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Space Marine Chapters. How many are there meant to be?

Hundreds?
Thousands
Hundreds of thousands?

thousands.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Space_Marine_Chapters#.UdRTiawtHWw

1000 chapters of 1000 marines is the official figure.

Yep. One thousand Chapters, one million Space Marines.

"Thousand" is a rough estimate, too, but generally agreed to be close enough. The nature of the galaxy and the wide-scale leaving LOTS of chance for error is that the Imperium isn't always sure which chapters are dead or not, sometimes.

Lexicanum has been tracking the number mentioned in all fluff sources, and it's about 270.

The official figure itself is 1,000 so still tons of unnamed.

Well, there's the official chapters, and then there's the ones that players make up for their home-brew games, so that your personal 40K universe doesn't have to be a rehash of the same handful of First or Second Founding Chapters.

One of the Codexes says there are "a thousand" Space Marine Chapters. But its one of those round numbers picked for effect more than anything else. Several hundred have been mentioned officially. Lexicanum has 290 listed with sources (all official GW books), if you count the Traitor Legions and Renegades (which aren't always Chaos, but typically were a Chapter in of themselves prior to going rogue). Many/most even have paint schemes.

Given how things appear in the game, attrition rates are high and space is big and dangerous so thousands of Chapters would not be unreasonable.

Actually, even with thousands of chapters it'd still not be enough to really make a huge difference in such a huge galaxy except in just a rare few battles, IMO. The scale of 40k and the scale of the Adeptus Astartes really don't mesh well.

GW writers do not do well with logistics at any scale, small, intermediate or vast.

 Melissia wrote:
Actually, even with thousands of chapters it'd still not be enough to really make a huge difference in such a huge galaxy except in just a rare few battles, IMO. The scale of 40k and the scale of the Adeptus Astartes really don't mesh well.

Which is precisely how the Space Marines are used.

It's rare for a guardsman, let alone a 'regular' citizen to even see a Space Marine. To many they're mythic, the Emperor's Angels of Death.

Space Marines deploy only in the most vital situations. When they do deploy they don't fight conventional, massed battles as the Gaurd does. They're surgical shock troops who go in decapitate the enemies' leadership, eliminate his logistical base, take out the planetary defences enabling the other imperial forces to land etc. They don't typically become embroiled in protracted battles. When they do it's usually a most desperate situation where you absolutely need a target held or taken and only the Astartes can do it.

Also remember that the Imperium's million worlds are not all constantly at war. Only a small amount would be. That makes it a lot easier to respond to distress calls and embark on pro-active campaigns.

I will admit though that often GW number's are weird and don't really fit. I think the atmosphere, and tone; the message they're trying to get across is more important than cold hard (often erroneous) figures.

I remember reading something from one of the HH events where an author (Graham McNeill maybe) said that there were more Ultra Marines in 30k than there are living space marines in 40K.

Spartak wrote:
I remember reading something from one of the HH events where an author (Graham McNeill maybe) said that there were more Ultra Marines in 30k than there are living space marines in 40K.

Then you're really not remembering correctly. The Ultramarines numbered around 250,000. There are around about 1,000,000 loyalist Space Marines in 40k.

Perhaps you're misremembering the total number of Space Marines in 30k because there were certainly more Space Marines in total in 30k than there are in 40k.

This is supposedly from the Space Marines 3rd Codex, according to Lexicanum, and I guess this figure has changed somewhat over the years but this gives an idea as to what can effect the number of chapters at any time.

765.M41: Space Marine Chapter Losses to date: 13 lost in the Warp, 21 Irrecoverable battle losses, 9 Geneseed failure, 4 Inquisitorial purges, 16 Other circumstances.

So in theory there are 1000 chapters with 1000 marines, but then there are some chapters with greater numbers than this, say Space Wolves and Black Templars, and others with greatly reduced numbers due to battle, like the Lamenters and Celestial Lions.

Depending on how greatly reduced the number of Chapters available is I guess leads to another Founding and due to the nature of how records are kept and how the Imperium communicates I guess it is also possible to have a number of over 1000 Chapters at a time or a very low amount.

Heres a thought, at what point does a chapter that has received irrecoverable battle losses get removed from the roster of Chapters and what happens then, do they fight until they all die out or do they given time to rebuild? I think both instances are true, but what would happen if they are reintroduced into action and it took the list of chapters to 1001 and the Administratum or whoever actually knew about that?

Hmm, we haven't heard from the Star Leopards from a very long time, let's just declare them Heretics to tidy up the books

 rems01 wrote:
Also remember that the Imperium's million worlds are not all constantly at war. Only a small amount would be. That makes it a lot easier to respond to distress calls and embark on pro-active campaigns.

But that can't be true... THERE IS ONLY WAR!

The way I see it, if a world other than Terra so much as dares to go even 100 years without being fought over, it's asking for a Warp storm/Genestealer cult/ancient Eldar artifact discovery any day now. Kinda like a dormant volcano...

JWhex wrote:
GW writers do not do well with logistics at any scale, small, intermediate or vast.

Well, this much is true.

 Melissia wrote:
Actually, even with thousands of chapters it'd still not be enough to really make a huge difference in such a huge galaxy except in just a rare few battles, IMO. The scale of 40k and the scale of the Adeptus Astartes really don't mesh well.

Exactly. The Red Army during WWII was about 5 million soldiers. (Consider that for a moment) And those five million took a while to conquer tiny Europe. A million Space Marines, as Bad A as they are, simply wouldn't make a difference in a universe so large. GW didn't really think their numbers through on this one.

 rems01 wrote:
Space Marines deploy only in the most vital situations. When they do deploy they don't fight conventional, massed battles as the Gaurd does.

Except when they do?

 Melissia wrote:

 rems01 wrote:
Space Marines deploy only in the most vital situations. When they do deploy they don't fight conventional, massed battles as the Gaurd does.

Except when they do?

Some chapters are a bit daft in the head like that.

More like "some writers"...

The Red Army thing is a bad example. Space Marines aren't "The Red Army" - whom their Commander in Chief described thusly: "Quantity has a quality of its own". For a better WW2 angle Space Marines are the 'Cockleshell Heroes' (to quote the name of the film): the 12 British Commandos who managed to sink 7 warships and in the process forced the Germans to pull half a million men off the front lines to garrison against similar attacks. The RT era boardgame Advanced Space Crusade when played as a full campaign allowed a demi-company to kill an entire Tyranid Hive Ship (99% of the tyranids on board are in statis, they don't have biomass to feed them all during deep-space transit). You get a few modern mentions of similar, ie: Ultramarines Honour Company destroying the engines of a ship carrying 100,000 heretics during the 13th Black Crusade.

 Melissia wrote:

 rems01 wrote:
Space Marines deploy only in the most vital situations. When they do deploy they don't fight conventional, massed battles as the Gaurd does.

Except when they do?

And that's the problem. A fundamental concept of Space Marines is that they cannot really hurt a major world on their own. GW is constantly writing them as doing just that, but in doing so they are basically ignoring/missing a fundamental element of the setting.

They'd be unplayable in Apocalypse games as a faction if they followed what they were supposed to do in the fluff. (though they'd work just fine in Apoc fluff-wise as an attachment to another imperium faction... mainly the guard)

It's been 1000 Chapters with 1000 members since 2nd edition.

It was only after that was printed that the writers completely stopped following that rule, writing so that each Chapter was ever more "unique" in how the buck the system by not following the proscribed numbers, until nowadays most of them are way over, thus rendering "not following Codex numbers" completely not unique at all.

It's been 1,000 Chapters of 1,000 marines since the 1st edition rulebook itself.

And there aren't THAT many that exceed the codex numberswise. Black Templars, Exorcists, Marines Errant, Space Wolves.. and Space Wolves have been that way since RT (Armies of the Imperium supplement for EPIC in 1991)

Don't space wolves get by on a technicality that each great company counts as a separate chapter? If so, I wonder if each great company counts towards the 1,000 chapter number, too.

Not really, no, because each Great Company still only recruits from Fenris, and still claims the Fang as its base of operations. They lack a separate homeworld and other Chapter-based resources to be considered a separate Chapter, and the HLoT and the =I= aren't going to be fooled by such shenanigans.

I could go on a whole SW rant here, but I'm not. They were once my favorite Chapter but the writing for them over the years has just... bleh. Not much a fan any more.

 MWHistorian wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Actually, even with thousands of chapters it'd still not be enough to really make a huge difference in such a huge galaxy except in just a rare few battles, IMO. The scale of 40k and the scale of the Adeptus Astartes really don't mesh well.

Exactly. The Red Army during WWII was about 5 million soldiers. (Consider that for a moment) And those five million took a while to conquer tiny Europe. A million Space Marines, as Bad A as they are, simply wouldn't make a difference in a universe so large. GW didn't really think their numbers through on this one.

To be fair, the Red Army only had nascent air support, no guided or targeted artillery, ineffective communications gear, minimal mechanization, and no orbital support.

Roughly 1000 at any one time.

Chapters are constantly being created and destroyed so its not always the same 1000 chapters.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

TiamatRoar wrote:
Don't space wolves get by on a technicality that each great company counts as a separate chapter? If so, I wonder if each great company counts towards the 1,000 chapter number, too.

No, the Space Wolves get by on their usefulness to the Imperium.

They gave Roboute the finger and wiped their backsides with his precious codex, while at the same time being utterly loyal to the Imperium and a very useful asset.

That plus the codex being technically optional helps them out.

The Space Wolves are still a Legion.

 Pilau Rice wrote:
This is supposedly from the Space Marines 3rd Codex, according to Lexicanum, and I guess this figure has changed somewhat over the years but this gives an idea as to what can effect the number of chapters at any time.

765.M41: Space Marine Chapter Losses to date: 13 lost in the Warp, 21 Irrecoverable battle losses, 9 Geneseed failure, 4 Inquisitorial purges, 16 Other circumstances.

So in theory there are 1000 chapters with 1000 marines, but then there are some chapters with greater numbers than this, say Space Wolves and Black Templars, and others with greatly reduced numbers due to battle, like the Lamenters and Celestial Lions.

Depending on how greatly reduced the number of Chapters available is I guess leads to another Founding and due to the nature of how records are kept and how the Imperium communicates I guess it is also possible to have a number of over 1000 Chapters at a time or a very low amount.

Heres a thought, at what point does a chapter that has received irrecoverable battle losses get removed from the roster of Chapters and what happens then, do they fight until they all die out or do they given time to rebuild? I think both instances are true, but what would happen if they are reintroduced into action and it took the list of chapters to 1001 and the Administratum or whoever actually knew about that?

Hmm, we haven't heard from the Star Leopards from a very long time, let's just declare them Heretics to tidy up the books

I'd say what happened to the Celestial Lions would count as irrecoverable losses; all apothecaries killed and <100 marines left alive with no way to recruit more. Maybe other chapters who go on penitent crusades and are whittled down to only a few squads so that Imperium write them off as 'irrecoverable'.

Space Wolves are, as in most things, a special case. Although they're also small for a legion when comparing them to their size in HH, so...