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After so many years since the heresy , the traitor legion numbers must been cut down . So how many traitor space marines are still left? My guest is at least 10000-50000

A lot. Traitor Legions recruit new Astartes, and also grow new ones. There's also Loyalist Space Marines turning to Chaos, adding to their numbers.

 thenoobbomb wrote:
A lot. Traitor Legions recruit new Astartes, and also grow new ones. There's also Loyalist Space Marines turning to Chaos, adding to their numbers.

but not in the rate they die in battle

 Metaljunx wrote:

 thenoobbomb wrote:
A lot. Traitor Legions recruit new Astartes, and also grow new ones. There's also Loyalist Space Marines turning to Chaos, adding to their numbers.

but not in the rate they die in battle

I'd actually say Chaos Marines have a lower attrition rate than normal Space Marines, considering a lot of them have a lot of experience and the backing of the Chaos Gods.

In the second book of the night lords trilogy Ruben states that the forces abaddon now controls vastly outnumber those that followed horus

Seen as the Alpha Legion on its own had 180,000... It has been declared wiped out 3 times though, but there are probably more CSMs than SMs. Problem is that they're not exactly too keen on the whole cooperation thing.

Alpha Legion, Iron Warriors, Word Bearers, and Black Legion are all confirmed to recruit new Legionaries. Dunno about the rest.

I'd imagine there are at least as many Chaos Marines are there are loyalist marines. Even more perhaps.

 Metaljunx wrote:

 thenoobbomb wrote:
A lot. Traitor Legions recruit new Astartes, and also grow new ones. There's also Loyalist Space Marines turning to Chaos, adding to their numbers.

but not in the rate they die in battle

they dont die in battle very often. They are space marines after all.

 Harriticus wrote:
Alpha Legion, Iron Warriors, Word Bearers, and Black Legion are all confirmed to recruit new Legionaries. Dunno about the rest.

Thousand Sons recruit as well.

 DxM Scotty MxD wrote:

 Harriticus wrote:
Alpha Legion, Iron Warriors, Word Bearers, and Black Legion are all confirmed to recruit new Legionaries. Dunno about the rest.

Thousand Sons recruit as well.

Plus the Thousand Sons Rubric Marines can be simply pulled out of their graves and shoved back into the front-lines by their Sorcerer commanders.

 DxM Scotty MxD wrote:

 Harriticus wrote:
Alpha Legion, Iron Warriors, Word Bearers, and Black Legion are all confirmed to recruit new Legionaries. Dunno about the rest.

Thousand Sons recruit as well.

but they dont make more rubric marines do they

 Exergy wrote:

 DxM Scotty MxD wrote:

 Harriticus wrote:
Alpha Legion, Iron Warriors, Word Bearers, and Black Legion are all confirmed to recruit new Legionaries. Dunno about the rest.

Thousand Sons recruit as well.

but they dont make more rubric marines do they

Rubric Marines are simply resurrected.

 Metaljunx wrote:

 thenoobbomb wrote:
A lot. Traitor Legions recruit new Astartes, and also grow new ones. There's also Loyalist Space Marines turning to Chaos, adding to their numbers.

but not in the rate they die in battle

We don't know this. We have no idea how fast they die nor how often existing loyalists change sides... I'm sure no one keeps count of the former and the Inquisition makes sure no one knows the latter.

Huron's Corsairs are said to now be near Legion strength. That's got to be at least 10,000 Marines, almost all new recruits as the Astral Claws only numbered a few hundred when they fled to the Maelstrom.

Chaos are limited by their tech and resources but unlike the codex chapters, they do not have caps on their numbers, don't care about geneseed purity as much and have no problem with experiments to clone or manipulate existing geneseed. Not to mention the raids into the Imperium to steal more.

Think of the Soviet Union. They lost millions in WW2, and they did not modernise as fast as the West, but they've never worried about wars of attrition, so despite the changes in modern warfare, they are still churning out tanks and planes. Not the most direct analogy, but one of a force that suffered huge losses but bounced back even more powerful than they were before the war.

 KorPhaeron77 wrote:
Huron's Corsairs are said to now be near Legion strength. That's got to be at least 10,000 Marines, almost all new recruits as the Astral Claws only numbered a few hundred when they fled to the Maelstrom.

Chaos are limited by their tech and resources but unlike the codex chapters, they do not have caps on their numbers, don't care about geneseed purity as much and have no problem with experiments to clone or manipulate existing geneseed. Not to mention the raids into the Imperium to steal more.

Think of the Soviet Union. They lost millions in WW2, and they did not modernise as fast as the West, but they've never worried about wars of attrition, so despite the changes in modern warfare, they are still churning out tanks and planes. Not the most direct analogy, but one of a force that suffered huge losses but bounced back even more powerful than they were before the war.

The Soviet Union is a poor analogy- the Soviets were not 100% mobilised soldiers.

In The Skull Harvest Huron just gifted Honsou over 17000 warriors and a fleet.

He would not do that if he could not afford it. He probably is closing in on the 100K mark, though most likely not all in the same place.

For the record, CSM Legionnaires don't die in battle all that often so there's probably a lot left since the Heresy.

As mentioned, the Corsairs are now operating at Legion-strength.

The Emperor's Children are basically shattered at this point; Fulgrim is off enjoying paradise, they were never big to begin with, and they've been whittled down from a combination of Istvaan 3, the flight to the Eye and Skalathrax.
The World Eaters still have enough warriors to pull 50,000 out for Angron's Dominion of Fire, plus however many were present at Armageddon.
The Death Guard are still operating as a Legion, with Typhus' Plague Fleet the largest splinter group. Mortarion is also at least slightly involved with the material world as demonstrated by turning up to lose to Draigo.
Thousand Sons are a divided Legion, with Ahriman's sect being a significant chunk of warriors and Sorcerers being dispersed across the galaxy to collect lore. I am unsure of how involved Magnus is with his Legion and whether he still leads his own Marines.

Alpha Legion, nobody ever really knew what was going on.
Night Lords were shattered after the death of Curze but the Talos trilogy sets up a fairly impressive final chapter for them. Suffice it to say that they are operating at enough strength to take on
Iron Warriors are still at Legion strength and include thousands, if not hundreds-of-thousands on Medrengard.
Similarly the Word Bearers are still at Legion-strength and the largest divide seems to be a power struggle between Apostles rather than any significant splits between warriors or splinters.

The Black Legion are still large enough to justify an entire Codex and as mentioned, are in numbers larger than what Horus commanded.

This is all in addition to the non-Legion Warbands and traitor Astartes, those created by Fabius's work or the Daemonculaba, and all of the geneseed stolen in raids. Due to the way the Warp works, there are also likely to be a fair few stuck outside the passage of time.
It's likely that there are at least as many, if not significantly more, traitors in action as there were at the time of the Heresy. A lot of these are organised into cells far, far bigger than a Chapter and so any claims that the Legions are dead in 40k are blatantly untrue.

Veterans of the long war? I'd peg that at 10,000 or less given how many of them die. Though honestly with any realistic attrition that number should be countable with your hands.

Everyone else?

Low millions.

Unlikely more than two million.

Like the Imperium's Space Marines vs the Imperial Guard, the Chaos Space Marines focus belies the fact that the more numerous lost and the damned is the actual bulk of their strength.

True Legionnaires, it's hard to say, obviously not as many as there were. I can imagine that the nature of the Warp doesn't always do their Geneseed any good, just because they have it doesn't mean it can be used. But there are various methods of getting around this though, like the Daemonculaba and Fabius Bile being two examples. There are probably an equal measure of traitor and loyal marines.

The majority of new recruits came from renegade chapters, whole and individuals or groups, and Geneseed harvested or stolen from loyalists, such as the attack on Hydra Cordatus and the assault on Vilamus, fortress monastery of the Marines Errant.

So they are always replenishing their numbers but true veterans of the long war aren't necessarily easily replaced.

Abaddon and Huron's numbers are so great because they are an amalgamation of various different warbands, legions and outcasts all adopted under one leader.

well in the book storm of iron the iron warriors attack and capture a massive storehouse of loyalist geneseed that were part of the tithe codex chapters give to mars .

the attack was a precursor to the 13th black crusade part of a deal between abbadon and the iron warriors

was a tie-in to the eye of terror sourcebook

 dekinrie wrote:
well in the book storm of iron the iron warriors attack and capture a massive storehouse of loyalist geneseed that were part of the tithe codex chapters give to mars .

the attack was a precursor to the 13th black crusade part of a deal between abbadon and the iron warriors

was a tie-in to the storm of vengeance sourcebook

Even then, more Iron Warriors joined Honsou's quest to stroke his hateboner for Uriel than did join Abby's "Terra or bust" road trip.

And managed to lose with a 10 to one advantage in Asartes numbers.

Then again, they did have sir Failsalot himself with them; M'Kar the everloser so I guess his unluck rubbed off on them.

Seriously, how the hell did M'Kar make Daemon Prince when he's done nothing but embarrass himself for eleven thousand years?

I personally think the Chaos Gods just made M'kar a Daemon Prince so they could watch him crash and burn time after time for the lulz after his epic contribution to the Horus Heresy of getting stabbed in the chest. Everyone is in on the joke but him, and they make sure to get out the popcorn every time he leaves the warp to see how he screws up this time. They're dicks like that.

 Kain wrote:

 dekinrie wrote:
well in the book storm of iron the iron warriors attack and capture a massive storehouse of loyalist geneseed that were part of the tithe codex chapters give to mars .

the attack was a precursor to the 13th black crusade part of a deal between abbadon and the iron warriors

was a tie-in to the storm of vengeance sourcebook

Even then, more Iron Warriors joined Honsou's quest to stroke his hateboner for Uriel than did join Abby's "Terra or bust" road trip.

And managed to lose with a 10 to one advantage in Asartes numbers.

Then again, they did have sir Failsalot himself with them; M'Kar the everloser so I guess his unluck rubbed off on them.

Seriously, how the hell did M'Kar make Daemon Prince when he's done nothing but embarrass himself for eleven thousand years?

I personally think the Chaos Gods just made M'kar a Daemon Prince so they could watch him crash and burn time after time for the lulz after his epic contribution to the Horus Heresy of getting stabbed in the chest. Everyone is in on the joke but him, and they make sure to get out the popcorn every time he leaves the warp to see how he screws up this time. They're dicks like that.

Not that unlikely actually. Chaos is fickle and the Gods don't seem to actually want to win. Plus they're known for abandoning champions who were pefectly fine and powerful otherwise in both 40K and Fantasy. The best instance was that one Beastmen Chaos Lord who IIRC was about to have a smashing victory, but Chaos set him up to die. He then realized as he was bleeding out that this was the plan of Chaos the entire time, and they'd always wanted him to fail.

I'm not sure if the fluff still stands but was'nt fabius cloning them on a mass production like scale.

I find the assertion that there are more chaos marines than loyalists pretty empty and generally just grimdarking.

Chaos marines have a more difficult life, being wasted by the environment, not just through combat.

Every marine recruited is a marine replaced by the Imperium.

Quick numbers crunch then for a comparison between the Loyalist and Traitor Legion's numbers.

There's 1,000 chapters and according to the Codex Astartes 1,000 marines per Chapter. Some have more some have less but this equates to roughly 1,000,000 marines.

Now, I just checked Lexicanum, the old Legions had the numbers to equate to easily 2,000,000 marines pre-heresy. Assuming half became traitor and during the Heresy atleast half died we're left with about 500,000 marines for the powers of Chaos.

Now as the Eye of Terror is weird with time and its progression every single one of those marines is alive today unless he has died on the battlefield or screwed over by the gods. Throw in the fact that you always have marines trickling over and the warbands using stolen geneseed to grow new troops it's safe to say that they do slowly build up their numbers.

All in all I'd speculate that the Ruinous Powers either have a similar or slightly larger amount of marines available to them than the Imperium. The only reason this hasn't become an issue is getting out of the Eye of Terror is a tricky feat so only handfuls of warbands can get out at a time...unless your Abbadon. Then you just pay a bulk toll fee and get a metric !@#$ ton of marines through no problem to launch the umpteenth Black Crusade.

And to answer the OP between the infighting, wars, Chaos being fickle, and the Warp just being a dangerous place for any mortal I'd say maybe a few thousand have survived to the 41st Millenium or are interred in Dreadnoughts (or whatever they're called now)

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Kain wrote:

 dekinrie wrote:
well in the book storm of iron the iron warriors attack and capture a massive storehouse of loyalist geneseed that were part of the tithe codex chapters give to mars .

the attack was a precursor to the 13th black crusade part of a deal between abbadon and the iron warriors

was a tie-in to the storm of vengeance sourcebook

Even then, more Iron Warriors joined Honsou's quest to stroke his hateboner for Uriel than did join Abby's "Terra or bust" road trip.

And managed to lose with a 10 to one advantage in Asartes numbers.

Then again, they did have sir Failsalot himself with them; M'Kar the everloser so I guess his unluck rubbed off on them.

Seriously, how the hell did M'Kar make Daemon Prince when he's done nothing but embarrass himself for eleven thousand years?

I personally think the Chaos Gods just made M'kar a Daemon Prince so they could watch him crash and burn time after time for the lulz after his epic contribution to the Horus Heresy of getting stabbed in the chest. Everyone is in on the joke but him, and they make sure to get out the popcorn every time he leaves the warp to see how he screws up this time. They're dicks like that.

Not that unlikely actually. Chaos is fickle and the Gods don't seem to actually want to win. Plus they're known for abandoning champions who were pefectly fine and powerful otherwise in both 40K and Fantasy. The best instance was that one Beastmen Chaos Lord who IIRC was about to have a smashing victory, but Chaos set him up to die. He then realized as he was bleeding out that this was the plan of Chaos the entire time, and they'd always wanted him to fail.

At the very least, his long career of being manipulated by the Eldar, losing planets to Tyranids, getting bitchslapped by everyone of importance in the Imperium, pissing away giant chunks of an entire legion to a force with a tenth of the Astartes at hand at best, and receiving banishments from teenaged girls ended by one of the few Daemon Princes to suffer the indignity of true destruction. He was like an actually canonical failbaddon.

I'm sure the Chaos Gods can find other hopelessly incompetent rubes to make into Daemon Princes to give them enough of an ego-boost to go on ill advised misadventures for the amusement of Chaos.

But if they ever want to replace M'Kar, they've got big shoes to fill. But...there may just be such a candidate in Honsou.

I can't imagine that Honsou is going to be welcomed back with open arms after the rest of the legion learns how he managed to lose over ten thousand traitor space marines with the backing of a large and diverse mercenary force at Ultramar with only 350 or so dead Ultramarines to show for it.

That's not material for the next war master. That's material for the gods' new butt monkey.

 Pilau Rice wrote:
True Legionnaires, it's hard to say, obviously not as many as there were. I can imagine that the nature of the Warp doesn't always do their Geneseed any good, just because they have it doesn't mean it can be used. But there are various methods of getting around this though, like the Daemonculaba and Fabius Bile being two examples. There are probably an equal measure of traitor and loyal marines.

The majority of new recruits came from renegade chapters, whole and individuals or groups, and Geneseed harvested or stolen from loyalists, such as the attack on Hydra Cordatus and the assault on Vilamus, fortress monastery of the Marines Errant.

So they are always replenishing their numbers but true veterans of the long war aren't necessarily easily replaced.

Abaddon and Huron's numbers are so great because they are an amalgamation of various different warbands, legions and outcasts all adopted under one leader.

It's mentioned the Alpha Legion had the purest, least corrupted geneseed in 'Legion.' They've not fled into the Warp either.

 Kain wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Kain wrote:

 dekinrie wrote:
well in the book storm of iron the iron warriors attack and capture a massive storehouse of loyalist geneseed that were part of the tithe codex chapters give to mars .

the attack was a precursor to the 13th black crusade part of a deal between abbadon and the iron warriors

was a tie-in to the storm of vengeance sourcebook

Even then, more Iron Warriors joined Honsou's quest to stroke his hateboner for Uriel than did join Abby's "Terra or bust" road trip.

And managed to lose with a 10 to one advantage in Asartes numbers.

Then again, they did have sir Failsalot himself with them; M'Kar the everloser so I guess his unluck rubbed off on them.

Seriously, how the hell did M'Kar make Daemon Prince when he's done nothing but embarrass himself for eleven thousand years?

I personally think the Chaos Gods just made M'kar a Daemon Prince so they could watch him crash and burn time after time for the lulz after his epic contribution to the Horus Heresy of getting stabbed in the chest. Everyone is in on the joke but him, and they make sure to get out the popcorn every time he leaves the warp to see how he screws up this time. They're dicks like that.

Not that unlikely actually. Chaos is fickle and the Gods don't seem to actually want to win. Plus they're known for abandoning champions who were pefectly fine and powerful otherwise in both 40K and Fantasy. The best instance was that one Beastmen Chaos Lord who IIRC was about to have a smashing victory, but Chaos set him up to die. He then realized as he was bleeding out that this was the plan of Chaos the entire time, and they'd always wanted him to fail.

At the very least, his long career of being manipulated by the Eldar, losing planets to Tyranids, getting bitchslapped by everyone of importance in the Imperium, pissing away giant chunks of an entire legion to a force with a tenth of the Astartes at hand at best, and receiving banishments from teenaged girls ended by one of the few Daemon Princes to suffer the indignity of true destruction. He was like an actually canonical failbaddon.

I'm sure the Chaos Gods can find other hopelessly incompetent rubes to make into Daemon Princes to give them enough of an ego-boost to go on ill advised misadventures for the amusement of Chaos.

But if they ever want to replace M'Kar, they've got big shoes to fill. But...there may just be such a candidate in Honsou.

I can't imagine that Honsou is going to be welcomed back with open arms after the rest of the legion learns how he managed to lose over ten thousand traitor space marines with the backing of a large and diverse mercenary force at Ultramar with only 350 or so dead Ultramarines to show for it.

That's not material for the next war master. That's material for the gods' new butt monkey.

They really need to just fire McNeil. Or keep him as far away from the Iron Warriors as possible lest he make them look further stupid.

No wonder why Perturabo keeps himself locked up. Or maybe that's the plan all along- see how many times Honsou and M'kar can feth up horrifically until Perturabo flips his gak and takes direct command of the Legion again.

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Kain wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Kain wrote:

 dekinrie wrote:
well in the book storm of iron the iron warriors attack and capture a massive storehouse of loyalist geneseed that were part of the tithe codex chapters give to mars .

the attack was a precursor to the 13th black crusade part of a deal between abbadon and the iron warriors

was a tie-in to the storm of vengeance sourcebook

Even then, more Iron Warriors joined Honsou's quest to stroke his hateboner for Uriel than did join Abby's "Terra or bust" road trip.

And managed to lose with a 10 to one advantage in Asartes numbers.

Then again, they did have sir Failsalot himself with them; M'Kar the everloser so I guess his unluck rubbed off on them.

Seriously, how the hell did M'Kar make Daemon Prince when he's done nothing but embarrass himself for eleven thousand years?

I personally think the Chaos Gods just made M'kar a Daemon Prince so they could watch him crash and burn time after time for the lulz after his epic contribution to the Horus Heresy of getting stabbed in the chest. Everyone is in on the joke but him, and they make sure to get out the popcorn every time he leaves the warp to see how he screws up this time. They're dicks like that.

Not that unlikely actually. Chaos is fickle and the Gods don't seem to actually want to win. Plus they're known for abandoning champions who were pefectly fine and powerful otherwise in both 40K and Fantasy. The best instance was that one Beastmen Chaos Lord who IIRC was about to have a smashing victory, but Chaos set him up to die. He then realized as he was bleeding out that this was the plan of Chaos the entire time, and they'd always wanted him to fail.

At the very least, his long career of being manipulated by the Eldar, losing planets to Tyranids, getting bitchslapped by everyone of importance in the Imperium, pissing away giant chunks of an entire legion to a force with a tenth of the Astartes at hand at best, and receiving banishments from teenaged girls ended by one of the few Daemon Princes to suffer the indignity of true destruction. He was like an actually canonical failbaddon.

I'm sure the Chaos Gods can find other hopelessly incompetent rubes to make into Daemon Princes to give them enough of an ego-boost to go on ill advised misadventures for the amusement of Chaos.

But if they ever want to replace M'Kar, they've got big shoes to fill. But...there may just be such a candidate in Honsou.

I can't imagine that Honsou is going to be welcomed back with open arms after the rest of the legion learns how he managed to lose over ten thousand traitor space marines with the backing of a large and diverse mercenary force at Ultramar with only 350 or so dead Ultramarines to show for it.

That's not material for the next war master. That's material for the gods' new butt monkey.

They really need to just fire McNeil. Or keep him as far away from the Iron Warriors as possible lest he make them look further stupid.

No wonder why Perturabo keeps himself locked up. Or maybe that's the plan all along- see how many times Honsou and M'kar can feth up horrifically until Perturabo flips his gak and takes direct command of the Legion again.

Honsou was probably too busy daydreaming about his rebirth fetish to pay attention during tactics class.

 Verstaka wrote:
Quick numbers crunch then for a comparison between the Loyalist and Traitor Legion's numbers.

There's 1,000 chapters and according to the Codex Astartes 1,000 marines per Chapter. Some have more some have less but this equates to roughly 1,000,000 marines.

Now, I just checked Lexicanum, the old Legions had the numbers to equate to easily 2,000,000 marines pre-heresy. Assuming half became traitor and during the Heresy atleast half died we're left with about 500,000 marines for the powers of Chaos.

Now as the Eye of Terror is weird with time and its progression every single one of those marines is alive today unless he has died on the battlefield or screwed over by the gods. Throw in the fact that you always have marines trickling over and the warbands using stolen geneseed to grow new troops it's safe to say that they do slowly build up their numbers.

All in all I'd speculate that the Ruinous Powers either have a similar or slightly larger amount of marines available to them than the Imperium. The only reason this hasn't become an issue is getting out of the Eye of Terror is a tricky feat so only handfuls of warbands can get out at a time...unless your Abbadon. Then you just pay a bulk toll fee and get a metric !@#$ ton of marines through no problem to launch the umpteenth Black Crusade.

And to answer the OP between the infighting, wars, Chaos being fickle, and the Warp just being a dangerous place for any mortal I'd say maybe a few thousand have survived to the 41st Millenium or are interred in Dreadnoughts (or whatever they're called now)

How, if 500,000 went into the eye, would they have gained double that to be equal or greater than the total number of loyalists?

The GW Grimdark answer is more than the loyalist.

The "realistic" answer would be significantly less than the loyalists.

In either case, the loyalist marines would most likely halt the traitors in a full on pitched battle. The problem there is that they cannot throw their full numbers at chaos because they are stretched too thin.

Like all the fluff, the Imperium is likely the most powerful group in total, but since literally everyone else is ripping into them from all directions, they can never apply all that power to truly overcome the enemies.