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Space Marine chapters DO NOT have 1000 Marines because:

Space Marine standard Company does not have 100 Astartes. It is very clear in the Fall of Damnos where the Ultramarines 2nd Company is depicted. There are 10 squads of 10, followed by Captain Sicarius, his HQ and Dreadnoughts. The roster here doesn't even include vehicle operators like Chronos. I believe Space Marine vehicles are driven by Servitors, but the guns are mostly operated by a Space Marine (a Predator would need at least 1 Space Marine inside).



10th Company can have as many Scouts as they like. Scouts are indeed Space Marines, even if they are not fully grown yet.

Space Marines sometimes have to dispatch squads to patrol, garrison, infiltration duties that take them away from their Chapter. They also die in battle, which leave their position vacant. However, a Company will be reluctant to go to war without all 10 squads accounted for and they can't wait a year or two for the Scouts to fully grow and replenish their ranks. Which means each Chapter must have Space Marine reserves that can be called upon to join a company or take part in other less grandeur duties like mentioned above.

Successor Chapters are created from excess of their parent Chapter. When a Chapter is deemed pure and successful enough that there will soon be more Space Marines in their rank than what the Codex Astartes deem appropriate, the excess is then evaluated by the Lord of Terra and split into a new Chapter after being supplied with new equipment, warship, right to build their fortress and fresh recruits.

So please, both GW and BL writers, stop putting 1000 as the figure for how many Space Marines a Chapter has. A single Space Marine makes a different. There is a big difference between 1000 Marines (what we are driven to believe) and 1100-1200 Marines (what a full-strength Chapter should have).

1000 marines in 1000 chapters for the whole galaxy was always ridiculous.

It’s an indicative number. I don’t see the issue. They picked a big, round number then their own fluff got away from them a little. So they mean “round about 1,000, probably a little more” but say “1,000” to keep it brief? So what? It’s not a big deal.

I prefer to think they meant 10,000 or 100,000.

The 1000 Marines has always been a nominal strength, not including auxiliary units. Plenty of Space Marine auxiliaries are acknowledged to be outside the standard structure, and therefore potentially bringing the Chapter over 1000 Marines. As this is standard practice, the 1000 is just accepted as short hand. Considering battle casualties, many Chapters will be well under 1000 for extended periods through attrition.

Auxiliary units:
Command staff (Captains and Chapter Masters)
Command squads
Honour guard
Reclusiam
Librarius
Apothecarium
Armoury (Techmarines- as far as I can tell, vehicles are usually crewed by Techmarines, with additional crew being drawn from the reserve companies. There isn't a standing force of crew-Marines. Chronus is an exception who has been permanently inducted into the armoury)
Other support staff (Fleet crew in particular. It is not clear how they are recruited)
Dreadnoughts
Scout company

Yes, the entire Scout company is not really counted. There is no set limit on the size of a Scout company in the Codex Astartes, and a Chapter can have any number of Scout companies (the Aurora Chapter maintains three if I remember correctly). Chapters that have high attrition rates (like the Imperial Fists) typically have large Scout companies.

The other area that is not clear is garrison forces. Often, they are clearly detached from a standard company. Other times, they seem to be stand-alone troops, and may possibly be acceptable outside the standard Codex Astartes structure, perhaps within certain conditions.

I may have missed some.

None of this is new background, it is just a kind of accepted loophole to allow Chapters to operate the required specialists. It would be difficult to quantify anyway, because none of these auxiliary structures have any formal limits, so they vary massively between Chapters. Some don't even have the entire Librarius. Add combat casualties, and you can see why they just round to 1000 and be done with it. A Chapter deploying in strength beyond 1000 is going to be an incredibly rare event.

The Inquisition doesn't get particularly worried until Chapters start growing into the several thousand, like the Astral Claws, Dark Angels, or Black Templars... (the two Loyal Chapters avoid suspicion by spreading out their forces sufficiently so that no one can really count the true total).

Successors are typically made from excess geneseed, not Marines, although the latter does happen.

the dark angels are no differant in size from a codex chapter Haighus, (unless you're one of those people convinced the deathwing and the ravenwing are huge units with hundreds of individuals) ther dark angels do cordinate closely with their sucessors but TBH even that is proably over played. we've seen Imperial Fists (in war of the beast) Ultramarines (under Gulliman)

but moving b ack, yeah a codex chapter is a lot bigger then 1000 marines let's take a looksie at how all this works out..



Chaplains: assume a chapter has 1 chaplain per company and a head chaplain running them, thats 11
Apocatharies: we'll assume 1 per company and then 2 more to handle geneseed implantation among new aspirants. so 12
Tech Marines: I'm going to assume 1 per company but I susect it's much higher so 10.
Librarians: Psykers are rare, I'm going to assume a chapter will have 5
Honor Guard and command squads: I'm going to assume about 3 per company


so that's proably around 70-75 additional marines. and it's possiable that there are a LOT more apocatharies and tech marines then 1 per company.

Its just for those Chapters that would follow the Codex Astartes, it excludes all those said in above, the reserve are usually the latter numerical companies.

Ask if the Black Templars or Space Wolfs care if their number be strictly at 1k, its a ridiculous small #. There are Chapters that are wiped out or well below strength fairly consistent too, not to mention those that are excommunicated. Take it with a cup of salt, it was never meant to be like it is when Gulliman wrote the Codex Astartes, always a guideline.

granted well we don't have a number for the black templars even the space wolves have been estimated as being 1500 Marines tops, and likely closer to 1200

bibotot wrote:
S¨However, a Company will be reluctant to go to war without all 10 squads accounted for and they can't wait a year or two for the Scouts to fully grow and replenish their ranks. Which means each Chapter must have Space Marine reserves that can be called upon to join a company or take part in other less grandeur duties like mentioned above.

Source? Plenty of references to understrenght companies. Why would space marines work differently to that to real life anyway? Casualties happen. Reinforcements don't come magically. Having every battle start with full amount of squads each at full numbers is just silly idea.

Also remember that every chapter interprets the codex differently. For many chapters, and certainly the examples given in a lot of GW publications, the strength seems to be "1000 combat marines, plus a bit more, if all the squads were full in the reserve companies" - given that at any time the reserve companies are likely to be understrength to keep the battle companies up to full force.

It seems very unlikely that the Inquisition will get bent out of shape about a Marine chapter being nominally 10% over strength - and what can they actually do about it? If you want to tell a chapter master that he's getting too big, best of luck to you - there is no chain of command telling that Marines what they have to do. There's a massive chain of treaties and obligations, with individual chapters being kept in line largely by the peer pressure of other, nearby chapters. It's these other chapters who will get insistent on a chapter reducing size if its getting too big, and if the chapter master is in good standing they won't. Or you get a Tyrant of Badab situation, and everything gets messy.

It's very likely that if your chapter is over strength, the other chapter masters will have an expectation that when the next big crusade rolls around, the one with the huge expected casualty rate, you're going to be first in the queue.

There will be other chapters who will say "1000 Marines and NO MORE, this is the true interpretation of the Codex" - and will therefore have less than 100 full squads, at all times, because command staff, Librarius, chaplains etc. count against this.

For further fun, remember that except in certain cases like the Iron Hands, where crew are wired into their vehicles, if the Chapter doesn't need tank crew that day the Marines won't be sitting around drinking tea while everyone else clambers into a drop pod. They'll be getting their bolters out of the locker to hit the ground with everyone else, or possibly doing flight prep on the Thunderhawks which will be going down for extract after the mission. A key thing is that pretty much every marine can do everything. That's how a chapter gets to be so small.

So as with all things marine-ish - take your pick. It's your chapter, unless you're going first founding, and even then things are pretty woolly. That's before we even get close to wondering how Primaris fit into the overall Order of Battle.

 Graphite wrote:


It's very likely that if your chapter is over strength, the other chapter masters will have an expectation that when the next big crusade rolls around, the one with the huge expected casualty rate, you're going to be first in the queue.

There will be other chapters who will say "1000 Marines and NO MORE, this is the true interpretation of the Codex" - and will therefore have less than 100 full squads, at all times, because command staff, Librarius, chaplains etc. count against this.
.

no there won't. the codex does not say "1000 marines NO MORE" it says something to the extent of "And a Chapter shalt consist of ten companies, the first company shalt be the vetern company, and shalt consist of ten squads of veterns. see chapter 33 appendix D for more details. Chapters 2-5 shalt be Battle companies, orginzied as dictated in chapter 23." etc

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I prefer to think they meant 10,000 or 100,000.

This is what I do to, it makes much more sense with every codex. Oh 10.000 guardsmen conquered an entire planet? Add a few zeroes and its more acceptable. A company of a 1000 marines I can see engaging in more defensive actions like shown in the fluff. Kind of makes you wonder, do the people writing BL books have a piece of paper they note each marine death on so they don't manage to kill over a 100

I think it gets broken down quite well in the 8th ed Marines codex, though never explicitly saying “1000” anywhere.

Essentially, the 1000 limit was a limit imposed on “fighting strength” (the exact wording is escaping me right now), but, essentially it states that a Chapter shouldn’t have more than 1000 active fighting troops in the 10 companies. This doesn’t include the Captain and 2 Lieutenants in each company, nor any attached support units, vehicles etc.

So, overall, a Chapter could realistically be pushing more towards 1500-1800 “marines” once to take everything into account.
A count for a slightly deviant chapter would put the total amount of marines around 1700 – which includes those “marines” inside Dreadnoughts, and the idea that each vehicle requires 1 additional marine to pilot it, alongside a force of roughly 370-380 scouts (each Company, bar the 1st, has its own scout contingent as opposed to having the 10th as just scouts -30 scouts and 12 bikers isn’t too unrealistic imo).
However, in regards to the “fighting strength” of battleline, fire support and close support figures, each company maxes out at 100.

Looking in the Marine 8th codex, we can see that the Ultramarines “Armoury” consists of 27 Techmarines, 95 servitors, 52 tanks, 12 land raiders, 14 gunships, 24 centurians, 19 landspeeders. From what we can presume, those each have their own pilots which are separate from the 1000 battleline figure. Just presuming 1 marine per vehicle puts an additional 124 marines onto the roster straight away. Then you have 11 Chaplains, Apothecaries and Librarians, then 10 Company Ancients, 1 Chapter Ancient, for a total of 44. Then the Dreadnought count, which could be as many as you want, which the Ultramarines have 26, then the count of 95 servitors puts numbers at 1189 before the ”unlimited” Honour Guard numbers and scouts. THEN, things like Rhinos, Repulsors, Razorbacks are all additions outside of the armoury figure and also likely have dedicated drivers.
I also think that the figures for things like gunships are a little low. If you think about each of the 9 companies operating independently most of the time, each would likely maintain at least 1 troop transport like a Stormraven, they’ll likely have a couple of ground attack gunships (ala Stormtalons) and then, they’d almost certainly have some fighter craft for void and in-atmosphere fighting, in the form of a Xiphon or something else. So, taking that as a pure min estimate, you’d expect to see a figure of at least 27 “gunships” if not more – especially for ship based Chapters.

My numbers are, of course based off a fleet based Chapter that maintains 10 full companies with scouts assigned to each company rather than being the “10th” company, putting each company outside of the 1st at roughly 154 bodies before taking Dreadnoughts, vehicle crews and servitors into account. (and by full company, I mean, if they were at 100% strength)

BrianDavion wrote:

 Graphite wrote:


It's very likely that if your chapter is over strength, the other chapter masters will have an expectation that when the next big crusade rolls around, the one with the huge expected casualty rate, you're going to be first in the queue.

There will be other chapters who will say "1000 Marines and NO MORE, this is the true interpretation of the Codex" - and will therefore have less than 100 full squads, at all times, because command staff, Librarius, chaplains etc. count against this.
.

no there won't. the codex does not say "1000 marines NO MORE" it says something to the extent of "And a Chapter shalt consist of ten companies, the first company shalt be the vetern company, and shalt consist of ten squads of veterns. see chapter 33 appendix D for more details. Chapters 2-5 shalt be Battle companies, orginzied as dictated in chapter 23." etc

Your codex doesn't. The copy kept as a holy relic by the chapter in question might, and might be missing chapter 33 appendix D.

The 1000 Marines thing has been pretty solidly debunked by GW themselves in the 3rd edition Codex (or maybe 4th, can't remember). It had the disposition of the UM chapter, the most Codex compliant of all, showing it well understrength due to casualties in the Battle Companies. It's also pretty obvious that even a fully Codex compliant chapter will have all sorts of auxiliary and command staff so the 1000 Marines was always more of a soundbite than actual fact.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
It’s an indicative number. I don’t see the issue. They picked a big, round number then their own fluff got away from them a little. So they mean “round about 1,000, probably a little more” but say “1,000” to keep it brief? So what? It’s not a big deal.

I understand if it is rounding, but they make it look like it's a hard and fast rule. You want 1001 Space Marines? The Codex Astartes does not approve. Also, you can't round 1100 or 1200 down to 1000. 100 Space Marines is a very powerful force.

err no, GW has always been pretty clear that the chapter is X, the "a marine chapter is 1000 marines" is useally fans summerizing

bibotot wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
It’s an indicative number. I don’t see the issue. They picked a big, round number then their own fluff got away from them a little. So they mean “round about 1,000, probably a little more” but say “1,000” to keep it brief? So what? It’s not a big deal.

I understand if it is rounding, but they make it look like it's a hard and fast rule. You want 1001 Space Marines? The Codex Astartes does not approve. Also, you can't round 1100 or 1200 down to 1000. 100 Space Marines is a very powerful force.

No they don’t. The latest Codex states each company has a hundred Warriors plus a Captain, so that’s 1010 dudes to start with, plus vehicle crew, Dreadnoughts, plus “officers and specialists” including Apothecaries, Chaplains, Techmarines, etc. So we’ll over 1,000 even by the latest Codex fluff.

The other thing to note is that-

Rhino crews
Tank crews
Honor Guard
Librarius
Apothecarion
Reclusium
Company Veterans

etc are not taken into account of the chapter's numbers. And you can get chapters with absolutely outlandish amounts of apothecaries/librarians just to begin there.

Occums razor that GW writers have a very poor sense of scale. (I'm looking at you Tau timeline blurb where a company of firewarriors take over a hive world of uncounted billions) The whole, 1 marine per world for the million worlds of the imperium is just downright silly.

Marines at 1000, unfortunately, make no sense for the kind of fluff they are written. If marines were a scalpel special operations force that strikes, does a discreet objective, then withdraws, then it makes a bit more sense. Any battle will have some casualties but the goal then would just be to reserve your super human warriors for key moments in battle then they grow some new ones.

But that's frankly just not the case in the fluff. Open ground warfare, sieges on both sides of the wall, attrition battles, etc. are all the common story. Besides being tactically stupid, the immense casualties taken in the fluff would render a chapter unusable very quickly even if the reserve companies were at full strength to reinforce. Oh wait, it gets stupider, a chapter doesn't fight as a full force but instead breaks up their strength when they fight. We are to believe that a chapter is broken up across several parts of the galaxy at one time can be an effective fighting force against literally numberless xenos and chaos forces. Again, GW writers just have no sense of scale.

But the other fun parts are that supposedly, among the 1000 marines, that also includes piloting their vehicles and crewing at least the bridge of massive starships. If true, they either don't count those guys (ya, stupid support staff, take that!) or it makes the 1000 number even more silly because, again, it's almost never a whole chapter in a conflict which means even fewer actual combat troops.

But hey, its a game not a hard science narrative. They want players to feel like their super space marines can walk across an battlefield and engage tank forces no problem. You just have suspend reality to enjoy it is all.

As a Chapter was a tactical formation at the time, like a Brigade or Regiment. The Legions broken down into Chapters would be like a Division broken down into independent brigade groups. I think that the 1000 marine idea came later, 10 companies of 100 marines, when RG probably meant something like Regimental strength.

I imagine the ultramarines in particular must have an ENORMOUS reserve of scouts, considering how many worlds they have to recruit from, with millennia to have shaped the societies in what ever wayd are needed to produce the most aspirants.

It would be cool to see Ultramarine forces field a realtivly small command of full astartes and otherwise have a huge force of scouts doing alot of the tactical heavy lifting in a battle.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
It’s an indicative number. I don’t see the issue. They picked a big, round number then their own fluff got away from them a little. So they mean “round about 1,000, probably a little more” but say “1,000” to keep it brief? So what? It’s not a big deal.

Yeah, this thread reminds me of when I tell my boys that it's 9 o'clock and time for bed, but it's really 8:57 and they both want to argue about it for those 3 miniutes.
I just take all their devices away and walk out of their room

-

BrianDavion wrote:
the dark angels are no differant in size from a codex chapter Haighus, (unless you're one of those people convinced the deathwing and the ravenwing are huge units with hundreds of individuals) ther dark angels do cordinate closely with their sucessors but TBH even that is proably over played. we've seen Imperial Fists (in war of the beast) Ultramarines (under Gulliman)

but moving b ack, yeah a codex chapter is a lot bigger then 1000 marines let's take a looksie at how all this works out..



Chaplains: assume a chapter has 1 chaplain per company and a head chaplain running them, thats 11
Apocatharies: we'll assume 1 per company and then 2 more to handle geneseed implantation among new aspirants. so 12
Tech Marines: I'm going to assume 1 per company but I susect it's much higher so 10.
Librarians: Psykers are rare, I'm going to assume a chapter will have 5
Honor Guard and command squads: I'm going to assume about 3 per company


so that's proably around 70-75 additional marines. and it's possiable that there are a LOT more apocatharies and tech marines then 1 per company.

This is the Blood Angels, the Ultramarines had similar numbers. Most Chapters have a smaller Honour guard, but I suspect the other numbers are broadly similar.


It was in one of their Codices I thought? They seem to have a suspicious number of full Marines on garrison duty in their many Chapter keeps, managing recruitment, yet are able to simultaneously do full strength Chapter deployments without pulling in these reserves. It is a subtle increase, a few Marines here and there, not something obvious like huge 'wings. I remember it potentially adding up to something like twice the usual number, but all speculation- only the Dark Angels themselves know.

Black Templars are estimated to be around 5000-6000ish in their 4th ed Codex, but again a very tenous estimation. Black Templars probably vary considerably, but they are commonly assumed to be overstrength, due to their many and varied Crusade deployments. There is a sort of tacit acceptance, so long as they don't group them together in one place as a Legion.

Astral Claws were estimated to reach around 3500 before their heresy was exterminated in the Badab war. They were caught though

Space Wolves are the hardest to assess. The largest Great company was over 200 Marines, if I remember correctly, and Morkai's company is ~120 Marines strong. With 12 companies, I think the Space Wolves could easily be between 1500 and 2000 strong. 1200 would be right at the lowest possible end, and would need at least two companies to be considerably under the strength of 100 Marines to average out the known larger companies.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tygre wrote:
As a Chapter was a tactical formation at the time, like a Brigade or Regiment. The Legions broken down into Chapters would be like a Division broken down into independent brigade groups. I think that the 1000 marine idea came later, 10 companies of 100 marines, when RG probably meant something like Regimental strength.

Chapters were originally around 10,000 strong in the GC and HH, so it is interesting how Guilliman shrunk them down.

Space Marine numbers are pretty hilariously ridiculous when put in context and given a modicum of thought (a thousand marines aren't going to conquer and hold a major city, much less entire star systems, even being super soldiers youd need millions or billions just to cover all that ground and territory for half the stuff they talk about), but the "thousand" number was never assumed to be exact, there are officers and auxiliaries and whatnot, it's always been a rough approximation.

I don't understand why people think this some new revelation. This has been known for decades.

The point of breaking up the legions was so that one charismatic leader couldn't have 20k to 300k marines fall to chaos. Roughly 1000 to 1500 leaves a chapter enough to be an effective fighting force while not being enough to wreck the galaxy.

It does make me laugh though that you could argue the Space Wolves are one of the most compliant with the intent. Unlike the Dark Angels, Imperial Fists, and Ultras they have no secret pact to be a legion again with their various successors.

Reminds me of the If the emperor had a pod cast where the boy points out if the black Templar had crusaded through planets and always left a recruitment keep with a chaplain and a apothecary then there would be a metric butt ton of angry and bored marines on agri and feral worlds.

HoundsofDemos wrote:
The point of breaking up the legions was so that one charismatic leader couldn't have 20k to 300k marines fall to chaos. Roughly 1000 to 1500 leaves a chapter enough to be an effective fighting force while not being enough to wreck the galaxy.

It does make me laugh though that you could argue the Space Wolves are one of the most compliant with the intent. Unlike the Dark Angels, Imperial Fists, and Ultras they have no secret pact to be a legion again with their various successors.

Because up until 20 minutes ago they didn't have any successors. The one attempt failed genetically and even then it was a sham attempt to keep Rowboat Girlman from soiling his knickers in impotent rage.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Desubot wrote:
Reminds me of the If the emperor had a pod cast where the boy points out if the black Templar had crusaded through planets and always left a recruitment keep with a chaplain and a apothecary then there would be a metric butt ton of angry and bored marines on agri and feral worlds.

Didn't they retcon BT to be chapter strength? But in any case, they were so spread out that it would be impossible to keep secret if they ever did try and form up as a cohesive whole.

I dont recall a retcon. nor do i recall a retcon on how their fleet based recruitment works.

but i haven't been looking hard. i just enjoy that show