This. The rules are an abstraction to make the game actually fun to play.
I know people like to rag on GW about game balance, but they do understand that much.
If the rules were accurate reflections of the game's world then IG, Ork and Tyranid armies would be even bigger and SM armies would be like...one squad with a support vehicle. And it would be a fair fight.
Armies Played (in order of acquisition)
Crons, SW, SM, Tau, 1k Sons, IG, Nids, BA, DE
One thing I learned at the HH Weekender? There was no master plan. There still isn't a master plan.
40k was described as a '5 minutes to midnight' setting, complete with it's own myths, legends, secrets and rumours. The HH wasn't really planned out in advance. It kicked off with a tiny tract of text in a random compendium book (1st Chapter approved). It then got expanded on when they released Adeptus Titanicus. They had all these plans for it, but could only afford a single sprue to be tooled. So someone said 'civil war?' and someone else said 'hey, what about that heresy thing, that sounds civil warish'. And the rest, is history!
Which makes Lexington's comment about canon all the more correct.
GW have given us a sandbox to play in. The background itself is quite clever, seeing as it wasn't thought out all that well! We know the main things that happened, but that's it. Who knows if Yarrick really was the hero everyone thinks? Is he even Yarrick, or just a PR stooge? Could be. Can be. Is, if you want it to be!
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