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If a wandering chaos warband can't hold any planets for recruitment, and if they don't even have an apothecary to utilize geneseed, then how would they recruit new marines? Do they just expect to convert loyalist marines or do they just accept that they will get whittled down?

I would say so. They either just run until they burn out, or make regular trips to a handy warp space tear to replenish from a daemon world.

Depends on the Warband.

Those of a Khornate nature won't really care, killing until killed sort of deal.

Most Warbands will trade slaves, materials or make pacts with those who have the ability to create new Astartes, such as the Dark Mechanicum or the likes of Fabius Bile or contemporaries.

Most Warbands have to be content with augmenting their forces by other means such as Cult troops or bound Daemons.

Recruiting via corruption is definitely a common practice alongside domination of other Warbands. A small Warband is likely to ally to or be subsumed by a larger force, with the likes of the Black Legion and Red Corsairs being particularly notable for this.
Warbands dedicated to Nurgle are also very "welcoming" of new brothers due to their nature of loving everyone who embraces Papa Nurgle.

There’s also absorption of other warbands.

Warbands tend to be cults of personality. If you’re doing well, others will seek you out to join or ally. Or indeed to Come And Have A Go If They Think They’re Hard Enough. Not entirely unlike Orks.

When warbands clash? If a leader is slain there’s the chance his or her warriors will be absorbed into the victor’s warband. That can replenish and swell numbers.

Geneseed can be culled from any fallen Marine. You may indeed have your own Apothercary, or know a rogue one who’ll do the honours for a price. And if you don’t have any? There are places where you can trade for it,

This is what makes Chaos such an unpredictable threat. Leaders like Abaddon, are rare. So Chaos is rarely terribly well organised. A lack of regular central organisation and communication means most warbands are just farting around doing their own thing. So you can never truly tell when or where they’ll pop up, or what they’re up to.

Recruitment can also come from kidnapping young men, or from any Cults which come out the woodwork during an attack.

[obligatory but vague reference to the Iron Warriors' atrocities]

It is one of the weak points in WH40K lore. The galaxy is gigantic, and small warbands without coordination should wither away lacking spare parts for their SM-sized equipment, without access to both a Apothecary and all stuff needed to create a (C)SM.

But, plot armor.

Anyway, one way could be for the warband to have non-astartes that could be "uplifted" when the warband finds an Apothecary. Either by recruiting renegade human soldiers, or do as SM chapters and recruit young barbarians from a death world, keeping them as cannon fodder and uplift those that survive.

Another possibility could be to ask their patron deity for assistance - where is a renegade but not fallen SM that could be a potential recruit? where is an Apothecary that could implant our recruits with Astartes gene-seed?

Small Warbands do wither away. They either die from lack of supply or are subsumed into a larger Warband.

That's been the case for years and it's an entire subplot of the Night Lords trilogy that the Warband barely manages to scratch by because of how desperate they are.

Yup.

The Eye of Terror is more than just a refuge. As is any permanent Warp Rift. They’re communities, after a fashion. Places you can find new recruits (existing Traitor Marines or someone to convert), get your gear patched up and/or replaced.

Unlike Loyalist Astartes, who have long standing pacts with various worlds, including Forgeworlds? It seems most Chaos Warbands have more ad-hoc arrangements. The Dark Mechanicum for instance always need slaves, raw materials and esoteric things, giving you a route to trade with them.

This is also why Traitor Astartes tend to favour more robust technology. They’re not only easier to maintain, but presumably when you need new or a full refurb, the negotiated cost to do so is lower.

Hence many Warbands at least appear to be Merely Piratical, launching raids to gather the materials and lives needed to treat with those who keep their toys ticking. Of course, that’s when they leave evidence that allows them to be identified.

For larger operations, Warbands will work together for mutual gain. But Chaos being Chaos? You can’t exactly trust such allies. And there’s not an awful lot to prevent a larger, better established force killing you and yours, then nicking your best toys.

Plus don't forget you don't need many Marines (or Chaos Marines) to rule and command large numbers of regular humans.

So even if your numbers are small, you can protect them by having even more regular humans within the army. Plus Chaos has no division of power within itself like the Imperium does; so there's nothing to stop them recruiting huge numbers of troops under their own banner.

True that. And a major failing of 40k’s in-game representation of Chaos.

You’ve got turncoat guardsmen, unknown numbers and variety of cultists. You’ve got mutants and abhumans. You’ve creatures of Chaos found on on worlds (Daemon and not) in the Eye of Terror and other Warp Rifts. If the leader of the Warband has the stomach for it? Chaos is an equal opportunities employer.

The Traitor Marines are of course an important collective prawn for the Chaos Gods. Not only warriors of exceptional martial prowess, but soldiers with a superior grasp of tactics and strategy. Even better? They’ve the life and attention span to enact plots and shenanigans years, decades, centuries even millennia in the making.

The Great Rift is the most notable example of that - but it won’t be the only one.

But as with The Imperium? It’s the little guys you really need to watch for. They’re the rot within the system. The ever growing canker fuelled by the Imperium’s own unthinking and uncaring brutality. The thousands of millions of tiny little cuts constantly bleeding the Imperium, making it always watch its own back against its own people, striving to root them out.

I think my concept of a chaos warband is somewhat more open than the definition that most folks in this thread are using.

Folks are saying things like "A warband shouldn't be able to survive without an apothecary."

Nowhere is it written that a warband needs to even include Marines.

A rogue psyker influenced by daemons that whisper to him in dreams who recruits 10 dudes by getting them addicted to Slaaneshi tainted drugs to help him steal a Chimera from the local guard outpost is a warband.

A pack of beastmen lead by a champion and a bray shaman is warband.

Both of them can learn rituals to summon daemons.

An excellent point. It's only really during major campaigns that Astartes are encountered.

Even then with the likes of the Sabbat Worlds, they're rarely involved in much and only in very small numbers.

Yeah on the tabletop we get the idea that whole companies of marines or chaos marines are common and normal.

It's the same, honestly, for every faction in some way or another. Eldar are not going to war with Avatars every single time; heck just taking Wraith units out is a very special event that they try to avoid as much as possible.

A Hive Tyrant is typically one per whole planetary invasion, you have to be bonkers unlucky to be at the same spot its at.

Also, depending where they’re embedded and who they’ve ensnared? A Chaos Cult doesn’t need to commit to massive acts to cause serious trouble. Nor does every member need to be a true believer.

The Imperium is a near perfect breeding ground for social dissent. And a canny cult leader can harness that, using regular citizens to do the damage, potentially entirely masking their own presence as a result,

Which of course, makes the Inquisition’s job that much harder.

Heck we've enough stories and even animations showing how many people fall to Chaos because it offers something, at least in the immediate, which is way better than the madness the Imperium offers.

Or its offering actual protection whilst the Imperium ignores you.

Chaos is WAY more than horror and mutations and by the time you realise that's what you get, its' already sunk its claws deep into you and you can't escape (nor do you want to escape)

Yup.

And they really need to explore that in the model range.

I mean, consider you’re a Guardsman or PDF Soldier. You are loyal. You take your job seriously.

Then? Some actual Space Marines arrive, accuse your Planetary Governor of heinous crimes, and lead you into battle.

Do you even know there are traitor Marines? No. You do not. Even if you are aware? What are their insignia? What are their colours? How the hell are you meant to reasonably know who’s good and who’s bad?

Same with the general citizenry. They’re trained over who knows how many generations to obey and comply. If an “Inquisitor” or similar leads you in revolt, how can you be expected to know they’re naughty?

A small cult need only at least temporarily disrupt food distribution, or a water source and presto you’ve pretty much got a guaranteed riot. Isolated at first? Sure. But those sparks can be fanned into an inferno.

Even if your cult is put down, you’ve still bled some attention and forces to do so. Which is where Lord Helmawr of Necromunda might have the right idea. Let the Clan Houses have their gangs to keep the Underhive more or less in line. After all? They know their turf. They won’t brook cult activity interfering with their holdings.

Isn't Fabius Bile's whole thing that he acts as a creator/designer of Chaos Marines? Admittedly I don't know much about his lore, or whether there are others in the Eye of Terror who practice his craft (though he'd obviously be the first and the best). But if the Imperium was able to create Primaris Marines without the Emperor's help, then this science clearly didn't "die" (or go comatose) with the Emperor.

Do Chaos Marines necessarily have original Astartes geneseed? I think it's entirely possible that Chaos gifts and mutations can augment a worthy human to the same level geneseed can, turning him into a sort of off-brand Marine. Only the Imperium really cares about purity; Chaos is all about results. If you're Marine-strong, Marine-tough and Marine-brave, and you fight like a Marine, then you're a Marine.

.

Bile and his Consortium were the chief route for Warbands without their own means to procure more Astartes.
Those Legions that are more organised and still recruit via implantation (Word Bearers, Iron Warriors, Black Legion) were less requiring unless something went massively wrong.

As for having powerful non-Astartes, yeah, loads of Warbands will have mutants and whatnot or those empowered by the Dark Gods. But being an Astartes is just as much a status symbol as it is a state of existence.

Take Savona from the Bile novels. A daughter of her world's ruling family, she betrayed her world and helped the Emperor's Children to take her world, joined the Warband as a Serf, then was gifted Daemonic armour by the Warband's leader and worked her way through the ranks to become 2nd in the Lord's inner circle.
It took Savona joining Fabius Bile and the battle at Belial IV for her to truly become the leader of the remains of the Warband that she joined as a mere mortal, and faced constant derision and insubordination from many within the 12th Millenial until they eventually accepted her as their commander.

The Legions are just as haughty and snearing as you would expect from the losers of a grand rebellion. They hate Loyalist Successors as weak-blooded copies of the Legions of old, view Renegade Astartes as cowards without true honour, and view every other Chaos Legion or Chapter with disdain for either not winning the Heresy or not being part of it.
And yet when the cards are down, every single one of those options will be readily accepted as new recruits. Hypocrisy and denial define the Legions. The single exception is the Black Legion, who instead think they're better than the old Legions for staking claim on the Long War and not grumbling about the Heresy.

Most CSM warbands would be a leader and their inner circle of CSM and lesser champions. They would then most likely be leading a much larger host of mutants, human renegades, or feral tribesmen recruited from worlds in the Eye of Terror (i.e. the contents of the Lost and the Damned army). GW's focus on CSM means though we don't see depictions of this in detail very often, with the focus being primarily on the CSM.

These warbands would live in a mostly scavenging hand to mouth existence as their leader attempts to gain enough favor for apotheosis to a daemon prince, and would spend its time doing acts related to the patron god or raiding to gain supplies (or things/favors that could be traded with others for supplies). I could see situations were poorer warbands are reluctant to directly engage in battle because it would consume their limited ammunition or risk damage that is too difficult or costly to repair. At such point they would either have to rely on melee combat or use their expendable underlings to do the fighting, or they might be absorbed by another richer warband in return for getting needed supplies. I could see the Dark Mechanicum having lots of CSM warbands in thrall due to "company store" model of making them dependent on resupply (and creation of new CSM for those unaligned to a Legion with such faicilities).

The CSM Legions exist more in name and it is like herding cats. Each warband is prone to breaking off to follow its own goals unless there is a clear overriding incentive.