There's no real standard size for an Imperial Guard regiment, even the Munitorium Manual, the closest thing we have to a canon word on the subject, just gives a rough figure.

Typically it's somewhere between 2,000 and 10,000 men.

Even doubled, that would only be 800000 men. That's way less than the military of earth.

Umm.. that's less then US army during the American Civil War. The US fielded more men that that in Europe, and it was hard fighting then, how would you retake a planet with that, exactly?

With 35 units of guard it took 18 years to retake Vraks. What happened, the forces of Chaos surrender?

On other hand, BaronInveagh, that is the canon on the matter. Whether it is good material is up to individual interpretation.

Kage

BaronIveagh said:

I would bet it might have something to do with the heavy Space Marine presence in the crusade forces, combined with the ongoing presence of the Deathwatch in the Jericho Reach.

nakano said:

Vraks had 3 chapters companies at various points, and two squads of Grey Knights. This does not hold water.

Further: even a lightly defended world is likely to have millions of defenders, even if they have not fallen to chaos. Further, you have to divide these numbers into three parts since they're fighting on three fronts.

So 250,000 ish men, even at a tripled number, and 250 space marines? This is not going to work.

Edit: revising since Millandson's post is a bit misleading:

500 Space Marines. This is still not going to work on anything but a feral world.

BaronIveagh said:

Well, it's going to work because people are willing to believe and they're dang'nam'it going to make it work, whatever you say...

Kage

The intel provided from Deathwatch stations set up throughout the whole of the sector could well have provided critical intelligence to the Crusade forces. Providing the locations where Astartes spearpoint attacks would effectively destroy the infrastructure of the opposing forces. It is afterall what Astartes do best.

Now to be totally honest, the scale of the campaign will be ramped up significantly from those numbers in my own games. I prefer the epic scale of millions. The committment of the Space Marines is really the only way the numbers in question could have a chance of working. Afterall close to 3/4 of the Storm Wardens are involved IIRC, plus assorted other chapters.

nakano said:

Because there's an upward limit on how effective that is. Superior training, intel, and equipment can go a long, long way. However:...

How many regular men is a space marine equivilant to? 100? 200?

Let's use a world with half the population of earth, around 3 billion and a tech level from the 1940's. We land with 500 space marines and 200,000 guardsmen.

The defending force could be, assuming that they unite against the invasion, could be as high as 7 or 8 million trained and well equipped men, easily.

That's out numbered 36 to one, assuming you count those 500 space marines as being as effective as an additional 50,000 men.

I hate to say it, but at that point you might be able to just beat them to death with stones.

"This is our new IG regiment, the 1st Space Wolves!"
"Um, that looks an awful lot like a space marine..."
"Nah, over here we have our Space Marines!"
"That looks an awful lot like a Emperor Class Titan..."
"Yeah, and 500 of these babies will hit the ground ahead of the troops!"

Haha, yeah the balancing does seem rather off. the space marine numbers sound ok to me, but for my campaign there will be LOTS more IG, also there may be PDF troops, do not know though really need to read the book. it is all subject to change though.

Good point about the Space Marine numbers, although one has to wonder whether they would be plot armoured to make them sound more "awesomez," but yeah. Could you count on the PDF that much since the sector isn't currently under Imperial rule?

Kage

Yeah, that is what i was not sure about, since the sector is in the process of being retaken would there even be a PDF force? I imagine the colonies that were taken longer ago might, but that can not be too many that have a PDF.

Though this raises the issue of "wave theory," or the idea that such Crusades are based upon working by taking a certain amount of ground and then consolidating it. That is, building up basic infrastructure, allowing for logistical resupply, and then sending out the "hearts and minds" that were won to bolster the next wave. So, now that I think about it, yeah they might be involved.

Kage

Kage2020 said:

If I was the CO, hell no. And how did they even hold onto a world once they took it? 200,000 men isn't enough to effectivly police a population of any real size. Hell, look how many problems 30,000 - 50,000 has with a population of a few million. Insurrection would be intense even if the army of plot armor managed to win. Space Marines are assault troops, they're huge powerful but so small in number it'd be impossible for them to control the population.

It becomes an issue of even if they took it, they'd have a terrible time holding it once they did. Look at Richard I at Jaffa.

The simple answer is the trusty TV trope: SCI-FI WRITERS HAVE NO SENSE OF SCALE

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale

Copying over my post from the secret thread...

Not every battle is an obscenely massive affair involving millions of men on both side, the likes of the Siege of Vraks. The Siege even strikes me as actually being an unusually large affair, as far as Imperial battles go.

That said, I am surprised by how seemingly small the Crusade is.

Also, I doubt most planets have populations more than a billion.

I'm just surprised since they blew starship crews up to such an ungodly size that they shrunk the Crusade forces down to the point they'ed be outnumbered by the crews of two cruisers at the low end.

Iocanthos, a feral/war/agriworld has a population of 3 billion and a technology level in the middle ages.

Earth cleared a billion people around end of the 18th century, though it had hovered near that for about a century.

It's not just Sci-fi writers have no sense of scale, they have no sense of consistency, either.

BaronIveagh said:

Well, to be fair even the Trope suggests that sci-fi writers have an ungodly passion for making such things as accurate as they can. The true problem lies in the people that are not required or do not care if they consider how big everything is. That's another reason that I would not consider the posts of some as worthless, even if the official posters would do so.

Kage

I know that the Storm Shield in Deathwatch is this:

Force Field with a protection rating of 55, overloads on a 1-10.
Gives +4 Armour to the arm it's on and the body location next to it.
Has 'Defensive' Quality.
Reduces the 'Guarded Attack' action to a 1/2 Action.
Can bash the enemy, doing 1D10+SB Impact damage, but suffers a -20 to Attack Roll.

But my question is, how do Force Fields work in Deathwatch? What does a rating of 55 mean? Is the same rules for fields as Ascension?

BYE

It would be a 55% chance of successfully ignoring the hit, afaik.

Hellebore

H.B.M.C. said:

Yes, that would be the exact same way fields work, per Ascension . As Hellebore said, a 55% to negate.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Brother Praetus said:

I know its slightly off topic but force fields in the inquisitors handbook work totally differently which rules set do people prefer the case where it gives you a varying amount of ap or a percentage chance to ignore a hit no matter how big its is with the ap rule a las cannon can still make it through most fields unless you are very lucky but with a decent field you tend to have a 50% chance of ignoring the hit no matter if it comes from an auto pistol or a las cannon

Walker0001 said:

I do prefer variety. I am largely opposed to mechanstic views of a role-playing setting. Why shouldn't be different technology behind different mechanics? So I vote for keeping both. :-)

Alex

As far as the size of the Crusade, unless I am mistaken the text says "Notable Imperial Guard Units", then gives a list of named regiments. Being that these are the notable ones it implies that the crusade has far more Guard resources, just too many to list completely. Thus I'm not sure there is a real fixed or known size of the Crusade.

kenshin138 said:

Maybe it´s similar to the lists of IG regiments in Codex Armageddon and Eye of Terror, where they didn´t list every single regiment participating on Third War or 13th Black Crusade respectively, but only the most notable ones.

One question though: are there any Death Korps of Krieg regiments participating on the Crusade?