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Hey guys,

I'm going to be starting an IG army soon and am waiting for the new codex to come out, but I have a fluff related question:

How big is an Imperial Guard Regiment?

How big is a battalion, company, etc?

I couldn't find an answer on them interwebs, and I don't have the old IG codex.

Thanks

If you look in APOC and Reload, it looks like the IG go straight from company to regiment and leave battalion out totally. And a new regiment seems to about 12 of one type of companies like all infantry or all armor. The size decreases from there due to loses.

Size of regiments:

usual way of GW whith IG organization is 6 platoons = 1 company, 6 companies = 1 regiment. (for the footsloggers). Mech companys are 3 platoons, so a regiment cold be 3 companys , but i think GW got the size wrong. Normally mech formations have the same amount of men as those on foot.

IG codex covers the infantry, the size of such formation could go from about 400 men per company to 2-3000 in a regiment.

One thing to note: GW rarely uses mixed formations, therefore you don't see much battalions since a battalion is the same size as a regiment but fields different companies.

Yup, instead you will have an Armoured regiment fighting alongside a Infantry regiment.

And the reason for not having mixed regiments is the same as the reason why Space marines only have one thousand man chapters. No commander is allowed too much personal power, and hence the Imperial army only works when different regiments cooperate. So the Armored regiments have to request help from infantry regiments when they want support for their tanks etc.

The thing is, in the new Codex they address this issue. Apparently, the size of regiments varies depending on the planet they're from, the role they're assigned, and so on and so forth.

In the book, it mentions an armored unit (i believe; could be mech) with 1,500 men in it; then, it mentions the Valhallan unit commanded by that asshat Checkov (or whatever the pock his name is. He's an asshat and I'll never use him), which is a "light infantry" unit with 120,000 men in it.

Similarly, the Tanith First-And-Only has been given at between 3,000 and 6,000, and the Valhallan 597th at 1,000 or 2,000; the 50th Gundarkian Rifles (not sure of spelling, but it's from the Eisenhorn trilogy) was given at a strength of 250,000 men.

So, in short, your unit can be as large or as small as you want.

glory wrote:And the reason for not having mixed regiments is the same as the reason why Space marines only have one thousand man chapters. .

You mean 1500 man chapters

@ Gwar? :
whats wrong with 1000 SM as general statement about the size of a chapter?
Assumed numbers of a complete chapter may vary, but still 1000 per chapter is only a mean value.

@ ogiwan:

250000 ? maybe not the regiment, but a force of multiple regiments since you can't handle 250.000 men with a regimental HQ.
Still waiting for the codex....

speaking from "real life" experience, the number of bodies in a Regiment does depend on the type of unit...

in my old unit, the size of a company varied depending on its role... the scout troops had about the same amount of men as the average infantry company, whereas a Tank Company had no where near the same numbers, because there are only 4 seats in a tank.

If i were to put this into 40k Terms, an armor company wouldnt have as many men as a mech company, but neither one would have as many as a footslogger, or "Airborne" company (as once ya hit the ground youre a footslogging infantryman)

The names Regiment, Battalion, and Brigade are used in different ways by different countries.

In principle, "the basic unit" for Infantry is the Company, for Armour is the Squadron, and for Artillery is the Battery... some others follow similar lines to these, but these three are the Main Core of fighting troops or Corps or Arms (Infantry Corps, Armoured Corps, etc… Arms are the fighting troops, Services are the support troops).

'Regiment' is typically a basic administration formation that (1) is generic to only ONE type of function (Guards, Rangers, Paras, Commando, Marine, etc), AND/OR (2) is from ONE distinctive origin (same age group, same religion, same city, same planet!, etc).

A Regiment may also include support formations from other Corps, such as with the Marines and some countries Infantry formations.

'Battalion' is also a basic administration formation, however, is generally applied when a Regiment is very large (typically over 10 companies) where groups off 3, 4 or more Companies are placed into Battalions within a Regiment.

‘Brigade’ is more of a sub unit of a Division, and as such, typically denotes the massing of multiple Regimental formations such as all tank, or all infantry (sometimes from different Corps, such as comprising off Infantry Battalions / Armoured Regiments / Recon Squadrons / Artillery Batteries).

Their use is more confusing… IF the force used in battle is generic and from one location, then it may use a Regiment structure incorporating multiple Battalions and Corps, such as Cadian troops.

IF the force is ‘rag tag’ then Brigades and Regiments will be in combined use, such as Tanith, with Mordian, with Catachan, etc.

In real terms… a Combined Arms force, may be all from ONE source or may be made up from MANY sources.

In GW game terms… the control of power is implied to apply to planetary leaders, individual battle command (unless they control the entire planet) is not an issue. A single force can include Infantry, Artillery, and Armour from the same source such as Cadian. The flexibility of the game system also allows the players to mix n match from different sources (Cadian Infantry, Tallarn Armour, Mordian Artillery, etc).

The Imperial Guard IS “men and tanks”, and as such, the force could be Armour orientated with Infantry support OR Infantry with Armour support.

My IG force is all Cadian and has multiple Armoured Regiments (super heavy, MBT, and recon), Artillery Regiments (siege, battlefield support, and air defence), and a Battalion of Infantry as support (4 Companies, including mechanized and air drop).

Each core formation must follow FOC and/or datasheet rules to ensure conformity, of course you can allow ‘battle attrition’, then just add them together for Apocalypse.

Mik

Lord Castellan Mik wrote:The names Regiment, Battalion, and Brigade are used in different ways by different countries.

In principle, "the basic unit" for Infantry is the Company, for Armour is the Squadron, and for Artillery is the Battery... some others follow similar lines to these, but these three are the Main Core of fighting troops or Corps or Arms (Infantry Corps, Armoured Corps, etc… Arms are the fighting troops, Services are the support troops).

in the US, the "basic" unit for armor is not squadron. a squadron is the same basic principle as a battalion, at least for land based units. the USAF usage of the term 'squadron' is completely different than the army's.

the best example of a Regiment in the US, is the 3d Armored Cavalry. wherein, you have 3 squadrons of tank companies and scout troops (troop being the cavalry term for a company sized element), a squadron of air assets (mostly attack helos and lighter transport helos), and a support squadron. the "normal" breakdown for most any organization of battalion/squadron size goes like this (in the US): 1 HQ company, 3-4 Fighting companies (whether its armored or infantry), and 1-2 support type companies.

That being said, if you were to look at the number of fighting personnel in, say.. the 75th Rangers, which is an airborne Ranger infantry formation, there is going to be more fighters than among the "fighting personnel" in the 3d ACR (i am leaving support personnel out of this because they are, by and large, broken down the same way across almost all units in the military)

I have to dust off this old thread, since I'm currently working on some fluff for my custom regiment and stumbled on the regiment size. As was posted here, the Codex mentions regiments sizes between 1500 and 120.000.

That surprised me a bit, since I imagined regiments to be somewhat larger when during a usual tithe 1/10 of the PDF forces are expected to be send away. I mean: if we take a medium size planet with lets say 1 billion inhabitants (far from being a big one) and a PDF force of 1% (some numbers (Para)militaries from Wiki for comparison: Russia 4%, US 1.5%, France 0.6%, China 0.3%) , that would mean 1 million soldiers during each tithe, equaling at least 10 Regiments and assuming an average size of 10.000 men it would even be 100 Regiments from each tithe. And the more industrialized hive worlds like for example Armageddon having a higher, more militarized population should tithe even more. At least for me this a bit of a conflict to regiment numbers leaning more on the 2 digits to 3 digits max, while with that much regiments it should more lean to 4-5 digits.

In some cases it seems more or less consistent like with Catachan having a population of 12 Million and regiments up to the lower 1000 Region (which could happen after some consecutive Tithes). But for example the Scintillian Fusiliers hail from a planet with 25 billion inhabitants and the largest regiment number I found mentioned was 112 while assuming 10.000 men per average regiment they should have sent something around 2500 regiments per tithe.

Can it be that the regimental numbers in some cases more refer to "army groups" of larger size?


EDIT: also it sounds a bit strange when in the core book on the pages describing different campaignes the number of AM regiments involved usually number in the region of 2 to lower 3 digits while I would expect more like some thousand 10k men regiments fighting on battlefields like Cadia or Armageddon. To put it in perspective in the WW2 battle of Kursk there were around 2.7 Million soldiers involved on a single battlefield and they were only from two nations and not even their whole army.
And according to wiki on its hight 1943 the 6 biggest armies alone had around 35 Million (~ 350-35000 AM Regiments depending on size between 100.000 and 1000) of active personal

Umm... Very variable.

Roles, planets, and specialist units all will greatly vary.

Some have been listed as a few thousand. Others are the size of small armies in real.terms and over 100,000 strong. If your looking for a concrete answer.such does not exist, there is the "standard" template that you could term the codex version though. It's a template. People have modified it from small to massively.

It's a error to think the impirum is a fairly tight empire. It's really more loose, especially when long as govenors pay the tithe, keepnpsykers and chaos down there free to do fairly as they please. There's major law to apply, but long as you meet those laws. Most major impirum authority does not sweat the small stuff. Elections, tyrant, king, trade lord or whatever titles and systems. Long as the basica are met, your stable enough and tithe paid etc. Your good.

Regiments are the same. There very much deoendong on planet etc for there contexts and how they work.

B. 40k has a habit of low balling a little. There's something like less casualties on Vraks than in WW2. And this we are talking about is the resources of the interplanetary empire. It should not be a blip on the man power who come of age across many many hive world's at any given day. Transit is a issue but GW low ball some of there stuff majorly.

Other times they dial to 11 and beyond so it's kinda eclectic.

An infantry platoon is nominally a command squad, two to five infantry squads, and up to three heavy weapon, three special weapon and a conscript squad - 25 to 93 soldiers. Each company is two to five platoons plus command team (30 to 490 soldiers plus company assets), and there’s no real official numbe of companies to a regiment.

It’s also possible that a given tithe could consist of multiple regiments.