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 Wyzilla wrote:

 Icculus wrote:
Well the author is given some artistic freedom to enhance the mood of the grim darkness. Even the Black Templar, traditionally one of the largest, is down to a skeleton crew. And as far as having 1000 marines, it was probably something he heard and then didnt know the BT usually have more.

Also, i read the synopsis, and this book is about the 2nd war of Armageddon. Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't this actually be a flashback in terms of where the current dates of the fluff end? So perhaps by now the BT are back up to over full strength.

In either case, this is just an authors take on it. Oh and this is all make believe and pretend, so you can pretend your soldiers are different than my soldiers and we can have a happy game of moving toys around and making sound effects as we roll dice.

No, this isn't a recent change like the BT's took horrendous casualties. GW wants to permanently drop there numbers (and has) in a retcon. So it sounds like they "never were" significantly above Codex Strength.

The question is as to why? Why make this change? Other than to piss off fans? Do they really think that is a better change or are they just treading down the spiritual liege thing.

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Icculus wrote:
Well the author is given some artistic freedom to enhance the mood of the grim darkness. Even the Black Templar, traditionally one of the largest, is down to a skeleton crew. And as far as having 1000 marines, it was probably something he heard and then didnt know the BT usually have more.

Also, i read the synopsis, and this book is about the 2nd war of Armageddon. Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't this actually be a flashback in terms of where the current dates of the fluff end? So perhaps by now the BT are back up to over full strength.

In either case, this is just an authors take on it. Oh and this is all make believe and pretend, so you can pretend your soldiers are different than my soldiers and we can have a happy game of moving toys around and making sound effects as we roll dice.

No, this isn't a recent change like the BT's took horrendous casualties. GW wants to permanently drop there numbers (and has) in a retcon. So it sounds like they "never were" significantly above Codex Strength.

The question is as to why? Why make this change? Other than to piss off fans? Do they really think that is a better change or are they just treading down the spiritual liege thing.

Because with lesser numbers, it makes their accomplishments more impressive. I think GW didn't like the Dorito Marine concept.

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Icculus wrote:
Well the author is given some artistic freedom to enhance the mood of the grim darkness. Even the Black Templar, traditionally one of the largest, is down to a skeleton crew. And as far as having 1000 marines, it was probably something he heard and then didnt know the BT usually have more.

Also, i read the synopsis, and this book is about the 2nd war of Armageddon. Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't this actually be a flashback in terms of where the current dates of the fluff end? So perhaps by now the BT are back up to over full strength.

In either case, this is just an authors take on it. Oh and this is all make believe and pretend, so you can pretend your soldiers are different than my soldiers and we can have a happy game of moving toys around and making sound effects as we roll dice.

No, this isn't a recent change like the BT's took horrendous casualties. GW wants to permanently drop there numbers (and has) in a retcon. So it sounds like they "never were" significantly above Codex Strength.

The question is as to why? Why make this change? Other than to piss off fans? Do they really think that is a better change or are they just treading down the spiritual liege thing.

Because with lesser numbers, it makes their accomplishments more impressive. I think GW didn't like the Dorito Marine concept.

Eh... I don't think so. I think having more astartes is more impressive, it just shows the power of the Black Templars. Plus it shows how terrifying they are. Kill one of them another one.

I thought the thing with Black Templars was that they weren't so much an Marine chapter of 3000 or so that would just throw buckets of Marines at the enemy to grind them down but rather a chapter that is on tons of different campaigns that requires lots of marines to be everywhere. The whole "Dorito Marine" concept is really more of the Minotaur's schtick anyway.

Yeah the Black Templar are an organization of individual crusades. Each crusade recruits on their own from their battle barges and continues on indefinitely until all heresy and chaos from the galaxy is eradicated. Which means they will all die trying, as the Emperor intended.

So maybe the author is saying that this individual crusade is down to only a few hundred, and each crusade is normally at 1000.

 Icculus wrote:
Yeah the Black Templar are an organization of individual crusades. Each crusade recruits on their own from their battle barges and continues on indefinitely until all heresy and chaos from the galaxy is eradicated. Which means they will all die trying, as the Emperor intended.

So maybe the author is saying that this individual crusade is down to only a few hundred, and each crusade is normally at 1000.

No, he specifically says that 200 marines is one fifth of all the Black Templars, not to mention in his blog post Haley describes how GW cut down the numbers of the BT's for good.

still think it is funny as the Ultramarines chapter have 1750 marines in their chapter, and no one bats an on eye on them. AS they had the honor company and then the tyranic war veterans that were drawn from the chapter and made a codex deviation. Yep totally that means that the Black templars are more codex compliant than the Ultramarines the freaking poster boys....

No they're not more codex compoliant with the Ultramarines and you'd only think that if you apparently had no clue what codex compliancy was.

When it comes to codex compliancy, size is just one of several factors.

What makes a chapter codex compliant? it's not just the size. it's orginization training etc.

a chapter is codex compliant when it follows the codex orginizational pattern (10 companies, veterns in the 1st, scouts in the 10th etc) the training paths et down in the codex (start in scouts, go to devestators then assault, then tatical) etc. none of this applies to the Black templars who even if they had the exact same numbers as the Ultramarines, would be orginized on a VERY VERY differnt LEVEL from a codex chapter. that's the thing, the space wolves? the black templars? they're not non codex compliant because they thumb their nose as the required size. they're non codex compliant because they orginize VERY VERY differntly. Size is not what makes the black templars (and the space wolves for that matter) distinct. I'd argue thats the least important part of em

Random side thought ... BT are known to have alot of numbers, could it be referring to just the actual marines and not be counting the neophytes / marines in training (which dont they have an unusual high number of neophytes) in the passage?

 Whereswaldo wrote:
Random side thought ... BT are known to have alot of numbers, could it be referring to just the actual marines and not be counting the neophytes / marines in training (which dont they have an unusual high number of neophytes) in the passage?

very possiable.

BrianDavion wrote:

 Whereswaldo wrote:
Random side thought ... BT are known to have alot of numbers, could it be referring to just the actual marines and not be counting the neophytes / marines in training (which dont they have an unusual high number of neophytes) in the passage?

very possiable.

Some people consider scouts full marines...

(Yeah i don't either)

 Wyzilla wrote:

 j31c3n wrote:
Why would the Black Templars reveal their true size? Clearly, that novel is just clever propaganda to get the Inquisition's attention focused elsewhere.

It wasn't the author. He was told straight from GW itself that the numbers were being changed.

Source?

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 j31c3n wrote:
Why would the Black Templars reveal their true size? Clearly, that novel is just clever propaganda to get the Inquisition's attention focused elsewhere.

It wasn't the author. He was told straight from GW itself that the numbers were being changed.

Source?

Guy Haley's blog post on the book.

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 j31c3n wrote:
Why would the Black Templars reveal their true size? Clearly, that novel is just clever propaganda to get the Inquisition's attention focused elsewhere.

It wasn't the author. He was told straight from GW itself that the numbers were being changed.

Source?

https://guyhaley.wordpress.com/2014/07/11/im-baaaacccckkk/#comment-5782

So that is the source.

Now, that source is probably wrong that they were ever 6000 marines. It was an estimate that they might be as large as 6000, and it is possible that the person making the estimate was wrong, due to the impossibility of collecting information over huge parts of the Imperium. Maybe every time they saw a fighting company, they assumed it was a full 130-200 marine augmented battle company. Maybe they reported the same marines two or four times.

They could just about manage that number of crusades, as some of them are very small, a squad or two.

Black Templars used to be codex compliant and had access to librarians, so really it is a retcon of a retcon.

None of this is particularly new? It went down to 1000 Marines spread across the western half of the galaxy with no love of (Non-Sanctioned) Psykers like 2 years ago. This is just basically a reprint of the stuff we got the last time.

Honestly this kinda sucks to me, I really liked their excessive number of dudes. :(

Maybe they're moving them back more towards their pre-late-3E status, viewing that as a distracting failure. Maybe it's another exampled of the writers simply not knowing what they're talking about. Who knows with GW anymore