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What is the average size of a regiment? I heard somewhere that it was only 15000. That seems a bit small for the IOM. If there is no canon number. What do you think would be a average size of a imperial guard regiment?

For the navy what is the common composition of a fleet? How many ships are there in grand total of a fleet? Is there a limit of ships a certain fleet can have before it gets in trouble?

I firmly believe the numbers in the book are exaggerated, and represent more of a rare case of exceedingly large regiments. Honestly, 15,000 is a huge regiment, massive even.

Considering a Platoon is anywhere from 35-100 with all the special and heavy weapons, and you'll have anywhere from 3-10 platoons per company. That brings us to a minimum of ~100 up to ~1000. A regiment will then have anywhere from 3-15 companies (an example in the apoc rule book states 12 companies at full strength), which brings our numbers to ~300 up to 15,000, with the average falling somewhere in between around the 4-7k mark. Armoured companies will have less, light regiments will have more.

IG Regiments are typically depicted as being between 2,000 to 20,000, but it varies massively. Really it's stupidly small if you're below the 100,000 level given what their missions involve.

BFG stated that a Battlefleet (one that operates at a Sector Level) consists of usually 70 capital ships plus escort squadrons and support craft. It was stated before in BFG that all of Segmentum Obscurus' operates 900 Cruiser-class vessels. Those are really the only 2 things as far as numbers go and of course does not include Space Marine vessels, local defense fleets operated by PDF's, Arbites patrol vessels, Inquisitiorial Strike Cruisers, the League of Black Ships, Ecclesiarchy craft, etc.

most sci-fi authors don't have a great grasp of numbers required for military formations. Typically Regiments are depicted as having a few thousand troops and then they take worlds with a handful of regiments. Taking WW2 as an example of the most recent industrial scale global conflict, troop numbers were much greater. A division might have anything from 50-150k guys, made up from not too many regiments. Also if you take an infantry regiment, only half of those guys will be riflemen. The rest will be specialists, vehicle crews and logistics staff.

You could easily have a Guard regiment of 20,000 guys split into battallions of several companies each. I think the problem is that people concentrate on the US version of Regiments as a defined size of formation, rather than the more traditional UK definition of a regiment being an organizational construct that coul d be made up of a variety of sizes of formation.

There are figures in 40k as diverse as 1,000 to 750,000 (Xenos by Abnett). It varies dependant upon the world raising the regiment and the tithes demanded by the Munitorum.

Without going into detailed research, all I'll say is a 40k regiment is specifically NOT the size of a real world regiment and would be magnitudes larger for most worlds.

Simply put, the life of a human is worth far less in 40k than in real life, and when the prototypical regiment's(read: not Cadian) main tactic consists of clogging your enemies war machines with bodies, you're going to need a lot of bodies.

A regiment varies wildly. It can be from a few dozen super heavy tank crews to well over a hundred thousand. As they will often never see the homeworld again, will not get reinforcements to replace loses, it tends to be large.

On the navy, as was said about 50-70 main capital ships is the average for a sector. some have much, much larger numbers.

Flinty wrote:most sci-fi authors don't have a great grasp of numbers required for military formations. Typically Regiments are depicted as having a few thousand troops and then they take worlds with a handful of regiments. Taking WW2 as an example of the most recent industrial scale global conflict, troop numbers were much greater. A division might have anything from 50-150k guys, made up from not too many regiments. Also if you take an infantry regiment, only half of those guys will be riflemen. The rest will be specialists, vehicle crews and logistics staff.

You could easily have a Guard regiment of 20,000 guys split into battallions of several companies each. I think the problem is that people concentrate on the US version of Regiments as a defined size of formation, rather than the more traditional UK definition of a regiment being an organizational construct that coul d be made up of a variety of sizes of formation.

No, divisions during the war had ~8,000-12,000 men in them.
But it does make me laugh when sci-fi writers say that "The Imperial Guard numbers billions of troops". 21st Century Earth could probably manage that at a push.

Hunterindarkness wrote:
On the navy, as was said about 50-70 main capital ships is the average for a sector. some have much, much larger numbers.

That's overstating it:

Each battlefleet consists of 50 to 75 warships of varying size, although in some sectors this will more or less, according to the importance of the sector and the number of enemies it must contend with. As well as these destroyers, frigates, cruisers, and battleships...

p. 86, Battlefleet Gothic rulebook

It is 50 to 75 warships of all sizes, meaning not all are capital ships and are escort sized.

Joey wrote:

Flinty wrote:most sci-fi authors don't have a great grasp of numbers required for military formations. Typically Regiments are depicted as having a few thousand troops and then they take worlds with a handful of regiments. Taking WW2 as an example of the most recent industrial scale global conflict, troop numbers were much greater. A division might have anything from 50-150k guys, made up from not too many regiments. Also if you take an infantry regiment, only half of those guys will be riflemen. The rest will be specialists, vehicle crews and logistics staff.

You could easily have a Guard regiment of 20,000 guys split into battallions of several companies each. I think the problem is that people concentrate on the US version of Regiments as a defined size of formation, rather than the more traditional UK definition of a regiment being an organizational construct that coul d be made up of a variety of sizes of formation.

No, divisions during the war had ~8,000-12,000 men in them.
But it does make me laugh when sci-fi writers say that "The Imperial Guard numbers billions of troops". 21st Century Earth could probably manage that at a push.

I've seen some number crunching that says that the hive worlds alone could raise quadrillions of soldiers if the Imperium had need of such massive numbers. And according to the Strategic Council of Terra, the Tyranids alone would require that. Whatever happens, I think a bowl of popcorn is called for.

Iracundus wrote:

Hunterindarkness wrote:
On the navy, as was said about 50-70 main capital ships is the average for a sector. some have much, much larger numbers.

That's overstating it:

Each battlefleet consists of 50 to 75 warships of varying size, although in some sectors this will more or less, according to the importance of the sector and the number of enemies it must contend with. As well as these destroyers, frigates, cruisers, and battleships...

p. 86, Battlefleet Gothic rulebook

It is 50 to 75 warships of all sizes, meaning not all are capital ships and are escort sized.

Eh I was counting those, I was not counting transports, shuttles and the like as you can most likely almost double or triple a fleets size with these, much less things like fighters. Perhaps i should have said "warship", sorry if I was unclear. Even a 40k destroyer like a cobra can lay waste to a planet.

Joey wrote:
No, divisions during the war had ~8,000-12,000 men in them.
But it does make me laugh when sci-fi writers say that "The Imperial Guard numbers billions of troops". 21st Century Earth could probably manage that at a push.

Current World armed forces are about 100million, so about 10% of that. If pushed the world probably could manage a wimpy US billion. However no where near a proper UK billion.

Electro wrote:

Joey wrote:
No, divisions during the war had ~8,000-12,000 men in them.
But it does make me laugh when sci-fi writers say that "The Imperial Guard numbers billions of troops". 21st Century Earth could probably manage that at a push.

Current World armed forces are about 100million, so about 10% of that. If pushed the world probably could manage a wimpy US billion. However no where near a proper UK billion.

Damn you differences in the English language, damn you to hell. Some spelling differences are okay, but having billion be different in the US and UK is confusing as hell.

Buttons wrote:

Electro wrote:

Joey wrote:
No, divisions during the war had ~8,000-12,000 men in them.
But it does make me laugh when sci-fi writers say that "The Imperial Guard numbers billions of troops". 21st Century Earth could probably manage that at a push.

Current World armed forces are about 100million, so about 10% of that. If pushed the world probably could manage a wimpy US billion. However no where near a proper UK billion.

Damn you differences in the English language, damn you to hell. Some spelling differences are okay, but having billion be different in the US and UK is confusing as hell.

Ya know up until now I did not know there was a difference. It really does not matter as the UK has adopted the American usage. It I had to guess I would say the older Uk usage was the archaic meaning of the word, and the American usage was changed to fit into standard tens counting.

i feel 4k-12k is a good estimate for an average regiment. when you see far greater numbers than that it is probably a one time thing to levy troops meet a certain threat at the time. The command structure would probably seem chaotic at times i bet.

But it does make me laugh when sci-fi writers say that "The Imperial Guard numbers billions of troops". 21st Century Earth could probably manage that at a push.

Only if it drafted every able-bodied man between the ages of 18 and 45 could Earth field an army of 1 billion people. If we included women, and drafted all of them capable of military service, we might see an army of 3 billion people. Maybe. And that's almost half the total population of the planet, incidentally. Our actual military capability would, in all likelihood, be much, much less.

I really think that the term "Regiment" is used because it sounds cool and because its a well known infantry unit over in Britain.

The fact is the structure for the Imperium is a bit silly and not really believable. It's a secondary thing and unimportant. They range wildly in size for the same due to population differences, casualties, and role. For example a modern Military Intelligence Brigade will have significantly less personnel than a Infantry Brigade. I believe, but may be incorrect, that Infantry units tend to be proportionally larger than other units.

Also keep in mind that support staff is largely ignored unless a tiny portion is introduced for story-line purposes....and then only for a short glimmer.

Story-wise;

Medics are cool.....Field Hospitals are boring.
Armoured vehicles are awesome......Mechanics? Yawn!
Firing guns? YAY.....Driving around with ammo and fuel? Nay.
Calling in close contact artillery strikes rocks......Making sure communication lines are kept up sucks.

and so on....

There isn't an average regiment.

Regiment size depends entirely on the type of regiment.



Gaunt's Ghosts are around 5000 at full strength, but they are a scout not a front line regiment.

Armored Regiments will be fewer in number but will have their armored elements making up for it.

Foot regiments will be the largest.


It may also vary depending on where the regiment was raised.

Harriticus wrote:IG Regiments are typically depicted as being between 2,000 to 20,000, but it varies massively. Really it's stupidly small if you're below the 100,000 level given what their missions involve.

BFG stated that a Battlefleet (one that operates at a Sector Level) consists of usually 70 capital ships plus escort squadrons and support craft. It was stated before in BFG that all of Segmentum Obscurus' operates 900 Cruiser-class vessels. Those are really the only 2 things as far as numbers go and of course does not include Space Marine vessels, local defense fleets operated by PDF's, Arbites patrol vessels, Inquisitiorial Strike Cruisers, the League of Black Ships, Ecclesiarchy craft, etc.

It's likely that a large sector of thousands of worlds would have tens of thousands of ships, counting all the small ones, while a smaller sector might have only around 1,000. Even WWII armies had thousands of ships. People make 40k armies way too small.

The Wehrmacht was 18 million soldiers.

Hunterindarkness wrote:

Buttons wrote:

Electro wrote:

Joey wrote:
No, divisions during the war had ~8,000-12,000 men in them.
But it does make me laugh when sci-fi writers say that "The Imperial Guard numbers billions of troops". 21st Century Earth could probably manage that at a push.

Current World armed forces are about 100million, so about 10% of that. If pushed the world probably could manage a wimpy US billion. However no where near a proper UK billion.

Damn you differences in the English language, damn you to hell. Some spelling differences are okay, but having billion be different in the US and UK is confusing as hell.

Ya know up until now I did not know there was a difference. It really does not matter as the UK has adopted the American usage. It I had to guess I would say the older Uk usage was the archaic meaning of the word, and the American usage was changed to fit into standard tens counting.

Incorrect, in the UK a billion is still defined as a million million (12 zeros) rather than the american ~100 million = billion (9 zeros). GW is a UK company so it sounds reasonable to assume they use the UK format of a billion I.E. 1,000,000,000,000.

Inquisitor Ehrenstein wrote:

Harriticus wrote:IG Regiments are typically depicted as being between 2,000 to 20,000, but it varies massively. Really it's stupidly small if you're below the 100,000 level given what their missions involve.

BFG stated that a Battlefleet (one that operates at a Sector Level) consists of usually 70 capital ships plus escort squadrons and support craft. It was stated before in BFG that all of Segmentum Obscurus' operates 900 Cruiser-class vessels. Those are really the only 2 things as far as numbers go and of course does not include Space Marine vessels, local defense fleets operated by PDF's, Arbites patrol vessels, Inquisitiorial Strike Cruisers, the League of Black Ships, Ecclesiarchy craft, etc.

It's likely that a large sector of thousands of worlds would have tens of thousands of ships, counting all the small ones, while a smaller sector might have only around 1,000. Even WWII armies had thousands of ships. People make 40k armies way too small.

The Wehrmacht was 18 million soldiers.

Engaged in million man battles with the USSR.

Hell, I think WW2 alone is bigger than any war I know of in 40k.

DxM Scotty MxD wrote:

Incorrect, in the UK a billion is still defined as a million million (12 zeros) rather than the american ~100 million = billion (9 zeros). GW is a UK company so it sounds reasonable to assume they use the UK format of a billion I.E. 1,000,000,000,000.

No, I looked it up. Officially GB uses the American version. They switched in 1975 under Chancellor Denis Healey. Some people may still use it but officially the country uses the American version.

Steelmage99 wrote:Also keep in mind that support staff is largely ignored unless a tiny portion is introduced for story-line purposes....and then only for a short glimmer.

Spot on. People want to read about the action, whether that's imperial guard troopers pouring into the breach as fast as the front lines can die or heroic space marines taking out ten times their number in a brutal swift strike.

Guardsman Joe and Tim sweating while hauling up ammo crates for the HW teams? Servitors under the guidance of chapter serf Michael restocking a Rhino? Nah... Boring. Besides, the actual games are also so short that they don't need to deal with supplies so there's no reason to even think about it.

Amaya wrote:

Inquisitor Ehrenstein wrote:

Harriticus wrote:IG Regiments are typically depicted as being between 2,000 to 20,000, but it varies massively. Really it's stupidly small if you're below the 100,000 level given what their missions involve.

BFG stated that a Battlefleet (one that operates at a Sector Level) consists of usually 70 capital ships plus escort squadrons and support craft. It was stated before in BFG that all of Segmentum Obscurus' operates 900 Cruiser-class vessels. Those are really the only 2 things as far as numbers go and of course does not include Space Marine vessels, local defense fleets operated by PDF's, Arbites patrol vessels, Inquisitiorial Strike Cruisers, the League of Black Ships, Ecclesiarchy craft, etc.

It's likely that a large sector of thousands of worlds would have tens of thousands of ships, counting all the small ones, while a smaller sector might have only around 1,000. Even WWII armies had thousands of ships. People make 40k armies way too small.

The Wehrmacht was 18 million soldiers.

Engaged in million man battles with the USSR.

Hell, I think WW2 alone is bigger than any war I know of in 40k.

Yeah, that's the problem. WWII should be a tiny battle in 40k, and yet a lot of people shout out figures that are inferior even to that.

Inquisitor Ehrenstein wrote:It's likely that a large sector of thousands of worlds would have tens of thousands of ships, counting all the small ones

Nope. Fluff states ~70, therefore it is ~70. Sectors don't vary too much in size. Certainly not enough to justify the existance of a fleet more than one hundred times the size of a 'usual' fleet.

I think I recall reading of 200+ ships in a sectors but can't recall where or which one, On the same note some sectors could have as few as 30-40 warships.

@ Kaldor, I though a sector was an area of space, not a number of planets. I know for example the Calixs Sector exceeds that number by a bit with 177 known worlds. I am unsure of its fleet size but by fluff it seems to be on the larger side of the scale.

...Why does this matter at all? Is someone planning on making an entire regiment? Good luck finding a game big enough to use it in, let alone painting ten thousand Guardsmen. At the end of the day, how many Guardsmen/capital ships/Space Marines/Adeptas Sororitas/Craftworlds/Chaos Marines/whatever there are in the galaxy shouldn't affect any background you're writing or army you're building unless you're a munchkin who wants to put the entire Purifier Order on the table at once or something like that. Just avoid stepping on other peoples' toes when you're writing fluff (avoid contradicting the fluff if you're trying to make a force from an established organization (no Aspect Warrior-heavy Ulthwe armies, for instance), for instance), and you should be fine.

Given the sheer size of 40k ships and how difficult they are to manufacture for the Imperium, the ~70 Capital Ships would be a good number for a Sector, though it should obviously have many thousands supporting, patrol, and escort craft to go with it.

Really I think the minimum size for a Regiment, a self-sufficent fighting force capable of waging planet-wide campaigns, should be about 500,000. I'd even keep my suspension of disbelief at 250,000.

I'm not really sure why GW has such an issue with big numbers. The Imperium has a million worlds, but everything else in 40k is fairly small. Even the huge Ork Waaagh! on Armageddon is about 2 million or so Orks. North Korea had more troops in South Korea then that.

Harriticus wrote:Given the sheer size of 40k ships and how difficult they are to manufacture for the Imperium, the ~70 Capital Ships would be a good number for a Sector, though it should obviously have many thousands supporting, patrol, and escort craft to go with it.

Really I think the minimum size for a Regiment, a self-sufficent fighting force capable of waging planet-wide campaigns, should be about 500,000. I'd even keep my suspension of disbelief at 250,000.

I'm not really sure why GW has such an issue with big numbers. The Imperium has a million worlds, but everything else in 40k is fairly small. Even the huge Ork Waaagh! on Armageddon is about 2 million or so Orks. North Korea had more troops in South Korea then that.

I agree about the numbers.

70 ships would have to be 70 capital ships, or at least major warships, as there's no way that would be able to include the smaller ships, and still be a significant force in wars the size of the galaxy.