>>44476059
They were very good at killing things, and had more raw muscle and lifting capabiltiy than a marine (their greaves are unpowered, so they're in essence lifting the weight of a motorcycle 24/7 on their own shoulders) but they were still mortal; almost all of them are dead from old age; one must remember they were a thing /thousands/ of years ago by 40k, and were not for their power armour they'd become nothing but another trivial detail of the pre-imperium age lost to history.
>>44476059
They were stronger and faster than marines, and generally more bloodthirsty. Emps programmed a short lifespan into them, as he had planned from the start to replace them with the marines of today, being more ideally human. And the custodes (the emperors guards in gold armor) are even more powerful still.
>>44476059
>How good?
Very.
>Where are they?
Dead. They had a built in expiration date.
>>44476059
I want a Custurd and Thunder army
>>44477593
The irony of this is that marines are actually less biologically human than the thunder warriors, but are mentally more capable of not breaking down Khornate-style and killing things they aren't supposed to kill.
>>44476461
So, presumably they were much easier to create than modern Space Marines given they were the earliest iteration of such things. Does that mean one of the more mad science loving Chaos types could feasibly recreate the Thunder Warriors, give them more up to date equipment, and have a super-murderous fighting force?
I figure Chaos, at least, would give zero fucks that they were much less human and just revel in the killing power.
>>44480651
Actually they were harder to make and more unstable. Thats why the emperor only used them to conqer terra and that was it.
>>44477593
They were less powerful then marines. More powerful in combat, on a planet perhaps but marines have all extras build in for more than that, and are much hbetter at void combat and also have non-combat stuff built in making them far more general purpose.
>>44480593
We all do.
Would it be closer to the fluff to have them be a secret order of wrecking-balls maintained by an old Inquisitorial/Mechanicus faction, someone rediscovering the Emperor's old note books, developing something independently that just looks a lot like them or a genuine Unification Era Thunder Regiment preserved some how?
>>44482457
There is that one lone survivor that become a great Mafia leader and started to steal technology and shit to prevent his death and then discovered the delivered flaws on the process to make them and then plotted to steal astartes gene seed or some shit.
>>44476059
Awful, without plasma bullets in the 41st millenia they suck
I am a thunder warrior. We suck.
>how good
Techno barbarians in slightly better armor and packing slightly better gear than the other techno barbarians on the planet.
>where are they now
Long gone. They were old hat by the time the crusade started up, since space marines supplanted them in every way.
The difference between a Thunder Warrior and Space Marines is smaller than between a guardsman and a Space Marine. The doctrine in which they would be employed in would be radically different than even chaos or BT. As for in game stats, same as marine, the difference isn't large enough to gain MC stats IMHO.
>>44476059
They are all quite dead by M41, but back in the day they were tough and ded killy as anything the Emps could call on, they were far deadlier in combat than SM and possibly even Custodes. But the big E in his infinite wisdom decided they were too bloodthirsty for Empire building and had them massacred in his final battle with the technobarbarians of old Terra.
I vaguely recall hearing of a tale from the lore of a handful of them surviving the battle and getting interned in a orbital prison staffed by Space Marines. They wound up getting sick of waiting to die there and attempted a good old fashioned prison break/riot. None of them survived but for every single Thunder Warrior that went down managed to take out 3-4 Astartes before biting the dust, so that should give you some idea of how the two compare in terms of combat prowess.
