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I mean some Chapters have more ships to carry more than 1000 Astartes.

I mean Blood Angels have 2 battle barges and 7 strike cruisers. That's 2x300 + 7x100 = 1300 Astartes carried. And Ultras have one more BB and SC. So they could carry 1700 in their entire fleet. And according to BFG, a Chapter fleet maximum is 3 battle barges and 10 strike cruisers. That's 1900 Astartes carried. And Space Wolves could have at least 5400 with 8 BB and 30+ SC.

Adding some extra hundreds of Astartes wouldn't exactly shake the balance to the extend that the spirit of the Codex Astartes wants to prevent uprisings, but it would allow for each Chapter to have better casualty endurance, etc...

I mean asides from adhering to Codex Astartes, it seems strange Astartes would have excess fleets in Chapters given the considerable maintenance demands of ships.

The number of ships is due to the way Marines deploy - it's rare for an entire Company to deploy in one go, let alone the chapter. If you're deploying in demi-companies you need at least a dozen ships.

On-topic - Chapters can and do go above 1,000 Marines. The trick is to not announce it, or draw too much outside attention.

I thought the 1000 marines only referred to line troops, not auxiliaries like in the motor pool, apothecaries, librarians, captains, chaplains, dreadnoughts, scouts etc.

Also, haven’t the 1000 thing and the codex structure been officially made into guidelines rather than hard and fast rules by the introduction of Primaris Marines?

Aash wrote:
I thought the 1000 marines only referred to line troops, not auxiliaries like in the motor pool, apothecaries, librarians, captains, chaplains, dreadnoughts, scouts etc.

Depending on the Chapter, vehicle crews might be from the Reserve Companies (6th - 9th), and scouts are counted as part of the 10th Company. The rest are Chapter Command and are not counted.

Aash wrote:
Also, haven’t the 1000 thing and the codex structure been officially made into guidelines rather than hard and fast rules by the introduction of Primaris Marines?

Companies are 10 squads, so it depends on how the squads are composed.

Where's the source for the transport capacity of the ships?

In any case, I've always assumed that Astartes ships carried far more chapter serfs than marines. You need serfs to maintain combat gear, perform kitchen and cleaning duties, and actually fly the ship and man the guns. Even the bridge crew of those ships is probably mostly serfs (albeit high-ranking ones), because what's the point of having supersoldiers with redundant organs and power armor if they're going to stay in orbit staring at a radar screen for the entire duration of a campaign?

Some chapters may also have extra space on board to help with the evacuation of civilians.

.

-Guardsman- wrote:
Where's the source for the transport capacity of the ships?

Looking at Lexicanum - mainly Battlefleet Gothic.

It’s an old argument about how to count the “1,000” marine figure, with solid evidence on both sides. And this is before the new primaris sized monkey wrench tossed into the mix.

I’ve always held to the “line strength” of 1k marines, and once you tack on specialists, pilots, motor pool, etc, you end up with closer to 1,500-2k marines in a chapter.

There are still massive disconnects with what a chapter is capable of doing compared to the manpower, but it works a little better with my headcannon.

 Tyzarion_Kronius wrote:
I mean some Chapters have more ships to carry more than 1000 Astartes.

I mean Blood Angels have 2 battle barges and 7 strike cruisers. That's 2x300 + 7x100 = 1300 Astartes carried. And Ultras have one more BB and SC. So they could carry 1700 in their entire fleet. And according to BFG, a Chapter fleet maximum is 3 battle barges and 10 strike cruisers. That's 1900 Astartes carried. And Space Wolves could have at least 5400 with 8 BB and 30+ SC.

Firstly, You assume they're at full strength. I would personally doubt many chapters could field, at best, anything more than 80 or 90 percent of this.

Secondly, you assume each ship carries a full compliment. This won't always be the case. Sometimes you need to send a Demi company, or even less on a patrol.

Thirdly - yes, they could do this, sure, but if an inquisitor or a more zealously compliant chapter got wind of it, the word used in response is 'heretics'.

 Tyzarion_Kronius wrote:

Adding some extra hundreds of Astartes wouldn't exactly shake the balance to the extend that the spirit of the Codex Astartes wants to prevent uprisings, but it would allow for each Chapter to have better casualty endurance, etc...

Gw's numbers are notoriously Off kilter. Personally, I'd add a couple of 0s to the end of any number gw produces if I'm trying to be believable. But i play 40k to escape, not to implement reality. the lore says a thousand Astartes is enough. I accept that.

 Tyzarion_Kronius wrote:

I mean asides from adhering to Codex Astartes, it seems strange Astartes would have excess fleets in Chapters given the considerable maintenance demands of ships.

Maintenance? That's what chapter serfs are for.

Think of the pay offs. Ships allow for strategic mobility. Ships allow for maximum threat projection considering their actual size. A hundred marines will pacify a system. At least, In-universe, this is an accepted fact. A lot of what backs this up is the arsenal of killer weaponry on board their fleet.

Primaris chapters actually cleared up a decent amount. Scouts are now explicitly NOT counted towards the company size of 100, whereas the 100 Vanguard marines do count. Basically Scouts are now part of command and support, like chaplains, techmarines, and lieutenants. 6th and 7th company are repeatedly mentioned in the new codexes as being responsible for driving vehicles, with additional crew being techmarines or the squad they're assigned to.

As for ships, not every ship in the chapter needs a marine presence. Plenty of the smaller ships are entirely human in function and only carry astartes when they're needed for boarding or landing.

The "1,000 Marines" number is nominal line strength (10 Companies of 10 squads of 10 Marines), it doesn't include command staff (officers, Librariam, Reclusiam, Apothecaries, etc.), the Honour Guard, the fleet, the Armoury (Techmarines and vehicle crew), or whatever you want to count Dreadnaughts as. I've gone through a couple of the full org charts GW has put in various Codices over the years and always end up with an actual number of 1,300-1,500 for a Codex-compliant Chapter of "a thousand Marines" at full strength.

If marines were really limited as they are in fluff, every tabletop game we play would be a chapter crippling massacre.

I lose an average of 40-50 marines a game. Half a company?

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
If marines were really limited as they are in fluff, every tabletop game we play would be a chapter crippling massacre.

I lose an average of 40-50 marines a game. Half a company?

To be fair, most marine augmentations are to make them tougher and more resilient than normal humans. I always figured table-top casualties were simply out of action, but only rarely dead. Quick slap on the back from the apothecary, and they would be ready for the next fight. Things that caused instant death in previous editions would probably be what it takes to off one.

Of course, the fluff is all over the place. But GW’s twitchy relationship with numbers and scale is nothing new...

In my headcanon, marine numbers are x10, because then the fluff makes sense. The store about 10 marines holding ground against -thousands- of cultists? It was 100 marines. A company deployed to subdue a world? 1000 marines. And so on. Even with how powerful they are described to be, the numbers just don't add up for what they do in the fluff.

I am usually very big on justifying and sticking to official cannon, but that is one spot where I just can't.

 Nevelon wrote:

 Nightlord1987 wrote:
If marines were really limited as they are in fluff, every tabletop game we play would be a chapter crippling massacre.

I lose an average of 40-50 marines a game. Half a company?

To be fair, most marine augmentations are to make them tougher and more resilient than normal humans. I always figured table-top casualties were simply out of action, but only rarely dead. Quick slap on the back from the apothecary, and they would be ready for the next fight. Things that caused instant death in previous editions would probably be what it takes to off one.

Of course, the fluff is all over the place. But GW’s twitchy relationship with numbers and scale is nothing new...

This is the easiest way to understand it. If you were running a campaign you'd use rules to represent this in terms of how likely a unit would survive and become a veteran.

Guardsmen are likely to stay dead. Eldar are likely to live (their body count is worse than marines and they'd be extinct if it was permanent) due to advance healing magic, marines are likely to survive etc.

In terms of rules it might just be a dice roll for each model with marines and Eldar At 2+ recovery, guard at 5+ Orks at 4+ and so on.


There are only a couple of ways you can go with the numbers as given:

Marines at 1000 never fight wars, they only deploy into existing wars and act as kill teams on high value targets. Or they are so ridiculously powerful individually that one marine can tank an armies shooting and walk out of it and the table top looks nothing like the reality.

The other option is that there are more than 1000 Marines.



Personally I go with marines are 1000 and they are just used seal team 6 style and never as a frontline war force. No matter how good your marines are, 10.marines with bolters aren't going to do that much more Damage than 10 normal humans with bolters

I feel like tabletop numbers are representative by necessity. Yeah it may seem like there are 60 guardsman on the board, but that is representative of a battle against 300+ guardsman. The IRL impracticality of 300+ guardsman means that the game itself needs to have less of them.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I feel like tabletop numbers are representative by necessity. Yeah it may seem like there are 60 guardsman on the board, but that is representative of a battle against 300+ guardsman. The IRL impracticality of 300+ guardsman means that the game itself needs to have less of them.

You can look at it like that but it also multiplies the casualties. If you lost 30 marines, that's 150 by your multiplication above....

Hasn't it always been a guideline? Guilliman made it clear that it was not to be treated like a religious text, nor did he try to forcefully shove it on anybody else.

Even the codex:Astartes only uses the 1000 as a rough guideline.

The reserve companies don't count for example, and there's a few other exceptions for other companies.

Some chapters don't even follow the "guidelines" (Black Templars have pretty much never done so, and the space wolves don't follow the rules anyway.)

Remember this is the same Imperium where you can be shot for putting a different scope on your rile than the one in the official assembly instructions. Even if your new scope is cheaper, better built and in all ways better performing.


It's not a sane system, nor are the elements within it operating in a perfectly sane way. Some of the rules and regulations are followed to the letter even if they are utter insanity. Heck there's a story about refuelling a battleship and the fuel is carried by living people into what sounds like a nuclear reactor chamber which results in their bodies being basically blasted to nothing but ash. Small robots then clean up the mess safely and efficiently. A sane society would just use robots or a remote controlled machine = not the Imperium.


So the whole 1000 troops per Chapter rule is likely a rule that some follow to the letter and others don't, but won't show that they don't follow it. It's a very tiny number for a Galactic armed force, but whilst Marines are heavily on display in the Lore and tabletop, they are, lore wise, supposed to be rare angels of supreme power. Just like Tyranids are supposed to come in uncountable masses. In theory Tyranids VS Space Marines on a tabletop should be akin to one tactical squad standing on one side and the other side being the entire table surface covered in gaunts.

The 1000 Astartes was never a rule, or even a guideline. http://maws40k.blogspot.com/2011/08/1000-marines.html

The Codex Astartes instructs that each chapter is to have 10 companies, nine of which have 10 squads of various formations, plus their command elements and support elements such as vehicle crew. The Scout Company was also never limited (don't forget Scouts are still full Astartes with all the Implants and Psycho Indoctrination minus the Black Carapace, and that the Command Elements, including Sergeants, of the Scout Company are full fat Battle Bruthers who are assigned to the Scout Company to teach the poor noobies).

jareddm wrote:
Primaris chapters actually cleared up a decent amount. Scouts are now explicitly NOT counted towards the company size of 100, whereas the 100 Vanguard marines do count. Basically Scouts are now part of command and support, like chaplains, techmarines, and lieutenants. 6th and 7th company are repeatedly mentioned in the new codexes as being responsible for driving vehicles, with additional crew being techmarines or the squad they're assigned to.

As for ships, not every ship in the chapter needs a marine presence. Plenty of the smaller ships are entirely human in function and only carry astartes when they're needed for boarding or landing.

Now this is starting to make some military sense.

 chromedog wrote:
Even the codex:Astartes only uses the 1000 as a rough guideline.

The reserve companies don't count for example, and there's a few other exceptions for other companies.

Some chapters don't even follow the "guidelines" (Black Templars have pretty much never done so, and the space wolves don't follow the rules anyway.)

Reserve companies absolutely count. 6th thru 9th company have always been reserve and still are in the new codexes.

Rather then 1,000 marines, I find it's clearer to think of a codex-compliant chapter as, "Ten companies of 100 marines, plus command and support." Clear and simple.

jareddm wrote:

 chromedog wrote:
Even the codex:Astartes only uses the 1000 as a rough guideline.

The reserve companies don't count for example, and there's a few other exceptions for other companies.

Some chapters don't even follow the "guidelines" (Black Templars have pretty much never done so, and the space wolves don't follow the rules anyway.)

Reserve companies absolutely count. 6th thru 9th company have always been reserve and still are in the new codexes.

Rather then 1,000 marines, I find it's clearer to think of a codex-compliant chapter as, "Ten companies of 100 marines, plus command and support." Clear and simple.

The 10th company isn't 100 marines, it's never had a limit or minimum.

 Tyzarion_Kronius wrote:

jareddm wrote:
Primaris chapters actually cleared up a decent amount. Scouts are now explicitly NOT counted towards the company size of 100, whereas the 100 Vanguard marines do count. Basically Scouts are now part of command and support, like chaplains, techmarines, and lieutenants. 6th and 7th company are repeatedly mentioned in the new codexes as being responsible for driving vehicles, with additional crew being techmarines or the squad they're assigned to.

As for ships, not every ship in the chapter needs a marine presence. Plenty of the smaller ships are entirely human in function and only carry astartes when they're needed for boarding or landing.

Now this is starting to make some military sense.

scouts not being counted isn't new though, I know the 6th and 7th marine dexes explictatly said this as well

Then how would you have gotten to 1,000 marines if they weren't counted? 10 companies of 10 squads and all? You'd have a company with zero countable marines. They definitely used to be counted, because command and support sure weren't.

I always figured the 10th had a “official” size of 100 men, with a big fat asterisk saying “due to recruitment, training times, and casualties, the size of the 10th company may wax and wane around this number.”

More then normal companies, which are often under strength due to combat losses.

Based on volume, a single battle barge could probably carry tens of thousands of marines and all their kit and all the manufacturing, support staff and everything else they need for hundreds of years... fleet size should not be an indicator of carrying capacity based on just 1000 marines.

Also a battle barge needs to deploy with support ships, so really it's not just a battelbarge carrying 300 marines, it's the battle barge alongside several strike cruisers for tactical.support and squadrons of smaller ships to provide security and support.

 Nevelon wrote:
I always figured the 10th had a “official” size of 100 men, with a big fat asterisk saying “due to recruitment, training times, and casualties, the size of the 10th company may wax and wane around this number.”

More then normal companies, which are often under strength due to combat losses.

Exactly. 8th ed does away with the asterisk. It says, "Here's 100 actual marines. Stop trying to count scouts."

I'd suggest that technically, the Codex says that 1000 fully fledged battle brothers is a standard, a nominal number to have for to be combat ready. I imagine, should a chapter be aware that a large scale conflict is coming, they would increase their ranks accordingly. Heavily damaged chapters likely reduce their deployments to allow their numbers to replenish to their 'combat nominal' numbers.

 iGuy91 wrote:
I'd suggest that technically, the Codex says that 1000 fully fledged battle brothers is a standard, a nominal number to have for to be combat ready. I imagine, should a chapter be aware that a large scale conflict is coming, they would increase their ranks accordingly. Heavily damaged chapters likely reduce their deployments to allow their numbers to replenish to their 'combat nominal' numbers.

The bit about large conflicts with how the Black Templar are technically compliant. If you are on a crusade, you can boost your numbers for the duration of the conflict. And they’ve been at it for ~10k years. Don’t stop with the purging!