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How many terminators are there active in the Deathwing, and how many are Knights? I'm trying to build a Deathwing Company with Belial and Asmodai and I want it to match the fluff as much as possible.

Depends on timing.

From reading The Unforgiven, the DW Knights seem to be Belial's personal retinue. There may be more, but I honestly can't remember reading about any other than the 5 who hang around with him:
Barzareon- mace
Decimus- replaced Deralus- mace
Cragarion-
Zandorael- Unit leader, flail
Galbarad-
Land Raider Crusader Lions Fury- managed to fit 11 terminators at one point.


For Deathwing in general, There are at least 40 at a minimum. At one point Belial leads 30 (including his 5 knights) on a boarding action taking 3 casualties, while later there are 3 squads of 5 with a dreadnought holding one point, 3 squads of 5 supporting armor, and 2 squads of 5 supporting Belial.

Land Raider (unknown type) Determinatus
Land Raider (unknown type) Bringer of Honor

Squad Caulderain
Squad Ardeon

Sounds almost like DWKs are intended to be the Dark Angels honor guard then. as such I'd guess the number ranges from 5-15 or so,

Deathwing knights, possibly a hundred or so across all of the unforgiven, possibly about 500 deathwing equivs across all of the unforgiven, maybe more, likely less.

You're in luck my friend.

The new codex has a page that actually details the composition of the Deathwing.

I'm not sure I understand it, but it's a lot better than the old codex, which just said "nobody knows."

Note that the old codex fluff made reference to a hundred terminators being deployed at once, and two chapters combined deployed "nigh on two hundred terminators." Based on this, I believe we're talking roughly 20 5 man squads per chapter per first company.

And, lo.

Page 17 of the new codex has a flow chart composition structure of the 1st Chapter, Deathwing.

At the top is the Grand Master of the Deathwing

Below, it branches into Librarians and Interrogator-Chaplains.

This branches into three parts stating "Deathwing Knights." Three individual Deathwing Knights parts with three unique kneepad heraldry. It doesn't go into detail on the numerical composition of these Knight units.

Beneath this, it splits into 20 individual Deathwing Terminator Squads. These Deathwing Terminator squads are not numbered, but obviously it's either 5 Termies or 10 Termies, and my guess is 5 Termies per squad, by 20, for a total of 100 Deathwing Terminators, three units of Deathwing Knights, Librarians, Interrogator Chaplains, and Belial himself.

Furthermore there is listed "Deathwing Support Assets: Deployed as required. As with Deathwing Squads, actual numbers are obfuscated to outsiders. Venerable Dreadnoughts, Land Raiders, Land Raider Crusaders, Land Raider Redeemers."

sounds like my upper limit guess was right on the money. it's... kinda nice to be right

3 sqauds, 10 man, that's 30, across the known unforgiven, that's over a hundred dw knights, looks like I was right too

 Formosa wrote:
3 sqauds, 10 man, that's 30, across the known unforgiven, that's over a hundred dw knights, looks like I was right too

sure except given we dunno how many dark angels sucessors there are it's easy to throw out large numbers. which is why I tend to think focusing on a per chapter basis is proably easier

KNOWN successors, this is what I said

I built my deathwing many moons ago. Back then it was 100 terminators. So right now I have

Belial
100 terminators
1 librarian
1 chaplain
10 deathwing knights
5 dreads
4 land raiders.

The Knights being the newest of course.

Be aware that even the codex states that the Unforgiven are notorious for obfuscating the true numbers of their second company, and that they are suspected to be overstrength. This may apply to the first one as well, and the flowchart might be deliberately wrong, or the terminator squads may have 10 members each. Older fluff seems to state that this is the case and nothing in the new codex seems to condradict this.

It may also be worth noting that company veterans are in addition to the 100 marines a standard company consists of, so a single battle company could probably have between 105 and 120 marines.