What is the Connection Between Space Marine Chapter Organization and Actual Armies?

[ElectricPaladin]

I'm working on the background for my Blood Ravens force, and I've suddenly realized that I have no idea how this actually works. I know that you have the chapter, that within the chapter you have the ten companies overseen by the leadership, the librarians, and the armory. What I don't understand is where in this structure you find the random collections of models fielded by the average player.

Do space marine captains (or librarians, or whatever) run around with detachments drawn willy-nilly from the ten companies? Should I imagine captain wandering around space with his own strike cruiser, his own tanks, and so on, looking for trouble? Should the characters my army have ongoing relationships (ie. my sternguard vets have a rivalry with my terminators, or my scout sergeant has a deep man-crush on my captain, or my librarian, apothecary, techmarine, and captain have some kind of "bridge crew" friendship dynamic). Or should I imagine that the army list I bring to a given game is merely the force assembled by the chapter master to deal with a specific threat (ie. my opponent's army)?

I'm looking forward to reading your answers. Thanks for clearing this up for me.

[Scion_of_Terra]

In many ways it depends on which Chapter you're talking about. Ones like the Black Templars and White Scars are more likely to be led by individual Captains with whatever forces he's managed to put together. More centralized chapters like the Ultramarines would have their chapter masters assign units to whatever theater needs pacifying through superior firepower. So for the Blood Ravens... well, to be honest, I'm not super familiar with their background. I'd say look at Dawn of War, then draw your own conclusions.

One thing to keep in mind, though, when writing about Space Marines - be careful about how you write them. They don't think and feel in the same ways that an ordinary, unaugmented and un-psychoindoctrinated human would.

[ElectricPaladin]

In many ways it depends on which Chapter you're talking about. Ones like the Black Templars and White Scars are more likely to be led by individual Captains with whatever forces he's managed to put together. More centralized chapters like the Ultramarines would have their chapter masters assign units to whatever theater needs pacifying through superior firepower. So for the Blood Ravens... well, to be honest, I'm not super familiar with their background. I'd say look at Dawn of War, then draw your own conclusions.

Ugh... video games?

Yeah. I'm a weirdo. I picked the Blood Ravens because I like their backstory and color scheme. I've never played Dawn of War (unless you mean the deployment style) and probably never will. I'm just not a video games guy.

I think I'll start by hoping this thread provides concrete answers. If that doesn't work, I'll bug my friend who just bought the entire Dawn of War series on Steam.

One thing to keep in mind, though, when writing about Space Marines - be careful about how you write them. They don't think and feel in the same ways that an ordinary, unaugmented and un-psychoindoctrinated human would.

I'll keep that in mind.

In general, I assume that Astartes tend to be single-minded and disciplined. To a human, they come across as cold fish since they sublimate most of their emotions to better focus on combat. Their emotional range is limited to a certain thrill at combat (some chapters go full-on bloodthirstiness), brotherly affection (which can include admiration for their superiors), and vague protectiveness towards mortals (and not all of them can manage that...). They're capable of deception, pettiness, ambition, and selfishness, but don't like to be caught at it. They're callous in the sense that they are made for war and don't find it too difficult to see lives sacrificed in the name of victory.

They're also fundamentally transhuman, a trait that grows as the space marine ages. Scouts are more like particularly zealous and disciplines humans, while older space marines tend to have more alien points of view, and the really old ones - Dante, dreadnoughts, and the like - are pretty weird.

Anyway... let's see what else this thread turns up.

[Rev. Tiberius Jackhammer]

From what I recall after playing the DoW games, the Blood Ravens are somewhat centralized when it comes to unit assignment, but once a battlegroup is assembled the Captains are pretty much on their own. They have a surprising amount of relics mysteriously sourced from other chapters in their armouries; "Space Marines steal the glory, and Blood Ravens steal everything else" - 4chan.

Some fluff mentions their first company has one or two squads of Librarians - maybe ally in a Grey Knight strike squad every now and then?

[ElectricPaladin]

From what I recall after playing the DoW games, the Blood Ravens are somewhat centralized when it comes to unit assignment, but once a battlegroup is assembled the Captains are pretty much on their own. They have a surprising amount of relics mysteriously sourced from other chapters in their armouries; "Space Marines steal the glory, and Blood Ravens steal everything else" - 4chan.

So, basically once a battlegroup is assembled to do anything - which can include "patrol this region of space" or "kill the cr*p out of the Tyranids here" - they have a lot of leeway to do it their own way? But, once that mission is accomplished, they go back to the main fleet and get reassigned?

Some fluff mentions their first company has one or two squads of Librarians - maybe ally in a Grey Knight strike squad every now and then?

AAAAH! Damn it, Allies rules. Stop being cool! Stop making me want to buy more armies!

[Rev. Tiberius Jackhammer]

So, basically once a battlegroup is assembled to do anything - which can include "patrol this region of space" or "kill the cr*p out of the Tyranids here" - they have a lot of leeway to do it their own way? But, once that mission is accomplished, they go back to the main fleet and get reassigned?

Yup, they seem to have a very general directive like "Free the Kuroava System", then they go about it as they see fit. This sometimes results in the Ravens commanders picking fights with other Imperial forces, which may well have been a choice a different Raven commander would've seen as abhorrent.

In one of the DoW cases a past (deceased) commander failed pretty epically and his name's no longer spoken, so it seems that having more control results in greater shame if you're beaten.

This could just be a consequence of it being a videogame, though, they probably didn't want players to have to stop and listen to superior officers sending messages and orders after each mission.

AAAAH! Damn it, Allies rules. Stop being cool! Stop making me want to buy more armies!

Don't resissssst :P

[Aventine]

The typical Space Marine army represents what is called a Strike Force...

So Captain bladdy-blah could be Captain of the 2nd Company and Commander of Strike Force gabbly-goo, as well as any number of other esoteric titles...

[Wolfshade]

It seems to me that individual captains have the right to persuse a campaign in any manner that the feel like, even the autonomy of sarges seems to be quite high in the books.
There are cases where the entire campaign is directed by a chapter master, liek armageddon ][, but in that case you had various space marine chapters all under the command of Dante of the Blood Angels.

[Lightcavalier]

Chapter makeup:
1 Vet Coy
4 Battle Companies (6 Tac, 2 Assault, 2 Dev, Dreads, Captain, Chaplain, Comd Squad)
4 Reserve Coy (2 Tactical, 1 Assault, 1 Devestator)
1 Scout Company
Chapter HQ
Apothecarion
Armoury
Librarium
(Chaplains are integral to companies)

As I have understood it, each Company acts as an independent combat team of sorts, drawing on armoury, librarium and apothecarion resources as necessary for the mission or when assigned to by the Chapter Master.

[ElectricPaladin]

So, what you're telling me is that a typical player's army of space marines is a task force assembled to achieve a specific broad goal. This task force is assembled in part by the captain who will lead it and in part by the Chapter leadership. The task force will mostly be drawn from a single company, with the exception of elements that are outside the company structure: librarians from the Librarium, apothecaries from the Apothecarion, scouts from the 10th Company, veterans of all kinds from the 1st Company, tanks and such from the Armory, and the captain himself (and other HQ units) from the Chapter HQ.

From a writing perspective, my force has to have a name and a justification for existing (ie. "Task Force Ascendance, named after its strike cruiser, Ascendant, has been charged with patrolling the Erudral Heights, a sector known to be infested with xenos and chaos"). Relationships between characters will have to be either based on fighting together in previous engagements (ie. "Brother-Captain Malak Heironomous trusts Codicer Ephraim's advice explicitly and has ever since it saved his life during the Gnoxyx IV campaign against Dark Eldar raiders") or stuff that has happened since the task force was assembled (ie. "Sergeant Rufio blames Sergeant Rook for the task force's defeat on Henderson's World"). I can give squads names and practices (ie. "the veterans of Task force Ascendance's terminator squad call themselves The Grim Rooks" or "Task Force Ascendance's sternguard veterans are known as The Scrollguard and maintain an ancient papyrus scroll on which they record the names and deeds of fallen members"), but I'd better make it good because I'm laying claim to a chunk of the setting, albeit personally.

Have I got all that right?