Hardest Character

[YorkNecromancer]

Simple enough: who is the hardest character in all of 40K?

Now, the rules should guide your decision, but so should the fluff; we're not talking 'two characters face off in a white room''. We're talking 'two generals face off with opposing armies, stratagems, etc, and fight to the death'.

Taking both fluff and crunch as a whole: who is the hardest?

My gut says Calgar, because as the 'Marine of all Marines', he pretty much should be, but he just never comes across in the fluff as ruthless enough to me. He'd worry about the civilians instead of putting a bullet in the bad guy.

Abaddon talks a good game, and is a beast on the table, but as we all know: he just can't back it up. Twelve Black Crusades later and he there kind of reaches a point where you have to figure that while the lunatic army with the scavenged weapons and mostly broken technology is part of the reason, there's probably another, more significant one, and it wears a top knot.

Draigo is too Mary Sue to be credible as a hard man for me. Same for Ghazghkull; he's not as bad as Draigo, but only because he's so charmingly violent. Yarrick's not a bad call, but he's not Tough enough (in game terms). The Swarmlord's a credible champ, but Tyranids always lose in the fluff, which makes him hard to place in front.

So in sheer, bloody-minded, gets-the-job-done, hammer-to-kill-a-flea, 'I gave you magic in there' Charles Bronson hard mannery, I think I'm going to go for an outside bet and choose Chaplain Lemartes, because he's already a monomaniacal lunatic to begin with, but then he hulks out and enters BEAST MODE and becomes something else entirely. Maybe not the best general, sure, but definitely the man most likely to beat you to death with your own spine.

What do other people think?

[CoffeeGrunt]

Asdrubael Vect. I can't imagine anyone out-scheming him if the chips are down and a real fight for his life is on the line.

Failing that, Yarrick. Any of the above would shatter the Old Man's body, but you'd never crush his will, and you'd be dealing with a helluva lot of furious Steel Legion firepower if you did bring him low.

[daboarder]

Abaddon, Seriously dude's still got a space marine legion

Dante, Calgar him self acknowledged Dante's superiority in war, thats no small thing

Ans probably the Swarmlord, I mean sure, it gets killed every now and then, but it gets better (Though I really miss Swarmlord being able to go toe-to-toe with the 30k primarchs, GOD he was a beast with lashwhip guard and forcing re-roll of invuls)

[DWest]

No love for Kharn? Crunch-wise, he's a monster when he hits melee, especially since he's 100+ points cheaper than the big names. As for the lore, here's a man who destroyed his own sanity out of loyalty, then set about destroying everything else simply because it exists. Yes, he's no strategic genius, and he doesn't have anything resembling a proper army backing him up (in fact, the cohesion of his own forces was one of the first things he destroyed), but nothing short of complete disintegration is going to stop him from closing in and ripping his enemies apart, barehanded if need be.

[Cactus]

Eldrad Ulthran. He's sneaky, smart, and knows all of the future magic.

He foresaw the future and helped develop an Ork to kill millions of Imperials- just to save a couple thousand Eldar.

[CoffeeGrunt]

Eldrad Ulthran. He's sneaky, smart, and knows all of the future magic.

He foresaw the future and helped develop an Ork to kill millions of Imperials- just to save a couple thousand Eldar.

Then he died.

[40kGamer]

Then he died.

...and thanks to the magic of retconning he came back.

[Cactus]

Then he died.

Then there were magic crystals. Then 6th edition.

[ShadowcatX]

Two generals face off? I'll take Eldrad Ulthran any day. Beyond what was mentioned earlier, he was a good enough seer 10,000 years ago to be able to warn the emperor about Horus. Add 10,000 years experience to that, and I doubt any couple hundred year old marine is going to even come close to matching him.

Vect gets an honorable mention for possibly being the only living being older than Eldrad outside of warp thingies.

[Tyrendian]

Eldar have the slight problem of being... well... Eldar, and thus by definition disallowed from ever winning any major war because that would go against the whole "dying race" theme - heck even in their own Black Library novels...

As for a winner, kinda surprised noone has mentioned the Necrons yet - if there's anyone besides Nids who's gonna rule that galaxy it's them in my opinion, and they have some pretty decent leaders... with Trazyn being my favourite - heck the guy seems to have his own primarch for a wall decoration for cryin out loud...