The Actual Number of Space Marines in a Chapter

[Master Antaeus]

Was taking a shower this morning when a thought hit me--no chapter is ever 1000 space marines.

 

Seriously.

 

Let's assume that a chapter of space marines is at full strength; an unlikely scenario, but let us assume.  This makes 1,000 space marines, right?

 

Well, no.

 

Composition:

 

Let's start with reserve companies because they are the easiest.  A reserve company is 10 squads, each of 10 sworn battle brothers.  Easy, each is 100 marines?

 

Maybe for 6th and 7th company, who are fully trained tactical brothers and can largely look after themselves.  They still have captains, and likely command squads to help with the day-to-day running of the company (a surprising amount of work and logistics), so that's (at least) 6 more battle brothers for each reserve company, giving us an extra 30 brothers.

 

So we have 530 minimum in the reserve companies, if there are 10 scout squads in the 10th, not including their trainers who we'll look at later.

 

That leaves us 4 battle companies, each with 100 brothers plus captain and command squad = 424

 

Assuming there are 100 brothers in the 1st company (again, unlikely), we come back to 106 before anything else happens.

 

So just in the meat of the companies, there are 1060 brothers.

 

Then there's the Chapter Master and his command squad, that's another 6 for 1066.

 

Motorpool:

There has to be a Master of the Forge and at least 1 full techmarine per company to maintain its motorpool (realistically, this would require a lot more, but we'll get there) Then there's the vehicles.  Assuming the chapter is poor and does not field transports for its reserve companies, you have (by the codex) to maintain transports for all your battle companies. That's another 2 brothers per rhino-chassis, so you have 4 battle companies x 11 squads each for 44 rhinos carrying 88 crewmen, bringing your total number of sworn battle brothers to 1165.  Since Land Raiders are 3 crew for a tank, we'll assume this number cancels out the more numerous, but less crew-intensive drop pods.

 

There is no easy way of determining the numbers of pilots, gunners, commanders and drivers for a given chapter's other vehicles, so let us assume a minimum of 5 of each vehicle spread across the chapter, excluding exotic vehicles like Fellblades and Sicarans:

 

Predator (3 gunners, 1 driver, 1 commander) 25 brothers.

Vindicator (1 gunner, 1 driver, 1 loader, 1 commander) 20 brothers.

Hunter (1 gunner, 1 driver, 1 sensor) 15 battle brothers.

Stalker (1 gunner, 1 driver, 1 sensor) 15 battle brothers.  

Whirlwind (1 gunner, 1 driver, 1 sensor) 15 battle brothers.

Stormraven (1 pilot, apparently) 5 battle brothers.

Stormhawk (1 pilot) 5 battle brothers.

Stormtalon (1 pilot) 5 battle brothers.

Dreadnoughts (1 pilot) 5 battle brothers.

Thunderhawks (1 pilot, 1 copilot, 1 gunner, 1 navigator) 20 battle brothers.

Land Speeders are usually flown by line brothers, so we'll assume we've already counted them.

1295

 

 

Apothecaries, ancients and champions.

We'll assume that aside from the chief apothecary, every company's apothecary is buried somewhere in its command squad.  Ancients and champions are easy enough to put in command squads, so we'll assume we've already counted them.  1296.

 

Librarius

Should be a chief librarian and at least one librarian for each battle company, so now we're up to 1301.

 

Reclusiam

Some chapters field chaplains with command squads, we'll assume this chapter does not.  The Reclusiam will have a Master of Sanctity and at least a single chaplain per company, so that's 11 more for a total of 1312.

 

Now we get to the hard part.

 

The Fleet

Every chapter needs a fleet to get from place to place.  At a bare minimum, a chapter will have enough ships to get its battle companies from place to place.  Let us assume our poor chapter has 4 strike cruisers.  Lexicanum states that the officers on board these ships will be space marines and the rest will be servitors and chapter serfs.  It says the crews are small, so let's assume there are 20 space marines (this number is probably much higher) on each strike cruiser, including its techmarines.  That's 80 more battle brothers.  1392.

 

Each of these strike cruisers should have a minimum of 2 sword or gladius frigates as escort ships (anything smaller would contain at most a single battle brother commanding it) each with approximately 10 space marines on board.  So 2 frigates x 4 strike cruisers is 8 ships for 80 more battle brothers.  1472.

 

So a full-strength chapter with modest support requires around 1472 battle brothers just to function.

 

Thoughts?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Iron Father Ferrum]

This math has all been done before but yeah, the average seems to roll out around 1500, though one guy I know high balled it at just shy of 2000.

[Ordo Machinum]

If your chapter is Black Templars you won't have to worry about this. 

 

Another consideration is new recruits. Does a chapter stop recruiting and prepping new initiates if they are at full strength? It takes time to select, prep, augment and train these younglings. "Oh no, sorry lads. No one has been killed yet so we don't need... waitaminute… ah, thank the Emperor! A Tyranid hive has just wiped out half of 5th company. Alright, everyone move forward. Let's get training!" 

[Captain Idaho]

Generally yes; Chapters need approximately 1500 Marines to operate at the nominal 1000.

 

Though I'd point out that things like Predators and Whirlwinds have a crew of 2 - driver and gunner.

[Panzer]

Isn't the restriction of 1000 Marines basically void now thanks to Guilliman? I thought I remember something about chapters being allowed to have a basically infinite amount of Scouts depending on how fast they can recruit. ^^

[Master Antaeus]

A chapter on crusade or on campaign can have any number.  This is how Black Templars get around the problem and get to roll around at legion strength.

[Preliminary Bombardment]

Seems about right.

[Panzer]

A chapter on crusade or on campaign can have any number.  This is how Black Templars get around the problem and get to roll around at legion strength.

 

Yeah I know but that's not what I was talking about.

[BluejayJunior]

Blood Angels have a ton of scouts now, but I don't think Guilliman has officially changed anything with the codex yet. Even though he isn't completely happy with it anymore seeing how it has been implemented. 

Isn't the restriction of 1000 Marines basically void now thanks to Guilliman? I thought I remember something about chapters being allowed to have a basically infinite amount of Scouts depending on how fast they can recruit. ^^

[redmapa]

A chapter on crusade or on campaign can have any number.  This is how Black Templars get around the problem and get to roll around at legion strength.

 

NO!

 

Holy crap I cant believe this bit of misinformation made it here but NO! ITS FALSE!

 

a) Even if this loophole existed it would assume that Black Templars are following the codex to exploit this thing, have you read any part of the Black Templar lore? Show me where it says they follow the codex after 2nd edition, I will gladly wait for it and I will give you a hint: THEY DONT FOLLOW THE CODEX, THEY DONT PRETEND TO EITHER! Even in 6th edition when their lore was castrated they were still described as not following the codex astartes in any shape or form.

 

ii) The idea that Black Templars are "getting around" or "getting away with it" is patently false, the High Lords do know that the Black Templars are way above the chapter limitations and in the back of the 4th ed codex you see that the office of tithes is worried about it and has gathered enough evidence to corroborate their suspicions. Now if this loophole existed and was within the legality of the Imperium then why is the office of tithes worried enough to make a case against the chapter? This idea makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

 

Black Templars abhor the codex astartes, they dont ascribe to it and they have been way above chapter strength because thats what they deem as necessary to complete their mission. They do it because they can, because they are willing, out of their own sense of arrogance and duty and not because they hide in legalisms or pretensions like the Dark Angels.

[Captain Idaho]

=][= Don't make this a Black Templars rant. =][=

[Marshal Rohr]

It used to be a thousand, now its whatever you need it be, within reason. 

[Kinstryfe]

I've thought about it a lot, as has likely any long term marine fan, and I have a feeling that there's a loophole in there. Something like "1000 Battle Brothers", but command staff aren't Battle Brothers, they're command staff, and scouts aren't Battle Brothers because they're not full Marines, and drivers are obviously motor pool, and so on. So they probably look at the 900 "Battle Brothers" in the first 9 companies as Marines Proper, and that explains things like command staffs and company veterans. Typical recruits minus typical casualties equals 900± over time.

 

About scouts, I imagine one of several things happens if they have "too many". The Chapter may be honor bound to seek out more dangerous tasks. They may decide it would be appropriate to second more brothers to the Deathwatch or other Inquisitorial bodies so that they are both within the bounds of the Codex and not wasting valuable recruits. They may simply amp up the training of the scouts, so that they get about the same number of surviving recruits but they're tougher than the normal lot. Rarely I could see them "gifting" some scouts to a chapter with comparable geneseed who is on the decline. Really though if you're running a scout surplus, you're likely not protecting the Imperium hard enough.

[shandwen]

There are other issues as well, such as the massive amounts of secondments.

The Ultramarine chapter has a half squad (or more) in the deathwatch, and many chapters have shrines/recruitment points/obligations that demand marines to be away from the chapter.

I fully believe when the numbers were laid down it was by people who knew nothing of military matters, and had little understanding to support staffing. They do their best now to explain it away, but the best you could hope for is that scouts are not considered battle brothers and they would make the chapter about 1100 with them included (which is doable, but would require tactical to man vehicles and such).

[Beta galactosidase]

Yes, there are some numbers available for things that you have estimated above.

 

Rhinos, for example, have one crew. That’s been in appendices and supplements like Insignium Astartes or Imperial Armor, but it’s also been right in the unit entry, as recently as fourth edition it has a crew number right under the profile, even though that had no bearing on the game.

 

Incidentally we also know that the passenger compartment only holds nine marines, and the tenth passenger occupies what would be the tank commander’s seat if the rhino had more than one crew.

 

We know in the same way that predators have two crew, like Idaho mentioned.

 

You have to venture slightly out of the army list entries all the way to the background section of the mainstream codices to get numbers for the librarium and headquarters apothecarium. The Ultramarines and Blood Angels have numbers each for a specific point in time and it seems like with the respective ranks of lexicanum, codicier, and epistolary a chapter has more than twenty if it had any at all.

 

I think you could amend those numbers in the OP without any controversy.

 

These particular numbers can be seen with a little bit of googling and reading. They are from the normal 40k marine codexes for the most part, not Epic rulebooks or Citadel Journal or anywhere else obscure so they get recirculated in forums and wikis and like geocities pages pretty widely.

 

Given that availability of numbers I’m not so confident in the other conjecture in the OP. For example we know that Libs and tech marines are headquarters groups, while each company has a specifically assigned chaplain and apothecary, besides the ones in the chapter headquarters. You have estimated numbers of tech marines and librarians based on needing one plus per company, however there are limited reason to suspect any relationship to each other.

 

A company has a chaplain and apothecary because those offices are used to maintain any group of 100 marines. The apothecary is effectively a GP, the primary care doctor responsible for the long term health of the marines in the company, since having a large number of donated organs and a variety of combat injuries needs monitoring and continuing care. A chaplain is needed in the same way, as an Human Resources officer who maintains the career development and spiritual health of each of the company’s marines, and doing about 106 under one dr and one priest seems like a good caseload. There is no connection however between the maintenance of fighting condition in line marines and a librarian or tech marine. Ships and heavy vehicles are not formal permanent parts of companies, so tech marines can be highly available while being assigned to take care of specific bodies of heavy armor and ships, not to companies. Libs and tech marines are useful for operations, but six out of ten companies are not operational units, they’re organizational and so lib and tech marine numbers have no reason to be related to company numbers. Besides the guesses on rhino and tank crew and librarians not accounting for the solid numbers, it seems like the underlying reasons for the guesswork are hard to trust.

 

The information on tank crew and librarians is from 40k codexes and so it’s floating around, most people who happened to play marines at the time saw it so it’s fairly normal information to see on forum discussions and painting logs. What didn’t come from that sort of universal knowledge can also be useful, like information on fleet crew that cane from an article on BFG fleets in a magazine, not white dwarf but Citadel Journal (a GW magazine). They say that the officers from marine fleets are directly from the line companies, that sergeants and battle brothers have temporary or secondary duties as fleet officers.

 

That’s where the confidence comes in, because when your conjecture about crew and officer numbers both doesn’t have very good explanatory power, and also doesn’t approximate the real fluff, then having an open mind about something like fleet crew being line marines is much more important. But we can keep working on those numbers and finding ways that they make sense.

[Master Antaeus]

@BetaGalactosidase

 

Some of this information I am basing on lore info, some of it I'm basing on military experience.  Though I was not explicit (100% my problem, nothing bad on you), I am also calling BS on some of the lore.

 

For example, a rhino can be modeled with the gunner unbuttoned and is often depicted this way.  There is no way a space marine, no matter how badass, is driving a vehicle one direction, watching for threats and keeping the hardest parts facing the bad guys and firing a pintle in another.

 

A predator, with autosenses and servitor/machine spirit support could probably get away with 1/1.  Conceded.  That said, if any of those things breaks, the tank is severely degraded.  If a gunner breaks, you just find another gunner.

 

I agree with you on the thin explanations and in part, this was because it was coming from memory, but also because every chapter is different and I was going for a "normal" chapter; one that has to balance reality against the codex.

 

In all honesty, I would guess that even with all of their support brothers in place and even if the fleet staff was not fielded from line brethren, simple battlefield attrition would keep the number of brothers around 1,000.

 

@The Guy Whose Name Was In Greek: I would guess that if they have too many battle brothers, they start shunting them off to other Imperial organizations.  Hey, Deathwatch, here are two full squads!  Mars, long time, no see!  Got a score of bros just itching to paint their armor red.  Here's a demi-company strength delegation to the Feast of Blades.  Are we Imperial Fists?  Who knows?

[Ishagu]

It's implied that with support elements the numbers are around 1300-1500

 

Following Dark Imperium, the introductions of new companies etc, chapters would probably be around the 2k mark.

 

The Ultramarines might be more, but it's largely irrelevant as all Ultra successors seem to be under direct command of Guilliman.

[Jolemai]

It's implied that with support elements the numbers are around 1300-1500

 

Following Dark Imperium, the introductions of new companies etc, chapters would probably be around the 2k mark.

 

The Ultramarines might be more, but it's largely irrelevant as all Ultra successors seem to be under direct command of Guilliman.

 

2k's worth of stuff in a 1300-1500 point list? Sounds like seventh edition to me.

[apologist]

It's an old discussion, but an interesting one; and – as with much of 40k's lore – different people will come to different conclusions, resulting in different numbers of marines in a Chapter. In my view, that's fine – in fact, it's 40k working as intended: given the scope of time and number of Chapters, probably all are true for some particular Chapter at some particular date in history. 

 

For the record, I think the rhetorical power of '1,000 Chapters of 1,000 marines, fewer than one for each world of the Imperium' is important to the mood of the game, even if it may not be literally true in-universe.

 

 

+++Warning: wall o' text ahead+++

 

As a thought experiment, I'm interested in seeing if following Master Antaeus' excellent run-down of a practical, real-world based interpretation (which resulted in 1,472 marines) can be tweaked to stick with the letter of the law, and give us a hard cap of 1,000 marines while still working in a somewhat practical sense. This would be suitable for Chapters that are hard-line adherents of the strictures of the Codex (like the Black Consuls, perhaps).

 

In contrast to Master Antaeus', I'm starting with the fighting elements of a Chapter; the Battle Companies. The background suggests that the 2nd–5th Companies are at the heart of any engagement the Chapter enters into; with the 6th–9th, 1st and 10th more rarely being fielded en masse. In a related article (here, if you're interested), I posited that a typical Codex Chapter fights in four 'Armies' as so:

 

 

the Chapter is split into four Armies. Each is made up of 100 Battle Company Marines, plus 100 Reserve Company Marines (50 Tactical Marines from the 6th and 7th, 25 Assault Marines from the 8th, and 25 Devastator Marines from the 9th) plus 25 Veterans and 25 Scouts. 250 Marines sounds about right to me – it's the sort of army the stories and games make us familiar with – able to break up into smaller Strike Forces or combine for a big battle.

 

If you're happy to take this as correct (and if you're not, then I do encourage you to read the full article – it's quite long, but it does go into quite a bit of detail that explains a lot of the immediate objections), then it goes a long way to making sense of the 1,000 marine limit.

 

The four 250-Marine strong Armies cycle between garrison duty (and recruitment) at home. This creates a sustainable model that importantly, allows us to stick within 1,000 marines as follows:

 

Command Squads

Master Antaeus' model splits out officers and command squads:

 

 

They still have captains, and likely command squads to help with the day-to-day running of the company (a surprising amount of work and logistics), so that's (at least) 6 more battle brothers for each reserve company, giving us an extra 30 brothers.

 

I'll come to the officers in a minute, but my model allows command squads to be ad-hoc affairs drawn from senior members of the core Battle company – the gaps from the squad being filled with appropriate members from the accompanying Reservists. Alternatively, the command squad can be drawn from some of the First Company Veterans; or, of course, a combination of the two. 

 

In any case, we end up with the Battle Company in any one army not exceeding one hundred members – even if half a dozen are taken into a Command Squad, the availability of Reserve Company marines allows the Company to be fielded at full strength, with all ten squads.

 

So, that accounts for Command squads – they don't add to the total number of marines. 

 

+++

 

Motorpool

This is the other big source of Marines – around 230 additional Battle Brothers – that Master Antaeus' model creates. I think we can get round this with the 'four Army' model by having the vehicles for an Army driven by the accompanying Reservists. Even being conservative and splitting the necessary 230 crew spaces across just three armies (i.e. assuming the fourth army doesn't use vehicles while in the garrison, and all the vehicle pool is in use) – requires just 77 crewmen per army at maximum; well within the available number of Reservists (i.e. 100) with any army, even taking those filling spots vacated by the Command Squad into account. In fact, using the four Army model, we can even have the majority of the vehicles crewed by experienced Tactical Company Reservists.

 

This allows us a way to field and operate the Chapter's entire vehicle pool without requiring additional permanent crew members. In addition, it fits the background of the Reserve Companies operating primarily as support for the Battle Companies.

 

+++

 

Fleet

Explaining this can be approached in a number of ways that don't necessarily increase the numbers of marines:

• Exactly like the motor pool, Astartes fleet crew are drawn from Reserve/Veteran company members.
• Like Command Squads, Astartes fleet crew are drawn from Battle Company members during transit. Control can be handed over to Chapter serfs when the theatre is reached, or an Astartes overseer can remain on board, seconded from the Army without impacting the Battle Company's ability to fight.

Slightly more contentiously, we can have another option:

• Astartes fleet crew are drawn from failed aspirants or injured/non-combatant Astartes. The article covers the potential of retiring marines; and there is some background to allow for marines to be honorably discharged from active duty.

 

 

Officers

Having accounted for Command squads and the motor pool, this leaves us with the problem of officers. I looked at this in relation to the four-Army model here:

 

 

Okay, so we've worked out how marines work up from being a Scout to a Veteran, and the 1,000 marine limit just about works within the model I've outlined. How about officers – can we answer the age-old question of whether they're included in the 1,000 marine limit? I think this is down to your personal preference and interpretation. Fortunately, there's enough slack in the maths for a number of approaches:

 

+ Model one: Officers are not part of the Codex limit and are in addition to the 1,000 Battle Brothers +

The officers and specialists are drawn from the occasional excess Marine from the Battle or Veteran Companies left during the gap between the ten-month casualty rate and the fifteen-month war rate. The advantage of this model is that it gives sufficient 'spare' marines to run the Librarium, Apothecarian, Armoury, Chaplaincy etc. The disadvantage is that you end up with rather more than 1,000 marines – probably an addition fifty or more.

 

+ Model two: Officers are counted amongst the 1,000 +

This neatly fits the hard line of the Codex, and still fits within our model for ages. However, it does make things a bit awkward – you lose the neat 'ten squads of ten' feel.

I prefer the second model for the reasons listed in bullets below, and think that there are ways to work out potential problems. The first part is by saying that the three campaigning Armies of the model are supplemented by the Marines seconded from the fourth army that garrisons the Fortress-Monastery. With this approach, members of (for example) the Third Company will draw their officers from within their ranks, filling the spaces this leaves in their squads with visiting members of (for example) the Second Company. This has the pleasant knock-on effects that:

• It allows narrative space for cross-company competition and training.
• It keeps as many marines as possible fighting – you're likely to have around fifty marines of the Garrison Battle Company on secondment. There are no 'spare' or 'lazy' marines; and increases the experience of each individual marine.
• It still keeps two hundred marines at home to protect the Fortress-Monastery, recruit, train etc.
• It provides flexibility to allow the garrison force to crew the fleet, monitor the armoury etc.
• It fits the 1,000 marines model.

This second model also has the benefit that it can account for the Veteran Sergeants in a Battle Company: they are simply seconded from the twenty-five Veterans of the garrison army.

 

Consider: each campaigning army includes a quarter of the Tenth Company: twenty-five Scouts. This is sufficient for five pure squads of Scouts. By adding six Veterans from the garrison, each campaigning army can now field six squads of Scouts led by a Veteran Sergeant (pleasingly, enough to fill the Troops choices of a standard Force Organisation Chart, providing support for armies of Scouts on-table). We're told they're driven to preserve the Scouts' lives, and this also offers support for the idea that Veterans take fewer casualties than Battle Company marines.

 

By allocating six Veterans from the garrison to each campaigning army, we account for Scout Sergeants without reducing the fighting number of the twenty-five Veterans originally allocated to the campaign. That still leaves us with seven Veterans in the garrison – who can either be allocated as occasional 'fillers' for campaigning Battle Company squads, or simply left at home to train.

 

 

 

+++

Specialists

Finally, we turn to specialists – the Apothecarian, Librarius etc. I'll have to hold my hands up here and say that my model, as set out in the article, doesn't account for these. It can – just about – do so by using spare marines from various companies:. 

 

Taking the four-army approach, we assume that there is at least one trained Apothecary (for example) in each Company – nominally a member of one of the Tactical squads, but who is almost always part of the command squad (and so his space in the Tactical squad is taken up by a Reservist).

 

That means each of the four armies army has at least two apothecaries available: one for the Battle Company, and one from at least one of the four Reserve Company elements (remember that only quarter of each Reserve company is with each Army, so the four Reserve apothecaries are split across the Chapter as a whole).

 

This leaves the 1st and 10th not contributing to the armies – so assuming the same model, we can add two 'floating' Apothecaries that can appear alongside one of the three active Armies. If we desperately need three apothecaries in an army, we can do this by taking one from the Garrison Army (leaving them with just one). These floating' apothecaries can account for the Chief Apothecary – entirely fitting for the First Company.

 

The same approach can be used for the Librarius, Reclusiam and Forge without breaking the model – essentially, four members of the Battle Company (apothecary, librarian, chaplain and techmarine) are nominally part of a Company's Tactical Squads, but are usually pulled out and their place in the squad filled by Reserve Company members during a battle. The senior members are drawn from the Veterans.

 

A similar approach can be used for the Company Champion and Ancient. Alternatively, the Ancients can be accounted for from the Veterans; perhaps being permanently assigned to a Company, but officially being part of the Veteran Company. This is made easier if we allow it to be typical for only the Battle Companies to field Ancients and Champions; the Reserve Companies only fielding them on the rare occasions they fight as a whole.

 

Finally, the 'spare' seven Veterans left at the Garrison (see above) can, if push comes to shove, account for supernumeraries.

 

+++

 

Summary

In essence, you can squeeze all the specialists, crew, temporary assignations etc. into a hard limit of 1,000 without impacting the Chapter's ability to fight in a meaningful way, and while still maintaining that magic 'one hundred marines in a Company'.

 

Whether you want to is, of course, entirely down to you and the way you see your Chapter – but it's entirely defensible to do so.

[Brother Casman]

I have to say, Apologist, this is a very well thought out piece. I've had vague thoughts of the typical Chapter operating as "4 armies", and here you just laid out a reasonable way to do it, that takes into account the concept of "perpetual war" 40k invokes. I particularly liked your implication that a typical battle-brother, in his mid-fifties, would have seen 31(!) tours of duty, and still have the majority of his fighting ahead of him. Quite frankly, this is part of my head-canon now!

[Robbienw]

That's brilliant Apologist, very well thought out

[Wargamer]

This, like with many things in 40K, comes down to weasel-wording.

Let's take the most common claim - a Chapter has 1,000 Space Marines (or 1,000 Battle Brothers). How are these terms defined? Is there a distinction between a Space Marine and an Adeptus Astartes? Is a Neophyte a Space Marine? Is a Scout? Is a Dreadnought? In my own homebrew Chapter, they don't consider you a Marine until you've proven yourself worthy of that title, so in a squad with five "blooded" Marines and five "unblooded" Marines, are there five Marines, or ten? Well, the Chapter's members will say both, depending on the definition you are using (or is convenient for them at the time). If you are talking about maximum members of the Chapter allowed, they would absolutely say five.

 

This kind of mischief is something I do love about 40K and its various organisations. Only 1,000 Marines, Inquisitor? No problem. What? No, Techmarines aren't Space Marines, they're Techpriests. Librarians? They are mutants, Inquisitor! You can't count a mutant as a Marine! And so on, and so on...

[CCE1981]

I did the math on this some time ago tallying the scout company up last. The scout company has no true number associated with it and a scout isn’t a full Battle Brother yet until he gets the black carapace. Attrition is the biggest problem, the numbers that are list in a battle in the lore prevent the tiny numbers that are being used.

[Commissar Molotov]

I posted a topic in 2006 here on the B+C called 'The 1,000 Marine Myth' that was largely copy-pasted and then edited into a Librarium article that has been mirrored here. I used a number of 40k sources to bring the size of a Chapter to approximately 1700 Marines - but as Apologist says, the argument is somewhat of a fallacy in itself.

 

 

[Sword Brother Adelard]

I just added up the numbers in the chart showing the order of battle of the Ultramarines in the 3rd edition codex. Without counting vehicles, the strength of the Chapter was 1,076. And that's even with a note that states the 5th Company was under strength at 81 marines.