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ok.... this is something that's always puzzled me aboaut 40k.... how can the renegade legions keep their numbers up? The fluff makes it seem like there are a million of these guys hiding in the eye of terror. Really, after 10,000 years of constantly fighting the imperium and eachother, there should be.... like.... two of them. maybe.


In fact how do any space marine armies keep their numbers up? Has anyone else noticed how super-elite units that take a thousand years to train are consistently taking 80, 90, 100% casualties in even casual games? If you took the blood angels when they were at legion strength and had them fight every battle that actually happens on a typical sunday in this country, they'd all be dead before 3pm. Completely exterminated. Gone.

Orks at least I can get. They grow from pods. Guard I can get. There's a trillion trillion billion of 'em. Even tyranids kind of make sense to me. But marines???

ok. rant over.

2 reasons.

First, remember that time in the warp is much different than in realspace. For the legions, it could have only been 100 years. Or 1,000,000. In the former case, 100 years is nothing to a Space Marine. In the latter, they may have been granted limited immortality by their patron god.

Second, it's still possible for the CSM to create new Marines. Some legions still have functioning Progenoid Glands. Those that don;t occasionally manage to steal Geneseed from fallen loyalists or other Geneseed stocks. A good book on this subject is Dead Sky, Black Sun by Graham McNeil, which is available from the Black Library.

As to you other questions; remember that the game is not 100% representative of the lore. In reality, a company of Marines would no problem handling what gets thrown at them in the average game.

chaos space marine have recruitment planets in the eye of terror...and in the eye of terror all kinds of space time oddity's
happen one ork warboss lead his waagh into the eye and finds a planet ruled by a daemon prince who they fight every day in a 24 hour time limbo where the battle is fought over and over...for an example of how fethed up the warp is

TT is not fluff, two entirely separate entities.

Bullfrog wrote:TT is not fluff, two entirely separate entities.

What are you talking about

Yeah renegade legions have their own recruitment strategies, like the Iron Warriors who stole Imperial Fist (iirc) geneseed, or the Night Lords, they have this short story showing them conducting trials of position where anyone who survives gets taken in as an initiate.

There is also the Blood Gorgons, who have their own recruitment planet outside the EoT. The Imperium unwittingly tried to invade it with predictable results (Flesh and Iron).

AbaddonFidelis wrote:In fact how do any space marine armies keep their numbers up? Has anyone else noticed how super-elite units that take a thousand years to train are consistently taking 80, 90, 100% casualties in even casual games? If you took the blood angels when they were at legion strength and had them fight every battle that actually happens on a typical sunday in this country, they'd all be dead before 3pm. Completely exterminated. Gone.

Cloning I believe.

They take the geneseed from their primarch and make supersoldiers out of it. (Thats what the raven guard did at least)


Correct me if I'm wrong guys.

Well you see it's not well known, but I've been told that every fighting force of the Imperium and its enemies are created through some arcane ritual. First this hot liquid is injected into molds. they are then distributed to separate individuals where the finished product of the mold, "sprues" are what I've heard they're called, are used to create new soldiers. Through some taboo ritual they are coloured and constructed, to varying degrees of success. Then the breath of life is given to them through a cube of unkown origin and battle is joined.

Mind you this is all hearsay.

Sgt.Sunshine wrote:Well you see it's not well known, but I've been told that every fighting force of the Imperium and its enemies are created through some arcane ritual. First this hot liquid is injected into molds. they are then distributed to separate individuals where the finished product of the mold, "sprues" are what I've heard they're called, are used to create new soldiers. Through some taboo ritual they are coloured and constructed, to varying degrees of success. Then the breath of life is given to them through a cube of unkown origin and battle is joined.

Mind you this is all hearsay.

Thats not possible.

vignor wrote:

Bullfrog wrote:TT is not fluff, two entirely separate entities.

What are you talking about

Exactly that. Units do not perform the same way in the game as they do in the fluff. The humble Marine is the perfect example.

If you took the blood angels when they were at legion strength and had them fight every battle that actually happens on a typical sunday in this country, they'd all be dead before 3pm

yeah but there are probably more blood angels in this country now than there were when they were at legion stength.

Bullfrog has it, you can't compare fluff marines to game marines. Fluff is there to add depth and spice its not the be all and end all. I think there is a movie marine codex out there somewhere which has vamped all the marines up to fluff like stats, i've not seen but I wuldn't be suprised if they were 500 points each.

Something else to keep in mind -after you remember that this is just a game- is that a casualty in the game does not represent a death. It represents a model no longer being fit for fighting.

Eric

P.S. Also, it's just a game. I mean, we don't fret about how there aren't enough people in the world to populate all of the armies that die in RISK games around the globe. Right?

Sunshine LOL

Bullfrog no TT isn't fluff.... wouldn't hurt if they tried to make at least some connection though.... I get tired of reading about how awesome autocannons are in the books, for instance. In the Commissar Kain book they kill a hive tyrant with a few shots from one (never happen), in Soul Hunter they blow away a terminator with 1. A terminator!!! like he's not even there. Grrrrrrr

AbaddonFidelis wrote:Sunshine LOL

Bullfrog no TT isn't fluff.... wouldn't hurt if they tried to make at least some connection though.... I get tired of reading about how awesome autocannons are in the books, for instance. In the Commissar Kain book they kill a hive tyrant with a few shots from one (never happen), in Soul Hunter they blow away a terminator with 1. A terminator!!! like he's not even there. Grrrrrrr

Meh, if my suspension of disbelief can handle the 40k universe it can handle the anomalies between fluff and TT. Plus, the rule set is ever changing, it would be unreasonable to expect the fiction to reflect them very closely and even if it did it would only be accurate until the next edition or codex was published. It would also require Black Library authors to know the game pretty well and to be honest they seem to have enough trouble with actually writing cogent prose let alone expecting them to get a grasp of the rules.

the rules change... but there are some things that have always been true in 40k... since early 3rd at least, since I started. power fists always cost 25 points, plasmaguns are always str7 ap2. the last big change I can remember a long these lines was dropping meltas to ap 1 and writing special rules for ap 1 guns... that got started shortly after the 1st tau codex with their ap 1 rail gun. w/e consistency is always nice, but yeah it's just a game. I liked the silliness of the earlier stuff. 40k takes itself alot more seriously now, but GW cant get away from its basically silly origins....

Chaos Marines train and recruit and they posses marines, or the let loyal marines join them driven by jealousy and anger. You see Chaos is like an infection, not everybody is strong inof to fight it.

Also their are alot of civillians that become chaos and become labour workers or just become cultists that pray all night, maybe some breed and make new cultists that are trained. I mean not all the planets were destroyed that were taken over by chaos so there must be millions of civillians.

SpankHammer III wrote:

If you took the blood angels when they were at legion strength and had them fight every battle that actually happens on a typical sunday in this country, they'd all be dead before 3pm

yeah but there are probably more blood angels in this country now than there were when they were at legion stength.

Bullfrog has it, you can't compare fluff marines to game marines. Fluff is there to add depth and spice its not the be all and end all. I think there is a movie marine codex out there somewhere which has vamped all the marines up to fluff like stats, i've not seen but I wuldn't be suprised if they were 500 points each.

There's probably 10,000 times as many blood angels on 'earth' than exist on the fluff. Only the tyranids and guardsmen have not been surpassed in plastic :3

I was just going to make a thread for this. Thanks for saving me some time :3

The red corsairs just steal loyalists and threaten them with death unless they join them. The black legion takes the outcasts from other legions. I think the word bearers have gene-seeds still. Same with the night lords, afaik. They don't really donate themselves to the gods like the world eaters or the death Guard.

No doubt the stealthier renegades abduct their recruits.

Sgt Sunshine, you are awesome.

The chaos Legions seem to have varying recruiting strategies, including the ones mentioned here (and probably more).
Actually, I think one Legion (Iron Warriors maybe?) specifically have a planet where they manufacture warriors using gene-seed and daemons. I don't think it works well all that often.

Oh, and other renegades (like the Red Corsairs, specifically) don't "recruit" so much as "get random donkey-caves who find and join them" or go the way of the Caribbean pirates and offer conquered forces a choice-join them or die.
(Thinking about it, the Legions may do this as well)

theres a story in the 5th ed rulebook about the corsairs grabbing some other chapter's gene seed. I got the impression that as long as there's at least 1 apothecary then they can make their own guys like normal space marines do.

I'v heard thet Emperor's children go to the nearest sm ask them: ' wussup, we got this cool party at Slaalesh's place wanna join in?' sm: 'For the Emperor!!' later after a minor fight sm continues: 'Maybe I can check that party out only if you spare me.' Emperor's child aswers ' No harm done, and there are chics that can wield up six melons (although many of them have breast canser), see you later.'

Thats what I'v heard

To be honest, if i was a guardsman, I'd likely just sign up for the ruinous powers as soon as my commissar went to take a leak. They have it pretty bad, and the spiky lads have all the temptations - Khorne will roid you up, slaanesh has multi-boobed action, tzeentch lets you play with madness and nurgle...umm... well, just don't eat the 'guacamole' whatever you do. Traitor guard need less reasons to leave the cold plasteel bosom of the imperium than they do to stay around and wait for the order - 'right lads, charge those orks armed only with toothpicks and mini-maglites. Oh, BTW, the Emprah protects!'

Ive herd somewhere that they use the children from there slave stocks and use them to create new marines.

Come on now, those toothpicks are usually sharpened!

Most Renegade SMs have different ways of recruiting more soldiers.

As to the other question. The way i see it, the only battles that would be entertaining to see played out are the really epic ones with the greatest heros and villains in the galaxy.
Nobody wants to play the kind of battles that would usually occur. We want to play out the battles that ended with the deaths of almost every space marine in the strikeforce.

Crazy stuff like this

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Daemonculaba

A question I've always had is this... Space Marines recruit from a planet for say oh ten thousand years. The best of children are taken before they reach sexual maturity, and all of those either die, become sterile space marines, or become chapter serfs who most likely never contribute to the planetary gene pool. Don't you think overall the planet would decline, genetically speaking, if you cull all the best on a regular basis?

Bromsy wrote:Crazy stuff like this

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Daemonculaba

A question I've always had is this... Space Marines recruit from a planet for say oh ten thousand years. The best of children are taken before they reach sexual maturity, and all of those either die, become sterile space marines, or become chapter serfs who most likely never contribute to the planetary gene pool. Don't you think overall the planet would decline, genetically speaking, if you cull all the best on a regular basis?

Some one mentioned Dead Sky Black Sun but gratz on the link.
Also i see what you mean about the genetic decline, i never thought of that ever before you mentioned it.

On the note of genetic decline - if the SM recruit based also on the dogmatic strictures of genetic purity, does it not also follow that the incidence of mutation in the tithe planet's population would increase? This could lead to some chaos shennannigans...

They had to make Marines less Bad Ass for the TT game so lesser beings such as Tau, Guard, Nids, and the like would actaully have a chance at winning, but also so that the marine players can feild more stuff instead of having a small number of really BA guys