Cifer said:

Noone is going to destroy your homeworld because you have a couple extra hundred Space Marines, even if you're not some prestigious First Founding Chapter. The Tyrant of Badab was brought down because he tripled the size of his Chapter through an aggressive program of expansion over several decades, and absorbing a few hundred Marines from an 'extinct' Chapter. And also built massed conventional forces.

Most Chapters would likely suffer enough regular attrition that the 1,000 limit isn't an issue. With varying levels of tolerance granted by the Adeptus Terra, since the First and Second Founding Chapters generally act in concert often enough that they might as well be considered Legions in effect.

Chaos really has everything going against them, compared to Loyalist Astartes. Their only real advantage being that they're dishonourable enough to steal geneseed. But everything else, from workable facilities and staff skilled enough to man them, to availability of equipment, and the just plain hostility toward all life of the places that Chaos Marines make their lairs. The once great Traitor Legions are a broken force that are a shadow of their former glory, just like the Imperium that birthed them.

@Blood Pact

And you think the majority of loyalist chapters wouldn't be honourable enough to keep to the 1000 marines rule?

Cifer said:

Fixed it for you.

And yes, I do, because it's Guilleman's rule, not the Emperor's, which makes it just a suggestion at best.

You're the one trying to say something as silly as a Chapter just stopping recruitment because it hit an arbitrary number. Oh noes, 1,001 would just be to horrible to countenance!

And even so, geneseed doesn't spoil, not with cryogenic storage facilities, or stasis fields. Which actually means they can stockpile it for a rainy day, and not suffer too greatly, should they unexpectedly take mass casualties.

Hell, the Traitor Legions don't even bother to collect the geneseed from their fallen all the time, let alone worry overly much about storing it.

Blood Pact said:

Remember that not just half the astartes, but pretty much half the everything else defected, to include techpriests, defected. Its not as if a handful of space marines one day went on vacation and didn't come back. The Imperium hasn't stood idle, yet people expect me to believe that the forces of Chaos have?

Also, yeah, a few loyalist chapters may be over strength, but the numbers given are always "about a thousand chapters, about a million astartes." That's… tiny. In all likelihood every legion outnumbers the loyalists (with the possible exception of the Thousand Sons, if you really believe that, for some reason, they stopped recruiting, and possibly the Death Guard, who may not even have the intact anatomy enough to have discernable space marine organs left), and the math easily shows that fact even with 99% chance of chaos screwup rate piled upon 99% chance of mundane screwup rate, that after 500 years and a single dead marine body, you can exceed the sum total of the old legions. The vast numbers of the old legions were made as a spur of the moment reaction to the loss of the primarchs and using their leftovers and the resources of a single world, and nothing suggests that the tiny numbers of astartes are for practical resource considerations rather than the overwhelming fear of Horus Heresy Mk2.

Even Huron Blackheart, a renegade who went into it not thinking it through well at all and being constantly attacked and without much in the way of time to plan or prepare has managed to build up a force that "exceeds the legions of old." When CSM attack the Imperium -- and the Imperium is allowed time to muster reinforcements -- they are portrayed as being outnumbered by 10-100 to 1, not by billions to 1. CSM forces are always attacking in enormous brute force strikes and usually getting wiped out to a man, yet portrayed as a constant threat and described as "The Greatest Foe of the Imperium." You're not going to get me to believe that they're some kind of tiny group of stragglers on an asteroid somewhere, talking about how they're going to totally screw up a minimall in the Imperium… CSM attacks are dramatic invasions, planet wide calamities, not a handful of dudes meandering about lost in a hive. And the "planet wide calamity" nature of the CSM is not portrayed as a function of their fleet support and they rarely have drop pods.

Also, as far as game portrayal is concerned, compare the availability of loyalists vs CSM -- a single CSM's services is of availability -20 (Very Rare), a single loyalist's services is of availability -70 (Unique). On top of that, in TT, loyalist squads go up to about 10 or so typically, while CSM squads go up to around 20.

They are said to be the greatest foe of the Imperium, but if they were as scant as some people in this thread believe, your planet could have been invaded by a Chaos Legions for years without anyone in your city noticing, and certainly without anything above the local PDF needed to be called upon. A tiny amount of dudes in big armor aren't going to be hard for some sniper squads to pick off as they wander.

Lastly, the Eye of Terror isn't as uninhabitable as some people think -- if a daemon prince conquers a world in the material universe, the Chaos Gods give it to him as his plaything to rule over, with him being able to stipulate the way the local environment will turn out and such. Most of the daemon primarchs likely want their legion to thrive so that they can get revenge, and all you really need is one world. More may be nice too.

I've always felt that the numbers were probably more or less quite similar with regards to Marines, my understanding of the Heresy led me to believe that the Legions split more or less 50/50. Now yes it is true that Legions are bigger than Chapters, but then there are far fewer Legions than Chapters. The Chapters are, afterall, simply the result of a policy of power decentralisation that came about after the Heresy.

The intervening period between then and now, the Long War, has seen the Legions fragment somewhat and I doubt there is any uniform unit strength any more at any given moment the fortunes of war govern the numbers of any one Legion ranging from potentially thousands in the case of the original Traitor Legions to a mere few dozen when it comes to the many splintered off-shoots that make up the uncountable Warbands.

Recruitment wise I'd say that the Imperium has the edge, since they're well supplied and most Chapters can do it from a place of relative safety but the Lords of Terra place quite a lot of emphasis on Guilleman's 'suggestion' and Chapters, like the constantly crusading Black Templars, have to justify going over the limit. That rule rein's in their pace of recruitment I think. As for the Legion's, their recruitment can be a lot more aggressive, it is more likely however dogged by many more concerns, they have already been stated (safety, success rates, logistics etc) and I could see these problems being more than enough to slow down recruitment to near Loyalist levels, despite their best efforts.

And just to quickly address the point about CSM invasions I think it's also important to remember the fractious nature of the Chaos forces, a Chaos invasion would more than likely involve millions upon millions of renegades, mercenaries and slaves but even if an entire Legion committed its forces they should still only make up a fraction of the numbers required to take control of a world. The days of seeing an entire Legion arrayed on one battlefield are few and far between, the chances are a Legion's various Companies can be better used against particular targets dotted all over the world. Multiple Legions working together is also the stuff of nightmare, and while possible, mercifully rare.

DW