So I don't have to search back through the thread, could someone remind me what the whole point of the Crusade is? I must have blanked it out.

Reclaiming the Jericho Reach and reincorporating it into the Imperium.

Isn't that a bit harsh, MILLANDSON? They're speculative, not worthless. Their worth lies in the idea that if you wish to consider these issues, then the practicality and the volume of the endeavour begins to take on the appropriate scale. YMMV as to whether the Imperium can keep this a "perfect secret" (I once again point out that it remains, regardless of how hokey it is, an easily exploitable story line from both sides of the argument), but BaronInveagh's post does indicate the scale likely involved.

The problem with that is that since all the numbers involved are pure speculation, the result may easily be a few orders of magnitude greater or lesser. The only thing known is that it's going to be a really massive undertaking. Did anyone doubt that?

Avalos from Final Sanction is/was an Agri-World and is specifically mentioned to be supplying food to the Crusade. Its not on the Reach Map (though is stated to be somewhere near Fortress World Hethgard), like I suspect most "average" agri-worlds or imperial worlds would be.

Cifer said >>>

Reclaiming the Jericho Reach and reincorporating it into the Imperium.

Okay, that answers the objective, but the objective is not always the point. I'll guess, however, that this is going to be part of the meta-story that FFG have to tell. (And it could be an interesting one at that.)

Cifer said >>>

The problem with that is that since all the numbers involved are pure speculation, the result may easily be a few orders of magnitude greater or lesser. The only thing known is that it's going to be a really massive undertaking. Did anyone doubt that?

That's why I said it was speculative, but not automatically worthless as a result of this since it gives you an appreciation of the scale of the endeavour. That, to me, is useful information. Maybe this will be covered in the final product. Maybe not. That wasn't what I was hoping to say, though, merely that the nerd rage might be slightly misplaced.

Ah well, I don't particularly want to get involved in that particular argument. It's way to common at the moment and one of the reasons that I became burned out on the 40k setting (though quite why I'm a stickler for punishment and keep on coming back even though it's killed my creativity I don't know ).

Kage

Here's the thing:

Look at exisiting Crusades. Sabbat Worlds is over 5 billion. The Second War for Armageddon produced six billion 'casualties'. The Siege of Vracks (in near by Scarus sector) cost 14 million casualties and was actually rather one sided. Many crusades seem to lose millions of men a day. Macharius is currently unknown, but some older fluff suggests over 20 billion men under arms.

It's a matter of scale, gentelmen. In a given crusade, battles like these are fought on several different worlds at once. If the Jericho reach war is being fought on three fronts, then you may have lost 10 million men on a given day, given how the Imperium tends toward a meat grinder approach.

Does 11 billion sound far fetched now?.

Considering some of the answers most recently given to us in the Q&A thread? Yes.

40 regiments of Guard and—what was it again?—8 companies of Marines? So 800 Marines and 200,000 Guard? Entire sector. Okay, I'm ignoring the Navy but, well, that's always traditionally balanced itself with the enemy forces or, alternately, been negated by the fact that "worlds are precious."

The big, grand epic war of Jericho is ground down to only twice the number of troops involved in Gettysburg? A fifth of the losses of Somme? Even if you work on 10,000 per regiment that's still unimpressive.

I think that people can be somewhat forgiven for trying to make 40k a bit more... epic? Perhaps even questioning the official figures for lacking in... well, just lacking a little bit.

Kage

Yeah, even at 800,000 that's not a force that can take a planet, let alone fight on three fronts in a sector.

Kage2020 said:

Okay, I just came online so I'm a bit late to this news - are these canonical figures for the Jericho Crusade? Am I missing something? Are they for just one world or something?

If they're stated as being for the whole crusade then ... well I'm lost for words. Frankly if that isn't clearly wrong for 40K, then I don't know what is. There's no argument that can cover or excuse that. It simply is not even vaguely in line with past canonical numbers (which are fairly rough, but always very large indeed).

I thought the conspiracy was the stupidist bit of fluff I'd read in a long while, I'm reappraising my position now ...

Adam France said:

The quote in question comes from the PR/Deathwatch Q&A thread:

MILLANDSON said >>>

Well, I'd rather not write out the entire list, if that's alright with you? It does include about 40 regiments of Imperial Guard, with a total of about 8 Companies of Space Marines (with a Special Detachment from the Relictors, and a few squads from various other Chapters which act as a Crusader Company that guard the Holy Crusade Banner). One of those Companies is a Space Wolves Battle Company, and that doesn't include 7 Companies from the Storm Wardens (though given they are originally from the Calixis Sector, that they would go in force is no surprise). There are then a few groups of Adepta Sororitas, and some Ad Mech forces and one Rogue Trader and their fleet.

Whether all of those SM Companies were fighting at the same time, or whether some were acting in a garrison/advisory capacity is unknown. Same goes for all the other forces.

But the size of the Imperial Guard contingent doesn't sound nearly as big as ones for other Crusades (such as the Sabbat Worlds).

Make of it what you will.

Kage

Adam France said:

Yup, it's appearently the entire initial crusade force.

Actually, the secret part makes a lot more sense now, but the rest of it is a bit shaky. Even Cifer and Blood Pack seem to have been taken a bit aback by this.

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.

Blood Pact said:

I think the point is that one has to wonder at the scale involved in all of these situations. This is why I considered MILLANDSON's suggestion that the speculation was "worthless" to be overtly harsh and, perhaps, even overtly protective of the published materials.

Blood Pact said:

It seems to be broadly consistent with the figures that GW normally bandy around. FFG can hardly be criticised for being consistent with the numbers that GW bandy around but... Those have always been widely regarded to be somewhat unrealistic. Or merely just uninspiring.

Kage

Kage2020 said:

Eh, it depends: FW/BL tends toward the higher (billions) end, as well as earlier editions of 40k. 2nd War of Armageddon had really high numbers. GW has been pointedly avoiding any numbers at all (particularly profits) lately.

Kage2020 said:

The numbers actually make me think more of the british empire and the era of colonialization. Or the conquistador.

Alex

BaronIveagh said:

Your cynicism made me chuckle. Fair enough with regards to the IA books. For some reason I associate those with "wargame" so I tend not to try and track those down. Maybe I will once I come out of 40k burnout.

So really one might construe the Jericho "Crusade" as something that is on the scale of... a Rogue Trader!

Kage

Bah, I replied in the other thread but this probably should have gone here:

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.

BaronIveagh said:

Kroot got on a ship. Stuck in the hull deep below so as to not bother the Pure Humans with their Xeno Filthiness. Then got off the ship when the landed on the other side of the gate. They never saw or heard of the gate and know no better.

As for the leaflets for the illiterate, I imagine its the same way we run Psychological Operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its called pictures. Images drawn to show the targets certain ideas, although in the Imperium I imagine the art is a bit more bloody and violent and less to win hearts and minds.

Are these number of regiments those only from Calixis or from all sides?

Ok I have commented before, and have read on since then, what are people qq'ing about?

1. The Secret Warp Gate.

Not a really hard secret to keep tbh, as have been pointed out earlier. Goods would come to worlds before the gate, and from there be shipped through the gate.

2. Scale of the Crusade

The Imperial Guard is the primary fighting force of the Imperium, so numerous in size that even the Departmento Munitorum cannot place a figure on the number of Guardsmen under arms at any one time; the daily lists of new recruits and toll of casualties can run into the millions in a single day

So it is more the possible, and very probable that there could be millions of guards and their support involved in the fight.

3. OMG Where's the Eye of Terror

As mentioned many times, citizens (including the guards) should be terrified of the EoT. I am not sure why they would make a point of looking for it. I also believe a good proportion of the guards may never have seen it, being shipped from ship then to a planet in most likely complete blackness of the inner hull. Funnily enough you don't stick your troops and goods up against the hull in case you get shot at!!! Maybe a dedicated astronomer may question it, but who are they going to talk too? And more importantly who actually cares?

4. My RT group discovered it in 6 hours gaming

I'm sorry, but that is because you wanted them too. Regardless of how you pitched it, if the outcome of the investigation was to discover the warp gate, then your players are going to discover the warp gate. If you didn't want them to discover it, then you would have had many other reasons listed "for their loss". So I fail to see how "your clever players" discovered a well kept secret if you didn't want them too.

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.

Ok, that would explain things. I couldn't believe FFG would goof up the numbers that hard - especially when the Crusade is supposed to be "draining" the sectors.

I must admit, although I've been broadly "pro-conspiracy", I have reservations about these figures. 200,000 odd sounds small. I would have thought that to conquer a planet even the size of modern Earth (5 billion population) would require an army 10-20 million strong. And that's one world.

Two instant thoughts:

(1) If we're looking at some sort of "notable regiments" section, then presumably there are many other less memorable regiments bolstering the numbers?

(2) Regiments can remain while soldiers die. Krieg Regiments in particular, as shown in the Siege of Vraks, soak up casualties in the tens of thousands while remaining stable units. Although there may be (X) number of regiments, this does not mean therefore that there are (X times 5,000) soldiers in the crusade. In fact the number of regiments may remain the same while tens or even hundreds of thousands of soldiers are killed and replaced.

It seems as if thought (1) is correct, Lightbringer. (2) still has the problem that I don't think you could fight at three interstellar fronts with a mere 200000 soldiers at a time.

Well I guess it depends what you mean by "notable" then. And I know Adam and the Baron will jump up and down about so much weight being put on one word!

But thinking it through, the British Army consists of many regiments, but how many would you really describe at notable ? Ask someone not from Great Britain with a non-military background to name three British regiments, and they might go..."Er...Those guys that guard Buckingham Palace? Er...."

So theoretically if the entire British Army had been summoned to join the Imperial Guard, the only "notable" regiment would be the Coldstream Guards. Because of their lovely furry hats.

Just a quick thought... Isn't it fair to say that there are two models of planetary conquest?

(1) The first is the Vraks model. You have one planet which is relatively self contained and which it is difficult for opponents to reinforce. With a target like this you can afford to take things relatively slowly, using your advantages against your opponents. In the Imperium's case, your principal advantage was numerical superiority, so they opted to take a 10-15 year approach, using siege regiments and massive trench warfare to grind the Vraksians down until a series of massive engagements enabled a final decisive action.

With a war like this, you may inflict and receive colossal casualties, but this would be on a "drip drip" basis, over many years. You could have a relatively small army in place - so long as it was briskly reinforced - which wouldn't amount to the sector-draining scale of more widely scaled conflicts.

(2) The second is the Sabbat Worlds model. Here you have a multi-front, relatively fast moving crusade with a heavy fleet presence. Worlds are taken and lost in rapid order with casualties in the billions, sometimes inflicted in days. Here you would need a genuinely vast crusade force, partly to soak up tremendous losses, partly to act as a reserve in an emergency to cover strategic realignment.

Perhaps the Jericho Reach Crusade BEGAN as one type of Crusade, but is evolving into another?

It seems that the Crusade has been caught on the back foot by the arrival of the Tyranids and the Tau. Perhaps, then, the Imperial planners were anticipating a leisurely 200 year campaign which would involve hundreds of millions of casualties, but spread over that two century timescale?

It might be like buying a car on hire purchase...you can't afford to buy it outright, so you make 36 smaller payments over a longer period. The Imperium has the disadvantage of suddenly facing adverse, unexpected changes in their game plan, which is prompting a bigger drain on surrounding sectors.

Just a thought!

kenshin138 said:

Well that's something of a relief then.

It's just covering the regiments that are famous, or infamous, for one reason or another. Like having participated in a noteworthy battle, or handled themselves better than could typically be expected of a Guard unit (the Gaunt's Ghosts of the Achillus Crusade, turning the tide wherever they land).

Of course, we're back to square one on just how massive an undertaking keeping the secret would be, with no solid figures to go off of and just supposition.