Space Wolves: How many are there?

[Brother Nathan]

to the lost great companys thing, probably in al likelyhood mostchapters also have a few missing companys due to the problems of warp travel

[Lord Ragnarok]

The Codex gives the best info in terms of a possible range with Ragnar's company size. I would guess like someone else said about 150 when fully recovered from casualties. That is the best info we have right now for the current time.

 

 

For Heresy?....Too hard to speculate, especially as stated before, GW has changed the sizes. I realized this when they described the Ravenguard as small with 80,000 marines.

 

Be nice if they could set things straight with some type of fact book.

[Valerian]

For Heresy?....Too hard to speculate, especially as stated before, GW has changed the sizes. I realized this when they described the Ravenguard as small with 80,000 marines.

 

Rags, did the Design Studio produce something with the 80K Ravenguard, or was that in a Black Library novel? Although there are a few discrepancies, and changes over the years, the Studio work is actually fairly consistent. Throw in the novelists, however, and they pillage the fluff like a Viking raider.

 

V

[Grey Mage]

For Heresy?....Too hard to speculate, especially as stated before, GW has changed the sizes. I realized this when they described the Ravenguard as small with 80,000 marines.

 

Rags, did the Design Studio produce something with the 80K Ravenguard, or was that in a Black Library novel? Although there are a few discrepancies, and changes over the years, the Studio work is actually fairly consistent. Throw in the novelists, however, and they pillage the fluff like a Viking raider.

 

V

The most commonly cited source is the horus heresy art-books, wich were overseen by a guy the studio said was the head of all things fluffy at the time IIRC.

[Gree]

The Codex gives the best info in terms of a possible range with Ragnar's company size. I would guess like someone else said about 150 when fully recovered from casualties. That is the best info we have right now for the current time.

 

 

For Heresy?....Too hard to speculate, especially as stated before, GW has changed the sizes. I realized this when they described the Ravenguard as small with 80,000 marines.

 

Be nice if they could set things straight with some type of fact book.

 

A-D-B has gone on record that the ''official'' size for the Legions is 100,000. In other words he said to take any of the 10,000 man Legion numbers that show up in the novels to be multiplied by ten. Appearantly Alan Merrett made that choice.

 

From what I understand a 100,000 Wolves show up in Prospero Burns as well.

 

For Heresy?....Too hard to speculate, especially as stated before, GW has changed the sizes. I realized this when they described the Ravenguard as small with 80,000 marines.

 

Rags, did the Design Studio produce something with the 80K Ravenguard, or was that in a Black Library novel? Although there are a few discrepancies, and changes over the years, the Studio work is actually fairly consistent. Throw in the novelists, however, and they pillage the fluff like a Viking raider.

 

V

The most commonly cited source is the horus heresy art-books, wich were overseen by a guy the studio said was the head of all things fluffy at the time IIRC.

 

Alan Merrett still is. He's the Head of GW IP. You can't make any kind of fluff change without his approval. Everybody, Studio, Forge World and Black Library alike answers to him. You can't get any higher than him on the fluff totem pole.

[Beef]

In the vision art books Ultra were shown at 250,000, And they were the largest with the smallest being only 30,000 (sallies I think) average was 100,000.

 

But then how many wolves are left now is anybody's guess. same as how big or small the current great companies are. I think we shud just sticky this thread cos it keeps coming up every couple of months.

[MaveriK]

The Codex gives the best info in terms of a possible range with Ragnar's company size. I would guess like someone else said about 150 when fully recovered from casualties. That is the best info we have right now for the current time.

 

 

For Heresy?....Too hard to speculate, especially as stated before, GW has changed the sizes. I realized this when they described the Ravenguard as small with 80,000 marines.

 

Be nice if they could set things straight with some type of fact book.

 

A-D-B has gone on record that the ''official'' size for the Legions is 100,000. In other words he said to take any of the 10,000 man Legion numbers that show up in the novels to be multiplied by ten. Appearantly Alan Merrett made that choice.

 

From what I understand a 100,000 Wolves show up in Prospero Burns as well.

 

I posted that earlier, post #12 yet people over-looked it and kept going :D just like how people don't bother using the search function LOL ;)

[Beef]

The Codex gives the best info in terms of a possible range with Ragnar's company size. I would guess like someone else said about 150 when fully recovered from casualties. That is the best info we have right now for the current time.

 

 

For Heresy?....Too hard to speculate, especially as stated before, GW has changed the sizes. I realized this when they described the Ravenguard as small with 80,000 marines.

 

Be nice if they could set things straight with some type of fact book.

 

A-D-B has gone on record that the ''official'' size for the Legions is 100,000. In other words he said to take any of the 10,000 man Legion numbers that show up in the novels to be multiplied by ten. Appearantly Alan Merrett made that choice.

 

From what I understand a 100,000 Wolves show up in Prospero Burns as well.

 

I posted that earlier, post #12 yet people over-looked it and kept going :D just like how people don't bother using the search function LOL ;)

 

Exactly my point Maverik, we should sticky this once and for all. it gets frustrating for older members when this same thread just keeps popping up time and time again. I usually steer well clear of this often repeated thread. Although the serach function is not always the best so i cant fault members for not being able tio find stuff they want to know about.

[Lord Ragnarok]

Good points Gree.

 

Although I'd like to understand if the "Were never really a large legion" old fluff remains true or retconned. Perhaps we are the size of the Ravenguard Legio? (80k). And how large were the T.sons. based on their mutations I thought they were very small.

 

 

@Beef, in terms of the search function. It works fine folks are just lazy. I found 2-3 threads on the first page by doing Search for size, search titles, search in SW forum. Folks are just lazy or uninformed on how to search.

------------

 

I will sticky this. This means any new thread may be obliterated from orbit.

[Gree]

Good points Gree.

 

Although I'd like to understand if the "Were never really a large legion" old fluff remains true or retconned. Perhaps we are the size of the Ravenguard Legio? (80k). And how large were the T.sons. based on their mutations I thought they were very small.

 

I don't quite know for sure. I would have to read Prospero Burns myself of course. The Word Bearers where susposed to be the second largest Legion at 100,000 men, so that would imply that the Wolves would be somewhat less than that.

 

As for the Thousand Sons I asked that question to A-D-B in the Prospero Burns thread in the Horus Heresy section. (Namely did 1,000 Astartes survive of the Sons numbered 100,000 men?) and his response was this:

 

Good question, dude. And I genuinely don't mean to be a useless tool when I say "Uh, I have no idea...", but I have absolutely no freaking idea, and I wouldn't want to speak for Graham (or any of the others) about details of previous novels. While the figure has (finally...) been set in stone, and it unfortunately contradicts some of the Heresy series novels, it's not exactly clear how it affects the previous figures - especially in regards to something like A Thousand Sons, where numbers have such an intriguing part to play in the narrative.

 

As a rule of thumb, I take the figures in all earlier novels, and just multiply them by 10. Where the Thousand Sons are concerned, I either tell myself that not all of the Sons were on Prospero at the time, or I grit my teeth and times the figure by 10, destroying Graham's numerological coolness. The 10,000 Sons doesn't sound as good, though.

 

Well to be honest the 10,000 Sons does make sense (After all where are the Rubrics going to come from? There can't be more than a couple hunderd Sorcerers after the Rubric if 1,000 survived)

 

I guess the best explanation would be that 1,000 Sons escaped from Prospero while 9,000 others where on the fleet or something like that.

[Lord Ragnarok]

Yeah absolutely correct on the Rubrics. With 100k being set it is going to upset some of the previous apple carts. I prefer to go with what makes sense. 10k Tsons makes much more sense.

[Brother Nathan]

apparently around 1200 thousnd sons got off pospero, but then the mtations started to claim them. so id assume arahman got his spell off when there was around 1k of them. there was probably only 1k of them when magnus was given them as the curse sounded bad at that point and was claiming many of them...

[Gree]

apparently around 1200 thousnd sons got off pospero, but then the mtations started to claim them. so id assume arahman got his spell off when there was around 1k of them. there was probably only 1k of them when magnus was given them as the curse sounded bad at that point and was claiming many of them...

 

That was the number before the Legions where ''offically'' retconned into being 100,000 strong. Prior to that the Thousand Sons had 10,000 men in their entire Legion.

[wolfpack]

Are we talkin about thousand sons or Space wolves??...I thought this was the SW forum??

 

IMHO and as the wolves have always been unorthodox in their tenets after Russ assumed command...it doesn't really matter how large OTHER legions are or were...as Russ never followed what the others did...now if yer talkin before the Emperor gave the wolves to Russ then yeah I would assume he made all the legions the same number...just for logistical ease...but after...that's anybody's guess

 

and that is the whole point...IT'S ALL GUESSING...not like GW is ever gonna take the initiative and tell us...they like the open ended fluff they have given us to work with...

 

it then becomes a part of the genre that WE decide how big our armies will be...after all that almighty dollar is what they are really after...so spend more and build yer armies to new heights of lunacy...

 

That's all I have to say on that

[Brother Nathan]

dont wolve like to know their enemy? and that info i supplied was from the book thousand sons, you know black libary horus herasy, relatively new. to reduce the sons t such numbers id assume the wolves took a similar beating, butunlike the sons the wolves could replenish their numbers. question isif the wolves had such numbers, and as russ refused the codex, and unlike the ba your primarch survived giving a suply of geneseed to replenish from, why is there so relatively few now? has the canis helix destroyed that much? or isit just that you dont want to unnerve the rest of the imperium etc?

[Lord Ragnarok]

Are we talkin about thousand sons or Space wolves??...I thought this was the SW forum??

Tsons is fair game when discussing Wolf Numbers because of recent developments in Tsons novels vs SW novels and the fact that numbers must make sense when discussing the battle between the two legions on Prospero.

[Legatus]

Previous fluff:

Legions were ten thousand strong (that's even what it still says in the current Codex Space Wolves). The Space Wolves were one of the smaller Legions, but were third in terms of victories won, so probably not extremely smaller than average. I would guess somewhere around 7,000 warriors. That means a single Great Company was about 500 men strong.

At the Second Founding the Wolves were divided into two Chapters, so had about 2,000 warriors left after the Heresy and the Scouring period, so had suffered about 70% losses. The remaining 30% were split into two Chapters. Today the Wolves are slightly larger than a standard Chapter, and one of the most famous Great Companies is said to consist of almost 200 warriors.

 

New fluff:

Legions were hundred thousand strong. Still having been a smaller Legion but not extremely smaller, the Wolves might have had about 70,000 warriors. That means a single great Company would have been about 5,000 warriors strong.

The numbers of the Second Founding and current Chapter size do not change. But that means that after the Heresy and the Scouring the Space Wolves had suffered 97% losses. The remaining 3% were split into two Chapters.

[Valerian]

The Wolves started out with about 15,000 Marines during the Great Crusade (WD 244), then fought against their Brothers on Prospero, campaigned through the Heresy, fought through the Great Scouring even so far as into the Eye of Terror, lost the 13th Company who continued the chase after Abaddon (or Magnus, if you prefer that version). Then, after all of that, they had just enough men left to split once during the Second Founding (a few years afterward), creating the Wolfbrothers and Space Wolves Chapters (not conforming to the Codex Astartes) from the original Legion.

 

Valerian

 

Oops, rechecked my source, and WD 244 said that the Space Wolves numbered about 10,000 during the Great Crusade (not 15,000 as I had thought). The 13th Company IA has an estimate that the Wolves lost about 1,000 Marines when the 13th Company disappeared.

 

As Legatus states, it's pretty clear what the sizes are, and what they were, according to the "old fluff".

 

I understand that the "new fluff" of the Hurus Heresy art books and novels as published by the Black Library pit these numbers at a whole order of magnitude higher. If this was directed by Alan Merritt, then it must certainly be approved, although I am disappointed with such a major change, for no real purpose.

 

As Legatus also points out, to get from the retconned starting strength, to what we know to be the ending strength, the Wolves suffer 97% +/- attrition, and they weren't even at the Battle of Terra. Just makes more sense to me to stick with the original numbers; especially if the latest Codex still puts the number at about 10K for the starting Legion.

 

Valerian

[Brother Nathan]

how much do you think was lost vs the thousand sons then? 10%-50% form the thousand sns book it seemed that the sons took the harder beating but then again they did have a titan... thoughts?

[Gree]

how much do you think was lost vs the thousand sons then? 10%-50% form the thousand sns book it seemed that the sons took the harder beating but then again they did have a titan... thoughts?

 

Unknown, Russ was stated as leading an attack near the end of the battle of a force consisting of ''six thousand Wolves and Custodes''. The amount of Custodes present at the battle of Prospero is unknown. It's possible that the Wolves lost up to 50% or even more of that. But we don't know since we never saw the Wolves after the battle at Tizca in A Thousand Sons.

 

If the Wolves where 80,000 men (Going by the fact that the Word Bearers at 100,000 men where considered the second largest legion. and the RG where one of the smaller Legions) then upwards of 40,000 losses at Prospero would be plausible. (Considering they where facing another Astartes Legion) Then Russ would have been ambushed by the Alpha Legion later on route to Terra, then he would have had to fight his way to Terra and then in the Scouring.

 

They could leave the Wolves with a few thousand Astartes left, probably enough to go with two 1500-3000 Chapters, assuming the Wolf Brothers followed the original Space Wolf organization. (Let's assume 6,000 Wolves survive the whole Heresy and Scouring)

 

Just my guesswork and opinion. Makes sense to me.

[Grey Mage]

Of course its been 10 thousand years- so the idea that casualties from the heresy are going to be the primary limiter on current SW sizes is pretty far fetched I think.

 

Ive always gone with the epic stats and veterans as a guideline- high end of around 300 all told, low end of around 150.

[Durfast Spiritwolf]

 

There is no fluff to say that there were only 2000 left after the scouring.

 

Your sums assume that the VI Legion split into two equal sized units - if a GC was 500 - 5000 men, why wouldn't Russ use one to form the new Chapter (remembering that at the time Chapter was another name for a GC), leaving the remainder of his Legion intact.

 

Moreover your sums are seemingly based on there being only 13 GC with HQ elements prior to the formation of the WBs (7,000/500=14?) - is there new fluff in PB to support this? It is not unreasonable give the importance of the number 13 in Norse mythology, but we need to distinguish deduction from assumption.

 

Regards,

[Legatus]

There is no fluff to say that there were only 2000 left after the scouring.

No, but I can think of several fluff sources that state that the Space Wolves Legion had been divided into two Chapters during the Second Founding.

 

 

Your sums assume that the VI Legion split into two equal sized units - if a GC was 500 - 5000 men, why wouldn't Russ use one to form the new Chapter (remembering that at the time Chapter was another name for a GC), leaving the remainder of his Legion intact.

Because the main goal of the Second Founding was that no single Marine Commander should have significantly more than 1,000 warriors under his command, and not merely to use a few Marines from each Legion to create additional formations. Also, while several Legions had their own formations and units, at the time of the Second Founding it was defined that a "Chapter" was to be a standardised formation of 1000 warriors as it had been used by the Ultramarines and a few other Legions, and that is usually the definition given in the Codex Space Wolves when it discusses those events as well.

 

"The original Space Marine Legions were broken up into smaller Chapters and a code was drawn up to redefine their role and jurisdiction within the Imperium. This code was called the Codex Astartes. Whereas before the Heresy, a Space Marine Legion might number ten thousand or more warriors, under the new order each Chapter's size was limited to about a thousand. The original Legion survived as a smaller Chapter and continued to keep its old name, but the remaining Space Marine warriors were reorganised into new Chapters."

5th Edition Codex Space Wolves, page 9

 

So the proceedings as described there were: Cut down original Legion to a single Chapter --> reform all the warriors that are left into new Chapters.

 

 

Moreover your sums are seemingly based on there being only 13 GC with HQ elements prior to the formation of the WBs (7,000/500=14?) - is there new fluff in PB to support this? It is not unreasonable give the importance of the number 13 in Norse mythology, but we need to distinguish deduction from assumption.

I thought it was fairly established that the organisation of the Space Wolves Chapter mirrors the former organisation of the Legion, only in smaller scale, with the only exception being that the 13th Company that had disappeared during the Heresy had never been replaced. Also, the 7,000 total members is only an estimate, so I used a nice round estimate for the Great Company size as well. There is no point in stating "538 warriors per Great Company" if we are not sure that they had exactly 7,000 men, and if their Great Companies were not standardised in size anyway.

[Marshal Rohr]

Youre not going to beat him. He does this all the time.

 

Largest Legion:

Ultramarines- 250,000

 

Large Legions= >100,000

Word Bearers-Said to be the second largest.

Imperial Fists- Had to be large to bear the brunt of the fighting during the Siege. Emperor's Praetorians and lots of victories, size would contribute greatly to that.

Luna Wolves- Its Horus' Legion duh....

Dark Angels- Said to have grown by 20,000 in the years following Lion El'Johnson return. Large tally of victories, and had enough forces to commit two Chapters (Terran/Calibanite) to each warzone they fought in.

Iron Warriors- Garrisoned all over the galaxy during the Crusade, had to be a large organization.

World Eaters- Had to be huge, they bore the brunt of the assaults on the Imperial Palace for 55 days. They would need alot of manpower to pull that off.

 

Medium Legions= ~/< 100,000

Raven Guard- Said to be 80,000

White Scars- White Scars tactics would prevent them from being large, as 100,000 soldiers on bikes is a logistical nightmare and a tactical clusterhump.

Iron Hands- Were nearly destroyed by the Emperor's Children, a small Legion, couldn't have been huge right? Besides all the infighting on Medusa and such would keep recruit pool small.

Blood Angels- An elite force by Space Marine standards, never noted as being large or small, so that makes medium the only option left.

 

 

Small Legions= <50,000

Space Wolves- 13 Companies can only have so many warriors before the span of control becomes too erratic and discipline/communication/combat effectiveness breaks down. If each of the 13 companies had 1,000 (which there is no way one Jarl could control) that would still put them at 13,000.

Alpha Legion- Small Guerilla Force. Needs no explanation. Last Legion found.

Emperor's Children- Suffered drastic setbacks at inception, significantly reduced numbers. Pursuit of perfection would hinder recruitment and implantation speed.

Night Lords- Kurze was a paranoid maniac, he couldn't have been able to sustain a force of 100,000 with the level of direct control and influence he wanted over his Legion.

Thousand Sons- Same as the Space Wolves, but mixed with the mutation that was ever present in the Legion would keep the numbers down.

Death Guard- Only had 7 Companies...

Salamanders- Also only had 7 Companies...

[Brother Nathan]

iron hands-nearly destroyed- correct me if im wrong but from what i under stand i was only their elites and primarch, the majorty of the legion was not present... unlike the salamanders, whos primarch survived so they were able to rebuildand the ravenguard likewse, who in particular took such heav casultys that they had to go to drastic measures to rebuild,think of a certain chaos apocethery...

 

blood angels. i think i read somewhere, perhaps horus rising that they were quite small due to casultys due to hard fighting, yet it only taks them a tenth of the time to make a marine as most chapters. And they had heavy losses against the blood thirster kalsomething, head blood thirster, think he alone killed a tenth of the legion never mind his minions and that was beore terra. and that when horus died all the ba on terra went mad and left the walls and charged into the fleeing hordes. yet they still had enough to make several 2nd founding...