Sunday 3 July 2011

Primarchs - Magnus

I thought this one might be tricky but I'm giving it a go anyway,

Essentially a being made of psychic energy in a humanoid outer shell. Able to use his psychic abilities at an Alpha+ level standard from the moment of his emergence from his pod.....

Essentially Magnus is living proof that the saying 'no good deed goes unpunished' is depressingly correct. He also further validates the opinion that the Emperor was a self centred egomaniac. His use of his psychic abilities to warn the Emperor of the heresy of Horus that disrupted the Emperors own work on Terra could easily have been avoided had he bothered to tell any of his sons what he was actually doing.

As a side note it's worth mentioning that none of the Primarchs that turned to Chaos did so for entirely selfish reasons. Magnus was left with no choice, Lorgar was allowed to do things is own way until the Emperor changed the rules suddenly, Angron was snatched from his own people when the Emperor could have saved them all without effort, Curze was used as a weapon of terror and then admonished for being a weapon of terror and so on. Even Peturabo who was apparently a dick-head pretty much from day one could probably have been kept on the side of the loyalists by the simple benefit of the odd "well done son" from daddy ;-)

Anyway,

Magnus could apparently represent himself in any physical proportions he felt like at the time but was generally regarded as being one of the largest of the Primarchs to the point that should he have gone down the physical path rather than a mental one he would have been an extremely able warrior (even by Primarch standards). This makes giving him statistics a bit tricky. I have therefore gone with the standard Primarch profile with increased strength to represent this increased size with perhaps a few other stat increases here and there.

As for equipment, he'll have the standard Primarch Armour, a staff (which is described as 'bladed' in the 'A Thousand Sons' novel) which seems to be able to shoot arcs of lightning capable of destroying battle tanks (more likely this is focusing Magnus's own power rather than being a ranged weapon in it's own right). It also makes mention of a 'Golden Axe' but I am taking this to mean that the 'Bladed Staff' was also usable like an axe rather than being two separate weapons.

Then of course we have his psychic abilities to take into account.....

I feel I should point out that these posts are not intended to be incredibly well balanced in 40K terms. Rather they are an extrapolation of the existing rules designed to be used in large Apocalypse games against another Primarch of equal (ish) power or failing that they need to be allocated a fairly high points value ;-)

Magnus the Red, Primarch of the Thousand Sons.



WS 7, BS 6, S 7, T 6, W 6, I 6, A 4, Ld. 10, Save 1+/3+inv.

Composition : 1 (Unique)
Unit Type : Infantry


Wargear:
Primarch Armour, Staff of Magnus*.

*Staff of Magnus - A focus for his own psychic power Magnus's staff acts as both a Force and Power Weapon with all the appropriate rules of both. Furthermore, whenever an enemy model succeeds on a Psychic test within 72" of Magnus, roll a die - on a roll of 3 or more that power may be nullified if he wishes.

In addition it can be used as a ranged weapon with the following profile. Range 24", S10, AP1, Assault 3.


Special Rules:
Acute Senses, Aura of Power**, And They Shall Know No Fear, Eternal Warrior, Independent Character, Master of Psykers***, Might of the Primarch, Relentless, Will of the Primarch, Wings of Power****.

**Aura of Power - The Primarch is surrounded by an aura of power barely tolerable by even Astartes let alone mortals - Magnus counts as being equipped with both Assault and Defensive Grenades.

***Master of Psykers - There is little doubt that Magnus was at the time the Emperor himself was active the 2nd most powerful psyker in existence and there was little to limit his power beyond his own imagination.

Magnus may use six psychic powers per turn. Furthermore he makes his Psychic tests on three dice and may choose any two of these in order to ascertain his total for the test. In the highly unlikely event of a 'Perils of the Warp' result Magnus may ignore it on a roll of 2+ on a single die. Finally, he may target multiple different units with these powers and may use a power more than once should he wish.

Should an enemy Psyker attempt to stop one of Magnus's own abilities from working by use of a Psychic Hood (or equivalent) then Magnus himself rolls three dice and picks the highest to add to his own Leadership score for the test of wills. Items with a fixed chance of success (such as Runic weapons) suffer a penalty of -d3 to their attempt to nullify his power (rolled for penalty before the test is taken). Should an enemy psyker attempt to stop one of Magnus's powers and fail he immediately suffers from 'Perils of the Warp' as the psychic feedback overloads his mind.

He may use any of the psychic powers from the standard lists (so not powers that are unique to single models) in the following Codices.

Blood Angels - Any from page 63, Chaos Space Marines - Any from page 88, Dark Angels - Any from page 39, Grey Knights - Any from page 25, Space Marines - Any, Space Wolves - Any from page 37, with the exception of 'Fury of the Wolf Spirits' which seems somewhat inappropriate ;-).

In addition Magnus may choose to focus his power into a specific psychic ability. For each psychic power he chooses to use below his maximum of six he may increase or decrease a single statistic in a power he uses by one or alternatively may extend a shooting attacks range by 12" or an area effect powers range by 6".

For example : Magnus has already used four powers this turn and for his 5th he decides to use 'Smite' on an enemy unit, deciding that the unit is probably out of range he sacrifices his use of a 6th power in order to extend the range of 'Smite' by 12" to 24". He could alternatively (in this example) have increased the strength to 5 or lowered the AP to 1 had the unit been closer.
This time Magnus has seen a large group of Jump Infantry moving towards an objective and decides to use the power 'Tempest's Wrath' to make this difficult for them. As the objective is a fair distance away Magnus only uses a single power this turn and sacrifices his remaining five to upgrade this ability by extending it's Range of 24" by five lots of 6" giving the power an area of effect of an incredible 54"!!!

****Wings of Power - With a mere flex of his psychic power Magnus can propel himself across the battlefield without using the mundane method of actually walking - Magnus and any unit he has joined may choose to move as Jump Infantry if he so wishes. This decision must be made at the the beginning of each turn.

So Magnus is floating across the battlefield throwing out psychic abilities like there's no tomorrow and toasting the brains of any psykers foolish enough to attempt to stop him. Sounds about right to me.....

Thoughts and Comments are (as usual) most welcome.

12 comments:

  1. Looks good, is it worth also giving Magnus the eldar pyschic powers, as the whole farseeing thing seems appropriate?

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  2. @ Martin - I considered giving them Eldar powers as well but Magnus doesn't really supplement the abilities of others in the way that things like Fortune, Doom and the like would represent.

    If you wan't to allow him to use them should you yourself use him in a game then that's entirely up to you ;-)

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  3. Thinking about it, your right, the eldar powers seem more like the general abilities for the Thousand sons troops, like the various cults

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  4. for the sake of cutting down the rules why not just make him auto cast psychic powers like typhus but still allow the opponents to "dispell" them as discribed?

    also a 72" psychic hood seems a bit ott 48" might be more reasonable as 72" is pretty much the entirety of a board. perhaps add that any directly targeting magnus suffer a perils as he mind wars them to oblivion for even trying it!

    otherwise seems pretty good, i especially like the fact he knows all the powers. Are you going to add some general thousand son rules as well at a later date?

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  5. @ Mark - I had some ideas for general Thousand Sons rules but it depends on the codex people use to represent the Legion. Upgrading sergeants/champions to sorcerers for a set cost seems okay in principle but becomes a tad irrelevant if people use the Grey Knights codex for them.

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  6. Also @ Mark - I do like the 'target him with psychic powers and your brain explodes' idea. I may add that in after some thought.

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  7. @ Custom - I've had requests for both Rogal Dorn and Vulkan, so probably one of those two.

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  9. I'd love to see your write ups for the Lion (especially after the description of his fight with Night Haunter in Age of Darkness), and Leman Russs. Both of them have fought pimarchs you have stats for already and the fights are detailed well in the novels.

    Dorn and Vulkan also interest me for different reasons. If anyone hasn't said so of late, thanks again for writing these up.

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  10. @ Custom - I'm glad you enjoy them. I'll try to keep doing them at the rate of one a week till they're all done.

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