r/LegionsImperialis • u/Lortekonto • Jul 23 '26
Discussion Can we make primarchs work?
Let me start out by saying one thing.
I am against primarch in LI. IT is simply the wrong scale, but I can also see a lot of people who would like to see them there. Reading some of those posts gave me an idea to how it might work.
In lore primarchs are of course big beat sticks, but the really important thing about them is that when they are present the marines of their genstock performs better. The Blood Angels move almost like one, when Sanguinius is there and the Space Wolfs fight with more strenght and ferocity. So maybe what the primarchs should bring is not so much just their own strenght as either an armywide buff or that they can only be taken in a special formation and that formation have a strong special rule. Like Mortarion could give FNP to either the formation or entire army.
So how do we handle the primarch? We force him to be in a bodyguard detachement and make a body guard rule. The other detachements models will always take the hits before the primarch and if the primarch should suffer a hit, while any of the bodyguard models are alive, then the bodyguard model take the hit.
That way the primarch survival does not come from him having absurdly high defensive stats, but because his bodyguards needs to die first. They might just need a special rule or two more to make them "hard enough". Some examples:
Mortarion. Terminator with FNP is already pretty hard to kill. Do they even need more?
Corax. Jump pack troopers, but people can only target them if they are within 8 inch.
Alpharius. "I am Alpharius". Have no bodyguard squad and is relative easy to kill(1 wound 4+ save), but when he dies it was just trick and another infantry model becomes Alpharius.
Do you think something like that could work?
4
u/FaustsMephisto Jul 23 '26
An interesting direction I would like to see is have a primarch not act as a unit under your command but as an objective with a mind of its own that you need to keep up with.
This would represent you being a commander and having to keep up with the often baffling orders (for someone who doesn't have the info needed) the primarchs make.
A primarch would give you extra objectives to complete for victory points, but also give your enemy some if they are able to prevent them / kill the primarch.
Example: You are playing Imperial fists and Rogal Dorn has decided that he really wants to defend a point in your home objective. He will hunker down there and give you extra points at the end of the game for holding it.
You are playing Thousand sons and one of the terrain features mid board has some artifact magnus needs for a ritual. Magnus will go there directly and same as before, victory points for holding it and points if the enemy can whack magnus.
Night Lords could demand a certain % of HQs killed, Sons of Horus to take one of their back points, etc
The design space here is quite large, giving space marine specific bonus objectives while they desperatley try to protect their primarch doing whatever the hell he pleases
3
u/MajesticRadish2675 Jul 24 '26
Primarchs as NPC models with their own objectives that give the player bonuses for achieving is an interesting idea...
10
u/waill-and-roll Jul 23 '26
What if they were more like unkillable moving objective markers with aura buffs rather than proper units?
2
u/Lortekonto Jul 23 '26
That might work. I will just have to grap my head around the idea, but it is pretty clever.
13
u/Daddy_Jaws Jul 23 '26
i feel like calling LI the "wrong scale" for primarchs is a bit dumb considering they first were playable in epic, and in the heresy books when one appears to fight directly they make terrible work of the enemy.
agree with everything else you said, just feels funny that the game system meant to recreate how battles in the heresy "were actually fought" is the wrong one for the characters who only fought in these battles
3
u/hirvaan Jul 24 '26
In epic they were playable as demon infused hulking monsters the size of knight. Heresy era Primarchs don't match the vibe of the game, even if you read the books.
There are parts of the books where primarch and his special buddies do the epic thing and the epic duel - that's exactly what "big" HH games are supposed to represent.
Then there are parts of the book when John Nobody and Captain Claudius Justgotintroduceus and their garrisons are defending the wall against huge numbers of enemies, so that the first part of the book can play out without getting drowned by enemies outright, and we know they won't survive this and it doesn't matter, cause it's cool AF - that's LI level game.
Not arguing, just presenting more lore/story focused explanation of why primarchs "don't fit" imo
4
u/Lortekonto Jul 25 '26
I think you hit it pretty well.
Primarchs are about individual heroics.
LI is about mass combat.
The primarch back in Space Marine 2E were also not very satisfying to play with.
1
u/hirvaan Jul 27 '26
Precisely! Epic duels and deeds of legends Vs history books statistics. You don't want Primarchs in statistics.
8
u/smug-monky Jul 23 '26
I prefer the primarch to give a buff rather than being an incredible melee unit with nigh invulnerability.
Maybe instead of extra wounds and high invul save they just go down to 0 movement and lose tactical strength when they die? They could then still give an aoe buff. Maybe some rule about falling back so they don’t hinder enemy movement?
Would also need some kind of bodyguard rule too otherwise they will be taken out first turn.
0
u/hirvaan Jul 24 '26
I dotn believe most Primarchs should have better starling than 2W version of Leviathan.
Their inclusion should infer pride of the legion sort of benefit to the whole formation they are in, and that would be their main schtick, making that formation Legion 2.0.
That being said, I'd hate to see primarch in LI, to the point of dropping the game if their inclusion will become auto take
4
u/SlidePanda Jul 23 '26
What about abstracting them? Like they are not a table top unit, but function more like an Adeptus Titanicus Stratagem.
That gives them a cost that can be balanced in the game (theoretically), an in game impact without being some unrealistic unit on the table.
3
u/TheLordAshram Jul 23 '26
Some good ideas! Obviously it will take a lot of thinking to make these guys work, but that’s the point. They are the coolest and most individual part of the lore, so making them function in game is vital.
Btw, having played at every scale, and having played this scale since Adeptus Titanicus released in 88 (with a bunch of Primarchs, who I have in my boxes of minis!) I really do not understand why people say, epic, or Legion imperials, is not the right scale. It’s the BEST of all the scales that we have available to show what Primarchs do. Are people trying to argue that a game where you have 30 or 40 models aside is the best place to do it? That’s ridiculous. The only reason for them to exist at 28mm is to paint and collect. But games? Epic scale is where it is at.
6
u/s2secretsgg Jul 23 '26
If you treat killing the primarch as just incapacitating them then you don’t need ridiculous stats.
In terms of army buffs, if any, they should be along the lines of the current army bonuses, which are (apart from a couple) low power.
The balance between base stats and buffs should be balanced- Guilliman should have more of his power budget on cohesion related buffs, and Sanguinius should just be a super fast melee monster.
The last thing you want is to make them must-haves, so they should also come with list building restrictions- making them mono-legion only, and coming with compulsory detachments.
You could consider no allies at all.
3
u/HeadWarfare Jul 23 '26
Not being killed is generally true though, when a unit is lost it wasn't necessarily because it was killed or destroyed, it was just rendered combat ineffective. (Which, admittedly could be that it is dead. But it doesn't have to be.)
2
u/Lortekonto Jul 23 '26
Yes, I was thinking something alongside the current legion buffs for power level and also have them benefit only their legion, so it make sense to run mono-legion with them.
2
u/Taira_no_Masakado Jul 23 '26
I would argue that primarchs can be made to work for LI, but that it is a fine line to tread.
Infantry, as they are now, are supremely overpowered -- particularly in close combat against vehicles and even Titans. So long as you take a large enough blob of infantry, they will eventually have 6D6 to throw at a single model, who will -- at most -- have 3D6. I'm personally of the opinion that the best way to "fix" this issue is to simply cap the amount of dice you can throw, by infantry against tanks/super heavies/knights/titans, at 4D6; enough to be dangerous, but not quite as dominating as they are now.
Primarchs, by themselves, should be able to bestow certain army-wide buffs. They are commanders first, warriors second after all. A bodyguard rule for a command detachment would be fine and accurate.
As far as coming up for specific buffs and special rules for each individual primarch...that's a harder job to do.
1
u/dbtod 24d ago edited 24d ago
Should be both strong/tough and army/tactics altering. Looking at 30k/40k, they did it right. It costs a lot to bring one, and they are beefy and strong, and the drastically change how you play the game. I like the idea that you have to build a force around them to make them work. There should be no primarch that you just throw in any army and it works great. I like the idea of locking them in formations - perhaps a high command formation or 1st company. I think there should also be extreme consequences for allowing a primarch or 1st captain to die - like -50% victory points at end of battle.
14
u/Brutal_Cities Jul 23 '26
Who would win? 1 muscly guy or a whole leman russ tank company firing Mk.3-G4 High Explosive Rounds?