Reforming Space Marine Legions?

[Aldarion]

OK, so I'd been reading on Codex Astartes and Space Marine legions and chapters and realized that... well, the situation is an exact mirror of Byzantine Empire. To sum up: Codex Astartes split up Space Marine Legions of several tens of thousands of Marines each into individual Chapters of a thousand Marines each (note that Chapters already were subdivisions of Legions, so, technically, reorganization merely abolished legions). But that is about exact same thing as happened with Byzantine Imperial themata. Original themes were massive: there were four of them, all in Anatolia. But their numbers gradually increased: original four themes were gradually subdivided due to frequent revolts by provincial commanders, and themes in newly conquered / liberated territories were also relatively small. The end result was that now there were 45 of the damn things, if not more (I vaguely remember number of 70 from somewhere?).

But in both cases, there was the same outcome: yes, the newly-fragmented organizations were much less prone to revolt, and when they did revolt damage was significantly reduced. But at the same time, they were also much less effective at resisting external enemies. Considering that situation in M42 is significantly different from post-Heresy one, it would appear that reconsolidation of Legiones Astartes would be the correct course of action. Guilliman appears to have done this exact thing with Ultramarines, albeit unofficially (?), while also reforming the Ultramar to provide the newly-reconstituted Legion a base of operations.

So question: how likely it is that other Loyalist Legions will also attempt to reconstitute, is such thing even possible to carry out, and would it make a significant difference in current Imperium's ability to defend itself?

 

[PsihoKekec]

IIRC Wolves are already well beyond chapter strength and so are Black Templars. In general there will be need for duality here, regular Chapters for dealing with regular threats all over the Empire and reconstituted first founding Legions as mobile reserve to deal with the worst threats. I reckon some tensions will arise from this.

 

[UltimatePaladin]

How exactly has Guiliman unofficially brought the Legion back into play? Is there a reason why this solution can't be applied to other Space Marine chapters?

 

[Navarro]

The problems with re-establishing the Legions ...

First off, the Imperium received a rather nasty lesson in the problems of permanently centralising so much military power during the Heresy. Even without Chaos influence, the danger of another massive revolt was quite real.

Second, the Chapters were also a solution to the problem of needing to hold territory instead of going on grand crusades of conquest. The Legions were meant to conquer large regions of space - the Chapters to serve as rapid-response forces in the interest of Imperial defence. It might also be noted that the Legions were wasteful, and the Astartes had suffered heavy casualties in the Heresy and losing a thousand or so was a much bigger loss than it would have been previously.

Third, unofficial temporary Legion-strength formations have been created to deal with various crises, such as the Third War for Armageddon - the various Chapters selected Tu'Shan, Salamanders Chapter Master, as de facto head commander of the Astartes fighting in that conflict as he was viewed as the best man for the job. Or Baal Prime in which the various Blood Angels successors all sent forces to fight under Dante.

 

[Aldarion]

The problems with re-establishing the Legions ...

First off, the Imperium received a rather nasty lesson in the problems of permanently centralising so much military power during the Heresy. Even without Chaos influence, the danger of another massive revolt was quite real.

Second, the Chapters were also a solution to the problem of needing to hold territory instead of going on grand crusades of conquest. The Legions were meant to conquer large regions of space - the Chapters to serve as rapid-response forces in the interest of Imperial defence. It might also be noted that the Legions were wasteful, and the Astartes had suffered heavy casualties in the Heresy and losing a thousand or so was a much bigger loss than it would have been previously.

Third, unofficial temporary Legion-strength formations have been created to deal with various crises, such as the Third War for Armageddon - the various Chapters selected Tu'Shan, Salamanders Chapter Master, as de facto head commander of the Astartes fighting in that conflict as he was viewed as the best man for the job. Or Baal Prime in which the various Blood Angels successors all sent forces to fight under Dante.

That is the issue which I have already explained in the OP by using Byzantine Empire as an example: having larger military divisions means that they are better at countering major offensives but also greater risk of revolts. Having smaller divisions means that they are better at countering raids and less likely to revolt, but also much less effective at countering major offensives. So while Chapters were ideal for Imperium which had to deal with many "brushfire" wars and raids, now that Chaos, Tyranids and potentially Orks are out in force, something bigger may be necessary. And keep in mind, Traitor Legions were never disbanded. They are still at Legion strength, and now that they are (presumably) active, Loyalists may well have to reconstitute Legions to counter them.

Also, the main reason why Legions fell is the fact that their Primarchs fell to Chaos, and Space Marines instinctively followed the example of their geneseed progenitors. We have few occasions (with Guilliman, I think) which show the effect of Primarchs on regular Space Marines. I do not think this is an issue which could have been resolved by splitting up Legions into Chapters.

 

[Firebat]

Space Marine Legions were created in an epoch of small Imperium, relatively stable warp and resulting reliability of communications and transport. Hence Space Marine formations could be held close to each other. And one could reliably direct multiple formations inside the legion.
Even so, as the Imperium grew, most legions were de-facto already split in lesser formations with Chapter-like autonomy due to impracticality of trying to command multiple fronts from the center in Warhammer. That's why nobody has legions anymore - they are impractical. Imperium formalizes it; Chaos Marines hold on to their pretensions, but theirs are not the legions - merely loosely affiliated collections of evil chapters.

Legions are a red herring. Splitting of the legions is a red herring. Uniting the legions is a red herring.

None of this matters because no matter how you slice it, you'll get multiple chapter-like formations fighting multiple wars on multiple fronts without any practical support or direction from above. Whether one of these chapters' masters has an extra arm band and calls himself "Legion Master" is immaterial. He will be a very distant, hand-off and slow superior at best and a bearer of empty title at worst.

The Imperium needs more manpower and materiel, not an extra layer of military bureaucracy.

 

[Navarro]

Space Marine Legions were created in an epoch of small Imperium, relatively stable warp and resulting reliability of communications and transport. Hence Space Marine formations could be held close to each other. And one could reliably direct multiple formations inside the legion.
Even so, as the Imperium grew, most legions were de-facto already split in lesser formations with Chapter-like autonomy due to impracticality of trying to command multiple fronts from the center in Warhammer. That's why nobody has legions anymore - they are impractical. Imperium formalizes it; Chaos Marines hold on to their pretensions, but theirs are not the legions - merely loosely affiliated collections of evil chapters.

Not to mention that the way the Legions used Space Marines in battle was incredibly inefficient. Super-soldiers in PA aren't much better than normal dudes in flak driving tanks, firing artillery pieces, or manning bunkers.

 

[Battlegrinder]

The legion structure is, for the most part, not useful in the current 40k settting, baring extremely rare events. At most, the imperium would need a legion on hand to deal with those sorts of crisis's, and if they have a single legion that's sufficiently close knit that it's vastly better coordinated and better able to weld military force than the multi-chapter alliances currently used for conflicts of that scale, then such a force would be just as dangerously effective if it turned against the imperium and far more likely to turn than a similar number of smaller chapters would be. And if you have two legions just in case one turns, well it's not like two legions are all that much hard to turn instead of one, and if you have enough legions that a widespread betrayal would still leave the imperium with enough loyal forces to resist....congratulation, you've created the circumstances for a second Horus Heresy, IE, the exact thing the legions were broken up to avoid.

And keep in mind, Traitor Legions were never disbanded. They are still at Legion strength, and now that they are (presumably) active, Loyalists may well have to reconstitute Legions to counter them.

Traitor legions are not quite at legion strength these days, many have been heavily reduced as the long war wears on. Some traitor "legions" might boost numbers on par with or even beyond the multi-chapter task forces assembled to oppose them, they are not even remotely as well organized or coordinated. Chaos warbands do not cooperate or work well with another (Arch's Seige of Vraks video series discusses this quite a bit), and while the same can be said of marine chapters, it's far less common for that to be the case, and the average chapter is far larger than the average warband. Additional, warbands are just that, loosely organized bands of marines held together largely by the personal will of the chaos lord in charge, while loyalist chapters are far better disciplined. If the imperium is very unlucky, their marine task force might have internal division almost as bad as the internal strife with the various opposing chaos warbands. If the chaos forces are lucky, the division will only be within warbands, while in practice it's far from unheard for individual squads to be bitterly divided and less tactically capable than loyalist forces.

Not to mention that the way the Legions used Space Marines in battle was incredibly inefficient. Super-soldiers in PA aren't much better than normal dudes in flak driving tanks, firing artillery pieces, or manning bunkers.

That might be true for artillery, but the marine's faster reflexes, greater skill (via long experience), and greater ability to withstand injury should the vehicle be damaged mean they have a substantial edge over baseline humans when it comes to armored warfare.

And marines are terrifying effective when fighting in the close quarters of a trench line or bunker. They have an overwhelming speed, strength, reaction time, and firepower edge over normal humans, who in turn have a much harder time bringing anti-marine weaponry to bear (the Astartes fan film really illustrates exactly how overwhelming they are against conventional infantry in close quarters fighting). This is typically something they use to thier advtange when they are on the offensive, but again I'd point toward Vraks, where small units of chaos marines operating alongside traitor infantry made death korps assaults on their trench lines virtually impossible and helped drag out the siege for years.

 

[ATP]

i think,that there is easy remedy for that.Chapter could not wield more then 1000,and they could not lead IG,too ?
then made auxilla from their planets,gave them hard training and best weapons - you could wield 1000 Astartes and as many as you want stoormtroopers then.

 

[Lanmandragon]

i think,that there is easy remedy for that.Chapter could not wield more then 1000,and they could not lead IG,too ?
then made auxilla from their planets,gave them hard training and best weapons - you could wield 1000 Astartes and as many as you want stoormtroopers then.

That's already what happens for the most part just not officially. SM are called into help out the IG all the time though I dont think they usally take command.

 

[ATP]

That's already what happens for the most part just not officially. SM are called into help out the IG all the time though I dont think they usally take command.

I mean replacing normal squads Astartes with stormtroopers from auxilla units, thanks to that 1000 would be made only from elite units in heavier armours.Terminators and Devastators.
And all tanks could be operated by auxilla,too.