Reserve Companies deploy as part of larger groups - look at the example deployment given. Dividing up the tanks by ten isn't exactly accurate. The First Company and Tenth Company almost always deploy as supplements to other formations.

The Joran VI retaliation force - 10 Predators, 3 Land Raiders, 6 Razorbacks. 70 Marines from the 3rd Company, plus 10 Terminators and 20 Scouts. They're supposed to join up with some Imperial Guard.

Not every company has Predator support all the time. Chapters clearly don't divide their forces up evenly.

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The Apocrypha of Skaros 1.1
Rogue Trader Expedition 0.4
The Horus Heresy 0.5
Night Lords 0.1
My Trade Thread

My point is not the exact number. It is that marines in the fluff aren't equipped to act as independent armies. In most case anyway, they have to fight alongside the guard.

How about the list of examples I gave you two days ago of marines fighting independently from the Guard - often in quite large deployments?

Furthermore, there are a number of examples of Marines 'fighting alongside' units where that means that the Marines do maneuvering while the Guard hold fixed positions. They coordinate, but in actual battle they're very much separate.

_________________
The Apocrypha of Skaros 1.1
Rogue Trader Expedition 0.4
The Horus Heresy 0.5
Night Lords 0.1
My Trade Thread

In most of the Actions I've read about, the artillery is guard, the main bulk of the forces is guard, and as the story is about space marines, the space marines are moving around to strike a strategic target. Usually with only infantry and rhinos, or inserting. Be they on the same line as the guard, and they act as shock troop spearheading an assault, or defending a key position, or if they act independently, they strike at key target outside the main front, like special forces.

Most BL books are indeed about that kind of stories, against Tau, against rebels, against tyranids, etc... Things get a little different against Chaos space marines, but not much.

And they're separate, yes, in terms of chains of command, battle role, etc, I'm not saying you should be able to take guard units, but they simply don't fight battles on their own, unless it's the guerilla / surgical strike stuff. "Fighting alongside" is actually exactly what I mean : they usually "fight alongside" someone else.

Do what you will with it, but even if an epic army would be something like a battle company plus various reinforcement from the reserves companies, there are still 4 battle companies, and if you were to distribute the chapter resources around 4 Forces you would still only get half a whirlwind formation, and admittedly 6 Preds and a 1st company formation.

Nah they have loads of hardware - it just gets blown up really often Those Ultramarines for instance have thousands of Rhino hulls in stasis fields as Heresy surplus.

That or they have actually got 1000's of warhounds on ice ready for quick deployment.

However this has strayed away from can marines be balanced without their two mainstay formations. inviting 2 questions - one are they balanced with and 2) is a list without them always going to lose compared to list with them (and made up in practice of 1/3 of the points on these two formations).