Iron Warriors Legion Organisation

[Dindrenzi]

Hey folks,

 

I'm trying to find get my head around the Legion organisation and things seem a little muddy lol.

 

The following is what I've been able to decipher, am I anywhere near correct?

 

 

Primarch and support

 

10x Grand Battalion>2xBattalion (each Grand Battalion)>10x Grand Company (each Battalion)>10x Company (each Grand Company)>5-10x Squads (each Company)

 

Grand Battalion led by Warsmith

Battalion led by first Legate

Grand Company led by Delegatus

Company led by Centurion/Lieutenant

Squad led by Sergeant

 

But would each company be dedicated to a specific type of unit i.e. Tactical/Breacher/Tactical Support Company, Assault Company, Tyrant/Terminator Company, Heavy Support Company? Or would it depend on the personality of the commander to dictate company organisation?

[Leif Bearclaw]

Sort of, but not really.

 

The primary strategic unit was indeed the Grand Battalion (noted as being the IW's 'Chapter analogue') but there were far more than 10 of them. Sizes of Grand Battalions are noted to vary wildly, with 500-4000 men given as the range in Extermination's 'unit organisation and structure' section. But the book also has 2800 men of the 77th GB present at Paramar. As they were an independent 'forgotten' unit, and so hardly in favour with Perty and Legion command, one would expect them to be on the smaller side, rather than in the top half, so Grand Battalions may have trended larger than the 4000 quoted.

 

Below the Grand Battalion structure is noted to be 'pragmatically varied by the demands of the particular operations and deployments' (rather than commander whim) so there isn't likely to be a 'one size fits all'. However, common divisions were Cohorts or Grand Companies 'heavily mechanised and reinforced units comprising three to five line companies and their attendant human auxiliary troops'. Below that were Line Companies and Armour Centuries of roughly 100 Legionaries or 20-50 armour units respectively, which were then divided into sections and squads. It's unclear whether a Century could replace a Line Company in the 3-5 Companies of a Cohort, or were in addition to that number. There were also the specialised Tyranthikos storm troops seeded across the Grand Battalions. Which is why you end up with formations like '3rd Grand Company, 7th Grand Battalion', '7th Assault Cohort, 23rd Grand Battalion' and '5th Counter-Armour Wing, 77th Grand Battalion'. There also appear to have been some independent company formations, like the 23rd Armoured Company, which is mentioned in Extermination without reference to a parent Grand Battalion. There's also apparently independent Grand Companies too (more on this later).

 

As for Warsmiths, they were a specific rank granted for being exemplars of Pertuarbo's way of war. It wasn't just the rank of 'guy in charge of a Grand Battalion'. It's noted that many commanded Grand Battalions (but not if every Grand Battalion had a Warsmith, imo unlikely as their number is noted to fluctuate) but they also ran specialised strategic formations like the Stor-Bezashk, important garrison posts, armoury worlds etc. It was also potentially possible to rise in the Legion without being a Warsmith.

 

Lastly we come to what is either an illustrative outlier, or a up. Captain Erasmus Golg. He apparently led the 11th Grand Company, like the 23rd Armoured without a parent Grand Battalion. He also rose to the Trident (Perty's three top advisors) despite being a Captain, not a Warsmith. It also suggests that, like most of the Legions, the IWs used 'Captain' to cover multiple levels of seniority..

[Brother-Captain Gilead]

Sort of, but not really.

 

The primary strategic unit was indeed the Grand Battalion (noted as being the IW's 'Chapter analogue') but there were far more than 10 of them. Sizes of Grand Battalions are noted to vary wildly, with 500-4000 men given as the range in Extermination's 'unit organisation and structure' section. But the book also has 2800 men of the 77th GB present at Paramar. As they were an independent 'forgotten' unit, and so hardly in favour with Perty and Legion command, one would expect them to be on the smaller side, rather than in the top half, so Grand Battalions may have trended larger than the 4000 quoted.

 

Based on the types of conflicts Iron Warriors fought in (long drawn-out sieges heavy on attrition interspersed with moments of absolute brutality when breaches occurred) and also that they were on the more efficient end when it comes to their recruitment I would take this as a given. Perturabo seemed to be a stickler for numbers, so I doubt that any Grand Battalion would have been more than double the maximum range given, but clearly they would bias towards the upper limit.

 

Lastly we come to what is either an illustrative outlier, or a up. Captain Erasmus Golg. He apparently led the 11th Grand Company, like the 23rd Armoured without a parent Grand Battalion. He also rose to the Trident (Perty's three top advisors) despite being a Captain, not a Warsmith. It also suggests that, like most of the Legions, the IWs used 'Captain' to cover multiple levels of seniority..

 

I have more or less given up on trying to match the titles that different characters carry to any type of hierarchy and consider them more like the title of captain given to the commander of a naval ship. Every ship from aircraft carriers to torpedo boats is commanded by a captain and that is just the way things work, even though obviously the one commanding the carrier must be several degrees of seniority (or at least competence) higher than the one in charge of the torpedo boat.

[Dindrenzi]

Thanks guys.

 

I guess I’ll just build the force I want to play and then build up around it.

 

Going for a battle of Tallarn themed armoured force, with knight and eventual Titan support...

[Zuvassin]

Here's a nice overview of the basics/generic organization of a Legion in general:

 

https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/mediawiki/images/5/56/SMLegionOrg.jpg

 

The TL;DR is that you shouldn't stress the idea of there being any hard and fast "official" structure, at least above the standard Company level.

 

To take that a little further, there's basically a lot of leeway and flexibility, as well as gaps in our knowledge, as to how the hinted at structure (as shown in that org chart) was actually carried out legion by legion. This is partly to allow for otherwise-contradictory elements in the pre-HH series lore, partly to give players flexibility in setting up their army and character backgrounds, and partly to represent the different attitudes of the Legions and their Primarchs, and even between different elements of the same Legion.

 

The Night Lords, for example, in (IIRC) FW's Horus Heresy Campaign Book 2 - Massacre, are stated to essentially be a Company-based Legion, but that the titles of the company commanders (which would ostensibly be Captain) varied wildly. This was due to both the vanity of the officers (particularly those from Nostramo) and the somewhat arbitrary nature of how Curze rewarded his subordinates. Similarly, while they apparently didn't really have permanent or widespread elements larger than a Company, unlike the Imperial Fists or Ultramarines, such elements did exist (I believe the book explicitly mentions Chapters and Battalions), but these too were essentially the result of arbitrary rewards by Curze and were equally known by a confusing variety of names, including their commanders as well (their entry mentions Masters and Regents as examples).

 

As for the Iron Warriors, and I may be wrong here as I think this is much more in line with virtually all Legions in general, the Company is really the primary building block. In the case of the IW, I think it's less that every single Marine has an unbroken chain of command as you outlined, or to put another way, that every Company has a Grand Company or Battalion it belongs to, but more that the primary and permanent structure starts at the Company level (and goes down), and that any structures above the Company-level were more fluid, arbitrary, and/or based on the needs and preferences of the Legion.

 

For example, as stated with the Night Lords, their nature (ie distrustful and prone to rivalry) meant that the only real way multiple Companies would be placed together is if a particular Captain gained enough favor from Curze to be given command of a joint army involving several other Companies, possibly as a permanent reward (especially if they were made a member of the Kyroptera inner circle, where even a lesser ranked Kyroptera member had authority over non-Kyroptera Night Lords with ostensibly higher military ranks), otherwise perhaps solely for a particular campaign or battle. After Curze is mauled by the Lion, Sevatar would try to break the Legion into more or less five or six "Great Companies", but effectively, the Night Lords are aligned by Company, with anything greater than that usually the result of the Primarch's whim, the charisma of a particular Captain, or from battlefield necessity towards the latter half of the Heresy itself.

 

For the Iron Warriors, I'd say they too are based around Company, with plenty of Warsmiths directly leading (and only leading) Companies. Grand Battalion, Battalion, and/or Grand Company (which, IIRC, all three are said to more or less be the same thing, with no or little differences) were likely to mostly be temporary arrangements for battle - Perturabo as a strategic mastermind (combined with the total arms approach of the IW) would almost certainly mean he'd want clear and direct leadership coordinating at all levels between himself and the line captains running the Companies. Particularly talented Warsmiths likely ended up acquiring authority over multiple companies or even multiple grand companies/battalions on a more or less permanent nature, but even then, they would often still have Warsmiths under them to lead the individual Companies (or other elements) as dictated by strategy or battlefield necessity.

 

IIRC, it's even said that due to the fluctuating and inexact nature of Legion organization, you could end up with IW "Grand Companies" that had fewer men than a regular Company, due to attrition and/or the random chance of what elements or supporting/attached elements a given Company had with it.

 

To use my Night Lords army as an example, my lore for it is that it's essentially a Battalion that was formed from the remnants of a handful of Companies that had been left behind to garrison a backwater sector that they had helped bring to compliance as part of the Crusade Fleet that they had been attached to. I haven't decided on just how large it'll be (lore-wise), but the idea is it gives me some flexibility as I can represent some elements as being from different Company types - IE, I could use one company as an Armored Company or Heavy Assault Company to explain having a bunch of Fellblades and Spartans (if I wanted to field them).

 

Similarly, I've thought about modeling a sub-section of my eventual full army to represent both a drop pod list and a zone mortalis list, with the idea being that one of my army's "parent companies" was a Void Assault Company that had been fully equipped and specialized for boarding actions.

[Dindrenzi]

Here's a nice overview of the basics/generic organization of a Legion in general:

 

https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/mediawiki/images/5/56/SMLegionOrg.jpg

 

The TL;DR is that you shouldn't stress the idea of there being any hard and fast "official" structure, at least above the standard Company level.

 

To take that a little further, there's basically a lot of leeway and flexibility, as well as gaps in our knowledge, as to how the hinted at structure (as shown in that org chart) was actually carried out legion by legion. This is partly to allow for otherwise-contradictory elements in the pre-HH series lore, partly to give players flexibility in setting up their army and character backgrounds, and partly to represent the different attitudes of the Legions and their Primarchs, and even between different elements of the same Legion.

 

The Night Lords, for example, in (IIRC) FW's Horus Heresy Campaign Book 2 - Massacre, are stated to essentially be a Company-based Legion, but that the titles of the company commanders (which would ostensibly be Captain) varied wildly. This was due to both the vanity of the officers (particularly those from Nostramo) and the somewhat arbitrary nature of how Curze rewarded his subordinates. Similarly, while they apparently didn't really have permanent or widespread elements larger than a Company, unlike the Imperial Fists or Ultramarines, such elements did exist (I believe the book explicitly mentions Chapters and Battalions), but these too were essentially the result of arbitrary rewards by Curze and were equally known by a confusing variety of names, including their commanders as well (their entry mentions Masters and Regents as examples).

 

As for the Iron Warriors, and I may be wrong here as I think this is much more in line with virtually all Legions in general, the Company is really the primary building block. In the case of the IW, I think it's less that every single Marine has an unbroken chain of command as you outlined, or to put another way, that every Company has a Grand Company or Battalion it belongs to, but more that the primary and permanent structure starts at the Company level (and goes down), and that any structures above the Company-level were more fluid, arbitrary, and/or based on the needs and preferences of the Legion.

 

For example, as stated with the Night Lords, their nature (ie distruplease be quietl and prone to rivalry) meant that the only real way multiple Companies would be placed together is if a particular Captain gained enough favor from Curze to be given command of a joint army involving several other Companies, possibly as a permanent reward (especially if they were made a member of the Kyroptera inner circle, where even a lesser ranked Kyroptera member had authority over non-Kyroptera Night Lords with ostensibly higher military ranks), otherwise perhaps solely for a particular campaign or battle. After Curze is mauled by the Lion, Sevatar would try to break the Legion into more or less five or six "Great Companies", but effectively, the Night Lords are aligned by Company, with anything greater than that usually the result of the Primarch's whim, the charisma of a particular Captain, or from battlefield necessity towards the latter half of the Heresy itself.

 

For the Iron Warriors, I'd say they too are based around Company, with plenty of Warsmiths directly leading (and only leading) Companies. Grand Battalion, Battalion, and/or Grand Company (which, IIRC, all three are said to more or less be the same thing, with no or little differences) were likely to mostly be temporary arrangements for battle - Perturabo as a strategic mastermind (combined with the total arms approach of the IW) would almost certainly mean he'd want clear and direct leadership coordinating at all levels between himself and the line captains running the Companies. Particularly talented Warsmiths likely ended up acquiring authority over multiple companies or even multiple grand companies/battalions on a more or less permanent nature, but even then, they would often still have Warsmiths under them to lead the individual Companies (or other elements) as dictated by strategy or battlefield necessity.

 

IIRC, it's even said that due to the fluctuating and inexact nature of Legion organization, you could end up with IW "Grand Companies" that had fewer men than a regular Company, due to attrition and/or the random chance of what elements or supporting/attached elements a given Company had with it.

 

To use my Night Lords army as an example, my lore for it is that it's essentially a Battalion that was formed from the remnants of a handful of Companies that had been left behind to garrison a backwater sector that they had helped bring to compliance as part of the Crusade Fleet that they had been attached to. I haven't decided on just how large it'll be (lore-wise), but the idea is it gives me some flexibility as I can represent some elements as being from different Company types - IE, I could use one company as an Armored Company or Heavy Assault Company to explain having a bunch of Fellblades and Spartans (if I wanted to field them).

 

Similarly, I've thought about modeling a sub-section of my eventual full army to represent both a drop pod list and a zone mortalis list, with the idea being that one of my army's "parent companies" was a Void Assault Company that had been fully equipped and specialized for boarding actions.

Thanks for that reply.

 

So my initial 1000pt army is a 'Pride of the Legion' ZM force, this will then be expanded into a terminator heavy 3000pt 'Armoured Breakthrough' force.

 

So this could essentially be the same 'Company' deployed on each battlefield, the ZM force being the mechanized infantry from the 'Armoured Breakthrough' force.

 

Then I could do a full tactical company of standard marines with tactical/heavy support as either foot sloggers or transports with the ton of tactical marines I've got and don't know what to do with :)

[Zuvassin]

Yep yep!

 

The lore states that even very specialized legions will have companies or other elements that are more general or specialized in other things, like White Scar heavy support detachments or IW fast attack elements.

 

There’s also of course companies being the amalgamation of remnants from other companies, or a particular company or commander acquiring elements to fit a given battle or the personal preference of the commanding officer.

[MegaVolt87]

Are dreadnaughts apart of an armour century or the wider parts of a grand batalion?

[Brother-Captain Gilead]

In the one picture we have depicting an organizational chart the dreadnoughts are mentioned as being part of the assets of a company, while battalions list dreadnought talons as part of their assets. This is somewhat interesting as it means that either dreadnought talons are considered specialist units separate from just a random collection of dreadnoughts or that dreadnoughts are situated in companies and when necessary they are collected from the companies on a battalion level and then assigned to an engagement where the deployment of a dreadnought talon is deemed necessary. Based on our earlier discussions on how Perturabo favored flexibility and temporary arrangements over rigid organizational structures I would suggest that the latter would be the most likely way for the Iron Warriors to organize around.

 

This is my speculation / headcanon: Considering that the Iron Warriors fought often in either Zone Mortalis or in Zone Mortalis-like conditions (brutal close quarters warfare in cramped conditions) combined with their high rate of attrition, I would assume that dreadnoughts would play a major part in their combat doctrine as well as providing the constantly rotating new recruits with someone who had seen it all before. I propose that for the Iron Warriors they would have the dreadnoughts stay as part of the same company where the marine interred into the dreadnought was fighting before his internment to act as the veteran / support in these grueling engagements and when deemed necessary they would be collected on a battalion level into dreadnought talons to act as the tip of the spear or as an anchor point in a line of trenches under assault.

[MegaVolt87]

Yeah that reasoning sounds plausible where dreads sit in the IW legion structure. I think UM dreads stay in their companies/chapters also. Though it seems WS, SW put them all together then part them out as needed. I was thinking of having my three contemptors apart of my line company, the levi's and deredeo's in the seperate armour century.

 

Another question- are super heavise mixed with armour century or they a seperate formation by themselves?

[Brother-Captain Gilead]

This is a really interesting question and somewhat difficult to answer definitely because this is one of the areas where there are a lot of differences between Legions with some Legions running a lot of tanks (which would be reflected in the number of superheavy vehicles as well) and other Legions not really doing that. Generally however the battalion level is the first one where you would find super-heavy vehicles as they list super-heavy detachments among their assets. As we move up the chain then in chapter assets you find the chapter armorium and then among the legion assets you find the legion armourium, which I have always assumed would consist of all of the most rare super-heavy vehicles and the Primarch's personal transports. Now, again we need to consider two things when it comes to the Iron Warriors (and of course this is all based on speculation and educated guesses):

1. That Iron Warriors utilized more armored assets than an average legion, thus they would have more assets to divide, including super-heavy armored assets for the three levels where they exist (Legion - Chapter - Battalion)
2. That Perturabo preferred flexibility in allocating these assets

Number 1 would suggest that there would be a lot more armored assets on every level with some super-heavy vehicles potentially even being allocated on a company level (there are mentions of IW armored battalions in some lore which would suggest that there exists a battalion of nothing but tanks which would then surely consist of companies of nothing but tanks, in such an organization it would not be impossible for a super-heavy to be allocated to an armored company in my opinion). Number 2 on the other hand would suggest that Perturabo and his subordinates would prefer to have as many of these pieces under his personal command to allocate as he sees fit to maintain that flexibility, which would mean that even as the Iron Warriors had a huge number of armored assets, the majority of them would be located in the Legion and Chapter armoriums to ensure there would be something to allocate as the need presented itself.

 

Summa summarum (everything IMO, of course): Iron Warriors are one of the legions which could have super-heavies mixed even among their non-super-heavy armored vehicles on an organizational level due to the number of vehicles that they are known to operate, but also because of the temporary and flexible nature of their deployments and assignments it is also possible that they would be retained in a separate formation to be deployed as necessary. Whichever one of these statements works better for you and how you view the legion is the right one for your collection.

[MegaVolt87]

Mixed armour century with super heavies, one could extrapolate the following after I did more reading-

 

Post dropsite massacres, the traitors left behind mixed elements of their legions on Istvann V.

The traitors salvaged a lot of stuff, super heavy tanks are mentioned specificaly.

 

So either you picked up at least one as a souvenir (bonus points if its not one of your legion ones or a fellow traitor one lol) before you left or you bullied/convinced your legion brothers to link up if you got left behind by your legion, a mixed armour century would be plausible past this point in time, ditto for blacksheilds/ shattered legions etc post Istvaan V.