40k Legends: Marneus Calgar

Hi All, Eldrad Vect here. I'm trying a new thing this year, I thought I'd test how well the rules of some of 40k's biggest names can match up to their legendary fluff, kind of like a Mythbuster-esque thing. I don't always have conversions, battle reports, projects or other stuff, so I thought this would be a fun thing to do. First up is the God of War himself, Marneus Augustus Calgar.

Calgar has done some insane things from breaching and slaying the Tyranid Hiveship Behemoth Primus to holding the gate against waves of Orks, but there are one thing that really stands out in the fluff as a full on act. This  act is from 'The Battle of the Sepulchre' where Calgar essentially Falcon Punched an Avatar of Khaine to pieces. This event is the one I'll be proving, can Marneus Calgar slay an Avatar.

First up, the Avatar. There will be six tests, three with a basic Avatar and three with my common Avatar setup (Disarming Strike and Fast Shot). The average of each test will be used so I'll be doing some hard math... not really, just some basic calculations, also all references to Wounds mean unsaved ones.

Test one, Calgar charges the Avatar (basic). If Calgar charges into an Avatar of Khaine expect to see some terrifying results, the average wound output of the Avatar who strikes first due to Initiative is 1.3 wounds which isn't enough to kill Calgar outright so Calgar gets to fight, his average damage output is 2.1 Wounds on an Avatar this solely came down to the fact that the Avatar's Invulnerable Save is a mere 5+, so prolonged combat would definitely see Calgar slaying the Avatar. Test two, locked in combat. Locked in combat is and interesting one were both of them have the same average of 1.2 wounds so it's going to be a fist fight to the end and a long one which can swing either way. Test three, Avatar's charge. 1.6 for Calgar and 1.7 for the Avatar, what I found interesting was that the Avatar loses purely because of the Invuln. Save being so bad.
Anyway on too the real stuff, my Avatar. Test four, Calgar charges. First of all the Avatar's Disarming Strike, which 'disarms' the opposing character, rending one of the disarmed characters Close Combat Weapons (i.e. Power Fist, Lightning Claw, Force Weapon, stuff like that and even unique gear too) completely useless. The test for Disarming Strike is simple, each player rolls a dice and adds it to the character's WS if the Eldar player wins or gets the same, he chooses a weapon to nullify, if the other player wins however it's effects are negated. Also the Eldar player gets a +1 to this roll, obviously the Avatar never fails to disarm Calgar (WS10 +1 with a roll of 1 still beats WS6 with a roll of 6), so Marneus has no more Gauntlets of Ultramar. Calgar inflicts 0.4 wounds, now this means on those really lucky occasions Calgar still hurts the Avatar, on his side, the Avatar still only averages 1.3 wounds, hey that matches the first one so at least he is consistent. Test 5, Locked is Combat. Avatar's results are identical to the last 'Locked in Combat' test with an average of 1.2 wounds, however Marneus has a abysmal average 0.1 wounds! he is not going to kill the Avatar like that. Test 6, Avatar Charges. Avatar stands up with a nice 1.8 average wound ratio, in 2 out of the 10 rolls the Avatar inflicted 3 wounds on Calgar too. Calgar got a 0.2, which to be honest should also apply to the last result too, but averages are averages and he just had better luck this time around.

Final Thoughts. In all honesty Marneus Calgar is quite capable of taking down an Avatar of Khaine, as long as he is wearing his Gauntlets of Ultramar and even still the fights against my Avatar aren't really fair, not because of the dirty Disarming Strike trick but because when this fluff first came up in the codex was before Disarming Strike was even invented. Either way, it's quite possible that Calgar can kill an Avatar, it still all comes down to the luck of the dice.