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What comprises a Crusade Force? I was thinking along the lines of an Great Crusade-era Expeditionary Force. One Chapter or its equivalent at least, several hundred capital ships, several hundred regiments of varied types, and at least one Titan Legion.

It depends on how big the Imperium interest is.

I will refer to Taros and Vraks for this.
Taros Imperium forces:

-5 Tallarn Regiments
-2 Stormtrooper companies
-1 Elysian, Cadian, Sarennian, Brimlock and Krieg Regiments ( note that Krieg and Brimlock never saw fight at all ).
-4 fighter wings
-2 Bomber wings
-1 Tactical wing
-4 Warhound Titans
- around 300 Space Marines.

Overall some around 50.000 Guardsmen and 350+ tanks and lot of other equipment.

Vraks Imperium forces:

-over 14.000.000 Krieg Guardsmen with heavy equipment and weapons.
-1 full Titan Legion ( composing in great number of Warhounds and dosen Warlords ).
-5 Space Marine Chapters ( 2 were helping in 1 action only, but in the war finale 4 Chapters were present in fighting.
-Unknown number of tanks, probably in high thousands.
-Unknown number of fighter and bombers.

In the end it only depends on interest, some crusade are small ( like faith wars of Battle Sisters or Black Tempalr crusades ) but some are a massive and includes billions of Imperial Guard, dozen Space Marines Chapters, several Tiatan Legions, thousands of ships etc...
But the truth is that big Crusades Imperium can summon only few times at most. Like they did for 13'th Black Crusade to hold off Chaos invasion.

I'm assembling a Crusade Force into the Ghoul Stars. One company from the Black Templars and the Blood Ravens each, and three companies from the Ultramarines, who by the way, are keeping the the Black Templars and the Blood Ravens from each other's throats. I' m still thinking which Titan Legion to join the Crusade, and I still need five more Astartes Companies as well as Imperial Guard and Navy unit to join the Crusade.

Just sayin', there's technically no such thing as a Black Templars Company.

AlmightyWalrus wrote:Just sayin', there's technically no such thing as a Black Templars Company.

The equivalent then. It's for a fan fiction I'm writing.

Tadashi wrote:as well as Imperial Guard and Navy

Of course, both organizations were united under the single term and hierarchy of "Imperial Army" during the Crusade era.

You probably know this, just throwing it out there in case you don't.

I also think that the ratio of Marines to normal troopers was notably bigger back then. Not only because there were more Marines, but also because there were fewer normal humans (at least in the form of a unified fighting arm under Imperial rule). Imperial Army ground forces only had to bother with securing worlds conquered by the Astartes, if I recall correctly, rather than taking the brunt of the heat like they have to do in the post-Heresy era.

Also consider that lots of the organization may have changed. When Guard and Navy were united, there may have been no difference in leadership, meaning that Imperial Commanders oversaw ground, air and space forces simultaneously. Furthermore, the differences between Army ground force regiments might have been notably smaller given that stuff was still somewhat manageable by central command, depending on the part of the Crusade era you're looking at.

Of course, these are mere suggestions. In the end, you'd only have to follow the same few rules as any novel author out there and may even introduce completely new ideas depending on your personal interpretation of the setting.

"Crusades" are just broad general terms for wars that are officially launched by the High Lords of Terra and given a religious blessing by the Ecclesiarchy. It essentially comprises multiple Imperial forces. Space Marines, Titans, Guard, SoB, so on.

Really, your "Crusade" could maintain any combination of various Imperial forces in any shape/size. They do however tend to be quite large, as the High Lords themselves authorize them and only the largest matters are given any attention by them.

I remember an old article from an old WD that mentioned Crusading SM after the heresy would paint part of their armour (like a shoulder pad, helm or even half of their armour) in Crusade Colours to unify them. I would assume IG would have a similar sort of job, and that their tanks would have Crusade markings too. The Inquisition would do its own thing, but if it was a member of the Ordos leading the Crusade, I'm guessing that the Crusade Colours would be from his own personal heraldry.

Brother Coa wrote: lots of good stuff but mainly "It depends on how big the Imperium interest is."

In the end it only depends on interest, some crusade are small ( like faith wars of Battle Sisters or Black Tempalr crusades ) but some are a massive and includes billions of Imperial Guard, dozen Space Marines Chapters, several Tiatan Legions, thousands of ships etc...
But the truth is that big Crusades Imperium can summon only few times at most. Like they did for 13'th Black Crusade to hold off Chaos invasion.

Taros was a bit of a shambles in organisation as was noted in the IA book and was under resourced for the task at hand......

Good thinkg is they can be as big or small as you like or need for your own fuff - hell it can even be one Black Templars Strike Cruiser

Tadashi wrote:

AlmightyWalrus wrote:Just sayin', there's technically no such thing as a Black Templars Company.

The equivalent then. It's for a fan fiction I'm writing.

Yeah, the BT are quite a divergent Chapter, their force organisation in particular no doubt raising more than a few eyebrows from the other Codex Chapters and the policing authorities of the Imperium, too! Where a Codex Chapter is a 1000 strong which is split into ten 100 sized Companies, the Templars are instead deployed throughout the galaxy via "Crusade Fleets" and their total strength is unknown. Each Crusade is lead by a Marshal, who divides his force into "Fighting Companies", again, these are different to regular Marine Companies and are formed in an ad-hoc manner, ranging from 20 to over 100 Marines, each one being lead by a Castellan. Finally, their Tactical Squads are called "Crusader Squads" and are made up of Initiates (Marines) and Neophytes (Scouts), who operate on a Kight-to-Squire like relationship; the former being a battle-proven warrior who sets an example for the latter who is an as yet unproven student.

Some other things you might want to consider:
- they hate sorcery and therefore don't have any Librarians
- they prefer close combat and therefore their Initiates will sometimes be armed as Assault Marines (pistol + ccw)
- they are very devout, very zealous warriors who place a lot of stock in prayer, oaths and look to their Chaplains with an uttermost respect
- their Terminators are called Sword Brethren who may or may not choose to use Terminator Armour
- their hallmark battle piece is the Land Raider Crusader, which they use to close on the enemy before disgorging their melee-focused warriors into the thick of the fighting

My advice, 40k fiction-wise: don't undersell things. Too many Black Library and GW authors have so little concept of the scale of military operations.

The number of Astartes you mention should be supporting Guard units in the tens of millions, probably. Just think about how many millions of troops it would take to overthrow all the governments on present-day Earth, and garrison things afterward. Millions, easily. Now scale that to dozens of star systems, fighting bizarre aliens or chaos-worshiping societies that may need to be completely wiped out without resorting to virus bombs (which would render your shiny new planet uninhabitable).

What he said... A lot of sci-fi authors seem to thing that 10,000 guys are a lot and more than enough to take over a planet. Now admittedly if the target planet is sparsely populated or severely technologically limited you could do a lot of damage with that number of guys, but its not enough to hold a whole planet. Similarly with the Taros campaign, in WW2 the average division was more than 50,000 men and there were an awful lot of divisions kicking about!

Brother Coa wrote:It depends on how big the Imperium interest is.

I will refer to Taros and Vraks for this.
Taros Imperium forces:

-5 Tallarn Regiments
-2 Stormtrooper companies
-1 Elysian, Cadian, Sarennian, Brimlock and Krieg Regiments ( note that Krieg and Brimlock never saw fight at all ).
-4 fighter wings
-2 Bomber wings
-1 Tactical wing
-4 Warhound Titans
- around 300 Space Marines.

Overall some around 50.000 Guardsmen and 350+ tanks and lot of other equipment.

Vraks Imperium forces:

-over 14.000.000 Krieg Guardsmen with heavy equipment and weapons.
-1 full Titan Legion ( composing in great number of Warhounds and dosen Warlords ).
-5 Space Marine Chapters ( 2 were helping in 1 action only, but in the war finale 4 Chapters were present in fighting.
-Unknown number of tanks, probably in high thousands.
-Unknown number of fighter and bombers.

In the end it only depends on interest, some crusade are small ( like faith wars of Battle Sisters or Black Tempalr crusades ) but some are a massive and includes billions of Imperial Guard, dozen Space Marines Chapters, several Tiatan Legions, thousands of ships etc...
But the truth is that big Crusades Imperium can summon only few times at most. Like they did for 13'th Black Crusade to hold off Chaos invasion.

Those aren't crusades they're campaigns.

Crusades are ginormous and involve many worlds. The Sabbat Worlds crusade for example involves 200 planets.

CalgarsPimpHand wrote:My advice, 40k fiction-wise: don't undersell things. Too many Black Library and GW authors have so little concept of the scale of military operations.

The number of Astartes you mention should be supporting Guard units in the tens of millions, probably. Just think about how many millions of troops it would take to overthrow all the governments on present-day Earth, and garrison things afterward. Millions, easily. Now scale that to dozens of star systems, fighting bizarre aliens or chaos-worshiping societies that may need to be completely wiped out without resorting to virus bombs (which would render your shiny new planet uninhabitable).

Yeah, this is something that bothered me in the beginning of Andy Hoare's Savage Scars, where an entire planetary invasion is tilted on the success of a SM pre-emptive strike against a major Tau Sept world . . . which consisted of about ten Marines each from three Chapters. The only defence they came up against was a handful of Fire Warriors, a few Gun Drones and a few stealth aircraft . . . yeah, and after what can only be described as a (very small) skirmish, the Crusade Fleet can suddenly land thousands of troops, armour and Titans almost completely unapposed. Hmm, okay. Also, I found it a little ridiculous that a White Scars Veteran Sergeant gets a place on the Crusade Council! I'm finding it difficult to keep going with the novel.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Crusades are ginormous and involve many worlds. The Sabbat Worlds crusade for example involves 200 planets.

Damocles Gulf was more a campaign to but it was called a crusade.

Flinty wrote:What he said... A lot of sci-fi authors seem to thing that 10,000 guys are a lot and more than enough to take over a planet.

Well, 10K elite troops might be enough to take something... they're just not enough to keep it if anyone disagrees. And if the enemy has no problem with blowing up a few city blocks they won't hardly suffer any losses for taking it back.

Spetulhu wrote:
Well, 10K elite troops might be enough to take something... they're just not enough to keep it if anyone disagrees. And if the enemy has no problem with blowing up a few city blocks they won't hardly suffer any losses for taking it back.

I'd assume that against most planets space superiority (or even supremacy) would belong to the Imperials, which makes it a whole lot easier. Also, with the Astartes at least, they generally have the ability to take out key targets and then withdraw before a proper response can be organised. When your orbital defences or power stations (or whatever) are being stormed by the enemy, you generally do not want to bombard the area because you need those assets.

I get the feeling that in many conflicts it's less of a fight to the death but more of a destroy their ability to strike back so they surrender since fighting is unlikely to get you anywhere.

Brother Coa wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:
Crusades are ginormous and involve many worlds. The Sabbat Worlds crusade for example involves 200 planets.

Damocles Gulf was more a campaign to but it was called a crusade.

In a weird turn of events the Vraks campaign was larger than the Damocles Gulf Crusade. Vraks was a hard nut to crack though and may have been more heavily fortified than the entire Tau Empire.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:
In a weird turn of events the Vraks campaign was larger than the Damocles Gulf Crusade. Vraks was a hard nut to crack though and may have been more heavily fortified than the entire Tau Empire.

Do you know how big the DGC was, all told? I remember reading it took like a century to kick off, and that it pretty much hit a brick wall after initial success once it got to Tau space proper, but online sources give two different dates that it ended (and I don't have my Tau dex with me), like 200 years apart? Also, anyone know how long it was?

Anfauglir wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:
In a weird turn of events the Vraks campaign was larger than the Damocles Gulf Crusade. Vraks was a hard nut to crack though and may have been more heavily fortified than the entire Tau Empire.

Do you know how big the DGC was, all told? I remember reading it took like a century to kick off, and that it pretty much hit a brick wall after initial success once it got to Tau space proper, but online sources give two different dates that it ended (and I don't have my Tau dex with me), like 200 years apart? Also, anyone know how long it was?

It only involved 19 regiments according to lexicanum.

A regiment can be in the millions. That's another bad thing about the BL-writers they have no idea of how large a regiment is. While we call it an army or army-group with a regiment that big.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:
It only involved 19 regiments according to lexicanum.

Only 19 currently known regiments.

if you are doing the Ghoul Star Crusade thing here are all the chapters fanmade or offical lore.
Storm Crusaders(Fan)
Sword Templars(Fan)
The Wanderers(Fan)
Death Spectres(offical)
Marines Errant(Offical)
The black templars do already have a crusade in the region but they pulled out and left a small group behind. I've used it in the wanderers fluff as a back-up group. They number at least 350 Black Templars.

The blood ravens would at most send a company seeing as how much they've suffered.

Anfauglir wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:
It only involved 19 regiments according to lexicanum.

Only 19 currently known regiments.

It doesn't say that...

KamikazeCanuck wrote:

It doesn't say that...

. . . I know.

Anfauglir wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:

It doesn't say that...

. . . I know.

.....ok........

KamikazeCanuck wrote:

Anfauglir wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:

It doesn't say that...

. . . I know.

.....ok........

. . . k

Asherian Command wrote:if you are doing the Ghoul Star Crusade thing here are all the chapters fanmade or offical lore.
Storm Crusaders(Fan)
Sword Templars(Fan)
The Wanderers(Fan)
Death Spectres(offical)
Marines Errant(Offical)
The black templars do already have a crusade in the region but they pulled out and left a small group behind. I've used it in the wanderers fluff as a back-up group. They number at least 350 Black Templars.

The blood ravens would at most send a company seeing as how much they've suffered.

Ghoul Stars Crusade already underway...here's the URL.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/428333.page

Beaviz81 wrote:A regiment can be in the millions.

Actually it can't...
"A regiment is divided into a number of fighting units notionally called companies, each with a command staff of its own. Each company can consist of a number of further sub-units again notionally called platoons, each platoon in turn being made of a number of individual squads of Guardsmen. The actual terms used for these fighting units, their numbers and equipment typically varies somewhat between regiments."
It can have between 1.500 to 300.000 troops ( I still didn't see Regiment numbering more then that ).

Brother Coa wrote:

Beaviz81 wrote:A regiment can be in the millions.

Actually it can't...
"A regiment is divided into a number of fighting units notionally called companies, each with a command staff of its own. Each company can consist of a number of further sub-units again notionally called platoons, each platoon in turn being made of a number of individual squads of Guardsmen. The actual terms used for these fighting units, their numbers and equipment typically varies somewhat between regiments."
It can have between 1.500 to 300.000 troops ( I still didn't see Regiment numbering more then that ).

That doesn't actually say there is a maximum number for a regiment...
Technically a regiment can consist of massive amounts of men.
However, it's more likely they would be divided into many regiments and consolidated into an army group or similar grouping depending on their numbers...