How are there any World Eaters left?

They slaughtered all their Librarians, so no psyker support for them. They're too blood-crazed to care about their own survival. They'll kill each other at the drop of a hat. The Nails mean even their former Apothecaries can't do without mindless slaughter. So who collects their gene-seed for new marines? Who maintains their armor and vehicles? Who refrains from murdering young boys long enough to recruit them into warbands? Where are they getting ammunition and warships from?

I mean, World Eaters are pretty metal but can anyone explain why the Imperium doesn't just send a million guardsmen to tie them up in melee the moment they make planetfall? Then just bombard the area from out of chainaxe range until they're all dead. Lather, rinse, repeat for every warband that pops up. They should be gone in a week, a month tops. They're way too crazy not to attack any bait the Imps set up.

World Eaters are long gone. They only gather on special occassions, other than that they are divided in warbands. Not everyone is Kharn and not everyone is bent on murderfucking everyone around him, so that works.

Yeah, but the point is that they're universally presented as way too unstable to perform such small matters as maintenance and recruiting on a scale that would be required to sustain their losses. Also completely strategically inept, to the point that a "shiny skulls over here" sign should be more than enough to lure them into a thousand-Basilisk killing ground. All the muscle and CC prowess in the universe mean jack diddly when you get blown apart by an artillery shell ten miles from the front line.

>Thinking that the long war veterans are as stupid as heretic human masses to actually get into artillery kill zone.

The recruitment is in the eye of terror, where they recruit on proving grounds on arena, on rare occassions they buy new ones from warp smiths. I am talking about SM's ofcourse.

Even during the Heresy the Butchers Nails drove them so crazy they completely ignored all strategy and even their own Primarch to try and close with the foe asap. Why would they be less lunatic now?

They are not dumb.

Even in that story they get pointlessly butchered by a guy on their own side, their gene-seed no doubt gone to permanent waste. Hell only through author wank does Kharn not just get immediately bombed to a red smear in that situation.

This.

>M-muh realism retard

Anger.

Also the Chaos Gods can bring back anyone they want, the only reason they haven't smashed the Imperium is because that would hurt them in the long run.

You're a retard. Khârn is on no one's side but his own. He's known as The Betrayer for a reason.

>>M-muh realism retard
>I have no answer so I'll just call this guy a retard
c'mon user, you can do it
just apply yourself a little and I'm sure you'll come up with a real answer

The World Eaters are flat-out retarded. Just to give a recent example when they hear Guilliman is back their immediate reaction isn't to team up to go kill him, but to go to war with *each other* for the right to hunt him down. Thereby ensuring the eventual "champion" will have the smallest warband possible, and that less blood will get spilled overall since all the losers aren't around to keep killing. That's the kind of attitude which makes them laughably unthreatening to the Imperium. No perspective.

Ah yes. "Plans". Let me tell you about plans.

Also one of Khorne's aspects is martial skill, which I think includes being a good tactician and strategist.
I'm sure that for every raving lunatic just rushing a line of guns that gets mentioned there's a clever but still bloodthirsty bastard moving to maximize losses on both sides, because Khorne doesn't care who bleeds as long as blood spills that doesn't.

I always assumed the Khorne brought them back to life all the time or something. Like Kharn and how he "dies" and then come back. Khorne is the most powerful of all the chaos gods, why wouldn't he be able to just bring back his mortal minions whenever he feels like it?

Khorne is the most meritocratic Chaos God, and largely is "safe too"
You know he largely supports being the best warrior and doesn't like pansy magic or backstabbing

And they have Kharn. who's a pretty cool guy

I doubt they're short of recruits

>Also one of Khorne's aspects is martial skill, which I think includes being a good tactician and strategist.
Great strat to murder your own men on the regular.

Please.

>We are now living in a future when people have forgotten that Khorne was also once a god of martial strategy and tactica
>We are now living in a future where people unironically believe that Bloodletters don't march to war in complex formations and just charge, swinging their big flaming sticks

Khorne's lore has been absolutely butchered in the past few editions, all because the writers can't handle him or his followers being anything less than roided-up retards. It's just another reason why, despite the company picking itself back up recently economically, the modern GW writers are just garbage.

You're right, the fluff doesn't support the idea that the World Eaters replenish their ranks in any way other than just letting in new CSMs who have recently become Berzerkers. I think I recall something about how the Black Legion has guys who know how to do the psycho surgery, but that only explains Black Legion.

Perhaps what GW was implying was that there were so many WEs from the Heresy that their massive casualties can be ignored since there's so many left over. Perhaps there is recruitment going on somewhere in the background by people who haven't completely fucking lost their minds. Maybe it depends on the warband and which allies/resources they've managed to gather. If it bothers you so much, just make some homebrew fluff that explains it to your satisfaction, and go with that. It's not like GW is going to kick your door down and demand fluff conformity or something.

mebbe ol buddy khorne simply brings them back, armor and all

if they have proven their worth

mebbe he does, for the champions like Kharn at least. For the others, I think it may be as simple as just somehow getting (i.e., kidnapping) other marines and forcefully ramming the Butcher's Nails into their heads. Loyalist Chapters like Blood Angels and their successors likely make prime recruiting grounds for Khorne Berzerkers if they fall. Who's to say that many berzerkers simply aren't Death Company who are so far gone that they've fallen to Khorne, or worse, don't even realize what they're doing?

Or maybe, Khorne, in his decision to oppose Slaneesh, has decided that sex for the purposes of purely procreating (and thus spawning mighty warriors) is now holy to him, in contrast to Slaneesh's degeneracy.

As such, he's given the virility back to his Khornate Space Marines, who plunder healthy women to impregnate, said women blessed so they can give birth to fully-grown Space Marines. No one thinks Khorne could actually make such an advancement, and thus no one ever asks him how he keeps his SM numbers stable. Tzeentch knows but he thinks it utterly hilarious and is keeping the secret to reveal it at a critical moment.

*so they can give birth to fully-implanted Space Marines.
Woops.

No no, fully grown. Armor, weapons, everything. We're in too deep, this is the new Veeky Forums fluff now.

>muh old superior lore
Bloodletters still have martial prowess and all you said and berzerkers were always buttfuck retarded, what the fuck are you talking about?

>they're universally presented as way too unstable to perform such small matters as maintenance

The fluff mentions that they possess "butcher-surgeons" who handle implanting the Nails into new recruits, and that some of them have gone to work for the Black Legion. So they aren't all mindless berserkers who can't do anything except scream at each other and hit things with axes.

That said, I doubt they do a great deal of recruiting. They don't try and harvest young children, train them, and turn them into new Astartes. Instead they accept converts and defections from other groups. Elements of Undivided legions who take to Khorne worship, or previously loyal Space Marines who fall to Chaos, will either seek out the World Eaters to pledge allegiance, or the World Eaters will kill their leaders and forcibly absorb the others into their ranks.

That sounds like the most plausible explanation. They fill their ranks by absorbing fully grown marines from other warbands instead of training their own from ground up. Maintenance etc. is done by serfs with very short lifespans.

It's not the most plausible thing, it's canon, i have before me 4th edition codex and it explicitly says khorne worshippers take the nails voluntarily and become berserkers(while joining the world eaters, there aren't canon berserkers who don't belong to them, though there probably are some) also for equipment they don't mantain their own, they act as mercenaries in exchange of equipment and maintenance.

There are Khorne Berzerkers in service to the Black Legion, in addition to surgeons capable of making more. So they don't all belong to the WE. Presumably the BL ones are more disciplined/less crazy, because I doubt Abaddon would tolerate a lack of nutcases killing his sorcerers and ruining his plans by Leeroy Jenkins'ing every five minutes. That Khorne-worshipping Daemon Prince in fall of Cadia seemed to have it together.

>Why doesn't a chaos faction in warhammer 40k operate like rational maximizers?

I have noooooooo idea.

>>We are now living in a future where people unironically believe that Bloodletters don't march to war in complex formations and just charge, swinging their big flaming sticks

Are you retarded? Nothing changed. It's said that Bloodletters in even the recent lore march in lock step rank and file.

This changes when they enter into battle.

>humbly sacrificing yourself instead of going out fighting against impossible odds

Seems very unKhornate.

I want to believe..
> Khorne lord of skulls and sex for the sole purpose of procreation.

They never really had an effective librarius. The Butcher's Nails were incompatible with being psychically active in the first place (since the crazy from the butcher's nails does not mix well with the voices in your head).

It amazes me how little the current gen of gamers know about The Gods and their followers.

Blood, Change, Excess, and Disease.
Red, blue, pink, green.
That's it!

Shows you know nothing of Khorne, then.

Does this mean Khorne is also the god of single mothers?

well most of them are pretty angry

In Traitor's Hate Kharn led a massive Khornate army straight into the teeth of Mechanicus guns with no regard for their own survival. And no avenue of retreat. Predictably, they all died except for Kharn, and he only survived because Abaddon made special provisions to rescue him. Which he was pissed about. Hundreds of marines with irreplaceable gene-seed lost for nothing.

Khorne confirmed for the god of harmless retards. The best thing that could happen to the Imperium is putting him in charge of the Chaos war effort.

Khorne just resurrects them if they kill enough Bloodletters/Daemons in his Realm.

It's my headcanon and kinda makes sense.