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I've read conflicting reports about the size of the Red Corsair's pirate fleet. Some sources say that there are less than 200 Marines left among the Astral Claws Renegades, but is that counting only the Astrals, or the other renegades that defect to them?

Other reports indicate that the Renegade forces are near pre heresy legion strength from the number of defectors. But is that counting only renegade Marines, or their Xenos Bandit and heretic allies?

From what I have read it seems they have anywhere between 200 and a chapters worth of Astartes. They partnered with a war band from the Night Lords and struck the fortress that held the bulk of the Marines Errant's gene seed. Then they tried to double cross each other over the booty and it is unknown who has what after that. This does not count recruited allies of non Astartes or the like.

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Red_Corsairs For more info.

So are they chaos or renegade?

Chaos Renegades.

Well Blood Reaver said they have the strength second only to the Despoiler so I would assume they have the force of one of the smaller Legions.

 ENOZONE wrote:
Chaos Renegades.

Please elaborate...I' know only chaos, and I know renegades (who don't accept chaos)...So, this is like a third party?

Not all of them have fallen to Chaos but most have, the flayer left because he knew his fellow Corsairs disliked him for not being a believer and letting chaos tainted Corsairs die on his operating table. But yea their pretty Chaotic, in one short story they even mention how its the Chaos Gods that allow Huron to survive his wounds.

I really enjoy the Corsair's fluff. Balls out insane pirate raids on Imperial Battlships to make their own fleets bigger.

Renegades don't necessarily hate Chaos, they've just gone renegade, doing their own thing. For some of them that includes embracing Chaos. Technically they're all Chaos Space Marines, but Chaos Renegades is used to differentiate more recent converts to chaos like the Red Corsairs or Crimson Slaughter, from the Chaos Legions, Like the Black Legion and Iron Warriors.

There were roughly 200 Astral Claws who escaped the Badab War. Since then Huron's conquered many other Renegade forces and drawn even more to his banner (including mortals, xenos and pirates) until his forces now 'rival the Legions of old.' A lot of people have a problem with this considering the time-frame he's achieved it in, but its impossible to deny that Huron's an incredibly gifted individual and hey, there's alot crazier stuff in 40k, so I don't worry about it.

Red Corsairs were initially small, just the remnants of the Red Corsairs. However they've since grown quite large through absorbing various renegade Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines. To quote Lexicanium:

"Over the years through absorbing other bands of Renegade Space Marines and outlaws, the Red Corsairs have grown close to the size of a pre-Heresy Space Marine Legion."

And the source cited for that is pg.176 of the 6th Ed Rulebook.

I think the IA book covering the Badab War made those statements a little more logical. This is, after all, a setting where it takes generations to get a new chapter going.

They mention repeatedly that Huron developed a way to kind of "cheat" space marine production; they're still nominally as effective, but geneseed components considered unimportant are omitted, and training is accelerated as to better churn out marines faster. They're not quite as good as other marines, but they'll still pound a Guardsmen into a pink mist. Through in some Chaos corruption and a few savvy Traitor Legion warbands, and it becomes more believable that Huron could build his forces up.

One key thing I think is worth considering is they'd still be lacking any kind of sophisticated hardware. Even in the Badab War, they mention that while the manpower of the Astral Claws was increased, there's no way to cheat and cut corners on, for instance, Land Raider production, or ways to conjour an Apocalypse Class Battleship from thin air, or, err, warp.

As such, I'd picture them of having a good strength of stand marines, havocs, berserkers and so on, but very few Daemon engines, no titan legions, few true capital ships (hard to capture capital ships without capital ships of your own), virtually no land raiders, land speeders, terminators, plasma guns and so on. However, unlike the traitor legions, they would have things like modern jump packs, storm bolters and so on; the conventional gear the traitors largely lack.

In short, the Red Corsairs, even if they're "Legion Strength," would be sorely lacking in conventional or heavy firepower, and would always be at a disadvantage in an open, traditional conflict with the Imperium, and would have to stick to being, well, corsairs and raiders to be effective.