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I have a question, i read a horus heresy book and someones refers to 500 marines being a company and then i red another one that refers to 100 marines as a company. so do you know what the standard legion company size is?

Varies, prior to the codex, each Legion did it's own thing.

Yeah the way legions were organised was different from legion to legion, depending on how the Primarch broke things down.

Post codex chapters have one hundred men.

Legion era did what they fancied. I think Word Bearers used to have 1000 men chapters in their legion.

Also note that you need to define 'company' a lot of legions had the 'battle company' or 'line company', which is a 100 man force like today, and the 'grand company', which is more like a space wolves great company, templar crusade or contemporary chapter.

In Vengeful Spirit, the 1st Company of the Sons of Horus is 500 Terminators.

I think company size varied from Legion to Legion. Company size was probably firmly set at around 100 marines after the codex was put out.

 Harriticus wrote:
In Vengeful Spirit, the 1st Company of the Sons of Horus is 500 Terminators.

There's also power armoured marines in the Sons of Horus 1st Company. There's the Justaerin Terminators and the Catulan Reavers.

And they had non-1st company Terminators too, didn't they? I have seen Terminators in the normal SoH colours.

 Ashiraya wrote:
And they had non-1st company Terminators too, didn't they? I have seen Terminators in the normal SoH colours.

Yeah they did, not all Termies were in the 1st Company.

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
And they had non-1st company Terminators too, didn't they? I have seen Terminators in the normal SoH colours.

Yeah they did, not all Termies were in the 1st Company.

Far as understand the first was part primarch honour guard, and also the elite unit, the very best of the veterans available. In battle a physical rally point, the first advances, the army follows kinda deal, I think I have its nature right.

Far from only elitely geared unit but the ceremonial, closest to the primarch, (normally)so highly respected, ( world eaters differ of course)

Per HH1 from Forgeworld, the standard Legion organization was 1000-man chapters, each divided into two battalions of five 100-man companies (keeping in mind that Legion companies would not have the same squad breakdown as later codex companies). Organization and numbers changed as time went by and the Primarchs changed things to suit their purposes, as well.

There's a nice 2-page spread in the book of the full org chart.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
Per HH1 from Forgeworld, the standard Legion organization was 1000-man chapters, each divided into two battalions of five 100-man companies (keeping in mind that Legion companies would not have the same squad breakdown as later codex companies). Organization and numbers changed as time went by and the Primarchs changed things to suit their purposes, as well.

There's a nice 2-page spread in the book of the full org chart.

The problem with that is it's only a rough "generalist" look at it. 18 Legions all with their own core organizations (DG, where every "basic" marine was trained for every role, WE where most "tactics and organizations" broke down into a giant mosh pit, etc.)

 Brennonjw wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
Per HH1 from Forgeworld, the standard Legion organization was 1000-man chapters, each divided into two battalions of five 100-man companies (keeping in mind that Legion companies would not have the same squad breakdown as later codex companies). Organization and numbers changed as time went by and the Primarchs changed things to suit their purposes, as well.

There's a nice 2-page spread in the book of the full org chart.

The problem with that is it's only a rough "generalist" look at it. 18 Legions all with their own core organizations (DG, where every "basic" marine was trained for every role, WE where most "tactics and organizations" broke down into a giant mosh pit, etc.)

Id imagine the Ultramarine system was just a massive codex formation. ie the First Chapter made up of various assault, Support and Terminator formations as well as veteran combined formations.

Each chapter had specialist and multi role formations.

Ie so a single chapter fromation of the legion is full mission capable on a wide range of tasks.

The codex had to come from somewhere. just with 20 man tacticals and such

Kind of: 'the operational doctrines of the XIIIth favoured tactical diversity and the application of overwhelming force. As a reflection of this, the legion maintained relatively few specialist companies, instead choosing to spread those units which maintained large stocks of non standard equipment and munitions evenly throughout the various companies of the legion... Each chapter featured a proportionate mix of tactical and assault units, armour and artillery as well as gunships and transports'.

But there were some exceptions, the 4th chapter 'Aurorans' had about 5 times as many vehicles as standard chapters, and the 22nd 'Nemesis' had a lot of Destroyers.

But you can see early influences of the Codex in the way they were made up. I think he was writing the codex throughout the crusade and it was finished after the heresy.

The problem in the HH novel serie is that even though they are featuring tens of thousands of marines battleforce, they still describe it as they would in 40k-era. I get that feel especially in the first trilogy about Garviel Loken. He is a company captaine, probably in charge of at least a thousand warriors, but his second in command is a "mere" sergeant, usually in charge of 10 to 20 warriors. I can't help but think of a 40k company where the captain in charge of 100 warriors can logically delegate to his senior sergeant. But It bugs me that there are no other hierarchy for a 1000+ sized company than captain-sergeant. It is further elaborated when Garviel Loken always "talks" about his squads as the only fighting elements in battle, like there are just 4 or 5 in battle at the same time, while should have way more than that under his command.

IMO the forge worls books are much more coherent and precise on how legions were operating during the Great Crusade and the HH.

His sergeant buddy is comparable to the veteran sergeant in a 40k command squad.

 Ashiraya wrote:
His sergeant buddy is comparable to the veteran sergeant in a 40k command squad.

Yes, a command squad led by a captain in charge of 10 squads/100 men, not a thousand or more.

Engrenages wrote:
The problem in the HH novel serie is that even though they are featuring tens of thousands of marines battleforce, they still describe it as they would in 40k-era. I get that feel especially in the first trilogy about Garviel Loken. He is a company captaine, probably in charge of at least a thousand warriors, but his second in command is a "mere" sergeant, usually in charge of 10 to 20 warriors. I can't help but think of a 40k company where the captain in charge of 100 warriors can logically delegate to his senior sergeant. But It bugs me that there are no other hierarchy for a 1000+ sized company than captain-sergeant. It is further elaborated when Garviel Loken always "talks" about his squads as the only fighting elements in battle, like there are just 4 or 5 in battle at the same time, while should have way more than that under his command.

IMO the forge worls books are much more coherent and precise on how legions were operating during the Great Crusade and the HH.

I agree, I think it comes down to 2 reasons.

Firstly I think the writers lack knowledge of rank structures in any standard military force, also the novel in question fw hadn't written the Legion astartes army list, so the Legion rank structures didn't exist for them to draw from, you can't have lokens 2nd be a centurion when the term hadn't been coined yet.

Second: there were no models etc. So the frame of reference for the writer was 40k, where a senior sergeant does fulfill that role.

The generic 1000/500/100 thing that FW included in Betrayal actually first appeared in the Horus Heresy artbooks (book 2 IIRC) a year or so before Horus Rising was published. I seem to recall ADB posting somewhere that the issue of whether the artbooks should be used as a source only came up in a writers meeting around about the time Prospero Burns was being written, apparently they didn't pay it much mind when writing the previous 14 novels..