The primarch of the first legion has awoken from his slumber and returned to our tabletops. His rules are the latest Warhammer Community reveal. Let’s take a look at what he offers.

His stat line is very comparable to Guilliman’s, which makes sense as he could be argued as the ‘vanilla’ primarch. However there are some improvements including number of attacks and, most surprisingly, an additional leadership point.

The Lion does not come across as being especially tough either. With only toughness 6 and 9 wounds it would not take much for heavy weaponry to remove him from the field. There is currently no mention of a resurrection rule for him either so once he’s gone that’s it! He does have a couple of tricks up his sleeves though…

As with most Space Marine characters the Lion comes with a 4+ invulnerable save in the form of his shield. Whilst this is pretty solid it wouldn’t take many unsaved shots from heavy damage weapons (or a certain faction that can ignore invulnerable saves…) to put him back into his slumber.

This also has the ability to reflect melee attacks, dealing mortal wounds (to a maximum of 3) on any unmodified save rolls of 6. So coupled with his sword, Fealty, he is a definite melee threat.

The sweep profile will give him a total of 20 attacks into a single unit so, at strength 6 and AP of -3, that is most standard units sliced up in quick succession even without the 2 damage each wound causes. Then there is also a strike profile that gives him strength 10 attacks at AP -5 and 4 damage apiece. With a potential 40 damage output (averaging about 5.5 successful wounds, or 20- 22 damage, against most targets up to toughness 9 before saving throws) he has the potential to deal with most large foes.

The most interesting reveal is his ability to deep strike using the Forestwalk ability.This is a particularly good deep strike as it allows you to re-roll a charge roll. As the Lion appears to be fairly fragile against shooting this would be a game-changing roll.

As is the current issue with the existing edition, I see the Lion being another high value model that will either be snuffed out before he finishes his morning coffee or an absolute machine that will decimate an army as he moves from engagement to engagement. We have, however, not been shown his entire ruleset yet and there is no mention of a firearm. There is definitely one on the model and I doubt somehow that it will just be a heavy bolt pistol.

What are your thoughts on the Lion? Are his rules even worth looking at with the imminent re-write coming with 10th edition? Let me know!