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Is there an exact number of Loyalist and Chaos Space Marines that we know about? If so, how many are on each side, Loyalist and Chaos?

What about Loyalist and Chaos combined?

the conventional wisdom is there are a thousand chapters, but that's far from an accurate number, even in canon the Imperium doesn't have a accurate head count of space marines.

still one thousand thousand marines is a tiny number, gives you an idea as to how damned RARE they are

Officially for loyalists there are a thousand chapters, each with roughly a thousand marines plus various support and headquarters staff, not all of which themselves are Marines.

The actual number varies wildly.

Especially that whole 'roughly a thousand marines' thing!

Have chapters expanded with the rollout of the Primaris at all? Or have they been folded into the existing structure?

Like with most things, the answer is "depends on the chapter."

 Jazzylee wrote:
Is there an exact number of Loyalist and Chaos Space Marines that we know about? If so, how many are on each side, Loyalist and Chaos?

What about Loyalist and Chaos combined?

In a word, No.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Jazzylee wrote:
Is there an exact number of Loyalist and Chaos Space Marines that we know about? If so, how many are on each side, Loyalist and Chaos?

What about Loyalist and Chaos combined?

In a word, No.

Well, I guess it would make sense, there's so many humans like there are Space Marines it's hard to count them all.

 Jazzylee wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Jazzylee wrote:
Is there an exact number of Loyalist and Chaos Space Marines that we know about? If so, how many are on each side, Loyalist and Chaos?

What about Loyalist and Chaos combined?

In a word, No.

Well, I guess it would make sense, there's so many humans like there are Space Marines it's hard to count them all.

that and GW tends to avoid giving hard numbers for stuff like that, part of the setting is vague uncountables. where generally people are faceless eneugh that if an entire planet, space marine chapter etc vanished... no one would notice

About a million. Maybe an order of magnitude higher?

I like to think there are more Imperial Knights than there are Astartes.

 Alpharius wrote:
Especially that whole 'roughly a thousand marines' thing!

Pre-Primaris when they gave you the org chart of a Chapter in the army books it was always ~1300-1400 once you factored in command staff, the Honour Guard, and the armoury.

GW has been selling them for decades so there must be 10s of millions atleast

Yeah, the number of marine models in circulation easily exceeds the in-game fluff count.

For a few years now, I’ve been thinking that the “each chapter is a thousand marines” is nothing more than Imperial propaganda. Maybe it’s true for most of the successor chapters, but I’m betting that the “reality” is that a single chapter like the Ultramarines has millions of marines, just hidden behind different designations via “successor”, “reserve”, “home Guard”, “recruits” or other wording that “officially” makes it look like on the books that there’s only a thousand marines to a company. I mean, they seem to have replacements readily enough to replace loses by the next major battle.

I very much doubt Guilliman would have been stupid enough to disarm the Imperium to the point it’d have one champion per human-controlled world.

 Stormonu wrote:
Yeah, the number of marine models in circulation easily exceeds the in-game fluff count.

For a few years now, I’ve been thinking that the “each chapter is a thousand marines” is nothing more than Imperial propaganda. Maybe it’s true for most of the successor chapters, but I’m betting that the “reality” is that a single chapter like the Ultramarines has millions of marines, just hidden behind different designations via “successor”, “reserve”, “home Guard”, “recruits” or other wording that “officially” makes it look like on the books that there’s only a thousand marines to a company. I mean, they seem to have replacements readily enough to replace loses by the next major battle.

I very much doubt Guilliman would have been stupid enough to disarm the Imperium to the point it’d have one champion per human-controlled world.

It wasn't a process of 'disarming' - we do have a statement from forgeworld and black library that the ultramarines legion was about a quarter of a million strong.

However:
1) All first founding/second founding chapters descend from just nine such loyalist legions
2) The Ultramarines were the largest loyalist legion
3) That figure was the estimate before the gak-storms such as Cath and Mars (the latter one alone supposedly killing 1/4 of the legion off).

There only being a million and a bit loyalists left when the dust settled is depressingly believable.

With the influx of Vanguard marines, there has been a massive bloat in the number during Vigilus.

After the Primaris thing, the number is massive.

42

 Tyranid Horde wrote:
With the influx of Vanguard marines, there has been a massive bloat in the number during Vigilus.

After the Primaris thing, the number is massive.

There can't be that many Primaris Space Marines, right? I get they're the "new kids", but they're basically just Space Marines selected to be put on steroids, you cant just take a neophyte and make him a Primaris from what the lore says.

 Jazzylee wrote:

 Tyranid Horde wrote:
With the influx of Vanguard marines, there has been a massive bloat in the number during Vigilus.

After the Primaris thing, the number is massive.

There can't be that many Primaris Space Marines, right? I get they're the "new kids", but they're basically just Space Marines selected to be put on steroids, you cant just take a neophyte and make him a Primaris from what the lore says.

No, almost every Primaris (counting the originals) are actually made from neophytes. Calgar was the first old-school marines to be successfully upgraded to a Primaris, and they had been introduced for a century by that point.

 Tyranid Horde wrote:
With the influx of Vanguard marines, there has been a massive bloat in the number during Vigilus.

After the Primaris thing, the number is massive.

not really. Vanguard Marines are just primaris marines that can deploy specially, the only that add to the numbers is a tenth company now may maintain 100 vanguard marines perminatly.

When GW has given hard numbers its been laughable. Take for instance the force org chart for The Thousand Sons. That chart lists the legion as having TENS OF THOUSANDS scarab occult Terminators, roughly the same amount as the legion has of Rubric Marines.

Sorry, that's just all kinds of stupid. This comes from the 1ksons codex btw.

The amount of marines on both sides is what it needs to be for the story at hand.