According to the new novel...

According to the new novel, Cawl had enough Primaris marines to resupply existing chapters and enough to build at least a couple dozen new ones.

The wording seemed to imply less than 100,000 but certainly more than 50,000.

This dude had a LEGION of space marines, the most powerful concentration of imperial power and he had it hidden in his martian garage for the last 10,000 years and no one noticed anything?

Really?

Other urls found in this thread:

warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/13th_Black_Crusade#Chapters_of_the_Adeptus_Astartes
the-conclave.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=1953.0
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

Yes, some of the P-marines have been in stasis for 10K years more or less.

>HERP DERP BUY NEW MODELS FAG.
-Cawl

Would you take a sneak into the garage vault of one of the most powerful motherfuckers in the AdMech and Imperium and not expect to be turned into a toilet cleaning servitor?

well he's a heretek too so...

Let me tell you about GW writers and numbers, on one example.

The number of Space Marines, before we even heard anything about Primaris.

There are said to be around one thousand chapters, counting around one thousand Marines. There are some that count more, not many though. And many are below strength due to casualties. But let us assume that those are not too high and there is about one million loyal space marines.

Now.

Black Legion is about 300 thousand, probably more

Huron is said to have almost the same. Let's say 250 thousand.

Word Bearers - over 150 thousand

Iron Warriors - over 100 thousand

That's 800 thousand already. Add the warbands from the remaining legions and countless renegade warbands.

There should easily be at least twice as many Chaos Marines as there are loyalists.

Which is bullshit. GW numbers are always bullshit. An army of a thousand supersoldiers cannot conquer a star system, even if they are invulnerable to the weapons used against them. So on and so forth.

>There are some that count more, not many though

Dark Angels are said to be at legion strenght on their own, not counting all their successor chapters. Same thing for the BTs. And SWs great companies are said to be as big as a chapter, and they have twelve of those.

I need you to realize the admech mined mars to shit. It's more machine than planet at this point.

Hiding 100.000 marines inside of mars when you'va got access to parts the mainline mechpriests do not know about is shit easy, it really doesn't take up that much space to store marines. Alhtough that number sounds high, it really isn't in the grandscheme of things. Shit that number is actually shit low if your building an army that would enter war on a galactice scale.

Most regular armies of today are lucky to account 40.000 and that's just to protect their slab of dirt. Even at full strength before the heresy with all 18 legions account for +/- 2.700.00 men that is not enough for a galactic army or even a feasible peace keeping force.

>Black Legion is about 300 thousand, probably more

Source?

Where are you getting those numbers

Dark Angels are NOT legion strength where did you get this idea?

Sure if you look at successor chapters, the Blood Angels, Fists, Ultras and Angels are practically a legion if they ever call but above strength chapters like Black Templars are only "1200" marines.

Wow 1200 marines, such big rule breaking. 5-7k at least makes their crusading everywhere somewhat plausible but 1200, what is that one extra crusading fleet?

>Dark Angels are said to be at legion strenght on their own, not counting all their successor chapters.
Wrong. Dark Angels are accused of legion building though by many because all successor chapters report to Azrael (mainly because of the Fallen). But the chapter is only ever at chapter strength.

>Same thing for the BTs.
hardly. they used to have around 6000 marines distributed among various crusades, but never in one place. in the new fluff however they are barely above chapter strength - which is a shitty retcon, if you ask me.

>And SWs great companies are said to be as big as a chapter, and they have twelve of those.
wrong. in the old fluff, great companies used to have 120 fighting men, not a chapter's worth.

Various sources man. I think number of Black Legionaries was mentioned in their supplement, I cannot remember. Word Bearers are from the third book of Word Bearers trilogy, and I cannot recall the Iron Warriors one.

I am aware I have given unsourced info, but the source is hard to find since there is no one place where Traitor Legions current strength is listed. This is no fanwank or headcannon though, it's all in GW/BL sources.

>Huron is said to have almost the same. Let's say 250 thousand.

Not to say GW is good or consistent with numbers. But that cannot possibly be true. The Red Corsairs are still made up of the remnants of a beat up renegade chapter. 1000 + various warbands could make them 2-5k sure whatever I could believe it. Thats a force that can bring a sector to its knees. But 250,000 chaos marines could carve out a dark imperium and no one could stop it.

The best way to back calculate would be to figure out what chapters have committed to the attack and defense of certain systems or campaigns.

The 13th Black Crusade, the most devastating attack into the Imperium to date mustered

warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/13th_Black_Crusade#Chapters_of_the_Adeptus_Astartes

28 chapters. Some at full, others at very minimal strength. For the sake of calculation let's say they are full chapters.

That makes them 28,000 marines mustered against the biggest danger to the Imperium in this millennium. Now there could be more or less chaos marines but the Imperium would have committed a force to try and match and defeat Chaos. It certainly could be 50,000 chaos marines that is at least a "realistical" ball park figure but certainly not 300,000.

it always cracks me up when i hear that a space marine chapter is only 1000 men strong. i don't care how super they are they aren't accomplishing shit even on a planetary scale with such a small force.

A plague marine died to a few dozen imperial guardsmen, I can't see how 250k CSM could carve out their own empire when the planetary defence forces number in tens of millions.

Space marines dont conquer a system on their own, they just win all the battles. Its up to the administratum, navy, guard, pdf, ecclesiary, inquisition, and any other imperial orginization involved to instill government and order after the space marines leave.

And even then its generally a surgical strike, a single stubborn fortress normal guard assaults and bombardments cant take, but a terminator assault can. Stuff like that. Remember that a platoon of normal soldiers follow in the footsteps of each super soldier. Thats how I think about it anyway.

Exactly, that's what I am talking about. The GW numbers are bullshit, especially the example I have given. Huron is often said to be close rival to Abaddon when it comes to the forces he commands. Also, Angron was said to lead his Dominion of Fire with fifty thousand Berzerkers at his back. Fifty fucking thousand. And it was Angron's own campaign of genocide. That would bean Abaddon, when uniting the various Legions and warbands, would actually command hundreds of thousands of Traitor Legionarries, many of them veterans of the Long War, and untold billions of heretical troops. Which means he would pulverise the twenty eight chapters and their allies rallied against him without breaking sweat.

Which again leads us to conclusion, GW numbers are bullshit. Almost all the time.

GW re retconned that to them being several thousand again according to the indeces. I have no idea about where the guy is grabbing his other numbers though.

Either a space marine chapter can take a world of a hundred million humans or it falls to a dozen baseliners.

We cant have both. One of these has to be an edgecase that rarely happens because even during the golden age of the Great Crusade 200k marine legions were limited to just the Ultras and Iron Warriors IIRC.

You're literally retarded congratulations. No really, if you dont understand the inconsistency of 40k fluff then you must have an IQ of 40.

Its almost like the fluff exists to push their miniatures on us.

Or like they don't actually give a fuck

Pretty sure its that the fluff exists to sell miniatures. Sorry to boost your bubble, kid.

This, chapters should be at least 10k battle ready marines for the kind of losses you hear about them taking in the fluff. It's even more ridiculous when you think about how few vehicles they have and how easily destroyed those are. Oh, a Tau storm surge just BTFO 3 of your chapters priceless landraiders and 6 of your rhinos, there goes half of your armory!

10k marines
Several hundred tanks and aircraft
Thousands of scouts/neophytes to keep up with attrition
That would make far more sense

Werent the legions organized exactly like that during the great crusade?

legions were anywhere from 100k to 200k strong.

>this is supposed to be a force large enough to take a planet
>this is a force that can beat an ork waaagh or tyranid fleet numbering in the billions
>this force is equal to millions of guard
Wut. Anything but legion strength seems ridiculous

even legions sound a bit undermanned when you look at the numbers. for example the real world US army has 1.4 million men. that is one country, on one planet. ultramarines when the horus heresy started had about 250,000 men.

Whenever someone asked, he shouted at them looking very menancingly. If someone couldn't be shouted down, he just got indignant, told them to stay out of his business, he does everything for the Emperor, yadda yadda. Seriously, the guy is insufferable cunt, I am glad to be off this rock soon.

Sincerely, Likehell Iam Givingyou Myname

>Now.
>Black Legion is about-
They didn't actually use hard numbers for the traitors until the old designers started to leave and the crazies took over. Everything under The Overfiend was handled as if it were an in-universe document.

Individual chapters of the legions could have that many, yes.

That is an analogy that only makes sense if marines fought like conventional forces like today's military, which they emphatically don't.
A SM campaign involves blowing up shit from orbit, sending down elite strike teams to disable shields so that they can blow shit up from orbit, then sending down simultaneous rapid insertion forces to every major leadership stronghold via drop pod, uparmored smash and kill gunships and teleporters, killing all the heads of state, and fucking off.
They do not stay to pacify the populace, they destroy their ability to fight and cow the planet into surrendering, which also happens to be a victory state, and the fleet buggers off to the next world, maybe leaving a single strike cruiser to watch for embers to be crushed before heading off.

But marines weren't the only combatants during that conflict, were they?

The US army counts clerks and cooks as soldiers. Space Marines are almost all fighters.
Think before you post user.

whenever they say "a company conquered a planet in two hours" someone else than marines did most of the work

Even if only 10% of soldiers were actual fighters, it would still be over half of the marines. And again, one country. I think ge has a point.

>Started new army of Iron Knights SM
>Red shirt recommends Primaris Marines
>Explain that lore-wise they're on a penitent crusade
>Watch him bend over backwards trying to sell me these new models without infringing upon lore again

Of all the bullshit that has happened in 40k lore, THIS is what twists your arm?

Actual combat personnel is like 10% of that if not less. The guard should have at least the same ratio, if not more in favour of the support if we count the navy too. Marines are 1000+ only for the combat guys, and each of them will require more than 10 servitors and serfs

More like "A full company crashed through Evil McBadguys roof, slaughtered everyone inside and disabled the shielings. Then the Guard cleaned up the rest. BUT HOLY EMPERORS ASSHAIR, HAVE YOU HEARD? SPACE MARINES! MOTHERFUCKING SPACE MARINES ACTUALLY EXIST! THE EMPERORS ANGELS OF DEATH ARE ACTUALLY REAL!"
To most of the Imperium the arrival of Space Marines would be like the second coming of Jesus, only this time he's a 7 foot tall, walking tank that is mightily pissed. Nobody cares about the Guard after a spectacle like that.

Your BL and RC numbers are massively inflated user.

Hes not, hes padding the actual numbers, doing the math wrong, or headcannoning without knowing it.

I don't know about you, but if I was a non-heretic, non-cultist force, I would immediately surrender the moment I heard that the Space Marines had taken the field.

I mean, fuck fighting Space Marines. No way we're doing that.

nah, space marines don't have to make sense

>Dark Angels are said to be at legion strenght on their own
No they are not.

They are functionally a legion because all their successors still report to and take orders from the Rock.

Officially, however, they are not a legion. The only Chapter that might qualify is the Black Templars, but there are varying sources that decry their numbers.

That sums up most of the Wh40K universe. To expect logic and realistic consistency is a folly. It's mostly rule of cool turned up as high as the knob allows. Then someone ripped off the knob, got some pliers and turned it some more.

How did he proceed from there? "They can't have those because of defining fluff reason" seems pretty definite, like how my Reductor have no automata because they're Genetors and mistrust them to fuck, so I make counts-as monsters instead.

He was trying to argue that I could run them as an allied unit helping them with their crusade. I'm not a WAAC player, I don't really give a shit about the new stuff, I just like running fun fluffy armies but he was too blinded by sales speech to realise.

>Word Bearers - over 150 thousand

Word Bearers have only one tenth of the numbers of the Black Legion.

I want to read a story about Marines trying that kind of thing on a proper military target world like a Forge World or something else with properly scaled infrastructure and armed forces to a galactic scale and getting utterly owned after their oneshot decapitation strike doesn't work.

Thing about that kind of strike is that if there's too much infrastructure and hardened bunkers and such for your paltry 1000 marines to handle, you're fucked. If you stay and fight, you will be bogged down and you will die. They can't take planets that aren't just a couple crappy cities or otherwise extremely centralised because of sheer scale. You'd probably need a at least a few hundred thousand Marines for a lasting campaign like that.

It makes me think that the vast majority of planets in 40k are more a few cities and a bunch of outposts, not a full Hive World or even approaching Earth's current population/industrialization.

Well, it's a new edition and new models. Obviously they will try to push it onto everyone.

2nd post best post

>Random allies showing up for no reason.
Body. Unless I have a converted model and are just using the rules for the need of having rules the furthest I go is the odd Inquisitor hanging around with my Admech, since there's an Ordo that does that.

Never had any of the staff at my local GW try anything like that, but the manager is probably too busy corralling the six million kids.

>approaching Earth's current population/industrialization.

>Implying Earth wouldn't be crippled and dying just by knocking out some satellites and torching farmland

Its like horrible fanfiction.

So what I'm getting from this is that Cawl has the initiative of a fucking calculator.

I mean, sure, the Primaris Marines were made on Guilliman's orders, but Koorland could've REALLY used those to help rebuild the Imperial Fists chapter back in M32 after he became the only Fist left...

Then again, the Mechanicus are a bunch of secretive dicks, so I can't say I'm surprised...

Belisarius Cawl is no mere god

>Koorland could've REALLY used those to help rebuild the Imperial Fists chapter back in M32

Who says they were ready in M32?
It's noted in Dark Imperium that Cawl was busy at the time and barely noticed the Beast.

Not actually true of the guard. The Munitorum comprises the vast majority of logistical support and the Navy itself is beholden only to itself despite ideally working in tandem with guard. IG may as well be 11b by another name. When IG numbers are given it should be assumed that it is close to 90% direct combat personnel.

>Then someone ripped off the knob, got some pliers and turned it some more.
>And when using pliers failed, that someone simply WILLED the 'rule of cool' knob to go even higher
Because let's be honest here. The Orks are the ones responsible for that knob going so damn high, simply because "Moar dakka an' moar fightin' cool-lookin' gits!"
You're welcome by the way.

Yeah, but we wouldn't be in a huge amount of danger from one thousand guys with basic APCs (Rhinos aren't anywhere near as much better than Chimeras as Marines are to Guardsmen) and regular aircraft. That's more an orbital bombardment, which defeats the point rather. A successful decap strike on a planet as big as Earth only gets a few things of importance, they won't singlehandedly cripple us to the point we can't point enough heavy ordnance at them to deal with their pitiful numbers.

You can't just leave out that Marines have space ships.
When comms go down, supply lines are severed and leadership assassinated your ordnance won't do shit sitting in a shed somewhere.

>That pic
Fucking saved.

If you send a team of superhumans to take down air defenses (assuming they can somehow through magic hit your ships) the power grids possibly a few nuclear silos, then bomb Washington and state capitals to nothing, the US is gone.
Rinse and repeat for other nations, Earth is done for.

If you are lazy: raze the farmlands from orbit.

Since it's the imperium you're talking about you won't even need to worry about multiple nations.

Guys, space marines don't conquer or defend world, they're more like commandos, they strike deep within the ennemy lines, destroy many strategics targets and go away.

It's the Imperial Guard who defend the worlds of the Imperium.
It's the Imperial Guard who conquer the worlds, not the space marines.

Most of you, also forget that a legion is not only 100k of space marines. It's also a powerfull navy, cohorts of Skitarii, the support of the Legio Titanica and billions of guardsmen.

That was not the 100k SM who make the legions so powerfull, that was the fact that a primarch could command titans, billions of guardsmen and many starships. All of this power concentred. That's what the legions were so good at war.

>SM can't conquer a world
But they can, they can't hold it, but they can take down a world.

>It's noted in Dark Imperium that Cawl was busy at the time and barely noticed the Beast.
Now that I think about it, considering that the Beast showed up and kicked in the Imperium's teeth only a couple thousand years after the heresy, and Corvus Corax was an emo dick/really smart man and didn't share the Emprah's research notes on how to make Primarchs as well as his own experience rapid cloning space marines, you probably have a point.

I'm probably giving Belisaurus "Walking Plot Device" Cawl too much credit on how fast he was creating the Primaris Marines in this scenario...

ya know what's shit?
getting interested in w40k
getting diinterested in w40k because theres no progress in... well, everything
finding out 2-and-a-half years later that it's
ENDTIMES

>It's the Imperial Guard who conquer the worlds, not the space marines.
hey bro you're wrong

>ENDTIMES

But things are just heating up.

Honestly guys

You're way overthinking things, it will never make sense.

For one thing 1000 dudes will never be able to carry enough ammo to stem a tyranid hivefleet. How the fuck can 1000 dudes stop 1 million tyranids coming at them?

How can a 100 man battle company teleport into a battleshield with tens of thousands of security crew and have enough ammo to kill all of them?

It will never make sense.

100 bolter rounds each, 10000 mini rockets essentially. Could a Space Marine carry that much? Probably way more really.

Plus sidearms.

Plus melee weapons.

Plus fists.

Plus bombs.

Plus resupplies.

Plus psyker bullshit.

Plus gigantic space-marine cocks

Most chapters would never engage such a target without Imperial support as it would be lunacy.
It would follow more along these lines assuming dedicated Navy and I support:
>IN and SM fleet arrival in system
>fleet powers ahead until contact with opfor defense fleet is made
>torpedo and nova cannon long range barrage commences to break up formations, corral forces, and suppress long range retaliation fire
>SM fleet hangs behind IN firing line performing active auger sweeps to identify enemy defenses
>as fleets close full engagement commences
>narrow spread torpedo salvos are targeted at capital ships and interceptors are launched to screen incoming ordnance
>SM vessels close directly behind vanguard Navy cruisers allowing the heavier vessels to absorb enemy fire and prep engines for full burn
>third torpedo salvo fires in narrow spread
>IN frigates, strike craft, and SM Strike Cruisers ignite full burn directly behind launched ordnance to punch through main opfor fleet
>ships-of-the-line begin an old dance as macro batteries and lances exchange fire while SM forces supported by frigates rush towards planetary orbital defense installations ignoring opfor defense fleet using their speed and the SM vessels' heavy armor to survive the gauntlet
>IN escort frigates interdict enemy reserve forces to make an opening for the Strike Cruisers
>thunderhawks and boarding torpedoes are launched at orbitals, cruisers close with large installations such as orbital docks and space stations
>Space Marines live up to their name sake and commence boarding actions on enemy defenses
>enemy weapons are taken offline or retargeted against defense fleet, greatly supporting the Navy and allowing an avenue for bulk troop landers to the planet's low orbit
>strike cruisers and thunderhawks now begin bombardment and rapid assaults on enemy ground defenses to suppress anti-ship weapons fire to allow transports to land
>approximate time from fleet engagement to planetfall ~1 week

Cont.

>it's a bunch of anons try and apply logic and coherency to 40k writing/fluff episode

How can anyone be into 40k for any length of time and not realize none of it makes any fucking sense , it's shit thrown against a wall to sell plastic models and paint and give a little context to your man-child hobby.

It's pretty much said that there were 40,000 Primaris Marines in the Ultima Founding. Half went to new chapters, 20,000 went to unnumbered sons

Cont.
>SM orbital attacks intensify against ground based defenses; these are the first wave of drop pod assaults
>thunderhawk and land speeder squadrons begin interdiction of ground based response forces to give IG room to breath and organize planetside; more transports can now land with more defenses knocked out by SM strikes
>communication infrastructure becomes priority target for SM forces, followed by power poduction; defense infrastructure and enemy forces are targets of opportunity
>space engagement ends, IN moves into orbit over world
>with outlying comms and power offline enemy defense forces are slow to respond allowing planetside SM forces to evade enemy force concentrations, the ponderous Guard however becomes fully engaged
>targets reprioritize to defense shield generators, munitions depots and air defenses become new secondary targets
>once targets are destroyed SM forces place locator beacons and extract while IG hold ground taken; IN moves into low orbit along with battle barges
>lull in fighting allows enemy forces to surge towards front bringing them out of hardened defenses; high saturation orbital bombardment commences; beacons allowed for accurate targeting of the more specialized SM bombardment cannons against hard targets
>with mushroom clouds still high in the sky, IG forces surge into softened enemy ground; SM launch full scale assault near enemy command targeting any remaining shields and support
>as final ground defenses fall, teleport homers lock and terminator units teleport into the heart of the enemy command echelon
>enemy command and cordination is now dead, major defenses down, enemy logistics heavily disrupted and forces now exposed to further orbital attack
At this point most marine forces extract and the IG commence "mop up" operations (this may still be a full fledged war for many weeks to come but the enemy is blind, disorganized, and starving for want of proper supply lines).

Because it's fun for some people to create some level of internal plausibility even if absurd from an outside perspective. Not everyone prescribes to the "it's magic, I ain't gotta explain shit" approach to settings, even over the top one.
If you don't care for it there is no reason to even be in the thread friend.

Could have taken over the Imperium in the name of whatever greater power.

Clearly, this man is a saint and not a heretek.

I agree. It might be an illusion, but seeing what happened to fantazy wh I can't help but see wh40k getting the same treatment right now.

And it fills me with apprehension, because I can't imagine something more retarded then what became of wh fantazy - Age of Sigmar. But there is a chance that it will be imagined and done by GW.

What seems stranger is that a man lives for 10k years, seems very fishy. He is either a space marine/custodes gone admech, an artificial intelligence or a number of people each becoming successor of memories and work of the previous one.

A thing you are forgetting, though, is that the enemy is also allowed to be smart. They aren't going to sit there while you painstakingly work your way through your list of important targets with less than a thousand Marines. Let's start with a Forge World 'cause we know what's defending those.

First up, several billion Skitarii including their tanks and walkers and such. They can't be taken "out of communication" because the Noosphere is woven into every comms node on the planet, and they sure as hell don't have time to purge the entire net. They won't trade very well individually with Marines, but they can operate for decades without support or infrastructure, and here they are being replaced constantly by the factories. They aren't surrendering, that's for sure.

Second, tens of millions of Cult Mech Kataphrons and similar. Given they can crush Carnifex with torsion beams in about a second, I'd be surprised if they don't kill at least a decent chunk of the Marine skirmishing and sabotage teams given they're dime a dozen and will be fucking everywhere important in the dozens. Also utterly replaceable.

Third, significant orbital defence batteries and void shields over major forge-fanes, which don't do much aside from stopping a direct strike there but do provide staging posts.

The enemy forces will not necessarily be slow as fuck and consisting solely of idiots with lasguns, is what I'm trying to say. The big thing in your strategy here is the orbital superiority and bombardment, and then fucking with the enemy to stop them interfering in the Guard operations. Scions can do the latter, Navy can do the former, there doesn't seem to be anything here you really need Space Marines for.

I'm not arguing that a combined Imperial invasion of a planet like that wouldn't be able to do it eventually (with GW's trademark invisible Heavy Casualties, but the Admech aren't allowed to win things so no surprise there.

>Cont.

I'm arguing that Marines are overkill for small battles and unnecessary for the most part for larger ones, since other people can do their jobs in any given moment well and they couldn't hope to succeed against any opponent of any real scale without a couple dozen Chapters at least. They're exceedingly good at one kind of battle, the medium-scale planetary rebellion with poor troops and easily disabled infrastructure, comms and command, as well as no mobile or abundant means of putting down Marines that would greatly restrict their raiding value.

Couple that with their extreme expense, and I would think that Marines would be primarily useful to the Imperium as a propaganda and enforcement force, solving all those problems that would be a largely unproductive faff for Guard and such.

The thing I'm annoyed about is that some try to argue they're the be-all end-all of warfare and can own anything on their own, and then the writers continue to write in get-outs and fiat to maintain this. It's approaching Starfist levels of special forces wank, except this time it's "decapitation strikes with MUHREENS will kill everything ever and nobody will ever be prepared to handle that and cause the Marines to overrreach themselves" after they realize there's no way the Marines can win an open war alone from sheer scale, rather than "Light infantry with decent anti-tank portable weapons will kill everything ever and nobody will ever find a way to handle them".

>a man lives for 10k years
Not too unusual for Admech, they will insist on doing that with all those augments. Personally I like the idea he's a clone lineage, but check out the-conclave.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=1953.0 - these all showed up in canon somewhere, or in the FFG books (yes, I know, questionable canon.) They have a lot of ways to achieve immortality. I like the idea he's a gestalt mind like Galatea personally, just united, to explain his capabilities in a billion different fields.

The guard and the humans are the real heroes imo.

Well, most of ot fanwank and GW needing to sell miniatures, and since Soace Marines are easily recognisable and basically the face of the company at this point, they sorta must kick every ass imaginable.
Forgeworld does a better job at describing and explaining imperial warzones from what I've heard though.

agreed

But most CSM are either insane retards or biologically mutated psuedo-marines that were just decent cultists who had corrupted geneseed shoved up their asses.
Loyalists marines are outnumbered, but they're better.

They do. Istvaan V was an awesome battle, they give stuff like Titans proper respect, the Vraks campaigns were really well written, etcetera. It's why at the moment I prefer 30k to 40k, although 8e looks pretty nice for pickup games.

>I want to read a story about Marines trying that kind of thing on a proper military target world

Emperor's warbringers did that on a hive world. They infiltrated scouts through commercial cargos, planted charges to disable power and create havoc, teleported terminators to destroy armored and air forces before they could muster and kill the command structure, then used air superiority to control the main avenues. Only then they deployed the rest of their force and did the rest of their job, which was destroying a relic and not holding ground.

>and getting utterly owned after their oneshot decapitation strike doesn't work.

That happened to the avenging sons on Taros

Exactly my point. The numbers you read are all combat personnel, the logistics come from the munitorum, which is always unaccounted for, and the navy brings a terrific force multiplier that involves tens of thousands of men per ship.

I agree with you as a standalone force. I have always however viewed any major conflict as being a combined effort with marines acting as special forces+ that also does not tax your logistics. Their cost is ephemeral. They are virtually autonomous with their own forges, munitions, medical, voidships, recruitment, and training. Having them show up to assist in a major war zone frees up your specialized units for other tasks and they function as an effective force multiplier within their expertise.
And their expertise are:
1 Boarding actions

2 Orbital assaults

3 Manouver warfare

Nothing really more than that. All of their equipment including their starships are designed around this.

I don't think you and I are really disagreeing on much. I don't see a single chapter ever taking on something like a forgeworld or any kind of fortified planet without a lot of outside help.

It is a known fact GW and BL do not understand two digit numbers.
Hell two digit numbers are hard for them.

To be fair, this is Mars. Most of it is the tech equivalent of an underhive mixed with a daemon world mixed with a nid digestive pool.

Anyone still got the link to the mega file? I lost mine.

There are as many X as the plot demands. All numbers are arbitrary, they've said this before

This is why I'm picking Astral Knights for my Primaris, bring a chapter back from the dead in a manner of speaking. Gona put them on necron style bases and cover then in chains, tabards and purity seals BT style. Its gona be tight.

It does suck though for existing chapters that wouldn't have then for fluff purposes but I'm generally ok with numarines. With half the Imperium cut off, Cadia gone and the orks itching for a big scrap it makes sense to throw the loyalists some kind of bone.

I can easily add them to my admech army too, they can be assigned to ensure that the Primaris are functioning within acceptable parameters.

Proceeding to post a short comic about what marines are like to the average citizen.

...

...

>what are space nazi templars are to citizens
fix.

...

How's that 1000-marine limit going for you, battle-brother?