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I am looking at a lot of Istvaan V Drop site Massacre info, and I am wondering what trader legions had the most actual Space Marine armies on the ground...some of the maps seems to have a lot of Word Bearers but they came in the 2nd wave? Anyone know what trader legions made up the bulk of the army's by the end of the battle? or was it all pretty even amongst them?


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From what I can assume by reading about the battle and maps, it looks like to me. Not counting Titan Legions...if someone disagrees, please let me know why.
1. Word Bearers
2. World Eaters (even though they already suffered a lot of casualties on Istvaan III, Angron Loves to fight)
3. Sons Of Horus (wanting to preserve as many of his legion for the push to Terra)
4. Night Lords
5.Death Guard (on one flank to hide numbers)
6.Alpha Legion
7.Emperors Children (Heavily depleted after Istvaan III)
8.Iron Warriors (mostly fighting in orbit)

All that's known exactly is that the Raven Guard landed with 80,000 Astartes and escaped with around 3,000.
Originally it was given in the novel "Fulgrim" that the combined size of the defending Traitors (WE, DG, EC, and SoH) was 30,000 but the sizes of all the Legions were changed in the FW book series and later HH novels as it was decided that the original numbers were far too low for a single battle in a conflict that tore the Imperium in half.

the word bearers were the largest traitor legion (and second largest overall after the Ultramarines) but I'm not sure how much of their force was there; I think they had their Calth contingent already seperated off at this point.

Of the initial traitor force, the Sons of Horus were the largest legion so I'd assume had the largest force, with the World Eaters just after. Death Guard and Emperor's Children were both on the 'small' side at ~100,000 according to Betrayal.

Anything past the actual Betrayal itself and the numbers are going to be iffy. All four Legions present at Isstvan III lost sizeable numbers of troops both from the purged Loyalist elements and the casualties sustained during said purge.