Why Loyalist Legions are so scanty?

[Marshal Rohr]

The numbers given in FW books are all pre-Istvaan and that is important because the accelerated recruitment is mentioned several times swelling each legion. By hundreds of thousands? Probably not. Tens of thousands by the Siege given losses and materiel stretching is most likely. 

[Master Sheol]

Traitor Legions are bigger than most of the loyalist ones cause from a narrative point of view the good guys are Always outnumbered but they win against all odds even if at the cost of some big sacrifice (sanguinius and ferrus dead and Emperor almost dead)

 

I guess there is non other reason for that

[Nova_Dew]

There's also that it is a siege, the 3-1 odd's given earlier are not right, it's closer to 1000+ to 6 odds (yes there has been a historical case where 6 people have held a castle for months against a whole army of attackers and yes i know real life history =/= 30K but it shows how hard sieges can be if they drag on), basically Horus couldn't win a full siege with other loyal legions threatening his back and without full control of the imperium.

[Marshal Rohr]

There's also that it is a siege, the 3-1 odd's given earlier are not right, it's closer to 1000+ to 6 odds (yes there has been a historical case where 6 people have held a castle for months against a whole army of attackers and yes i know real life history =/= 30K but it shows how hard sieges can be if they drag on), basically Horus couldn't win a full siege with other loyal legions threatening his back and without full control of the imperium.

There are not 1000 traitor legionaries for every one loyalist. If you are adding Auxilia to your Numbers there is a parity between loyalist and traitor auxilia complements, because the traitors have to bring their auxilia with them and Dorn has spent seven years training the Solar System population into a militia grade fighting force not to include the Imperial Army mainline regiments and solar auxiliaries they’ve garrisoned in the system.

 

What we don’t want is the traitors being so superior everything is a cake walk. What we do want is to be able to build armies that have mechanicum, auxilia, titans, knights, Custodes, sisters, knights errant, Skitarii, et al versus armies of the same.

[Nova_Dew]

 

There's also that it is a siege, the 3-1 odd's given earlier are not right, it's closer to 1000+ to 6 odds (yes there has been a historical case where 6 people have held a castle for months against a whole army of attackers and yes i know real life history =/= 30K but it shows how hard sieges can be if they drag on), basically Horus couldn't win a full siege with other loyal legions threatening his back and without full control of the imperium.

There are not 1000 traitor legionaries for every one loyalist. If you are adding Auxilia to your Numbers there is a parity between loyalist and traitor auxilia complements, because the traitors have to bring their auxilia with them and Dorn has spent seven years training the Solar System population into a militia grade fighting force not to include the Imperial Army mainline regiments and solar auxiliaries they’ve garrisoned in the system.

 

What we don’t want is the traitors being so superior everything is a cake walk. What we do want is to be able to build armies that have mechanicum, auxilia, titans, knights, Custodes, sisters, knights errant, Skitarii, et al versus armies of the same.

 

 

But what we want isn't what is in/has been in the fluff, the Siege of Terra was The Imperium's last stand against overwhelming odds and Horus so worried about the loyalist forces behind him that he settles for a risky gambit because his tip of the spear strike to claim the throne of Terra and force the loyalists to besiege him didn't work. That can't happen with parity story/fluff wise (which the OP was talking about) the parity is in the FOC and rules.

[Marshal Rohr]

If you look at it from a purely lore angle, the traitors can’t possibly outnumber the loyalists by a 1000:1 margin. They have to bring their forces with them. The loyalists do not.

[Nova_Dew]

the loyalists were fighting a defensive war against an equally well trained force that had all the intel it would ever want thanks the the Alpha legion and the fact they were a part of the Imperium, while the Emps was busy fighting in the web way, Horus spent years moving unfriendly forces out of the way (Blood Angels, White Scars, Space Wolves and Dark Angels) and reduced 3 legions to little more than guerrilla forces (Iron Hands, Raven Guard and Salamanders), bringing friendly ones to him and then further messed things up for the loyalists with the ruin storm, it would be very easy for the traitors to out number the loyalists on Terra. Chances are Horus planned to hit Terra with only the Solar defence forces and the Imperial Fists to oppose him.

 

So from a lore angle the Traitors should have had even higher numbers than 1000:1 and it's only the trope of hero's arriving at the last minute to save the day (Blood Angels, White Scars and the now added hanger on forces to give all loyalists a slice of the saving Terra pie) and the threat of knights to the rescue trope (Wolves and Dark Angels) that stopped Horus winning

[Marshal Rohr]

You’re really overestimating Horus ability to get fighting forces into the solar system. A 3-1 advantage is perfectly acceptable and realistic from a lore perspective. You still haven’t clarified if you’re saying the traitors are bringing a thousand legionaries for every loyalist. You aren’t taking into account ship numbers, how to get those forces on the ground, and the idea of 1000:1 is insanity because the size of the area of the siege is fixed to the Tibetan plateau. At the numbers you’re suggesting there would be standing room only, not including buildings and the actual mountains.

[Nova_Dew]

I have never said a 1000 - 1, I said a 1000 - 6 has been known in history and Horus' odd's were closer to that over 3 - 1.

 

As for ship number's we know at least the Word Bearer's were building up ships in secret and that Horus had a few Forge worlds on his side, so ship numbers shouldn't be an issue, as for landing troops, teleporters, drop pod's and lander's. the Tibetan Plateau is 2,500,000 Km^2 (970,000 miles^2) today, fluff had it that the Emps flattened it a bit to build his castle/house thing, right now it's 10 times larger than the UK that had 66,040,229 people living in it in 2017.

 

[Elzender]

At any rate, I don't think the proportions we know from historical sieges can really apply to such a situation. There were probably battles all across Terra, specially on the early stages, and even when it was reduced to the Imperial Palace, it was still an enormous battlefield. If we add to that the battles for orbital supremacy, the presence of titans and superheavy (ordinatus size) war machines, and all other warfare methods that do not exist in our times, I don't think the ratio of attackers to defenders is such an important number. Obviously, the defenders were outnumbered, and probably by a big margin, but when a single orbital barrage can practically obliterate a city, including everyone fighting in it, the number of boots on the ground might not be the most decisive factor.

[Vykes]

There's also that it is a siege, the 3-1 odd's given earlier are not right, it's closer to 1000+ to 6 odds (yes there has been a historical case where 6 people have held a castle for months against a whole army of attackers and yes i know real life history =/= 30K but it shows how hard sieges can be if they drag on), basically Horus couldn't win a full siege with other loyal legions threatening his back and without full control of the imperium.

 

The only way anything approaching 150:1 odds is going to be remotely close to possible is if you count Daemons as primary combatants for Horus's army.  Beyond that, I'd be a little surprised if the number goes above 6:1 and even then I'd think that number is high and mostly thanks to army regiments and cult insurgency groups rather than legionnaires.  

 

The Imperials had 7 years of defenses built up, and refugees flocking to Sol that were then conscripted under arms as a home guard (not all of them, but massive numbers thank you Master of Mankind).  More over, despite Phall, the Imperial Fists didn't seem to have any other major drains on their legion for men and material, they continued to build.  The Blood Angels were numerous, the White Scars I think had what, 70,000 circa Path to Heaven on their way to Terra? (not huge, but significant).  Some other loyalist groups such as the Riven Hound's Blackshields and the like were there as well, it's not an insignificant number overall.  And thanks to Russ's attacks at Trisolian and the resultant battle of Yarant, the Sons of Horus were still bleeding resources even if they got the better of the engagements.   That's just the 'at Terra' numbers, while the Ultramarines had the industrial base and general inclination to rebuild effective forces even after Calth and Johnson was ruining most of the traitor homeworlds and centers for resupply. 

 

Despite all the talk of numbers swelling and getting bigger in legion ranks despite combat attrition, we don't seem to see much in the way of supportive evidence for that yet (not saying it hasn't happened, just that most of the time the numbers for main campaign forces haven't been grossly inflated, though this could well be because of the demands of ever expanding warzones through the Galactic plane.  Thus, even if Sons of Horus expand from their 140ish-thousand to 300ish-thousand, we're still seeing the main body of Horus Lupercal's armies at the 60-100K mark).  Horus's main force at Moloch in Vengeful Spirit was 60,000 16th legion legionnaires and a similar number of Mortarion's Death Guard arrayed against 50Mil armed defenders that had only about 600 legionnaires .  They were majority deployments mid-war.  Horus's 'mortal' army was the ones who carried most of the attack on Lupercalia, an army we can only assume is near parity but the losses for them and legion personnel were significant.   

 

Even as late as Slaves to Darkness, the Iron Warriors despite their advantages at low geneseed rejection rates weren't just having problems with legion numbers, they were having major materiel deficiencies when fighting rearguard actions against the Ultramarines and in their search for the fragmented legions in Horus's camp.  World Eaters were always good in that arena but high attrition rates, destruction of main training worlds like Bodt, and the significant degradation in legion upper echelon command feels like it's leading them on a downward spiral as well.  

 

For all the 'overwhelming might' that the traitors are typically afforded in the premise, the triators were bleeding resources and losing any edge they had after Istvaan V.  Once upon a time I'd have said that the Loyalists were the absurdly outnumbered, outgunned, undersiege 'Alamo' style narrative figures seen in heroic prose, but a lot of the later material still feels like Horus is desperately having his rebellion unravel, his advantages squandered, and time running out.  His early advantages were in his better command unity, legion numbers, ease of transport through the warp, and surprise.  By the late war, a lot of those eroded to be replaced with 'cults, daemons, daemon primarchs, and unwilling daemon primarchs leading culty daemon squigglies'.  

[Pacific81]

There's also that it is a siege, the 3-1 odd's given earlier are not right, it's closer to 1000+ to 6 odds (yes there has been a historical case where 6 people have held a castle for months against a whole army of attackers and yes i know real life history =/= 30K but it shows how hard sieges can be if they drag on), 

 

Yes although it's probable that the 1000 people attacking the castle weren't armed with anything more technically advanced than the corpse of a cow fired from a catapult (although that might be something the Death Guard might have tried..) :) 

[Arkangilos]

3-1 odds for sieges is perfectly acceptable when you have the good old force multiplier of nuclear weapons and orbital bombardment.

[Hrvat]

Discussions such as these are an example for me that GW made a mistake by x10 the size of legions and thus changing the narrative of the Horus Heresy as it was known prior to that shift. 

 

The Old Horus HeresyTM was a desperate gamble. It was a galaxy wide rebellion but it relied on a precision strike against Terra to depose the Emperor and face many who have not take sides with a fait accompli as well as hoping to turn some or most of those that have declared originally for the Emperor to switch sides. 

 

So with the old legion sizes when the HH was "half of space marine legions and a third of the imperial army" it really looked like a gamble and way clear why Istvaan V was absolutely necessary. The main fighting strength of the HH on both sides were their Imperial Army contingents not the elite SM legions. 

 

Furthermore the change in how warp travel works also made sense why Guilliman was late even though he was rushing across the galaxy to reinforce Terra. There was no need for Imperium Secundus, Ruinstorm or WB+WE Crusade because it simply took that long to get from where he was to Terra. Unless there are extra strange and rare occurrences in the Warp it takes between 5 months and 3 years of real time (5 day to 3 weeks of in ship time) to cross 5000 Ly. With the old timeline of the HH lasting from 007-014.M31 it made perfect sense that it would take Ultramarines that long to get to Terra. 

 

The setting even before recent changes had really strained suspension of disbelief for me but now I feel like everything goes which reduces my interest in the official setting. 

 

 

I mean what happened to timeline where great Crusade lasted in excess of a thousand years and the corruption of Horus as well as preparation for the heresy took centuries? I know a lot of players weren't even born back then but I does leave me a bit deflated.  

[Nova_Dew]

 

There's also that it is a siege, the 3-1 odd's given earlier are not right, it's closer to 1000+ to 6 odds (yes there has been a historical case where 6 people have held a castle for months against a whole army of attackers and yes i know real life history =/= 30K but it shows how hard sieges can be if they drag on), 

 

Yes although it's probable that the 1000 people attacking the castle weren't armed with anything more technically advanced than the corpse of a cow fired from a catapult (although that might be something the Death Guard might have tried..)

 

 

Yeah but 30/40K is still the WFB in space which was historical battles with fantasy mini's, and i'd accept the firing of a cow but only if they used Monty Python jokes.

 

On a side note i'm surprised one of the writers didn't include a passage in a book about the use of corpses as ammunition in a siege against imperial army troops, as a historical nod, it would fit the DG and IW well.

 

3-1 odds for sieges is perfectly acceptable when you have the good old force multiplier of nuclear weapons and orbital bombardment.

 

against void fields and "magical" material walls, it returns to a medieval warfare space opera, with knights and sieges and sadly no cow's since they've all been used by the DG as ammunition. 

 

But the point was that defended positions tend to be very defensible by a very numerically inferior force by using a very extreme example to show how hard it is to take a defended position, you have to surround the fort to stop the people inside just walking out while you're not looking and attacking you, with an area of about 2.5 million Km^2 that's a lot of surrounding to do for the Imperial Palace/castle thing, then you need a force big enough to take the defences against entrenched defenders on top of your force surrounding the place or the defenders walk out where you're thinnest and attack you from the side while you're attacking their fortifications (Ok that is just rude and since GW/FW are a british company that would never happen and all the attacking force will queue up nicely to walk in the front door after buying tickets).

 

But in the end all of us could be wrong and the odd's were/are 1:10 and Horus just wanted to kill off the attackers to summon a huge deamon army instead and the defenders turned into storm troopers so Horus face palmed talked to the Emps and arranged a less useless fight on the Vengeful Spirit involving Paradox-Billiards-Vostroyan-Roulette-Fourth-Dimensional-Hypercube-Chess-Strip Poker that went very wrong.

[Marshal Rohr]

Consider the Himalayas are one of the most inaccessible land locked regions on earth, though. You don’t gave to surround the whole thing, just place battlegroups and siege lines at the mouths of each pass.