@conner_wolf: I just pointed out times they had. Blackmane, a space marine with one of the microsecond reaction feats to his name, was nearly speedblitzed by a Warboss, pre-current [post 2nd War] Thraka stomped Belial [Who, outside of maybe Azrael, is the best Dark Angel duelist, and so one of the best space marine duelist, period] into the ground and nearly tore him, quite literally, in two after a very brief fight.
Because Orks don't just get bigger. Their stats, across the board, increase. They get stronger, tougher, larger and faster.
And if you want more examples:
Chapter Master [Kantor], a Captain and part of a squad of Crimson Fist fighting a sub-Warboss
‘Let’s have you, wretch!’ he hissed, drawing a last howl of threat from the beast before it lunged straight at him with its blood-splashed power claw.
Despite the creature’s speed, the blow was telegraphed, the ork taking a fraction of a second to shift its weight forward into the lunge. It was enough. Kantor slid aside just as the claw slashed towards his abdominal plates. He struck at the extended arm with his power fist. Had he connected properly, he might well have sheared straight through the arm, but the ork was blisteringly fast. It did not leave its arm extended long after the blow, but recoiled it as quickly as a striking snake recoils its head.
Kantor’s fist passed through thin air, putting him ever so slightly off-balance for an instant. That was when the ork whipped its battered twin stubbers at him. There was no evading the blow. Instead, Kantor raised his left arm, couched his head against his inner forearm, and tried to absorb the impact.
The force was stunning, slamming into him and hurling him from his feet despite his best efforts to resist. He landed hard on his right side and slid six metres across the floor.
He cursed as he pushed himself up and tried to shake off a momentary dizziness.
He saw Sergeant Daecor, Brother Verna and Brother Bacar try to surround the beast, Daecor taunting it from the front while the other two each took a flank. It looked like it was working. The monster hurled itself at Daecor, its massive claw hammering into the marble flooring as the sergeant leapt backwards. Verna and Bacar moved the instant the blow missed their new squad leader. Verna thrust his combat blade into the workings of the left leg and yanked back hard, ripping cables from their housings and spraying himself with oil and hydraulic fluids. Bacar tried to lever his knife up underneath the monster’s armpit where mobility demanded there be a gap in its armour.
The monster’s remaining eye was its right one, and it saw Bacar move in its peripheral vision. In a flash, it spun on him, striking his helmeted head with the battered barrels of its twin stubbers. With Bacar momentarily stunned, hands thrown out to stop himself from toppling, the creature torqued the left side of its body and hacked him into three with a great diagonal slash of its power claw.
Bacar’s body, power armour and all, slid into three parts. His head and left arm flopped to the floor. Great gouts of blood geysered upwards from his open torso.
That was when brothers Lician and Anais tried to enter the fray.
‘No!’ bellowed Kantor. ‘Brother Anais, get back in the elevator. Lician, defend him with your life. We cannot lose him!’ The Chapter Master raced towards the beast that had just killed another of his beloved Crimson Fists.
How many more did he have to lose before Urzog Mag Kull would die?
Daecor had Mag Kull’s left flank now, but, as he lunged, the beast turned and clipped his breastplate with a savage backhand blow. The upwards angle of the blow sent the sergeant metres into the air. He crashed down on his back, bolter skittering away from him.
Verna, finding himself behind the beast, threw himself at the back of its piston-powered knees and tried to take it to the floor, but it was hopeless. Even in full Astartes plate, he weighed a fraction of what Mag Kull did.
He managed to confuse the creature for a second, allowing Kantor to launch himself into the air, power fisted right hand held high for a deadly downwards blow.
For a moment, the Chapter Master literally flew, all his prodigious power and strength, all his athletic ability, invested into the attack.
Mag Kull managed to kick Verna away, shattering the armour of the Crimson Fist’s left arm in the process and breaking the bone beneath. It turned in time to see Kantor’s attack, but not quickly enough to avoid it. Instead, it could only try to minimise the damage from the blistering overhand strike.
It rolled its massive metal shoulder in front of its face at the last instant. There was a massive crack, like sharp thunder, as Kantor’s fist struck the beast’s armoured plate, shearing straight through the metal and pulverising the dense bone and muscle beneath. The force of the impact launched the beast backwards and sent Kantor crashing to the ground.
The ork raged. The sparks from its malfunctioning legs ignited the oil leaking from its cables, and fire engulfed its lower body. But it was not finished with the Crimson Fists. Its right arm, the one bearing the useless heavy stubber, now hung from its shoulder by little more than a thin bundle of nerves and sinew. It slapped uselessly against the burning monster’s side as it struggled forwards in Kantor’s direction. Irritated, the beast raised its huge power claw across its body and, with one motion, snipped the useless arm away completely.
The severed arm fell to the ground with a clatter of metal.
Verna lay groaning, fighting to rally himself. Daecor, too, was struggling to get to his feet. Kantor rose, his whole body aching, damned if he was going to let the monster get the better of him. But the creature was unnaturally tough, tougher than any Astartes. It was not just the armour, it was the nature of the ork race. Pain hardly slowed them, fear rarely stopped them in their tracks, they were addicted to war, addicted to slaughter, and they would never stop coming.
On burning metal legs, the creature staggered towards him, gnashing the blades of its only remaining weapon, its deadly power claw, as if they were a second set of jaws.
Kantor loosed a burst of bolt rounds at it, aiming for the beast’s head, but the massive metal gorget of long tusk-like spikes protected the creature’s face. The bolts detonated on the armour without penetrating, though they certainly angered the beast.
Four metres away from him now, it raised its massive claw into the air, and he readied to try to block or slip the blow. His entire awareness was focussed on that gleaming razor-edged weapon, as if it were the only thing in the universe right now. So, at first, he did not understand what happened next. Though his eyes saw it all, he was not sure he could believe it.
A harsh voice barked out, ‘We are not finished, xenos!’
An armoured figure leapt up from behind, throwing itself on the creature’s back, gripping with only its blue, ceramite-plated legs. The figure’s left hand, its only hand, raised a small metal object.
The monster tried to turn to face its new attacker, but, no matter how it tried to twist and turn, the blue figure was always behind it, holding fast to its back by leg power alone.
The beast bellowed in frustration and, the moment its mouth was open as wide as it could surely go, the attacker leaned forward and placed the metal object deep inside the creature’s mouth.
On reflex, the ork swallowed, confused, not realising what had just happened.
It thrashed again and, finally, the blue figure released its grip and was flung backwards, crashing to the ground and skidding away.
The monster turned to pursue, but it only managed two steps. It was about to take a third then the krak grenade detonated inside it. Where its head had poked out of its armoured shell, a fountain of blood and shattered bone erupted. For a second, the armour stayed upright, apparently undamaged by the explosion in the creature’s body. Then, slowly, like a falling ebonwood tree, it tumbled forwards and smashed to the floor.
Kantor realised he was breathing hard and consciously tried to relax his body. He was still not entirely sure what had just happened. Then he heard dry laughter somewhere off to his right. A figure in battered Crimson Fist armour sat up, still chuckling, covered in blood, beaten almost beyond recognition.
Almost, but not quite.
‘Alessio,’ breathed Kantor, numb with relief. ‘Alessio.’
It was Cortez, though he was in a worse state of repair than Kantor could remember seeing him for at least a century.
‘You’re alive! By Dorn, you’re alive!’ - Rynn's World
Fighting the true Warboss:
Now that Snagrod had landed on the plate, he rose to his full height, and the gunship pulled up into the air, hovering there, drifting drunkenly from left to right as the pilots tried to keep it steady.
Kantor’s eyes were on the warlord. Snagrod wore no suit of power armour like other warlords did. His hulking, muscle-bound torso was bare of everything save deep scars and burns, crude stitches and rippling veins as thick as a man’s thumb. This lack of armour was the most overt sign of pure confidence and power Kantor had ever seen in an individual ork.
Kantor knew then that he had never faced a beast like this in mortal combat.
For weaponry, the monster wielded no power claw, but he gripped a single massive heavy-stubber in the fingers of its right hand, box-fed with a cruelly serrated bayonet slung underneath the barrel. There were close combat weapons slung on the creature’s back, too, but Kantor didn’t have a good view of them.
The two enemies glared at each other, frozen for a moment, each silently assessing his foe. From around Snagrod’s thick waist, a collection of Space Marine helmets hung, swinging on short iron chains that rattled from a squiggoth-skin belt. There were four helmets, each coloured differently, each taken from a battle-brother belonging to a different Chapter. One was decorated with the gold laurels of a veteran sergeant.
Inside his armour, Kantor flexed his muscles and felt blood rushing through them, blood and adrenaline. The latter would make him faster, inure him to pain, help him fight fatigue and make his opponent’s movements seem slower than they really were. But how fast could this monster move? Unhindered by tonnes of iron plate, like that worn by Urzog Mag Kull, Snagrod was a different prospect altogether.
The moment broke suddenly, like glass, and it began.
Snagrod raised the barrel of his gun straight at Kantor and pulled hard on the trigger. Kantor raised Dorn’s Arrow and opened fire a fraction of a second later. Shells hammered through the air in both directions… and struck their targets.
Kantor had flicked on the shield of his Iron Halo again, just in time. The ork rounds danced on the energy field, sparking and ricocheting while he fired back.
The bolts from Dorn’s Arrow struck true, but Snagrod suffered no damage at all. He, too, seemed to be shielded by some kind of power-field. It was another reason he didn’t need a hulking mass of metal plate. The storm bolts exploded harmlessly, sending ripples of strange green energy out over the warlord’s body.
They stood there, unleashing the full fury of their weapons at each other, both roaring in hate at rage as they did so. Then, almost simultaneously, their ranged weapons ran dry.
Kantor deactivated the halo’s energy field. His armour’s power levels had dropped dangerously low. They climbed again now, but never quite reached optimum. He knew he couldn’t rely on the halo again. If he came too close to overloading his armour’s generator, his systems would lock out to prevent an atomic explosion.
Ammo spent, Snagrod threw his heavy-stubber aside in disgust and charged.
Damn, but he was fast!
His impossibly muscular legs halved the distance to Kantor in scant seconds.
Kantor loosed a battle cry and raced forwards to meet him, drawing his sword left-handed from the scabbard at his lower back and activating the power fist on his right.
Snagrod drew the close combat weapons from the slings on his broad back as he ran, two huge chainaxes decorated with roughly painted black and white checks. They growled into motion, teeth blurring.
The two enemies clashed hard, right in the middle of the Nolfeas Plate. Kantor slipped a blistering blow and struck at Snagrod’s belly with his blade. Green sparks flew. The monster’s energy shield was still in play. Where did it get its power? It had to come from somewhere, but Kantor’s eyes couldn’t find any sign of a device. It had to be somewhere on Snagrod’s body, but there was no time to search in earnest for it. Another whistling swipe almost took the Chapter Master’s head off. The blade of the left chainaxe missed him by a hair’s breadth.
Kantor tried to stay in close. His reach was far shorter than the ork’s. It wouldn’t help him to pull back. If he stayed here, he stayed within his own striking range, but what good would that do him when the monster was still shielded?
Another swing of the warlord’s axes gave Kantor a brief opening, and his power fist flashed forward, a devastating hook that would have killed just about any living thing. The fist’s power-field snapped like lightning, and Snagrod’s personal shield flashed bright, but the force of the blow was spent on the shield, and the warlord barely even stumbled back a step.
Kantor’s adrenaline surged even higher. He felt like a child battling this thing, powerless to hurt it.
Snagrod kicked out while Kantor was focussed on the swings of the monster’s deadly blades. The kick caught him square in the stomach and launched him ten metres backwards, skidding along the surface of the landing plate.
Kantor grunted. Even through his ceramite plate, the blow had winded him.
Snagrod charged straight in while the Chapter Master was still on his back. The beast lifted both chainaxes at once and put all its formidable might into a vertical killing stroke.
Kantor rolled left, every fibre of his body committed to the motion, and the axes bit deep into the plate, lodging there hard. The motors that drove the weapons’ wicked teeth whined in complaint.
Snagrod roared and yanked at them, while Kantor leapt to his feet and slipped around to the monster’s side. There, at the warlord’s back, attached to the squiggoth-skin belt, was a curious-looking module.
The shield must come from there, thought Kantor.
In the split second before Snagrod pulled his axes free, Kantor’s sword stabbed towards the module, his movement deliberately slowed. Most shields resisted objects travelling at high speeds, but allowed slower intrusions. This was no different. The tip of Kantor’s blade pierced the energy field and skewered the module.
There was a snap of ionised air and the green shield flickered off.
Snagrod felt it immediately. With a roar of rage, he swung and batted Kantor aside with the butt of his right axe.
The blow sent Kantor skidding along the plate once more, his right pauldron almost entirely shattered, chunks of ceramite spinning away from him.
But he had achieved more than he’d hoped. The warlord was vulnerable now, and all Kantor’s fury and lust for vengeance bubbled up, spilling over his self-control like a torrent of boiling lava.
He was on his feet instantly, ignoring all his pain. His conscious mind retreated, giving way to raw, untempered aggression. With a battle cry that rang out across the landing plate, he launched himself at the ork warboss one last time. There was no holding back. His killer instinct took over everything. He would rip the beast apart or die.
Snagrod loosed a roar of his own and stormed forwards to meet him, axes high. The warlord had been undefeated in battle for a thousand years, slaying every last challenger to his rule. No mere human would change that.
They slammed against each other like crashing trucks, ceramite armour against flesh tougher and thicker than old leather. The axes whistled through the air, motors growling greedily again, hungry for meat to rip apart. Snagrod tried to cut Kantor in half with a scissor-like double backhand, but he cut only empty space.
Kantor slipped under in a blur and, at last, had the warlord right where he wanted him. His sword thrust deep into the monster’s side and twisted. Snagrod howled in pain and anger, and tried to knock Kantor away, but the pain robbed the blow of speed and Kantor evaded it, staying inside the creature’s guard. He yanked out his blade. Hot blood poured onto the landing plate. Snagrod swiped again and staggered back, his right leg drenched in slick crimson.
Kantor followed the ork’s movements, pressing his attack. He launched a savage overhand blow with his power fist, aimed straight at the warlord’s head, but the beast rolled with the blow, catching it on his huge shoulder.
The thick deltoid muscle exploded in a grisly spray, revealing the bone and sinew beneath. The impact staggered Snagrod, dropping him to one knee. Kantor leapt at him, kicking him down onto his back and straddling the beast’s huge chest. He raised the power fist again for a killing blow, but Snagrod caught it, fingers wrapping iron tight around the wrist.
Kantor’s reaction was immediate. He brought his left hand up, still gripping his sword, and stabbed down at the monster’s throat.
Snagrod’s left shoulder was almost obliterated, almost useless, but not quite.
Through the pain, the ork managed to bring his ruined arm up just in time. He caught the blade of Kantor’s sword in his right hand, the edge biting deep into his fingers. With a roar of pain, the warlord wrenched the blade from Kantor’s grip. It skittered away across the ground.
Kantor snarled and launched a barrage of punches with his gauntleted left hand instead. There was no deadly power-field over that hand, just hard knuckles encased in armour. It was enough. The fury of his blows was terrible. He rained punch after savage punch on the warlord’s face, smashing the beast’s tusks, tearing deep red gouges in its cheeks and brow, blinding one of its eyes and breaking its massive jaw.
Snagrod scrambled to defend himself, but, from his back, one arm greatly diminished in strength, the other locked in a death grip around the Chapter Master’s power fist, he could do little to resist Kantor’s unrelenting fury.
‘You destroyed our home!’ Kantor yelled as he tore the warlord’s face apart. ‘You killed my brothers. Now you pay!’
The words were wasted on the warlord’s tattered ears, but the meaning was not. Death was close, closer than it had ever come to the greenskin leader before.
With an infuriated roar, Snagrod bridged, thrusting his torso up from the ground with the full power of his thick legs. Kantor was flung off and scrambled back to his feet to continue the attack. Snagrod didn’t wait for that. He rose and ran, his huge feet pounding the plate, straight towards the place where the gunship still hovered. Kantor gave chase, but there was a sudden stutter of autocannon and he had to leap back to avoid being torn apart by the shells.
Snagrod kept running, blood pouring from his wounds in red rivers, splashing a great wet trail onto the landing plate as he went. The gunship dipped towards the edge of the plate just as Snagrod arrived there, and the warlord leapt into the open bay-door in the side of the craft, causing the whole gunship to swing unsteadily for a moment.
Kantor roared in frustration as he watched the ship drift away from the edge on tongues of blue fire. The warlord was going to escape!
-Rynn's World
Ork Warbosses being as fast as elite Space Marines is fairly common for any Ork Warboss worth the name. But they do vary, like everything, and smaller Warbosses of smaller WAAAGHs [usually in IG novels] can be brought down by normal humans and aren't faster then a normal Space Marine [The one Cain defeated not withstanding as Cain has also dueled, and defeated Chaos Space Marines, Dark Eldar, Broodlords....]
Depends on the Warbosses. They range from being able to be beaten by humans to speed-blitzing Space Marines to being more then capable of throwing down with Primarchs.
If they are the first, the Custodes win handily.
If the second, the Warbosses win.
If the third, the Warbosses stomp so badly the Emperor would clench his sphincter if he still had one.
^ As I said in my first post:
Then Metal, the OP, replied with:
It's the second one lol, no primarch level bosses in this scenario. Basically they're somewhat successful bosses that have a planet or two but aren't as successful as the bigger and badder ones. The Adrastus caliver goes without saying, but would the Guardian Spears' projectiles be effective against cybork armor of good quality? I'm wanting to say no personally.
He clearly intended this to be the bigger, stronger Warbosses that are the ones who deserve the name like the ones I mentioned before, not the tiny ones fighting over a single planet that IG face, but the true Warbosses that require heavy armor [such as the one in gunheads where it took a leman russ battle cannon round to the chest and still had the energy to kill the IG general before it was finally killed by the General's retinue of stormtroopers] but not the primarch level ones like Ullanor and the Beast's Prime Orks.
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