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The Munitorium Stormtroopers are obviously influenced by the Persian Immortals. Ten Thousand Men at all times, when one dies, another takes his place. However, doesn't this number seem a little small, all things considered? There are less Stormtroopers in the Galaxy than there are Space Marines. Sure, you have Grenadiers, Kasrkin and Inquisitorial Stormies, but for the Munitorium, they seem rather undermanned in the grand scheme of things. There are regiments bigger than the Stormtroopers.

What gives? In the Fluff, these guys are taken to the Schola Progenum, same as Commissar Candidates and other special functions military units. They are the deadliest non Space Marine soldiers that humanity has to offer, and they do it all through intense training and top of the line equipment. Shouldn't there be more of them? Or just how deadly can these squads be?

The Stormtrooper Regiment being a single Regiment is just GW having little idea of military size/manpower in their own universe. Really, it would make much sense for there to be an unstated amount of Storm Trooper Company's that are specially trained at the Schola and attached to Regiments on a need-to basis by the Departmento Munitorum.

That being said I don't think it has been stated that there are 10,000 Storm Troopers. Or how many there are for that matter.

GW numbers make little sense. A SM Chapter should be 10,000, a Regiment at minimum ~500,000, and Sororitas orders in the mid tens of thousands for it to be believable that they can do what they're said to do.

GW are pretty bad with numbers on a universal scale.

The number of Space Marines seems "a little small, all things considered", too. The Imperium simply makes do with what it has, and the Storm Troopers as well as the Sisters of Battle are simply the very best the Schola Progenium has to offer on a galaxy-wide scale. Of course the Imperium could just as well lower the high requirements for these troops, but this would undoubtedly affect the quality and thus capabilities of the overall force, as well as potentially throwing up logistical issues due to the need to procure more high-tech equipment.

One thing to consider: The Storm Troopers are not a force by themselves. They are an optional add-on that gets sent out to crisis warzones as part of the Munitorum's escalation doctrine. In theory, thus it does not matter much whether there are 1.000, 10.000 or 100.000 Storm Troopers - they won't be fighting all in one place anyways. All that you would achieve with a higher number would be the ability to cover more warzones. Then again, the term "crisis" is subjective, and you would then have to assess at what level you'd actually dispatch this elite force. As it stands, the Storm Trooper regiment is a top-level formation which can only be called in by Segmentum Command, and then have companies or squads attached to an existing command, augmenting it with deep-strike and infiltration capabilities.

Or in short: For what the Storm Troopers are supposed to do, their numbers are entirely sufficient.

Also, let's not forget that there are "Storm Trooper equivalents", which are way more numerous - they just don't get used the same way. This ranges from the Inquisition's own Storm Troopers (which are recruited from the same source) as well as the many Grenadier troops of various individual Imperial Guard regiments, right up to Cadian Kasrkin.

Harriticus wrote:That being said I don't think it has been stated that there are 10,000 Storm Troopers. Or how many there are for that matter.

2nd edition Codex Imperial Guard gave that number.

The Munitorium Stormtroopers are a small fraction of the regiments that are actually referred to as 'Stormtroopers' in the rules. Harakoni Warhawks and the Terrax Guard have been noted as maintaining at least ten thousand Stormtroopers all on their own; it's entirely plausible to say that every Schola facility has a few dedicated Stormtrooper regiments, and that doesn't even count other regiments that function as Stormtroopers under the rules but aren't trained at Schola facilities (the Kasrkins under the old Guard Codex, for instance). Claiming that this one Stormtrooper regiment of ten thousand demonstrates that the Stormtroopers are undermanned means about as much as claiming that the fact that there are only a thousand and a bit Ultramarines means the Space Marines are undermanned.

2nd edition said a lot of things. Remember the Goff Rokkaz?

Why do you need there to be a lot of storm troopers?

Goff Rockerz predated 2nd Edition, lol. But that's why old 40K was awesome, in its own way.

nomotog wrote:
Why do you need there to be a lot of storm troopers?

Because 10,000 across a whole Galaxy makes them irrelevant.

 Harriticus wrote:

nomotog wrote:
Why do you need there to be a lot of storm troopers?

Because 10,000 across a whole Galaxy makes them irrelevant.

Do they have have to be relevant?

AnomanderRake wrote:The Munitorium Stormtroopers are a small fraction of the regiments that are actually referred to as 'Stormtroopers' in the rules. Harakoni Warhawks and the Terrax Guard have been noted as maintaining at least ten thousand Stormtroopers all on their own; it's entirely plausible to say that every Schola facility has a few dedicated Stormtrooper regiments, and that doesn't even count other regiments that function as Stormtroopers under the rules but aren't trained at Schola facilities (the Kasrkins under the old Guard Codex, for instance).

In the rules, the other units are collectively termed "Grenadiers", and they are not regiments on their own but rather companies or platoons firmly integrated into the normal military raised by the respective planet. The term "Storm Troopers" is indeed only ever used for that one regiment (see 5E Codex IG), and any Grenadier formations would naturally be raised on the world the respective normal Guard regiment is tithed rather than in the Schola Progenium.

The only other kind of Storm Troopers ever mentioned to come out of the Schola Progenium would be the Inquisitorial Storm Troopers, though the available material sadly leaves it unclear whether they are trained in parallel to those Storm Troopers of the Imperial Guard, or whether the Inquisition would recruit its share out of active Storm Trooper companies.

That is, of course, only as far as GW's fluff is concerned, which one would not necessarily have to regard as gospel.

Harriticus wrote:

nomotog wrote:Why do you need there to be a lot of storm troopers?

Because 10,000 across a whole Galaxy makes them irrelevant.

The Storm Trooper regiment is like the Sisters of Battle or the Space Marines.

On a galaxy-wide scale, they are a pitifully small force, unable to save the Imperium all on their own. What they can do, however, is apply their unique capabilities to particularly important battles and thus help turn the tide, which in turn may affect the war as a whole. The small number of the Storm Trooper regiment merely means that they would only deploy to particularly important war zones, even less frequent than the Astartes or the Sororitas. However, unlike with the other two military forces, the Storm Troopers have an equivalent in the normal Imperial Guard in form of the already-mentioned Grenadiers, which are firmly attached to their various regiments rather than a mobile elite strike force that hops from battle to battle.

So perhaps it would be better to not think that the Storm Troopers are so few, but rather that they are an entirely optional add-on to be deployed to the most important theaters. They are not necessary, they are simply "nice to have".

Maybe it helps to compare the Storm Troopers to the Delta Force. It doesn't mean that there are no other troops more integrated into the conventional forces to deploy for similar missions - it only means that there is a small, separate force out there that will occasionally move in to help.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070604193401/http://www.armageddon3.com/English/Campaign/Troops/storm.html

While in the game proper, Grenadiers fulfill similar roles to Stormtroopers, minus certain special rules, in the fluff, their purpose can vary.

Krieg Grenadiers have probably the crappiest job in the Imperial Guard. Worse than regular footsloggers. A regular infantryman might find himself assigned to an artillery regiment or somewhere far from the frontlines.

Krieg Grenadiers are the first ones into every battle, and their casualty rates are appalling. They are used as spearhead units to make way for vehicle backup.

But back to stormtroopers themselves. If their numbers are so low, then they are extremely specialized, correct. There are less of them than there are Space Marines.

just how dire a situation would something need to be to warrant a Munitorium Stormtrooper deployment, when Grenadiers or Kasrkin for Cadians could suffice?

 Lynata wrote:

AnomanderRake wrote:The Munitorium Stormtroopers are a small fraction of the regiments that are actually referred to as 'Stormtroopers' in the rules. Harakoni Warhawks and the Terrax Guard have been noted as maintaining at least ten thousand Stormtroopers all on their own; it's entirely plausible to say that every Schola facility has a few dedicated Stormtrooper regiments, and that doesn't even count other regiments that function as Stormtroopers under the rules but aren't trained at Schola facilities (the Kasrkins under the old Guard Codex, for instance).

In the rules, the other units are collectively termed "Grenadiers", and they are not regiments on their own but rather companies or platoons firmly integrated into the normal military raised by the respective planet. The term "Storm Troopers" is indeed only ever used for that one regiment (see 5E Codex IG), and any Grenadier formations would naturally be raised on the world the respective normal Guard regiment is tithed rather than in the Schola Progenium.

The only other kind of Storm Troopers ever mentioned to come out of the Schola Progenium would be the Inquisitorial Storm Troopers, though the available material sadly leaves it unclear whether they are trained in parallel to those Storm Troopers of the Imperial Guard, or whether the Inquisition would recruit its share out of active Storm Trooper companies.

That is, of course, only as far as GW's fluff is concerned, which one would not necessarily have to regard as gospel.

Harriticus wrote:

nomotog wrote:Why do you need there to be a lot of storm troopers?

Because 10,000 across a whole Galaxy makes them irrelevant.

The Storm Trooper regiment is like the Sisters of Battle or the Space Marines.

On a galaxy-wide scale, they are a pitifully small force, unable to save the Imperium all on their own. What they can do, however, is apply their unique capabilities to particularly important battles and thus help turn the tide, which in turn may affect the war as a whole. The small number of the Storm Trooper regiment merely means that they would only deploy to particularly important war zones, even less frequent than the Astartes or the Sororitas. However, unlike with the other two military forces, the Storm Troopers have an equivalent in the normal Imperial Guard in form of the already-mentioned Grenadiers, which are firmly attached to their various regiments rather than a mobile elite strike force that hops from battle to battle.

So perhaps it would be better to not think that the Storm Troopers are so few, but rather that they are an entirely optional add-on to be deployed to the most important theaters. They are not necessary, they are simply "nice to have".

Maybe it helps to compare the Storm Troopers to the Delta Force. It doesn't mean that there are no other troops more integrated into the conventional forces to deploy for similar missions - it only means that there is a small, separate force out there that will occasionally move in to help.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070604193401/http://www.armageddon3.com/English/Campaign/Troops/storm.html

Spoiler:

Meh, there are more Special Forces in Syria then there are Imperial Stormtroopers. It's an absurdity and to expect for them to do anything, even in "important battles", they need to be more numerous. Ultra-elite used in special circumstances only goes so far.

10,000 doesn't sound like much to be spread out everywhere. 100,000 ya I can see that.

Is the Inq stormtroopers part of that 10,000?

Arcsquad12 wrote:just how dire a situation would something need to be to warrant a Munitorium Stormtrooper deployment, when Grenadiers or Kasrkin for Cadians could suffice?

Since Storm Troopers are not part of the "normal" Imperial Guard deployment, I assume it would need to be a conflict that has Segmentum Command assume a direct role in coordinating the Guard, rather than leaving it to some local noble or a lower general. Let's see how this works as per GW:

"Should the Imperium's response not prove to be decisive in crushing an enemy, then the sphere around the conflict zone is increased in ever-larger increments, reinforcements will be drawn from further away, and more regiments are raised to replace the losses. This ponderous process repeats itself until the enemy is ground down and destroyed, the massed forces of the Imperial Guard slowly pounding at the foe until eventually the hammer blow is delivered and all resistance is completely and utterly shattered. In this way, the harder a foe strikes at the Imperium, the greater the response will be."
- 5E C:IG

"Once a war is underway, it will absorb fresh Imperial Guard regiments from all over the galaxy. If victory is not swift, the Departmento Munitorum will draw in regiments from beyond the normal 10.000 light year range, including troops from worlds in the relatively peaceful Segmentae Solar and Pacificus."
- 2E C:IG

Now, my assumption is, of course, that these troops include squads or companies of Storm Troopers. The vast majority of conflicts will simply not be that big, which is why 10.000 soldiers may be perfectly sufficient for what they are supposed to do. The Third War of Armageddon lists 18 companies of Storm Troopers in action (see chart posted above), which means that the Departmento Munitorum has, in theory, enough Storm Troopers to fight five Third Wars of Armageddon simultaneously (assuming that company = 100). Compare that to how many Space Marines fought in that conflict.

Harriticus wrote:Meh, there are more Special Forces in Syria then there are Imperial Stormtroopers.

Well, there are special forces and then there are Special Forces.
Delta Force is supposedly 1.000 men tops, likely fewer. Is anyone complaining about that being too few?

Numbers do not matter as much as how you use them. I think perception may suffer from the Storm Troopers being part of the Imperial Guard, yet the IG also having that "endless numbers" thing going on. We have to remember that theStorm Troopers are not like any of the existing regiments. They're a one-off exception, a limited corps of specialists that is treated unlike any of the normal regiments in that they never, ever deploy as a whole but only send out groups of troopers to "help out" other army groups for particulary important battles. Their tactical doctrines, their deployment, their recruitment, their training and their equipment are all completely different from what we are used to from "normal" Imperial Guard regiments, so don't let the IG affiliation fool ya.

If you want numbers, take Cadian Kasrkin. They're almost exactly as good as Munitorum Storm Troopers but way more numerous. Another important difference? They're a firm part of the Cadian Shock Troops rather than a direct strategic SpecOps asset of the Departmento Munitorum to be used throughout the galaxy.

Focke_Wulf wrote:Is the Inq stormtroopers part of that 10,000?

Nope.
The 10.000 is just the "true" Storm Trooper regiment. As for the number of ISTs ... GW never wrote much about them, other than their origin:
"Recruited from the Schola Progenium and certain families with a tradition of service to the Inquisition, Inquisitorial Storm Troopers are equipped and trained in a similar fashion to the elite Storm Troopers of the Imperial Guard."
- 3E C:WH

Re-reading that actually forces me to amend my earlier statement about ISTs potentially being recruited out of the normal ST companies - I forgot the Codex actually described this in detail. Note also how the Schola is apparently not the only source of recruits for those guys.

The force disposition chart for the 13th Black Crusade lists one group of 38 companies of IST, with a second force of "classified" size.
I'm kinda assuming that there may be more ISTs than Munitorum Storm Troopers, if only because the latter have a way higher casualty rate due to being shipped from one war zone to another, whereas the ISTs are also used for simple guard duty.

It may also be of note that the number of Storm Troopers recruited in the Schola seems to be somewhat close to the number of Battle Sisters, so there's another potential bit of consistency to it. The overall number of Sisters Militant is larger, but just like with the ISTs I am assuming that the Storm Troopers have a high rate of attrition and thus need more people to make up for more casualties due to seeing more combat.

PS: I suppose a lot of this involves interpretation as well as personal preference. My own personal stance on stuff is that I try to stay as close to what GW wrote as possible, and look for explanations (or even "excuses", as long as they sound somewhat feasible) for how and why things may be like they were written. For the Storm Trooper regiment, it works for me by using the above rationale - and simply thinking that there aren't actually so many friggin' big campaigns going on all simultaneously that the Imperium would need more of these guys.
If that's really too much of a stretch for some, I suppose the only alternative would be to declare it BS and make up your own alternative. Arguably, we all have different concepts of where we draw the line, so to say.

Yeah, I think the OP is getting confused. It's not that there are 1,000 soldiers in a single group. It's that there are millions of soldiers split into single groups of 1,000.

Just because storm troopers follow the regiment system doesn't mean that there is only one regiment of them. They're not space marines.

 Ailaros wrote:
Yeah, I think the OP is getting confused. It's not that there are 1,000 soldiers in a single group. It's that there are millions of soldiers split into single groups of 1,000.

Just because storm troopers follow the regiment system doesn't mean that there is only one regiment of them. They're not space marines.

any time I look up information, it is always referred to as THE Stormtrooper regiment, in singular form. It never fights as a single unit, however, but forces are divided among task forces ranging from squads to companies to the Stormtrooper Strike Force.

Well, but it's not in caps. It's very possible that they're using a non-exclusive form of the word "the". For example, if you said "members of the orchestra play many different instruments", that doesn't necessarily imply that there is only one orchestra on the entire planet Earth, it could just as easily be more general, where "the" is being used as a synonym for "any".

Plus, it just doesn't make sense. The only way that you can become a commissar is to first be a stormtrooper. Furthermore, only the best of the stormtroopers get to become commissars. The fluff says that every guard regiment has at least one commissar, and often several of them.

If we say that the average regiment has 5 commissars and that there are a million regiments, there is no possible way that they could produce enough commissars just by skimming off the top of a thousand guys now and again.

The Schola Progenum doesn't have a single line of progression. If you get picked to be a StormTrooper, you are a Stormtrooper. If you are picked to be a Commissar, you are a commissar.

You don't level up from Stormtrooper to Commissar. You are a Stormtrooper who can move up through the rank structure, or you are a Commissar who starts out as Junior, to Senior, all the way up to LORD Commissar.

There are separate branches of the Schola.

If storm troopers are used the way I use them on the table top that number would run out fast. It's kind of ironic that players cherish their basic troops choice and use the Elites as a throw away section.

Ailaros wrote:Well, but it's not in caps. It's very possible that they're using a non-exclusive form of the word "the". For example, if you said "members of the orchestra play many different instruments", that doesn't necessarily imply that there is only one orchestra on the entire planet Earth, it could just as easily be more general, where "the" is being used as a synonym for "any".

Actually, I think the more correct form would be to say "members of an orchestra". The sources are fairly consistent in always talking about a single regiment, so much so that I would say claiming that this is just meant to be an exemplary reference would be grasping at straws because you desperately prefer another interpretation. Nothing wrong with that, per se; I'm just pointing out that the books tell otherwise.

"The Storm Troopers are the Imperial Guard's best fighting regiment. Unlike other regiments, they are recruited from all across the Imperium, and they wear a distinctive uniform which is instantly recognisable by other Imperial Guard units. The regiment is unusually large, with as many as ten thousand men under arms at one time."
- 2E C:IG

"For natural warriors, the Imperial Guard offers a place in one of the elite Storm Trooper companies, where the training received is of brutally high standard."
- 5E C:IG (note how it refers to companies instead of regiments)

"It is rare that the entirety of the Storm Trooper regiment will fight in one place. Instead, individual companies are sent to bolster the strength of the Imperial Guard present, providing a core of ultra-trained squads that can be deployed as needed."
- 5E C:IG

If there were more than one regiment, the books would say "the regiments" or at least "a regiment", but every time we only hear about "the regiment" - singular.

It is of note that the GW website, however, has one entry in their shop catalogue that does say "regiments" instead of "regiment". Personally, I'm thinking this is an oversight, as the website is of course not created by the same guys who write the books and the latter have consistently talked about a single force. But as interpretations may differ on this I thought it should be pointed out. If you think there are multiple regiments, then there is no limitation as to how many there would be and the discussion becomes a moot point as then everyone could just ramp up that number to whatever amount of troops they're comfortable with.

If you go by the game, they're terrible. But apparently you aren't supposed to do that.

They are certainly not terrible in game by any means. Deep strike onto a target and then having a load of AP3 Shots and special weapons unloaded into a target? Yes please

 Arcsquad12 wrote:
They are certainly not terrible in game by any means. Deep strike onto a target and then having a load of AP3 Shots and special weapons unloaded into a target? Yes please

They're way too expensive to use that way though. It might work if your opponent has a massive points per model over quantity list, such as Gray Knights and you land next to a non terminator squad, but otherwise they're too specialized. If you're fighting Orks, than they're just wasted points.

They are headhunter units. They make for great target elimination or holding points. however, I don't see what their TT purpose has to do with their numbers.

Tabletop stats are, at best, only tangentially related to the lore.

 Griddlelol wrote:
If storm troopers are used the way I use them on the table top that number would run out fast. It's kind of ironic that players cherish their basic troops choice and use the Elites as a throw away section.

Same here mate...

But yeah, I doubt there are so few stormies. I'm with Ailaros on this one.