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 Furyou Miko wrote:
Nah, that's still a negligible number of Astartes if you're going to look at how many Marines you would actually need to pursue a conventional ground war.

Exactly. So even with 10,000 men, the setting should still be very grimdark. 1,000 is just so....inconvenient.

 AWesker1976 wrote:


On another point, most Chaos Legions don't even operate on a Legion level anymore. World Eater, Emperor's Children, Alpha Legion, etc.

The Alpha Legion are operating at legion level afaik. That's their whole modus operandi.

I've always thought that the small size of space marine chapters was meant to reinforce the hopeless, grimdark nature of the setting.

Astartes are the last vestiges of the (false) Emperor's glory, of the hope of a brighter time when they used to sweep across the galaxy in vast armies, enlightening everything they saw.

But now, their role as defenders of the Imperium has been passed on to weak, fragile, terrified humans whose lives are worth less than the lasgun they carry.

And the Astartes? Lost, leaderless and relegated to groups so ineffectually small that their inevitable fall to Chaos will go unnoticed.