I was actually thinking "hmm...but what about the Dark Angels?", but I didn't mention them. Sorry.

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Another secret of the Dark Angels: They don't have a hundred suits of terminator armor either, but neither can they find enough qualified battle brothers to fill out 1st Company or man the ones they have.

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I know the talk of ultramarine on this thread is quite old, but I'd point out something that I noticed when reading some deployment statistics from an imperial armour book. Since a chapter can only field 900 non-scout battle brothers, they will field far lass than 90 10 man squads. Similarly a company could never field it's full 10 squads without help from another company. Many marines have to be assigned to tank crews, for every 10 men in an army you need another to drive their rhino, mor for razorbacks and land raiders. The same goes for the supporting whirlwinds, press etc. Then factor in the fact that departments like the apothecarium also maintain their own transports that would need drivers...

If a whole chapter, at full strength took to war, conceivably at least one whole company would be needed to perform taxi driving duties.

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Possibly. Pages 8 to 10 of imperial armour give very detailed descriptions of how marines organise their vehicles. They state that all vehicles are crewed by line marines and generally these are tacticals. Tacticals from 6th and 7th company form most of the tank crews. They give an example of an executioners strike force where 4 tactical squads of the 7th company were deployed purely as vehicles crews (including if my Mathis is correct as rhino crews for the 3 rhinos and 2 razors of the seven 2nd company squads)
. I can only assume, that if one follows the fiction, a chapter could never field more than about 70 or so squads of infantry, which is fine by me as I could paint up a whole chapter quicker!

The officers and support are listed as being above and beyond the 1k men, as are the dreadnought crews (obviously).

Which Imperial Armour Volume is that? I only have one, the original one I think, and that's not what's on my pages 8-10. Thanks!

James R. Coplin

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Lol, yeah volume 2, putting the number would have been a good idea wouldn't it!

My view is that it's cooler to have all 1000 troops fielded and don't sweat the small pedantics of who is driving what for who etc. I know I'd rather see 1000 minis hit the table than 700 + vehicles. Much more awe inspiring Plus Epic is all about the abstract, so what better way to use it?

A let us not forget that a 1000 battle brothers is an ideal not a requirement (at the 1001st they don't say, "sorry but we're all full at the moment"). Numbers go up and down due to losses and recruitment and "siring" new chapters. Some are noted as being in the many thousands (Black Templars for instance) or broken into smaller non-standard armies (Space Wolves Great Companies). It's just a good round number that sounds good so nothing to get hung up on too much and enjoy fielding 200 stands of infantry

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Don't get me wrong, I'd never be pedantic and tell someone their army is wrong, (I'm no Robute Guilliman) but when I was trying to paint a company in 28mm it was nice to know I didn't have to paint up 6 tactical squads!

I also quite like forgeworld's attempt to merge the fantastical and the authentic to make something that sounds like it just might happen. I find the fact that they have thought about secondments and crew requirements quite reassuring, it makes it feel real.

On the other hand, tell me the rhinos in your chapter are driven by servitors, human serfs, bound Daemons, extra marines or machine spirits and I'd be just as happy :-D

(unless you were playing Ultrasmurfs, then I would expect you to be pedantic )