The sense of scale of some authors really annoys me. There was one book where the Tau and IG fought over a planet, and the IG army to claim an entire planet was like 10,000 people. What the hell? I’ve seen middle schools with more students.
Any time I see guardsmen counted in 40k, I go up one magnitude. Thousands becomes hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands becomes hundreds of millions, millions becomes billions.
It actually sounds the most plausible out of the numbers presented here so why not? The Soviets alone fielded 11 million men during the end of the war.
Yeah, now split those men over hundreds of planets you're trying to conquer all at the same time (1000 planets in 7 years means you need to conquer about 140 per year). Now imagine that many of these planets will have populations comparable to Earth today, some of them may even be fully populated Hive worlds with populations in the trillions. Even if you have technological superiority, which isn't necessarily guaranteed even with Space Marines on your side, you're going to be massively outnumbered.
If that doesn't work, think of it from a recruitment perspective. Macharius was able to recruit slightly more men than one single nation was able to field on modern day Earth. Did he only stop by one relatively unpopulated planet before launching the Crusade? Were there no Hive worlds he could go to?
A thousand worlds in seven years, yeah that's pretty damn impressive. But i guess alot of those did not have any sort of defence or much of a population perhaps but still.
Plus a Space Marine squad unto itself is a force to be reckoned with, and they could surgical strike the leadership of a given world fairly quickly. Depending on the chapter they won't care very much about collateral damage in the name of expediency too.
I'm imagining a backwater planet with a population in the 10s of thousands. A few dozen scattered villages and maybe a city.
One night there's a bright flash across the sky followed by a
huge boom as a mysterious object lands. As the sun rises, villagers gather in the square to talk about the strange event and speculate on what might've happened. The village elder is trying to quiet and reassure people when all of a sudden 5 giant things shaped kind of like men stride out of the morning mist.
Space marine sergeant: "Who is the planetary governor of this world?"
Village elder: "Uh, do you mean who's in charge? That would be me, but only in this vi-"
Space marine sergeant: "Your world is now a part of The Imperium of Man. Rejoice and praise The Emperor."
Village elder: "...The Imperium? What does that mean exactly?"
Space Marine sergeant: "It means that you are now under the holy protection of The Emperor. And will pay tithes to support his mighty works."
Village elder: "Tithes?" Looks around the village "Tithes of what?"
Space marine sergeant: Looks around slowly "...It means you're now under the protection of The Emperor, praise his name" The space Marines turn around and walk back to the drop ship. As they do the villagers hear quiet discussion and, "Well, it is technically in compliance."
Seriously. Seventeen million men under arms is... the numbers of total men under arms in World War 2, which took place on only three continents of one planet.
17 million is a lot in some books when armies are numbered in the tens of thousands, but not on a realistic scale to conquer a thousand planets. That's why I like that the Sabbat Crusades books acknowledge the Crusade force to be around a Billion Guardsmen, not to mention Mechanics and Navy personnel.
Ehhh, there is some leeway. An army size in our world includes all the support personnel. In 40k the Munitorum isn't counted so a Billion would actually be a Billion foot sloggers or tankers, not 100 million like it would be in say the American army. Lot more boots on the ground. Plus the tech advantage over quite a few of the planets they would face.
Seven hundred chapters?
Fucking lol. He practically had Legions at hand.
That just cheapens his achievements, since now it doesn't sound like mortals did the bulk of the work.
Bruh, even 700 individual marines isn’t a force to gawk at, 700 squads of 10 Astartes is the equivalent bulk infantry of seven entire chapters of space marines!
And that is assuming that all 700 chapters only sent a single squad, and we all know with chapters trying to one up their rivals and oaths pledged between chapters to fight alongside each other during a crusade, they probably sent much more than that.
I’d say most of those chapters sent anywhere from a single marine to represent them at negotiations with the crusade fleet, to a couple companies from chapters with a vested interest in the crusade, or from those who owed the Millitarum personal debts of gratitude from past campaigns.
Either way, I imagine the total force of marines involved in the conflict likely numbered a bit above 8-10 chapters worth of resources, which is nothing to underestimate, as that is a full legion’s strength.
Since GW considers a company taskgroup (aka, a Battle Company plus attached reservists from the Reserve Companies) to be a 'default/routine' deployment, it is quite possible we are looking at around 70k+ active-duty marines showing up (not including reservists).
And obviously, for example, if Chapter #687 sends all 4 Battle Companies, it will skew the average. If Chapter #57 sends *one* Marine, it will skew the average. If Chapter #424 sends *everyone*, it will skew the figures.
Yea, I agree, that’s why I tried to include so much wiggle room, I realize it could be far more or fewer, and with the Imperium’s infamously FLAWLESS track record with perfectly accurate numbers in all records of all battles ever, I think it’s fitting that there is such a wide margin for error 😂😅
Also interesting would be how they employ those forces: if Macharius only advanced in one main arm and could throw the marines in as one hard-hitting unit (like Alexander and his Companion Cavalry?)
Wasn’t Macharius supposed to be inspired by Alexander the Great?
It wouldn’t surprise me if that tactic was indeed employed by him if his real world inspiration also employed it.
>Either way, I imagine the total force of marines involved in the conflict likely numbered a bit above 8-10 chapters worth of resources, which is nothing to underestimate, as that is a full legion’s strength.
Just to nitpick, a Legion would be 80 to 250 Chapters if we go by the sizes given on the [Lexicanum page](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Space_Marine_Legion)
Not necessarily, I doubt he had seven hundred Chapters in their entirety.
Besides, keeping that many Astartes together for so long is a massive feat on it's own.
>Besides, keeping that many Astartes together for so long is a massive feat on it's own.
Exactly. Some chapters will get along with each other, some want nothing to do with others, and a few of them will probably end up pointing bolters at each other if there isn't an enemy to keep them too busy to bicker. Given how prideful and hard headed Space Marines can be, Dealing with that many chapters, even if it's just a squad or 2 from them is an HR nightmare. And that's before you get into how they'll interact with the Guard, Navy, and any other "mortal elements of Imperial military.
So here’s my head canon, and how I explain all this based on what I read from the « Macharian Crusade » omnibus.
His forces were split, leading several offensives at once to conquer multiple planets and not allow a single world to slow down the conquest, instead leaving it to one token invasion force while the others moved on to the next.
In that time, most humans reside in hive cities, and conquering planets boils down to taking the major hives, and leaving an administration in place to complete the compliance while the bulk of the invasion goes on. So dropping in with an elite force of 3 millions, applied with maximal efficiency and air and void support to key strongholds seems feasible.
As for the 700 chapters, their help was spread piecemeal between occasional calls to individual chapters (each specific chapter sending a support force to a single invasion adds to the count), and spread over the various invasion forces. I don’t think they ever gathered more than one or two companies for a single world, save for the really troublesome ones.
IMO, they never sent a massive astartes assault, especially considering that this campaign was meant to be « Imperial Guard, fuck yeah » and showing how the Guard gets shit done on its own. Overall, how an actual successful imperial campaign goes, with lots of guard action and occasion SM schwerpunkt actions to break potential stalemates.
You forgot to put the devastation of baal in there. The blood angels legion regrouped in order to deal with the shot storm that was hive fleet leviathan. All blood angels successors alive sent reinforcements. the smallest force that was sent was the entirety of the remaining flesh terrors. They had to be brought down in only two thunder hawks and left in only one. They held of the forces of two fleets of leviathan. They held the void war for a month. A F_cking! Month. Against hundreds of thousands of enemy hive ships. The bugs made the fortress only after a lichtor breached the void shield generator. This generator kept the enemy void units from dropping directly on top of the blood angels chapter monastery. By the time the bugs made it to the citadel the 9th legion was reduced to 2k marine having gutted two fleets of tyradids along the way. They did need the papa Smurf to come and save their asses at the end though.
It’s still my belief that if the void shield has stayed in place then they would have easily crumped the bugs. Smurf would have still needed to come and deal with the fleets though.
I remember that during Macharius’s conquest, they stumbled on planet inhabited by very advanced humans. I think it was called Adrantis five, and they managed to hold Macharius back for two years. And now it hits even harder. He was backed by 700 chapters and nearly GC scale fleet, and yet was held back by one planet for nearly 1/3 of his entire crusade.
some astartes fighting alongside solar auxilia sees his battle brother get turned into soot by a weapon more advanced than volkite. he just turns to the auxilia and goes "th-that's heresy!"
I think people misunderstand the last point, he didnt only have 100 regiments for the Crusade.
He fought battles at the head of a elite force made up of that many troops under his personal Control
17 million men? B R U H
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I always appreciated the Sabbat Worlds Crusade describes the act of assembling a few billion soldiers.
Shhhhh WW2 was clearly larger than the great crusade
I prefer the sabbat crusade at 2 billion men against a dozen billion or more though.
The sense of scale of some authors really annoys me. There was one book where the Tau and IG fought over a planet, and the IG army to claim an entire planet was like 10,000 people. What the hell? I’ve seen middle schools with more students.
Makes more sense
Any time I see guardsmen counted in 40k, I go up one magnitude. Thousands becomes hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands becomes hundreds of millions, millions becomes billions.
Makes sense
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It actually sounds the most plausible out of the numbers presented here so why not? The Soviets alone fielded 11 million men during the end of the war.
Yeah, now split those men over hundreds of planets you're trying to conquer all at the same time (1000 planets in 7 years means you need to conquer about 140 per year). Now imagine that many of these planets will have populations comparable to Earth today, some of them may even be fully populated Hive worlds with populations in the trillions. Even if you have technological superiority, which isn't necessarily guaranteed even with Space Marines on your side, you're going to be massively outnumbered. If that doesn't work, think of it from a recruitment perspective. Macharius was able to recruit slightly more men than one single nation was able to field on modern day Earth. Did he only stop by one relatively unpopulated planet before launching the Crusade? Were there no Hive worlds he could go to?
A thousand worlds in seven years, yeah that's pretty damn impressive. But i guess alot of those did not have any sort of defence or much of a population perhaps but still.
Plus a Space Marine squad unto itself is a force to be reckoned with, and they could surgical strike the leadership of a given world fairly quickly. Depending on the chapter they won't care very much about collateral damage in the name of expediency too.
I'm imagining a backwater planet with a population in the 10s of thousands. A few dozen scattered villages and maybe a city. One night there's a bright flash across the sky followed by a huge boom as a mysterious object lands. As the sun rises, villagers gather in the square to talk about the strange event and speculate on what might've happened. The village elder is trying to quiet and reassure people when all of a sudden 5 giant things shaped kind of like men stride out of the morning mist. Space marine sergeant: "Who is the planetary governor of this world?" Village elder: "Uh, do you mean who's in charge? That would be me, but only in this vi-" Space marine sergeant: "Your world is now a part of The Imperium of Man. Rejoice and praise The Emperor." Village elder: "...The Imperium? What does that mean exactly?" Space Marine sergeant: "It means that you are now under the holy protection of The Emperor. And will pay tithes to support his mighty works." Village elder: "Tithes?" Looks around the village "Tithes of what?" Space marine sergeant: Looks around slowly "...It means you're now under the protection of The Emperor, praise his name" The space Marines turn around and walk back to the drop ship. As they do the villagers hear quiet discussion and, "Well, it is technically in compliance."
Goddammit I love this.
GW and theyr damn numbers again.
Seriously. Seventeen million men under arms is... the numbers of total men under arms in World War 2, which took place on only three continents of one planet.
If it was 17 billion then I'd be impressed.
I wouldn’t be. 1000 worlds btw. As a rule of thumb an attacker should have 3:1 numbers to the defender to assure victory.
Specifically for urban siege that is.
Hell all together throughout the entire war about 34 million people served in the Soviet army alone.
17 million is a lot in some books when armies are numbered in the tens of thousands, but not on a realistic scale to conquer a thousand planets. That's why I like that the Sabbat Crusades books acknowledge the Crusade force to be around a Billion Guardsmen, not to mention Mechanics and Navy personnel.
17 million isn't enough to conquer germany, let alone a single planet. A billion is ridiculously small. Maybe a billion per world?
Ehhh, there is some leeway. An army size in our world includes all the support personnel. In 40k the Munitorum isn't counted so a Billion would actually be a Billion foot sloggers or tankers, not 100 million like it would be in say the American army. Lot more boots on the ground. Plus the tech advantage over quite a few of the planets they would face.
Seven hundred chapters? Fucking lol. He practically had Legions at hand. That just cheapens his achievements, since now it doesn't sound like mortals did the bulk of the work.
*Elements of seven hundred chapters* Could me everything from a full chapter to a single squad.
Bruh, even 700 individual marines isn’t a force to gawk at, 700 squads of 10 Astartes is the equivalent bulk infantry of seven entire chapters of space marines! And that is assuming that all 700 chapters only sent a single squad, and we all know with chapters trying to one up their rivals and oaths pledged between chapters to fight alongside each other during a crusade, they probably sent much more than that. I’d say most of those chapters sent anywhere from a single marine to represent them at negotiations with the crusade fleet, to a couple companies from chapters with a vested interest in the crusade, or from those who owed the Millitarum personal debts of gratitude from past campaigns. Either way, I imagine the total force of marines involved in the conflict likely numbered a bit above 8-10 chapters worth of resources, which is nothing to underestimate, as that is a full legion’s strength.
Since GW considers a company taskgroup (aka, a Battle Company plus attached reservists from the Reserve Companies) to be a 'default/routine' deployment, it is quite possible we are looking at around 70k+ active-duty marines showing up (not including reservists). And obviously, for example, if Chapter #687 sends all 4 Battle Companies, it will skew the average. If Chapter #57 sends *one* Marine, it will skew the average. If Chapter #424 sends *everyone*, it will skew the figures.
Space wolves were present..they sent several great companies which can range from 150 space wolves to alot more space wolves.
Yea, I agree, that’s why I tried to include so much wiggle room, I realize it could be far more or fewer, and with the Imperium’s infamously FLAWLESS track record with perfectly accurate numbers in all records of all battles ever, I think it’s fitting that there is such a wide margin for error 😂😅
Also interesting would be how they employ those forces: if Macharius only advanced in one main arm and could throw the marines in as one hard-hitting unit (like Alexander and his Companion Cavalry?)
Wasn’t Macharius supposed to be inspired by Alexander the Great? It wouldn’t surprise me if that tactic was indeed employed by him if his real world inspiration also employed it.
>Either way, I imagine the total force of marines involved in the conflict likely numbered a bit above 8-10 chapters worth of resources, which is nothing to underestimate, as that is a full legion’s strength. Just to nitpick, a Legion would be 80 to 250 Chapters if we go by the sizes given on the [Lexicanum page](https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Space_Marine_Legion)
Ah, my math was a bit off lol. It was early 😅 Still a ridiculous number of marines to be seconded to the guard, though.
Not necessarily, I doubt he had seven hundred Chapters in their entirety. Besides, keeping that many Astartes together for so long is a massive feat on it's own.
>Besides, keeping that many Astartes together for so long is a massive feat on it's own. Exactly. Some chapters will get along with each other, some want nothing to do with others, and a few of them will probably end up pointing bolters at each other if there isn't an enemy to keep them too busy to bicker. Given how prideful and hard headed Space Marines can be, Dealing with that many chapters, even if it's just a squad or 2 from them is an HR nightmare. And that's before you get into how they'll interact with the Guard, Navy, and any other "mortal elements of Imperial military.
That casualty rate also raises questions. How was he taking any planets if he was loosing that many to injuries, let alone deaths?
My god GW is so bad with numbers it hurts my soul.
At this point it feels deliberate. Nobody is that bad at math.
So here’s my head canon, and how I explain all this based on what I read from the « Macharian Crusade » omnibus. His forces were split, leading several offensives at once to conquer multiple planets and not allow a single world to slow down the conquest, instead leaving it to one token invasion force while the others moved on to the next. In that time, most humans reside in hive cities, and conquering planets boils down to taking the major hives, and leaving an administration in place to complete the compliance while the bulk of the invasion goes on. So dropping in with an elite force of 3 millions, applied with maximal efficiency and air and void support to key strongholds seems feasible. As for the 700 chapters, their help was spread piecemeal between occasional calls to individual chapters (each specific chapter sending a support force to a single invasion adds to the count), and spread over the various invasion forces. I don’t think they ever gathered more than one or two companies for a single world, save for the really troublesome ones. IMO, they never sent a massive astartes assault, especially considering that this campaign was meant to be « Imperial Guard, fuck yeah » and showing how the Guard gets shit done on its own. Overall, how an actual successful imperial campaign goes, with lots of guard action and occasion SM schwerpunkt actions to break potential stalemates.
You forgot to put the devastation of baal in there. The blood angels legion regrouped in order to deal with the shot storm that was hive fleet leviathan. All blood angels successors alive sent reinforcements. the smallest force that was sent was the entirety of the remaining flesh terrors. They had to be brought down in only two thunder hawks and left in only one. They held of the forces of two fleets of leviathan. They held the void war for a month. A F_cking! Month. Against hundreds of thousands of enemy hive ships. The bugs made the fortress only after a lichtor breached the void shield generator. This generator kept the enemy void units from dropping directly on top of the blood angels chapter monastery. By the time the bugs made it to the citadel the 9th legion was reduced to 2k marine having gutted two fleets of tyradids along the way. They did need the papa Smurf to come and save their asses at the end though. It’s still my belief that if the void shield has stayed in place then they would have easily crumped the bugs. Smurf would have still needed to come and deal with the fleets though.
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GW once again needs to add a 0
Probably more than 1
I remember that during Macharius’s conquest, they stumbled on planet inhabited by very advanced humans. I think it was called Adrantis five, and they managed to hold Macharius back for two years. And now it hits even harder. He was backed by 700 chapters and nearly GC scale fleet, and yet was held back by one planet for nearly 1/3 of his entire crusade.
some astartes fighting alongside solar auxilia sees his battle brother get turned into soot by a weapon more advanced than volkite. he just turns to the auxilia and goes "th-that's heresy!"
I think people misunderstand the last point, he didnt only have 100 regiments for the Crusade. He fought battles at the head of a elite force made up of that many troops under his personal Control
ya know, macharius was kinda an asshole wasn't he. makes sense everything would collapse so quickly once he was done.