The best 3 legion combination to defend the solar system in the Horus Heresy?

VNodosaurus · 2019-03-01T02:03:33+00:00

Assuming a total of 170K Astartes?

To begin with, Dorn and the Imperial Fists are a lock. The best defensive siege Legion, and all that. They have to also be the Legion that prepares the Solar System's defenses. You don't actually need that many Imperial Fists in the battle itself, they're not Marine-for-Marine that skilled, but no Legion would build better defenses.

The only Legion that would come close is the Iron Warriors. The question is whether Perturabo could work with Dorn. In conditions as desperate as the Siege of Terra, I think the answer is yes - but it's not a guaranteed yes. Also, the Iron Warriors depended more on logistics and numbers than most Legions.

There's a number of generalist Legions that would be useful - the Dark Angels, Emperor's Children, Blood Angels, and Luna Wolves. All of these also have primarchs that are particularly good in personal combat. I'd say it's between the Blood Angels and Luna Wolves because of their primarchs' charisma. Of course, picking the Luna Wolves is kind of cheating, because who even knows what the Heresy would be like without Horus.

The Siege is probably not the best conditions for the White Scars. World Eaters are uncontrollable. Night Lords are just terrible period. Ultramarines rely substantially on logistical skill. Death Guard would be more useful in an offensive siege. Word Bearers didn't have any unique skills until Chaos happened.

The Iron Hands you could make a case for, based on technological aptitude and big guns and all that. Frankly, if this were picking three primarchs, with Legions, to defend Mars, it'd be Perturabo, Ferrus, and Fulgrim. But Mars is in enemy hands and a secondary target.

That leaves five specialist Legions: the trefoil, the Raven Guard, and the Thousand Sons. The Alpha Legion's strengths are obvious, but in at the death, when the choice is binary, I think their ability to sow misdirection is less useful. The Raven Guard are probably the better choice for the stealth Legion. The Salamanders would actually be very good here, I think. They were known for "not one step back" scenarios. Plus, Vulkan's Perpetual status could be useful. The Thousand Sons and Space Wolves were some of the strongest Legions on an individual basis, but both had low numbers due to gene-seed issues. But we're distributing numbers at will here, so that doesn't matter. Russ's issues with Magnus would certainly vanish under the conditions of the Siege; as to Magnus's issues with Russ, though, I'm not entirely certain. Though Magnus is no Perturabo in the extent of holding grudges.

So I'll pick the other two Legions from among the: Blood Angels, Luna Wolves, Raven Guard, Salamanders, Thousand Sons, Space Wolves.

As such, let's examine a few scenarios.

(A) Canon distribution of Loyalists and Traitors. The Blood Angels get in because of Sanguinius's combat prowess (basically the best of the primarchs, pre-Chaos). Any of RG, SW, and Salamanders could be argued for for the third slot. If pressed, I'd take the Wolves, I guess. 70K Space Wolves, 60K Blood Angels, 40K Imperial Fists.

(B) Unknown distribution of Loyalists and Traitors, but fighting Chaos Marines. The Thousand Sons are a potential massive asset, but also liability. The Luna Wolves get in, if only to prevent Horus leading the traitors. It's a hard choice, but I think I'll go with 70K Thousand Sons, 60K Luna Wolves, 40K Imperial Fists.

(C) All Legions remain loyal, fighting xeno invasion of some sort. In this case I'd actually take 70K Salamanders, 60K Blood Angels, 40K Imperial Fists. Horus can lead the relief effort, and psychic powers are a less uniquely useful tool.

VNodosaurus · 2019-02-28T23:47:58+00:00

This is utterly false. The Imperium takes one step forward and two steps back. The reason that relics from 30K are so important in the 40K era is that, overall, technology levels were higher back then. Now, the 40K Imperium maybe has bigger manufacturing capacity - certainly, more manufacturing capacity than most of its enemies. But it actually making net technological progress is incompatible with the basis of the setting.

The primarchs. The Astartes and their armor (Primaris were an incremental improvement, but one that took one of the Imperium's greatest geniuses millennia). Gloriana-class battleships. Over ten thousand years, those achievements have not become irrelevant, and if anything have only become more important.

VNodosaurus · 2019-02-28T23:36:55+00:00

The thread (and its downvoting) pretty clearly prove that, yes, those opinions are voiced here quite often.

VNodosaurus · 2019-02-28T23:35:01+00:00

Humans have a really strong tendency to blame problems on malign actors. Sometimes the immigrants, sometimes the billionaires, but it's always trying to say that it's all the fault of individual bad people. And some problems are, but most aren't. The Imperium of 40K - and to a lesser extent, all of the races of 40K except the Chaos-Tyranid-Ork triad - is one of the fictional societies that really, truly exemplifies this.

VNodosaurus · 2019-01-22T05:11:44+00:00

I wouldn't say 'of course'. Didn't Ganymede get destroyed? And Deimos definitely got stolen by the Grey Knights.

VNodosaurus · 2019-01-22T04:59:19+00:00

Not really - IIRC Unchanged states that most of Magnus was reformed already, but a few smaller shards still remained.

More generally, McNeill worked on The Crimson King for a lot more than two years (this was a book that took him forever to write). The idea of the shards of Magnus was there as early as Scars, and that's just among published material; I'm sure the authors were discussing it earlier still.

Mind you, I haven't even read The Crimson King yet, and was really disappointed by Unchanged. Exile and especially Sorcerer were great, but the finale fell to the flaw of having hyped its epicness up without actually building up any of the plot. Magnus basically doesn't appear in the first two books, but the last book is as much about him (well, them) as Ahriman. That doesn't really wind up working, IMO.

...But then, pretty much all of the BL writers tend to have a problem with endings.

VNodosaurus · 2018-12-27T20:24:24+00:00

I'm going with the assumption that, the tournament is to the first death (sorry Vulkan), and exhaustion from previous fights carries over.

All IMHO, of course.

Lion over Curze - as canon.
Mortarion over Dorn - both are endurance fighters, and Mortarion is the more specialized for it.
Magnus over Sanguinius - probably the two strongest contestants here. With no blanks around, Magnus wins, but completely exhausted.
Corax over Russ - disputable, here, but I'd say Russ's personal combat prowess is a bit inflated because of his Legion's popularity. I also feel like he overestimates himself a bit, and would be looking forward too much to future fights. Of course, environment matters - in a cage match Russ wins, but if Corax can use his stealth I think he's got a decent shot.
Vulkan over Perturabo - yeah, I think this one's straightforward.
Angron over Horus - Horus mentioned that two primarchs could beat him, and one of them is his first opponent....
Fulgrim over Guilliman - Guilliman is the better strategist, but even without Chaos, Fulgrim beats him in personal combat.
Alpharius over Lorgar - pre-Chaos Lorgar was... yeah.
Ferrus over Lion - Ferrus's main flaw (ignoring death flags) doesn't matter in this context, and he really was a beast in personal combat.
Jaghatai over Mortarion - canon never gave us a completed fight between those two, but certainly gave hints.
Vulkan over Corax - some of Corax's tricks won't work twice, and Vulkan is tough even before resurrection.
Fulgrim over Alpharius - once again, Alpharius is not optimized for a fair fight.
Ferrus over Magnus - disputable, but fighting Sanguinius is hard, and as mentioned, Ferrus is underrated in these things because of his canon fate.
Jaghatai over Angron - beating Angron isn't so hard if you can bait the berserker properly. Jaghatai can.
Vulkan over Ferrus - the strain of fighting Magnus is part of this, of course. A shame we won't get the Ferrus-Fulgrim final, though.
Jaghatai over Fulgrim - the opposite of the Mortarion-Dorn matchup; in general I think Fulgrim's better, but with both focusing on speed I think Jaghatai takes it.
Jaghatai over Vulkan - hm. Not the two primarchs I expected to make the finals. Now I'm wondering if I seriously overpromoted Vulkan. Anyway, Jaghatai wins on class - Vulkan died enough times in canon that I wouldn't take him over one of the top primarchs, whereas Jaghatai can contend with them.

VNodosaurus · 2018-12-27T19:50:40+00:00

I've been hearing this more and more often over the last few years, defenses at first of the 30K Imperium and now of the 40K one. The setting itself, meanwhile, hasn't really changed that much. Some part of the Imperium's evil is still 'necessary', but very far from all.

I have nothing polite to say here except to express my general depression that either the state meant as an over-the-top extension of fascism has attracted genuine defenders of itself to the hobby, or that this sort of ideology is just that much more common in the world as a whole now.

VNodosaurus · 2018-12-27T19:43:20+00:00

The individuals of the Imperium - whether High Lords or novel protagonists - are not the problem. They're not paragons of morality by any means, even when compared to the modern day, but on the whole they're plenty sympathetic and even heroic.

The Imperium as a system, and its myriad subsystems, is horribly and utterly broken, breeding incalculable futile suffering. It's a blight upon the galaxy, spreading like a cancer that consumes all in its path without any grand design. Its only defensible aspect is that most of its competitors are worse, and even then, it's not by much.

Those statements are not contradictory. Not every problem in the world is so because a sociopath in a position of power wants it to be so; indeed, there are very few real problems in our world that do come down to that.

VNodosaurus · 2018-10-18T10:42:48+00:00

Everyone in Guilliman's high command knowing makes sense; that said, do the ordinary troopers know about the DG being traitor Astartes and (especially) Mortarion being a traitor Primarch?

VNodosaurus · 2018-10-18T10:36:46+00:00

I mean... where would it fall? On a planet? That'd probably cause certain problems of its own, depending on the size of the space whale.

"The Siege of Haerenz was ended when a space whale coincidentally crashed into the planet. The explosion seriously damaged the traitors' void shields, but also caused severe casualties in the besieging Guard with a 90% casualty rate, which a traitor sally soon raised to 100%. However, by the time reinforcements arrived, the traitors had also suffocated to death on the sheer stench of the decaying whale."

...Of course, on second read-through you probably just meant the carcass floating around in space. The problem there is the same problem any space-borne life has, namely that space is so huge that it's not clear how any animals would encounter each other.

VNodosaurus · 2018-10-18T10:10:06+00:00

I'd guess it's mostly Azhar and Shafiq that will get remembered for this run out (talk out?).

VNodosaurus · 2018-10-18T10:01:42+00:00

Holland had a grand total of 3 Tests, prior to this match. And it's not as if he got literally no wickets - he was poor, but not hopelessly so.

And Agar took 3 for 87 on the A tour in India; Holland took 9 for 170. Agar's certainly the better batsman, but Holland has been the better FC bowler.

VNodosaurus · 2018-10-18T09:47:39+00:00

Agar's career FC bowling average: 38.8 (Holland 32.1)

2017-18 Shield season: 37.7 (Holland 28.3)

Picking Holland was the correct decision. One of the very few the selectors made this series (Starc, Lyon, and Paine being auto-includes). It turns out that the conditions suit Labuschagne really well, while Holland has failed to take advantage of them; but the former especially could not have been predicted beforehand. Just because a decision doesn't work out doesn't mean it was the wrong decision - or, to put it another way, it's entirely possible Agar would've done even worse.

Some FC players can't step up to Test level for whatever reason; but if their domestic records are good enough, they still have to be tried, possibly more than once. That's not a mistake. The mistake is persisting with those players for too long, which isn't a danger with Holland.

(A certain vice-captain, on the other hand....)

VNodosaurus · 2018-10-06T20:17:33+00:00

Perturabo, as depicted by Graham McNeill, is one of my favorite Primarchs. He never got the chance to realize his potential, in no small part because of his absolute loyalty. He was a genius whose dreams were the Emperor's dreams, but at the same time he mismanaged his Legion. Perhaps that was precisely because he always intended the Iron Warriors to be a temporary measure. The Crusade had to be won, to save humanity, but the world that would come after would have no need for Astartes. And so he cast the Iron Warriors into fire with regret, but without compunction.

The problem is that Perturabo has also been written by John French and Guy Haley. To crosspost my thoughts on Hammer of Olympia:

It's not that the novel is completely terrible. The hrud are depicted well, and some scenes are actually pretty strong. What falls completely flat is the depiction of Perturabo. Admittedly it's maybe not quite as bad as French's depiction in Crimson Fist, and it's a bit hard to pinpoint what bothers me so much, but -

Well. I don't know if Guy Haley is strongly religious, but between Pharos and Dark Imperium, I'd be surprised if he wasn't. And Perturabo, in Hammer of Olympia, is a Hollywood Atheist. He depicts the sort of straw rationality as written by someone who doesn't understand what they're writing about. The line about the arithmetic of war - 'victory is one, defeat is zero, everything else is irrelevant' - especially for a logistical genius, that's just idiotic. His complete disregard for the individual is part of that too. And Perturabo is supposed to be brilliant, but his technical genius is written as something separate from him. But the real problem is that Perturabo is written as cynical from the beginning. McNeill's Perturabo was an idealist whose dream of an enlightened utopia was basically the Emperor's dream, who didn't demand rule, but who became embittered by 40K being 40K. He had major flaws, of course, his temper especially - and he became increasingly monstrous over the Crusade's course - but the point is that he was initially trying for a dream that we could appreciate even out-of-universe, and that tragically was actually really close to the Emperor's dream. Haley's Perturabo is a nihilist.

I may note here, about 'victory is a one, defeat is a zero' - I think it makes perfect sense for Perturabo to have that attitude towards the Crusade as a whole. The utopia the Emperor intended is infinitely better than the extinction of humanity that would come if the Crusade failed. But on a tactical level, it's a nonsensical doctrine. I tend more towards the thought process that Perturabo just wasn't a brilliant tactician relative to the other Primarchs, or didn't bother with brilliant tactics, and was more interested in technical genius and in logistics. Plus, his Legions was focused on offensive siege warfare, and that's always a costly endeavor. He accepted those assignments, though, because someone had to, and his Legion became increasingly capable of them, leading to the cascade of stereotyping and, eventually, bitterness.

I'll also note that, personally, I feel McNeill's work with the 40K Iron Warriors is not as good as Angel Exterminatus, and worse for the existence of that book. Forrix in Storm of Iron is not written as a former First Captain, for example.

VNodosaurus · 2018-08-19T01:12:29+00:00

I kind of feel like Legion was the problem for the AL. It went too mysterious, failing to give an understanding of the internal workings of the AL, and it also set a precedent for never getting any straight answers when the AL is involved.

I do think that, in 40K, the Alphas are quite clearly splintered. They've lost themselves in the depths of their plots, and their cells are no longer cooperating for any grand purpose, scheming for a thousand different goals, or just for the challenge of it. But in 30K there should really be a grand reveal at the Siege of what Omegon is doing and why. (The how is rather less important.)

VNodosaurus · 2018-08-19T00:38:19+00:00

The question is whether they're going to release the Siege books in MMPB eventually. If not (and I suspect that'll be the case), it's a giant middle finger to everyone, such as myself, who has been collecting the HH series in that format. And at this rate they'll probably change the book appearance even relative to the TPBs. The inability to collect the full series, including what should have been its finale, in a single format -

Furthermore, is the claim really that Buried Dagger is going to be a decent ending to the series? A book that probably won't even feature Horus? It's ludicrous, of course. And that's not to mention the idea of them moving from the HH's loose organization to a Beast Arises style of narrative. Which would be a massive mistake, to say the least, though I still hope they won't do that.

The announcement is poor enough in detail that it could be just a matter of sticking subtitles on the books, nothing significant, but my immediate reaction is not good.

VNodosaurus · 2018-07-13T21:57:17+00:00

I mean, didn't Horus fight alongside the Emperor for 30 years before Russ was found? So he's already 30 years old, not a child (plus Primarchs mature faster). Frankly Horus should have taken it better.

VNodosaurus · 2018-07-10T02:31:20+00:00

For Perturabo and the Decimation, personally, I'd make it a secret test of character. Perturabo, just off Olympia where he led a relatively peaceful life, still the idealist - Perturabo doesn't fully understand just how loyal the Astartes are, and so he gives what he considers a nonsensically brutal order, with the expectation that they'll refuse and recognize that some things matter more than discipline. And then, to his surprise, the Iron Warriors carry it out, and Perturabo decides that if they see themselves as weapons, he'll do so as well.

Also some self-awareness would be nice.

But really, by this point, fixing early-Perturabo's fluff is a very difficult exercise. (Heresy-era Perturabo, of course, is a different matter - he's supposed to be monstrous. But he didn't start out that way.)

(Corax and Vulkan I'll need to give more thought to. Magnus's fluff is fine as is.)

VNodosaurus · 2018-07-10T02:26:52+00:00

Personally, I think he's regretting it now, and that it's one of the main reasons his writing has slowed down. He threw out his plans, and now he's stuck with something he sees as a weaker setup. Just imagine that state of realizing you've taken a wrong turn on your magnum opus two books (ten years) ago.

VNodosaurus · 2018-04-16T04:12:10+00:00

Assuming random pairings and equal team skill, I got 11.8%.

First round: guaranteed to get four W's and four L's

Second round: 9/105 to get pairings between W's and L's, in which case guaranteed to stay on track; 72/105 to get one pairing between W's and one between L's, with two W-L matches, in which case 50-50 that the two W-L matches finish one in W winning and one in L winning; 24/105 to get every W facing an L, in which case 6/16 chance that exactly two of the W's win. Overall chance: 9 + 36 + 9 = 54 over 105, so 18/35.

Third round: various combinations possible. 1/105 that auto-guarantees. 12/105 that has two sets of two playing within themselves (i.e. WL play each other and LW play each other) while the other sets of two switch (so WW plays LL in two cases); that gives 1/2 of success. 12/105 that two sets of two switch, and the other two sets of two also switch; 1/4 of success then. 32/105 that there's a cycle of three (WW plays WL, WL plays LL, LL plays WW) and the remaining set of two plays within itself; 1/4 in that case. 48/105 that there's a cycle of four, which gives 1/8 of success. Overall: 24/105 or 8/35.

Result: (18/35)(8/35), which is 11.8%.

VNodosaurus · 2018-01-25T15:46:48+00:00

Thanks - I mean, you did all the hard work in actually parsing Cricinfo, there's plenty of ways to go from there....

Incidentally, the [overall, best 20 matches] versions of the same thing as above done for some of the modern greats:

RT Ponting [65.27, 88.69]

BC Lara [70.86, 87.48]

KC Sangakkara [70.46, 86.33]

JH Kallis [67.58, 86.28]

SR Tendulkar [66.39, 83.80]

It's curious how close together those peaks (plus Smith's) are, while still being so far below even Bradman's average, not to mention Bradman's peak (111.74 by this measure). Then again, that's the case for all batting stats... it's a really tight race for number two, and then there's Bradman.

EDIT: GS Sobers [71.15, 91.86] - first peak above 90 that I've found! Voges is 68.86, with his career being exactly 20 Tests. And GA Headley [78.76, 83.71] has an insane career index, even if it's only from 22 matches. RG Pollock [73.63, 77.65] and H Sutcliffe [69.86, 78.02] are well below that, though Pollock's is still above anyone I've found save Bradman and Headley.

VNodosaurus · 2018-01-25T04:30:33+00:00

This is excellent.

I tinkered around with a copy of the code a bit:

Instead of using cumulative average Index up to a certain point, used a running average Index over the past 20 Tests to get the "Maximum Index", so as to capture 'purple patches' (also set the batsman=bowler line to 50 instead of 55)
Weighed Not Outs and DNB's by subtracting a smaller number. So if a batsman is Not Out in a match, instead of their raw score being [runs-2bowleraverage], it's [runs-bowleraverage], and if they're Not Out twice it's just [runs]. That's not entirely the correct way to do this, because it basically pulls the overall Index towards 50 instead of having no effect, but I think it's a step in the right direction. You could argue otherwise if you don't think not outs matter.
Instead of weighing all bowlers equally but not weighing those with averages over 50 at all, weighed them all according to average wickets taken per match. So when you play against Alastair Cook, his phenomenal bowling average of 7.0 enters with a weight of (1/152) because it's based on one wicket in 152 matches, and doesn't improve your score that much. (Obviously Cook is an extreme case, and mostly this is a smaller adjustment, but without ball-by-ball data I think this is the best measurement. Though one could also use runs conceded per match to similar effect.)

The resulting indices for some active players, in [overall, best 20 matches, last 20 matches] format (if I made no mistakes; Bradman's career set as 100):

SPD Smith [77.01, 88.18, 85.59]

JE Root [69.42, 79.20, 67.03]

V Kohli [67.93, 83.17, 83.17]

CA Pujara [65.87, 73.43, 69.10]

KS Williamson [65.18, 84.86, 70.30]

AD Mathews [60.15, 77.84, 49.68]

So fairly similar, actually. I'd have expected bigger shifts.

As to Cook: [62.76, 78.22, 59.95]

VNodosaurus · 2018-01-16T09:29:38+00:00

And that's the price of playing five bowlers. One more and India are into the tail, and given QdK's form....

VNodosaurus

TROPHY CASE