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So basically how many points would you wager an entire SM Legion with all armoury support, etc... would be in HH TT, and how long would a Legion vs Legion game take?

It's going to vary enormously by Legion.
My own lists generally clock ~70-100 bodies in a 3k list. If we assume that most lists focus on the shiny toys, then something like 100 Marines per 3000pts seems like a fair approximation.
The smallest Legion are Raven Guard at 80,000 Marines. That would be something like 2.4 million points. On the other end of the scale, we have Ultramarines at 250,000 and 7.5 million points.

Supposedly the biggest game of 40k ever had 750k points, which is nowhere close enough for even one Legion.

There's also the practical problem of how big the table would be and how you would reach the models in the middle.

Mozzamanx wrote:
It's going to vary enormously by Legion.
My own lists generally clock ~70-100 bodies in a 3k list. If we assume that most lists focus on the shiny toys, then something like 100 Marines per 3000pts seems like a fair approximation.
The smallest Legion are Raven Guard at 80,000 Marines. That would be something like 2.4 million points. On the other end of the scale, we have Ultramarines at 250,000 and 7.5 million points.

Supposedly the biggest game of 40k ever had 750k points, which is nowhere close enough for even one Legion.

There's also the practical problem of how big the table would be and how you would reach the models in the middle.

Going by the same approximation if you were playing Ultramarines v. Sons of Horus (the biggest Legion on each side) you'd need about 2,500x the tables. Doing it so humans can reach along one giant battle front like most Apocalypse games that'd be close to three miles of 6'x4' tables. Scaling all directions simultaneously you're looking at a 200'x300' table, but that assumes your forces are evenly distributed through the depth of the field, which is improbable given how ranges work in 30k/40k. 50'x1,200' with diagonal deployment would probably work better, and you'd probably move models by building a scaffolding above the table that people can walk around on. Small Legions from FW sources were roughly 80-90,000 Space Marines, so putting a small Legion on each side you only need something more like a 650'x30' table, but you'd probably still need the scaffolding.

As a random piece of amusing data here this approximation gives a table a population density of 8.33 Space Marines per square foot.

Even if you got every HH player of any given Legion to have their entire collection in a game simultaneously you'd probably still not have the whole force that some of the legions could bring to bear. That's just how colossal a space marine legion is.

Then again you could cheat.

"And here we have the first ever game of HH showing off the 2nd and 11th legions!" And just have an empty table.

Just a big black sheet with the word *redacted* on it.

another way to look at it: assume that those marines models are all deployed in one, massive line, bases touching. assuming 32MM bases (FW standard for the HH models), every 1,000 marines would be a line about 35 yards long (34.99something yards, or 32 meters exactly).

thus, a 80,000 strong "small" legion would be about 1.6 statue miles long. if deployed base to base in a single line. a 250,000 strong "big" legion is just shy of 5 miles long in a single line (4.97).

assuming you can fit every model into a 32mm square box (1024 square MM), the 80,000 strong legion has a base area volume of about 880 square feet, or the current average floorspace of a rental apartment in the US. . the 250,000 legion is just over 2,700 square feet, bigger that most two story houses and then some..

So what ya'll are saying that a full legion-on-legion engagement is improbable, but that taking, say, the floor of a convention center and creating a massive battlefield to represent part of one conflict during the Heresy is entirely possible... All I'm seeing is recreation on a huge scale, like those historical guys who play out Waterloo during the Napoleonic War.

 Mr. Grey wrote:
So what ya'll are saying that a full legion-on-legion engagement is improbable, but that taking, say, the floor of a convention center and creating a massive battlefield to represent part of one conflict during the Heresy is entirely possible... All I'm seeing is recreation on a huge scale, like those historical guys who play out Waterloo during the Napoleonic War.

maybe, but the 1:1 scale guys tend to go for a much smaller scale that 40K minis. if you tried epic 30K it would a much more manageable proposition.

Just out of curiosity, I had thought some Legions were rather small, with some in low 4 digit range. Did this change?

 Vaktathi wrote:
Just out of curiosity, I had thought some Legions were rather small, with some in low 4 digit range. Did this change?

Depends on your source. GW used to say ten thousand a Legion, but Forge World figure that was silly for a force that was supposedly spearheading galactic conquest, so they revised them upwards quite a lot in HH fluff.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mr. Grey wrote:
So what ya'll are saying that a full legion-on-legion engagement is improbable, but that taking, say, the floor of a convention center and creating a massive battlefield to represent part of one conflict during the Heresy is entirely possible... All I'm seeing is recreation on a huge scale, like those historical guys who play out Waterloo during the Napoleonic War.

Be aware that historical wargames are seldom played with 1:1 minis:people at the kind of scale where people are playing Waterloo. The historical scenarios in the Black Powder rulebook are at a rough scale of 1 28mm miniature to 20 men, so your full Waterloo is closer to 10,000 minis than the 200,000 people that were there in the real world.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Just out of curiosity, I had thought some Legions were rather small, with some in low 4 digit range. Did this change?

Depends on your source. GW used to say ten thousand a Legion, but Forge World figure that was silly for a force that was supposedly spearheading galactic conquest, so they revised them upwards quite a lot in HH fluff.

Ah ok, that would make sense, because I could have sworn I remembered the SW's original fluff having them at only a few thousand, possibly as low as 3k, as a legion during the HH

Increasing the numbers absolutely makes sense for the scale of galactic conquest, though on that note a single order of magnitude increase in size doesn't actually mean much really in terms of such scale, but I guess it looks a bit better on paper

 Vaktathi wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Just out of curiosity, I had thought some Legions were rather small, with some in low 4 digit range. Did this change?

Depends on your source. GW used to say ten thousand a Legion, but Forge World figure that was silly for a force that was supposedly spearheading galactic conquest, so they revised them upwards quite a lot in HH fluff.

Ah ok, that would make sense, because I could have sworn I remembered the SW's original fluff having them at only a few thousand, possibly as low as 3k, as a legion during the HH

Increasing the numbers absolutely makes sense for the scale of galactic conquest, though on that note a single order of magnitude increase in size doesn't actually mean much really in terms of such scale, but I guess it looks a bit better on paper

yhea, quite a few legions were down to a few thousand before meeting their Primarchs. the Thousand Sons, notably, were down to their titular number.

the HH fluff explains it as the "traditional" methods of gene seed production and marine recruiting (the ones used in M41) wasnt able to keep up with the attrition levels in the Great Crusade (ie, stomping down masssive xeno empires, resisting worlds, etc). They were forced to use faster methods of production, many of which led to high mutation rates form "unstable" gene-seed, which lead to the various legions genetic quirks, like the Wulfen curse, etc. some legions were more prone to it than others (the Tsons were among the worst for it, hence their low numbers).

Their a few hints in the HH books to the effect that the Two Missing Primarchs (And Their Legions) had some serious mutations or flaws that were bad enough to get them purged (this is one of the reasons why every legion was so secretive of any flaws in their own gene seeds, becuase they thought if the emperor found out about them, he'd purge them as well, not try and fix it)

The Empeor and his underlings managed to work out a way to use the primarchs themselves to stabilise and mass produce gene seed and some fancy "flash" memory training tech that let them churn out "battle ready" marines in just over a year form start to finish. this process (its never explained) was apprantly reliant on something taken form the primarchs once thier were mature (or at least, not form the samples used to make the orignal gene seed), so it could only start once the Primarch was reunited with his legion.


so, the Luna Wolves/Sons of Horus/future Black Legion got a leg up on the rest becuase Horus was the first Primarch found. A few other legions had very stable gene-seed (and thus lost less to mutations), namely the Ultramarines and a few others.

Side note, but this rapid implanting and training regime was blamed post heresy for being a contributing factor for the heresy (something about training the body and mind but not steeling the soul) , which is why the "traditional", slow method was brought back into use.

Been reading a lot of HH Book VIII: Malevolence and the Blood Angels seemed to be one of those Legions that was on the verge of dying out. Maybe had something to do with the types of Crusades they took on. It seems like the Emperor didn't give it a second thought we he dispatched 10,000 BA on a suicide mission. When a couple thousand came back, the Emperor was not pleased. Seems the BA are able to "Eat the Dead" and transfer memories/skills. This came to light in a big way when they went on a campaign with Dorn and the IF (no Sanguinius yet...) and Dorn had to censor the BA (killed 'em all) after they started eating the dead. After Sanguinius was found, he became Best Buddies with Horus, and Horus game him 10,000 or 20,000 Luna Wolves to shore up his Legion and reign them in. So Sangy was able to temper his Legion, and they went on to being known for "No mission too difficult, no objective not taken" as they hurled themselves again and again into the fray. Somehow, Sangy was able to keep his numbers up even under horrific losses. Most of that was probably because they would recover and "restore the memories" of the senior leadership (IE, eat the dead and take over their duties). The book also alludes to the process of making a Blood Angel Space Marine was harder with a higher failure rate then the other Legions.

As a side note, after reading Book VIII and how all the other Primarchs except Horus and the Emperor treated Sanguinius, I have no idea how the BA didn't turn to Chaos during the Heresy.

Well I think in 28mm you would need an actual army of modellers and painters, plus Jeff Bezos' resources to buy the miniatures from ForgeWorld. (Even with 'buy in bulk' discount can't imagine how much it would cost in money terms!)

6mm/Epic Scale I would say is still not really possible, even for the smaller Legions, but there are a couple of guys in the Epic 30k scene having a damned good go and probably doing at least chapter's worth (1000 marines plus, tank companies, titan legion supporting etc.)

I'm up to about 330 Legionnaires (infantry), probably another 30-40 in support personnel (artillery crew, gunners etc.). If I can complete the army as I would like to I'd hope to go for perhaps several battle companies and that might take it towards 1000.

Vanguard Miniatures are doing a 3mm scale of proxy marines now - I guess at that size (10 marines to a small base) you could probably paint a company in an hour or two, it might be possible to complete a Legion but would still be in an insane amount of work!

 Tamwulf wrote:
. Seems the BA are able to "Eat the Dead" and transfer memories/skills.

Unless changed recently that's actually generic marine ability.

Mozzamanx wrote:

There's also the practical problem of how big the table would be and how you would reach the models in the middle.

This isn't really a problem. The table "only" needs to be very long on the players' respective sides. The distance between the players' sides can be as normal.

True if you want it to be just big brawl rather than how that big battle would be about. That's been bane of big battle attempts. You don't get big battle feel　just by widening board and cramming more models.

It's passable as diorama, unsuited as a game

tneva82 wrote:

 Tamwulf wrote:
. Seems the BA are able to "Eat the Dead" and transfer memories/skills.

Unless changed recently that's actually generic marine ability.

My post was 100% off topic and served to only derail the conversation. My apologies. Only in the loosest sense was my post appropriate to the topic, and that is that the Blood Angels were a small Legion.

The practicality of actually fielding an entire Legion... would cost a lot of money, and the table size would have to be in something like a gymnasium or large gathering hall to fit in. Back in 2016, my local group played a huge 30K game. 20 players on a single table. The table was 144" x 360" and we played in a Eagles lodge (private club that rents out its space). Each player had 3,000-5,000 points- so it was at least 60,000 points in total. Surprisingly enough, we managed to play the entire game in a Saturday. When you play with a couple Titans on the table and the huge Pie Plates of Dooooooom! template weapons, you tend to lose a lot of models quickly. I think around turn 3, we had to improvise the "without end" rule of "If you've lost a squad, or a squad is broken, you can bring it back from reserves in your deployment zone". We had to do that because a player on Turn 3 was finally able to bring in his Thunderhawk that was promptly shot down by interceptor fire and he lost 3/4 of his army... The Titans were "free points" and both sides had the same ones. Interestingly enough, they were all gone by Turn 2.

Probably my favorite game of 30K ever. I feel like the local group needs to do that again in 2021...

You guys should really try 30k on a 6 foot wide table. We play on a 12' by 6' and it changes everything, so much more fun having to maneuver and plan more.

 Pacific wrote:
Well I think in 28mm you would need an actual army of modellers and painters, plus Jeff Bezos' resources to buy the miniatures from ForgeWorld. (Even with 'buy in bulk' discount can't imagine how much it would cost in money terms!)

6mm/Epic Scale I would say is still not really possible, even for the smaller Legions, but there are a couple of guys in the Epic 30k scene having a damned good go and probably doing at least chapter's worth (1000 marines plus, tank companies, titan legion supporting etc.)

I'm up to about 330 Legionnaires (infantry), probably another 30-40 in support personnel (artillery crew, gunners etc.). If I can complete the army as I would like to I'd hope to go for perhaps several battle companies and that might take it towards 1000.

Vanguard Miniatures are doing a 3mm scale of proxy marines now - I guess at that size (10 marines to a small base) you could probably paint a company in an hour or two, it might be possible to complete a Legion but would still be in an insane amount of work!

For Epic30k (on Epic: Armageddon chassis), I'd say some 100-200 marines is a normal amount in a regular 4k game with armour, support and all that jazz included. Scaling that up thousandfold would be a pretty rad undertaking, but not outside the realm of possibility for a dedicated group that isn't too fussed about the quality of their painting until everything gets to a basic standard. Churning out thousands of little "base colour + one or two details like shoulderpads and guns + brown wash" troops would be rather fast to do if one is ready to live the sweatshop life for a time. The logistics of playing with all of those minis would be utterly bonkers, though. I mean, I know my XIV is getting into silly numbers already and it hasn't even broken 20k points yet

 Sherrypie wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
Well I think in 28mm you would need an actual army of modellers and painters, plus Jeff Bezos' resources to buy the miniatures from ForgeWorld. (Even with 'buy in bulk' discount can't imagine how much it would cost in money terms!)

6mm/Epic Scale I would say is still not really possible, even for the smaller Legions, but there are a couple of guys in the Epic 30k scene having a damned good go and probably doing at least chapter's worth (1000 marines plus, tank companies, titan legion supporting etc.)

I'm up to about 330 Legionnaires (infantry), probably another 30-40 in support personnel (artillery crew, gunners etc.). If I can complete the army as I would like to I'd hope to go for perhaps several battle companies and that might take it towards 1000.

Vanguard Miniatures are doing a 3mm scale of proxy marines now - I guess at that size (10 marines to a small base) you could probably paint a company in an hour or two, it might be possible to complete a Legion but would still be in an insane amount of work!

For Epic30k (on Epic: Armageddon chassis), I'd say some 100-200 marines is a normal amount in a regular 4k game with armour, support and all that jazz included. Scaling that up thousandfold would be a pretty rad undertaking, but not outside the realm of possibility for a dedicated group that isn't too fussed about the quality of their painting until everything gets to a basic standard. Churning out thousands of little "base colour + one or two details like shoulderpads and guns + brown wash" troops would be rather fast to do if one is ready to live the sweatshop life for a time. The logistics of playing with all of those minis would be utterly bonkers, though. I mean, I know my XIV is getting into silly numbers already and it hasn't even broken 20k points yet

I feel like some kind of challenge is coming on Sherrypie

I am aiming for approx 25k pts a side (Space Marine/NetEpic). But getting a little bored painting marines so likely some Imperial Army alongside them, plus Titans. The real challenge will be the Orks on the other side as I can't imagine how many that will need, even if I go mental with the Gargants! I think with 3 players a side and turn time limits it might be possible to play this over a weekend....

 Pacific wrote:


I feel like some kind of challenge is coming on Sherrypie

I am aiming for approx 25k pts a side (Space Marine/NetEpic). But getting a little bored painting marines so likely some Imperial Army alongside them, plus Titans. The real challenge will be the Orks on the other side as I can't imagine how many that will need, even if I go mental with the Gargants! I think with 3 players a side and turn time limits it might be possible to play this over a weekend....

Oh you cheeky git, we just might have to at some point

Now that gets me thinking, painting a whole titan legio would be a lot quicker, given how even the largest ones rarely include too many hundreds of engines...