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aka_mythos wrote:
Between the end of the Heresy and the second founding... there is about a decade that goes by.

7 years...

aka_mythos wrote:
While they had to sit out the remainder of the war due to losses, their second founding chapters 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 centuries.

Not full strength, but unlikely to split a Legion in severe understrength chapters.
So 800-900 marines maybe, but I doubt a chapter would start out at less than 600 marines.
Newly founded ones are put into service at nearly full strength. Plus per codex GreyishKnights there were 400+ chapters at second founding. Our old and wellknown "apokrypha of skaros - chart" shows about 50 chapters...
Maybe the actual (2011) size of Legions isn't the only change.

iproxtaco wrote: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?

Expedition fleets numbered in their hundreds.
HH series shows expedition fleets with some marines, and imperial army elements. Not tens of thousands, so mrMerett kept his take on this
too secret.
20 Legios, with 50k are 1.000.000; with 100k are 2.000.000.
The new size, split up to expedition fleets grants 500 fleets 4.000 marines per fleet.
Clearly, M41 sees 1000 chapters a 1000 marines, thus 1.000.000. Seems like the numbers the loyal legions contribute hasn't fallen.
But switched from a single larger Legion to the same Legion providing 60%...
The size of the astartes didn't rise becuse the creation process has slowed down. At "great crusade speed" we would have a squad for each guard regiment the IoM fields.