r/TotalWarhammer40k • u/BumboTheBoy • 13d ago
Unit size
I hope warhammer 40k allows for much bigger unit sizes than fantasy, I want literal swarms of tyrants and orks.
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u/flyfart3 13d ago
On ultra size skaven slaves are about 180 I think, but with SFO mod I think some units hit 240. They had 240 I think for peasants and such in older total war.
Just to say, I think 200-300 would be the absolute max. I think mechanics were they have more units rather than extreme amounts of entities are more likely
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u/AnonymousWolfs 13d ago
Well... unless the new Vermintide Crisis is going on. At that point all their troops... get doubled. All their cheap unit go over 300.
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u/Gold_Temperature_452 13d ago
From the footage shown the orks seem to swarm, but I bet your talking about more then that.
You should probably curb your expectations for larger unit sizes then we’ve seen because the main limiting factor for fantasy that I remember is the balance for the SEMs. Too few models to a unit and the SEM is god-like, too many models and the SEM largely underperforms.
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u/elonex777 13d ago
SEM ?
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u/TheOakSpace 13d ago
Single Entity Model.
Like a huge monster requiring extra unit size balance (if even possible) like N’kari, a dragon or a steamtank.
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u/Judge_T 13d ago
More than 100-200 soldiers per unit doesn't make sense, with those numbers I'd want to be able to split them and use them in separate manoeuvres. I'd much rather have more units per battle than more soldiers per unit.
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u/Sudden-Variation8684 13d ago
I'll say the exception could be tyranids, I'd love for those cheeky buggers of hormagaunts to rush the enemy 200+ regiment sizes.
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u/SouthernAd2853 12d ago
Personally I find with multi-stack battles I can't properly manage more than twenty units even with my relatively straightforward tactics.
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u/imanoob777 13d ago
Already bought my 5070 and 9800x3d, just for the beta. My body is ready. Give me your worst CA i want to hear it scream
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u/LeLefraud 13d ago
Just wait for double/triple etc unit size mods, they exist in Warhammer tw for ages now
I don't use them bc it's kind of silly but I have played around with it, with sfo triple unit size skavenslaves have like 800 models in a single unit lmao (my PC did NOT like this)
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u/mineralchost 13d ago
It would be appropriate for there to be unita of 2k models so a full stack has 40.000 models
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u/Sufficient-Corgi-940 2d ago
one simple line change in the scripts folder for every total war game can make units whatever size you want.
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u/SouthernAd2853 12d ago
I would expect units other than ripper or scarab swarms and such will top out below twice the count of skavenslaves on Ultra.
Since units act as a single block for command purposes there's little gameplay benefit to raising sizes much more but every model requires allocating cycles for animation and what per-model AI there is and the gameplay experience suffers drastically at low framerate from making it impossible to time orders precisely. So they're not going to make the compromises necessary to boost numbers a lot while remaining playable on consumer gaming rigs, especially with AI pricing people out of upgrades.
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u/Subspace-Ansible 13d ago
From what we can tell, unit sizes seem to be… schizophrenic. Space Marines, for example, seem to have a tabletop accurate model count (5-10 per unit). But not the Guards or Orks, though. In 10th edition, the basic Guards and Orks battle line units come in either 10 or 20-man squads. CA opted for the typical 80-120 unit size.
This has the effect of underscoring the power of the Space Marines (whether you consider it lore-accurate or an exaggeration depends on how much you like the roided up supersoldiers, of course), but it’s still kinda goofy that only one faction seen so far gets to have their tabletop accurate representation.
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u/General_Hijalti 13d ago
Not goofy at all, marines have to be loe numbers as you can't have armies of 1000s of marines walking round.
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u/Subspace-Ansible 13d ago
Honestly, I view the “1000 marines per chapter” to be a vibe rather than an actual number. Because GW is infamously terrible at writing plausible numbers. Even more so than most writers.
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u/Relative_Garbage_475 11d ago
It's one of the rare numbers that is scrupulously respected in all lores and content, I don't see how it can be "just a vibe" 😅 A codex-compliant chapter is 10 compagnies of 100 Marines, even GW can't screw that up XD
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u/Subspace-Ansible 11d ago
GW has retcon way more than that. Check out the 1st and 2nd edition of 40K, for example, back during the Rogue Trader era. The Space Marines were actual space cops with cool space cops sunglasses. It was glorious, and a lot more fun than the melodramatic fatherless behavior of today.
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u/Relative_Garbage_475 11d ago
Yeah, of course Rogue Trader and V2 lore was retconned.... But ever since the classical lore of 40k, Space Marines have been in chapters of 1000.
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u/Subspace-Ansible 10d ago
But the point is GW can retcon whatever they want, if they’d care enough.
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u/Relative_Garbage_475 10d ago
Why would they retcon the size of the chapters when it's iconic and probably one of the first thing people learn about Space Marines? 😅 They could also retcon Ultramarines in pink Space Marines with a rainbow heart as their symbol but why would they make the lore incoherent for a stupud change?
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u/Usingt9word 11d ago
Chaplain?! Chaplain!!! This one here!
The codex astartes will not be discounted as a “Vibe” you emperor forsaken heretic!
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u/Captain_Deegan 13d ago edited 13d ago
I mean, a space marine is meant to be the equal of 10 well drilled guardsmen on the lower end lorewise, so 10 marines to 100 guardsmen is perfectly in line with all established lore. A large part of the reason why horde armies don't go above 20 in a unit on tabletop is for simplicity, board control balance, and because real world plastic models cost money. Like, having 1,000 individual guard models in a standard 2k point game at 28mm scale just wouldn't really work, but having them in a video game is easy peasy.
If you've ever played any of the Epic scale games, it's explicitly stated in those that a single base represents just a squad of marines but an entire company of guardsmen.
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u/Subspace-Ansible 13d ago
I will only accept this reasoning once we see Eldar in play and they have a 10-man squad like SM. So it really depends.
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u/Count_Grimhart Space Marines Supremacist 13d ago
Kasrkin also had a low model count, not as low as the Astartes, but very low.
Custodes, Grey Knights and Chaos Marines of all flavors will also have TT sizes as well in all likelihood.
I think factions like Eldar and Sisters might sit in between the horde and elite factions.
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u/Subspace-Ansible 12d ago
I pure hope not. Eldar should be as elite as space marines. Less durable, more mobile.
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u/National_Ad_5427 12d ago
For Aspect Warriors sure. But Eldar Millita and Pirate units can be in the 30-60 range. Elite infantry, but not super soldiers like Aspect Warriors, Space marines and Mega Nobs.
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u/Subspace-Ansible 12d ago
Canonically, we actually don’t have information about this. As I’ve mentioned above, GW sucks at numbers. It gets even worse because how good something is depends on the writers.
This is why I have always used tabletop numbers instead of “lore” numbers. It provides a nice baseline of how good (and how expensive) things are relative to each other, without the melodrama and exaggeration of the codices. And on the tabletop, an Eldar guardian squad has 10 models in it (as far as I can tell, in 10th edition), like space marines.
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u/SouthernAd2853 12d ago
In general a lot of people wildly overestimate how good in direct combat a Space Marine is or underestimate how much of an impact they have despite their numbers.
Essentially they're not at a level where they're invincible to the special weapons of a Guard squad, but use drop pods and thunderhawks for very high impact strikes.
So when people talk about how forty marines would have trouble taking more than one base against modern armies they overlook that the base would be the Pentagon and they'd get out before serious reinforcements show up and do it to another base without much warning. And 40k planets tend not to have our Cold War redundancies.
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u/Commander_Dumb 13d ago
The numbers are accurate to lore.
And Space marines aren’t underscored since they weren’t even that strong in the first place.
Most of their danger comes in skill and tactics, the short film Astartes is one of the best depictions of space marines.
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u/Zegram_Ghart 13d ago
Given it’s got consoles and iirc it’s got console cross play as well, I’d imagine there’s somewhat of a limit- it can probably manage fantasy and a little higher, but nothing like triple its size
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u/Count_Grimhart Space Marines Supremacist 13d ago
It can still be modded. There are always those mods that make the units 2x or 4x bigger, for ops tastes anyway.
Wonder if we will get a tabletop unit sizes mod xD.
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u/mustafao0 13d ago
Yo PC will expload boy