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I really have no idea why people keep on arguing about it...

I, based on my own canon references (Codex Astartes, BL books, etc...), estimate Marines to be in between 7.6 to 8.2ft.

Of course, that theory somehow offsets the well-known theory that Grey Knights, due to the higher gravity on Titan, would be smaller. So they'd be somewhere along the 7 to 7.2ft mark, which is far from "small" !

But, I'd rather ditch that last theory, so that I can think that Space Marines really tower above mere mortals.

In The First Heretic by Aaron Bowden-Denski, it is said that "the Blessed One", a female blind Word Bearer servant, has the top of her head at Lorgar's waist.
So, let's say she's between 5 and 6ft : Lorgar would be between 10 and 12ft ! ! !
I don't think there would be that much difference between the Primarchs & their Space Marines... So I'm pretty sure the SM should be taller than 7.2ft.

But, as I mentioned before, that's my point of view, and my take on the fluff. I do not wish to impose it to you, nor do I think this is THE truth.

Just voicing thoughts aloud, and giving facts from where you can base your own thinking on.

YMMV.

Black Library authors often take quite a bit of artistic license and deviate from what was stated by GW, and ADB (since he was mentioned) has already admitted as such on his blog. It's all about personal interpretation, and a freelance writer's preferences aren't any more important or "canon" than your own. It basically boils down to whether you accept what the studio designers have established or if you prefer to "mix things up a bit" because, for example, you think that the official range of 7'0" to 7'6" in armour is not, for whatever reason, cool enough.

Personally, I think any larger would create more problems than advantages - but, as has been said, YMMV.

As for the ongoing discussion, I think a consensus is possible, but it would require people to acknowledge that licensed material can and does contradict both itself as well as, at times, studio material. That really covers it all. Anything beyond that is quite simply personal preferences (including whether you accept the numbers given by Jes or would like them to be bigger) and as such not worth argueing about.

DarknessEternal wrote:

NuggzTheNinja wrote: At 7' you're looking at around 450 lbs realistically for someone of absurd musculature who is very lean.

Space Marines are ~700 pounds outside their armor. That's where their unbelievable size comes from, not their height.

Didn't the initial post refer to 700 in armour? With power armour being canonically ~250 pounds... That said, this is science-fiction, not science. Cut GW some slack.

Pretty reasonable words, and better expressed than mine.

I think it's silly to have such passionate debate about something that isn't entirely established, or may vary according to the sources (even amongst GW).

Tekeino wrote:

Alpharius wrote:Sounds OK here too!

As always...

Marine = 7' to 8'

Marine in armor = 7'6" to 8'6"

Some especially tall/big marines do show up, but I don't recall any 'short' ones being mentioned... ever!

What about "Little Horus" Aximan (spl?) from the Horus Heresey books, you know, the guy they mentioned a lot, part of the mournival. He was short compared to the others right?

I think he was just short compared to Horus.

bedeporter wrote:He was nicknamed little horus because of his resemlbance to horus himself, rather than being short

Actually, Aximand was noted to be fairly short, but stout, for an Astartes. Loken, Torgaddon, and Abaddon were all taller, Torgaddon being the tallest by a hair IIRC, but Abaddon being the largest and nearly as tall.

Yggdrasil wrote:I don't think there would be that much difference between the Primarchs & their Space Marines... So I'm pretty sure the SM should be taller than 7.2ft.

Lion El'Jonson was stated to be noticeably taller than the Space Marines when they came to Caliban in Descent of Angels. Same with Fulgrim, Ferrus Manus, and the other Primarchs in Fulgrim, and Magnus in particular was a giant even by Primarch standards.

And I can't accept the Marines being 450 pounds outside of armour, since it's just wrong.

Lynata wrote:

Alpharius wrote:As always...
Marine = 7' to 8'
Marine in armor = 7'6" to 8'6"
Some especially tall/big marines do show up, but I don't recall any 'short' ones being mentioned... ever!

Well, if you think armour adds 6" to a Marine, Jes Goodwin's lifesize Astartes would be 6'4".

As always, I see no reason to go beyond the 7'0"-7'6" range (in armour) mentioned by the designer. As Jes said, "it's not the height"!

Note that Jess still had them going to 8', even if he forgot to start at 0...

Also, Power Armor certainly add some height, both from the boots and from the helmet.

If you want to nitpick over inches well...

No, too easy!

8 Feet in full power armour and 7 feet without power armour, is about average.

Alpharius wrote:Note that Jess still had them going to 8', even if he forgot to start at 0...
Also, Power Armor certainly add some height, both from the boots and from the helmet.
If you want to nitpick over inches well...
No, too easy!

Nope, he just fethed up the scale. It's meant to be 7'. Listen to GW's #4 podcast where he talks about Marine height.

And yes, power armour does add some height. How much can be extrapolated from the drawing.

250 pounds of armor? To cover all of that? What, is it made out of aluminum a few millimeters thick? I would believe it if you stuck a "1" in front of the 250. Even in the year HolyCrapbillion, armor with the intended function of "I don't care what you shoot it with, stop it." will always be made out of the toughest, densest, heaviest duty crap you can find. This is not a "Ok, well we only want it to stop X, and then make it as light as possible." sort of armor.

It doesn't really matter how heavy the Armour gets due to the black carapace interaction with he body's muscles. I would expect a FULL set of power armour to be at least 1/3 of a ton.

It doesn't really matter how heavy the Armour gets due to the black carapace interaction with he body's muscles.

Hope that building your marines just breached is built to Imperial Code #23532508 and has stairs that can hold up 10,000 pounds of meat and metal when a combat squad thunders up it.

"Quickly, brother Meltagun Magnet, we must jump from roof to roof to get to the extraction point!" *leap* *Find roof incapable of bearing the impact of a low speed car crash* *plummet*

Just something that never quite made sense to me in 40k. Certainly explains the architecture. Rickety wooden stairwells would not go well when the Angels of Death show up, and start breaking every wooden step and falling right back down to the basements.

SOFDC wrote:250 pounds of armor? To cover all of that? What, is it made out of aluminum a few millimeters thick?

It is made out of Unobtanium.

To be fair, we have zero knowledge on how heavy ceramite is. It is said to incorporate plastic compounds, which kinda goes against the idea of "tons of armour" that may be evoked when looking at artist drawings. As already pointed out: it's sci-fi.

The only thing that truly surprised me is that a Marine is supposed to have difficulties moving in it were it unpowered. But I suppose this is a matter of interpretation and may be explained less by the weight but more by the suit just being rather "stiff" (it is lots of fibre-bundles, after all!) which are distributed all over the body, so the Marine's limbs would face equal resistance everywhere, unable to focus his strength to easily overcome a single hard point.

Alpharius wrote:
Note that Jess still had them going to 8', even if he forgot to start at 0...

He didn't forget anything. He's explained it himself in a discussion everyone of us can find on the internet that it's 7 feet between bottom of foot and top of head.

We know there are many chapters which have "unofficial" geneseed and other practices, e.g. Space Wolves.

It is difficult to assume that all chapters would adhere to the official height requirement even if there is any.

(There's a reason they are called Ultrasmurfs!)

You guys really should find and read A D-B's article on "canon".

Wait, here, I found it for you!

http://www.boomtron.com/2011/03/grimdark-ii-loose-canon/

GET INTO IT!

And... relax about height and weight!

It is made out of Unobtanium.

To be fair, we have zero knowledge on how heavy ceramite is.

Firstly, we do have an idea of how heavy the ARMOR is. Skim to the part in the deathwatch rulebook dealing with powered armor becoming suddenly unpowered. It sucks. For a being that would reasonably weigh 600-700 pounds, there is no way it's just over a third of his bodyweight. That is like a 240 pound musclebound man being overly weighed down by plate armor that weighs 100 pounds. Doesn't really work like that, not in the short term. The effect for the supposed weight does not make sense.

Secondly, the material itself does not matter, because...again...this is not a piece of equipment that was made to be light. If you give me unobtanium, that has properties like 100 times the strength of steel under -all- stresses, and is also a tenth of the weight and can be made very thinly without compromising the ballistic capabilities of the material, and then tell me to make you a suit of armor that will allow a warrior to march into hell to spit in the devils eye, to be worn by your genetically engineered death machine with strength out of all proportion to his already huge size? You're -still- going to get a monstrosity that weighs half a ton, with a breastplate 6 inches thick and motor assistance. it's just going to be a <CENSORED> load more resistant to damage than what you can make with "Real" materials.

(This is the same line of thinking that results in soldiers getting "Smaller, lighter ammunition"...but since the situation dictates "As much as you can get away with" this results in no weight savings, just more cartridges for the weight.)

SOFDC wrote:Firstly, we do have an idea of how heavy the ARMOR is. Skim to the part in the deathwatch rulebook dealing with powered armor becoming suddenly unpowered. It sucks. For a being that would reasonably weigh 600-700 pounds, there is no way it's just over a third of his bodyweight. That is like a 240 pound musclebound man being overly weighed down by plate armor that weighs 100 pounds. Doesn't really work like that, not in the short term. The effect for the supposed weight does not make sense.

It does make sense when you consider that, as I have pointed out, it may not be the weight that makes movement so difficult but the many fibre bundles which we know criss-cross the entire suit, and which will feel pretty stiff without power.

And no, the armour was not made to be light - it was, however, made to be comfortable to move in. When you could choose between 2 inches of ceramite and 2 inches of a much heavier material that provides equal protection, you're going to go for ceramite because it is easier to handle during transport and maintenance. And because it results in your Space Marine not falling through the damn floor all the time. Likewise, you will not simply stack armour plate above armour plate until you reach the maximum weight because a Space Marine that is about as mobile as a Killa Kan isn't much use. These people still have to move their limbs, and a breastplate that is half as thick as the body behind it will cause serious issues when you want to hold your gun with two arms or try to pilot a Rhino (a vehicle crafted for human proportions, by the way).
You want to trade mobility for being a mobile tank? Fine. That's what Terminator armour is for.

Not everything in the setting makes sense, but this stuff here I find easy to rationalize.
And at the end of the day, this is quite simply what GW said (which is ~250 lbs for the armour). Feel free to theorycraft why it may work, but pointing out it's silly will not change anything. You could just as well say the same about lasguns firing explosive bolts of light (!) or that Space Marines can supposedly only be made of men. Both is waaay more "out there" than the armour weight.

Somebody official should put out a document about this. Awhile back I bought a nifty little art book that had various xeno bodies dissected and drawn up, why not something like that for a space marine? Would be interesting artwork for sure and put this debate to rest.

On a side note, it is interesting that people debate the molecular structure of astartes armor but nobody bats an eye at faster than light speed travel or teleportation. Both arguably impossible with our current understanding of physics.

Odd how somethings are just accepted as they are, while other times that dead horse just hasn't been beaten enough apparently.

Kellhus wrote:Somebody official should put out a document about this. Awhile back I bought a nifty little art book that had various xeno bodies dissected and drawn up, why not something like that for a space marine? Would be interesting artwork for sure and put this debate to rest.

You mean Xenology? That'd just be another Black Library source ... I love that book, but the writer made mistakes there, too. Tau do not have normal feet with toes.

I wish GW itself would churn out something like that, or at least have its authors write fluff articles for WD again. At least the recent codices are somewhat more fluff-heavy again ...

Kellhus wrote:On a side note, it is interesting that people debate the molecular structure of astartes armor but nobody bats an eye at faster than light speed travel or teleportation. Both arguably impossible with our current understanding of physics.

Oh yeah. Easy to explain, though - debates about the constitution or equipment of an army almost universally target the public perception of its "power level", so it's pretty much a "my hero is better than yours" kind of thing, however subconscious that motif may sit. Warp travel or teleportation, on the other hand, is something that everybody uses, so discussions about that are not as heated as it doesn't end up being fan vs fan.

ArbitorIan wrote:TEN FEET TALL

Im sure it was 8...

Yggdrasil wrote:I really have no idea why people keep on arguing about it...
In The First Heretic by Aaron Bowden-Denski, it is said that "the Blessed One", a female blind Word Bearer servant, has the top of her head at Lorgar's waist.
So, let's say she's between 5 and 6ft : Lorgar would be between 10 and 12ft ! ! !
I don't think there would be that much difference between the Primarchs & their Space Marines... So I'm pretty sure the SM should be taller than 7.2ft.

Actually, primarchs are a bit bigger than the marines I think. They are implied to be living demi-gods, so it would make sense that they are massive.


Notice how Horus and the Empra are a bit bigger than the marines.
Interesting thought about the GK though. Would make sense that their height is affected by gravity.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Yggdrasil wrote:I really have no idea why people keep on arguing about it...
In The First Heretic by Aaron Bowden-Denski, it is said that "the Blessed One", a female blind Word Bearer servant, has the top of her head at Lorgar's waist.
So, let's say she's between 5 and 6ft : Lorgar would be between 10 and 12ft ! ! !
I don't think there would be that much difference between the Primarchs & their Space Marines... So I'm pretty sure the SM should be taller than 7.2ft.

Actually, primarchs are a bit bigger than the marines I think. They are implied to be living demi-gods, so it would make sense that they are massive.


Notice how Horus and the Empra are a bit bigger than the marines.
Interesting thought about the GK though. Would make sense that their height is affected by gravity.

It could also be distance or perspective affecting the height of those marines.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Yggdrasil wrote:I really have no idea why people keep on arguing about it...
In The First Heretic by Aaron Bowden-Denski, it is said that "the Blessed One", a female blind Word Bearer servant, has the top of her head at Lorgar's waist.
So, let's say she's between 5 and 6ft : Lorgar would be between 10 and 12ft ! ! !
I don't think there would be that much difference between the Primarchs & their Space Marines... So I'm pretty sure the SM should be taller than 7.2ft.

Actually, primarchs are a bit bigger than the marines I think. They are implied to be living demi-gods, so it would make sense that they are massive.


Notice how Horus and the Empra are a bit bigger than the marines.
Interesting thought about the GK though. Would make sense that their height is affected by gravity.

That's just because they are the most important people in the picture. It's like mediaeval pictures in which the King is bigger than the nobles who are bigger than the commoners.

In "reality" the Emporer is probably either fairly average (or he would have got noticed a lot over the 18,000 years he roamed the Earth, or more likely he has the space magic ability to either alter his size or the appearance of his size at will.

Kilkrazy wrote:In "reality" the Emporer is probably either fairly average (or he would have got noticed a lot over the 18,000 years he roamed the Earth, or more likely he has the space magic ability to either alter his size or the appearance of his size at will.

Both of the second two are true.

Biomancy can allow psykers to alter their appearances and physical traits at will, and as the most powerful psyker to ever live it's no stretch to assume the Emperor did the same. Likewise, in "The Last Church" it's basically explicitly shown the Emperor can alter the perception people have of him at will, he approaches a priest as a normal sized man of medium build, but the priest notes several times that when the Emperor sat benches creaked under his weight, too much for what his build implied. Then, he revealed himself and he was indeed a giant.

The Emperor was the size of his Primarchs, who were all taller than Space Marines (Though there was variance among the Primarchs as well, Magnus was a giant even by their standards, and Alpharius was short in comparison).

That painting isn't meant to be a photograph, it's meant to be a painting. It's simply some remembrancer's impression of what the final battle looked like. A battle he never saw.

Horus is standing above the Emperor. Obviously the painter was a heretic.

Also, there's an Astartes helmet right next to Sanguinius, so we get another size-comparison divorced from the vagaries of perspective/distance.

DarknessEternal wrote:

Melissia wrote:Hm, chapter based off of Napoleon?

Napolean was of average height for his time and place. He just surrounded himself with people that had a height requirement.

Yep. He was 5'7". He only looked short next to soldiers.

That said, I'm the same height and get plenty of comment about being short.

In the Space Marine video game, guardsmen are about a head and shoulders shorter than the Space Marines, while the Inquisitor in power armor is only maybe half a food shorter.

now I may be wrong but as far as I remember reading: space marines could almost hit 9ft tall, most being between 7.5 AND 8.5 ft

as I would seriously hope that they would be more than a 1 ft taller than myself.

now I could be talking out my rectal area but im sure this was from official fluff somewhere.

edinburgh40kgamer wrote:now I may be wrong but as far as I remember reading: space marines could almost hit 9ft tall, most being between 7.5 AND 8.5 ft

as I would seriously hope that they would be more than a 1 ft taller than myself.

now I could be talking out my rectal area but im sure this was from official fluff somewhere.

I doubt you'll find any space marines who are 8' to 9' well at least in power armour, in terminator armour that's another story.