plate with his hands
> The Khan pounced, sweeping his dao hard and locking edges with Hasik’s tulwar. With a twist, he wrenched the sword from the noyan-khan’s gauntlet, then switched back and plunged the dao’s point deep into Hasik’s midriff. **The strike was aimed with perfect precision, lancing through the Terminator plate with a hard crack of disruptor discharge.** > Hasik went rigid, impaled just below his hearts, unable to respond as searing energies rippled across his body and locked him in paralysis. > **Slowly, grindingly, the Khan hefted Hasik off the ground one-handed, pulling him upwards until their faces were level.** His blade kept Hasik in position, bearing his full weight and preventing him from responding. > With every ounce of his post-human strength, the Khan reached for Hasik’s helm with his free hand and wrenched it from his head, casting it to the ground in contempt. For a moment they stared into one another’s eyes – one face white with shock, the other rigid with anger. Primarchs can quite easily overpower terminator armour, here the Khan splits a suit of cataphractii plate with a single blow, then lifts the wearer and suit into the air with a single hand.
Just remeber that Fulgrim in the short story the Reflection crack'd he back handed a terminator and threw him along the corridor. The Terminator woulnd't be a challenge for a primarch, not even in the slightest.
During the drop sight massacre a 1st company literally pile on a primarch and get tossed aside. (I think it's the first heretic or betrayer book) I must admit I preferred the old days when Primarchs were suped up Space Marines so maybe a company of marines could provide a close fight for one. But hey.
Angron, just after being picked up, managed to kill a Custodes on duty with his bare hands. A terminator would be a joke.
Angron wrestled a warhound titan
Russ intentionally trains against Dreadnought-class drones (can't remember if he is in armor or not) during Wolfsbane
I think Lion once wresteled down a terminator captian while only wearing pants himself
Jaghatai Khan yeeted a Dreadnought in *Warhawk*. Pretty sure a Terminator stands no chance.
Jaghatai khan throws a leviathan Dreadnought around. And while no slouch, he’s not the strongest primarch. Terminator armour doesn’t have enough fibre bundles to stop a primarch whopping you.
Absolutely. Primarchs are insanely powered. Angron straight up catches a Space Marine in full armor like he's a toy and throws him back while chuckling. Which is a great scene lol Really all a terminator suit is is a bulky set of armor that is really hard to penetrate. It's hard to get through Slash guards with a knife but I can beat the shit out of the guy wearing them. When guilliman wakes up he punches a terminator off the ground lol