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I guess if space marines were just being deployed as special forces, there would be less "grind". Since 6th Edition that's actually exactly how I use them. I use my IG to form a firing line and then use my SM to drop in directly behind the enemy line and disrupt. Opponents tend to become utterly distracted by the marines. But even with a spec ops role, there are still some obvious holes. I hadn't even thought about the progenoids when I originally thought about the question. Against an enemy like orks, tau, or eldar, the idea of being able to recover the progenoid seems plausible, but what about necrons? Their flayers apparently tear you apart on a molecular level, and as someone else pointed out, tyranids with their bio-plasma and the fact that they eat everything, I feel like certain campaigns would utterly wreck a company.

That's a clever way to use the Allies rules to bring the game closer to the fluff. Well done!

As for Necrons, perhaps that's what makes them scary. They are a comparatively new enemy for the Space Marines to fight, so perhaps they are indeed fighting a losing battle in that regard - or you'd simply end up with Chapters that have to go into self-imposed isolation for a decade or two.

And ultimately, the High Lords of Terra (or the Inquisition, heh) can always decree new Chapters being made from the geneseed banks of the AdMech's Divisio Biologis. The only weird thing is how little the "posterboy" Chapters are affected by casualties, or rather how often they can seemingly deploy without consequences on their fighting ability ... but Space Marines as a whole? Nah, that works out nicely, I think.

~1,000 battle brothers simply isn't enough, not against the kinds of foes space marines are called to fight against and the scale at which wars are fought in 40k. While they might act as an elite surgical strike force, they would still need the math on their side to make a noticeable change in tide as they generally seem to do.

My personal theory is that 'a thousand' was chosen because it sounds just a little bit cool, so we're left with a nonsensical element in the narrative that has to have a number of explanations shoe-horned in to have it begin to make sense.

 sing your life wrote:
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.

I like this explanation! Likewise with the traitors, or at least the VOTLW. In one of the SW books a bunch of heretics get possessed by CSMs from the warp and when they are slain they just go back into it. I imagine that this is what happens when my CSM army gets tabled.

They're all just back in the warp...

Back on topic. There are plenty of fleet based chapters, it must be much harder for them to maintain, so how do they do it? And what about crazy SM like the Cacharodons? I'll bet those guys just take slaves.

 Vaerros wrote:
~1,000 battle brothers simply isn't enough, not against the kinds of foes space marines are called to fight against and the scale at which wars are fought in 40k. While they might act as an elite surgical strike force, they would still need the math on their side to make a noticeable change in tide as they generally seem to do.

My personal theory is that 'a thousand' was chosen because it sounds just a little bit cool, so we're left with a nonsensical element in the narrative that has to have a number of explanations shoe-horned in to have it begin to make sense.

Well, it's a thousand Astartes or so as the number fluctates, with a custom number of scouts. Sensibly, your average chapter should have two scout companies, rather than the traditional one.

You'd also think Scouts would be mass produced more considering that they are of high quality and certainly better than gaurdsmen or stormtroopers.

darkcloak wrote:

 sing your life wrote:
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.

I like this explanation! Likewise with the traitors, or at least the VOTLW. In one of the SW books a bunch of heretics get possessed by CSMs from the warp and when they are slain they just go back into it. I imagine that this is what happens when my CSM army gets tabled.

They're all just back in the warp...

Back on topic. There are plenty of fleet based chapters, it must be much harder for them to maintain, so how do they do it? And what about crazy SM like the Cacharodons? I'll bet those guys just take slaves.

Fleet Based chapters simply pull recruits directly from the worlds that they're passing by I guess. From what I've read, SM chapters even go so far as to pull strings on different worlds, creating conflicts, just so that they can weed out potential recruits in the future. I do find the whole fleet-based Fortress Monastery thing weird though. It seems like you'd be awfully vulnerable. I know they have incredibly powerful fleets to guard but still......not to mention the never ending threat that come with traveling through the warp. If I'm not mistaken the reason the Legion of the Damned exists at all is because of a warp incident in which their gellar field malfunctioned and the entire crew was exposed to all the perils of the warp, transforming them into supernatural astartes that are slowly dying.

A campaign might go on much longer than the major astartes involvement as well. Consider the Taros campaign-- after the initial fight (where many astartes died) the red scorpions came and secured a LZ which the guard later exploited to land troops. Although the scorpions hung out and later bagged a few ethereals, I imagine in 90% of campaigns the SM are only around for the few days/weeks of operations when they are needed. In modern parlance they are 'first day' weapons/operators. So a campaign might drag on for decades and kill tens of millions of guardsmen but only result in 3-4 injured space marines because they were withdrawn to the next theater years before, after only fighting for an hour or two.

I think the Imperium uses them primarily in jobs where ONLY they can succeed, like clearing space hulks or SEAD/DEAD before a planetary invasion. Then they just drown people in guardsmen, since they are essentially an unlimited resource.

Ah hell, don't slander the DKoK by saying they're beneath marines.

In the Siege of Vraks, the only reason why the Steel Brethren, who are Iron Warriors in all but name, have some measure of success, its because they already got a fully crewed fortress with plenty of labor.

Without the traitor guardsmen, the Brethren would've been removed from existence pretty quickly.

Theres always the possibility that after a trip through the warp, their replacement might already be ready

Maybe they aren't surviving. It's the general theme of the IoM that they are slowly losing everything. I don't see why this can't also carry over into the SM slowly dwindling in numbers as more and more chapters collapse under the strain of endless war.