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What made the Astra claws so bad? That there where to many of them?

But do not the black Templars have to many as well? And the SW also.

Initially? Nothing.
The Claws just wanted to do their duty as Space Marines and the High Lords didn't want to put effort into patrolling the Maelstrom. The Maelstrom Warders slowly but surely had resources diverted away from them while the Trade Lords of Kathargo got rich off the back of it. Eventually, the Warders declared all of the resources in the Badab sector would be used for patrolling the Maelstrom and the Trade Lords got mad, then they got some other Marines involved then things escalated rapidly. By the time the Badab War was in its end stages the Claws had got so desperate that they'd started trading with local Heretech Pirates to get weapons and equipment for their forces.
Basically, the whole war is about how incompetent the Imperium is and how easily preventable it all could have been.

Taxes, man.

There is a certain charm to the mundanity of Badab War. Taxes, politics, distribution of power.

Sure, ultimate fights of ultimate destiny against cackling demon lords for the fate of the universe are a good enough reason to throw down on occasion, but sometimes it's nice to see wars start for more grounded reasons.

It's one of those things where GW Campaigns must contain X, Y, and Z to account for recent releases which hobbles the creativity of the design teams, whereas IA at least seemed to be written in co-operation with the releases. That and IA had Alan Bligh at the helm which is almost impossible to replicate.

 Niiai wrote:
What made the Astra claws so bad? That there where to many of them?

But do not the black Templars have to many as well? And the SW also.

Nothing. But nobody ever claimed the Imperium was ever even remotely consistent in its (application of) rules.

TBF the Templars aren't breaking any rules. Astartes Chapters on a crusade can expand their numbers to account for excessive casualties sustained on a lengthy deployment. The Templars are on an eternal crusade, ergo they aren't restricted by Codex numbers.
The Wolves get to bend the rules because they're a First Founding Chapter. Generally picking fights with them ends up with the fight picker getting the snot kicked out of them.

 Niiai wrote:
What made the Astra claws so bad? That there where to many of them?
But do not the black Templars have to many as well? And the SW also.

The limit on chapter size was ultimately part of Guillimans' edicts, supported by the administratum because he had replaced them with his own yes men, and ultimately supported by Dorn to prevent a civil war because Guilliman wasn't backing down even after shots were fired in his name.

New chapters are built around its stucture but 1st founding chapters get some degree of leeway - Khan supported it but then ignored it, Russ was against it and ignored it, Vulcan was against it and negotiated an exception, Dorn was against it and compromised by splitting off the Templars so that the the Imperial Fists would be seen to be compliant.
Of all the chapters the Ultramarines themselves have perhaps been the most non-compliant with their chapter re-forming to legion strength in all but name for the attack on the Night Lords.

At the end of the day however it is all just variation in doctrine and the various chapters (aside from the wolves and their unrelated rampant heresy) still broadly comply with the edicts of the Administratum and the Imperial Lords. Perhaps more significantly none of these variations amount to any attempt to influence control outside of their own chapters affairs.

By comparison the Astral Claws seized control of an area of space, replacing the ruling lords with their own men, taking command of local guard and navy forces, withholding the tithe, and running the place as their own empire in direct opposition to the High Lords. They overthrew the governance and production of an entire region of Imperial space and seceded.

I'd like to point out that it wasn't the withholding of the tithe that got them in trouble, it was fighting with the Fire Hawks and Marrines Errant.
The Administratum and High Lords didn't actually care of the gene-seed tithe was late, because it happens all the time, nor did they care that the Karthago Trade Lords weren't able to make bank off of the resources of Badab. It was only when the Chapters started full on open warfare with each other did anyone important begin to care. The Badab War was almost even resolved until what is suspected to be intervention of Chaos forces.

 Niiai wrote:
What made the Astra claws so bad? That there where to many of them?

But do not the black Templars have to many as well? And the SW also.

Black Templars and SW abuse crusading provision that states there is no limit on new recruits for crusading chapters, ballooning usual 100 prospects from 10th company to 500-900 (which they need thanks to stupid, ork like tactics). That still leaves them with less than twice strength of regular chapter, though, and besides, their main strength lies in inheriting big HH era fleets, not the number of SM. You can ignore dumb fanon stating they are LeGiOn SiZeD, it's nothing but baseless 'my dad can beat up yours' kind of fandumb.

As for Claws, yeah, they were unlucky in the fact Fire Hawks were looking for trouble for past slights and supported Trade Lords as an excuse to start a fight (which spiraled out of control). No one had any idea they were close to 3500 SM until Badab War was already halfway done.

A.T. wrote:
New chapters are built around its stucture but 1st founding chapters get some degree of leeway - Khan supported it but then ignored it, Russ was against it and ignored it, Vulcan was against it and negotiated an exception, Dorn was against it and compromised by splitting off the Templars so that the the Imperial Fists would be seen to be compliant.

Um, what? Scars are compliant. Fists too. Wolves are not because a few chapter masters were stupid, Russ not only agreed to codex (splitting legion up), his plan to contain CSM in eye of terror was planting dozens of SW chapter successors around eye as a sort of wall (but then he left and SW shelved that plan). There is literally no major chapter that is openly codex breaking, all of them follow it at least for appearances.

The Scars' only non-compliance comes from how every single Company can become mounted but that's due to the culture of Chogoris as riders of the steppes.
The Fists were fully compliant with only the Last Wall protocol being deviant but it was abandoned after the War of the Beast when Thane reformed the Chapter and initiated a new Founding.
Russ's plan to guard the Eye with Wolves Successors failed because the Canis Helix is super unstable and required all aspirants with Russ's gene-seed to be on Fenris for their trials. Even with the Primaris advancements, it's still a huge risk and there are only 3 confirmed Wolves Successors, the dead Wolf Brothers, the Wolfspear (who only operate 7 Companies), and the Icefangs (who are gifted in the Psychic arts).

 Irbis wrote:
Um, what? Scars are compliant.

They organise their company structure based on traditional brotherhoods, each with specialised tasks such as headhunting and mechanised warfare. That coincidentally break down into almost exactly the same composition as a generic codex compliant chapter.

Then again even the templars coincidentally break down into a near enough codex chapter these days with tactical and devastator squads, etc.

 Irbis wrote:
That still leaves them with less than twice strength of regular chapter, though, and besides, their main strength lies in inheriting big HH era fleets, not the number of SM. You can ignore dumb fanon stating they are LeGiOn SiZeD, it's nothing but baseless 'my dad can beat up yours' kind of fandumb.

Psychic Awakening: Faith and Fury is 'fanon' now? Unless it's been retconned in the new codex supplement, the latest official fluff has individual BT crusades each being several thousand marines strong.

 Duskweaver wrote:

 Irbis wrote:
That still leaves them with less than twice strength of regular chapter, though, and besides, their main strength lies in inheriting big HH era fleets, not the number of SM. You can ignore dumb fanon stating they are LeGiOn SiZeD, it's nothing but baseless 'my dad can beat up yours' kind of fandumb.

Psychic Awakening: Faith and Fury is 'fanon' now? Unless it's been retconned in the new codex supplement, the latest official fluff has individual BT crusades each being several thousand marines strong.

A legion on average was like 100,000 marines.

Even the Tsons were like 80k strong. Not even the Traitor Legions are "Legion Strenght" anymore.

 Gert wrote:
Even the Tsons were like 80k strong. Not even the Traitor Legions are "Legion Strenght" anymore.

Still stupid by the way. 10,000 marines for that particular legion was fine.

I'm not getting into a debate about opinions on numbers in 40k.
The Templars aren't breaking any rules and honestly if the Badab War hadn't happened, nobody would have noticed the Astral Claws increased numbers since they could be dispersed amongst the very large fleet and across the Tyrants Legion.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
A legion on average was like 100,000 marines.

Irbis claimed the BT were less than twice the size of a codex chapter. That's obviously wrong. Individual crusades can be bigger than that.

Whether they're actually legion-strength depends on how many crusades there are, of course. But you'd only need 30 crusades of 3000 marines each to be well into legion numbers. And that's entirely plausible given how the BT are described in Faith and Fury.

I make no judgement on whether any of this is good fluff, but it is official, like it or not.