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Hi all, just a quick one. In a codex battle company the first 6 squads are tactical squads so would be numbers 1-6, I understand the assault would be 7 and 8 and so on with the devastator squads. Would the assaults always be 7 and 8 or could they be 1 and 2 on the basis they are different from tactical squads.
Thanks
EdO

IIRC, Codex Tactical Companies are Squads 1-6 Are Tactical, 7,8 are Assault and 9-10 are Devastator.

Of course your Dev squads could be from 8th or 9th Company so numbered 1-10 and, your Assault squads from Ass Companies 6 or 7 also number 1-10

Ed Orange wrote:
Would the assaults always be 7 and 8 or could they be 1 and 2 on the basis they are different from tactical squads.

There are no canon examples of that, but the codex astartes does urge commanders to periodically alter their markings to confuse the enemy and this strikes me as a very good way to go about it.

Actually, boba fide codex chapters (as per a source I will find later maybe) often do have that ratio of squads. They might have fewer of one type and more of another, or maybe a fourth, weirder type of squad. According to the source (insignium?) they can do this and still be codex chapters. So the main requirement seems to be "have all the squads in a company use a different number."

This is better because it is much more useful to identify by jst number than to use the same number multiple times and have to attach more information that can be lost in transmission.

The only company that might use the same number twice is the first company. This is because terminator squads are five marines, so they need to go up to 20, and the terminators from squads 11-20 need to also be part of veteran squads 1-10.

pelicaniforce wrote:
Actually, boba fide codex chapters (as per a source I will find later maybe) often do have that ratio of squads. They might have fewer of one type and more of another, or maybe a fourth, weirder type of squad. According to the source (insignium?) they can do this and still be codex chapters. So the main requirement seems to be "have all the squads in a company use a different number."

This is better because it is much more useful to identify by jst number than to use the same number multiple times and have to attach more information that can be lost in transmission.

The only company that might use the same number twice is the first company. This is because terminator squads are five marines, so they need to go up to 20, and the terminators from squads 11-20 need to also be part of veteran squads 1-10.

Terminator Squads can be 5-10 marines, I assume they are actually trained in batches of 10 but can be split up (eg, combat squadded) unofficially to spread their power across the battlefield, so I imagine they would still be numbered 1-10

The army list lets you do that, but the charts from the same book all say 20 squads of terminators if they say anything at all.

There is this old picture of the markings below. You can see the difference, because "veteran squads" are now divided into to vanguard and sternguard, but have a single set of squad numbers the same way battle companies use one set of numbers 1-10 for three different types of squad.

The environments that terminator squads are formed to fight in make squads of even five a little bit too large and hard to coordinate as one unit. The TDA used by terminator squads is rare enough and powerful enough that sending them in blocks of ten is inefficient.