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Has it been ever told / implied on how large the two lost Legiones Astartes were? Were they small, mid-sized or large legions? Any ideas?

No way to know. They've never been namechecked by someone claiming their legion to be biggest or smallest, suggesting they weren't either, so I'd say average size.

Not exact sizes but the ultramarines and wordbearers I wanna say became the largest of the legions after the other 2 were disbanded. I know the heresy books always say that was why the two largest legions were that way.

Stalked21 wrote:
Not exact sizes but the ultramarines and wordbearers I wanna say became the largest of the legions after the other 2 were disbanded. I know the heresy books always say that was why the two largest legions were that way.

It's actually the exact opposite of what they say. And that two random Word Bearers shooting the gak wouldn't know any more about the Ultramarines than we would.

Canonicaly, the 1st legion, the dark angels, were the largest at the start of the crusade and remained that way until the ragdan xenocides, which we know the two lost legions took part in, and that they suffered such heavy losses in that campaign that the ultramarines overtook them.

We don't have absolute values for the size of the legions at this point, but id go with at least 10,000 for the starting strength of a legion leaving terra.

Depends entirely on when they were “forgotten”.

If it was shortly after, or at the point the Primarchs were recovered, likely relatively small, as they’d just be the Terran Astartes contingent.

There’s also the possibility they numbered even fewer, depending on why they were “forgotten”.

For instance, if there was a serious genetic instability (ala Thousand Sons, but worse) they may have been strangled in the crib as a Legion - a lost cause they had neither time nor opportunity to correct. The Primarch would still need to be found, possibly in the hope of correcting the salvaged gene seed, but equally possibly just to put it down, and not have such a powerful potential foe farting around the Galaxy.

If the transgression happened later, and was more of action than flesh? Well, who knows? If the Primarch came from a comparative paradise world, they’d have a decent range of potential Astartes. Even that is a sliding scale.

Consider the Ultramarines. A part of their huge numbers is the simple fact of Ultramar - a stable empire unto itself, with prime recruitment grounds of untainted humans. 500 potential recruitment worlds.

There’s also the issue that we don’t truly know what percentage of young men were suitable and capable of surviving the transition to post-human.

In the modern era, Chapters are highly selective, and we know there’s a not insignificant failure rate. But that doesn’t mean only say, 1 in 1,000 or whatever can be considered. It’s just as likely it’s a gradual deterioration of knowledge, and that with only 1,000 or so Astartes needed, they can afford to be picky.

Given we know the Blood Angels gene seed at the very least can turn someone bordering on being a mutant into a hale and healthy Astartes, it could be the original process is better preserved, and provided the candidate was young enough, the Legions at their peak could successfully convert even the worst physical specimens into fully fledged Astartes. Or it could be a unique factor of the Blood Angel gene seed - because that’s really quite ambiguous.

We’d also need to discuss how many each Legion started off with in The Emperor’s labs. Was it a set number, or whatever they could manage with the tools at hand?

From that number, we’d need to know their role in the pacification of Terra and the Sol System, because that could tell us more about their attrition rate. After all, powerful as they were the proto-Legions were ultimately only ever one serious defeat away from extinction.

I think it's implied but not actually stated that the success rate of each legion/chapter's recruitment is specific to that legion/chapter dependent upon geneseed, recruiting world, conditions etc.