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 EmpNortonII wrote:
Do the Word Bearers have those three Abyss-class battleships? If so, couldn't they simply withdraw from any ground battle, keep it in space, and steamroll the competition? All three ships supporting each other at Lorgar's word seems pretty unstoppable.

As specified by the assumed time period, being before Nikea or Monarchia or any of that fun stuff, no, the WB wouldn't have made the Abyss-class vessels.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
With 30k currently on the brain, I started wondering about which Legions were "strongest", and realised that I really don't think I can answer that.

So, these are my criteria for "Which Space Marine Legion was the strongest?":

1: This is assumed to be pre-Nikea, and pre-Argel Tal's Pilgrimage. Therefore, there will no Possessed, no Kakophoni, no Gal Vorbak, no Daemons, etc etc.

2: Primarchs will not be included on a personal combat level, but any strategic or tactical input they may have is included. Think of it as the Primarch leading their army, but having no physical effect.

3. We are not counting allies of the Legion (Titan Legions, Knight Houses, fleets not directly commanded by the Legion, Solar Auxila etc etc). However, assets that the Legion directly control will be counted (so the Spireguard, Armaturan Academy Guard, Kaerls, or Battle Automata), as will fleets directly controlled by the Astartes - so the Imperial Fists would not include the Solar System's defences, but would include the Phalanx and their own fleet, whereas the Ultramarines would have access to Armatura, but not the Segmentum Fleet.

4: There could be many different ways of fighting - I ask to look at a holistic approach, across the widest variety of possible engagements. So while the Alpha Legion would be the strongest Legion in sabotage, that's only one type of battle.

5: The size difference between Legions is a factor. The Thousand Sons and Emperors Children, for example, will be very small Legions, whereas the Death Guard and Ultramarines will be larger.

With all this in mind, what do you think?
Spoilered are my insights:

Spoiler:

I don't think I could rate the Night Lords or Alpha Legion that high. Night Lords are great terror troops, but Space Marines are resistant to fear. Not only that, but the Night Lords lack courage themselves in a pitched battle.
Alpha Legion also flounder in pitched battle. They simply don't seem to have the doctrine to allow them to fight well in massed warfare.

My top picks, as Legions, would be Dark Angels (good technology, lots of veteran legionnaires, Lion's tactical insight), Imperial Fists (the Phalanx, good defensive and aggressive tactics), Sons of Horus (Horus' good tactics, general skill of the Legion), and Ultramarines (sheer weight of numbers, Guilliman's tactical/logistic support, a large support network).

Not sure how I feel about the Thousand Sons - either great, or low. Being all psykers is good, but flesh change is a factor. They're also one of the smallest of Legions, but can their psychic powers make the difference?

No legion was the strongest, they all had their own specialities and strengths, otherwise why would the Emperor create 20 of them. There is literally no strongest. Take the Luna Wolves, they were up there, but imagine them fighting in a fortress, the Iron Warriors would decimate them.

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:
No legion was the strongest, they all had their own specialities and strengths, otherwise why would the Emperor create 20 of them. There is literally no strongest. Take the Luna Wolves, they were up there, but imagine them fighting in a fortress, the Iron Warriors would decimate them.

While I agree they each had strengths and were the best at *something*, this is why I'm proposing multiple different theoretical fights between each combination of Legion. And while every Legion had a strength, some Legions simply were just excellent at most things. So while the Iron Warriors might be excellent at siege warfare, the simple generic skills of the Luna Wolves would press the Iron Warriors harder than the Iron Warriors attempting to match the Luna Wolves in open battle. Some Legions were just simply very good in general, while others went all out on single aspects of warfare, which massively hinder their potential in other engagements.
So, yes, there's no single strongest Legion that beats all other Legions in all ways, but there are Legions that are a cut above the others.

The highest ranking Legion would be the Legion with the greatest success in the widest variety of possible engagements, against the most other Legions. I'm trying to get an insight into which one, and why. So far, Sons of Horus seem highest (very good generalist fighters, pragmatic, good numbers, effective and widely applicable tactical preferences), with Dark Angels and Ultramarines in tow (presumably both for excellent tactics/strategy/logistics, good resources, and large numbers).

"No legion was the strongest, they all had their own specialities and strengths"
That's why I say UltraMarines. Their Strength is not having a real Weakness.

That isn't to say they're better than everyone.
They're not as crazed as World Eaters. Or as drunken viking werewolf crazy as Space Wolves.
Or as magical as Thousand Sons.
Or as tactically perfect as Dark Angels/Luna Wolves.
Or as sneaky as RavenGuard/Night Raptors/AlphaLegion.
Or as skilled at siegecraft as Imperial Fists/Iron Warriors

Or soforth.

But they'll beat World Eaters / Space Wolves by tactics and restraint.
They'll beat Thousand Sons by traditional warfare.
They'll beat Dark Angels / Luna Wolves on logistics, charisma, and grit.
They'll beat Raven Guard / Night Raptors / Alpha Legion on the field and in logistics.
They'll beat Imperial Fists / Iron Warriors with flexibility/maneuverability.

Every other legion is weak to something. Marines are best at adapting. Punch the gunner in the face. Shoot the Ork before he's close enough to punch you. UltraMarines are the most flexible, the most capable of adapting. Where each other Legion falls down somewhere, UltraMarines stand strong in every category. Not as strong as the legion that excels at that aspect, but stronger than the legions that don't.

And, in war, your strengths don't win you the war - your weaknesses lose it.

One of the primary weaknesses of the Ultramarines being that they have one of the squishier Primarchs. He was damned near killed by a dozen Alpha legionnaires- nervermind that even with the Lion at his back, Curze fought to a standstill long enough to spring a trap that would have killed both without a metric ton of plot armor.

Seems unfair to make the Ultramarines big weakness off limits for the comparison.

This thread has been skewed enough by the OP's response to be who's the coolest legion in your opinion, not by the OP's original restriction of just no primarchs(only as HC on the sidelines of a football field) on the battle field.

Capable fighter captains(duo threat QB's on the football field)=skewed; only fighting in a single pitch battle(restricting Patrick Peterson(one of the best CB) to play zone D on the horrible Card's team)=skewed; overlooking potential game breakers like magic/precog(telegraph your play calling)=skewed; underestimating legionaries because they aren't your typical soldiers(underestimating an NFL team on any giving sunday)=skewed; enough said.

EmpNortonII wrote:One of the primary weaknesses of the Ultramarines being that they have one of the squishier Primarchs. He was damned near killed by a dozen Alpha legionnaires- nervermind that even with the Lion at his back, Curze fought to a standstill long enough to spring a trap that would have killed both without a metric ton of plot armor.

Seems unfair to make the Ultramarines big weakness off limits for the comparison.

But that's a Guiliman weakness, not an Ultramarine one. As said, I care about the Legions, not their Primarchs.

Big Mac wrote:This thread has been skewed enough by the OP's response to be who's the coolest legion in your opinion, not by the OP's original restriction of just no primarchs(only as HC on the sidelines of a football field) on the battle field.

I'm curious how you came to that conclusion. I've not once said that coolness is a determining factor, because of how inherently subjective it is.

I also think you seem to miss the intent of why I didn't include the Primarchs. It's not because I have something against the Primarchs specifically, or that I want to compare this to a sports game. It's because I don't believe that the strength of the Legion is really that affected by the individual heroics of 0.01% of the Legion's men, no matter how good they are. As I've already said, literally every Legions had their superb warriors of roughly comparable skill - with some being slightly better, don't get me wrong, but not better enough to justify their Legion being ranked as better overall.
Kharn and Abaddon are good fighters, but they're drops in the bucket of their Legions. If you wanted to talk about individual heroics, I'm sure that a thread on that would be great, but as it stands in this thread, I've been consistent about the general sentiment of "I don't care if *named character* was a great duellist, I care about their Legion as a whole, and they only make up a tiny portion of it".
The only reason I've specified that the Legion's Primarchs can still command is so that the Legion still fight in their standard fighting styles (ie, no White Scars suddenly losing all their hit-and-run prowess, no Luna Wolves losing their mastery of speartip strikes).

Capable fighter captains(duo threat QB's on the football field)=skewed;

Forgive my probable lack of knowledge of American "football", but you still only have one quarterback on the field? And you still only have 11 players on the field at any given time?

There's a big difference between ignoring nearly 10% of your team, and an integral part of how the game functions, versus 0.01% of the team, and the rather minor influence they have on the battlefield in general.

only fighting in a single pitch battle(restricting Patrick Peterson(one of the best CB) to play zone D on the horrible Card's team)=skewed;

I never said a single pitched battle. I said in a variety of battles, ranging from pitched battles, to sieges, to ambushes, and everything in between. The Legion with the most success over the widest range of potential encounters is the highest ranking. I never said that there'd be just one battle, but that a Legion with a tiny range of successful scenarios (Night Lords, for example) should quite rightly have a low score because of their inability to fight well in different encounters, and why Legions like the Dark Angels, Ultramarines, and Sons of Horus, who can fight well nearly anywhere, should rank highly.

To use your example of the NFL - would you call a team that, when they play on a snowing day, will always win, but are poor in any other weather condition, a good team?

overlooking potential game breakers like magic/precog(telegraph your play calling)=skewed;

Absolutely right: emphasis on "potential". The reason I've ignored precog is quite clear, I've stated that a lot: no-one who has precognitive powers has actually ever used them to command their army in some respect. I'd be happy to change that if you can show me a situation of a Primarch actually using their precognitive powers to change the battle's outcome on a macro level, not just "I can forsee attacks coming at me" or "I know how I die". I'm talking "I know their troop placements, act accordingly, and will be able to react to hidden changes throughout the battle". It's not a "potential game breaker" if no-one does it.

Now, actually, there IS a case of this happening in the HH series: but it's not a Primarch who does it. Hell, it's not even a Legionary. It's an Imperial Army officer attached to the Raven Guard, who forsees an Alpha Legion trap and redeploys based on the hunch of his precog. However, seeing as no Primarch or Legionary does this, or even shows an attempt at it, I can't include it.

underestimating legionaries because they aren't your typical soldiers(underestimating an NFL team on any giving sunday)=skewed; enough said.

But... this is a ranking of Legions, of soldiers, of military forces. That's not bias, that's the parameters of what I'm trying to discuss. I like Night Lords, but as a Legion, they're weak compared to their brethren.

It's not because they're savage or anything like that: the Luna Wolves were just as ferocious, just as gang-like in their fighting style. However, what sets them apart is that the Wolves use tactics, fight as a unit, fight like SOLDIERS. The Night Lords haven't seemed to move beyond terror warfare alone.

I absolutely AM being skewed, because that's how you establish criteria for discussing a certain topic. I want to judge the Legion based on certain criteria, and those criteria are their available resources (size, immediate auxiliary resources like dedicated human levies, Legion fleet, personal automata), their tactics, their general skill, and suchlike. Factors that I did not consider important were their stand-out combatants, because they make up a tiny portion of the Legion itself, because ever Legion seems to have someone roughly equivalent, and because their impact would be inconsequentially low, or abilities that are never actually demonstrated to be used by that Legion (such as precog).
Yeah, this is skewed, but I've been consistent with it with the OP. Funnily enough, most analyses are skewed like this, to set the parameters of what it even if I'm trying to determine.

Unfortunately, what you're trying to determine seems to be something different from mine: hence why I laid out parameters.

I don’t think that number of Crusade victories is a good metric to use, simply because Legions went about the crusade different ways and with different orders. For instance the Word Bearers were chastised for not conquering quickly enough because they were overstaying to create truely compliant worlds, Iron Warrior were specifically diverted to focus on worlds that were very hard, attritional, long term battles thereby reducing their overall victories. All I’m saying is that it’s not the be all and end all. Who knows how many times a legion passed over that alien death/fortress world to go after that non-compliant agri-world instead, if merely to reduce losses/chalk up another point in the race?

Originally it was the Dark Angels who were the most powerful, being the largest legion, the best space fleet with tricked out archeotech ships, and having the best assortment of relic gear. Post-Rangdang and the inability of the Dark Angels to fully recover from the crusade that title then falls to the Ultramarines due to sheer numbers and logistics. Which makes sense as the Ultramarines were essentially the Dark Angels 2.0, another generalist Legion made to face any threat instead of being a specialist force. Albeit not quite possessing the same archeotech punch as the First.

 Danielle Rae wrote:
I'd rank the Iron Warriors pretty high. Maybe not in the top 3, but deadly enough given their numbers, determination and firepower. They were ultimately the legion the others turned to when nobody else wanted to take a particularly well-defended world. Also IIRC the Alpha Legion was able to give the Ultramarines a good dressing-down even without their Primarch.

The Iron Warriors are idiots who use the valuable assets of Space Marines in the most incompetent manner possible. They would only inflict losses upon another legion if said legion was braindead enough to think attacking a fortified position head-on in a war of attrition with limited assets was a good idea....



Well nobody ever accused Dorn of being intelligent.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

EmpNortonII wrote:
Russ was third in number of victories . Only the lion and Horus exceeded his victories. Russ is an extremely under rated commander.

Citation? Not saying the Wolves weren't good, but Guilliman is cited to have gotten more victories certainly than Russ, and I'm pretty sure it's unclear if Guilliman or the Lion brought more worlds to compliance - of course, Horus claimed the most.

This was established back in the original 2nd edition version of the "The Lion and the Wolf" from Codex: Angels of Death.

If Jonson was quiet he was also brave and a mighty leader of men. During the Great Crusade only he and Horus achieved a greater tally of victories than Russ. Russ, ever concerned with his honour and good name, and ever keen to tell the noble saga of his deeds, found this exasperating.

agurus1 wrote:I don’t think that number of Crusade victories is a good metric to use, simply because Legions went about the crusade different ways and with different orders. For instance the Word Bearers were chastised for not conquering quickly enough because they were overstaying to create truely compliant worlds, Iron Warrior were specifically diverted to focus on worlds that were very hard, attritional, long term battles thereby reducing their overall victories. All I’m saying is that it’s not the be all and end all. Who knows how many times a legion passed over that alien death/fortress world to go after that non-compliant agri-world instead, if merely to reduce losses/chalk up another point in the race?

Oh, absolutely. It's why I'd class the Word Bearers quite well, purely on numbers, fervour tempered with skill, and a larger psychic cohort than most Legions.

Karhedron wrote:This was established back in the original 2nd edition version of the "The Lion and the Wolf" from Codex: Angels of Death.

If Jonson was quiet he was also brave and a mighty leader of men. During the Great Crusade only he and Horus achieved a greater tally of victories than Russ. Russ, ever concerned with his honour and good name, and ever keen to tell the noble saga of his deeds, found this exasperating.

However, more recent lore, most notably the 5th Edition Space Marine Codex, (and seemingly more consistently) seems to suggest that the Ultramarines were on the heels of the Luna Wolves.

There's also lore suggestions that UM absorbed the <redacted> Legion and/or the <redacted> Legion - so they're fielding a lot more than just what Bobby G conquered.

Add to it, what he's good at is logistics - so his resources per conquered world would be larger than any other Legion.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wow, DakkaDakka's filtering is really good. I didn't realize it wouldn't let you say those legion names!

Bharring wrote:
There's also lore suggestions that UM absorbed the <redacted> Legion and/or the <redacted> Legion - so they're fielding a lot more than just what Bobby G conquered.

ADB has said that this was in-universe speculation rather than fact. It was a couple of angry Word Bearers trash-talking the UMs in the aftermath of Monarchia.

A dual threat Quarterback is a Quarterback who is capable of throwing the ball a mile or running it without a bodyguard.
What it means is he needs to have rescources commited to stopping him, putting the defensive team in a numbers problem because one guy is not going to stop that Quarterback but if you commit more than one guy to stopping him you leave recievers unchecked for him to throw the ball to.

Both the Space Wolves and Dark Angel's codexes have mentioned Lion and Horus being the only commanders to beat Russ out in worlds conquored. Guiliman beat Russ in worlds diplomatically submitted, Russ rarely submitted worlds, when the VI Legion were sent in it was not to negotiate, it was to make an example out of the inhabitants.