Same codex lists a 'retaliation force' based around a near full strength 3rd company, with the addition of 10 1st coy terminators in a pair of LR, and 20 10th coy scouts (and then extras in the command). So that's a company + a few sensible extras not toooo far off an epic force at 3k. The vehciles/extra stuff/war gear with them was:
4 pred A
6 pred D
6 razorback
3 Land raiders (+2 for 1t coy termiantors)
4 vindicators
3 WW
2 Dreads (note: speeder, dreads, bikes etc are part of the 3rd company not the central armoury)
6 speeders
10 bikes + 2 attack bikes
12 Thawks

That force, based around effectively one company, is using a big proportion of the chapter armoury, they could only really field 2 companies with that many extras attached at once before depleting the armoury. But that was 3rd ed fluff.

12 thakws sounds high for 1 company (and is just over 1/3rd of the entire chapter's thawks …) but we could assume some of these are running supply/logistics/combat roles outside of the scope of the epic battlefield, and that some of them are transporting vehicles not infantry (3rd ed codex has no thawk transporters or landing craft)


note: i've now split the fluff discussion from the main thread. any posts about how codex EA rules list building does or does not match codex the fluff go here.

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Thanks, that is the kind of answer that I (we?) needed.

So in E:A terms that represents a force of

• Approximately 100 marines, eg 3x tactical formations or 2x Tactical + 2x Assault formations with formation upgrades
  • 3x Land Raiders added to the above possibly given to a single tactical formation
  • 2x Dreadnoughts, possibly added to a single tactical formation
  • 6x Razorbacks split among the above, or possibly given to a single tactical formation.
• 1x Landspeeder formation
• 1x Bike formation, with 1x attack bike upgrade
• 1x scout formation, possibly using up to 4x Razorback from the above
• 2x Predator formations of 4-5 tanks (different types as required)
• 1x Vindicator formation
• 1x (weak) Whirlwind formation
• 'Enough' air transport to carry them all, so
  • 1x THawk for the Bikes,
  • 2x Landing Craft each carrying 1x Tactical + transport (LRs or RBs)
  • 1x THawk carrying either the third Tactical + Dreads or 2x Assault, or possibly another Landing Craft also carrying the Vindis
  • 1x Landing Craft carrying the Scouts and possibly the Whirlwind or a Predator formation
  • the Landspeeders and the other 2x armoured formations on the ground, or in a further 3x Landing Craft

That is roughly 3150 points of marines and commanders excluding all the air transport, which is a minimum of 1100-1250 for 1-2 THawks and 2-3x LC leaving the scouts, Landspeeders and 3x armoured formations on the ground.

The "1000 marines a chapter" has always been ridiculous, but the armoury numbers are even worse.

Im sure someone more qualified than i can chime in here, but a battle ready figure of around about 50% of the motor pool at one time is apparently pretty good going for a modern military in a long campaign. Particularly aircraft. I guess they always portray the marines as special-special forces in the fluff but with these figures they would barely be able to fight for a small city, and one battle would have them knocked out for weeks.


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every soldier in the field takes on avg 7 in support. it's bonkers to think of 1000 marines everyone can drive a tank type poppycock (trust me, it's a full time job to grok that). In addition, the use of members from reserve companies is odd as most chapters don't fight as a unified army. The sheer amount of handwavium available to the Imperium is impressive!

The reason there's not a good answer is that there's tons of contradictory fluff. DK posted some good stuff that says X. Imperial Armour books have stuff that says Y. Index Astartes articles again have more contradictory fluff (which I can't be arsed to open up, locate which articles, and then retype) that says Z. Hence why my headcannon is what it is: tons of tech marines. Yours can be whatever you want it to be.

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from the 3rd/4th ed fluff that is … sort of true. Except that in the fluff keep in mind that just 1 marine is *amazing*, far, far more powerful than the stats in the game settings suggest. Each marine is a super human genetically altered mind washed monstrosity with the best weapons and armour. In epic they'd be 3+ RA TRA fearless etc etc and might even need DC on just a stand of tacticals.

At the same time, a tank like a land raider is/was meant to be very, *very* valuable. Losing just one would indeed be a disaster (techmarines weeping) and might in some situations be almost impossible to replace (hard to build, old ones were better anyway).

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Yep, movie marines and all that. But then - everything in 40k is supposed to be uber in the fluff. Well, except guard infantry :-)

I seem to remember thinking that the tanks were all crewed by hard wired servitors once upon a time, but cant remember if i read it somewhere or just made it up to make some sense of the numbers?

Anyway, the cannon has obvious moved on. Enough derailing! :-)


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Anyone remember the "Movie Marines List" from WD way back when? Was an exercise in just what would a marine on the tabletop game be if living up to the fluff. So fun.

edit: ninja'd by Blip! Movie Marines FTW!

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who needs tank crew! let the machine spirit take the wheel!

(yeah, i know, marine tanks don't have steering wheel controls)

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Yeah i remember that bit. Something about "a marine being too valuable" yada yada wank wank. IIRC that's in the RT days (might even been IN the RT book in fact). Like I said, it's handwavium

Funny you mention the Machine Spirit as even in the devolved superstitious state the imperium is in, even the most basic technology around is mind blowing to what we can think of. For instance ships and land raiders and titans and even the computer sections of servitors are computing systems and AI that makes HAL look like a stick and rock hammer to us. Just that it's all shackled to being interfaced with by a Human before it can be "released" generally. There's some very big bits of Frank Herbert right there.

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just to add to the example 3rd ed fluff list i gave above, it is stated as being sent to 'combine' with 3 guard regiments. So they'd presumably pick up loads of armour, arty, line holding support there.

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Ok thanks for the fluffy commentary and critique. My reason for asking was to try to understand what a "standard" Tactical formation might take into battle according to the fluff to see whether that might help.

Tacticals tend to underwhelm in E:A; when dropped into front-line combat vehicles other than the LR tend to be a bit squishy and 6x squads do not perform great execution. With armoured upgrades it makes a reasonable BTS to be kept out of harms way. Led by a Captain to command several formations, the Tacticals may just about live up to the fluff, but in practice they ought to have better armour and weaponry. Effectively we seem to want to use terminators as 'Tacticals', possibly down-rating the weapons slightly.

However that creates a problem on how to represent Terminators with the same type of buff within the limits of the E:A game mechanics, and more importantly in a way that is fun to play against. Perhaps one possible way might be to give them 3+ RA armour, but to give the opponent an extra VP per pair of Termies destroyed to reflect the importance of the armour . . . .

Obviously a 'fan based' exercise

hah yes, losing a full formation of 20 terminators and being unable to recover their armour would be devastating for a chapter. In some chapters that could be most or all of their entire terminator contingent (iirc 1st coy are vets but in many cases chapters don't own enough terminator for every vet to be wearing it). I think what it should be is each terminator stand killed drops a new blitz objective, and both sides then have to fight for possession of the corpses/armour

mini by mini geneseed reclaiming objectives for marine apothecaries!

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And in this 'fan based' pipe dream, the termie contingent would be limited to 0-1 per list both to reflect their rarity and value . . .

I think it comes back to Doomkitten's earlier point - it would have been interesting if tacs had FF 3+ ...

And termies : move 10cm and only one assault cannon shot would also even the internal balance a little.

& @ JZ - Yep, i remember the bit about marines being too important for menial tasks - glad I'm not going completely nuts :-)


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And wreck all external balance or we going to take aspects and nerf amour and get rid of triple retains? After that, orks!
There's probably a need to of had more granularity in the dice as 1/2 hits is a wee bit weak. The problem is always that they are generalists and they don't work well in EA.
It works though tacticals are probably worth a free or discounted captian.

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