New recruits

[Ja'ryn]

Apologies, I can't help but feel that this is a stupid question, but can anyone enlighten me as to whether newly recruited marines are automatically made into Primaris now?

 

As far as I can tell from reading the lore, Cawl released the secrets of the three new organs in the late 41st millennium, which kind of implies that any chapter can now make Primaris marines. This makes sense if the Primaris only chapters are to be self sustaining. But are they now the way of things, or if they're not entirely trusted are they more likely to be a one off set of reinforcements?

[Ogun]

Honestly, aspects to this are still unclear.

New Primaris are definitely being made by chapters, and not just Ultima Founding ones. 

That said there is evidence that Chapters are still raising normal marines. The way the Blood Angels codex mentions the huge expansion of the Scout Company and the creation of new Primaris, is in such a manner as to imply that the creation processes are different. 

To add some credence to that idea is the fact that the magnificat and the sinew coil implants of the Primaris are meant to be implanted very early on in the creation process. Any scout with those should be taller and stronger than a normal marine scout, and we have not seen any evidence of a Primaris scout yet. Given that 'machines' are apparently part of the creation process, it could be that Primaris don't have a Scout phase at all and rather grow to maturity in a vat perhaps. 

The other big question is geneseed. They need the three primaris organs to make primaris, but unless chapters are given large supplies of 'spare' Primaris organs, or a lot of Primaris geneseed out right (I don't think there has been any indication yet), then the growth and cultivation of the Primaris organs is going to be limited to the same rate as a standard marines. So if a chapter receives say reinforcements of 100 Primaris, they would be reliant on the progenoids contained in those 100 Primaris to create more Primaris. As such they would have to carefully cultivate and build up their supplies of Primaris seed to make more  than 100. Doable, depending on casualty rates of course. That though would mean that quite a few chapters would still be producing normal marines for quite a long time, even if they wanted to switch over wholly to Primaris.

The Codex Space Marines chart of the 2nd Company Ultramarines is interesting in this context. It is meant to represent the company at the end of the Plague Wars, well over a century after the chapter received Primaris. That is a century of Ultramar being under a constant state of war. If only Primaris are being produced for a century then it is very odd that the 2nd company still contains so many standard marines in its ranks, suggesting that standard marines are still being recruited as well. 

So in summary, we don't know yet, but some evidence suggests that standard marines are still being made.

[Brother Christopher]

Ogun, thanks for your detailed insight! I am surprised that GW failed to mention such a seemingly important thing about Primaris; I've been wondering about their production/training, actually, but never bothered to any actual research. Now, based on what you wrote, I feel even more that the entire release was dictated by purely financial gains primary-world reasons at the expense of the fictional setting.

[Ja'ryn]

That's great reasoning, thank you!

[Claws and Effect]

Ogun, thanks for your detailed insight! I am surprised that GW failed to mention such a seemingly important thing about Primaris; I've been wondering about their production/training, actually, but never bothered to any actual research. Now, based on what you wrote, I feel even more that the entire release was dictated by purely financial gains primary-world reasons at the expense of the fictional setting.

2 factors went into the release of Primaris.

 

1) Something to sell to long time Marine players who already had completed armies, and thus were not spending money on more.

 

2) They wanted things with trademarkable names to discourage 3rd party sellers. They were told they can't trademark Space Marine because it existed in public domain prior to their use of it. Primaris and the associated unit names ARE trademarkable.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Ogun, thanks for your detailed insight! I am surprised that GW failed to mention such a seemingly important thing about Primaris; I've been wondering about their production/training, actually, but never bothered to any actual research. Now, based on what you wrote, I feel even more that the entire release was dictated by purely financial gains primary-world reasons at the expense of the fictional setting.

 

To be honest, I think it's more that they don't want to upset anyone or step on any toes. People still like the old-Marines, GW can't just immediately come out and say "their days are numbered, there are absolutely 0 new standard Marines being made in-universe, it's all Primaris from now on". They want to leave it up to the players as to how their Primaris are received. After all, it's your army.

 

GW aren't going to put in the Codex "oh, that's a nice home-brew Chapter you've got there. They're only Primaris now. Throw out those Scouts, it's the very last generation of OldMarines." Even within most of the named Chapters, we know there's pushback against the Primaris, to some degree or another, if not resentment or hostility, like with the Dark Angels.

 

Like the discussions going on about OldMarines being phased out, if that does happen it's a long way away yet. As much as the naysayers might shriek otherwise, GW aren't stupid enough to shoot themselves in the foot and invalidate the bulk of the models in their most popular and best-selling army.

So yeah, every Chapter has the knowledge of how to make Primaris marines. How many they make, and how they're accepted into the Chapter, that's up to you.