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 CShaffer wrote:
I know that DA have the second most successor chapters behind UM.

I don't think this has ever been said.

If anything, there is a curious lack of Dark Angels chapters, given the stability and purity of their geneseed. But it's likely because the Dark Angels are shifty and unreliable.

the second largest legion after the HH due to not actually being at most of the fights.

Not so sure about the validity of this one either. The Fists, Scars and Blood Angels all have more listed 2nd Founding chapters than the Dark Angels. It's entirely likely, given that they lost their homeworld, their primarch, and a good chunk of their command structure that the Dark Angels struggled to recover following the Heresy compared to Legions which at least had their logistical structure intact. There's a reason why the Ultramarines quickly swelled to be more than half of the total Space Marines. They were the only Legion which had been preparing for such an eventuality. The Dark Angels were in the same place as the other Legions, except they no longer had a home planet to draw recruits from. It isn't like The Rock turned itself into a space ship. That would have taken time to construct.

Successor number wise I've always thought it went Ultramarines > Imperial Fists > Blood Angels > White Scars > Raven Guard > Dark Angels > Iron Hands > Salamanders > Space Wolves

The White Scars through Iron Hands order is debatable. I can see where you're coming from, given the White Scars geneseed purity. But something to keep in mind is a chapter with that geneseed is most likely to be trained by another chapter with that geneseed, meaning a White Scars successor is most likely going to be unruly in one way or another, in which case, why not make another Ultramarine or Imperial Fists chapter? That's the only reason I can think of for why the White Scars aren't as common.

I'd not bank on Blood Angels being #3. There (apparently) hasn't been a new one since the 21st Founding, and that was an attempt to fix the Blood Angels, which means they knew there was a problem (so were they still making new Blood Angels successors in the 20th, 19th, etc?).

I'm guessing it's:

Ultramarines











Imperial Fists
White Scars
Raven Guard


Iron Hands


Blood Angels



Dark Angels



Salamanders
Space Wolves

It's kind of interesting to think about too. I mean, if say 670 chapters are the Ultramarines and their successors, that means there are only 329 split between 7 Legions, which comes out less than 50 per Legion. There are, in all likelihood, less than 100 chapters total which represent the next most common geneseed.

When they talk about the "Spiritual Liege", I know we all like to laugh. But the Ultramarines' body of successors could, quite possibly, be almost ten times larger than the next most common Legion.

 ChazSexington wrote:
The way I see the SM Chapter breakdown is simply to allow players creative freedom for their own Chapters. Existing Chapters, like Blood Ravens or Carcharodons, are there to act as inspiration for Chapters like the Angry Marines.

Ironically, there is reason to believe that both the Blood Ravens and Carcharodons were from traitor geneseed.

Thousand Sons and Night Lords, respectively.