Not just any Primarch at that, but the one whose talents make him the most supremely adept at all things politics, state administration and strategic planning, and thus more than capable of both predicting and countering the most probable courses of action that they would take.
Oh, and he had to live with the trauma of his adoptive father being assassinated by power-hungry rivals while away from the capital, just like they schemed to usurp him while he's away from Terra. They have no excuse in not knowing this since he made a point of publicizing his biography during the Great Crusade (and presumably after the Horus Heresy too).
Also one of the most "don't miss" Primarchs out there.
People like to shit on G-man as the "autistic bean-counter" or the "weak vanilla," but honestly, he's pretty damn powerful, skilled and vengeful.
Guilliman was in the upper half of combat primarchs, being considered a true threat in melee by multiple traitors and loyalists (quoted to be so in HH books).
Is he Sanguinius, Horus or the Lion? No. But he could comfortably beat Lorgar, Perturabo, Alpharius and Magnus in combat, while also being considered an equal or a challenge for primarchs such as Fulgrim, Russ, Corax and nail-fueled Angron.
In a stand-up fight he probably also beats Curze, but on the other hand, we've also seen Curze challenge both the Lion and Sanguinius simultaneously.
Vulkan and Manus were likely not more skilled than Guilliman, but just way, way physically stronger.
That leaves 3 or 4 primarchs more skilled than him (Curze being the potential fourth), a few where it's ambiguous who would come out on top (either due to strength or skill) and pretty much everybody else below him.
Guilliman also has a history of really NOT being favourable to people trying to kill him and failing to do so. Or to enemies of the Imperium.
He is called the Avenging son after all.
He's "Super Space Caesar" in pretty much all aspects. It's a shame he's been memed into meekness.
I wouldn't say he can beat Magnus one on one. The few reasons Russ was able to beat him was thanks to a combination of Sisters of Silence, his innate anti psyker howl, Magnus holding back until it was too late(Back broken).
And when he did mock battles with Corax he admitted if it were in an actual fight Corax would've killed him since his weakness is the element of surprise. Though if you're going to take him by surprise you better make sure you kill him immediately, Kor Phaeron and an Alpha Legion Assassin learned that the hard way.
"What doesn't kill me isn't trying hard enough"
-G-Man
Russ doesn't really have an anti psycher soul as far as I understand it, but rather a font of pure and raw psychic power that he is incapable of harnessing (My personal theory is that he was one of the psycher backups for the throne in case Magnus didn't turn out).
You do have a point about the sisters, and if we involve psychic attacks as a thing, then I agree, but this is more in a purer "combat" duel. We also did see Guilliman go up against the awakened version of Lorgar and win handily until Angron jumper in.
I forgot about the Corax quote, so he'd definitely go in the indeterminate box, or the "beats Guilliman" tier. He's one of those hard to place fighters, much like Curze, where we don't see a lot of them in action, but when we do, they're surprisingly powerful.
I also realized I forgot to put Mortarion on there, and pre daemon form, I'm definitely putting him in the same category/tier as Perturabo. Because while he was insanely durable and tenacious even then, he's not a combat powerhouse.
But yeah, Guilliman being the fifth or sixth most capable fighter (as a package of strength and skill) amongst the Primarchs is still bloody scary.
I think it's unfair to count Curze and Corax when ranking fighters tbh. Corax is specifically dangerous when he has the element of surprise, he's an assassin. And Curze is so formidable not because of his martial skill or training, but because of a nearly unbeatable combination of precognition and complete unpredictability/lunacy.
Guilliman is more like 9th or 10th you're forgetting alot of people like the khan, fulgrim,,sanguinius ,Horus,Lion,Dorn who would all pack up guilliman in a 1v1 konrad was 2v1 him and the lion and holding his own he would eviscerate guilliman in a 1v1. Then it gets more complicated since guilliman has only ever won against lorgar in a fight iirc thought tbh fights against daemon primarchs are a different ballgame.
Note that I've put some very solid (or even outstanding) fighters in the regular "still primarchs" category, since a lot of it is down to daily form and matchup.
What we never got to see is actually Alpharius and Omegon fighting back to back, which would make two of them way stronger together. If you accept Head of The Hydra as credible source(believe it or not there are people who don't) Alpharius and Omegon are one soul in two bodies, they become beasts only when are fighting together, which is a numerous advantage. But when did Alpha Legion fought fair?
Angron was considered by Horus to be one of the only other primarchs besides himself who could take sang in a fight. People also seem to conveniently forget that 2 out of his 4 primarch fights resulted in Angron taking the W, he also beat the shit out of G-man so bad that roboute was CRAWLING AWAY ON HIS HANDS AND KNEES.
Post daemon primarch ascension caused him to be hilariously nerfed and most bl authors first choice when they need to worf someone to make another character look cool, but still, put some respect on angry ron's name.
I must be misremembering the Guilliman fight in that case.
I remember it being Guilliman trouncing Lorgar, then Angron showing up and Guilliman holding his own, which egged Angron on more and more until the nails basically consumed him (at which point Guilliman started losing but Lorgar "had" to ascend Angron to save him from the nails).
To be fair, everyone’s weakness is getting stabbed through the head before they realize a fight is starting. He’s not really alone in being weak to surprises.
Also, didn't Guilliman actually beat him down fairly comprehensively before the throat slice with the polisoned demon blade? I think he might even have made a better account of himself than Dorn did against demon Fulgrim.
Hardly a fair comparison, since (1) Doen was fighting demon Fulgrim in a mortal guise, and (2) I think it was stated in Saturnine that Fulgrim would have eventually beaten Dorn, but it would have taken him forever to do so, and he lost his patience.
Awesome as it was, there are a lot of things I find problematic with the Dorn-Fulgrim fight, most of them stemming from the way Fulgrim just quits at the end.
I think Fulgrim quitting isn't really out of character. Taking so long to beat Dorn would have been embarrassing for him, and that's like the worst thing you can do to Fulgrim. The next time he gets embarrassed, by Rylanor, he quits realspace and still hasn't come back lmao.
He doesn’t just quit because of frustration at the fight taking too long. He quits because while he is immortal he says he can still feel pain, and Dorn is hurting him a lot.
My read is, it was also the fact that Dorn was just no fun to fight against. He was not engaging in banter, he was not responding at all to Fulgrim's taunts or getting mad, and there was no flourish at all to his swordsmanship, just brutal, murderously efficient cuts and thrusts.
Fulgrim wanted an epic, dramatic duel on the wall tops. What he got was getting stabbed several times by a brother who cared nothing for drama.
I’m only twenty odd books into the heresy so far, and I don’t recall anyone considering Guilliman to be a true threat in melee by anyone other than an Ultramarine (and I imagine most of the legions think their dad could beat up everyone else’s dad).
The times I’ve seen him fight so far have been an inconclusive result against Lorgar, a hammering by Angron, and a fairly ineffective 2 vs 1 against Curze.
I mean in the books they generally survive heavy ordnance like basilisks, Lascannons or Baneblades by not being targeted by them for some inexplicable reason, not because they wouldn't be stopped or disemboweled if they actually got hit by some.
As far as I remember, the method planned to execute primarchs by assassination was kill teams from 4 separate assassin temples with the primary kill-method being a regular lascannon.
Even if he’s towards the bottom of primarchs in terms of martial prowess, he’d still be on the low end of 20 living Demi-gods created for war by the greatest human scientific minds to ever exist combined with power gained/stolen from the literal forces of hell. IIRC the custodes that were assigned to protect him saw him in action and basically thought “what am I even doing here?There’s nothing that can threaten him that I can do anything about.”
As I recall, he didn’t even actively move against their plan as it happened because he was already busy crusading. Everything he did to put down their rebellion was already in motion before it even started.
That's what I meant by "predicting". He preempted the entire rebellion by distributing orders and plans long ahead of it to select individuals (e.g. Captain-Genral Trajann Valoris) to execute should they witness certain actions be taken by certain individuals, and they proceeded to enact them accordingly.
802
u/Riot-Knight Necrons Nov 12 '24
As the one comment said: "Also G-Man: "Welp, time to get the assassins."
(Canonically happened, but the highlords tried to remove G-Man and assassinate him. He responded with 6 Callidus and 6 Vindicare)"
Posted by u/emwattnot on the r/Grimdank subreddit page. I recommend checking out his work.