Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So I've been reading alot of the 40k fluff here lately, particularly the space marine stuff, their recruitment, organization, battles, etc because I've been wanting to write some of my own stuff but one thing keeps irking me and that's the fact that even with their superior skills and survivability (at least in terms of the fluff) I don't see how it would be possible for a chapter to last. From what I've read, it takes decades for new recruit to work his way from aspirant all the way up to full fledged battle brother ready for all responsibilities, so taking that into consideration, that would mean any loss of a full fledged space marine would be detrimental to a company as it takes several years to get a replacement. Even if space marines are putting up some amazing numbers, I'm talking 1-500 kill ratios, you're still going to lose a few, maybe 5-10 in a moderate campaign. Well those kind of casualties might be okay if space marines took breaks but from what I've read, they're fighting almost constantly with not very much downtime in between. That would make it impossible for recruitment to ever keep up with the casualty rate. This problem is worsened even further by the fact that scouts are pressed into combat also. That means their even losing their potential replacements as well. They could maybe offset that by having a huge recruit pool but space marine trials to my knowledge are a "last man standing" sort of deal so you get like maybe one or two. Then there's also surviving implantation and what not. I just don't see those numbers adding up very well. I could see there being veterans (you get lucky) but it seems a company of 1000 would quickly be grinded down within a century of so, unless they simply don't take any casualties. What's anyone else's thoughts on this?

Economies of scale.

If you are recruiting and training constantly in large numbers, you will always have enough to replace losses.

If there's one thing that the Imperium has, it is manpower. If 1 of 100 get all the way through training, that just means you need to start train 10,000 every year.

They don't wait for a battle brother to die and then start training his replacement. Each chapter always has many scouts going through various stages of the training. When a marine falls there is a good chance that there is a scout who is ready to become a full battle brother and replace him almost immediately.

In situations where a chapter loses a significant portion of its forces it seems they generally remove themselves from the scene for a few years/decades until they have regained some numbers. There are exceptions to this of course.

Space marines are tougher than humans. When SM are removed play on the tabletop they're likely just incapitated and ready to fight another day instead of being killed.

Very rarely in the fluff is an entire chapter committed at once. You generally see one to three companies worth of marines from one chapter engaged at a time. It's reasonable to assume that companys that are particularly mauled after an extensive campaign are rotated home to refit while fresh companies deploy to the next warzone.

In the fluff, a squad of marines can pretty much pacify an entire planet, so there isn't much outside of major conflicts (which are supposed to be rare) where you have a significant number of them.

It's not much of a big deal if you go by the general GW core studio fluff: according to the Index Astartes articles, it takes about 6 years for a Neophyte to be transformed into an Astartes, at which point he'll enter the Scout Company and be ready for deployment. And then there's always the option of simply not waiting as long as protocol would demand before installing the next phase of implants.

"A Marine usually joins the ranks between the ages of 16-18, but such are the hormonal changes induced by the process of creating a Space Marine that recruits are physically fully grown before then. Pressures during wartime may accelerate the process."
- WD #247

Space Marines advance towards their final proficiency by moving from one Company to the next, being promoted as the need or the opportunity arises. As per the Astartes Tactics article in WD #300, a Codex Chapter strike force (the most common form of deployment) will most often be built around a single Battle Company - the Reserve Companies exist only to provide fire support teams, vehicle crews and ... replacements for battle casualties. So when a Marine from a Battle Company dies, his spot will be taken by a Marine from another Company (with a higher number), whose spot will be taken by yet another Marine from yet another Company (with an even higher number), and so on ... until you end up promoting a Scout.

The only real issue is certain bits of fluff that attempt to romanticise and mystify the Astartes with stuff like the Blood Angels only recruiting "once per generation", with ridiculous trials lowering the number of viable recruits to something like 50, out of whom yet more may die from failed implantation. So ... what, is the writer trying to tell me the BA can only afford to lose ~3 Marines every year? Sorry, but that indeed doesn't fit to the casualties I sometimes read about in studio fluff (e.g.: Imperial Fists: 85% casualty rate at the Battle of Naeuysk Gorge - WD #269).

Except if we assume that the Space Marines simply don't go to war all that often, and spend most of their time sitting around in their Fortress-Monasteries, training like mad for the day they're actually needed. Given the relative independence they are usually afforded, they could just decide to not answer any call to battle for as long as it takes them to stock up on numbers.
For what it's worth, the only way the Black Templars can afford their "eternal crusade" is because they are constantly recruiting from several worlds all across the Imperium.

The problem, as noted in a hundred threads about space marine numbers, is their depiction, especially in Black Library novels, would necessitate a chapters numbers to be many times 1000 for it to be effective.

If, as many stories tell us, marines are used for frontline attritiative combat then each loss would be a huge loss for the chapter if the number is only 1000.

If, however, as presented in the Forgeworld books, especially the Badab War ones, marines are a speartip used to strike at a critical location then actually pull out of the entire combat zone, then 1000 may make sense as even atrocious losses could be explained as they don't need to be in combat very much and have time to re-train and re-equip.

buddha wrote:If, as many stories tell us, marines are used for frontline attritiative combat then each loss would be a huge loss for the chapter if the number is only 1000.
If, however, as presented in the Forgeworld books, especially the Badab War ones, marines are a speartip used to strike at a critical location then actually pull out of the entire combat zone, then 1000 may make sense as even atrocious losses could be explained as they don't need to be in combat very much and have time to re-train and re-equip.

Very true.

"Space Marines are entrusted with all sorts of perilous missions, such as lightning raids behind enemy lines, infiltration attacks to capture vital positions, and tunnel fights in enemy held cities. They also undertake long voyages of planetary exploration and conquest on behalf of the Imperium, earmarking planets which are too well defended so that they can be attacked later with the support of the Imperial Guard."
- GW Inquisitor RPG

WayneTheGame wrote:
In the fluff, a squad of marines can pretty much pacify an entire planet, so there isn't much outside of major conflicts (which are supposed to be rare) where you have a significant number of them.

What isn't mentioned is that the squad of marines is there alongside a massive Imperial Guard invasion fleet, and its often the threat of space marines and/or the belief that they are divine angels of vengeance that pacifies the planet, not the marines themselves.

The only real issue is certain bits of fluff that attempt to romanticise and mystify the Astartes with stuff like the Blood Angels only recruiting "once per generation", with ridiculous trials lowering the number of viable recruits to something like 50, out of whom yet more may die from failed implantation. So ... what, is the writer trying to tell me the BA can only afford to lose ~3 Marines every year? Sorry, but that indeed doesn't fit to the casualties I sometimes read about in studio fluff (e.g.: Imperial Fists: 85% casualty rate at the Battle of Naeuysk Gorge - WD #269).

Thats not entirely out of the question, a generation for humans in the present world is approx. 20 years or so, if Blood Angels recruit heavily from feral worlds, then a generation could conceivably be a shorter timeframe than that... They would just have to recruit much greater numbers, so instead of the typical 10k/year that someone mentioned prior, we're talking 200k to start.

Except if we assume that the Space Marines simply don't go to war all that often, and spend most of their time sitting around in their Fortress-Monasteries, training like mad for the day they're actually needed. Given the relative independence they are usually afforded, they could just decide to not answer any call to battle for as long as it takes them to stock up on numbers.
For what it's worth, the only way the Black Templars can afford their "eternal crusade" is because they are constantly recruiting from several worlds all across the Imperium.

Yup, I think this is more the case. Also keep in mind that the entire chapter isn't continuously deployed, usually only a battle company or two and/or detachments from the rest of the chapter (squad or two here and there).

Also, the BT are much larger than a typical chapter...

The problem, as noted in a hundred threads about space marine numbers, is their depiction, especially in Black Library novels, would necessitate a chapters numbers to be many times 1000 for it to be effective.

I haven't read a single Black Library novel post-Heresy where Marines deploy an entire chapter, let alone even a full company. Going by the BL novels I've read, it seems the standard deployment is usually 1-2 tactical squads plus another 1-2 units in support.

Basically, each Space Marine can create 2 Space Marines. 1 from his extra set of Progenioids, and the second when he dies and his main set of progenoids is created.

So, obviously there's not a true 2:1 replacement rate since catastrophic damage or the inability to recover the corpse can destroy that second set of progenoids. However, the better than 1:1 means there will always be spare progenoids glands.

So there are always Marines in the pipeline since the process takes 8-10 years to complete (start as early as 8 (late as 10), finish at approximately 18). They enter the Scouts around 16. Before that, they're still there, they just aren't counted against the combat power of the Chapter.

It's called a recruiting pipeline. Even modern military forces have this concept mastered, lol. You recruit new members at the projected rate they'll need to be replaced. For most modern military forces, that's based on a predicted rate of retention past the first enlistment and modified for any possible combat casualties. For Space Marines, this is obviously going to be based on their average casualty rate.

But the point was made that Space Marine casualties are typically pretty low. Most fluff that bothers to talk about it suggests that outside of the most dire of campaigns, most Space Marines rendered combat ineffective can be restored to capability fairly easily. If you look at the Siege of Vraks books, for example, the Dark Angels suffered only a handful of deaths until they got into a protracted, all-out battle with Chaos Marines. Space Marines are not only ridiculously tough, they're built to be resilient too, and capable of recuperating from fairly significant wounds that would kill normal troops.

So you have to realize that not every campaign is the Siege of Vraks, the Battle of Macragge, or the defense of Helsreach. Most of them are probably solved pretty quickly when Space Marines show up with space power, airpower, and the ability to surgically strike to hit key targets with concentrated force.

It's also fairly important to remember that Space Marines are fairly autonomous. Nobody can really tell them what to do. If they take pretty severe casualties and need to take a decade off to refit, they probably will, and it's unlikely that any Imperial authority is going to bother to force them otherwise.

"Hey Dark Angels, can you help us out here?" "No. Busy." "Okay, we'll ask somebody else."

 Lynata wrote:


Space Marines advance towards their final proficiency by moving from one Company to the next, being promoted as the need or the opportunity arises. As per the Astartes Tactics article in WD #300, a Codex Chapter strike force (the most common form of deployment) will most often be built around a single Battle Company - the Reserve Companies exist only to provide fire support teams, vehicle crews and ... replacements for battle casualties. So when a Marine from a Battle Company dies, his spot will be taken by a Marine from another Company (with a higher number), whose spot will be taken by yet another Marine from yet another Company (with an even higher number), and so on ... until you end up promoting a Scout.

Just to point out, this was adressed in a Standard Bearer. 'If a Chapter has two Assault Squads and a Whirlwind available, then that is what they will send.' (Think it was those units anyway, though that is irrelevant.) The reserve companies generally do not fight as a whole which is what makes them different to the Battle Companies, but despite the name they are not sitting out. They are just spread out.

And to add to Veteran Sergeant's words, a Space Marine indeed has great resilience; in fact, I'd argue that their defensive advantages over a human or a Sister are far greater than the offensive advantages. (Even if a very accurate massive rapid fire sidearm that is essentially a 'mini'-rocket launcher, along with truly massive strength, speed and skill in melee, makes for very nice offense as well.) The argument I see that Space Marines can't handle protracted warfare is a fallacy, honestly. Take the Iron Warriors. These guys are absolute masters of attrition and siege warfare, on par if not superior to similarly specialised forces like the Death Korps of Krieg.

chaos0xomega wrote:Thats not entirely out of the question, a generation for humans in the present world is approx. 20 years or so, if Blood Angels recruit heavily from feral worlds, then a generation could conceivably be a shorter timeframe than that... They would just have to recruit much greater numbers, so instead of the typical 10k/year that someone mentioned prior, we're talking 200k to start.

I was working with an estimate of a generation being ~15 years - you can't well go even lower even on feral worlds for biological reasons. Also, as far as I've read the BA only recruit from a single planet, and it didn't even sound as if they had 10k volunteers to begin with (likely due to geneseed compatibility issues).
Really, it just sounded as if the writer did not consider what effect such low recruitment numbers would (should) have. :/ You can read the entire article as an online backup here - like all Index Astartes articles, it's well written and very interesting, aside from this potential hiccup.

As I said, it wouldn't be a problem if they'd just not go to war so often, but the big, popular Chapters are "unfortunately" shown fighting so many different battles that you'd assume they are constantly warring.

chaos0xomega wrote:Also, the BT are much larger than a typical chapter...

That's why I mentioned them as an exception from the rule.
I recall reading about them being estimated at 3-4 times the size of a Codex Chapter, but I believe that various sources have suggested different numbers, at least according to some posters on dakka.

BrotherHaraldus wrote:The reserve companies generally do not fight as a whole which is what makes them different to the Battle Companies, but despite the name they are not sitting out. They are just spread out.

Hey, I did write they accompany the Battle Companies into action!
But I guess I could have made it clearer to avoid possible misunderstandings, so your addition is still welcome.

 Lynata wrote:
Hey, I did write they accompany the Battle Companies into action!
But I guess I could have made it clearer to avoid possible misunderstandings, so your addition is still welcome.

Well, they are not only replacements, fire support teams and vehicle crews. Reserve Assault Squads are just as much in the thick of it from the very start of a battle, for example.

Just want to clear that out, not pointing out any fallacies in your post.

Another thing to remember is that a "casualty" in game isn't necessarily a fatality. You might knock out a Marine squad, but they aren't "dead" they're just out of commission for that battle and need to go the infirmary for a couple of weeks to recuperate. So the rate at which units are "killed" in the game doesn't mean that every time a tac squad is destroyed, 10 Marines die. They aren't dead, just wounded enough that they need to retreat and aren't of any more consequence to the game; fluff-wise they might even still be combat ready but can't contribute meaningfully anymore, so in the rules they are out of action.

Plot armor, mostly.

 Melissia wrote:
Plot armor, mostly.

Like every other race in the game, then.

The infamous SM plot armour mostly exists in novels, that individually have little effect on the faction as a whole, and occasional stories like the whole Orar Sepulchre thing.

It is not significant enough to affect their existence, survival and performance in the setting as a whole.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
The infamous SM plot armour mostly exists in novels

I'll agree to that.

In the non-novel GW lore, Space Marines are competent special forces / battle monks who drop down behind enemy lines, kill everything they see quickly, then move on before the enemy notices that they've hit. This makes sense, really, that's playing Marines to their greatest strengths, and hey, that's cool and all. In the novels though, they're often skull-fethed morons by comparison, making stupid tactical decisions and basically only managing to succeed because their author wanted them to.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
that individually have little effect on the faction as a whole

They have a huge impact with regards to how the faction is perceived.

 Melissia wrote:

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
The infamous SM plot armour mostly exists in novels

I'll agree to that.

In the non-novel GW lore, Space Marines are competent special forces / battle monks who drop down behind enemy lines, kill everything they see quickly, then move on before the enemy notices that they've hit. This makes sense, really, that's playing Marines to their greatest strengths, and hey, that's cool and all. In the novels though, they're often skull-fethed morons by comparison, making stupid tactical decisions and basically only managing to succeed because their author wanted them to.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
that individually have little effect on the faction as a whole

They have a huge impact with regards to how the faction is perceived.

I was not talking about perception, only in-setting performance.

Besides, Marines can and do use attrition and head-on siege tactics. As I mentioned above, the Iron Warriors are a perfect example of this. Their mastery of such tactics might outstrip even specialists like DKoK. They would have been extinct if Marines were as bad at slogging through the frontlines as some say they are.

No, they don't. They simply don't have the numbers for it. Attrition doesn't work very well for elite soldiers.

 Melissia wrote:
No, they don't. They simply don't have the numbers for it. Attrition doesn't work very well for elite soldiers.

Yes, it very much does. A war of attrition simply means out-surviving your enemy. The Iron Warriors are highly proficient in this. There is no reason elite soldiers can't do it, after all, the kill ratios are likely to be appropriately skewed in their favour.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
No, they don't. They simply don't have the numbers for it. Attrition doesn't work very well for elite soldiers.

Yes, it very much does. A war of attrition simply means out-surviving your enemy.

Marines are roughly worth ten guardsmen, according to their own primarchs. Ten marines against two hundred guardsmen is a losing prospect. A hundred marines unsupported against a hundred thousand guardsmen is even more so.

 Melissia wrote:

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
No, they don't. They simply don't have the numbers for it. Attrition doesn't work very well for elite soldiers.

Yes, it very much does. A war of attrition simply means out-surviving your enemy.

Marines are roughly worth ten guardsmen, according to their own primarchs. Ten marines against two hundred guardsmen is a losing prospect. A hundred marines unsupported against a hundred thousand guardsmen is even more so.

Except we also have numerous examples that massively contradict this. That and the guardsmen couldn't even successfully injure the Astartes without heavy weapons or special lasguns like the hotshot/hellgun variety.

Melissia said it best: plot armor.

There are some great explanations mentioned here for how it might be possible for a chapter to maintain its numbers, but due to the scope of the setting there is no reasonable way a chapter could maintain its numbers without sequestering itself constantly. Though the fluff supports the nigh indestructibility of the space marines against long odds, it isn't plausible given how many engagements each chapter supposedly encounters. For space marines to really make such a difference on such a vast scale they would have to expose themselves to harm far too often for them to keep up with recruitment. If they only engaged in an occasional battle it might be reasonable, but too often they are involved in campaigns and even wars. The progenoid glands are a HUGE liablilty to the recruitment process, as any soldier captured, lost in space, the warp, eaten, etc. slows down the chapter's ability to replace its losses. Some foes such as Chaos, Tyranids and maybe Dark Eldar might be more hazardous to engage due the difficulty in retrieving vital progenoids. I have no problem with the story of the space marines and in fact enjoy it very much, but it isn't any more plausible than the warp, orks and elves in spaaaace, super-psychers, etc., etc.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
No, they don't. They simply don't have the numbers for it. Attrition doesn't work very well for elite soldiers.

Yes, it very much does. A war of attrition simply means out-surviving your enemy. The Iron Warriors are highly proficient in this. There is no reason elite soldiers can't do it, after all, the kill ratios are likely to be appropriately skewed in their favour.

Except in that case it's not the Iron Warriors actually doing the fighting. It's their legions upon legions of slave soldiers that they're sending into the meatgrinder. If the Iron Warriors tried to do their style of fighting without the use of slave cannon fodder they'd be wiped out before they could even dig the first trenches.

TBH it depends on what author you read as to how many casualties you would expect. Some authors have marines as nigh on indestructible where as Abnett and his Geron crew chop through chaos marines like a knife through butter. i think a lot of the space marine books feature around mass dramatic battles where casualties are inordinately high (otherwise there wouldn't be any drama) Out of interest, how many space marines do you guys think a chapter would lose in an average year and how many engagements do you envisage them having ?

 amanita wrote:
Melissia said it best: plot armor.

Said it best? Might as well have said "Because 40K".

Everything in the game has plot armor, lol. Wacky action festish elves with chainmail bikinis riding open topped skiffs. Orks who don't have to explain where they obtain and refine enough fuel to power an army of internal combustion engines and yet they have zero infrastructure. If we were to make some snarky comment about a race only being able to function because of plot massaging we'd be left with... well, not quite sure. How do the Tyranids travel across space at faster than light speeds? Um, like harnessing gravity or something. Otherwise, Hive Fleet Leviathan is coming! In about ten thousand years.

Look at her favorite, the Sisters of Battle. This is an army with absolutely no mid to long range firepower aside from the Exorcist.

They're low toughness troops with nothing more powerful than a heavy bolter with a range over 24" that can be carried by their infantry. That means on a battlefield with tanks and walking tanks, and people built like light tanks, they only have an anti-armor capability at extreme close range.

Their primary combat capability is at extreme close range (12" or less), where they are most vulnerable (low toughness, low weapon skill, low initiative, low numbers), rather than at medium-long range where their best attributes (ballistic skill and heavy armor) come into play.

This is an entire faction that succeeds in universe solely on plot armor.

At least the Space Marines are written into the fluff with space fleets, and aircraft, and artillery, and ridiculous toughness.


Though let's not use the Iron Warriors as an example. In fact, use just about any other Chapter or Traitor Legion/Warband. The idea of a Space Marine Legion that specialized in siege warfare was redonkulous, lol. If there's one thing Space Marines would never do, it is lay siege to anything (other than Terra, since that was their final objective).


I made that to make fun of the Alpha Legion's current, and awful, fluff. But it works pretty well for the Iron Warriors too if you just swap in "a protracted siege war of attrition".

The Space Marine Legions were all about conquering as much as possible, as quickly as possible. And that's more or less the way they work in 40K. Chapters come in, lay a whooping, and then take off. Look at the siege of Vraks. Aside from offering the writers a way to produce three books about one campaign by giving them a new Marine Chapter to take up page space, and draw pretty pictures of, look how many Marine Chapters come and go during the 17 years. Five.

Every once in a while an author puts them in a situation they probably shouldn't be (all of the Iron Warriors fluff, everything written about the Alpha Legion in the Horus Heresy Series). But that's just silly bad writing. Space Marines go where it is advantageous to have a small number of troops who can concentrate a lot of firepower in a small space, and live to talk about it. The Legions may have fought a little differently, but they were still supported by the Navy and Army too. It's important to recognize that when it says that a Space Marine Chapter turned the tide in a war, it was probably because they were combining their air, land, and space power against selected weak points of the enemy. Otherwise they die like the Doritomarines did at Helsreach. But even then it took the Orks over a month to do it. They were literally only killing an average of just under three Marines a day in protracted, all out warfare.


Edit: Actually, I take that back. I was making fun of one of the recent HH novels, but not about the Alpha Legion. Promethean Sun? Pretty sure. That one was terrible even if that wasn't what I was making fun of.

Wyzilla wrote:That and the guardsmen couldn't even successfully injure the Astartes without heavy weapons or special lasguns like the hotshot/hellgun variety.

The GW studio seems to have a different opinion on this than you.

There, what allows the Astartes to accomplish their missions objectives against a numerically superior force such as a Guard regiment is their ability to deploy almost anywhere they wish, thus having the luxury of picking out weak spots and projecting their impressive firepower and resilience on a comparatively small zone where the enemy will just fail to respond with all the dispersed troops they would otherwise have at their disposal. The Marines' biggest advantage is their mobility, with everything else - from powered armour to genetic enhancements - just being a bonus that allows them to pull it off even better and with less casualties, not to mention the effect on enemy morale.

We can see what happens when the Marines deploy with information based on falsified intelligence in the Third War of Armageddon, where the entire Celestial Lions Chapter was all but wiped out in a small series of successive battles with Orks, simply because they had pissed off the Inquisition earlier and were later ordered to deploy in a disadvantageous position with distorted information.

The main TT game does a comparatively poor job of representing the Space Marines' tactics, but I'm told it worked much better in the Epic 40k game where deployment played a larger role.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:This is an entire faction that succeeds in universe solely on plot armor.

That, and/or the fact that they also have jump-troops specialised on tank-hunting with meltabombs and inferno guns. Or that in situations where the enemy has lots of tanks and walking tanks, they would usually deploy together with the Imperial Guard like they did on Armageddon. Much like the Space Marines, Sisters are special forces, and thus work best as a multiplier rather than an independent army - although depending on the specific mission, they occasionally still deploy as one, just like the Astartes. It's not their job to fight in tank battles, though, just like it's not something the Marines are supposed to do.

Also, depending on where you look, the Sisters also have their own space fleets (rapid response fleets from Codex fluff), aircraft (Lightning fighters and Valkyries from DoW) and artillery (Exorcist missile tank from Codex fluff and rules) as well.

They are too stubborn to die. And it's not like they face apocalyptic battles everyday.

Space Marines on their own could not survive. But they have an entire Imperium to support them. SM are usually deployed as special forces to accomplish some special objective. If marines are deployed in a large scale war, they will have IG regiments to support them.

Also, the Iron Warriors make perfect sense. A marines' skill and toughness are great assets in a siege. And with IG support they also have the neccesary bodies to throw against the enemy's walls.
Of course they should not be deployed alone, but only a fool would lay siege without support.
The only way the Iron Warriors could win a siege by themselves is if they had some übercool special unexpected blitzkrieg tactic. Or something like the Trojan Horse.

Also, making fun of the Alpha Legion is not fun.
You are just an undercover Alpha Legion operative that ridicules his own legion in order to make it seem less of a threat and hide the fact that all the High Lords of Terra have been replaced with
Alpha Legion operatives and that Roboute Guilliman is in fact Alpharius. It all fits into their grand scheme...