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So, it's 41st millenium. How many CSM there is in an average legion, after all campaings of Long War? Do they recruit new CSM?

alrighty, this is a complicated subject. first off the easy question. yes new CSMs are recruited.the how varies a bit.

regarding legion strength. the Legions are no longer intact. they've instead splintered into warbands. yeah a lot of the time those warbands have a legion identity and employ tactics and nomeclature in common. but for the most part there is no high command they report too. as a good example. in the ultramarine series. Honsou didn't need to go ask Pertubeo "pretty please may I?" to attack Ultramar. he just did. not even the deamon primarchs are going to be able to draw in ALL their wayward children (although they can assmble eneugh to make a pretty mean sized force. even with the most splintered legions. as typified by the 1st war for Armageddon) so it's hard to say "the Iron Warriors have X many people while the Night Lords have Y".

Many warbands are also a little blended. this brings us back to the recruitment issue. It's a safe bet that most warbands also recruit fallen marines from loyalist chapters. (we know for a fact the Red Cosairs do) Large Space Marine units falling to chaos is rare. so, if the Ultramarines 4th company 6th tatical squad decides "SCREW THE EMPEROR!" they can attempt to go it on their own sure. (and depending on their resources they might be able to do alright. a full squad of Marines is proably a reasonably potent force for piracy back in the hinterlands) but just as likely they'll be offered a place in a larger warband.

so that Iron Warriors warband, might have iron warriors at the core, and employ the typical tactics expected of them. but they might have a squad of former ultramarines serving with em.m and maybe a 10k sons sorc in their employ. and maybe they picked up the survivors of a world eaters bezerker warband and use em as shock troops etc.

Okay, so... How many CSM there's in a warband?

 BioVass wrote:
Okay, so... How many CSM there's in a warband?

depends on the warband as they're not very well orginized. a warband could consist of hundreds of CSMs to a small handful.

A warband could even consist of a single CSM, backed by cultists whom, CONSIDER HIM A GOD MUHAHAHAHAHA!

Angron and 50000 berzerkers conquered three dozen star systems in the 38th millennium. Pg: 36 of the previous CSM codex

It doesn't state how many of them are World Eaters but most of them should be so the legions are still pretty big.

the Legions are no longer intact

The Word Bearers are unified under Erebus and Kor, the Black Legion under Abbadon, Thousand Sons are unified under Magnus with Arhiman leading a couple hundred that Magnus banished, their seems to be similar situations with the Death Guard, Perturabo just doesn't care that his sons fight each other. The only Legions that are broken are the Emperors Children and the World Eaters. I don't feel like debating about what the Alpha Legion are up to.

Night Lords are broken as well.

Scion of Davin wrote:

the Legions are no longer intact

The Word Bearers are unified under Erebus and Kor, the Black Legion under Abbadon, Thousand Sons are unified under Magnus with Arhiman leading a couple hundred that Magnus banished, their seems to be similar situations with the Death Guard, Perturabo just doesn't care that his sons fight each other. The only Legions that are broken are the Emperors Children and the World Eaters. I don't feel like debating about what the Alpha Legion are up to.

Ok first off, I considered making an exception for the Word Bearers, but they more or less apply as well, they're not the legion of old, they;'re effctivly a lose collection of warbands. but yes they're reasonably unified.
Secondly, the Black Legion are NOT simply a rebranding of the Sons of Horus. the Black Legion is essentially the galaxies biggest warband. yes at it's core you have the remnaints of the sons of Horus but it also has members of other legions and the like,
the thousand sons are by your own admission kinda splintered. Sure there is a solid core whom follow Magnus, but there's also the ones who followed Arhiman. also the sources indicate mopst often 10k sons memebrs rent their services out to warbands. the last unified legion action we saw from the 10k sons was in M 32.

yeah the Legions can sometimes reunite, but to claim they're single individual legions is kinda wrong at this point. you definatly have warbands whom see themselves as still part of the legion. but they're pretty broken.

As a quick rehash, some legions are bigger than the others and always have been. IW and Black Legion, the previously smallest legion, got huge influxes of new marines recently when the IW under the order of Abbadon captured a massive geneseed storage facility. It is also well know that the legions will steal geneseed from fallen or captured loyalist marines and use them which is how Honsou came about.

Other legions it just depends, I wont get into legions I am unfamiliar with. Alpha Legion never retreated to the Eye. Since the heresy the AL have not really done anything in full Legion strength, instead working in independent cells with no clear chain of command and hidden supply bases all over the place. It is not really known what they are doing and if they are working towards a common goal or their own ends. Along that note, because they work as small cells on missions spread out across the Imperium, there is no frikkin way to tell how many of them there are.

Night Lords are a good example of a broken legion. They fly around in ships under a charismatic/ruthless commander and have no issue fighting each other. Their numbers can be anywhere from 2 or 3 guys to hundreds plus their serfs. Unlike the other Legions they are fanatically loyal to their deceased Primarch who they revere as the ultimate father figure. Even the most hard core of them have cracked a tear when finding relics of Konrad. And with that fanatical devotion they will come together seamlessly from across the Imperium to fight a common enemy in order to reclaim a relic of their past. Aside from the Atramentar, no one knows what the hell these guys are doing since they do not seem to be working the same plan as everyone else. Their numbers are dwindling and there isn't a record that I know of where they have been making new marines. That said, the main protagonists in the fluff have mostly skipped the last few millennia due to the fun of warp space time travel or hibernation. So for quite a few of them, the Heresy was only a couple hundred years ago.

Col. Dash wrote:
As a quick rehash, some legions are bigger than the others and always have been. IW and Black Legion, the previously smallest legion, got huge influxes of new marines recently when the IW under the order of Abbadon captured a massive geneseed storage facility. It is also well know that the legions will steal geneseed from fallen or captured loyalist marines and use them which is how Honsou came about.

Other legions it just depends, I wont get into legions I am unfamiliar with. Alpha Legion never retreated to the Eye. Since the heresy the AL have not really done anything in full Legion strength, instead working in independent cells with no clear chain of command and hidden supply bases all over the place. It is not really known what they are doing and if they are working towards a common goal or their own ends. Along that note, because they work as small cells on missions spread out across the Imperium, there is no frikkin way to tell how many of them there are.

Night Lords are a good example of a broken legion. They fly around in ships under a charismatic/ruthless commander and have no issue fighting each other. Their numbers can be anywhere from 2 or 3 guys to hundreds plus their serfs. Unlike the other Legions they are fanatically loyal to their deceased Primarch who they revere as the ultimate father figure. Even the most hard core of them have cracked a tear when finding relics of Konrad. And with that fanatical devotion they will come together seamlessly from across the Imperium to fight a common enemy in order to reclaim a relic of their past. Aside from the Atramentar, no one knows what the hell these guys are doing since they do not seem to be working the same plan as everyone else. Their numbers are dwindling and there isn't a record that I know of where they have been making new marines. That said, the main protagonists in the fluff have mostly skipped the last few millennia due to the fun of warp space time travel or hibernation. So for quite a few of them, the Heresy was only a couple hundred years ago.

Huh?
The IW and the Black Legion were never the smallest Legions, Both were a part of the top three by size.

Black Legion wavered after the Heresy of almost being destroyed as they threw their lot in with any chaos god that would take them and more and more of them got possessed and the new sponsor really didn't like the possessed from the old sponsor. Old fluff, might have been retconned but I tend to stick with older information rather than switch to new.

Not to mention all four Istvaan legions lost about a third of their fighting power purging the loyalists, and then the massive casualties they took when the punishment force arrived before they retreated to the drop site massacre. Also the other legions kicked their butts across the Eye for running away and causing the defeat at Terra.

Col. Dash wrote:
Black Legion wavered after the Heresy of almost being destroyed as they threw their lot in with any chaos god that would take them and more and more of them got possessed and the new sponsor really didn't like the possessed from the old sponsor. Old fluff, might have been retconned but I tend to stick with older information rather than switch to new.

Not to mention all four Istvaan legions lost about a third of their fighting power purging the loyalists, and then the massive casualties they took when the punishment force arrived before they retreated to the drop site massacre. Also the other legions kicked their butts across the Eye for running away and causing the defeat at Terra.

Still more men than most traitor legions

The Legion's GREW in size during the heresy, they even managed to increase astartes recruitment vastly and this led to a lot of the issues we see to this date.

 Khonsu wrote:
Huh?
The IW and the Black Legion were never the smallest Legions, Both were a part of the top three by size.

This is not correct. We can't tell for sure because we don't know the Alpha Legion's size, but of the known Legions, the Ultramarines were by far the largest, at 250,000 ish. The second largest were Word Bearers, at 200,000. Then we have a fair few at around 160,000, such as Sons of Horus and Iron Warriors.

Yeah the smallest legion was the raven guard (previously it was the thousand sons, but that was retconned for the time being) they were around the 70k mark.

Col. Dash wrote:
Black Legion wavered after the Heresy of almost being destroyed as they threw their lot in with any chaos god that would take them and more and more of them got possessed and the new sponsor really didn't like the possessed from the old sponsor. Old fluff, might have been retconned but I tend to stick with older information rather than switch to new.

Not to mention all four Istvaan legions lost about a third of their fighting power purging the loyalists, and then the massive casualties they took when the punishment force arrived before they retreated to the drop site massacre. Also the other legions kicked their butts across the Eye for running away and causing the defeat at Terra.

Not to completely derail the thread but the amount of traitor HH casualties always bothered me. Though it varied from legion to legion we know that as many as half of some of the traitor legions remained loyal and had to be culled. After Istvann III and V which were super casualty driven fights thanks to everyone from Saul Tarvitz to Corax how much of an average traitor legion like the world eaters or sons of hours could have be left to campaign to terra?

 Formosa wrote:
Yeah the smallest legion was the raven guard (previously it was the thousand sons, but that was retconned for the time being) they were around the 70k mark.

This is not true. In Extermination, page 138, we are told that approxmately 80,000 Raven Guard were present at Isstvan V.

 buddha wrote:

Col. Dash wrote:
Black Legion wavered after the Heresy of almost being destroyed as they threw their lot in with any chaos god that would take them and more and more of them got possessed and the new sponsor really didn't like the possessed from the old sponsor. Old fluff, might have been retconned but I tend to stick with older information rather than switch to new.

Not to mention all four Istvaan legions lost about a third of their fighting power purging the loyalists, and then the massive casualties they took when the punishment force arrived before they retreated to the drop site massacre. Also the other legions kicked their butts across the Eye for running away and causing the defeat at Terra.

Not to completely derail the thread but the amount of traitor HH casualties always bothered me. Though it varied from legion to legion we know that as many as half of some of the traitor legions remained loyal and had to be culled. After Istvann III and V which were super casualty driven fights thanks to everyone from Saul Tarvitz to Corax how much of an average traitor legion like the world eaters or sons of hours could have be left to campaign to terra?

They actually lost about a third of their numbers in Loyalists, then they really didn't lose very men on Istvaan because it was the Dropsite MASSACRE not the Dropsite battle. AL, WB, and NL swooped in and fethed gak up with minimal casualties, and the rest of the Chaos Marines didn't suffer very many either. During HH, they were able to recruit without restrictions, so numbers would've skyrocketed from that, also, Warbands have been continually recruiting since they got their asses handed to them at Terra, so numbers would be keeping steady due to lack of safety restrictions and billions of slaves willing to be turned into CSM.

They are still pretty big.

It's easier for csm to create new marines because they don't require such rigorous testing, at least mentally. Csm don't really mind if you are slightly unhinged.

In other ways though it's not that easy for CSM to create new marines. The constant warp exposure ruins their geneseed, meaning they have to raid loyalist genestocks (the CrimsonS laughter supplement includes a scenario of this theme, alongside a quote along the lines of 'what is it to lose hundreds if thousands more can be born from their deaths').

Do CSM's have 'daemonic possesion?' I ask because if that is wouldn't they sort of be recycled as their daemon is banished to the warp? Just wondered about that.

The main legions involved at the Istvaan massacre got pummeled on both sides. It was when the loyaists fell back to the drop site that the real massacre happened. But the four traitor legions involved in the initial defense still took the brunt of the three legions that attacked them before the attackers fell back to "safety."

The numbers have never really added up very well. According to the fluff, out of the traitor legions the Sons of Horus, EC, WE, and DG should be the smallest of the legions attacking Terra with not a lot left to retreat with to the Eye, which should have left the other 2 to beat the crap out of them once they arrived at the Eye.

I don't think the traitors have a consistent recruitment prcoess. I'd imagine a lot of warbands survive by recruiting other marines rather than makingv their own.

Bear in mind that Fabius Bile is listed as selling his services to many warbands, and has a quote where he scoffs at the imperium for requiring less deaths per space marine produced than him.

If the resources to produce new CSM were common, he would not be able to sell his shoddy services.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Yeah the smallest legion was the raven guard (previously it was the thousand sons, but that was retconned for the time being) they were around the 70k mark.

This is not true. In Extermination, page 138, we are told that approxmately 80,000 Raven Guard were present at Isstvan V.

Cheers thats the thing I was thinking of, and yes it is true, I was just 10k out lol slight error yeah?

As I said before according to the hh books the Legion's got larger during the heresy, not smaller, basically reducing space marine creation to 2 years in some cases.

When those 10k Marines are outside your house, knocking on your window, it won't seem like a slight error.

Besides not all RG were at Isstvan.

In one book the emperor made the whole word bearers legion bow to him. I could swear there was 100,000 word bearers present.

yellowfever wrote:
I could swear there was 100,000 word bearers present.

You withnessed it? Guilliman wake up, Imperium needs you

Col. Dash wrote:
The main legions involved at the Istvaan massacre got pummeled on both sides. It was when the loyaists fell back to the drop site that the real massacre happened. But the four traitor legions involved in the initial defense still took the brunt of the three legions that attacked them before the attackers fell back to "safety."

The numbers have never really added up very well. According to the fluff, out of the traitor legions the Sons of Horus, EC, WE, and DG should be the smallest of the legions attacking Terra with not a lot left to retreat with to the Eye, which should have left the other 2 to beat the crap out of them once they arrived at the Eye.

None of the legions present has 100% of their forces on the ground.

Also attacking usually requires more men than defending, and suffers proportionally more casualties even with more men.

So while the initial traitors did take a nasty assault, they would have lost less than the loyalists who attacked them even before the betrayal.

and the sons of Horus, in fairness basicly where beaten into the ground.

go read "Talon of Horus" it does a pretty good job of giving us a look at the state of the traitor legions shortly after the Heresy

BrianDavion wrote:and the sons of Horus, in fairness basicly where beaten into the ground.

go read "Talon of Horus" it does a pretty good job of giving us a look at the state of the traitor legions shortly after the Heresy

Then the Sons of Horus turned into the Black Legion and started to recruit from the other Legions, so it's all good (also, yeah, they got raped).

Exergy wrote:

Col. Dash wrote:
The main legions involved at the Istvaan massacre got pummeled on both sides. It was when the loyaists fell back to the drop site that the real massacre happened. But the four traitor legions involved in the initial defense still took the brunt of the three legions that attacked them before the attackers fell back to "safety."

The numbers have never really added up very well. According to the fluff, out of the traitor legions the Sons of Horus, EC, WE, and DG should be the smallest of the legions attacking Terra with not a lot left to retreat with to the Eye, which should have left the other 2 to beat the crap out of them once they arrived at the Eye.

None of the legions present has 100% of their forces on the ground.

Also attacking usually requires more men than defending, and suffers proportionally more casualties even with more men.

So while the initial traitors did take a nasty assault, they would have lost less than the loyalists who attacked them even before the betrayal.

This. If you read Fulgrim (or pretty much any novel that features portions of the Dropsite Massacre), you see that Fulgrim built MILES of incredibly well-built fortifications for the defenders, which would've reduced defending casualties massively, not to mention the fact that they were defending with far superior weaponry (see: Sound Marines, Sorcerers, Posessed Marines) than the attackers were using, AND that the attackers were basically just charging across a massive killing field to hit the Traitors (fething seriously, why didn't they just virus bomb the Traitors?)