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 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
The Space Wolves split twice. The Ultramarines split more than twenty times. So yeah, while the Space Wolves split into somewhat larger than 1000 Marined, yeah, that's roughly ten times the size. It's pretty simple math.

Remember, we're talking about Post Heresy numbers, not Pre-Heresy. At any Legion size, the only one that mattered in context was how many of them were left after the Heresy and Scouring, not how many they had at their height. Going toe to toe with the Thousand Sons, on the Thousand Sons homeworld, is almost guaranteed to have bled them pretty heavily.

And that's by the outdated numbers, lol. At this point, the Space Wolves could number less than 5,000 by the end of the Scouring to have split only twice, and then the Ultramarines are something like twenty five times larger.

Oh agreed, but by the OP, we're talking about at the START of the heresy - not post-heresy.

 ArbitorIan wrote:

Veteran Sergeant wrote:

 Void__Dragon wrote:
Guilliman might not be capable of besting Leman Russ in a brawl, but in a war, with the full backing of the rest of the Imperium, the Ultramarines would unceremoniously crush the Space Wolves, be real here.

Pretty much.

The Ultramarines were upwards of ten times larger than the Space Wolves, with a ridiculous amount of assets.

I tend to agree with the 20-30,000 assessment, and the losses at Prospero and the Scouring dwindling their strength down to less than 10,000 by the 2nd Founding. Fighting the Thousand Sons, on their home turf, had to have caused staggering casualties to the Space Wolves. And the fact that they only divided once pretty much confirms that. The Space Wolves would have always been hampered by only recruiting from Fenris, where as the other Legions were all using many, many worlds to do it. Except the Ultramarines, who were using hundreds, lol.

Again, I don't remember seeing anywhere that states that the UM were 'ten times' bigger than the Space Wolves. I think 30,000 is on the small side, but then we're just randomly picking figures out of the air at the moment.

beef wrote:secondly the HH vision artboooks have Ulras as the largest with 250,000 marines pre heresy. The average was 100,000 with the smallest being the Sallies and not the 1000sone (the sallies were small at 30,000,) the wolves were average, it says they were not the largest but it never states they were the smallest either.

The Salamanders have been stated to be the smallest Legion (can't remember where, though). Can you state where it says they were 30,000 strong? I said its from the HH vision artbooks, Ie horus heresy artbooks, We know from 'A Thousand Sons' that the Thousand Sons used to be composed of 10 Brotherhoods, and that the loss of 900 marines in one of the brotherhoods 'effectively wiped them out', which suggests that Brotherhoods are about 1000 marines each. That puts the Thousand Sons at roughly 9000 marines. If the Salamanders really were the smallest Legion, they'd have to be smaller than that?

No they would not because fluff changes

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
The Space Wolves split twice. The Ultramarines split more than twenty times. So yeah, while the Space Wolves split into somewhat larger than 1000 Marined, yeah, that's roughly ten times the size. It's pretty simple math.

Remember, we're talking about Post Heresy numbers, not Pre-Heresy. At any Legion size, the only one that mattered in context was how many of them were left after the Heresy and Scouring, not how many they had at their height. Going toe to toe with the Thousand Sons, on the Thousand Sons homeworld, is almost guaranteed to have bled them pretty heavily.

And that's by the outdated numbers, lol. At this point, the Space Wolves could number less than 5,000 by the end of the Scouring to have split only twice, and then the Ultramarines are something like twenty five times larger.

The Wolves split once and only once.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Guilliman gave up more power than all the other primarchs combined. Russ and Dorn were just throwing tantrums. See how easily that can be turned on its head?

And yeah, Guilliman could have forced them. He had more Space Marines than the rest of the Primarchs together, he had the support of some of his brothers, and he was the High Commander of the Imperial forces at the time which means he had the whole Navy and Army. If Russ "gave in" it was because he realized he had no choice. Not because he was saving the Imperium from another civil war. The Space Wolves would have been crushed quickly.

Oh, FFS, this has been argued already.
At the time Guilliman was pushing his Codex through he was *not* High Commander of the Imperial Forces yet. Therefore, he did not control the entirety of the Navy and Army.
If neither side had backed down, both would have split according to individual guard/navy commander's loyalties. Guilliman vs Russ, Dorn & Johnson and their Legions with Navy and Army divided (roughly, I should think) along "we've served with this guy for so long, we'll follow him now" lines is *not* a rolfstomp in favour of Guilliman. The only reason it's even a contest is that the UM's had avoided the worst of the fighting of the Heresy, and therefore as a single Legion were about as numerous as the other three put together. That leaves them 3 Primarchs to one, with 2 of the 3 having better battlefield records...

(Since no source I'm aware of states where Corax, Jaghatai, Vulkan or the Legions now bereft of primarchs stood on the matter, I'm assuming that they either had no opinion one way or the other and were waiting by the sidelines to see who won the argument or weren't numerous enough to make a difference.)

 Tyr Grimtooth wrote:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
The Space Wolves split twice. The Ultramarines split more than twenty times. So yeah, while the Space Wolves split into somewhat larger than 1000 Marined, yeah, that's roughly ten times the size. It's pretty simple math.

Remember, we're talking about Post Heresy numbers, not Pre-Heresy. At any Legion size, the only one that mattered in context was how many of them were left after the Heresy and Scouring, not how many they had at their height. Going toe to toe with the Thousand Sons, on the Thousand Sons homeworld, is almost guaranteed to have bled them pretty heavily.

And that's by the outdated numbers, lol. At this point, the Space Wolves could number less than 5,000 by the end of the Scouring to have split only twice, and then the Ultramarines are something like twenty five times larger.

The Wolves split once and only once.

Into two pieces. Good lord, why with the semantics? I would hope we were more intelligent than that here.

Bran Dawri wrote:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Guilliman gave up more power than all the other primarchs combined. Russ and Dorn were just throwing tantrums. See how easily that can be turned on its head?

And yeah, Guilliman could have forced them. He had more Space Marines than the rest of the Primarchs together, he had the support of some of his brothers, and he was the High Commander of the Imperial forces at the time which means he had the whole Navy and Army. If Russ "gave in" it was because he realized he had no choice. Not because he was saving the Imperium from another civil war. The Space Wolves would have been crushed quickly.

Oh, FFS, this has been argued already.
At the time Guilliman was pushing his Codex through he was *not* High Commander of the Imperial Forces yet. Therefore, he did not control the entirety of the Navy and Army.
If neither side had backed down, both would have split according to individual guard/navy commander's loyalties. Guilliman vs Russ, Dorn & Johnson and their Legions with Navy and Army divided (roughly, I should think) along "we've served with this guy for so long, we'll follow him now" lines is *not* a rolfstomp in favour of Guilliman. The only reason it's even a contest is that the UM's had avoided the worst of the fighting of the Heresy, and therefore as a single Legion were about as numerous as the other three put together. That leaves them 3 Primarchs to one, with 2 of the 3 having better battlefield records...

(Since no source I'm aware of states where Corax, Jaghatai, Vulkan or the Legions now bereft of primarchs stood on the matter, I'm assuming that they either had no opinion one way or the other and were waiting by the sidelines to see who won the argument or weren't numerous enough to make a difference.)

You'd think you'd know the fluff better if it had been argued so many times.

Heck, you don't even have the numbers even remotely close. The Ultramarines were larger than all the other Legions put together. They were easily twice as large as the DA, SW, and IF put together. Even without the strength of the Navy and Army (which we know sided with Guilliman since it was the Navy that opened fire on the IF), the Ultramarines would have crushed them. There was no "about as".

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

 Tyr Grimtooth wrote:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
The Space Wolves split twice. The Ultramarines split more than twenty times. So yeah, while the Space Wolves split into somewhat larger than 1000 Marined, yeah, that's roughly ten times the size. It's pretty simple math.

Remember, we're talking about Post Heresy numbers, not Pre-Heresy. At any Legion size, the only one that mattered in context was how many of them were left after the Heresy and Scouring, not how many they had at their height. Going toe to toe with the Thousand Sons, on the Thousand Sons homeworld, is almost guaranteed to have bled them pretty heavily.

And that's by the outdated numbers, lol. At this point, the Space Wolves could number less than 5,000 by the end of the Scouring to have split only twice, and then the Ultramarines are something like twenty five times larger.

The Wolves split once and only once.

Into two pieces. Good lord, why with the semantics? I would hope we were more intelligent than that here.

This isn't semantics, it is you typing something completely wrong and trying to turn the blame aside for your stupidity/fat fingers. Next time instead of going the pompous ass route, just say oops or make an edit.

No, it's called you being an obnoxious twit when you knew exactly what I meant, lol.

I'm skeptical of the idea that Guilliman's legion was bigger than all the other loyalists by the end of the heresy. That was probably true in the old fluff, but I don't think it takes into consideration just how badly the Ultramarines got dat ass whooped at Calth in the new fluff, even if Gulliman did manage to turn it around in the end and win a [pyrrhic] victory.

Iirc, the Ultramarines lost nearly 2/3rds of their forces at Calth alone. Even with the IF, Blood Angels and White Scars taking a pounding at Terra, I doubt that by its end all three of them would have been reduced in strength to the point where even combined, their numbers wouldn't have been superior to the Ultramarines.

Good lord, it's like one of those high school rumors. The Ultramarines lose more Marines at Calth every time the story gets repeated, lol.


Identifying the fact that the Ultramarines had more than half the total Marines at the end of the Scouring is easy. The fluff tells you that, flat out. The Ultramarines also had 23 successors, when the next largest legion only had 5. Obviously those numbers will adjust upwards if the new Black Library fluff holds true.

But what allowed the Ultramarines to stay larger was the infrastructure of Ultramar. They just kept making more Marines, and they had the resources to make their own ships and armor and weapons on a massive scale. So while all the other Legions were suffering heavy casualties too, they weren't replacing Marines at the same rate.

Besides, even if you consider how badly they were mauled at Calth, you're obviously vastly underestimating how bloody the Battle of Terra would have been. Honestly, the fact that any of the Legions escaped the Battle of Terra intact is a miracle itself and only occurred because the fluff was written to say that they did, lol. We're talking about protracted battles, on a relatively small planet, between the forces of 10 Legions of Space Marines (7 vs 3). Even with the benefit of defensive fortifications and entrenchments plus the Custodes and Sisters of Silence, the loyalist Legions were badly outnumbered and outgunned. And being the attacking force, the Traitor Legions would have been shattered against the walls of the Imperial Palace too. It might be reasonable to expect that only 10-20% of each Legion might survive the Battle of Terra, on both sides.

My understanding of the losses they took at Calth is based off a line in the new fluff explicitly stating that they lost 2/3rds of their forces at Calth; so again, pointing to what the old fluff says on the matter is largely irrelevant. The only question is whether or not the 2/3rds line actually exists. Admittedly, I may be thinking of the line in Betrayal that states that the EC's lost 2/3rds of their troops on Istvaan.

Terra was no doubt a charnel house- but on the other hand, the Loyalists had on their side the most well-built fortress in the Galaxy, years of preparation, and untold amounts of army forces, the custodes, the sisters, near full-strength Imperial Fists, full strength White Scars, and Blood Angels (idk what shape they were in- I haven't read Fear to Tread). The traitor legions on the other hand were all at less than half strength, considering Istvaan, and their other little squabbles while fighting their way to Terra. As well, we know that the EC's went on a lol-rape spree once they reached Terra instead of actually contributing to the Siege, and a good number of the Death Guard spent their time farting around the warp and getting corrupted by Nurgle, rather than go to Terra.

Conversely, the Ultramarines might as well have been bent over a table with their pants down when the Word Bearers betrayed them.

The Siege of Terra was unarguably a far grander and bloody event then battle of Calth, but I wouldn't say that, ratio-wise, the loyalist legions took more losses than the UM did.

And that's not even counting the Dark Angels, who were largely unscathed once the dust cleared (their campaign against the NL's might have been bloody, but by fluff they spent more time kicking ass then getting their asses kicked).

The Dark Angels lost half their legion to Chaos, lol.

And in a few hours, 100,000 Ultramarines were lost at Calth, in Know No Fear.

Ooooooh, right. Luthor. Trololo.

Was it really 50% of their legion that seceded? Hot damn, son.

It was far from 50%, he only banished one company to watch over Caliban, coincidentally most of those were Caliban-born. Considering these were faced with the Imperium seemingly trying to destroy their planet, their secession is understandable, maybe even justifiable.

Weird, I could have sworn the amount was always half.

They wouldn't be a very successful Legion if fully half of them just sat around chilling at home base. Descent of Angels establishes the banished ones as being a large portion of Zahariel's company, or "hundreds upon hundreds of loyal warriors", certainly not 50,000+. Many of these disagreed/resisted Luther. Angels of Darkness establishes the number of Dark Angels "who first swore allegiance to Luther when he rose against the Lion" as 136. Granted, these are disparate sources, but they are the only ones we have. Shows just how obsessive these guys really are.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
Weird, I could have sworn the amount was always half.

It used to be half. In any case, this didn't happen until after the Heresy and the Scouring, so doesn't really have a bearing on the discussion at hand.

It was never half, I don't know where you are getting that from.

In Index Astartes, the Lion had "the majority" of the Legion with him. In the 3rd edition codex, the number of traitors is given as "some". The 2nd edition book is even more vague, merely stating that the rebels were Luther and those left behind to be caretakers of the planet.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Identifying the fact that the Ultramarines had more than half the total Marines at the end of the Scouring is easy. The fluff tells you that, flat out. The Ultramarines also had 23 successors, when the next largest legion only had 5. Obviously those numbers will adjust upwards if the new Black Library fluff holds true.

This bit is actually true. 2nd edition Ultramarines says as much (it finally came in! - that leaves only the Chaos Codex missing from the collection :-D). They were also scattered all over the Galaxy from, y'know, being the largest Legion and hence best equipped to divide forces to fight on so many different fronts to keep the Imperium together.
It still makes no mention of which way the Imperial Army and Navy would jump, and I very much doubt that they'd side as a single entity with one Primarch; it seems to me to be entirely more likely that they would fall out along Expeditionary Fleet lines, with each individual Fleet siding with whichever Primarch they served with. Which might still leave the UM with an overall numerical advantage, but, again, a scattered one, and the outcome up in the air.
Since all of this is pure speculation, as none of this actually happened according to canon (Russ backed down to save the Imperium), anything but the state of the Imperium during and after the scouring is your opinion vs. mine, and even the state of the Imperium is (evidently) open to much debate.