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How many various Legions had Space Marine in their ranks?

I only know that Thousand sons were the smallest with about 10.000 Marines.

Brother Coa wrote:How many various Legions had Space Marine in their ranks?

I only know that Thousand sons were the smallest with about 10.000 Marines.

Depends on your source. Legions were anything from a few thousand to a hundred thousand or even far more. I believe these contradictions are mostly due to different authors in the Heresy series.

The Word Bearers consisted of 100,000 marines. The Ultramarines were more numerous, and by far the largest.

Darkvoidof40k wrote:Depends on your source. Legions were anything from a few thousand to a hundred thousand or even far more. I believe these contradictions are mostly due to different authors in the Heresy series.

+1 to that. Novels always come with a certain degree of author's interpretation.

Anyways, this is from the current 5E Marine Codex:
"Mustered into great, ten thousand strong Legions of the First Founding, they were warriors of immense strength and unbreakable willpower, with an unflinching loyalty to the Emperor."

The Codex doesn't mention any deviations from this size. That said, I wouldn't explicitly dismiss the possibility, given that old Codices (found this in the 2E one) did mention that the Legions' sizes varied greatly during the Great Crusade as some Legions received extra troops to deal with broad fronts or difficult targets. 100k sounds a liiittle over the top, though...

Thanks Lynata. I had always thought 10k but couldn't remember where I had read that.

At the start of the great crusade all legions were 10,000 strong but by the end most were a lot bigger with the ultras and word bearers around 100,000.

Lynata wrote:100k sounds a liiittle over the top, though...

word bearers spent most the crusade peacefully converting planets and

The 1ook size is rather new. Was brought up first in the card game support that is "visions of.. I-iv" and then established in the HH series.
Before, 10k was fine.
The only continous secure source is the chart of second founding chapters ( part of any space marine dex since 3rd ed ), which is intended to be a incomplete list but still has 20+ non UM and the 23 UM plus the ones that kept the name of the Legion > 50+ chapters.
now, recently codex GK told us the GK were installed as chapter 666 even when only 400 chapters existed. This may give us a hint that either
chapters got rapidly founded or the incomplete apocrypha of skaros only mentions so few its just the names of 25% of the first batch we know of.

20 legions of 100k sound lot.
9 remaining legions split into chapters from a 400k pool would mean horrible losses if every Legion was at a 100k strength.
I'd guess the common size was at 10-50k and only some like UM and WB had more.
Once the reason for less screening of the recruits and creatures like kor phaeron being inducted was pointed out as result of the necessity to replace the high rate of casualties in the GC.

1hadhq wrote:The 1ook size is rather new. Was brought up first in the card game support that is "visions of.. I-iv" and then established in the HH series.
Before, 10k was fine.
The only continous secure source is the chart of second founding chapters ( part of any space marine dex since 3rd ed ), which is intended to be a incomplete list but still has 20+ non UM and the 23 UM plus the ones that kept the name of the Legion > 50+ chapters.
now, recently codex GK told us the GK were installed as chapter 666 even when only 400 chapters existed. This may give us a hint that either
chapters got rapidly founded or the incomplete apocrypha of skaros only mentions so few its just the names of 25% of the first batch we know of.

20 legions of 100k sound lot.
9 remaining legions split into chapters from a 400k pool would mean horrible losses if every Legion was at a 100k strength.
I'd guess the common size was at 10-50k and only some like UM and WB had more.
Once the reason for less screening of the recruits and creatures like kor phaeron being inducted was pointed out as result of the necessity to replace the high rate of casualties in the GC.

But the Iron hands, slamanders and Raven guard would not be able to split into chapters because they barely had enough gene seed to get by themselves at the end of the heresy.

And the other legions would all have lost alot.

moonshine wrote:
But the Iron hands, salamanders and Raven guard would not be able to split into chapters because they barely had enough gene seed to get by themselves at the end of the heresy.

And the other legions would all have lost alot.

Salamanders suffer from the "losses of istvaan IV", yes. But there are chapters said to be of vulkans geneseed out there...
Iron Hands lost their primarch and his bodyguard, some veterans but the majority was still in transit and they have 3 official successors.
Raven Guard escaped with 3k from istvaan in the HH series and had 3 official successors.

Istvaan was a strike that took 3 Legios out of service.
In the end, the traitors were beaten, so losses on both sides should not be underestimated.

The Drop Site Massacre was on Istvaan V. Istvaan IV never plays a role.

The Thousand Sons kept getting frequently pruned. The first rash of mutations left about 1000 alive by the time Magnus was found and made his Faustian deal (hence the name), so they were never very numerous (I doubt they even reached the 10k mark). The burning of Prospero also left about 1000 alive to flee to the Planet of the Sorcerers. Then the Rubric turned the majority into automatons (>60%), a good chunk of which were then annihilated at the Battle for the Fang.

The Ultramarines founded at least 20 chapters at the second founding IIRC so they must have had numbers of at least 20k after the scouring. The Heresy and scouring were two periods of intense warfare, whilst varying from source to source depending on age/author etc, roughly lasted 7 years apiece I imagine there would be very little time during this period for the training of vast numbers of recruits especially with the attrition rate of astartes v astartes combat being so high.

Omegus wrote:The Drop Site Massacre was on Istvaan V. Istvaan IV never plays a role.

The Thousand Sons kept getting frequently pruned. The first rash of mutations left about 1000 alive by the time Magnus was found and made his Faustian deal (hence the name), so they were never very numerous (I doubt they even reached the 10k mark). The burning of Prospero also left about 1000 alive to flee to the Planet of the Sorcerers. Then the Rubric turned the majority into automatons (>60%), a good chunk of which were then annihilated at the Battle for the Fang.

True, but it's often done by the Sorcerer's to reborn their soldiers into new suits of armour, hell the Space Wolf omibus has Ragnar encounter this happening afew times.

From most of what I've read chaos marines can be brought back after death, so death isn't the end for a lot of them. It's one of the only reasons I can think of that Chaos marines can still be numerous.

The Legions all began as 10,000 astartes each.

as the Great Crusade went outwards some became more numerous then others. the Word Bearers had 100,000, outnumbered only by the Smurfs.


some Legions never expanded much beyond the original 10,000. the Thousand Sons, Ravenguard, and Salamanders were low in number. the Ravenguard and Salamanders were so devestated at Isstavan that they didn't have any 2nd founding chapters because they were so few in number.

IIRC SW were also fairly low down number-wise...

10k was the " norm " for legions during the crusades,going up and down as casualties were taken and new marines brought in.

As to the traitors,they keep numbers up with stealing geneseed / using daemonic machines and or possession to keep their numbers up.

They were intended to be the Emperor's attack dogs(its rumored that Russ and the Wolves were the ones who took care of the 2 missing Legions, whatever their crime) so weren't super numerous.

10K was the original size as described prior to the Horus Heresy novel series.

Relatively recently, according to Aaron Dembski-Bowden over on B&C, the GW head honchos made the call to start going with the 100K number.

Hmmh. Is it certain that this was GW's call? Just asking because Aaron said on his blog that BL authors - including himself - take certain liberties with such details when they don't like the original writing. Though he does note that there has been more collaboration in case of the HH novels (albeit leaving it a bit uncertain as to whether this was just referring to between the HH novel authors or between these authors and GW).

Also, if this is as per GW, does the 100k apply to every Legion, meaning is this supposed to be the new standard?

Lynata wrote:Hmmh. Is it certain that this was GW's call? Just asking because Aaron said on his blog that BL authors - including himself - take certain liberties with such details when they don't like the original writing. Though he does note that there has been more collaboration in case of the HH novels (albeit leaving it a bit uncertain as to whether this was just referring to between the HH novel authors or between these authors and GW).

Also, if this is as per GW, does the 100k apply to every Legion, meaning is this supposed to be the new standard?

Took me a bit, but I found the post: http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=224192&view=findpost&p=2693718

So, yeah, it's GW's call, and it does apply to every Legion, meaning this is the new standard.

1hadhq wrote:

moonshine wrote:
But the Iron hands, salamanders and Raven guard would not be able to split into chapters because they barely had enough gene seed to get by themselves at the end of the heresy.

And the other legions would all have lost alot.

Salamanders suffer from the "losses of istvaan IV", yes. But there are chapters said to be of vulkans geneseed out there...
Iron Hands lost their primarch and his bodyguard, some veterans but the majority was still in transit and they have 3 official successors.
Raven Guard escaped with 3k from istvaan in the HH series and had 3 official successors.

Istvaan was a strike that took 3 Legios out of service.
In the end, the traitors were beaten, so losses on both sides should not be underestimated.

Between the end of the Heresy and the second founding... there is about a decade that goes by. While they had to sit out the remainder of the war due to losses, their second founding chaptesr may have been built off of the accelerated marine creation methods that started during the Heresy as well as marines who were neophytes at the end of the Heresy. Even though the second founding occured and those legions each created second founding chapters, there is nothing to say those chapters were at fully strength for a number of decades or centruries.

Seaward wrote:Took me a bit, but I found the post: http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=224192&view=findpost&p=2693718

So, yeah, it's GW's call, and it does apply to every Legion, meaning this is the new standard.

Huh, thanks for digging up that thread - much obliged!

Funny that the new Codex still mentions 10k, but I guess this is a "leftover" of the old way of thinking and wasn't discovered by the editors. I'll adopt the 100k then. Thanks again!

10,000 makes sense in one way but no in another. Firstly, considering there's about 1,000,000 marines in the current time-line, it would make sense that the numbers would either stay the same, or increase, after The Heresy. On the other hand, 10,000 for each legion is stupidly low. Even if there were some that were slightly larger, then the numbers couldn't have been more than 250,000. How ridiculous would that be if there were a quarter of the current figures operating across the entire Great Crusade?

pre hearsay - each chapter stated out with 10,000 marines.
some like the word bearers, and the ultramarines ended up with more, some like the 100 sonns and i think death company had less(they had 7 great companies, not sure weather they had more or less in total).

post hearsay- the loyalists were ordered to split there chapters up, 10 chapters to one original founding chapter, 1000 marines in each. however some like the ultramarines have about 27 successor chapters(27,000 marines), and some like the salamanders who were heavily killed so didn't even make one successor chapter(at least known). and then theres chapters like the black templars who have no limit.
the chaos chapters are random, with the devotees like khorn berserkers, and the random spread of troops.

I suppose the idea was that, over the course of millennia, the subsequent Foundings of new Chapters was also meant to provide the Imperium with more Marines, whilst simultaneously their quality (geneseed and equipment) would slowly decline, the awesome "quality" of the Imperium's forces during the Great Crusade (applying not only but also to the Astartes) lost along with much of their technology.

Whilst the numbers may still seem a little far-fetched, I wouldn't say they were ridiculous. Just that the Imperium is even bigger on quantity over quality now than it was back then (not that this is a conscious choice - they just have to make due and adapt to an ongoing decline).

stonned_astartes wrote:pre hearsay - each chapter stated out with 10,000 marines.

That's not the case any more, according to the guy in charge of all 40K fluff.

welll feth him!

realize that they didn't have 1000 chapters right off the get go with the 2nd founding. they probably only had a few hundred due to the Legions having an unequal amount of successor chapters.


I would guess that it wasn't untill the 3rd or 4th founding when they actually got to the full 1000 chapter limit.

The "10,000" marines was the starting strength of a given legion at its founding but it's been noted by the peek of there Heresy most numbered between 50,000-100,000... with a few like ultramarines numbering 250,000. I recall, but I don't remember where, I think it was the Horus Heresy art books that said there were suppose to be about 2 million marines... split relatively evenly between Chaos and loyalists at the start of the Heresy. That it was only after Istavan that things moved in favor of Chaos.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Grey Templar wrote:realize that they didn't have 1000 chapters right off the get go with the 2nd founding. they probably only had a few hundred due to the Legions having an unequal amount of successor chapters.


I would guess that it wasn't untill the 3rd or 4th founding when they actually got to the full 1000 chapter limit.

Between the loyalist Legions the Iron Hands, Salamanders, and Ravenguard were smashed and ended the war with few numbers. Those chapter's second founding probably came largely from the Neophytes being trained at the end of the war... or in the case of Ravenguard, the Space Sharks were the beastial abomniations and failed science experiment of their Primarch, which wouldn't have necessarily been counted amongst the legion's numbers during the Heresy. The Raven Guard also managed to churn out another 2 other chapters. The Salamanders had none. The Iron Hands also had 2. So where there were 3 legions, there were 8 Chapters.

The Blood Angels and Dark Angels each had 5 and 3 respectively. The White Scars and Imperial Fists, 3 and 3... with one of the three Imperial Fist successors being the Black Templars with 6000 marines. The space wolves had only 1 counted.

Then there is the Grey Knights who have no primarch, were a second founding chapter numbering 3000. Their existance implys the Emperor left some other means of producing space marines... that maybe wasn't as efficient or generally more demanding. There is implication that they were built from psykers gathered from all the loyalist legions.

The assumption alot of people make is that the founding of Chapters was an immediate break down of Legions into Chapters. There isn't anything really written about the 3rd through 12th Foundings. The process would have to have been a gradual step down of the Legions into Chapters to ensure each Chapter was autonomous and self sufficient, with enough vehicles, veterans, and specialists. Fortresses Monastaries would then have to be built for each and fleets distrubted. After the heresy there were 250,000 Ultramarines. Imagine immediately after the 2nd founding the Ultramarines had 230,000 (give or take) marines and 20 chapters... after the 3rd founding having 210,000 marines and 40 chapters... all the way till the 12th founding when they would have been 230 progentior Chapters and the Ultramarines. The first 12 foundings occured within a 4000 year time span, or approximately one founding every 333 years... hmm maybe some secret numerology... but given Imperial beauracracy and the great distances, this doesn't seem unreasonable. Thats relatively rapidly compared to the later foundings... implying either marine production rate was higher or they were coming from else where.

The fluff also says that the different successor chapters named are only the ones accounted for that other may have existed with no record of their heredity left. So even on face value the fluff can be read to say those 20 Ultramarines are only the most significant.

Chaos took some losses too, many of the traitors had to weed out the loyalists within their own Legions.