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I'm currently writing up fluff for a custom Space Marine chapter (which will be used for literary purposes unless someone can donate me some cash with which to buy the models) and I've hit one of the trickier parts: their notable battles.

I've only written up one battle thus far, but looking over it and comparing it to the battles fought by other Chapters (Ultramarines, Blood Angels etc.) against the same enemies in a similar or greater number, I think I may have completely overestimated a lot of the numbers. I expected an Ork Waaagh!, for example, to be a task worthy of several companies of Space Marines at least, with a rather decent number of Astartes casualties at the end of it, but it appears that only a small handful of companies are actually required to face such a force. After dedicating the entire chapter to an unexpected incursion by a large Ork fleet containing an Ork Space Hulk, I feel I may have drastically overshot what I actually needed, as well as overestimated the number of casualties such an incursion could cause a chapter to suffer.

For the rewrite and future reference, what sorts of numbers are we looking at when throwing Space Marine companies at noteworthy enemies? I don't want putting down a small rebellion, but the stuff that would appear on a chapter's timeline. Chief amongst these will be a large assault by Necrons, which would be repelled, only for them to attack again later with a larger force, which would be the literary setting, ongoing, and their most recent battle to date. Including the numbers for taking on part of a minor Necron dynasty, and then feeling the full force of the dynasty at a later date, what would be the more realistic numbers of Astartes sent to fight some of the more well known enemies, mainly of the Segmentum Pacificus? So Eldar/Dark Eldar will probably pop up at some point, along with the ubiquitous Orks and possibly Chaos (it pretty much neighbours the EoT after all), probably ignoring Tyranids currently, as they'd give me all sorts of problems, not least another extended conflict they've participated in.

Also, what would be the expected number of Astartes casualties from the above scenarios (ignoring the second Dynasty attack; I can use the numbers of the initial attack to get a feel for this one, and not feel that I have to carefully monitor each and every injury and casualty noted in the literary work)? I could always not include them expect in the bloodier battles, but for the sake of completeness it'd be nice to give even a rough estimate.

Numbers really depend on who is writing what. I feel as if a lot of the licensed fiction, i.e. novels, have gradually devolved into a situation where you have a single squad of Haxmarines slaughtering their way through entire armies because it's cool.
Not to mention that quite often, supporting forces (IG, PDF, militias, ...) are active in the background - they just aren't mentioned often, or at all.

Ultimately, example X is merely the writer's own interpretation, and you, as the writer of your own fiction, are free to go a different way. It's how this franchise operates, and what brings us to the consistency issues between sources that commonly result in long neckbeard internet debates.

In fact, looking at Armageddon, easily the most noteworthy Ork incursion into Imperial space in the recent centuries of Imperial history, we have these numbers:
Imperial Forces
vs
Ork Warbands

Now, that looks like a much more even and fierce battle, doesn't it? I actually bothered to calculate a rough estimate ... it's 2.5 million Orks versus a much larger Imperial force, including about 150.000 Astartes.
That said, I reckon that with so many Orks around, it's hard to put them down for good. Spores and all. Not to mention that the Imperial forces had to deal with a lot of "internal issues", resulting in stuff like losing entire cities because the deposed governor is a bitch, or having entire Marine Chapters get killed off due to faulty intel and Inquis-, err .. "Ork snipers", or the Flesh Tearers apparently like to eat allied human miltias for breakfast.

Speaking of, if you want to have a "noteworthy event" for your Marines, and "fighting Orks" - why don't you add a deployment on Armageddon to your Chapter's record? Lots of Astartes withdrew their forces during the First Season of Fire, as the ongoing war of attrition did not suit their battlefield specialisation as shock troops, so it's not even as if your guys would be "bound" there. It could just be a quick stint of a few months, saving a hive here, helping out your allies there, losing a company of Marines in one of the major fights (see the sector news in the above links, it has bits of fluff about what's going on in the various warzones on Armageddon), stuff like that?

Armageddon seems like the exception rather than the rule. I'm not sure if there's ever been a recorded Ork incursion anywhere close to the same scale, and as you said, there were other aspects that caused it to be prolonged.

What I'm trying to avoid is drawing attention to that fact that this chapter has particiapted in Huge Battle A, but they haven't been heard of before. However, that means I'd have to downsize pretty much everything, and that's where trying to avoid the entire Space Marines are godlike/fall to a stiff breeze comes into play. I want them to take enough casualties to seem accurate, but not too many to seem like they were like lambs to the slaughter and not too few to make it seem like a single company is about as badass as they come.

As for them participating in Armageddon, the list of the Chapters that took part is pretty cut and dry, and I don't like to try and crowbar stuff into official canon, especially something as well-known as Armageddon. Besides, the chapter specialises more in direct assaults, making them a likely candidate for the chapters that wouldn't suit a battle of attrition. Armageddon's location in Segmentum Solar also makes it unlikely that they'd be there in order to play any sort of part in the initial assaults, and they are more likely to turn up to the ongoing attrition.

EDIT: In case it comes across like it, I'm not trying to shoot ideas down as they come; I want to create something at least half accurate and believable. A lot of custom chapters have overly powerful characters, or mega-fleets, or are all over the place in terms of canon as well as having no idea at all which part of the galaxy they or their enemies are in. That's what I don't want to become, really.

If you want to be reasonable then going by the points (assuming ultramarines vs green tide) it should be approx 10 SM to 30 orks. This should give roughly 50/50 chance to win so assuming no great tactical prowess (actually you would have to be an idiot to engage the orks on even footing like this considering the SM deployment options).

I would say with a good plan SM could probably handle 10 times that number over a series of engagements with reasonable (less than 25%) as they have much better armor and deployment than orks. They would just need to take bite sized chunks.

This will change if they are supposed to defend as the SM are truly not a pitched battle force and lack many of the key elements for this...despite what some fiction would have you believe. If you go this route IG are probably a necessity or at the very least tarantula turrents and thunder fire cannons.

Unfortunately, the "it depends who's writing the fluff" answer is the only truly correct one. When it comes to space marines, more than anything else, Its impossible to equate what happens on the board with what happens in fluff. There is an incredibly wide range that is acceptable in terms of the scale of both losses and triumphs, so it really is up to your discretion. There are stories where space marines barely escape with their lives (seems to happen to the salamanders a lot) and stories where they are outnumbered 100 to 1, and yet still cut a bloody path to victory. You're probably safest somewhere in the middle ground. Though if you want to write fluff that resembles current 40k fluff, you should probably ask yourself "is this a realistic scenario for the space marines to overcome?" and if it is, you should probably exaggerate more. With something like orks, 10 to 1 odds seems like the sort of thing that happens in fluff. Keep in mind with deaths and losing multiple companies that if your chapter is codex-adherent, they only have 1000 men to lose at any given time.

From which founding are they?

 Lynata wrote:
Numbers really depend on who is writing what. I feel as if a lot of the licensed fiction, i.e. novels, have gradually devolved into a situation where you have a single squad of Haxmarines slaughtering their way through entire armies because it's cool.
Not to mention that quite often, supporting forces (IG, PDF, militias, ...) are active in the background - they just aren't mentioned often, or at all.

Ultimately, example X is merely the writer's own interpretation, and you, as the writer of your own fiction, are free to go a different way. It's how this franchise operates, and what brings us to the consistency issues between sources that commonly result in long neckbeard internet debates.

In fact, looking at Armageddon, easily the most noteworthy Ork incursion into Imperial space in the recent centuries of Imperial history, we have these numbers:
Imperial Forces
vs
Ork Warbands

Now, that looks like a much more even and fierce battle, doesn't it? I actually bothered to calculate a rough estimate ... it's 2.5 million Orks versus a much larger Imperial force, including about 150.000 Astartes.
That said, I reckon that with so many Orks around, it's hard to put them down for good. Spores and all. Not to mention that the Imperial forces had to deal with a lot of "internal issues", resulting in stuff like losing entire cities because the deposed governor is a bitch, or having entire Marine Chapters get killed off due to faulty intel and Inquis-, err .. "Ork snipers", or the Flesh Tearers apparently like to eat allied human miltias for breakfast.

Speaking of, if you want to have a "noteworthy event" for your Marines, and "fighting Orks" - why don't you add a deployment on Armageddon to your Chapter's record? Lots of Astartes withdrew their forces during the First Season of Fire, as the ongoing war of attrition did not suit their battlefield specialisation as shock troops, so it's not even as if your guys would be "bound" there. It could just be a quick stint of a few months, saving a hive here, helping out your allies there, losing a company of Marines in one of the major fights (see the sector news in the above links, it has bits of fluff about what's going on in the various warzones on Armageddon), stuff like that?

Tbh, the ork numbers for Armageddon are a big joke. 2.5 million orks are next to nothing on a planetary scale, especialy on a hiveworld.

Yeah I sort of went for at least 2.5 billion orks, and even that number is low in order to conquer a planet like Armageddon.

Hmmm, it seems there really isn't much to it than trial and error after all. Thanks everyone.

From which founding are they?

That was also a tricky one. Since if we follow the strict stated numbers given during the 26 foundings, we end up with only a scant few Chapters operating, I assumed that having the records of their founding declared lost (as so many things are in the Imperium, probably because the High lords of Terra haven't heard of filing cabinets or paperweights, or have but declared their use heretical) was the safest bet, but given the dates of their first recorded deeds (I.E. the ones that actually made a big enough impact to be noted by others) it places their founding at between, but not including, the 21st and 25th.

This gives them the 22nd founding as the earliest possible known, and the 24th as the latest possible known, with any number of unstated foundings between.

It depends, many threats can be taken out by a surgical strike that marines are good at.

A Waaagh for example.

There can be upwards of 10-20 million orks in a good sized Waaagh, if we ignore GWs fethtarded numbers as we should, all held together by a Big Warboss and his lackys. No way a chapter can take them all head on.

All the Marines need to do is kill the Warboss, and the other bosses will begin fighting amoung themselves to see who's the boss now. The marines can hang around and pick off any of the major contenders to further destabilize the Waaagh.

Once the waaagh is broken into 5-8 sizable chunks under their own bosses fighting each other the waaaagh is effectivly stopped. Now its the IG and IN's turn to clean up. The chapter may assist in retaking some vital assets and keep tabs on the situation in case a new Warboss is able to reunite the waaagh before it loses too much steam.

Avatar wrote:Armageddon seems like the exception rather than the rule.

Absolutely! I just gave it as an example because it's one of the few accounts where we actually have a rather detailed list of participants (in case you'd just want to divide those numbers) and to show that in some fluff even Space Marines aren't that unkillable as a lot of novels would want you to believe.

Avatar wrote:What I'm trying to avoid is drawing attention to that fact that this chapter has particiapted in Huge Battle A, but they haven't been heard of before.

I see ... how about a made-up Imperial crusade, then? This would allow for reasonably large forces whilst allowing you to take full creative control of what happens where, simply because the entire thing is original work.

ragingmunkyz wrote:When it comes to space marines, more than anything else, Its impossible to equate what happens on the board with what happens in fluff.

This I don't really agree with - I feel that a lot of fluff tends to focus on epic legends or exceptional fights (thus omitting the average), whereas the "neutral" TT at least gives us a vague understanding of how one force relates to another. The only thing we have to keep in mind is that the TT assumes a "fair fight" between balanced armies, which is something the Space Marines would never do if they can avoid it - and they often can, thanks to their mobility. So I'd rather expect the Marines to tend to have an advantage of about twice or three times the number of points of the defender, simply because they choose the time and place of their attack. On the other hand, their generally low numbers also mean that they can ill afford casualties and thus would gradually surrender this advantage during an ongoing campaign (or be forced into a declining range of options as they cannot commit as many forces) - especially if the enemy ever manages to surround the Marines' base of operations, prepare a trap, or otherwise catch them unprepared.

In short, it's not the stats that are "unfair" to the Marines, but rather the deployment. From what I have been told, Epic40k is much closer to what we read in the background regarding this.
Ultimately, I think it would come down to what ansacs wrote.

Marine chapters tend to be created on the spot by various authors. Fortunately, there were enough foundings that this is pretty easy to do. Also numerous chapters were created for a particular purpose: guarding a certain sector or to support an upcoming crusade, for example.

The good news is that the guys at GW didn't flesh out all of the history. There are numerous events in which you know it was a big deal but there is only a sentence or two about it and certainly no army lists.

I'd say step through the imperial history section of BRB and pick an event that sounds good. Then look it up on lexicanum to see if there has been additional written about it. If not, take it on yourself and build it out. Based on the time of the event you could place the founding of your marines prior to that. Maybe they were special made just to fight in that event; or it occurred in their area of deployment.


Just as a random starting point: the 6th black crusade in 901.M36 - per the warhammer40k.wikia.com, there is no information about the conflict in imperial records. We know it wasn't a small affair. Also, it occurred sometime after the 21st founding. There is also no information about several other foundings that occurred in M36. Seems like a ripe area to start with. Maybe they were created during the 20th to guard against another abaddon incursion...

Point is, there is a LOT to work with.

Grey Templar has the right idea. Marines don't literally crush entire armies. They simply lack the numbers. They excel at surgical strikes, applying force quickly and in such high concentration that they can overwhelm their adversaries. They maintain a high operational tempo, redeploying rapidly and often to hit multiple targets with a limited number of marines.

Space Marines are basically incapable of fighting wars. Marines help win battles. The Guard and the Navy win wars. Keep that in mind when you're writing. If you write them realistically, they can do heroic things and change the course of wars without being wiped out or venturing into total silliness.

Side note - don't pay attention to GW's numbers, they make no sense. GW's writers as a rule have no sense of scale. For instance, Orks invading an Earth-like planet should number in tens of millions at least if they want to pose a realistic threat. Just look at the number of combatants on both sides in World War II, and figure that's an average planetary defense force for an Earth-like planet in the militarized future of 40k. Now multiply by 10 or so for a heavily armed hive world like Armageddon and you'll see why 2.5 million orks is a laughably small invasion force.

Well, one could say that the 2.5 million is a result of Ork society (it's amazing that Ghazghkull managed to get that many Warbands to work together) as well as transportation limits. You don't just ship "tens of millions" unruly passengers across space - at that point, the Orks wouldn't even need to bother with landing anymore because they have so many ships that they could take on the entire Segmentum Fleet and bomb Terra into bits afterwards.
Also, I'm not sure if Orks actually care that much for strategy that they'd think 2.5 millions isn't enough.

Perhaps 2.5 million would be insufficient if we'd talk about normal people, but these are Orks. And I'm not just talking about combat prowess, but rather their ability to "infest" places and practically grow their own reinforcements on the spot. Who cares if a million Orks dies on Day 1 of the invasion, if there are so many spores around that entire regions become breeding grounds?

Sidenote: How much does it take for an Ork to become fully grown? This is a rather important detail in this matter, of course, but unfortunately I lack that info. :(


But the "help win battles" bit was a well written description, which I of course fully agree with.

The Inquisitor RPG also had a good explanation along those lines:
"The Space Marines are the Imperium's elite fighting troops, a core of highly mobile shock troops trained to fight on land and in space. On the battlefield they are expected to take part in the most dangerous and important attacks, to hold their positions no matter how hopeless their situation. Space Marines are entrusted with all sorts of perilous missions, such as lightning raids behind enemy lines, infiltration attacks to capture vital positions, and tunnel fights in enemy held cities.
They also undertake long voyages of planetary exploration and conquest on behalf of the Imperium, earmarking planets which are too well defended so that they can be attacked later with the support of the Imperial Guard."


Oh, and clively also has a neat idea regarding the timeline.

I always thought that the orks grow reinforcements rapidly as they kill themselves off, even in a warband, at a prodigious rate. If they don't then any invasion would be done in months especially if the defending force doesn't fight the orks.

Also do not forget that most of those armies had huge number of "titan" class gargants each is like an army onto itself.

2.5 million seems like nothing but those are probably the landing force who suffered 90% causalities. The gargants then would do most of the actual fighting with the boyz defending.

I agree with most of the posts here that there is a wide degree of literary license due to the elite nature of the SM. Just like real life SF they either seem invincible when the plan goes right or they die like the lowliest grunt when the plan goes wrong.

I also would love to hear the growth rate of an ork. I have never seen any numbers, rough or otherwise.

btw good luck with your writing.

 Beaviz81 wrote:
Yeah I sort of went for at least 2.5 billion orks, and even that number is low in order to conquer a planet like Armageddon.

The numbers really don't make much sense, GW is just bad with math and poorly thinks things out. No BL writer (who understand scale a bit better usually then the standard codex writers) is going to suggest there are more Imperials then Orks on Armageddon, or that there's only 2.5 million total. Hell Hellsreach by ADB more or less states that there's millions of Orks in their immediate warzone.

2.5 billion Orks is a more realistic figure of Armageddon given what has been said about it, basically the largest Ork invasion in 10,000 years.

 Lynata wrote:


Perhaps 2.5 million would be insufficient if we'd talk about normal people, but these are Orks. And I'm not just talking about combat prowess, but rather their ability to "infest" places and practically grow their own reinforcements on the spot. Who cares if a million Orks dies on Day 1 of the invasion, if there are so many spores around that entire regions become breeding grounds?

Still wouldn't be enough to win a planet, honestly. You take 3 million orks, throw them at a planet and half of them die on day 1, releasing let's say 2 million spores. Well, 50% of a unified (by ork standards), concentrated army that has war veterans and leaders who've seen a hundred battles, is now gone, and is replaced by 2 million newbs who've never seen a lick of combat and are, to boot, spread out over a landscape of hundreds if not thousands of miles by the breeze. Easy pickings for the Imperium, or any organized fighting force.

Yeah, it's just poor numbers, and it makes sense considering how often sci-fi writers suck at scale.

You guys think 2.5 million orks fighting on Armageddon is dumb? Karen Traviss thinks 3 million clones is enough manpower to fight a war on a galactic scale.

3 million. That's the size of America's modern day military, roughly.

So, I've hunted down a few studio sources to check up on Ork reproduction and whether there may be anything to this claim that "GW is bad with numbers" or whether this is really just an opinion borne out of dislike of what the books say. This is what I found:

"Orkoid physique is so robust that it can withstand tremendous punishment. An Ork feels next to no pain even from the most grievous of wounds, enablind him to fight on whilst horrifically injured and even a short while after he is technically dead. The greenskin regenerative process is so powerful that an Ork who has been cut apart in the crucible of a battle can simply be stitched back together again, bewildered but ready to fight once more.
[...]
The Ork reproduces by the dispersal of spores that settle and mature over time. An Ork's demise triggers a mass release of spores that can develop into dozens of cocoons. Though these cocoons may hatch Gretchin, Snotlings or just simple fungi depending on conditions, a good number will mature into fully-grown Orks after a short gestation period. These spores are dispersed far and wide by the wind, which makes the eradication of the greenskin presence from a contaminated warzone impossible to effect with anything short of the cleansing firestorm of Exterminatus."
- 4E C:O

So, with 2.5 million Orks landing on the surface, I'd imagine that's a lot of spores contaminating large swathes of the land. If Orks can breed as fast as the text suggests, then Armageddon is indeed in for a very long and very bloody war.

"Imperial analysts predict that over a sustained campaign the Orks' supply lines will fail, that their losses cannot be replaced. Those who have fought Orks before are less certain, knowing as they do that resilience and improvisation are the Orks' greatest strengths."
- WD #251

Oh, and just in case that still fails to convince you ...

"Orks always attack before they are ready and they never think beyond the next battle. This lack of foresight and organisation has saved the Imperium from defeat many times, although the raw damage inflicted by rampaging Orks can still be very great."
- 2E C:O

... size didn't even matter, anyways. At least not to those who launched the invasion.

BlaxicanX wrote:You take 3 million orks, throw them at a planet and half of them die on day 1, releasing let's say 2 million spores. Well, 50% of a unified (by ork standards), concentrated army that has war veterans and leaders who've seen a hundred battles, is now gone, and is replaced by 2 million newbs who've never seen a lick of combat and are, to boot, spread out over a landscape of hundreds if not thousands of miles by the breeze.

With 1.5 million dead Orks, apparently you'd have enough spores for about 18 million cocoons. Not all of them will become Orks, but it's still a respectable number. And Gretchin or Snotlings can be a threat as well, or are at least kinda important for the war effort.

Also, what's the problem with Orks being noobs? They operate largely on instinct, anyways. Ork society is in a perpetual state of warfare - that's not how you generate veterans in the first place, so I think I will pass on the thought that the invasion force had so many Orks that have seen "a hundred battles".
Veterancy is much more a problem for the Imperial Guard, where entire regiments may have no more experience than the couple weeks of training they received on the transport ship. And whilst humans can fight based on instinct as well, they won't do it as well as the Orks.

You know what would've been unrealistic? 2.5 billion Orks managing to get a ride on spaceships. You almost make it sound as if they've got some sort of organised shipping going on rather than jury-rigging frigates out of junk, converting small asteroids into space caravans, and hoping that a Space Hulk drifts by one of their worlds.


Sidenote:

BlaxicanX wrote:You guys think 2.5 million orks fighting on Armageddon is dumb? Karen Traviss thinks 3 million clones is enough manpower to fight a war on a galactic scale.
3 million. That's the size of America's modern day military, roughly.

Whilst I don't agree with everything Traviss wrote, or her attitude regarding certain controversial topics, I think here, too, you forget a number of important aspects:
- Clones have been replaced within a matter of weeks for the entire duration of the Clone War. A modern army entering into a war needs to be huge because it will invariably incur losses, but attrition isn't really an issue when you can re-stock in such a short timeframe, is it?
- The Seperatists battle droids were not everywhere, as well, and whilst they were just as easy (or even easier) to build as the clones, they also were much easier to take down.
- Aerial/spatial superiority goes a long way in negating the need for using large masses of ground troops.
- Not every planet in the galaxy was contested. The Clone Wars largely focused on some strategically or politically vital worlds, whereas the majority swung around by mere diplomacy - or threats of invasion.
- Of those planets that were contested, the fighting was limited in area. In Star Wars (and similar to many wars in 40k), armies tend to force a decision within a short period of time, usually around or in the world's capital. I think this is a result of the high mobility, and that neither side actually keeps large armies around (because of point #3).
- Lastly, you forget that the entire affair was intentionally dragged out because of Sidioius' machinations. The Republic could've won the war much sooner if it had not been manipulated from the inside.

Besides, when you're counting the reservists for the US military, then I think we'd need to add the Judicial Fleet to the Clone Army as well. And that's active duty personnell, actually. And that's still not counting planetary defense forces or mercenaries employed by the Republic.

BlaxicanX wrote:

 Lynata wrote:


Perhaps 2.5 million would be insufficient if we'd talk about normal people, but these are Orks. And I'm not just talking about combat prowess, but rather their ability to "infest" places and practically grow their own reinforcements on the spot. Who cares if a million Orks dies on Day 1 of the invasion, if there are so many spores around that entire regions become breeding grounds?

Still wouldn't be enough to win a planet, honestly. You take 3 million orks, throw them at a planet and half of them die on day 1, releasing let's say 2 million spores. Well, 50% of a unified (by ork standards), concentrated army that has war veterans and leaders who've seen a hundred battles, is now gone, and is replaced by 2 million newbs who've never seen a lick of combat and are, to boot, spread out over a landscape of hundreds if not thousands of miles by the breeze. Easy pickings for the Imperium, or any organized fighting force.

Yeah, it's just poor numbers, and it makes sense considering how often sci-fi writers suck at scale.

You guys think 2.5 million orks fighting on Armageddon is dumb? Karen Traviss thinks 3 million clones is enough manpower to fight a war on a galactic scale.

3 million. That's the size of America's modern day military, roughly.

Karen Traviss was given that number to work with. She didn't pick it at random. And it was still better than the excuse Attack of the Clones gave us. 1.2 million clones to win a war. Right. Plus, she did fix the problem with the reserve force being held on Coruscant's moon. Hundreds of millions of clones flash trained and accelerated growth processes to be used as an occupation force rather than a combat force.

In one go, she fixes the numbers problem that plagued the books and movies, and offers an explanation for why Stormtroopers are so crappy compared to Clone Troopers. Even Labyrinth of Evil, the book that leads directly into Revenge of the Stih, still had the Clone Army at a strength of 1 million.

If people are going to attack Traviss, do it for the right reasons (character derailment, anti jedi sentiment), not for her actually solving a problem.

How about one of the Black Crusades?Their founding could have possibly be around the time of the 8th. Also their Founding could have been after with the Abyssal Crusade, to replenish the loses and counter those that turned traitor.

The 8th Black Crusade doesn't actually have much detail on it so you could generally have a long bit of rope on numbers.

 Lynata wrote:
With 1.5 million dead Orks, apparently you'd have enough spores for about 18 million cocoons. Not all of them will become Orks, but it's still a respectable number. And Gretchin or Snotlings can be a threat as well, or are at least kinda important for the war effort.

Which means little when they're scattered all over the damn place, with no weapons or equipment. Orks are already just barely equal to the other factions in terms of a chance to win fights when they're concentrated together in one Waagh. 5 million new orks randomly popping up all over the place means that they'll just be popping up in piece-meal for the defenders. You seem to forget that due to their psychic abilities and general nature, orks are the least autonomous of all the factions besides Tyranids. And your source never states how long it takes for these spores to develop into full grown boyz, so I'm not sure how helpful that turned out to be.

Also, what's the problem with Orks being noobs? They operate largely on instinct, anyways. Ork society is in a perpetual state of warfare - that's not how you generate veterans in the first place, so I think I will pass on the thought that the invasion force had so many Orks that have seen "a hundred battles".

Stop it. We both know that the more orks fight the bigger and stronger they get- that's why Ghazghkull is freakin huge. That's why Nobz are bigger than boyz, and that's why an army of newb orks isn't nearly as formidable as an army filled with veteran nobz.

You know what would've been unrealistic? 2.5 billion Orks managing to get a ride on spaceships.

2.5 billion orks is about what you would need to take a planet like Armageddon; the logistics of that don't really mean anything.

Whilst I don't agree with everything Traviss wrote, or her attitude regarding certain controversial topics, I think here, too, you forget a number of important aspects:
- Clones have been replaced within a matter of weeks for the entire duration of the Clone War. A modern army entering into a war needs to be huge because it will invariably incur losses, but attrition isn't really an issue when you can re-stock in such a short timeframe, is it?

Yes, it is. The CIS's army and fleet numbered in the sextillions. Considering that you can travel from one end of the Star Wars galaxy to the other in a week, that means that realistically there is zero way for the Republic to shell out enough forces to keep up any kind of front whatsoever. Even if the clone army reached something like 50 million troops, which it never did throughout the whole of the war, the Republic still wouldn't have enough troops to simultaneously defend more than two or three planets at a time, whereas the CIS had so many troops that they could simultaneously attack a few hundred planets if they wanted too.

The Republic won in the end, but even with Palpatine pulling the strings in the background, logistically their victory should have been impossible.

The Clones planted sabotage agents across CIS manufacturing planets, seeding plants with faulty diagnostics to create droids that either malfunctioned during combat or had poorly tempered metal plates that crumpled under stress.

They also realized during these operations that the droid numbers were being vastly overstated, most likely as part of Palpatine's propaganda machine. The war was widespread with a number of massive fronts, but the true numbers were somewhere in the billions. Enough to keep up the illusion and trick the jedi, but nowhere near the numbers being tossed out.

It was a massive war on our terms, but closer to a brushfire conflict in the galaxy. Widespread, large battles, but ultimately a fear tactic over a legitimate full scale uprising.

The quote regarding the droids is an out-of-universe statement, made in one of the Star Wars Insiders- what the CIS said in-universe is irrelevant.

The CIS outnumbered the Clone army trillions to one. Even if we assume that Republic sabotage cut that number in half, they would still outnumber the Clone army trillions to one, such is the massive disparity in their troop numbers.

edit- My mistake. Revenge of the Sith: Incredible Cross Sections, which is one of the four Star Wars "definitive encylopedias" lists the droid army as numbering "in the quintillions".

Not as big as a sextillion, but a quintillion is a thousand quadrillions, which in turn is a thousand trillions, which in turn is a thousand billions, etc. And again, Cross Sections is not an in-universe source- that is the definitive number for the droid army.

The disparity is amazing.

BlaxicanX wrote:Which means little when they're scattered all over the damn place, with no weapons or equipment.

With that many cocoons this is actually working for them, as it means they will "regroup" away from the front lines and push back - whilst their buddies at the front can apparently stitch together fresh troops from the torso and lower body of two different Orks.

Ork numbers, strategy and physiology mean that they're quite possible to beat for a sufficiently disciplined army in any single battle, but very difficult to eradicate once and for over the course of a campaign.
I mean, the Imperium didn't even manage to get rid of all Orks from the Second War of Armageddon before Gharghkull came back, and they had fifty years to do that.

BlaxicanX wrote:And your source never states how long it takes for these spores to develop into full grown boyz, so I'm not sure how helpful that turned out to be.

"Fully grown" after a "short gestation period". Sounds fast enough to me. Especially given that the Season of Fire has forced both sides into a slow war of attrition without much movement between the fronts and entire areas rendered inaccessible. With the mobility of Imperial forces diminished, I imagine that the hardest fighting has actually yet to come, for after the Season of Fire is over there'll be more Orks around than in the first days of the invasion.

BlaxicanX wrote:Stop it. We both know that the more orks fight the bigger and stronger they get- that's why Ghazghkull is freakin huge. That's why Nobz are bigger than boyz, and that's why an army of newb orks isn't nearly as formidable as an army filled with veteran nobz.

Fortunately for them, being on Armageddon means they have ample opportunity to fight and grow. And you sound like all Nobz would die on Day 1. We know this didn't happen, which in large part is probably because they tend to not be the first ones in line but rather let others - "newb Orks" - charge first.

BlaxicanX wrote:2.5 billion orks is about what you would need to take a planet like Armageddon; the logistics of that don't really mean anything.

Then why do you complain that this number is unrealistic in the first place? Logistics -is- the chief issue here, not whether the Orks can or cannot actually capture this world. Orks are intended to come to battle ill-prepared and lacking in numbers, so the criticism directed at GW simply isn't justified.
But after consulting the sources quoted above, I have to say that my perception of the Third War for Armageddon has changed a bit. Now I actually see it as possible that the Orks might win this one.
And then the IoM will be a sore loser and call Exterminatus.

BlaxicanX wrote:Revenge of the Sith: Incredible Cross Sections, which is one of the four Star Wars "definitive encylopedias" lists the droid army as numbering "in the quintillions".

That's more than 20 times the population of the entire galaxy of that setting!

Yeah, I think I'm just gonna attribute that to inconsistencies. They happen way less frequently in SW than 40k, as the former actually has a canon (and a guy watching over it), but they still happen.
Star Wars Insider #87 lists the size of the droid army as "hundreds of millions". I think that' a far more realistic number, so personally I'm gonna go with that one.

 Avatar 720 wrote:
I'm currently writing up fluff for a custom Space Marine chapter (which will be used for literary purposes unless someone can donate me some cash with which to buy the models) and I've hit one of the trickier parts: their notable battles.

I've only written up one battle thus far, but looking over it and comparing it to the battles fought by other Chapters (Ultramarines, Blood Angels etc.) against the same enemies in a similar or greater number, I think I may have completely overestimated a lot of the numbers. I expected an Ork Waaagh!, for example, to be a task worthy of several companies of Space Marines at least, with a rather decent number of Astartes casualties at the end of it, but it appears that only a small handful of companies are actually required to face such a force. After dedicating the entire chapter to an unexpected incursion by a large Ork fleet containing an Ork Space Hulk, I feel I may have drastically overshot what I actually needed, as well as overestimated the number of casualties such an incursion could cause a chapter to suffer.

For the rewrite and future reference, what sorts of numbers are we looking at when throwing Space Marine companies at noteworthy enemies? I don't want putting down a small rebellion, but the stuff that would appear on a chapter's timeline. Chief amongst these will be a large assault by Necrons, which would be repelled, only for them to attack again later with a larger force, which would be the literary setting, ongoing, and their most recent battle to date. Including the numbers for taking on part of a minor Necron dynasty, and then feeling the full force of the dynasty at a later date, what would be the more realistic numbers of Astartes sent to fight some of the more well known enemies, mainly of the Segmentum Pacificus? So Eldar/Dark Eldar will probably pop up at some point, along with the ubiquitous Orks and possibly Chaos (it pretty much neighbours the EoT after all), probably ignoring Tyranids currently, as they'd give me all sorts of problems, not least another extended conflict they've participated in.

Also, what would be the expected number of Astartes casualties from the above scenarios (ignoring the second Dynasty attack; I can use the numbers of the initial attack to get a feel for this one, and not feel that I have to carefully monitor each and every injury and casualty noted in the literary work)? I could always not include them expect in the bloodier battles, but for the sake of completeness it'd be nice to give even a rough estimate.

Generally speaking, you would need to look at what any given space marine is supposedly capable of doing. For example, Chapter Masters are considered to be pretty much a god on the battlefield, but the average space marine is often shown to be capable of slaughtering a normal human, stand well against a pair of strong orks, but get smashed into the ground by almost any given MC.

So, against human-strength opponents, the space marines would need to be facing apocalyptic numbers to really give a damn about it (Unless something goes badly for the chapter), against orks, you would be looking at a system-scale Waaagh (A good few million orks), against eldar any numbers will do as their strengths are more based on tactics. For things like the 'nids, just a small tentacle of the fleet will have the entire chapter running back to their homeworld.
As for necrons, they are facing MEQ's who can bring themselves back to life, and have far more powerful technology. It is quite possible for only a small number of necrons to tear apart a SM company, if the attack plan is well engineered, and the technology still works. (Something to note is that on a Tomb World, a large part of the SM force will be royally f'ked, taking the SM codex as an example).

When facing down chaos, however, if the entire chapter, or at least a great part of it were to be involved, you can expect a pretty spectacular battle. The battle may start small, but once the word of chaos spreads, the chapter could very easily end up facing itself, daemons, traitor humans, and traitor marines in one big mess of a war. (I say this because Chaos vs Space Marines tends to have the goal of taking out the entire chapter). If you're facing a pirate force, these guys would have to be using hit and run tactics, and if the chapter can't keep up, it may well find itself with no spacecraft.

 Lynata wrote:

You know what would've been unrealistic? 2.5 billion Orks managing to get a ride on spaceships. You almost make it sound as if they've got some sort of organised shipping going on rather than jury-rigging frigates out of junk, converting small asteroids into space caravans, and hoping that a Space Hulk drifts by one of their worlds.

I thought Ghazghkull had several, if not an entire fleet of Space Hulks and Roks. Roks being hollowed out asteroids (which can actually house sizeable populations, depending on the size of the asteroid.) Big enough to support a miniature Ork ecology, at any rate - and as long as Ghazzie was inarguably the strongest ork around, he'd have been able to keep the rest of the boyz in line for however long the journey took. That's kind of what a Waaagh is; an entire population of orks stopping their infighting under a leader ta smack some uvver 'eads fer a larf.

BlaxicanX wrote:

 Lynata wrote:
With 1.5 million dead Orks, apparently you'd have enough spores for about 18 million cocoons. Not all of them will become Orks, but it's still a respectable number. And Gretchin or Snotlings can be a threat as well, or are at least kinda important for the war effort.

Which means little when they're scattered all over the damn place, with no weapons or equipment. Orks are already just barely equal to the other factions in terms of a chance to win fights when they're concentrated together in one Waagh. 5 million new orks randomly popping up all over the place means that they'll just be popping up in piece-meal for the defenders. You seem to forget that due to their psychic abilities and general nature, orks are the least autonomous of all the factions besides Tyranids. And your source never states how long it takes for these spores to develop into full grown boyz, so I'm not sure how helpful that turned out to be.

I'd like to point out that orks are also genetically programmed to do certain things (as per the ork codex). This means that the average clump of spores will produce a mekboy, a painboy, someone with enough cunnin' to lead and keep the ladz alive, and a load of boyz, grots, squigs and extra fungal life. In additon to this, have you not heard of the ork kommandoz on armageddon who sneak behind imperial lines in small numbers, and skin the heads of battalions worth of Guardsmen?

Also do not forget the gargants and that some of warbands are cults of speed and some may have a large number of looted vehicles.

Think of the ork boyz as being an extremely rough number of the boyz on the ground not including the toyz that allow major offensives. 2.5 million boyz actually sounds semi reasonable when taken in light of the Lynata's information provided. Also keep in mind all of those boyz can and will fight at the drop of a dime.

Even during a waagh the boyz will still fight each other they just will not fight full scale battles or wars with each other. I don't think that your average boy could even think in a way where he doesn't get in a fight at least once a day. If one did then Gork and Mork would stomp them like a rotten mushroom.

Now that we are talking about it space marines are the perfect force to send against orks as it seems more and more like a war of attrition against a seeded world would be a loosing war. The dispersement of the waagh due to removal of leadership seems like the only way to win.

I was reading the Grey Knight Omnibus and in the first few chapters they sent 300 Grey Knights to attack a planet infested by chaos, i think they had less than 30% casualties.

Tiberius Atellus wrote:
I was reading the Grey Knight Omnibus and in the first few chapters they sent 300 Grey Knights to attack a planet infested by chaos, i think they had less than 30% casualties.

It was 100% casualities actually.