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tgjensen wrote:
The Imperium consists of roughly one million worlds. The Imperium was forged during the Great Crusade, which lasted 200 years. It was primarily conducted by 18 Primarchs. That is, on average, 55,555.56 worlds per Primarch. If we assume that they all were active for all 200 years - which they certainly weren't - then they each conquered, on average, 277.78 worlds per year, or almost 2000 worlds in a seven year span. Horus and the Luna Wolves conquered more worlds than anyone save perhaps the Ultramarines, so he was certainly above this average.

Macharius managed nearly one thousand worlds in seven years. Macharius also was Lord Commander Solar, which means - if I understand my fictitious military ranks correctly - that he commanded the full forces of the Imperial Guard stationed in the entire Segmentum Solar. That is military power that seems to me to be at least on par with what any of the Primarchs ever commanded, save Horus as Warmaster.

In short: No, he was not as good as Horus.

Horus was a superhuman, so I don't see how Macharius ever could hope to be as good as him. That said, there's probably a point where you are good enough to overwhelm all resistance - especially when you command probably the greatest unified fighting force in the galaxy at the time - and any "additional" strategic genius gives rapidly diminishing returns.

The problem with your math is that:

A) We know that the Emperor started the crusade before any of the Primarchs were found- it was in fact him doing the Crusade, and conquering planets, that allowed him to discover the scattered Primarchs in the first place. So, who knows how many Worlds were captured before Horus and the gang jumped in.

B) We know that the Space Marines numerically were not the bulk of the Crusade force. Each Primarch directly commanded an expeditionary fleet or two in addition to their own legion forces, yet there were over four thousand Expeditionary Fleets that were out conquering planets for the Imperium at the time of the Crusade's end. With the Space Marines working alongside only a small minority of those fleets, what that means is that the super-majority of Crusade action was performed without Astartes assistance. This further dilutes the number of worlds that would have personally been conquered by the Legions, especially only a single legion such as the Luna Wolves.

C) The unreliability of warp travel makes your time-table functionally impossible. It takes weeks to even years to travel even relatively small distances via warp travel. For reference, it took the Grey Knights something like six months to travel from Titan to Armageddon during the 1st War, and that's despite Armageddon being within the same Segmentum as Terra and the Grey Knight ships, by word of God, having the fastest warp-travel technology in all of the Imperium. It took months to a year (can't recall which) for Eisenhorn to travel from Thracian Primaris to some other planet, and both planets were in the same sector. Warp travel is ass, dude. So with that being the case, the idea that any legion would be conquering "a planet per day", even a planet per week, or month, is unrealistic. Especially when you consider that most of the Primarchs very rarely ever fought ceaselessly, oftentimes returning to their home worlds for years at a time to work on their own personal projects (Magnus' sorcery research, Guilliman's empire-building, Lorgar's religious nonsense, etc) or to get a little RnR.

All these factors combined pretty much makes the "millions of worlds" figure completely useless in regards to calculating how many planets any singular Primarch might have conquered during the Crusade.

Horus had 10 legions to 7 for the loyalists didn't he?

They were technically 9v9.

However, it gets a bit more complicated than that because the RG, Sally's, and Iron Hands were all but obliterated at Istvaan, while the Dark Angels spent the entire Heresy playing grab-ass with the Night Lords- so that's four loyalists not really in the fight. On the other hand, the Emperor's Children and Thousand Sons were also all but obliterated, the former on Istvaan and the latter at Prospero, which knocks the traitors down to six mostly functioning legions.

So overall, you could say that the Heresy was more or less 6v5, advantage going to Horus.

The actual battle for Terra is a different story,with the Fists, Blood Angels and White Scars pretty much single-handily holding the line against the Death Guard, World Eaters, Iron Warriors and Luna Wolves.

Not counting the Human participants as there's no telling who had more of those guys, and the listed number of Army defenders is idiotically small (1.5 million. fething really Games Workshop?)

 BlaxicanX wrote:


The problem with your math is that:

A) We know that the Emperor started the crusade before any of the Primarchs were found- it was in fact him doing the Crusade, and conquering planets, that allowed him to discover the scattered Primarchs in the first place. So, who knows how many Worlds were captured before Horus and the gang jumped in.

Yes, but we are specifically talking about Horus here, who was discovered earliest, as a child, and raised by the Emperor. Which means he was around and in charge for the majority of the Crusade. And since many of his brothers were discovered late, Horus must have conquered proportionally more worlds. My number is an average. Horus must necessarily lie well above that.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
B) We know that the Space Marines numerically were not the bulk of the Crusade force. Each Primarch directly commanded an expeditionary fleet or two in addition to their own legion forces, yet there were over four thousand Expeditionary Fleets that were out conquering planets for the Imperium at the time of the Crusade's end. With the Space Marines working alongside only a small minority of those fleets, what that means is that the super-majority of Crusade action was performed without Astartes assistance. This further dilutes the number of worlds that would have personally been conquered by the Legions, especially only a single legion such as the Luna Wolves.

I am basically - but perhaps not rightfully - assigning responsibility to the Primarchs of all the fleets in the Crusade, in the same way that Macharius gets to claim responsibility of all the fleets carrying out his conquests. The fact that the Legions were so outnumbered just lends credibility to my argument, since one of the strongest counter-arguments is that the Primarchs' forces were qulitatively so much superior. They were not; they might have had more Space Marines, but the bulk of the fighting was done with regular Imperial Army.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
C) The unreliability of warp travel makes your time-table functionally impossible. It takes weeks to even years to travel even relatively small distances via warp travel. For reference, it took the Grey Knights something like six months to travel from Titan to Armageddon during the 1st War, and that's despite Armageddon being within the same Segmentum as Terra and the Grey Knight ships, by word of God, having the fastest warp-travel technology in all of the Imperium. It took months to a year (can't recall which) for Eisenhorn to travel from Thracian Primaris to some other planet, and both planets were in the same sector. Warp travel is ass, dude. So with that being the case, the idea that any legion would be conquering "a planet per day", even a planet per week, or month, is unrealistic. Especially when you consider that most of the Primarchs very rarely ever fought ceaselessly, oftentimes returning to their home worlds for years at a time to work on their own personal projects (Magnus' sorcery research, Guilliman's empire-building, Lorgar's religious nonsense, etc) or to get a little RnR.

One million worlds in 200 years divided by 18 Primarchs gives the exact same average no matter how you slice it. I agree completely that their forces must necessarily have been split into many fleets in order to accomplish it. The same goes for Macharius, who on average conquered a new world every 2½ days. It's ridiculous to think that Macharius actually set foot on each of those worlds, of course, or that he even were in-system for them all. Clearly he was simply in overall charge of multiple fleets carrying out his crusade - but he still gets the credit for everything that his generals did. In the same way, the Primarchs clearly were in charge not only of their own Legions, but also heaps and heaps of Imperial armies, carrying out the Great Crusade under their overall command. They still get the credit.
And again I will point out that Macharius could draw upon the resources of a full segmentum in an established Imperium at it's largest, while the Primarchs divided into 18 the resources of a still-growing Imperium. Logically Macharius must have had far more troops under his command than any single Primarch.

If you want to compare the results of the single fleets directly under the command of Macharius and Horus, you'd have to first find those numbers. Until then we have to compare the known numbers of their overall command.

tgjensen wrote:
Yes, but we are specifically talking about Horus here, who was discovered earliest, as a child, and raised by the Emperor. Which means he was around and in charge for the majority of the Crusade. And since many of his brothers were discovered late, Horus must have conquered proportionally more worlds. My number is an average. Horus must necessarily lie well above that.

How does "discovered earlier" equate to "around from the earliest times of the Crusade and leading legions in conquering"? You're making a logic-jump with little substantiation to support it. It could have been 50 years before the Emperor trusted Horus enough to put him in command of the Luna Wolves, for all we know. And, again:

I am basically - but perhaps not rightfully - assigning responsibility to the Primarchs of all the fleets in the Crusade, in the same way that Macharius gets to claim responsibility of all the fleets carrying out his conquests.

You shouldn't, as only the Warmaster was head of the entire Imperial fleet- the rest of the Primarchs and legionarries were more or less first among equals when compared to the Imperial Army. There's nothing in the fluff to support the idea that 18 Primarchs were micro-managing 4,000 fleets scattered across the Galaxy while performing their own crusades. The Horus Heresy book series portrays the the Expeditionary Fleets as being largely autonomous and under the individual control of Lord Generals, only interacting with Astartes when a Lord General petitioned for Astartes assistance or a Primarch requisitioned control of one.

One million worlds in 200 years divided by 18 Primarchs gives the exact same average no matter how you slice it. I agree completely that their forces must necessarily have been split into many fleets in order to accomplish it. The same goes for Macharius, who on average conquered a new world every 2½ days. It's ridiculous to think that Macharius actually set foot on each of those worlds, of course, or that he even were in-system for them all. Clearly he was simply in overall charge of multiple fleets carrying out his crusade - but he still gets the credit for everything that his generals did.

Macharius gets more credit because he was actually in direct charge of every army under his command, by virtue of being Warmaster, whereas the Primarchs during the Crusade were nominally only concerned with their own legion and whatever small handful of expeditionary fleets were traveling with them.

But that's neither here nor there. I'm not comparing Horus to Macharius. I'm just pointing out that the reasoning you're using to form your arguments doesn't really add up. Numerically, very few of the "millions" of worlds conquered during the Crusade can be attributed to the Primarchs or any one Lord General.

I don't think so. In the Macharius novels it's revealed he doesn't like working to closely with Space Marines because when they show up they steal his thunder.

LightKing wrote:
Would you guys say in terms of military intellect, strategic intellect and being a commander Macharius is as good if not a better leader then Horus and the other Primarchs

Macharius did more with less. Plus he didn't get his panties in a bind and go full blown Traitor.

 Wyzilla wrote:

 PhillyT wrote:
Macharius never lost. If Wyz is using the fact that after Macharius was finished his generals broke out in rebellion as a reason he wasn't as good as Horus, the fact that Horus couldn't defeat an inferior force in a pitched battle and was annihilated in single combat is a perfectly reasonable point to bring up.

Terra was not an inferior force. Sanguinius and the Emperor were his betters, not to mention at the time the Imperial Fists, White Scars, and Blood Angels were probably much more numerous than the force Horus Had assembled due to the traitor legions purging their loyalists. The only one still at full strength were the Night Lords.

Horus's forces were between 30-40% of the imperium. The forces that defended terra were more numerous than his. The fact that with a smaller, more poorly equiped force he was ALMOST able to complete the conquest and kill the emperor points to his skill.

Also, you can't use the current size of the Imperium to determine how many worlds were conquered in the Great Crusade. The Imperium is constantly losing and gaining worlds.

Hell, it's entirely possible that the Imperium loses a world (but doesn't know it lost it), then finds the same world again, names it again, and voila, two worlds on the roster (which are the same planet).

The Imperium is also constantly colonizing (or recolonizing) worlds, as well as constantly losing them to enemy action or simple bureaucratic bungling.

The number of worlds in the Imperium of Man probably fluctuates daily, not to mention on the scale of 10,000 years.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Also, you can't use the current size of the Imperium to determine how many worlds were conquered in the Great Crusade. The Imperium is constantly losing and gaining worlds.

Hell, it's entirely possible that the Imperium loses a world (but doesn't know it lost it), then finds the same world again, names it again, and voila, two worlds on the roster (which are the same planet).

The Imperium is also constantly colonizing (or recolonizing) worlds, as well as constantly losing them to enemy action or simple bureaucratic bungling.

The number of worlds in the Imperium of Man probably fluctuates daily, not to mention on the scale of 10,000 years.

It is likely though that there were more human worlds before the HH than after. The massive war and scouring probably ended(made unfit for human life) more worlds than have been recolonized in the 10,000 years since.

 Exergy wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Also, you can't use the current size of the Imperium to determine how many worlds were conquered in the Great Crusade. The Imperium is constantly losing and gaining worlds.

Hell, it's entirely possible that the Imperium loses a world (but doesn't know it lost it), then finds the same world again, names it again, and voila, two worlds on the roster (which are the same planet).

The Imperium is also constantly colonizing (or recolonizing) worlds, as well as constantly losing them to enemy action or simple bureaucratic bungling.

The number of worlds in the Imperium of Man probably fluctuates daily, not to mention on the scale of 10,000 years.

It is likely though that there were more human worlds before the HH than after. The massive war and scouring probably ended(made unfit for human life) more worlds than have been recolonized in the 10,000 years since.

I'm not 100% on that. The Imperium actually does a whole fuckton of colonizing. I know it's one of the most glossed-over part of the fluff, but in the places where it is mentioned, it's always assumed to be an incredibly common thing.

Which means it's incredibly common on the scale of an empire the size of the Imperium. That's like, a lot, and stuff.

LightKing wrote:
Would you guys say in terms of military intellect, strategic intellect and being a commander Macharius is as good if not a better leader then Horus and the other Primarchs

That's cos Macharius is actually one of the lost Primarchs, having his immortality and god status stripped by the Emperor as a punishment. Nah just kidding.

it's worth noting after Horus died the traitor legions basicly fell into a prolonged period of inter legion war before Abbaddon smacked them around,

and indeed Talon of Horus basicly suggests Horus had basicly mostly lost control at the battle of terra. he certinly had lost the third legion. who abandoned units they where supposed to support to go do whatever they wanted.