Please do excuse my voice if its a bit off in places today, if you enjoyed and want to appease our lord master ALGO - please LIKE - and tell me your thoughts about the numbers often quoted in 40K when it comes to battles AMEND NOTE: I dont know why, but in my brain after I had calculated numbers for the US and China militaries for some reason I ended up saying 1% - when actually what I meant to say was 0.13% and 0.15%. Sometimes my brain just stops working, especially when it comes to math lol

I remember even as a kid thinking that 1 million astartes was a ludicrously small number given the kind of battles they were fighting in the artwork

Misplaced decimal point and a new colony gets a shipment of 80 million new laborers. The resulting famine ends in an exterminatus

"You got to pump those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers." - Luetin

"... you Did say sixty Thousand?" Wow! A whole scout force for a single major engagement.

You did say "six guardsmen?" "Yessir, there's me and the wife, old Pete, little Jim, bob from HR and Panjit the flavour"

This is something that I find Twice Dead King actually does really well. During the final act of Ruin, humanity is described as pretty much numberless during their attack against the Necrons. Fleets of enormous Guard dropships are described like a swarm of flies, and the humans spend *literal days* getting absolutely slaughtered until the Necrons' reanimation crypts are slowly overwhelmed. It reminded me of how the Orks are always depicted. An endless horde of insane barbarians who overcome even the widest technological differences with brute force and the crushing weight of numbers.

I think 40K lore would better if numbers were more hidden, but unfortunately they aren’t. A Space Marine company is described as 100 Marines, which is 10% of a Chapter. In lots of stories Marine Companies are often described as losing large numbers of infantry and then simply moving onto the next campaign. How does this make sense ? Losing even a few squads should be devastating to company [and even the chapter], as Marines take decades to recruit and fully train.

I actually love this kind of content. Always add at least 2 zeroes to any number they write to make it even vaguely logical.

Finally! Never have my thoughts on the setting been addressed more articulately before. Lack of rationalisation in narrative, politics and world building is what weaned me off of fiction for years. so when i did discover WH40k, the politics, role of faith, and the strategic themes are what drew me to the setting. So when the details of these things are used flippantly to lazily create a narrative, it ruins the entire setting and you're left having to balance book canon and head canon very selectively and subjectively. I understand not everyone may be too pedantic, but it's the "serious" interpretation/perspective of the universe which makes it an immensely rich universe.

Reading the Siege of Terra books I just can't wrap my head around the size of the Imperial Palace complex. Given the actual size of the Himalayas, and the palace being described as having flattened the mountains and now covering it with walls and gates, the structure would be so large that it follows the curvature of the Earth and having multiple zones of different climates and weather systems. I don't get how you could even see an attack on some distant part of the wall from the top of the wall, even if there were Titans crawling down there. Yet in the books, the walls and citadels shrinks down in perspective so that it seems like its basically a fight over sections of a few hundreds of metres of castle walls in midieval times...

Its so true, I think the authors very often forget that a planet isnt a 10x10 field

For me, the biggest problem in 40k was this idea, that Space Marines are these old veterans, some serving 100 years, other like dreadnoughts serve even entire Millenium! Each space marine with a backstory is written as a veteran of 1000 battles. Each recrucitment proces to become a marine is so harsh that only 1 out of many makes it out alive out of tests. and then every single battle with space marines ever shown, has like 200+ dead spacemarines who perished during mission. How can they be at the same time old veterans with armors made 100 years ago when every skirmish has tons of dead ?

This whole speech about "people moving into the hobby not knowing anything but wanting to imprint they own touch on it" aged really well

8:56 "It means we don't tend to see abrupt changes that are badly planned and have to be stupidly retconned" That didn't age well...

Guilliman reads imeprial records. "Why are the soldiers numbers so low in those planetary conflicts?" A scribe responds "Oh, we jut cut off the 3 least significant digits. It saves some bookkeeping efforts"

I’m sure I speak for many of us when I say, Thank you Leutin! You’ve brought many hours of fun and entertainment through your videos.

Given the scale of the Horus Heresy not one legion would have survived the first year let alone seven due to attrition. I get that the Space Marines are uber-super soldiers but their numbers are ludicrously low given 30K/40K scale.

"i enjoy very much thinking about stuff that doesn't matter" has a more relatable sentence ever been muttered

I blame it on the unavoidable disconnect between the numbers that can get on the tabletop and the image we all have of the mind breaking scale battle in the setting

My biggest gripe with 40k is chapters only having 1000 marines. It should have been AT LEAST 10k per chapter or less depending on the strength and influence of the chapter. It would have made big wars alot more believable

In the far hills of the valley, in fortified factories, worker habitats and material store yards, the enemy was dug in - a billion strong. one of my favorite line in any 40k book. if only more writers increase the scale.

The biggest flaw of 40k is that GW is a Public Company with greedy investors carrying for nothing but growth. It is the major flaw for all the public companies throughout the whole specter of entertainment.

My headcannon is when the imperium talks about their troop numbers they only count officers, not enlisted. Some regiments could have 100 enlisted per officer. And this would be even more skewed for penal legions

Even in the Siege of Terra series I remember being taken aback at times like when the White Scar commanding the, admittedly doomed, defence of the Eternity Wall Spaceport is asked how many troops he has and he says something like eight thousand. Eight thousand what, divisions? Because defending one of Terra's major spaceports with 8,000 men would be like defending Stalingrad with... three woodlice.

The 60k number is wild because the US, as of 2023, has a little over 2 million soldiers. Yes, not all are ground forces, but still, it's just america, not including the rest of the world. Modern-day earth could give more troops than any planet in 40k.

Just started a knight force. It was luetin who got me into 40k and I can honestly say it’s helped me so much. It’s now a hobby I love! Thank you luetin you saved me from my lowest point.

One thing the Abnettverse, despite valid criticisms about power creep in characters, gets right is this. The Ghosts books regularly feature millions of troops used, and portray the some 5K Ghosts as a tiny unit in comparison. In Eisenhorn, a world (Gudrun IIRC) tithes several regiments with six-figure numbers each, as part of background noise for a crusade. Of course, 300.000 soldiers are not really a regiment as WE understand it, but ... the numbers there do feel much better (let's not talk too much about Eisenhorn's and Ravenor's starship crew sizes though).

Devastation of Baal. The untold millions of the Tyranid swarm vs....hundreds of Blood Angels and successors, total. With hilariously tiny splinter forces sundered from this total to put up a "defence" presence on the two moons - completely absurd, utterly pointless and, somehow, they last for significant time spans without a real fortress or even the benefit of a void shield. And some of them escape the moons and survive. Fortunately, the Angel's sons and the Baal system had their galactic-scale artificer plot armor polished to a belief-blinding shine.

I know your voice is paining you and I regret your suffering. Thank you for continuing despite the difficulty. Your voice now fits the subject matter better, praise the Emperor.

Replace the word "Soldier" with "Battalion".

Leutin here trying to wrap his head around 40k’s scale inconsistencies like Guilliman trying to wrap his head around the inconsistencies of the Imperium’s record keeping.

Flaws: 1. Scale. 2. Improbable preponderance of land based warfare. 3. Improbable preponderance of hand to hand combat instead of ranged. 4. Shoulders being armoured like tanks while heads are left completely exposed.

Love how you mentioned about thinking about things deeply and if the will and won't work. I love thinking about (as an engineer) can I build a dreadnought, can I build a titan. Yes, yes I can, but I can't put enough mice under the hood to make it move.

I always thought it was a major flaw that Space Marines are described as a very limited number of special forces, but at the same time participating as foot soldiers in major battles. In my head cannon, they are only used extremely rarely to teleport on to the bridge of enemy cruisers, infiltrate, retrieve artifacts, run missions on space hulks, etc. Not slugging it out with millions of Orks.

Hitler invaded the Soviet Union with 3 million men. Somehow Dorn was only able to muster 2 million men for the siege of Terra, the final battle of a galaxy spanning Civil War. I remember I had to rewind the audiobook and replay it to make sure I hadn't misheard it.

The sheer soul-crushing scale of the galaxy and the Imperium within is one of the biggest aspects of atmosphere and worldbuilding I hope for in 40K extended media. That being said, even Star Wars projects, with their Disney overlords, often fail to deliver on that angle even within the comparatively smaller scale of their universe. One could easily argue mismanagement in many of those cases, but regardless, the cost of CGI is still very high with our appetites for bigger scales and better graphics only increasing. For 40k to be properly depicted, it would take an insane amount of rendering hours and processing power. I think a mix of miniatures and CG might be the way to go for a while.

The reason I suspect why authors fail to describe scale in 40k properly is either word count or a lack of logistical military understanding what it takes to wage a ground war on a planetary scale. Which is why a faction like the Eldar always portrayed like a dying race is silly since they would simply lack the sheer number needed to fight Orcs, Tyranids, Necrons or the Imperium on a planetary scale where fighting is happening all across not just one planet but several in a solar system at the same time.

My quick and dirty numbers: For PDF, 50 billion pop hive world at 1% security forces, that's 500 million PDF. On each hive world. A million worlds, that's 500 trillion Judge Dredds in the Imperium. Now general armed forces at a modest 10%. 50 billion times a million worlds times 10%, that's 5 quadrillion servicemen deployed across the whole Imperium. Form a thousand theaters or sectors of engagement to distribute them across, that's still a pool of 5 trillion soldiers to draw from each. Using just quick and dirty multiplication and guesstimating pop sizes. It's actually less than I imagined but still probably reasonable. But it should give you a rough idea of scaling.

Well done on your analysis. Having done this work for the military for 30 of my 40 years of service (I'm now retired), the 'statistics' offered by the folks in Nottingham NEVER added up, IMHO. People can argue the peripherals of your assumptions, but your core maths are correct. Something for any budding 40k (or future space novelist in any other genre) to take careful note of. Take a bow Luetin09.

Could the issue be the practical disposition of units / forces in any given space? Good example might be that the Romans and other historical militant cultures often models field forces staffed between 25-35,000’s not only for logistical consideration, but also the practical realities surrounding cohesion and command. Maybe a story focuses most keenly on what the characters are experiencing around them, i.e. the literal field they’re currently battling upon and thusly the troops involved fit within the realities of those spaces. One thing to say that a guard formation could compromise 100’s and 100’s of thousands, another thing to realize that such a formation would be days and days and maybe weeks from end to end when in movement. 🤷🏼‍♂️ Remember a maneuver element shouldn’t ever be so large that it’s size alone imposes complications and limitations when navigating terrain.

I’m glad you brought up the scale. When I listen to lore sometimes I get confused when hearing small numbers and it’s presented as huge

just as a side note: i love what you call your "boring stuff", i have been following your 40k lore analysis for more than four years now (it carried me through difficult times and yes, at times i am also a member of the luetin sleep club). please keep it up! so much appreciated.

The only flaw in 40k lore is that there is not enough new stuff about the emperor that’s exciting. I feel like they are going to drop the ball heavily with Big E. The return of the Primarchs has been dope though.

My interpretation of Wh40k is as a Dark Comedy, rather than a Tragedy. Basically, no matter how Grim things are things kinda always sorta work out, at least for the broader setting. And the comedic and outrageous events are clearly worn on its sleeve. It exists right alongside the misery and death.

Sir, You explained the workings of Warhammer 40K and the way I feel about every little finding or a piece of information from that Universe.Thank You.

Sir, your passion for this stuff makes it enjoyable to hear you talk about it.

Praise the Emperor! The Lore Master speaks

in general the size of titans 80M for an imperator! and in the eisenhorn books a warlord is 20000 tonnes, a small shipping tanker is 200000 tonnes, thats my pet gripe :)

“A million guardsmen died for this planet” Me: “I mean statistically that’s really not bad all things considered…”

I have very recently delved into Warhammer 40K and my first perspective was that, outside Dan Abnett, I have yet to read about combined arms, actual flanking or crossfire's, no one has an SOP, the Guard fight like they're on a tabletop. Now I really want to write a series where there's actual tactics and maneuver warfare.

"choosing instead the paradigm of secondary belief based on inner consistency of reality: in order for the narrative to work, the reader must believe that what they read is true within the secondary reality of the fictional world. By focusing on creating an internally consistent fictional world, the author makes secondary belief possible suspension of disbelief is only necessary when the work has failed to create secondary belief, saying that from that point on, the reader ceases to be immersed in the story and so must make a conscious effort to suspend their disbelief or else give up on it entirely" Tolkien On Fairy-Stories 1939

The way I always saw it was that the numbers were the Administratum's numbers, which are ALWAYS out-of-date.

Really like your comparison to world war 1 here. It's immediately what I thought of when you started mentioning actual battle numbers and the amount of troops called in and dead. For people who don't know much on this history the sheer numbers thrown into the meat grinder during those wars was mind-boggling

I love this stuff too. One reason I loved 40k to begin with back in the Rogue Trader days were the little glimpses of incredible detail set between vast unknowns and maybes for me to think about.

"putting my own mark on it" Yeah, like the "Witcher" series where the writers and producers literally BRAGGED about never reading the books, playing the games, or knowing really anything about the source material...like it was something to be proud of and expect praise for. We all saw how well that ended for them. I think the reason that the Guard's numbers are always reported as so low it is sort of comical, is that most people can't fathom numbers like 20,000,000. In a fight like the scale of Vraks with a fighting style like the Krieg use...20 million could be your casualties at the end of the first month. Think about it, the British ALONE lost 57,000 on one single day at the Somme in 1916 and to this day people refuse to accept that number because "it just doesn't make sense, no way that may people died in one day". Meanwhile in combat today 12 people dying in a single fight makes national news and is a HUGE deal. I feel like if the writers said "yeah then at the end of Vraks the Imperium has lost 45,000,000,000 soldiers" (casually five and a half times the entire population of Earth) so many people would just go "yeah that makes no sense at all".

60 000 kriegsman issue is even more fun when you put it into perspective of the amount of military personnel small countries can have. My country has a population of 5.6 million, with a ready defence force of 280 000 men, with a total reserve of 870 000. Tiny ass country has 5 times the soldiers Krieg had at the time.

39:00 "thats the crux of the problem, its the inconsistancy" thats it, thats the entire video and sums up almost all of 40k. Seriously tho, love the content and always enjoy the videos luetin, but that particular comment was funny to me just because of how "well duh" it feels

As always a great watch. Your videos pulled me back into 40k during the pandemic after i stopped painting and playing in 07. I like the way you approach this universe wether it be philosophical, scientifical or from a writing perspective : open for discussion and interpretation and thus very welcoming

I agree with all but one thing in this video. As far as the Krieg example goes. If I was a high ranking official going to a dead world like Kreig and they told me they could give me 60k fully geared troops with no notice I would be surprised. Not because of the initial 60k but the potential of how many troops I can get from them if they actually had notice that they were needed and transportation was coming for them. I'm not just excusing it but looking at it from an experienced generals POV that is always forward thinking. Just my .02 cents. Amazing videos. Keep them coming.

For the military stories, I just imagine that there's been a mistranslation from High Gothic to English and multiply everything by 10 or 100 depending on context.

I remember years back you said to add a zero to the end of the amounts of the combatants and KIA/MIA numbers in 40k battles to make it make more sense. That's kinda what I usually fined myself doing during some stories. I remember I read one story where a small resource world was destroyed by Chaos and the death toll was only a few million. I understand that the author was implying that most of the populace were just there to mine the planet dry and it was never meant to be a huge population center, but a few million on an entire planet is kind of dumb.

Sleep Club reporting in. I got in to WH40k thanks to your content and have now after a year, starting buying 40k audiobooks. James should really thank you for the free promos

the days not yet half over, and theres 10,000 slain... the sheer magnitude of world war casualties makes some 40k battles look laughable.

Time for my coworkers to hear the absurdity of the warfare of the Grim Dark future…at full blast 😎

This is Fantastic and I think the criticism is valid and a result of the notion of having soooo many authors actually touching the lore and not understanding what your talking about with regards to numbers and scope because i agree with this video. I often wonder if this also has to do with how many Guardsmen can be sufficiently Trained and equipped. With Materials and Ammo and Food the old saying an Army marches on its stomach. It would be awesome to know if there is a Story bible for 40K I mean given where the story is going i hope they sort it out.

Thanks Luetin for your insights. I appreciate the work and thought you put into these illuminating videos.

The reason they don't deal with the Tau is simply because the Imperium doesn't have the forces SPARE. They have enough on paper, but they are committed to bigger threats. The Tau's strategy of never being ENOUGH of an imminent risk is what people mean by tactics. They know when to push and when to give the Imperium room to not panic about them in comparison to the Great Rift, Leviathan, Octarius etc. That was why the Damocles Crusade was a great example. The Imperium tried, realised how much it would take, realised they didn't have that much spare at all, and backed off because while it was doable, it would mean losing many more worlds elsewhere...

One of the things that can put people off the sense of importance. If I read about a chaos lord destroying a planet and then being killed by a squad of Astartes I ask "Why should I care?" It's one planet of millions, it's just some nameless villain, it's just a few Marines that have never mattered before and would probably not matter again. Gaunt's Ghosts is a fantastic series. Billions of guardsmen fighting for 30 years to retake 100 planets for the Imperium. A story of war, struggle, death, and triumph. And yet when you skip a 100 years and a 100 light years later, nobody even knows that it happened. Warhammer has the potential for a million stories but not all of them can have the same level of impact and importance. I personally don't have a problem with this. It makes the world feel fleshed out and that there's something always happening out there. It's not like Star Wars, locked to a dozen planets and handful of characters, making you feel like the rest of the Galaxy even exists.

I just thought about this today. Thank you for talking so extensively about this topic.

I'm not saying that I have a specific type of creator I enjoy however Tolkien goes on about a tree for a page and a half and Luetin spends 54 minutes talking about administration and accuracy of troop numbers in fiction. Splendid!

I remember one of the biggest shocks I felt was while playing spacemarine the game on PS3 and hearing the Guards' Lt talk about how she only has a few hundred guardsmen left... Really?? There are millions of orks descending on your planet and you're holding them back barely with a few hundred soldiers?

Yeah it's a problem in scifi in general, I remember in Star Trek in the Dominion war they estimated something like 10 million losses, which was lower than ww2 for fuck sake.

Thank you for yet another wonderful video, Luetin! Personally, I am very much in the suspension of disbelief camp in that being taken out of it isn't something that regularly happens for me with 40k. However, on the flip side, I absolutely love hearing from people like you who are intensely focused on the details and minutiae that are involved re: materials, city population numbers, soldier numbers, etc, because it really helps to educate me (and many others, surely). I may not be bothered by the things that don't line up, but I love hearing *why* they don't line up, even if it doesn't spoil my enjoyment in the slightest. Honestly, I think you get the most enjoyment from this kind of mindset - being able to do the handwave while also being able to appreciate that the "realities" of what you see don't always match up with the, you know, real realities, hah. So, yes, thanks again my good man - clicking subscribe on you many years ago has been one of the best things I've ever done on KZfaq!

Here's a number for you! Luetin is my number one 40k creator :)

I view the Tau power vs the Empire as similar to the Empire vs the Chaos Gods; they can easily be wiped out, but redirecting effort to do so would leave a vulnerability that isn’t worth the strategic gain it would accomplish.

Honestly, I think one of the first things GW need to do, is retcon the Astartes chapter cap from 1000 to 10.000 or 100.000, because 1000 is and never has been enough to accomplish anything even on ONE planet, and if you go by their strength on the tabletop, it's utterly laughable.

Thank you, Luetin. I thought I was the only one that had an issue with this. Keep the excellent work.

45:07 I think a great example of this is the Tanith regiments, the planet had never had Guard units but there was a need and suddenly regiments were created

MORDIAN GLORY! Drive them men drive them!!!

8% of the entire population of the US fought in ww2, more than Germany at 5.7% and more than Russia 3.4%

Listening the Anthology...it really seems that Ciaphas Cain would make an excellent intro show given the breadth and variety of his adventures - and the excellent characters and narrative style.

I will say this luetin I watch you for your lore, thoughts and what i see as your expertise. I've bought a few books because of you and bought a dark templar starter army and hopefully this year my sisters of battle army

A point regarding your frustrations with the Tau and the Imperium's ability to smother them with numbers. From page 119 of the 5th edition rulebook: "A threat growing in strength is that of the rapidly rising younger races. Worlds that once trembled before Imperial wrath are casting off their shackles and looking to carve their own empires among the stars. The Draxian Hegemony, the Tau Empire, the Worldweave of the Noisome Reek, the Ulumeathic League, the Church of Dracolith - the list goes on. Individually these upstarts cannot hope to challenge humanity's dominance, but if their encroachments are taken as a whole then their containment promises to drain valuable military resources." So you are right that the Imperium could overwhelm the Tau Empire in isolation. But they are forced to challenge them alongside many other empires of similar size that just haven't been given their own model range, and all this is on top of dealing with large threats like the Tyranids and the traitor legions. This situation will have only grown worse since the emergence of the great rift... --- Fully agreed re the scale issues, longstanding frustration of mine also.

In the Eisenhorn series there’s this subplot about the 50th Gudrunite rifles being tithed from the planet Gudrun in the Helican subsector. There’s a mention that the tithe is something like 750,000 men being taken from this world. To fight in the Ophidian sector to sort out all the bad things happening there. This tithed unit is badly damaged even before it can start because of the Glaw family killing stealing a lot of them. Eventually this crusade can start and lasts about a century. You’re telling me that initially less than 750,000 men is a significant contribution to a crusade pacifying an entire subsector? Sure other planets would chip in with their tithes, but surely to be significant you’d need millions or tens of millions of men at least. When you have a war being waged across even a single planet that’s the least you need.

Really well thought out video. Great job Luetin

You make a great point. Even in the 1800s, there were over 60,000 casualties in around 10 hours at Waterloo. Since WWI tactics and methods of modern warfare have reduced the casualty rate somewhat but the point is that the Imperium cares not for casualty rates...

If it mentions Space Marines, 10x If it mentions Sisters or Skitari, 100x If it mentions Guard, 1000x If it mentions PDF, 10000x So Krieg offered up 60 million soldiers.

That’s one thing Star Wars tends to beat Warhammer on. The numbers are comically low, but they’re _consistently_ comically low. 2 million clones and 10,000 Jedi fighting a billion droids, but clones have like a 10:1 KD ratio and Jedi are in the 100’s or even 1,000’s. Plus local militias on many worlds. Also, in the Republic Commandos series one Mandalorian even began to unravel Palpatine’s plan because “there’s no reason the CIS shouldn’t have a trillion droids- even if the whole GAR were ARC troopers we should still be drowning in droids.” (Something to that effect).

This is definitely a pet peeve of mine when it comes to 40k lore. Luetin is all over it like always

When they describe the start the Sabbat Worlds Crusade, we can actually see the ridiculous numbers that make W40k so lovable. They started with a BILLION guardsmen, tens of thousands of tanks, hundreds of warships, etc. Also, in one of the lore books, they describe one battle. It was listed as a secondary battle, yet the general in command was able to deploy 120(!) Titans to the surface.

The "badge of honor" comment you made is huge in our culture now. Writers, directors and producers thrilled with themselves that they don't understand a franchise or story.

Hello everyone

This discussion really drew my thoughts back to why i enjoyed the banter between the characters of Darktide. That game really managed to (imo) capture the balance of what individuals are like in the 40k. Yes, there are plenty of "For the emperor", but mostly it shows actual personality, humor, and how indiviudal upbringing and experiences have shaped theses people. It shows what is often lost in the grim dank memeing. That the Imperium of man, despite it objective awfulness, is a human society, and that there is room for being a human, as we understand it.

I think it's weird that the war in Ukraine has bigger numbers than most of 40k...

I wish they would stop saying clips. They are magazines!

I recently read The Colonel's Monograph by McNeill and was positively surprised that it spoke of a campaign that lead to the deaths of something like 25 million guardsmen. One of the rare times the numbers actually kinda made sense in 40k.

Well done Luetin. You could have even touched on the issue of how timings are inaccurate in novels such as the Horus Heresy series. Astartes Legions are given 24 hours to take entire planets and bring them into compliance. Regardless of advantage that's just not happening.

I've always been bothered by there only being 1 space marine per planet of the Imperium. They're so rare as to be utterly irrelevant to the outcome of anything. Compare with real world historical conflicts - a functional Tiger II tank was more than a match, tank for tank, than anything the Allies could field. But overall it was a poor tank that didn't affect the outcome of the war in the slightest because it was so rare, such a huge investement in terms of manufacture, so over-engineered as to be prone to break-downs and so large and heavy that it could not be recovered. It was a terrible *war* tank, easily overwhelmed by the Shermans, T34s etc of the Allies. In the VAST scale of the apocalyptic galactic wars of 40k, space marines are irrelevant.

Whoa! Major flaw in 40k? What is this heresy?