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Would it be fluffy for a chapter that is codex compliant to employ large numbers of servitors in a combat role to support the Astartes? I am wondering if this would be a fluffy way to include guardsmen units in my army while making them look like servitors.

Alternatively, have this as a private army or forgeworld force. The "marines" are heavily armored admech troopers. The conversion opportunities are awesome.

 Frazzled wrote:
Alternatively, have this as a private army or forgeworld force. The "marines" are heavily armored admech troopers. The conversion opportunities are awesome.

As far as I know marines having direct control over imperial forces is highly heretical. I do not think a private army would fly at all.

Edit: I just no realized I totally misunderstood your post. My bad.

 Tibs Ironblood wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
Alternatively, have this as a private army or forgeworld force. The "marines" are heavily armored admech troopers. The conversion opportunities are awesome.

As far as I know marines having direct control over imperial forces is highly heretical. I do not think a private army would fly at all.

depends on the chapter. every chapter has it's own home world, some are developed worlds. I could see a space marine chapter doing it, but it'd be an unuseal chapter. perhaps one that was ad mech tied, whose recruiting world was a penal world, that converted failed canidates into servators and used them as cannon fodder. it'd be a unusal thing, and certainly differant (and I'd advise against anything else snow flakey about the chapter) but yeah I could see it

You could run a whole lot of Kataphron Battle Servitors

Space Marines do use Servitors in combat roles. It is not explicitly forbidden.

It is reasonable that a chapter which has heavy ties to the Mechanicus might employ a larger than typical number of combat servitors. Such a chapter wouldn't be the most codex compliant, but you at least wouldn't necessarily be flying in its face.

Every space marine chapter also trains their chapter serfs for combat. It would be perfectly acceptable to skin Guardsmen as chapter serfs. As a matter of fact, most of the crew of space marine space ships are serfs. If a space marine ship performs a boarding action or gets boarded, the majority of the defense is up to the serfs. The Marines do the important actions, but the main combat will be the serfs. Serfs also aren't necessarily crap troops either. Most chapters arm their servants well, and many of them will be failed marine aspirants who potentially have some of the marine implants and are technically super-human themselves. They will be well armed and armored, often with Carapace armor and good weapons.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Space Marines do use Servitors in combat roles. It is not explicitly forbidden.

It is reasonable that a chapter which has heavy ties to the Mechanicus might employ a larger than typical number of combat servitors. Such a chapter wouldn't be the most codex compliant, but you at least wouldn't necessarily be flying in its face.

Every space marine chapter also trains their chapter serfs for combat. It would be perfectly acceptable to skin Guardsmen as chapter serfs. As a matter of fact, most of the crew of space marine space ships are serfs. If a space marine ship performs a boarding action or gets boarded, the majority of the defense is up to the serfs. The Marines do the important actions, but the main combat will be the serfs. Serfs also aren't necessarily crap troops either. Most chapters arm their servants well, and many of them will be failed marine aspirants who potentially have some of the marine implants and are technically super-human themselves. They will be well armed and armored, often with Carapace armor and good weapons.

Serfs get trained heavily, there rather capable in a fire fight for boarding actions, with yeah, good level weapons and armour.
They likely have hell guns/hotshot or if there ernough marines implants maybe a bolter.

And a siege assult, letting a few hoards of servitors rumble into the gunfire and take the enemy fire if fairly logical.
Maybe as a distraction for a real assault wave. That comes in while there busy dealing with a ton of expendable stuff, and a techpreist or few who are running the distraction.

A chapter with brutal and/or stricter requirements with access to more recruits then average could have a lot of battle servitors, especially if they look down on the average human and have no time for serfs.

I could see an Iron Hands descendant chapter heading in this direction.

i think that it depends on the chapter's average temper and attitude towards other armed forces: some would be glad to fight alongside fellow guardsmen or SoB, some others would not. I think that on that point your chapter's fluff is the only answer. It should not be heresy to have a chapter even controlling an imperial guard regiment given the huge liberty chapters have

You also have a few mysterious, and sinister Chapters (DarkAngels*CoughCough*) that have quite a few "Brand new" servitors after major battles to hide their secrets.
I can also see some IH descendants taking the whole failure is not an Option thing to mean lobotomizing everyone unworthy.

Serfs are well trained, but usually as defensive forces. Very common for them to be in combat during boarding actions, but very uncommon for them to be sent planetside.

Also, on the idea of having SM Chapters with Guard regiments and other military forces under their command, although it's forbidden by Guilliman's post-Heresy reforms, if you're anwhere near the fringes of the Imperium you're basically free to do what you want. So long as you pay your tithes and don't try and summon eldritch deities you're not really going to get noticed. The Inquisition and the other agents of the High Lords barely have the manpower to hold their genuine enemies in check, let alone going snooping around for people bending the guidelines.

The only known instance of a Chapter getting called out for it is the Badab War and they didn't really care until he stopped paying his tithes.

I always thought it was more realistic to have the majority of Chapters actually use relatively large armies of serfs to support their military actions. In-universe, the reason you don't hear kabout them is the same reason you don't hear about the 300 Helots that accompanied the Spartans during the last stand at Thermopylae, not to mention the 700 Thespians and 400 Thebans.

It also sort of helps to alleviate the issue of 1000-steong chapters being a basically negligible number in any planetary war worth its salt. Makes more sense if they're just the spearhead of a larger unremembered army of serfs and helots

One of the early Iron Hands novels has their base of operations being defended by battle servitors.

 Tibs Ironblood wrote:

As far as I know marines having direct control over imperial forces is highly heretical. I do not think a private army would fly at all.

I don't know if they have direct command, but Ultramarines themselves have no issues working with Ultramar forces.
It seems reasonable that your marines might frequently deploy with troops raised from the chapter homeworld or another planet in the system.

You could argue that your Chapter took heavy casualties, and they resort to the use of servitors ?

vizier wrote:

 Tibs Ironblood wrote:

As far as I know marines having direct control over imperial forces is highly heretical. I do not think a private army would fly at all.

I don't know if they have direct command, but Ultramarines themselves have no issues working with Ultramar forces.
It seems reasonable that your marines might frequently deploy with troops raised from the chapter homeworld or another planet in the system.

Depends. Having serfs deployed to guard your supply base on planet under say a few marines supervision.
That's not a big break.

Landing one million men as part of your allied army, under your command.
Might not be so accepted.

even though they have the Ultramar Auxilleria there's no evidance of the Ultramarines using them in an offensive fashion

They don't have to be under Astartes command at all to be frequently seen with each other. If both forces patrol the same sector or participate in the same crusade odds are they'll be in positions to fight together.
Or perhaps through a shared past campaign, some regiments have earned the chapter's respect, so when the distress call goes out they bump up the priority because they know there must be a worthy threat and not just rookies panicking at their first battle. Then there’s also familiarity with tactics; chapter strategists will likely prefer to deploy their valuable resources to support known quantities they trust over conscripts or penal legions who may or may not follow through with their role in the plan.
Related origin just makes it simpler to make a visually themed army because it’s really your models that create the first impression of whether something appears fluffy or not. (Or you could just make a Mechanicus-friendly chapter à la Iron Hands, though I figure if you’re unsure about servitors, that’s not quite what you had in mind)

Nothing forbids marines from using servitors, but do they have enough TechMarines to actually keep a larger force working and obeying orders? How will they deploy them, and can they keep up with the marines?

I could easily see the Iron Hands or Black Templars sending out waves of combat servitors.