Quote from: Local Trouble on Apr 23, 2024, 03:11:53 AMAre you going to tell him about the necrons?
Spoiler
I think he's going to tell him about the necrons.
Actually, I'm going to talk about Space Marines.
We all know what they are, Games Workshop has made damn sure of that. If you're in this thread, you probably know that they're organised into chapters of "about 1000" marines. I use quotation marks there because for a long time it was simply "1000 marines", until GW realised this conflicted with their own lore, and added the vagueness clause.
How many more than a thousand, assuming full strength? That's never really been consistent either. We know for a fact that we can add an additional 60 marines thanks to the Captain, Chaplain and five-man command squad each company contains. We won't count Dreadnoughts, as, despite technically being Space Marines, they're also living relics and somewhat outside the standard organisation.
What about headquarters and support staff? It gets hairy here. There's four we can name easily, being the Chapter Master (and maybe, but maybe not, a command squad or honour guard), Chief Librarian, Master of Sanctity, and Master of the forge. There are no set numbers of Librarians, Reclusiarchs or Techmarines, but I think it's safe to say there's probably 10-20 each of Librarians and Techmarines per Chapter, and perhaps 5 or so Reclusiarchs. Using the larger of those numbers, we're now at 1000 + 89.
Lets talk about Apothecaries though. We know there's a Master of the Apothecarion too, and at least one Apothecary per company, taking us to a cool 100 extra Marines. One medic per 100 guys seems low though, and GW have both acknowledged this at times while ignoring it at others. There might be a lot more medics. Sometimes there is, sometimes there's not. It's also extremely unclear (as in, it's been stated and shown both ways, repeatedly) whether Apothecaries are counted as part of those five-man company command squads, or are auxiliary to the company and take the number to 107 per formation.
And support roles, such as Master of the Fleet, Master of Recruits, and so on? These have been roles filled by "retired" veteran Marines in some lore, or by the Captains of reserve companies when GW feels like it. It's never really been stated that the role is open to both/either, simply presented as absolute fact that it's whichever one GW says it is right now (which could change again without notice).
Then there's the 10th Company, or Scout Company. Is this actually 100 men (or rather, 106, possibly 107)? This is where new recruits are trained before earning their power armour, and it seems bizarre that a Marine Chapter would limit itself to only field-training 100 recruits at a time, given attrition rates and the tyranny of distance. The exact number of Scout units a full strength chapter can deploy is often very vague and inconsistent for this reason, but it's not unreasonable to assume that after a large recruitment push and a relatively quiet time for the rest of the chapter, there could easily be another 50-100 Marines over the baseline 100 listed. Let's be generous and use the larger number again. We're now at 1200 Marines.
The problem now, is all those vehicles. The Fleet and various support vehicles have human crews, but there are
at least 100 Rhino APCs, 10 Razorback APCs, and any number of Land Raiders, Predators, Whirlwinds, Hunters etc, plus dropships and light aircraft.
Who is crewing all these tanks?
GW has, at various points, claimed it's human chapter serfs, or failed marine aspirants. Except the rules and models have always shown the crew to be fully armed and armoured Space Marines, so they stopped doing that. Where are all these other marines coming from? That's two crew per ground vehicle, and one pilot per drop/air craft. Sometimes Games Workshop will say that it's the Marines of the reserve companies pulling this duty, except sometimes GW also says that a chapter can deploy its full strength in boots on the ground while still having transports, tanks and air support. Which would mean, wait for it, there's another (conservative estimate) 300 Space Marines crewing all these vehicles.
GW is not and probably never will be consistent on this issue, but we could be looking at "about 1000" Marines actually being more like minimum 1500 Marines at full strength. That's 50% more Space Marines than advertised.
And all of this changes at the drop of a hat, fairly regularly. I haven't mentioned anything about Primaris Marines throwing off numbers or organisation because that actually was presented as a new development, not quietly retconned as always having been that way or presented in frustratingly inconsistent ways like the other stuff.
I also mentioned in a previous post, things like Centurion Armour, the Hunter tank, etc. Usually when GW makes a new Space Marine unit or vehicle, it is simply presented as always having been part of their organisations - you just didn't know about them til now. There will very often be bits of fluff in the accompanying Codex depicting these new units in historic battles, to drive the point home.
I could also mention that Space Marines used to be brain-wiped convicts who acted like petty space-cops, not the genetically enhanced angels of death we know today, and that that particular retcon was never presented as a change but as just the way it'd always been, but that's really another rabbit hole.
So, in summary, Games Workshop has had 36 years to define their poster-boy faction and financial golden goose - to decide how many Space Marines are in a Chapter, and what equipment and vehicles they have access to - and they can't even give you a straight answer on that.
Consistent, GW is not.
