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Ok, since Chaos forces dont need to follow the self imposse restrictions of codex astartes nor have to worry of their ranks joining the loyalist* because of the dogmatic approach of the Imperium towards "traitors" why dont they muster millions upon billions of Heretics Astartes to put an end to the long war?

They have the known how and they have the time to do so.


*I known there are some exceptions, but in general the IOM dont accept back the deserters.

Because when you live in Hell your gene-seed and potential recruits tend to be horrifically mutated. A lot of CSM gene-seed ends up being utterly unrecoverable after the Marine dies which is why untainted Loyalist gene-seed is such a valuable prize but the Loyalists aren't going to just let you take it so it's not exactly a quick "hey presto all of our losses are gone". Traitor Apothecaries are so rare and sought after you will hardly ever see on in a battle because if he dies then that's it, no more new Marines for you.
CSM almost entirely rely on influxes of Renegades or by getting really lucky with recruits and less mutated gene-seed.

IOMs plot armour...

My fluff might be out of date but it's something to do with traitor geneseed being next to useless in creating new Marines so they have to rely on stealing it from Loyalists, no simple feat especially as you'd need a fairly positive kill/death ratio to actually net gain

If that was the explanation then CSM warbands would always be one defeat away from erradication.

They would be reduced to oportunistic raiders rather than the first tier foes they are ment to be after the Great Rift has opened.

Most Warbands are a defeat away from oblivion and it's only certain groups that can sustain a prolonged conflict. It's why so many Warbands turn to pacts with Daemons to bolster their numbers, maintain huge swathes of Cultists or use Daemon-Engines instead of battle tanks.
The biggest problem for CSM was that the Imperium could bring its might down upon any invasion with little delay whereas now with the Imperium split in two those resources can't be marshaled as quickly or effectively as before (relatively speaking of course considering how slow the cogs turn in the Imperium).

Don't forget the logistics they have to deal with as well, its not like they have endless forge worlds pumping out power armour for these new recruits you claim they can make out of thin air. So there's fundamentally a hard cap on how many marines they can realistically arm and outfit with armour/weapons. Given that most CSM warbands can usually barely scrape by with scavenged pieces of power armour and weapons, it's very clear that being stuck on the fringe parts of the galaxy and lacking a stable non-warp base of operations means that they simply don't have the resources to pump out legionaries, on top of what other people have said regarding all the issues that being in the warp brings on their own gene-seed and logistics.

 Argive wrote:
IOMs plot armour...

The opposite, in a sense.
The chaos astartes are ultimately just pawns of the four gods. The gods want war, not an end of it, and sacrificing their pawns is just part of the game.

That aside many of them are in various states of mutated, melted, walking dead, and/or literally dust, their recruitment base is questionable, their apothecaries are self serving psychopaths, they are self serving psychopaths, they mostly hate each other, their supply of equipment comes from the ever reliable 'lets put a daemon in it and see what happens' dark mechanicus - who are just as often talking about the marine as his wargear, none of them have the time or inclination to train new recruits... or at least if they did there would be a queue of other marines who don't like the idea of someone raising their station through added manpower, they struggle to do anything in a sensible timeframe as time doesn't work for them all that well, many of them are lost to varying forms of madness or caught between thoughts of past conflicts, and many many other reasons.

Abaddon managing to gather as many as he did under a vaguely coherent banner, if only for a moment, was a singular achievement for them.

So the Heretic Astartes are mostly incapable of military action because they lack a proper chain in command or logistics and aparently all of them suffer from ADHD? How can they be the IOM main antagonist?

Kind of funny to see how Astartes transform from demigods able to single hand take down a bunker complex to hopeless hobos just because they change their loyalty.

Raw human recruits would be no problem for CSM to increase their ranks... If they needed one billion young male recruits (volunteer or forced) to create 100k new heretic astartes that shouldnt be a problem... After the rift opened they control a sizeable amount of the Galaxy and those are billions upon billons of human supporters/slaves.

Vatsetis wrote:
So the Heretic Astartes are mostly incapable of military action because they lack a proper chain in command or logistics and aparently all of them suffer from ADHD? How can they be the IOM main antagonist?

Kind of funny to see how Astartes transform from demigods able to single hand take down a bunker complex to hopeless hobos just because they change their loyalty.

Raw human recruits would be no problem for CSM to increase their ranks... If they needed one billion young male recruits (volunteer or forced) to create 100k new heretic astartes that shouldnt be a problem... After the rift opened they control a sizeable amount of the Galaxy and those are billions upon billons of human supporters/slaves.

The scale of 40K is a little wonky, but it works when at a tight focus against a huge backdrop. Have you heard of the willing suspension of disbelief? It helps.

Having said that, the ability to take down a bunker complex single-handedly has nothing to do with the ability to raise and maintain mass armies. You can be amazing at one and not another.

So a band of Chaos Space Marines might be able to wreak havoc in a city/spaceport, but they might lack the inclination to raise, maintain and discipline a mass force. The two skill sets are not related. Someone else might have the organizational skills to raise and maintain an army but not be able to open the bunker door. Someone might have both, to be sure, but they don't have to go together.

Anyhoo.

Ya know Vatsetis, for a guy who insists on 40k being a sattire etc, you seem remarkably focused on nitpicking the setting

I would say that the Heretic Astartes have little means to overwhelm the Imperium at this point is beacuse of:
A) Limited production methods: Daemoncuba and assimilation are their (easiest) achievable methods, and even those are sometimes are hard tpo achieve, Daemoncuba can die in the process and sometimes Space Marines are too loyal to the Emperor.

B) Enormous amounts of Infighting: Chaos Space Marines don't like to adhere to rules, except for their own or their Leaders, and sometimes even that is unreliable. If someone doesn't agree with the Chaos Champion of Khorne's thinking, they may be beheaded. Khorne, Slaanesh, Nurgle, and Tzeentch are constantly at war with each other, and so are their Mortal Champions. Trillions of Chaos Space Marines die to infighting, and many champions of Chaos have fallen to another more powerful Leader.

C) Imperial Forces: The Imperium simply is powerful enough to combat the forces of chaos undivided. Minor Chaos Legions can be wiped out without much effort by a space marine chapter, who adhere to ridgid forms of mental, physical, and Emotional training. And, Chapters sometimes come together and fight in the name of the Emperor, but Chaos Legions have a hard time doing so with others, with the Exception of the Black legion, and the Alpha Legion.

The thing is IOM would be battling endless hordes of demons who can just keep materialising over and over that the heretic astartes would bring with them/enable..

BrianDavion wrote:
Ya know Vatsetis, for a guy who insists on 40k being a sattire etc, you seem remarkably focused on nitpicking the setting

Well a satire can still have some level of internal consistency (even the Monty Python films have it). And some people insist very heavily that 40k is not satirical at all, so that opens the door for this type of criticism.

I really dont understand why the Astartes, being the focus of the setting, need to be so extremely limited in number... The insistence that such a relatively tiny military force has such a huge military impact in the setting seems completelly counterintuitive to me.

Also, this puts the lore writters into a sort of dead end. Since SM have to be meaningfull despite being so few, each individual marine has to be incredibly powerfull... Id rather have marines being a bit more mundane but being able to deploy in significant numbers.

It almost as if GW is endorsing his artificial "limited edition" product policy into the fictional setting... Including the "we found a lost container" gimmick in the form of Primaris Marines.

Also the art has a tendency to depict SM in great numbers or as a collective force... Not as individuals like Custodes or Titans.

Well I suppose that it sort of makes some sort of philosophical sense that the IOM dont want to have more SM because of their self imposse restrictions and Chaos forces cant have more marines because of their anarchic nature.

It's the fluff being at odds with the business of flogging plastic, people want to play Marines and GW wants them to buy so the fluff gets bent around that

 Argive wrote:
The thing is IOM would be battling endless hordes of demons who can just keep materialising over and over that the heretic astartes would bring with them/enable..

Daemons are hard to summon, (certainly at scale) making them less of a disposable army than that.

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
It's the fluff being at odds with the business of flogging plastic, people want to play Marines and GW wants them to buy so the fluff gets bent around that

So them why not multiply the number of Astartes by x10 or x100 in-universe?

Its sort of puzzling that such a niche of force is so ubiquitous.

Because of there were 10 million or 100 million Astartes running around then the Imperium wouldn't have problems.
Don't equate game with background because it's not a good comparison and that's fine.

Vatsetis wrote:
So the Heretic Astartes are mostly incapable of military action because they lack a proper chain in command or logistics and aparently all of them suffer from ADHD? How can they be the IOM main antagonist?

Well consider that the Imperium of Man does have huge swathes of worlds that never feel the touch of war. There are worlds that never get mustering for the IG; or which never feel the real sting of invasion and are so far from the front lines that Marines are stories, Xenos are boogymen and Chaos is something they aren't even aware of at a basic level. The stories we read tend to focus on the front lines and perpetuate a constant state of warfare even though it shifts around system to system all the time.

The Imperium as a single entity is at war, but within it there are pockets of peace and pockets of constant warfare.


As for the main antagonist I'd actually argue that that has changed over time. Necrons and Tyranids both shifted from being a small minor curiosity on the fringes of the Imperium into massive threats of their own. Necrons have a huge former empire and can awaken from the very ground underneath Imperial worlds. Tyranids can cut vast swathes of destruction through whole systems and, worse, leave behind barren worlds that you basically can't repopulate without vast investment of resources to rebuild them - and even then the scouring will likely mean that world will need constant resupply of basic resources forever. Tyranids have torn through worlds and even resulted in the Imperium issuing one of the biggest swathes of Exterminatus projects on multiple worlds without time for evacuation.


Orks are a sort of constant but buzzing threat; Eldar and Tau are both major, but limited in their impact to regional areas. Eldar because they've limited numbers; Tau because they've limited technology in certain areas and limited influence; however theirs is growing steadily.



Chaos does have a special place though because not only are they mostly the remains of a long civil war, but they can arise from any world. They can set the seeds on any planet and infiltrate and corrupt from within. Yes Genestealer Cults can do that, but not to the same scale Chaos Cultists can. Stealers need a genestealer to make it planetside and start an infection; Chaos just needs one undocumented psycher to open a connection and begin the whispers of corruption. They are huge threat because they are a constant civil war sitting just in the shadows ready to arise anywhere. Yes Black Crusades are major offences that capture and destroy swathes of worlds; but their real threat is the ability to just never be gone. No matter where you send your armies to crush Chaos, it can arise from anywhere else. Even within the peaceful worlds that are far from the front lines.
Most of the other races at least have some kind of front line for the Imperium to fight - even Necrons have a sort of do and you can also get a head start on knowing there might be a problem if you start finding necron remains on a world etc...

Its not like the Astartes Power Level is fixed in lore and dosent vary greatly depending if they are the protagonist of a given story or not... it can be adjust downward at the same time their numbers increase... you know, sensible numbers-sensible power levels... this way you dont have to overcompensate the artificial lack of Astartes with making every one of them an hybrid of Hulk and Batman (well until they turn to Chaos and are reduced to the Grim Dark version of Homer Simpson).

Why is having a complete disyunction between game and background a good thing? Making them be more online one with each other seems reasonable and I dont see the drawbacks for this approach.

Is not like if Astartes units are weak in the tabletop battlefield by any means.

Are you going to tell every SM player you meet that they can't use their army because there are a limited-ish number of SM? Are you going to police who can fight who based on your interpretations of the setting?
As for you point on Astartes power, what is sensible for something as unknowable as an 8ft tall bioengineered human with a huge suit of armour that offers brilliant protection while not hindering their movement or reflexes both of which are enhanced to superhuman levels that carries a 40mm grenade launcher and a machete sized knife as their standard weapons? What is sensible?

Who Im I policing anyone just by giving my POV?

As I said many times, there is no need to double down on the most dumb elements of the setting. That just IMHO.

There is enough info in the setting to back up the view that astartes are not just tecno barbarians but rather fight in a proper military structure... And CSM must have some sort of large scale logistics or else they wont be able to wage war on a galactic scale.

Reducing the Heretic Astartes to below the level of organisation of orks, seems wrong.

Why does my view of the background so problematic for some people?

Tabletop gameplay is not indicative of lore, that's just how all games play.

Do you think GW should amend the lore in accordance with player stats?
In 7th ed Eldar were everywhere, should GW have changed their lore to be a huge army that's all over the place? Then retconned that again in 9th now that they've fallen into disuse?

What about Imperial Guard? They're meant to be ubiquitous in the setting, but very few people play them.
Should GW change the lore? Make them super rare?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Chaos are described as all fighting for their own agenda. They rarely work together, and when they do they only vaguely work to the same goal and often go about doing so in their own ways.
But they rarely actually fight one another.

This is better than the Orks, who will often fight one another for the hell of it, unless they have a strong leader and an enemy to be pointed at.

Because its not a view of the background. You just keep saying "40k is awful everything is stupid" then when people give reasoning and citations, you stick your fingers in your ears and go "lalalalala I'm right your wrong!".
You're asking for every single piece of background to be specified down to the smallest details when it doesn't need to be and frankly if it was the setting would be much worse.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Tabletop gameplay is not indicative of lore, that's just how all games play.

Do you think GW should amend the lore in accordance with player stats?
In 7th ed Eldar were everywhere, should GW have changed their lore to be a huge army that's all over the place? Then retconned that again in 9th now that they've fallen into disuse?

What about Imperial Guard? They're meant to be ubiquitous in the setting, but very few people play them.
Should GW change the lore? Make them super rare?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Chaos are described as all fighting for their own agenda. They rarely work together, and when they do they only vaguely work to the same goal and often go about doing so in their own ways.
But they rarely actually fight one another.

This is better than the Orks, who will often fight one another for the hell of it, unless they have a strong leader and an enemy to be pointed at.

Im not saying that the lore has to be adaptated so that it matches player fads in the way you are describing.

I get that Heretic Astartes are all a bunch of prima donnas, but isnt in favour of all major CSM agents to expand their numbers? I sort of remember an economic system in which compiting parties can fight for their selfish agenda while also growing at the same time.

Ok, I suppose that the setting needs chaos forces to be selfdefeating to maintain the status quo... Im a party pooper for wanting to look beyond the courtain of the wizard of Oz.

Vatsetis wrote:
Its not like the Astartes Power Level is fixed in lore and dosent vary greatly depending if they are the protagonist of a given story or not... it can be adjust downward at the same time their numbers increase... you know, sensible numbers-sensible power levels... this way you dont have to overcompensate the artificial lack of Astartes with making every one of them an hybrid of Hulk and Batman (well until they turn to Chaos and are reduced to the Grim Dark version of Homer Simpson).

Why is having a complete disyunction between game and background a good thing? Making them be more online one with each other seems reasonable and I dont see the drawbacks for this approach.

Is not like if Astartes units are weak in the tabletop battlefield by any means.

The problem with trying to link real world gaming to lore is that it can break things. It also becomes hard for the company to work with because product lead times are measured in months to years but real world shifts can be measured in days and weeks. Heck one time GW did do a whole campaign that was designed to let the real world influence the lore - GW had to jump in with a bit of a ret-con when the side that shouldn't win won and GW couldn't just dial back and change all the products they'd designed based on the outcome they'd expected.

In the end it just doesn't really work for a game like this. It's more something you'd get in an mmo and even there not every one works the same.

@Vatsetis
You can't make more CSM if you don't have the gene-seed. It is literally that simple and people have told you multiple times in this thread that lack of suitable gene-seed is the biggest reason CSM need to bolster their forces with Cultists, Daemons and murder machines.

Vatsetis wrote:


Ok, I suppose that the setting needs chaos forces to be selfdefeating to maintain the status quo... Im a party pooper for wanting to look beyond the courtain of the wizard of Oz.

Here's the thing - the status quo is a static element in almost all wargames. Because they establish a theme for a force and that theme is typically part of that forces identity and marketing; which is then preserved. Making drastic changes is often avoided because it can change the theme and "feel" of an army and all their marketing and even their model appearances. In short it just doesn't work for a product line. I think if you want a really dynamic setting you want to look at just stories alone; meanwhile stories based on games are nearly always going to swing back to maintaining the status.

Heck GW had to ret-con some of its own recent lore because they advanced the timeline and then someone pointed out that they were running out of years in the 41st Millennium and no one in marketing would advise renaming 40K into 41K.

I remember a very, very long recent post fueled by the need to update or not the lore/models to better fit current day worldviews.

Im not complaining or asking for any change. I dont have an agenda, I simply want to better understand the inner workings of the setting.

Best way to do so is asking uncomfortable questions.

They fixed the 41k thing with just "oh the calendars are all wrong, we need to wind back the clock 100 years to correct it" mighty convenient that!