the apocalypse

if multiple armies engaged in full scale battle, the aftermath would really put a dent in an army's forces

example: if ultramarines lose a battle, they would lose several companies.

how would this efect a side and how would someone recover from such loses?

I'd guess they'd have to lick their wounds for a couple of years and get to work on implanting gene seeds into new recruits

I agree with JMarv. If they tried to do very much else, they would end up like the Celestial Lions (46 Marines left, no apothecaries), or they would end up like the Crimson Fists (lots of dead marines with a heavy reliance on the scout company to refill their numbers).

Any other army can really just rebuild, eat more biomass, get more people from the civilian population, etc. (except Eldar, who do not really get into big battles that could cause them very major losses [of course, there are Eldar that believe a new god will come to life when all the Eldar die and it will be able to kill Slaanesh]).

This campaign is run around huge armies correct?What is the main part of this war,fluff wise.?whats so cool about it.

Ilike it for the reason its played with 2000 plus on the points correct.

Apocalypse is 3000+ points. It's not really a campaign per se. Just a way to play games.

Perhaps Apocalypse was a poor choice of title, a bit misleading. Rhino was asking what would happen if a marines chapter (or any army) suffered heavy losses in battle.

It really is pretty dire for marines to lose a ton of people. Fluff wise, it really doesn't happen very often. Still, from time to time it does, like Nathan mentioned.

Marines need a lot more time than other forces to replenish their numbers. Then again, they rarely (very rarely) commit entire companies, let alone multiple companies to battle. The game is different, as marines no where near represent their fluff in game terms.

If for some reason the Space Marines did lose like hundreds then they would pretty much stop and just focus on trainning I think. You know that is the one disadvantage about the Marines, how long it takes to build an army of them.

Tyler hit the nail on the head there. Any time a marine chapter gets whooped in the fluff they pretty much go into "rebuild" mode.

fair enough