3/17/23 Lord Solar Macharius

So I am a freaking idiot. For some reason I thought the Lord Solar Macharius model was a 30k era character. I never read any books with him and always saw him for sale with other Horus Heresy models when he did pop up. Timeline he is dead, but he very much was a 40k Lord Solar. In fact, arguably the best commander the Imperium has ever had until the return of Roboute Guiliman!

In classic tale he claimed just shy of 1000 worlds back into the Imperium before his untimely death. I have not had time to read his novels yet (or the literal hundreds of other ones out there), so if I got the name of his unique Wargear wrong please let me know. The only source I found was an old DakkaDakka post with some interesting but unrealistic rule propositions. I did find an old datasheet for him, but true to the time it just lists his weapons as Mastercraft.

The goal after reading up on his synopsis from several sources was to make him the ultimate Lord Solar strategist, and keep Leontus as the ultimate Lord Solar combatant (Ultimate being in terms of mortal Guardsmen. Leontus is basically fully machine now with just a touch of mortal flesh left after his many horrific injuries, letting him get a good step above your typical mortal human). Leontus hits on 2+ while Macharius hits on 3+. The permanent injuries Macharius suffered caused his old datasheet to have randomized stats, which inspired me to have his WS and BS 3+ stat differentiating their roles.

He brings a nasty Bolt Pistol called The Emperor’s Sidearm. As primarily a commanding figure and not as much of a front line combatant like Lord Solar Leontus, his offense is more conservative. It still packs a nasty S5 AP3+ punch due to its Godslayer Bolts it fires (per the DakkaDakka post. I have no reason to suspect this is wrong).

His sword, Doomherald, is a potent Power Sword in its own right with S+2 and AP2+. With his solid A4, he has some nasty punch to keep the enemy back if his forces get overwhelmed.

His Armour of the Warmasters is a Carapace suit per the old Datasheet. Per the lore, it is built from broken pieces of the God Emperor’s suit by Roboute Guiliman for Lord Solars to wear for millennium to come, and is said to grant a high resistance to Psychic Energy directed at the wearer. I gave it a 4+ Invulnerability Save and the model cannot be targeted by Spells. Wounds could still bleed over from a squad he is joined to, but it does make him difficult to assassinate by sniper spells or handicap spells.

His Command Stave is a large version of a Command Rod some models carry (yes, he has one of those as well on his model, I just combined the 2 effects into one Wargear). This increases his Order range from 12″ to 18″ and treats Macharius as having a Vox Caster at all times! He does not have quite the range as Ursarkar Creed, but he is his own radio bearer. While he does not have Infantry Orders 4 like Ursarkar either, he does have Infantry Orders 3 and Tank Orders 2! In comparison Leontus has Infantry Orders 2 and Tank Orders 1.

His Crimson Cloak sounds like an easy rallying piece of wargear, so I granted it similar attributes to a Standard for a Command Squad. The only difference is the Auras are tied together for A+1 and reroll failed Ld Tests, so it cannot be spread out quite as easily. It is a 12″ True Aura which makes it significantly more powerful!

The Helm of Macharius allows him to give another 12″ True Aura. This one allows friendly units to use his Ld stat and Stubborn rule. Combined with his cloak, he has a very stable army base!

In addition to the now established Lord Solar Aura that grants reroll 1s To Hit and To Wound, he has a lot more lore to work with than Leontus. Ferocious Strategist allows a target Slot (not unit, but not also all of one Category) to not be Pinned when deploying via Deepstrike. This is nominated during deployment, but can apply to a whole Stormtrooper Platoon! This is a significant chunk of his 464 points, but based on his lore of pushing his men to do the near impossible with aggressive tactics it seemed like a good fit.

If there are any further things you think I should know about this character in lore (or other edition datasheets), please let me know! As always, happy wargaming! We are working hard on getting this other codexes published. We want to make sure they are not broken internally with combinations that are not intentional.

The old datasheet is referenced below for those interested. It is from 2006 and was considered “Legends” back then before the term was used in later editions.