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Thinking a lot about Chaos lately and I wonder if Chaos has no way to recruit completely new CSM other than corrupting existing SM (or am I missing something?) what % of an army would CSM consist of? How effective is "recycling" of fallen CSM - how many of them might be effectively brought back into service?
In modern armies special forces are <5% of an overall number. For Chaos army composition it seems like there would be significantly less CSM than that, as for Khorne even part per thousand. It kind of shatters the vision of how Chaos army looks like which WH40k art presents. There would be 30 battalions of cultists, 15 battalions(if they can keep the file) of lesser daemons per single COMPANY of CSM. On operational scale they would not be even visible.

What do you guys think? What would be the approximate % composition of Chaos army?

Chaos Marines can make new Astartes, its just a lot more dangerous and they're a lot less picky about what geneseed gets used.
Chaos Warbands are also not standardised, its kind of their whole deal. You could have an entire Warband that is exactly one Astartes champion with only cultists and spawn as followers or you could have a Warband entirely dedicated to armour or Daemon-engines.

CSM often use recruiting worlds in the Eye or slaves to create new Marines. We know that DG has more Marines in 40K than they had in 30K. Iron Warriors and Fabius Bile are noticable examples where we have descriptions about how they make new Marines (haven't read them myself).

Concerning numbers we have exemplary battles or crusades to look at, the Invasion of Ultramar had a pretty detailed description in the 8th rulebook and the Fall of Cadia might have been specific about Abaddon's attack there? Either way in these events CSM aren't as rare as you think, but if you take the whole picture of Chaos Wars against the Imperium CSM (and SM for that matter) are a tiny fraction of the involved forces with Imperial Guard and Traitor Guard outnumbering them in the billions. I always find it hard to assess Daemons, once you have an incursion they probably come in big time, but you'd need significant Chaos forces to call them.

There used to be some fluff that their neck Prognoid was removed as soon as it was ready (or if it was ready and they were recruiting) to be able to make another marine. Which contributed to their unbalanced nature as the glands also regulate the marines bodies.

Also use geneseed from loyalist legions, especially for the black legion/Red corsairs, or for those that anyone can join type of thing.

Most of the CSM Warbands aren't going to be picky about where their geneseed comes from. The Iron Warriors used the Imperial Fists geneseed captured at the Iron Cage and Hydra Cordatus to expand their numbers, as well as gifting some of the latter batch to Abadddon as part of a pact.
The Black Legion obviously don't care where you come from, neither do the Red Corsairs.
The God marked Legions are similar, especially the Death Guard and what remains of the World Eaters.
Renegade Chapters will take what they can get as will any other smaller warband.
The worst two would be the Word Bearers due to their obsession with hating the Ultramarines lineage (most Successors are Ultramarine descendants) and the Night Lords, who just hate everyone anyway.

Soleil wrote:

In modern armies special forces are <5% of an overall number. For Chaos army composition it seems like there would be significantly less CSM than that, as for Khorne even part per thousand. It kind of shatters the vision of how Chaos army looks like which WH40k art presents. There would be 30 battalions of cultists, 15 battalions(if they can keep the file) of lesser daemons per single COMPANY of CSM. On operational scale they would not be even visible.

What do you guys think? What would be the approximate % composition of Chaos army?

But 40k is tiny. Its a company of troops if you want to be generous.

Even at Epic Armageddon level you are only really fielding (from a recent successful army)
Approx 120 marines
20 chosen
Approx 20 bikers
12-20 terminators
Some oblitorators
10 Rhinos
Greater demon and bunch of demons
2 chaotic warengines
6 Hellbades

That is a reinforced company. Could argue with the warengines its the equivalent of 2 companies.

The Chaos hordes would be a lot of other guys as well.

The_Real_Chris wrote:



That is a reinforced company. Could argue with the warengines its the equivalent of 2 companies.

The Chaos hordes would be a lot of other guys as well.

This is what I meant. If we take Khorne military overall it would be
ground forces XXXXX
air force XXX
navy (*) etc.

I am affraid that ground forces would consist in 97% of NON CSM. Most battles would NOT see CSM deployed, in those operations where they are deployed they would make a tiny portion of the chaos force. So what we are being shown on arts is completely false. OR we can assume that CSM are much, MUCH more (like twentyfold) numerous than SM but I doubt whether according to the sources this is the case?

* in (WH 40K) English would those be separate terms? Like air force and navy? When you want to refer to flying vehicles and spaceships.

 Gert wrote:
Most of the CSM Warbands aren't going to be picky about where their geneseed comes from. The Iron Warriors used the Imperial Fists geneseed captured at the Iron Cage and Hydra Cordatus to expand their numbers, as well as gifting some of the latter batch to Abadddon as part of a pact.
The Black Legion obviously don't care where you come from, neither do the Red Corsairs.
The God marked Legions are similar, especially the Death Guard and what remains of the World Eaters.
Renegade Chapters will take what they can get as will any other smaller warband.
The worst two would be the Word Bearers due to their obsession with hating the Ultramarines lineage (most Successors are Ultramarine descendants) and the Night Lords, who just hate everyone anyway.

Night Lords don't seem to have problems with using stolen loyalist geneseed. Faith and Fury mentions them stealing geneseed from loyalist fortress monasteries after the fall of Cadia. They also can get more use from their own geneseed, as they have the lowest instances of mutations (note that "lowest" doesn't mean "none"). The obvious example of that is the "new recruits" 10th Company was in the process of creating in the Night Lords trilogy. The biggest issue would be getting suitable "recruits".

Oh I was meaning more like adding proper Astartes to the Warband.

 Gert wrote:
Oh I was meaning more like adding proper Astartes to the Warband.

So, from other Legions/Renegades? Well, there's Variel, but that's all I can think of off the top of my head. So, yeah, probably. Not too keen on "outsiders", the 8th Legion.

Yeah, Variel got let in because he helped steal the Echo and was already basically a Night Lord anyway what with all the flaying and torture he did. I mean even Ruviel didn't get let back in and he was of the 8th.

Well, Ruven was a defector, and the 8th doesn't like that. I'd really like to see what they'd do to Haarken if they ever got ahold of him without any Black Legion protection around. But we're getting off topic:

@OP: Yes, in any large scale battle there's going to be WAY more Traitor Guardsmen, Cultists, Mutants, etc than CSM, but I think you're getting it a little wrong thinking of CSM as "special forces". As Gert said, Chaos warbands aren't "standardised". Some are just piratical raiders, and could be all Astartes. Others could be a single Astartes leading a force of Cultists and such. Others might not have any Astartes at all. And everything in between.

Soleil wrote:
This is what I meant. If we take Khorne military overall it would be
ground forces XXXXX
air force XXX
navy (*) etc.

I am affraid that ground forces would consist in 97% of NON CSM. Most battles would NOT see CSM deployed, in those operations where they are deployed they would make a tiny portion of the chaos force. So what we are being shown on arts is completely false. OR we can assume that CSM are much, MUCH more (like twentyfold) numerous than SM but I doubt whether according to the sources this is the case?

* in (WH 40K) English would those be separate terms? Like air force and navy? When you want to refer to flying vehicles and spaceships.

You can't really put a number on the forces of Chaos no more than any other faction in 40k, which is kind of the point.
It's like how nominally, there are 1000 Space Marine Chapters but each Chapter varies in size due to culture, adherence to the Codex, simple attrition from constant combat missions, and the fact that the Imperium's record-keeping is at best, awful. Some Chapters just disappear into the annals of history with no record of their Founding, name, or deeds. The same thing applies to the forces of Chaos.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
CSM often use recruiting worlds in the Eye or slaves to create new Marines. We know that DG has more Marines in 40K than they had in 30K. Iron Warriors and Fabius Bile are noticable examples where we have descriptions about how they make new Marines (haven't read them myself).

Concerning numbers we have exemplary battles or crusades to look at, the Invasion of Ultramar had a pretty detailed description in the 8th rulebook and the Fall of Cadia might have been specific about Abaddon's attack there? Either way in these events CSM aren't as rare as you think, but if you take the whole picture of Chaos Wars against the Imperium CSM (and SM for that matter) are a tiny fraction of the involved forces with Imperial Guard and Traitor Guard outnumbering them in the billions. I always find it hard to assess Daemons, once you have an incursion they probably come in big time, but you'd need significant Chaos forces to call them.

CSM would make up only a tiny fraction of the total Chaos aligned forces just as SM only really make up a tiny fraction of the Imperial forces.

The vast majority of all fighting would be Imperial Guard vs. Traitor Guard, Cultists, and/or Beastmen/mutants. In space the vast majority again would be Imperial Navy vs. traitor Navy ships, pirates. SM and CSM ships would again be the rarity.

And don’t forget time has little meaning in the eye, so “overtime” the numbers would be depleted but time isn’t relevant.

How many examples are there of a “chaos army” or “khorne army” where there is a choas warlord that is constructing an army of any and all chaos worshipers including marines and cultists and demons. The recent deciples of belakor is the only one I can think of.

More often than not if there are CSM in an army they are at the top of the command structure and the warlord will be a CSM warlord and they might recruit cultists for cannon fodder and summon demons.

mrFickle wrote:
How many examples are there of a “chaos army” or “khorne army” where there is a choas warlord that is constructing an army of any and all chaos worshipers including marines and cultists and demons. The recent deciples of belakor is the only one I can think of.

More often than not if there are CSM in an army they are at the top of the command structure and the warlord will be a CSM warlord and they might recruit cultists for cannon fodder and summon demons.

The Invasion of Ultramar features Daemons, Renegade Guard regiments, DG, Cultists, Chaos Knights, Dark Mechanicum, Legio Mortis (Titans), Pestigors and Zombies. So everything you could think of .
But I agree, it's these large events where everything Chaos comes together, usually you'll have only smaller factions. But since GW only supports CSM (and not Traitor Guard) you'll see CSM in every Chaos battle mentioned in 40K.

Edit:
The Chaos Army that attacks Cadia doesn't feature any Guard in the 8th ed rulebook, just CSM and Daemons, for example.

Iracundus wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
CSM often use recruiting worlds in the Eye or slaves to create new Marines. We know that DG has more Marines in 40K than they had in 30K. Iron Warriors and Fabius Bile are noticable examples where we have descriptions about how they make new Marines (haven't read them myself).

Concerning numbers we have exemplary battles or crusades to look at, the Invasion of Ultramar had a pretty detailed description in the 8th rulebook and the Fall of Cadia might have been specific about Abaddon's attack there? Either way in these events CSM aren't as rare as you think, but if you take the whole picture of Chaos Wars against the Imperium CSM (and SM for that matter) are a tiny fraction of the involved forces with Imperial Guard and Traitor Guard outnumbering them in the billions. I always find it hard to assess Daemons, once you have an incursion they probably come in big time, but you'd need significant Chaos forces to call them.

CSM would make up only a tiny fraction of the total Chaos aligned forces just as SM only really make up a tiny fraction of the Imperial forces.

The vast majority of all fighting would be Imperial Guard vs. Traitor Guard, Cultists, and/or Beastmen/mutants. In space the vast majority again would be Imperial Navy vs. traitor Navy ships, pirates. SM and CSM ships would again be the rarity.

This is what I meant. WH40K art is extremely misleading it puts WAY too much emphasis on SM and CSM. While they would be Barely visible in military operations.
It is like making an album of US armed forces where most photos portray Delta Force and Navy Seals operators.

Ok? But those are the things that sell and 40k doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's a product line. In the same way that people like stories about special forces raids or daring groups of heroes, people like stories about Space Marines. If you look past the covers of Campaign books, it's pretty clear Astartes forces are still massively in the minority in almost every campaign the Imperium conducts.