Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-2113806-20131221211104/@comment-2113806-20131223094339

Neithan02 & Contributer, the Forge World books are publishing the numbers of Astartes in each legion as they go along:

Betrayal has the Sons of Horus at 130,000-170,000, with the Legion in "the upper quarter of the Legions in terms of Space Marine man power".

The World Eaters at Istvaan are at ca. 150,000: 'placing the World Eaters in the higher-mid levels comparative to its contemporaries. Perhaps three quarters of this number accompanied their Primarch to Istvaan and of these a full third were placed into the first attack wave, and betrayed unto their deaths on the surface'.

The Emperor's Children were ''ca. ''110,000, with a quarter to a third marked for death and lsoing up to 20000 warriors in persecuting the death of the Loyalists at Isstvan III, losing up to 50000 marines in total. It is remarked that "The growing strength of the Emperor's Children in later phases of the war, and the increasing instability of its warriors may be linked to the gene-seed experiments and flesh abominations of its renegade Apothecaries [....]."

The Death Guard had 95,000 members with them at Isstvan, and Mortarion consigned a third of this strength to their deaths there.

In Massacre the Iron Hands in excess of 113,000, in the 'mid-tier'.

The Night Lords by the time of Massacre 'had been teeting on the edge of renegade status for several years' meanign a vague estimate of 90,000 to 120,000. However the Legion "was known to have continued recruiting from subjugated worlds [...] the use of rapid psycho-conditioning and accelarated gene-seed implantation was widely practised by the Night Lords, further supporting suggestions that their numbers were at least on par with many of the more numerous Legions."

The Salamanders were one of the smallest, at circa 89,000 at the end of the Great Crusade - with 83,000 at Isstvan V.

And the Word Bearers is really interesting - "though to be approximately 140,000. it is now clear that this figure was a lie. Four decade earlier, [...] at Khur, it was approximately 100,000 strong. That they had made a notable increase in recruitment was clear, but far from swelling their numbers by 40,000, the Word Bearers had grown to a far greater strength. Mass recruitment from every world they conquered, and the use of rapid gene-seed implantation and hypno-indoctrination meant that by some reports their numbers rivalled those of the Ultramarines. Certainly the scale of their actions during the opening phases of the war, and the casulties they suffered, indicate that few others could have approached them in size."