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I've been trying to plan how to make a space marine company for a while now. I have a good understand of how the marines themselves are organized, however, I have a much lesser understanding of how the armoury is organized.
My questions are along these lines:
-What is a chapter generally given at creation?
-What does your average codex chapter have?
-What do more established chapters (e.g. Ultramarines, Iron Hands, etc.) have?
Any other imformation would be highly appreciated

Bolters and armor en masse, fewer special weapons, and some heavy weapons are coveted relics (Plasma Cannon)

Thank you that helps a little, and I apoloize for vaugeties , but I was looking more at vehicles in the armoury.

Oh well in that case they would have 40 Predators, 10 Vindicators, 20 Whirlwinds, 45 LRs, and quite a few Rhinos, 100-150 Id say

Many thanks, and that would be split across the 10 companies as needed i take it?

Each company will have its own compliment of light vehicles like Land Speeders and Rhinos.

The only exception i believe is that 1st Company will have its own Land Raiders.

Yes, Heavy Vehicles such as Predators, Vindicators, and Whirlwinds are all assigned on a mission by mission basis. So its safe to assume if a company requests Predator support or anything else for a mission, it will be assigned to them by the Master of the Forge.

IIRC It's the 7th company that has all the land speeders (And bikes) they are attached to a company when their support is requested or deemed necessary.

The 7th company doesn't have all the chapters Bikes and Speeders. They have enough Bikes/speeders to be a fully mobilised company but the other companies have their own bikes & speeders also, usually enough for the assault squads to use all though the tactical squads/marines are also capable of fullfilling the role of drivers for them obviously..

I was able to find this in my research on this, but I'm not sure where it's from.
One of my big questions now is about how many of the company vehicles would they be assigned?

The SM codex has a better chart to be honest...

I figured that'd be the case, but with the release of the next codex looming and the lack of funds I don't really wanna bother with it yet.

So far as I'm aware, the Ultramarines are the only chapter that has ever had numbers for tanks and equipment given to it.
The current Space Marine codex lists the Ultramarines' armoury as including: Master of the Forge, 27 Techmarines, 95 Tech servitors, 25 Predators, 8 Vindicators, 9 Whirlwinds, 12 Land Raiders.

The first company would get its land raiders from the 12 in the armoury.
Looking at the other numbers, it seems likely that there would be 10 vindicators and 10 whirlwinds when at full strength.
Rhinos are not given but there should be at least enough rhinos to carry the entire chapter plus extras. Bikes and land speeders also exist in unknown numbers. Bikes you can expect there to be a lot of, they are not rare technology.



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endlesswaltz123 wrote:
The 7th company doesn't have all the chapters Bikes and Speeders. They have enough Bikes/speeders to be a fully mobilised company but the other companies have their own bikes & speeders also, usually enough for the assault squads to use all though the tactical squads/marines are also capable of fullfilling the role of drivers for them obviously..

This. The 7th can be entirely equipped with these vehicles, but they don't have every single bike and speeder. What that means though is that the chapter has at least 50 land speeders and 100 bikes. You can probably double the number of bikes and maybe add at least another 25 speeders. Speeders are supposed to have hard to produce anti-grav technology afterall.


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As for a company, a line company only consists of captain, 5 man command squad, chaplain, probably a librarian, 6 tac squads, 2 assault squads, 2 dev squads, and a couple of dreads. Everything else like rhinos are extra and are given based on the mission the company is going to do.

Thank you cadbren, I've been hounding the forums, and any source i could for the past few days on an answer and some were kinda odd .
Hmm, so basically your average codex chapter should have somewhere around 10 each of vindicators, land raiders and whirlwinds. Roughly 20-30 predators, 50-75 land speeders, 100-200 bikes and 150-250 rhinos (permutations included) ?
I can cope with numbers like that, seems believable for a force that size. I still wonder about thunderfire cannons but I'd expect there to be around 10 of those as well. Not to mention, on average 20-30 dreads.
Also if those totals are semi-accurate I'd expect an average batte company would end up with something along the lines of:
1-2 vindicators, thunderfire cannons & whirlwinds
4-6 predators
~10 land speeders
~20 bikes
~15 rhinos
2-3 dreads
and if they had a veteran termie squad attached
1-2 land raiders
not too shabby

No problems, it is quite subjective though and GW keep updating their own fluff. There were no stormtalons when the last codex was released so they aren't in the list.
Thunderfires aren't mentioned either and they were around so maybe they're common enough to not bother listing.
They also don't mention transports like the thunderhawk transporter unless they're included under the thunderhawk listing, nor do they list tempests.

Yeah, on the one hand it's good that GW does that. I mean it leaves the universe open for anything, but on the other hand it also makes it a bit difficult to have something cool.

The only thing I would say is that the Chapter wouldn't have 150-200 Rhinos. That's a bit over kill, as there is roughly 1000 marines in the chapter so all they would need is 100 + 5/6 or so for chapter command maybe and then take into account terminators needing land raiders. I'd put them at having no more than 110 rhinos, if that, probably around the 90's.

Basically, I doubt you would see or justify more than 10 Rhinos in a company, you also have forgot Razorbacks!

That was why the number of "rhinos" was so high, because I included permutations such as the razorbacks and damocles command rhino.
Part of my reasoning for that was the fact that in a pinch they could probobly convert them back into rhinos.

Not to mention there would be some spares around. The Rhino's whole purpose is to be driven into area's where damage will occur.

Still far too high an estimation. A chapter typically will have under 20 Razorbacks, under 10 specialist Rhinos and then the rest would be normal Rhino.

Also, they don't leave the chassis on the planet if it has sustained damage, they will typically retrieve and repair, so the instances of needed that many rhinos in back up are redundant as it's built to be a very sturdy vehicle that is easy to repair and get moving again, lastly the instances of the whole chapter being mechanized for war are slim, especially the whole chapter travelling directly into a battle completely mechanized. About 100 Rhinos is correct and is what is stated in most chapter organisation charts I have seen.

Makes sense but I would still say 100-150 of the chassis all considered
90-100 for use by battle brothers
~20 in the form of razorbacks
~10 in the form of specialist rhinos
and ~10 as "backup"


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As far as the aircraft go atm I just wanna stay away form those till I know more about them... Between the thunderhawk, storm raven and storm talon that might get silly, especially considering I have set the lofty goal of actually owning all these models at some point....
just remembered drop pods too...

I would not compare first founding chapters to 'established'chapters. The first found chapters have alot of pre-heresy technology in their armouries that a later founded chapter would never have access to.

I was expecting as much
There really is no easy answer to this kind of question sometimes....

Every chapter is different is the short answer, no two chapters will have exactly the same organisation.

With my chapter however (which is a typical codex chapter), no company has direct control over any vehicle (except dreadnoughts, but they're more like "super terminators" than tanks) every battlegroup requests vehicles on an as-need basis.

Tanks will have dedicated crews (meaning the full amount of marines in a chapter is closer to 1500) but bikes and speeders will be crewed by members of the companies themselves, again on an as-need basis.

Thunderhawks, Stormravens, transports ect are under the jurisdiction of the chapter fleet and are NOT crewed by space marines but rather chapter serfs (this is the case if you read the HH series).

Chapters upon creation will likely be given a limited amount of weaponry, however more can be produced by forgeworlds in return for the chapters protection, acquiring a strong fleet however would take far longer (they take decades if not centuries to build).

You can see the roster of vehicles for the Ultramarines in the SM codex, probably equivalent to the numbers of vehicles displayed by first/second founding chapters. A typical codex chapter will therefore have slightly less but again no two chapters are the same.

IIRC correctly the 4th edition SM codex had a trait system to make custom chapters. One trait was for newly-founded chapters that had limited numbers of terminator armor and other 'lost' tech.

So it would make sense that a newly-founded chapter might
find itself with few to no dreads, land raiders or terminators.

Land Speeders, rhinos and bikes seem to still be in general production.

My personal fluff is that vehicle are not normally crewed by full marines but by chapter serfs, servitors or marines too injured for front line duty. That explains the paradox of who drives the rhinos.

 vodo40k wrote:
Every chapter is different is the short answer, no two chapters will have exactly the same organisation.

With my chapter however (which is a typical codex chapter), no company has direct control over any vehicle (except dreadnoughts, but they're more like "super terminators" than tanks) every battlegroup requests vehicles on an as-need basis.

Tanks will have dedicated crews (meaning the full amount of marines in a chapter is closer to 1500) but bikes and speeders will be crewed by members of the companies themselves, again on an as-need basis.

Thunderhawks, Stormravens, transports ect are under the jurisdiction of the chapter fleet and are NOT crewed by space marines but rather chapter serfs (this is the case if you read the HH series).

Chapters upon creation will likely be given a limited amount of weaponry, however more can be produced by forgeworlds in return for the chapters protection, acquiring a strong fleet however would take far longer (they take decades if not centuries to build).

You can see the roster of vehicles for the Ultramarines in the SM codex, probably equivalent to the numbers of vehicles displayed by first/second founding chapters. A typical codex chapter will therefore have slightly less but again no two chapters are the same.

Maybe in 30k the Flying vehicles of the Marine armies are not piloted by Marines, but they are most definitely are in the 40k era.

I can see the truth in that, but I think that it makes more sense to have vehicles crewed by marines, possibly scouts, because of the taint of chaos and war in general...
Anyway that's just my take on things, and I think until I can get myself a few more sources of my own to look at I'll stick with what I got.

Like I said my idea of serf/servitor pilots is my personal fannon. GW art and models show marine pilots.

Last I checked vehicles aren't assigned to companies but are checked out of the armory on a mission-by-mission basis. There are Marines, Techmarines, and Servitors assigned directly to the Armory to handle the vehicles; given that the last canon data we had on crew sizes was 2 men for a Predator and 3 for a Land Raider I suspect that means most Chapters have the equivalent of an extra Company attached to the Armory.

I just noticed something, is scouts don't count toward the 1,000 for a codex legion and they have an extra company for vehicle pilots then it works out pretty well...

I always assumed the vehicles were piloted/gunned by members of the reserve companies otherwise they would see very little battle time which could make them sloppy and effect their experience if they're called upon to engage in a major total chapter engagement. This also mean I don't assume when a full chapter goes to war that there are a full 1000 marines on the ground, and the only excess marines over the 1000 were for the fleet, which wouldn't be many, serfs would fulfill 95% of ship roles, marines would be there to command and pilot Thunderhawks.