SP Chapter +1000

[TheDungen]

i think 1.000 is a figure of speech, sure the chapter is amde up of 10 companies of roughly a hundred men each but considering there are always brothers in training scouts and marines dying keeping the companies at exactly 100 men is impossible and thus keeping the chapter at 1.000 also is.

Consider this knowing that they'll suffer losses soon enough do you really think that the chapters ignore a worthy recruit just because it may take them above 1.000? What the astral claws did was keeping their geneseed for themselves to keep making more marines, that made it quite obvious what they were up to. a chapter that is well beyond 1.00 may have a problem because of it but a hundred marines over or under the limit no one will care about. they die in combat soon enough.

and as for the BT the thing the imperium does when a chapter goes over full strength is order them to do a crusade, and that's kind of meaningless when it comes to the BT.

[Sai-Lauren]

This is true, however Astartes Chapters are supposed to be in near constant combat. Where other armed forces take leave or have at least some sort of downtime, Marines are supposed to actively seek out the most dangerous enemies imaginable and fight and fight and fight where others simply wouldn't or couldn't.

So yes, I take your point about their increased ability to recover and the medical technology available to them, but still, they must still have a relatively high attrition rate if they are operating on the scale that they are depicted as doing. Better organised Chapters would have to have at least some redundancy built into their replacement requirements, just in case the crapola really hits the fan with another Tyranid invasion or Black Crusade (or whatever else).

Is the chapter constantly in combat, or are individual companies? IMO, some companies will be out on a patrol of the Chapter's territory, whilst others could be on their way to or from a warzone, and still others refitting after a campaign and inducting the new recruits. So at any one time, there might be, say, 7 companies listed as deployed for combat, but only one or two actually involved in any fighting.

[Khorneguy]

It's more of a guide than a rule. Chapters can go over, within reasonable limits, but if it's clear they're doing it to excess or as a clear grab for power, then it's not acceptable.

I can't remember where it was said, but I seem to remember reading somewhere that it's virtually impossible to enforce the limitation anyway. The only force really able to punish marines for transgressions are other marines and many of them aren't that fussed about the limit. There's also the fact that it'd take 2-3 chapters combined at least to deal with the wayward chapter and even then it's not a given. Look at the Badab War to see how hard it is to take action against other marines.

As long as they don't cause trouble, i think most chapters can get way with with having about 1500 Marines, including command a nd support staff.

[bound for glory]

Plus 100 of those Rank and File are scouts, should those fit into the 1000 as full marines?

scouts ar'nt "full" battle brothers. they should'nt count.

[Connor MacLeod]

It would be impossible (and silly) to enforce the letter of the 1000-man limit for various reasons. For one thing, Space Marine recruitment and creation is not an exact science The mortality rates involved in the winnowing and implantation process alone can't be controlled to any great extent, nor can the loss rates among the battle-brothers. They can, however, keep a large pool of scouts available and ready for implantation (or perhaps at varying stages of readiness) as a stopgap to help plug losses, but even if they somehow exceed the limit I doubt they're going to kill off a rare and highly valuable marine just because they have ten, twenty or even a hundred over limit or something.

Secondly, Marine Chapters are both very diverse and very secretive, and monitoring them for this sort of thing is probably not easy for any number of reasons (Space Marine pride and independence being the least of them.)


It could be said that the 'spirit' of the 1000 man limit is paid attention to generally rather than the letter, and the reasons behind it - EG not to let a Chapter become another Legion, and as long as they do that, there probably isn't a problem. Heck I think the 5th edition SM codex resurrected some early bit of Epic 40K fluff about being able to temporarily exceed Chapter limits in times of war (to offset potential losses.) On the other hand, given that over half the chapters purportedly in existence are supposed to be Guilliman-descended, its unlikely that many of them exceed the 1000 man limit by any great margin - if they do so at all, so we're probably not going to go greatly above the million man limit.