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I recently re-read the Space Marine codex, because you know its not like I have anything else to do, and I discovered something that really doesn't make any sense. Originally there were 20 legions of Space Marines, each of which numbered aproximately 10000 marines, that puts the grand total for marines during the Great Crusade at 200000. With this number of marines the Emperor manged to conquer most of the galaxy without much resistance untill the Horus Heresy happened and now instead of conquering the entire galaxy the Imperium is struggleing to survive. The thing there is no reason why they shouldn't be conquering the galaxy since they actually have five times as many marines as they did during the great crusade. Currently there are a thousand chapters each numbering about a thousand marines putting current space marine numders at 1000000.

Am I missing something here? Why isn't the Imperium just dominating everyhing like they did in the Great Crusade?

The legions mostly numbered over 10,000 marines...
IIRC the Ultramarines had something like 600,000 marines...

Legions varied greatly in strength/size. The Thousand Sons and Emperor's Children were tiny comparitvely, whereas the Ultramarines and Word Bearers both had over 300,000.

The main reason for this was gene-seed production and replication, each Primarch had their own issues with it.

The threats from without and within are much greater now than they were during the Crusade and the Imperium does not have the same level of leadership it once had, as well.

Blood Angels were known as one of the smaller legions, and in Fear to Tread we learn that they were 125,000 strong, organized into 300 companies.

The Great Crusade was so successful due to the fact that it involved a massive wave of Human military, naval units and Space Marines acting as an all consuming wave, this was great but came at a price. With so little oversight people with egos became dangerous, leading to the Horus Heresy.

With all the military branches divided and further sud-divided and massive heresy will be hard to form but has lead to slower response to threats and a weaked military potential.

Well this got answered fast. Thanks guys for sorting this out for me, I had heard that the numbers in The legions changed greatly overtime, but I had no idea they got anywhere near 300,000 in number.

300,000 is an exaggeration.

The Ultramarines were the largest, around the time of the battle of Calth they numbered around 250,000 astartes.

Most of the other legions seemed to weigh around the 100,000 mark, with some -- like the Thousand Sons -- being far smaller, consisting of only a few thousand astartes.

Plus there was, you know, between 19 and 21 unkillable monsters that would basically be capable of taking a planet by themselves and then moving on (as many of them did before being found). In 40k the only monsters that powerful are all daemonic or MIA at best.

Well only tiny legions had 10,000. The SW, TS, and EC come to mind for being around there. The UM had about 250k and WB 200k. Most resided in a happy medium, between 100 and 175

And a primarch. Don't forget the primarch! They're probably worth another 100+ in themselves, and then there's old empy-poo of mankind!

Primarchs, while incredibly powerful no-doubt, don't really come into it when discussing the size of a Legion.

Yeah, though when factoring in power, awesome weapons, morale benefits, and so on I wouldn't be surprised if they counted for 200 marines each...
But you're right of course.

If we're going with numbers, how about the imperial army? Was it bigger than the imperial guard in 40k?

 p_gray99 wrote:
Yeah, though when factoring in power, awesome weapons, morale benefits, and so on I wouldn't be surprised if they counted for 200 marines each...
But you're right of course.

If we're going with numbers, how about the imperial army? Was it bigger than the imperial guard in 40k?

I doubt even a Primarch could face 200 marines, maybe count for them, but I highly doubt anyone (except the Emperor and such) could face 200 marines.

 p_gray99 wrote:
Yeah, though when factoring in power, awesome weapons, morale benefits, and so on I wouldn't be surprised if they counted for 200 marines each...
But you're right of course.

If we're going with numbers, how about the imperial army? Was it bigger than the imperial guard in 40k?

Initially I believe it would of been smaller as they had less planets to draw on although the total manpower count could be close as the Imperial Army was split into the Guard and Navy

p_gray99 wrote:Yeah, though when factoring in power, awesome weapons, morale benefits, and so on I wouldn't be surprised if they counted for 200 marines each...

I think Primarchs get blown out of proportion quite a bit, as if they'd be unstoppable behemoths of war, very likely due to various legends and a "colourful" language when describing what they did. Yet, at the end of the day, Rogal Dorn was killed by a bunch of CSMs defending the bridge of a starship he and his Astartes had boarded.

p_gray99 wrote:If we're going with numbers, how about the imperial army? Was it bigger than the imperial guard in 40k?

I don't think the Imperial Army was bigger - but it was surely better organised and had more advanced equipment. Nowadays, the IoM has long since stopped handing out Land Raiders and grav vehicles to the Guard, and the Munitorum occasionally even raises regiments that go into battle wielding spears and muskets.

Ultras had 1 million marines, calth killed roughly 40% of those (as said in the book) and that left about 600k left, the ultras were insanely massive, its not an exageration

When it comes to Primarchs it varies greatly from Author to Author, in Battle of the Fang Magnus pretty much face stomps everyone including a butt ton of dreads and multiple squads of marines, then he buys it to the Great Wolf.....

In Fulgrim and First Heretic it describes the Dropsite Massacre battle and pretty much the Primarchs are unkillable death machines unless facing another Primarch, even Lorgar the weakest of the weak was knocking around marines like Sauron in a elvish daycare.

 Ratbarf wrote:
When it comes to Primarchs it varies greatly from Author to Author, in Battle of the Fang Magnus pretty much face stomps everyone including a butt ton of dreads and multiple squads of marines, then he buys it to the Great Wolf.....

In Fulgrim and First Heretic it describes the Dropsite Massacre battle and pretty much the Primarchs are unkillable death machines unless facing another Primarch, even Lorgar the weakest of the weak was knocking around marines like Sauron in a elvish daycare.

To be fair, that's pretty equal IMHO, Magnus did...


They're all basically like Greater Daemons or Sauron as you (so brilliantly) described, but they're not infallible, as shown by Fulgrim almost losing to an Avatar, Kurze vs. Lion and friends, Magnus vs. Titans (then a company+ of Space Wolves) and Sanguinius to a Bloodthirster etc.

Formosa wrote:Ultras had 1 million marines [...]

wat

The last number I saw printed in a GW publication was
"Mustered into the great, ten thousand strong Legions of the First Founding, they were warriors of immense strength and unbreakable willpower, with an unflinching loyalty to the Emperor."
- 5E Codex: Space Marines

That said, Index Astartes said that the old Legions were unlimited in size, so perhaps the above is just the average. I've also heard from some licensed publications (was it the Horus Heresy books?) having bumped the number considerably, but even there it surely wasn't a million for a single Legion? That seems pretty excessive - even in Black Library books, the most I heard was 100.000 for a Legion. Where is the million from?

Ratbarf wrote:When it comes to Primarchs it varies greatly from Author to Author [...]

One of the biggest problems with the franchise - and not just where Primarchs are concerned. Given how the continuity is handled, however, we have little choice other than to select the version we as individuals feel most comfortable with, be it the Codex fluff or one of the many novel interpretations.

Primarchs regularly exercise their pimp hands. Nuff said

The disparity between the sources is probably easiest explained as legend (although probably unintentional on the BL's part). It's been 10,000 years since the Heresy and Crusade, and the 6th ed fluff clearly states that all history from this time is forgotten and unreliable. It has devolved to legend, and all fluff about it should be treated as such.

IIRC, Know no Fear states that Guilliman mobilized about 200,000 marines and lost roughly half of them at Calth. I don't remember if it said how many marines he had available to him in total though.

What Formosa said was completely innaccurate/exaggerated. Since the publication of the last Space Marine Codex (hence the disparity), Black Library/the Horus Heresy team has very deliberately increased the number of marines in a Legion from the tens of thousands, to the hundreds of thousands. AFAIK (a Dan Abnett vid blog explained it best IIRC), its not disparity or due to legend, but a concious and relatively recent change.

The latest/now-'true' figures are basically what Reds8n and AngrySquig said:

TheAngrySquig wrote:Well only tiny legions had 10,000. The SW, TS, and EC come to mind for being around there. The UM had about 250k and WB 200k. Most resided in a happy medium, between 100 and 175

reds8n wrote:300,000 is an exaggeration.

The Ultramarines were the largest, around the time of the battle of Calth they numbered around 250,000 astartes.

Most of the other legions seemed to weigh around the 100,000 mark, with some -- like the Thousand Sons -- being far smaller, consisting of only a few thousand astartes.

And don't forget the Dropsite Massacre at Istvaan. The Raven Guard alone lost about 75,000 marines there.

 Just Dave wrote:

 Ratbarf wrote:
When it comes to Primarchs it varies greatly from Author to Author, in Battle of the Fang Magnus pretty much face stomps everyone including a butt ton of dreads and multiple squads of marines, then he buys it to the Great Wolf.....

In Fulgrim and First Heretic it describes the Dropsite Massacre battle and pretty much the Primarchs are unkillable death machines unless facing another Primarch, even Lorgar the weakest of the weak was knocking around marines like Sauron in a elvish daycare.

To be fair, that's pretty equal IMHO, Magnus did...

Spoiler:

Kill 2 Wolf Lords, several Wolf Guard, High Rune Priest, High Wolf Priest, practically Bjorn and all the others you mentioned.

They're all basically like Greater Daemons or Sauron as you (so brilliantly) described, but they're not infallible, as shown by Fulgrim almost losing to an Avatar, Kurze vs. Lion and friends, Magnus vs. Titans (then a company+ of Space Wolves) and Sanguinius to a Bloodthirster etc.

Sanguinius got distracted while fighting that Bloodthirster, thats why it beat him. He was beating it pretty badly until the Thirster told him about Horus.

He then went on to break the Bloodthirsters back over his knee outside Daddy's Palace.

Much more powerful than a Bloodthirster considering Ka'Banda was known to be one of the strongest BloodThirsters.

 pretre wrote:
The threats from without and within are much greater now than they were during the Crusade and the Imperium does not have the same level of leadership it once had, as well.

This is the biggest change, not the number of Astartes/Imperial Guard.

Humanity was united under the Emperor, had peerless generals in the Primarchs, were unburdened by the beurocracy that plagues the current Imperium (though it was starting), encountered xenos empires were relatively small, and more importantly, did not have the huge amount of mutants, psykers and heretics to deal with internally (up until Erebus and Kor Phaeron got uppity).

As it is now, humanity is not quite as united, its followers are fractured into their own beleif circles, the military leaders often fall to petty power squabbling, the Astartes follow their own agendas, the administratum and munitorum have a great deal of control over dispotion of the Imperial Guard logistics, internal warfare and policing is rife, and they are beset on all sides by emergant xenos races that are united in their efforts like the Necrons and Tyranids, and also now the forces of Chaos.

How the Imperium actually makes any progress at all anymore is remarkable.

 -Loki- wrote:

 pretre wrote:
The threats from without and within are much greater now than they were during the Crusade and the Imperium does not have the same level of leadership it once had, as well.

This is the biggest change, not the number of Astartes/Imperial Guard.

Humanity was united under the Emperor, had peerless generals in the Primarchs, were unburdened by the beurocracy that plagues the current Imperium (though it was starting), encountered xenos empires were relatively small, and more importantly, did not have the huge amount of mutants, psykers and heretics to deal with internally (up until Erebus and Kor Phaeron got uppity).

As it is now, humanity is not quite as united, its followers are fractured into their own beleif circles, the military leaders often fall to petty power squabbling, the Astartes follow their own agendas, the administratum and munitorum have a great deal of control over dispotion of the Imperial Guard logistics, internal warfare and policing is rife, and they are beset on all sides by emergant xenos races that are united in their efforts like the Necrons and Tyranids, and also now the forces of Chaos.

How the Imperium actually makes any progress at all anymore is remarkable.

This.
What you know of the Horus Heresy is a mixture of fluff-slackness (as mentioned above) and legend. And until the Heresy, there wasn't so much Grimdark. The Imperium almost completely collapsed after the Heresy; what we have now is the most amazing balancing-spinning-plates trick you can ever imagine. All those marines don't really count as much as the Emperor, and when he was crippled, it was worse than Stalin's little breakdown in 1941. The Imperium as we know it has been static because stasis is the very best they could achieve under the circumstances. To take 10000 years to collapse is pretty impressive actually, considering.

And marines are overrated anyway, nothing quite like the military history of the last ten years to point out how much of a difference there is between conquering somewhere and effectively holding it and bringing it into line with your core values. A lot of those marines were too busy chasing vendettas to help in the long run, there was no centralised control, and when the smoke cleared there was another problem, and another.

It's all part of the Star Child's plan anyway

The current Imperium is very different than the Imperium of 30K. Sure there may be more Astartes, but the Imperium is besieged by more threats, the Dark Eldar have grown considerably in power, several powerful Ork warbosses have risen, the Tyranids are pouring into the galaxy, and the Necrons are just now beginning to rise. Not to mention that Segmentum Pacificus revolts like every 1000 years and the Imperium is constantly being harassed by dozens or hundreds of mini xenos (and sometimes human) empire, in addition to more complicated things such as the Harrowing. The Emperor didn't have to deal with the Harrowing, the emperor didn't have to deal with a new major hive fleet every 3 years, the emperor didn't have to deal with numerous large scale Dark Eldar raids, and perhaps most importantly the Emperor was able to focus his forces so the minor empires across the galaxy could be easily conquered.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Captain Roderick wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:

 pretre wrote:
The threats from without and within are much greater now than they were during the Crusade and the Imperium does not have the same level of leadership it once had, as well.

This is the biggest change, not the number of Astartes/Imperial Guard.

Humanity was united under the Emperor, had peerless generals in the Primarchs, were unburdened by the beurocracy that plagues the current Imperium (though it was starting), encountered xenos empires were relatively small, and more importantly, did not have the huge amount of mutants, psykers and heretics to deal with internally (up until Erebus and Kor Phaeron got uppity).

As it is now, humanity is not quite as united, its followers are fractured into their own beleif circles, the military leaders often fall to petty power squabbling, the Astartes follow their own agendas, the administratum and munitorum have a great deal of control over dispotion of the Imperial Guard logistics, internal warfare and policing is rife, and they are beset on all sides by emergant xenos races that are united in their efforts like the Necrons and Tyranids, and also now the forces of Chaos.

How the Imperium actually makes any progress at all anymore is remarkable.

This.
What you know of the Horus Heresy is a mixture of fluff-slackness (as mentioned above) and legend. And until the Heresy, there wasn't so much Grimdark. The Imperium almost completely collapsed after the Heresy; what we have now is the most amazing balancing-spinning-plates trick you can ever imagine. All those marines don't really count as much as the Emperor, and when he was crippled, it was worse than Stalin's little breakdown in 1941. The Imperium as we know it has been static because stasis is the very best they could achieve under the circumstances. To take 10000 years to collapse is pretty impressive actually, considering.

And marines are overrated anyway, nothing quite like the military history of the last ten years to point out how much of a difference there is between conquering somewhere and effectively holding it and bringing it into line with your core values. A lot of those marines were too busy chasing vendettas to help in the long run, there was no centralised control, and when the smoke cleared there was another problem, and another.

It's all part of the Star Child's plan anyway

And this.