Ranked at peak, forms listedwar in heaven · heresy · m41–m42
Power,WithdrawnThe Warhammer 40,000 power ranking
This franchise printed a statistic called Power Level, on every unit, for two editions. It was never a measure of power — the rulebook called it a rough approximation of battlefield effectiveness, which is to say a budget for army lists — and in tenth edition it was withdrawn entirely. No other franchise on this site has admitted the problem in writing. Every entry here is ranked on what a source shows it doing, and the tabletop is treated as what it is: a game about balance, not a record of what happened.
The short answer
The Emperor of Mankind, ranked at the only state worth ranking him in — before the Siege, before the Throne. He made the Primarchs, he holds the Astronomican open across the galaxy, and he beat Horus at the height of everything four gods could put into him. The setting's cruelty is that this is a past tense: he has been a corpse maintained by machinery for ten thousand years, and the Imperium has been arguing about what he was ever since.
Continuity
Medium
Rank 24 and below carry a name, its tags and its sources, and no paragraph. Not a lower standard of evidence — every one of them still cites — but a different amount of prose, kept where the disagreement is.
EvidenceCrowdΔ
Tier 00 · not on the scale
They do not attend
The four are unkillable in the way weather is unkillable, and they have never once turned up in person. Everything they do in realspace is done by something smaller, wearing their mark.
The largest of the four by most accounts, and the one with the least to show for it, because he does not attend. Khorne is fed by violence wherever it happens and grows on it regardless of who wins, which makes him unusually hard to fight: victory over his followers is an offering. Off the scale because a thing that has never taken the field cannot be ranked against things that have.
statedCodex: Chaos Space Marines (8th ed., RU)
Sustained by bloodshed and battle regardless of which side commits it.
Schemes as a metabolism. The convention is that any plan against Tzeentch is a plan he wrote, which is unfalsifiable and is exactly why he is not ranked — an entity that cannot lose by definition is a narrative device rather than a combatant. The one concrete thing on his record is the Rubric, and he had a mortal cast it.
shownA Thousand Sons (RU ed.) · ch. 22
The Thousand Sons' fate is bound to his patronage. — 2010
statedAhriman: Exile (RU ed.) · ch. II
The Rubric, cast to save the Legion from the flesh-change, is what fixed most of it as dust in empty armour. — 2013
Despair and disease, and the one the books write with something close to affection. What he does at scale is depopulate: a Nurgle incursion is counted in worlds rather than casualties, and the Plague Wars cost the newly-restored Imperium more than any battle in the same period.
shownDark Imperium · 2017
The Plague Wars are fought against Mortarion's Death Guard as his instrument in realspace.
most of the Aeldari speciesthe Fall — a civilisation, in the moment of its birthCodex: Craftworlds
The only one of the four with a birthday, and the birth is the largest single act of destruction anywhere on this page. Slaanesh came into being out of Aeldari excess and the arrival killed most of a galaxy-spanning civilisation in a moment, tore the Eye of Terror open where their empire had been, and left the survivors running from a god that owns their souls by default. It is off the scale for the same reason as the others — it has never once taken the field in realspace — and it is the strongest argument that the scale is the wrong tool.
statedCodex: Eldar Craftworlds (7th ed., RU) · «ЭЛЬДАР ИСКУССТВЕННЫХ МИРОВ», and the «РОК ЭЛЬДАР» timeline at M31
The race's own filth and lust merged in the Empyrean into one consciousness; when it woke, a psychic explosion killed a million-year-old civilisation in a single heartbeat and left the warp rift called the Eye of Terror where its heart had been.
Tier 01 · apex
Unanswerable
Each of these was stopped, and in every case it took something the galaxy only had once. Nothing here was beaten by a plan that could be repeated.
He made twenty demigods to specification, held a psychic beacon open across a galaxy so ships could navigate at all, and beat Horus at the moment Horus had everything four gods could give him. The Throne is the asterisk and not the rank: for ten thousand years he has been a dying body maintained by machinery, and the Imperium's entire theology is an argument about what the man on it used to be able to do.
shownThe Master of Mankind (RU ed.) · ch. 2, and the cost in ch. 19 and ch. 24
He cannot rise from the Golden Throne without the paths between the Imperial Dungeon and the webway collapsing, and the Throne is fed with the lives of a thousand psykers to hold them open. — 2016
statedHorus Rising (RU ed.) · preamble
Established as the creator of the Primarchs and the architect of the Great Crusade. — 2006
statedA Thousand Sons (RU ed.) · ch. 22
Made the primarchs with technology recovered during the long wars and the help of geneticists defecting from the Martian Hegemony, as generals for the army he intended to raise. — 2010
All four powers backed him at once, and briefly he was the strongest thing in the galaxy on that basis. He was not the first — Be'lakor, far below him here, holds that — but he is the one they chose after giving up on a champion they could not steer, and the difference between the two entries is what the gods learned in between. He killed Sanguinius, broke through the Emperor's guard aboard the Vengeful Spirit, and left the Emperor in the state the Imperium has been managing ever since. Second because it did not hold: the same duel ended with his soul annihilated rather than merely his body.
shownFalse Gods (RU ed.) · ch. 17
Turned on Davin in the temple of the Serpent Lodge, and given power by the gods of the warp. — 2006
shownThe End and the Death: Volume II · 2023
Kills Sanguinius aboard the Vengeful Spirit and mortally wounds the Emperor.
shownThe End and the Death: Volume III · 2024
Destroyed utterly by the Emperor, soul included, so that nothing can return.
The Nightbringer wholebefore biotransference and the shattering
A shardthe only state anything in M41 has actually met
War in HeavenM41–M42novelgamecontested
KillsNo confirmed kills.
A star-eater that fed on the life of living things across the galaxy, and whose lasting achievement is psychological: the setting holds that the fear of death present in nearly every species was imprinted by it. What keeps it at three rather than one is the ending. The Necrons shattered every C'tan into shards, and every appearance since has been a fragment on a leash.
statedCodex: Necrons (8th ed., RU)
A C'tan said to have imprinted the fear of death across the galaxy's species.
statedCodex: Necrons (8th ed., RU)
The C'tan were shattered into shards by the Necrons and bound.
The one whose feats are entirely other people's nerves. The setting strongly implies a C'tan is imprisoned beneath Mars and that the Mechanicum has been worshipping it without quite knowing, which would make the Imperium's entire technological base a religion built over a sleeping predator. Contested and ranked here on that implication, which is thinner evidence than anything above it.
statedMechanicum (RU ed.) · 3.03
The Emperor's imprisonment of the Dragon beneath Mars, and the Mechanicum's unknowing worship of it. — 2008
statedCodex: Necrons (8th ed., RU)
Not named among the C'tan the codex lists, which allows there may be four of them or four thousand; it records only that some sources claim a star god sleeps beneath the canyons of the Red Planet.
Tier 02 · the greats
Primarchs, and worse
Demigods built to order, and the things that took some of them apart. The gap between this tier and the one above it is that these were designed and those were not.
Sanguinius at Signus Primeagainst Ka'Bandha, and standing at the end of it
Sanguinius at the Eternity Gatethe state the rank is argued from — holding, and knowing the outcome
Heresynovelgamecontested
KillsNo confirmed kills.
He is the reason the Emperor got there at all. Horus at second on this page is Horus at the height the pantheon built him to, and Sanguinius is the only being who stood in front of that and made it cost time — long enough for his father to reach the throne room, which is why the Heresy ends the way it does instead of the other way. He lost, and the losing is the feat. Before Terra he had already fought a Greater Daemon of Khorne in single combat on Signus Prime and put a sword through its chest, which is the closest anyone here comes to a controlled experiment: the same primarch, against a lesser opponent, wins.
shownFear to Tread · ch. 18
Fights the Greater Daemon Ka'Bandha in single combat on Signus Prime and drives his sword into the daemon's chest. — 2012
shownThe End and the Death: Volume II · 7:xliii
Faces Horus aboard the Vengeful Spirit during the Siege of Terra and is killed there. — 2023
The one point every version of the duel agrees on: the Emperor could never have beaten Horus had Sanguinius's blade not broken a breach in the Warmaster's armour first.
Daemon Primarchafter Prospero, in Tzeentch's service
HeresyM41–M42novelgame
KillsNo confirmed kills.
The strongest psyker the Imperium ever fielded, and the one who proved it by accident. Warning his father cost the Emperor the webway project, let what was in the warp into Terra, and is the direct reason the Golden Throne became a life-support machine. Everything the Emperor is now traces to one message Magnus was told not to send.
shownA Thousand Sons (RU ed.) · ch. 25
Breaches the Emperor's webway defences delivering a warning, wrecking the project. — 2010
statedThe Master of Mankind (RU ed.) · Prologue and ch. 24
The webway breach is what commits the Emperor permanently to the Throne. — 2016
He broke Magnus the Red's back across his knee on Prospero, and he is ranked below him anyway. That is deliberate and it is what this column measures: Magnus sits where he sits for what his warning cost the Imperium, not for the duel he lost, and a page that ranked on fights alone would have to put the winner of that fight above the man whose one mistake is the reason the Emperor is on a life-support machine. And the duel is narrower than the summary: Russ blinded him and broke the back, then Magnus used sorcery to leave before the killing blow landed. The weapon the Emperor pointed at his own sons worked, and did not finish.
shownA Thousand Sons · ch. 20
Russ blinds Magnus and breaks his back over his knee at the Burning of Prospero; Magnus escapes by sorcery before the final blow. — 2010
statedIndex Astartes II
Named among the greatest of the primarchs in single combat, alongside Angron and Vulkan.
He traded his entire species' bodies to the C'tan for immortality, got what he asked for, and then understood what he had done — and the second act is why he ranks here. Having handed the C'tan a galaxy, he shattered them, which makes him the only entity on this page to have beaten something in the tier above it and then walked away from the throne rather than keep it.
statedCodex: Necrons (8th ed., RU)
Led the revolt that broke the C'tan into shards. The Triarchy he headed assented to biotransference rather than ordering it, and the codex credits Szeras with organising the work.
Angronprimarch of the World Eaters, with the Nails already killing him
Daemon Primarch of Khornethe state he was elevated into on Nuceria
HeresyM41–M42novelgame
KillsNo confirmed kills.
A primarch operated by a torture device nailed into his skull. What makes him rank rather than merely appear is that the Nails cost him almost everything a primarch is for — strategy, patience, the ability to stop — and he is still one of the most dangerous things in the galaxy with only the last of those left.
shownBetrayer · 2013
The Butcher's Nails are destroying him, and his elevation on Nuceria is what stops it.
Ferrus Manusat Isstvan V — the first primarch to be killed by anotherFulgrim 2007
The primarch who killed another primarch and did not get to enjoy it. He took Ferrus Manus's head at Isstvan V, the first time one primarch killed another, and the novels are explicit that the thing holding the sword was no longer entirely him.
shownFulgrim (RU ed.) · ch. 24
Beheads Ferrus Manus at Isstvan V while under the blade's influence. — 2007
He spent his mortal life resenting anything he could not out-endure, and ended up the property of the one god who makes endurance the whole point. In the present he runs the Plague Wars against Guilliman's Imperium, which is the largest sustained offensive any of the returned primarchs has had to answer.
shownDark Imperium · 2017
Leads the Death Guard against Ultramar in the Plague Wars.
Lord Commander of the Imperiumreturned in M42, in the Armour of Fate
HeresyM41–M42novelgame
KillsNo confirmed kills.
Ranked for what he holds together rather than what he kills. Mortally wounded by Fulgrim and kept in stasis for ten thousand years, he came back to an Imperium that had turned his father into a god and had to decide what to do about it. The distinction the books keep making is that he is the only primarch whose most dangerous act was a reorganisation.
shownDark Imperium · 2017
Returned from stasis to command the Imperium and prosecute the Plague Wars.
shownKnow No Fear · 2012
Holds Ultramar together through the Word Bearers' surprise attack at Calth.
The returned LionM42, out of the Rock and back into a galaxy split in two
HeresyM41–M42novelcontested
KillsNo confirmed kills.
Missing for ten thousand years and returned into a setting that had built an entire chapter's secret around his absence. Contested because the return is recent and most of what supports his placement is Heresy-era: he was one of the most capable primarchs then, and the present has not yet had time to test the claim.
statedThe Lion: Son of the Forest · 2023
Returns in M42 after ten thousand years unaccounted for.
A Lord of Change with one head that sees everything that has happened and one that sees everything that will, and enough damage between them that neither can be trusted. It is the highest-ranked greater daemon here because prophecy in this setting is a weapon rather than a genre convention, and it is the one entity holding both ends of it.
Tzeentch's vizier and oracle, seated at his right hand with eighty-one Lords of Change transcribing every word he says. His right head sees all possible futures and his left everything past; the present is hidden from him, which is where he is vulnerable.
He got there first and it did him no good. Be'lakor is the first mortal all four powers blessed at once — the distinction the entry at second is usually given — and the first Daemon Prince there was. What happened after is the entry: the gods decided he could not be controlled, stopped investing in him and put their will into other mortals instead, so his power was greatly diminished without anyone having beaten him. He remains the strongest of the Daemon Princes and he is still working, which makes him the longest continuously active thing here that is not a god. He is not placed higher because being abandoned is not the same as being tested, and almost nothing he has done since was done anywhere it could be seen.
statedCodex: Chaos Daemons · p. 71
The first mortal blessed by all four Ruinous Powers, and the first Daemon Prince. — 2017
statedCodex: Chaos Daemons · p. 71
The gods gave up on controlling him and invested their will in other mortals; he remained the strongest Daemon Prince but his power was greatly diminished. — 2017
statedWar Zone: Charadon Act II — The Book of Fire · pp. 14–18
Still acting in the present, moving behind the Charadon campaign to seize a domain of his own. — 2021
Tier 03 · everyone else you'd name
Killable
The names on the boxes. Each has done something the Imperium wrote down, and each can be shot.
Twelve Black Crusades that the Imperium wrote up as failures, and then a thirteenth that broke Cadia and tore the galaxy in half along the Great Rift. The reading the setting now invites is that the first twelve were not failures at all but preparation, which is the rare case of a villain's record being revised upward by events.
statedCodex: Chaos Space Marines (8th ed., RU)
Leads the 13th Black Crusade, destroying Cadia and opening the Great Rift.
Two wars for Armageddon, one of them fought to a standstill against the full weight of the Imperium, and a stated willingness to leave rather than finish because the fighting was the point. He is the only entry here whose strategic goal is more war, which makes every victory over him a partial one.
statedCodex: Orks (10th ed., RU) · «ГАЗГКУЛЛ»
Led the first invasion of Armageddon, and returned fifty-seven years later at the head of a still greater Waaagh!
The most accomplished farseer the craftworlds have, and the record is a list of warnings nobody acted on. Ranked on the one that landed: he read the Heresy coming and went to Fulgrim with it, who was already lost to Slaanesh and beyond persuading — and the forty years since have treated that as the founding example of Aeldari foresight being useless in human hands.
statedCodex: Eldar Craftworlds (7th ed., RU) · «ВЕРХОВНЫЙ ЯСНОВИДЕЦ УЛЬТВЕ»
High farseer of Ulthwé and past ten thousand years old. The codex records one warning carried to the Imperium — to Fulgrim, that Chaos was closing on the Legions — and it went unheard. Ulthwé's seers grieve for no part of the Imperium; they fear what its fall takes with it.
She has died in front of witnesses more than once and returned each time, and the Imperium has decided this is sanctity rather than a phenomenon requiring explanation. Contested because the mechanism is deliberately never given: the setting will not say whether it is the Emperor, the warp, or the difference between them.
Has repeatedly seemed to fall in battle and risen again each time; Lord Ansgar's conclave of Thorians declared her a living saint, and the Adepta Sororitas venerate her as one.
He steals people. Trazyn's method is to take living specimens out of history and store them in stasis in a gallery, which means his real capability is not combat but the fact that losing to him is not death and is arguably worse. He also cannot be killed conventionally — he simply transfers into another body in the collection.
statedCodex: Necrons (8th ed., RU) · Trazyn the Infinite entry
Maintains a stasis collection of specimens taken from across history; survives destruction by body-transfer.
A baseline human, bionic eye and looted klaw aside, who held Hades Hive against Ghazghkull and became the thing the Orks themselves are superstitious about — they came to believe he could not be killed, which in a species whose belief has physical consequences is not a small detail. The highest-ranked baseline human on this page, and it is not close.
statedCodex: Orks (10th ed., RU)
Commanded the defence of Hades Hive, where the defenders fought like men possessed; Ghazghkull led that siege in person and found in him an enemy worth fighting.
The oldest living Space Marine, which in a role with that life expectancy is the feat by itself. He has commanded the Blood Angels for over a thousand years without succumbing to the two genetic conditions that take almost every other member of his chapter.
statedCodex: Blood Angels (7th ed., RU)
Believed to be the oldest living Space Marine, at least eleven hundred years old and fighting for more than a thousand of them.
He went into the Black Rage, which is terminal, and came out the other side as something the Blood Angels have never been able to classify. Last of the argued entries because the achievement is internal — he survived his own genetics — and this page ranks what was done to the world above what was done to oneself.
statedCodex: Blood Angels (7th ed., RU)
Emerged from the Black Rage transformed rather than destroyed, becoming the Chief Librarian.
Meant the Rubric as a cure for the mutation consuming the Legion and killed his brothers with it instead; some survived, the rest became spirits and handfuls of dust sealed in armour, no more than automata. — 2013
Returns in the body of whoever kills him, and it is the killer's own pride in the victory that triggers it — the codex's example is a necron whose living metal could not save it.
statedCodex: Space Wolves (10th ed., RU) · «Логан Гримнар»
Great Wolf, an office the codex equates with a Chapter Master's; first among the Wolf Lords, rules Fenris as High King, and has led the Chapter more than five hundred years.
Herald of the Hive Mind, perhaps as old as the Tyranid race. Killed, it is always reabsorbed through the synaptic link and born again, and grows more deadly with every incarnation.