Chaos warband size

[Lord Kallozar]

Ok so from established fluff we are told that warbands are smaller in size compared to the legions, but i wonder how big/small some of the warbands are. For example the Flawless Host. There is an entry on the Flawless Host in the Apoc book that states that their force is comprised of;

- Lord Eleaxus, master of the Flawless Host

- 3 squads of Terminators

- 3 squads of Noise Marines

- 3 Rhinos

- Dreadnaught (Hellbrute now)

- Predator

- Warhound Titan

- 3 packs of Daemonettes

 

Now is that the entire Flawless Host force or is that just a small segemnt of the entire Flawless Host force? Im more inclined to believe it is the entire force as it is spearheaded the master Elaexus - and only the entire full force or majority of the force usually commands the presence of the master.

 

What do you guys think?

[Kol Saresk]

I imagine that would only be one "warband" of the Flawless Host.

 

Confusing answer, I know. There wa a topic on something like this forever and a half ago(too far back to be worth searching for). Anyway, what it comes down to is that a warband can be from one person to several hundred thousand Marines along with millions of Cultists/Traitor Guard along with Dark Mechanicus and Titan Legios as well as any human/xenos mercenaries/fans-of-oppurtunity that get dragged in their wake. For example, a single Alpha Legionnaire could be considered a warband. Or it could be the Black Legion Squad from Honour Among Fiends in the Heroes of the Space Marines anthology. Or maybe something like the Alpha Legion warband in We Are One in Treacheries of the Space Marines to the Warband of the Broken Aquila from A-D-B's Night Lord trilogy to Krieg Acerbus' warband to Marduk's 34th Host.

To the Blood Pact and Honsou and M'Kar's Bloodborn. Or even an emtire Black Crusade.

 

Also, these groups of Warbands do not have to be exclusively in just one group. Look at the Legions. Each group of Marines is basically allowed to do whatever. Some Legions are strict about the Warbands maintaining contact(Word Bearers) while some only ask that the warbands answer when the Legion calls(the Black Legion) while some are scattered to the four corners of the galaxy with no hierarchy whatsoever(Night Lords).

 

On a non-Legion level. Let's look at the Violators. I believe they first appeared in the 3.5 Codex as part of the list of Renegade Chapters that helped out in the Black Crusade. They also appeared in Ben Counter's Daemonworld, numbering 400 strong. However, the warband that was featured there was wiped out. And yet the Chapter survived to fight in Soul Hunter and the 13th Black Crusade. So from that we can guesstimate that a single warband doesn't always equal the total forces of that Legion/Renegade Chapter/Conglomeration of Traitors. With an emphasis on "doesn't always".

[Azekai]

Putting exact numbers on warband size is difficult, since the term simply means "group of chaos followers of any size." I would hazard that what is given in the Apoc book is simply an example of a Flawless Host force, unless it came right out and said that was the warband in its entirety. Of course, that example army can be considered a warband in its own right, so . . . who knows?

[minigun762]

Warbands seem to function almost like Ork armies, in that they are held together primarily because of the actions of one particular individual, the Warlord.

 

So the size of the warband would, at least in part, be a function of that Warlord's power and resources.

 

If we look at the WB or IW novels, we see individual Warlords who are in charge of fairly massive armies that are 5x-10x greater than the Flawless Host warband listed above. Now compare that to the NL novels where a particular warband is much smaller and much less well equipped and this gives you a sense of the range of possibilities.

 

For me, I tend to make the assumption that an average Chaos warband = Loyalist company in approximate power level, however this is just a starting point and the scale can be adjusted based on your fluff needs.