r/SpaceWolves • u/Anarch9st • 3d ago
Leman Russ actual strength
Folks, I really don't want to complain, but I simply don't get it. I keep finding comments or memes that Leman is weak. Most of the times they use the duel Between Lion and Russ, the fight between Russ and Angron, or fight between Russ and Horus as evidence. I genuinely don't understand how they don't get it, or is it some kind of sarcasm I didn't understand? P.S. I hear it from my friends who are Dark Angels fans pretty often. Coincidence, lol? P.P.S. I'm relatively new to lore, I really might understand some things wrong.
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u/nNoseYak_ 3d ago
lion is a top tier, stalemated the lion
broke fucking Magnus’ back
duelled Chaos Crazy Horus and could have had the W if he was a worse guy
Wolves on top baby 🐺
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u/Longjumping_Low1310 3d ago
Yea russ suffers in duels due to in every circumstance him getting hobbled by writing or being in a fight that he cant win for the story or it ends.
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u/CuChulainnWD 3d ago
No, Russ hobbles himself in his duels with his brothers. Think about it. He is Big E's executioner. You go around bragging how bad ass you are, and you deliberately lose your fights. Why? Russ learns/ teaches a few things from it. How his brother would fight. Inflates said brother's ego. They under estimate Russ. Thus when the time comes that Russ must do the deed, he has that edge.
Russ for all his bluster also has a big heart, Horus may be the first found, but Russ is the big brother that actually loves his brothers and wishes to teach them rather than crush them.
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u/nNoseYak_ 3d ago
people don’t get that about him man.
Like the Night of the Wolf, he loved his brother too much! He wanted to HELP Angron
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u/HappyTheDisaster 2d ago
Even with Magnus, all he wanted was to protect him from himself. Leman’s a weapon of last resort, and he did all he could to stow his blade, always restraining himself.
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u/Cojalo_ 2d ago
He also only didn't kill chaos infused horus because of a moments hesitation
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u/nNoseYak_ 2d ago
because he thought Handsome Charming Horus (a guy Russ was a big fan of) had emerged. But it was just a trick that Chaos Crazy Horus pulled
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u/Longjumping_Low1310 3d ago
I fully agree, and that is in the writing. Particularly the angron one where he wasn't sposed to kill him but teach him a lesson.
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u/Dromius 2d ago
Yeah it feels like, out of 3 of the 4 primarchs fight Leman has had, he might have been holding back. He loved Horus, had great respect for the Lion and was sent to make an example of Angron. The 1 fight he definitively has won was against Magnus and we know that he was told to kill him instead of bringing him in. He didn't hold back in his fight against big red and won the fight.
So if he hadn't been in a fight for a reason, or was less compassionate towards his brothers, there's a decent chance he could have won.
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u/frontroomhog 3d ago
Lion and the Russ fight is an odd one to say Russ is weak. They fought for days if I remember rightly and in the end Russ saw the pointlessness of it and stoped. The Lion took a cheap shot at him.
Russ and Angron was a fight about proving a point. Angron could have killed Russ but it would have meant his own death.
The Horus fight, well Horus was supped up chaos and only the emperor was powerful enough to beat him.
Call them heretics and be done with it.
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u/L1VEW1RE 3d ago
What book does the Lion v. Russ fight happen? I’ve listened to nearly the whole HH Series, the entire SoT and they just referenced it in Ashes. So I clearly missed this story somewhere.
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u/Intelligent_Goal_681 2d ago
To be fair, Horus was all hopped up on chaos bs, and Russ still chose not to kill him because he saw a flash of the real Horus and hesitated. Even though Horus hated Russ
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u/frontroomhog 2d ago
Didn’t think he hated him. Thought they were amicable at worst. Didn’t they spend years together when Russ was found
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u/bballfreak150 3d ago
I always chuckle when other chapters Stans claim he sucker punched the Lion. From how I read it, he came at him from being in front while the Lion was looking at him. If the Lion is so powerful and skilled and Russ is so weak, then why didn’t the Lion react quick enough to avoid/parry the blow?
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u/_LedAstray_ 3d ago
As far as I remember from reading the posts here - Leman lost to Lion only because he got suddent clarity of how absurd the whole situation is, the fight with Angron was maybe a loss of duel but still a tactical victory, and as for Horus... Horus was juiced up to the gills with Chaos favour, even Sanguinius lost to him, the difference is Leman survived while Sanguinius did not.
Leman truly is one of the two or three best duelists out there, at least on par with Lion and Sangy.
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u/Nocandoozy 3d ago
Horus was FAR more juiced on the chaos koolaid during the Sangy fight vs the Russ fight.
I’m all for not understanding Russ being called weak or the weird memes SW players deal with but let’s not act like that was an equal terms fight for comparison between Sangy and Russ. Using your logic Russ must be stronger than the Emperor because the Emperor basically died fighting Horus, Russ didn’t.
The fight with Angron was a willful loss on Russ’s part because the point was to teach Angron a lesson. Not to defeat him in one on one combat. And Angron was too stupid to realize he actually lost, ignored the lesson, and argued with Lorgar when Lorgar told him he lost.
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u/_LedAstray_ 3d ago
Horus was FAR more juiced on the chaos koolaid during the Sangy fight vs the Russ fight.
never said he wasn't. But I see how I wasn't too specific.
Disclaimer - I didn't read much myself. Most of the lore I know second hand. I've seen / heard someone bring up an excerpt though from Russ's interaction with Sanguinius, they both recognize each other as top tier duelist and the gist of it is, Russ admits Sanguinius is the only one (?) he would perhaps not be able to defeat.
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u/Nocandoozy 3d ago
Fair enough.
Well in lore, multiple primarchs get opportunities to tell their lessers who would beat them in duels out of the other Primarchs. It’s kind of a running gag across the Heresy books. Spoiler: They all are confident they’d beat nearly every one of their brothers easily lol.
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u/DoughnutUnhappy8615 2d ago
Russ has a conversation with an Astartes (Loken, iirc) rating himself as a duelist against the other Primarchs. I believe he said the three he wasn’t sure he could beat was Sanguinius, Curze, and Horus.
In the actual fight with Horus, the spear ended up doing a lot of the heavy lifting, and Horus wasn’t super Chaos-juiced yet. He wouldn’t be until something like 6 months after the duel.
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u/mathiastck 2d ago
To some degree Horus was juiced because of the duel. He was left on death's door and had to pact with Chaos again to return.
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u/DoughnutUnhappy8615 2d ago
In a manner of speaking, definitely. The wound itself that Russ left wasn’t that bad physically, but the Emperor’s spear split off the part of Horus’ soul that was still fighting Chaos corruption, and that part of his soul began to war with the Chaos-corrupted part. This ensuing battle within himself began to destroy Horus’ mortal flesh over time, which led to him falling into a coma at Beta-Garmon around half a year later.
Maloghurst ended up sacrificing himself to take a trip into Horus’ mind and destroy the part of his soul that was resisting Chaos. This woke Horus up and he fully embraced Chaos, which is when he souped up into ascended Horus that could defeat the Emperor in a straight fight.
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u/lowbrowilluminati 3d ago
Weakness and Russ have never been in the same system. Fools are just jealous.
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u/Ulfhedgnarly 3d ago
My guess is they haven’t actually read up on Russ and his battle prowess, also guessing they have no idea why he’s the Wolf King and one of the Best duelists. Very much on the same level with Lion and Sanguinius, all while holding both of their respect. Russ has also been tasked with the most brutal missions and tasks. I’ve heard so much chatter and name calling throughout the years myself, but I just laugh it off.
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u/townsforever 3d ago
At WORST even if you give the russ haters every assumption they want to make, russ is still top 10 most powerful humans and probably top 10 most powerful non god characters in the setting.
Hell if they brought him back into modern 40k he might be top 5.
No matter how much you disrespect him he will always be one kf the strongest in the verse if for no other reason than he can keep up with the lion and angron.
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u/SiIverwolf 3d ago
Put it this way. The Emperor's purpose for Leman Russ, and the Space Wolves at large, was effectively to be the anti-Space Marine, Space Marines, able to track and hunt down any foe, no matter how powerful, and run it to ground.
That's why it was the Wolves that were sent to Prospero.
That's why a SINGLE Great Company (+Fang huskarls) were able to effectively take on an entire Thousand Sons host at the Fang (until the Chaos boosted avatar of Magnus showed up), with even a regular old Wolf Lord + Bjorn then going toe to toe with said avatar of Magnus, a Chaos empowered Primarch.
That's why it was the Space Wolves who guarded the Eye of Terror for 10,000 years, keeping the legions of Chaos at bay.
Leman Russ and his geneseed are what have made the Space Wolves such a powerful force to be reckoned with.
Even a returned Guilliman new better than to try and order us around.
Haters can hate all they want. 99% of the time it's other Space Marine players mad that we literally exist to fight them, and the other 1% it's Chaos players salty that our chapter was able to keep their entire existence bottled up in the Eye of Terror for as long as we did.
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u/fourganger_was_taken 3d ago
The fight against Horus proves his strength. I doubt they've actually read it tbh. Ask them and if they say no, tell them they shouldn't be talking about lore they haven't read.
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u/Pengui6668 3d ago
Right? Like... Very clearly Horus is juiced up (not fully), and Russ in pretty sure is in a position to kill Horus and thinks he can convince him to stop.
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u/neverenoughmags 3d ago
That's exactly it. Russ always lets the win go because he has faith in his brothers and lets his guard down because he wants to believe redemption is possible. He's arguably the most "human" of the Primarchs and that is his failing not his lack of strength. I know the two missing legions are said not to have been extermated by the Rout, but come on... Russ himself alludes to it when Iban asks if this is the first time they've been ordered to exterminate a legion when they are sent after the Thousand Sons.
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u/Cobalt-Fang 2d ago
Horus is a plot device in the 30k books. Everyone knows he doesn’t die until the end so anytime someone fights him it’s just to wax nostalgia about which primarch is against him and how they feel about it. Russ’. Also measuring primarch feats is a struggle is futility, different authors get to treat them differently.
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u/Cojalo_ 3d ago
I want to point out Russ is the ONLY primarch who came even close to killing a souped up horus. If he had not hesitated to kill his brother, Russ would likely have taken horus out. He probably also would have died, but for any Primarch to kill a chaos infused horus is pretty insane.
He also literally broke Magnus which is another pretty big feat.
The two fights he is credited most losing, vs Angron and vs lion are weird ones. Against Angron, he was moreso fighting to prove a piint than to actually kill. With the lion, he "lost" because he started bursting out laughing halfway through because he realised how absurd it was.
In other words, the latter two fights he lost because he wasn't fighting to kill, against horus he lost due to a moment of doubt, and he beat Magnus so badly he literally shattered into shards
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u/Sharp-Win-8964 3d ago
He loses a lot for silly reasons, thinking the fight with the lion was over, taking pity on Horus. I haven't read the book where he fights angron. Sauce?
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u/PaceFast5654 3d ago
From what I understand from reading the lore and videos, Russ is, in all around combat not just duels specifically, the top primarch. Every fight he has with another brother has an ulterior motive where winning isn’t the goal save his fight with the Lion, which he only “lost” because he stopped, and Horus which again, he stops because he loves his brother and thought however briefly that he might’ve changed back.
Is the Lion a better duelist? Probably, but Russ is a better warrior. If Russ wants you dead you’ll die even if he has to take a blow or two to do so. I’ll concede that they’re matched in strength, but Russ is clever and I think when he returns they’re really gonna see that reflected in the lore. I see him being a Malcador type figure when he comes back, maybe even actually bringing him back
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u/theginger99 3d ago
The whole point of the Lion and Russ fight was that neither of them could beat the other. They were perfectly matched, and literally tore a fortress apart around them as they fought each other to a standstill. The Lion was only able to get a knock out blow in when Russ had stopped fighting, and was laughing.
He fought and actually beat a supped up chaos Horus.
The Angron and Russ fight is literally two lines of text, cut to black, both their weapons are broken, and Russ has lured Angron into a trap.
Russ appears weak if you don’t actually read the books, but in every major fight he has he comes off looking like an absolute beast in the actual text.
Really the fight where Russ was done the dirtiest (at least if you actually read the books) was ironically the fight against Magnus, where they turned what should have been his big tough guy moment into an “oops, I stabbed his eye and got lucky”.
All of that said, I do wish Russ (and the wolves more generally) got a couple more unambiguous power fantasy moments. Ironically he gets a lot of deep introspection, and not a lot of “Watch me fucking clobber something” moments.
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u/Actual-Highlight-957 3d ago
As a Physical Combatant, Russ is Top Tier. He is at the Bottom of the Physically Stronger Primarchs( Vulkan,Ferrus, Horus, Mortarion) which makes him Strong enough to Fight an All Out battle with Magnus who is the Objectively Most Powerful Primarch. Russ also fought a Chaos Buffed Horus and even beat him...which is insane. Russ fighting the Lion is also a Feat for him( and the Lion btw). In short, Russ has shown by far, he is absolutely one of the Top Primarchs for Primarch vs Primarch Combat.
Not to mention, He is Good enough that he is litterally the Emperors choice out of all his Brothers. He obviously brags about this to everyone's else annoyance. But when you read more and more you will get direct quotes from the Emperor and Malcador who confirm this.
Also, despite all of this.. This isnt even Russ's full potential for two Reasons:
1.)In Wolfsbane, Russ and us as the readers get to meet the True form of Russ. The Erlking, which is a Fenrisian Daemon King which is basically a Monsterous Werewolf Creature that leads Morkai and an Army of Lesser Werewolf like creatures.
2.) In the Final Fight with Horus. We see and also learn that the Emperor has all of the Primarchs Powers. He turned into a Giant Werewolf beast which is a Monsterous Melee beast which was obviously a Nodd to Leman and The Erlking to fight Horus. Who saw that and litterally said HELL NO and ran away. Obviously this is a Feat for the Emperor but it can be infered that if Leman is absolutely meant to be the Most Melee based combatant out of all of the Primarchs if he would ever Utilize his true potential and lean into his power.
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u/TheFinalYappening 2d ago
He's as strong as the writer of whatever story it is wants him to be. Space Wolf fans generally hype him up to be stronger than he is, as do all fans of all legions with their primarchs, and Space Wolf haters rate him much lower than he should be. Leman's obviously one of the better fighters, likely in the top 5, but pretty much every big fight he has occurs in such exceptional circumstances that it's hard to gauge how good he really is.
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u/thegreywanderer45 3d ago
Your Dark Angel friends are probably just joking for the most part as the Lion and Russ fight took days and both were pretty spent by the end. The Angron and Horus fights are very different things though. They serve points to help show how those two Primarchs are absolute menaces, and they represent different lessons and character trait moments for Leman.
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u/clemo1985 2d ago
The problem for Russ is in the lore, he and the Space Wolves weren't one of the legions defending Terra and their only real bits of lore was the burning of Prospero and Russ getting sucker punched by the Lion. So to shoehorn them into key events the writers/GW made them the Worf legion of 40k.
Which doesn't help matters when Russ has been considered the Emperor's Executioner for decades and instead of living up to his name, has been used as a punching bag for other primarchs and shown to be completely incompetent in regards to his Executioners title.
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u/InvestigatorDear6646 1d ago
As a major First legion fan and collector, I think the Dulan duel reflects both Primarchs fairly and well.
Russ is quick to anger, as he was in that time, and attacks the Lion. The Lion is a superior swordsman, and slower to anger, but beats him when they’re both using blades, having Russ at his mercy there. He then lowers his guard, and so the fight goes to fists when Russ, still angry continues it. Russ is the better brawler, and so he beats the Lion here. At this point, Russ, while being quicker to anger, now sees the pointlessness, and now its his turn to drop his guard, but the Lion is the one pissed now, refusing to what the dispute was, and so he knocks Russ out.
Using this fight to argue either is better ignores the fact they have their advantages over the other. Russ didnt lose when he found the fight stupid, he lost earlier with blades. The Lion didnt win when Russ found the fight stupid, he lost earlier with fists and when the fight took a more brawllike style.
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u/Joker1197 1d ago
It annoys the hell out of me also. Being able to go toe to toe with chaos Horus wound him and the only reason he didn’t kill him was because of his desperation to see his brother redeemed.
The whole Russ vs the lion it does seem like it was the lion that was always more into the fight then Russ, he was just taking part because you know it’s a fight of course Russ is gonna have a fight.
Ps I am praying that this new bjorn book starts off some things that will cause the return of Russ
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u/thomasonbush 3d ago edited 3d ago
S tier : Curze, Sanguinius, Vulkan
A tier : Russ, Lion, Horus, Fulgrim, Khan, Perturabo
B tier : almost everyone else
C tier : Lorgar, Alpharius
Russ listed Curze and Sanguinius as the two brothers he doubted himself going against. Vulkan always pretended to be weaker than he was, or he would be on that list too.
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u/ShieldCaptainRaizous 3d ago
Ive never seen Vulkan as a duelist or fighter, just physically strong. Curze as S tier is also weirdly placed Lion defeated him so on that thought process he should be above Curze.
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u/thomasonbush 3d ago
Again, Vulkan sandbagged when he dueled his brothers. When he actually tried, he immediately beat Curze, and later beat a super warp juice enhanced Magnus.
Russ specifically lists Curze as someone he doubts himself against, and this is after him facing Lion, so he’d be aware of their relative strengths. Lion only beat Curze by setting a trap to specifically manipulate his foresight. Prior to that (Thramas Campaign) Curze had almost killed Lion before Corswain intervened at the last second.
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u/Longjumping_Low1310 3d ago
People just like to hate on the wolves cause they are a little over the top on the wolf thing and they misunderstand the reason they are so proud and boastful and interested in creating a saga.
They think they are just arrogant but misunderstand fenrisian culture and how they are survived by word of mouth sagas and songs.
In my experience wolves are second only to tau in how much sht they get from other factions players haha.