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With around 400 billion stars in the Milky Way alone and the Imperium only consisting of 1 million worlds the sizes of armies seem to utter on the drastically small.

Hell, even during the Great Crusade Legions were only 100,000 in size which seems rediculously small given the crusade was to conquer the whole Galaxy.

Surely GW will amend the military sizes at some point?

GW has never been good with numbers or scale...and likely never will, its kinda their thing.

A hunder thousand Adeptus Astartes will murder anything and anyone opposing them and if you add that up with several legions of that size backed by the Imperial Army you will understand why the IoM could reach such massive size.

Not all stars have planets orbiting them. In fact, most don't.

I kind of wish even Astartes Chapters were capped at 10k instead of 1k... in a Galaxy of murder and bloodshed it makes 1k seem too small and easy to wipe out entirely.

Yeah, the Imperium having 1 million habitable worlds isn't that bad for a big number in the Milky Way. Especially when you consider that its never portrayed as being big compared to the number of habitable planets that are around at the time of M41.


Imperial planets are separated by thousands of light years. Hundreds of smaller independent empire exist in the space between bastions of imperial authority. Orks, Humans, and thousands of less common alien species inhabit the galaxy.

The Imperium is just one of the larger and more spread out of empires.


GW is bad at numbers, but that's more when they talk about IG regiment sizes and casualties, and physical properties of armor.

And even then, that's just the habitable planets we are talkign about here. IF you consider all of the other things that the imperil would have, like, say, asteroid belt mining operations, deep-void survey stations, not to mention the minor worlds that have been left abandoned that still claim loyalty despite not being recognized by the imperium.... these worlds do end up supplying their manpower to the imperium should they be unfortunate enough to expect a visit from either the space marines or the imperial navy.

Bad at numbers might even be an understatement. In the third war for Armageddon the death toll is supposedly spiralling towards the billions (acceptable, even though it might still be a bit low), yet Hive Helsreach, which has seen some of the heaviest fighting, only has 3 million casualties amongst its defenders. This seems way to low, as the BL novel about the battle makes it sound like a lot of militias are raised from the civilians.
Overall the ratio and just numbers are terrible. Like Grey Templar said its when they talk IG that they mess up bad. They always mentioned the IG as having recruitment and death tolls in the millions each day, which for such a large empire with almost countless humans is way too little for their 'only war' slogan.

Indeed. Plus there is the roster of regiments in certain warzones. Way too few regiments for the number of soldiers stated as being there, if you take GWs word that a regiment of footsloggers numbers 5-10 thousand. IG regiments would need to number in the hundred thousand range for the numbers to be close to consistent.

I guess it also then depends on the imperial definition of casualty:
=is he dead?
-not yet he isn't
=so, he's fit for duty
-.... uh...he has sustained serious wounds, we've had to amputate both legs and replace his lungs, as well as give him a pace-maker and a chemical cocktail to keep him alive
=but can he shoot a rifle?
-it's highly advised that he not do so
= but he CAN shoot, right?
-....uh... well... technically, i guess he can, b--
=outstanding, put him on the line.