Crimson wrote:
BTW, comparing to the GW's normal humans, the Primaris Marine models are scaled to be about seven and half feet.

This is why their principle purpose as far as I'm concerned is as the basis for Truescale proper Astartes.

 Alpharius wrote:
ADB puts the Night Lords in his novels at 3 meters tall, so there's always that too.

Basically?

They're as tall as they need to be?

Or alternatively never trust BL as a fluff source.

(Guilliman model is scaled to be about three metres. Imagine an army of those.)

Right?

So, who is the 'definitive source' then?

I'm guessing that there isn't one?

And that's what GW/BL/FW would tell you too?

 Alpharius wrote:

So, who is the 'definitive source' then?

I personally trust GW studio's fluff over BL fluff, as it seems to be way more consistent. BL authors have a lot of creative freedom and often strange ideas about fluff. YMMV.

In this specific instance seven to seven and half feet seems to be pretty consistent figure across multiple sources, so obviously sudden ten feet is an outlier.

Let's go with 8' ± 6" in armor and call it a day!

 Crimson wrote:
BTW, comparing to the GW's normal humans, the Primaris Marine models are scaled to be about seven and half feet.

Remember- Cadians are 6'8" Marines are 7' tall. That makes the Primaris marines quite a lot taller (to scale).


1- We have lots of references for the heights of space marines- most of them say 7' tall is average.

But we don't have references for the average heights of anyone else. It makes the most sense to base it off of the one we know rather than conjecture about Cadian height.

Absolutely all of the "marine minis are too short" comes down to people assuming Imperial Guard minis aren't too tall (they've had more recent scale creep than Marines).

2- Heroic Scale presents men as generally 6'6" to 6'8" - yes, that's tall. But they're not just people, they're "heroic" people. "Heroic scale" also pushes heights toward the center- smaller characters are presented larger, while larger creatures or vehicles are generally presented smaller.

GW don't make non-heroic scale minis.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Alpharius wrote:
Right?

So, who is the 'definitive source' then?

I'm guessing that there isn't one?

And that's what GW/BL/FW would tell you too?

Games Workshop has recently been consistent with 7' as the average space marine (unless you can do the meters to feet math, in which case they're 6'10). For whatever reason, many fans add six inches to this, and expect average marine height to be 7.5.

But remember- it took them until the 6th edition to put it into an official codex- before that, Marine height was not mentioned in any previous codex or core rule book (even though there was quite a bit of detail given to marine physiology). It was not a topic of debate in the Rogue Trader or Second Edition days.


As I see it, GW didn't have a height for Marines until the Black Library started up. BL authors fell in love with the idea that Marines were huge, and BL readers spread the word to all of fandom. Sometimes, I'm pretty sure that characters were meant to be crazy giants among marines, but the prominence of special snowflake giants increased the expected size for all marines.

The Movie Marine article (4th ed era) was a backlash against the Black Library- it states that BL fiction is to the fluff like Rambo is to history. In this context, the 7' tall figure in the Movie Marine list might have meant to be an exaggeration- Everything else in the article makes them larger than life, right, so why do we think the 7' tall figure is meant to be accurate?

In the 6th ed, GW have adopted the 7 foot figure officially (not seven and a half- seven even, and sometimes 6'10" if you know your metric conversion).



Personally- I'm old school, so I can live with human sized marines that are just about right when scaled against 2nd ed Imperial Guardsmen.

If Cadians are two metres tall, then how tall are tall human models like Greyfax? Yeah, I'm not buying that.

I base my calculations on assumption that 30mm model represents 180cm person. That is already taller than average and even many GW's non-character human models are 32mm, making them over 190cm in this scale. This leads 35mm Deathwatch marine being about seven feet and 38mm Primaris being seven and half feet. Seems to make sense to me.

 Crimson wrote:
If Cadians are two metres tall, then how tall are tall human models like Greyfax? Yeah, I'm not buying that.

I base my calculations on assumption that 30mm model represents 180cm person. That is already taller than average and even many GW's non-character human models are 32mm, making them over 190cm in this scale. This leads 35mm Deathwatch marine being about seven feet and 38mm Primaris being seven and half feet. Seems to make sense to me.

But remember- GW minis are 28mm scale (official word, at least). How does that calculate out if we assume that number is correct? We get two meter tall Cadians to start out with.



One thing to consider is the scale creep that has not taken effect with Space Marines. The Marine design we use was finalized with the 3rd ed box set- everything after that is compatible (you can part swap from plastic marines for the past 29 years).

This is not true of Cadians and Catachans- the plastic kits made they way bigger.

 odinsgrandson wrote:

But remember- GW minis are 28mm scale (official word, at least).

That's not how 28mm scale works. 28mm scale means 28mm to the eye level, which in turn means about 30mm tall model.

One thing to consider is the scale creep that has not taken effect with Space Marines. The Marine design we use was finalized with the 3rd ed box set- everything after that is compatible (you can part swap from plastic marines for the past 29 years).

This is not true of Cadians and Catachans- the plastic kits made they way bigger.

Not true, marines have gotten bigger over the years, even after third edition and prior Primaris. Later multiparts are a bit larger than earlier ones and the Deathwatch are substantially larger.

About seven feet tall out of armor, armor adding four or five inches at least, possibly up to half a foot.

One thing I find interesting is how much people expect is added from the armor, and how much people expect that Games workshop's 7' tall number is meant to be a marine out of his armor. Is that where the 7.5 number comes from?

The sources either do not indicate whether the size is out of armor or in armor, or they specify that it is in armor (Blanch scale picture is definitely a marine in armor who is 7' tall from the bottom of his boots to the top of his helmet).

The consistency to me indicates that the average GW Marines are 7' tall in full armor- while the average Black Library character marine is 7.5-9ft tall in full armor.

 Crimson wrote:

 odinsgrandson wrote:

But remember- GW minis are 28mm scale (official word, at least).

That's not how 28mm scale works. 28mm scale means 28mm to the eye level, which in turn means about 30mm tall model.

Sorry- the measurement to the head is so common now days that I forget some people measure to the eye.

Measuring to the eye is the minority- the majority of the time, scale is reported from foot to head before hair is added (although hair and headress can often make the minis taller than reported). All of these cause inconsistencies since very few minis are standing straight enough for us to properly measure their height.

I don't buy that GW have always measured to the eye. I'm old school, and my older minis were definitely a LOT shorter than the newer ones- they used to be roughly 28mm tall (I might even have some that were 25...). The only time they've openly acknowledge their scale creep was with orks (ork scale creep is cannon).

The pattern that I've noticed is that newer companies that make minis compatible with older companies tend to use larger numbers to describe them (28mm GW minis are the same scale as 30mm Privateer Press minis).

One thing to consider is the scale creep that has not taken effect with Space Marines. The Marine design we use was finalized with the 3rd ed box set- everything after that is compatible (you can part swap from plastic marines for the past 29 years).

This is not true of Cadians and Catachans- the plastic kits made they way bigger.

Not true, marines have gotten bigger over the years, even after third edition and prior Primaris. Later multiparts are a bit larger than earlier ones and the Deathwatch are substantially larger.

Yes, plastic IG are bigger than the old metal IG (and Catachans are abominations.) That also happened ages ago and all the new 'normal human' kits have matched that scale. That ship has sailed, normal humans in GW-land are 30-32mm tall. And no, normal humans are not two metres tall.

(Also, the old metal models are not that much shorter, they're mostly just less bulky.)

And yes, Chaos Chosen, Deathwatch, the new Plaguemarines as well as the Rubrics are bigger than older marines. That's the new 'normal marine' scale.

What I really meant was that when Marine scale became stable, normal humans were a lot smaller than they are now- which to me indicates that the minis were meant to be comparatively larger than they currently look.

Marines had spent so long in such a stable place, it is interesting to see them finally start catching up to the scale creep.



The most interesting thing I find about the Primaris marines isn't their height but their proportions. By the 4th ed, GW started making their marine artwork look more like they have human proportions under the armor. The Dark Heresy/Deathwatch RPGs definitely went this route as well.



It seems to me that in sizing up the Primaris Marines, they also dropped some of the dwarf proportions that go along with them (longer legs, smaller heads etc). I haven't tried it yet, but I read that Primaris heads are the same size as normal marine heads, and completely interchangeable.

 odinsgrandson wrote:
What I really meant was that when Marine scale became stable, normal humans were a lot smaller than they are now- which to me indicates that the minis were meant to be comparatively larger than they currently look.

Those first multipart plastic marine kits came in 3rd edition, as did the plastic Catachans. So they're actually from the same era. Though marines were released couple of years earlier, so technically you're right.

I haven't tried it yet, but I read that Primaris heads are the same size as normal marine heads, and completely interchangeable.

Yes, they are.

 Crimson wrote:

 odinsgrandson wrote:
What I really meant was that when Marine scale became stable, normal humans were a lot smaller than they are now- which to me indicates that the minis were meant to be comparatively larger than they currently look.

Those first multipart plastic marine kits came in 3rd edition, as did the plastic Catachans. So they're actually from the same era. Though marines were released couple of years earlier, so technically you're right.

Now, I'm thinking about the dates, but you're right. Catachans were absurdly out of scale when they came out. I really just meant that the humans that were around when they last assessed marine scale were way shorter, and I think that's true.

I I haven't tried it yet, but I read that Primaris heads are the same size as normal marine heads, and completely interchangeable.

Yes, they are.

That's cool. Honestly, I've recently realized how much I've been wanting marine minis that look like the (better proportioned) artwork, so that's terrific.

If Cadians averaged 6'8", that would mean there are many millions of 7'0" and taller Cadian guardsmen, just as part of the normal height distribution.


Cadian models cannot mean that Cadians are 6'8". The printed studio and WD background for those models is that they represent Cadians, regiments from worlds conquered by Cadians which have different nutrition, gravity, and preexisting human populations, and they also represent regiments from worlds with no relation at all to Cadia except for using commonly imitated patterns. So it wouldn't just be that Cadians are remarkably tall, it would be that billions of diverse and unrelated guardsmen are a foot taller than the average height of a male in the western world.

Cadians can be especially tall in background but there aren't any specifically Cadian models except Creed, Kell, and Bastonne?, which is not a representative sample.

So that is a reference.

Migs from Ironsleet (the Blanchitsu crew) has already created some true scale MK7s and MK6s using the Primaris.

Behold their glory:

 Alpharius wrote:
ADB puts the Night Lords in his novels at 3 meters tall, so there's always that too.

Basically?

They're as tall as they need to be?

In that particular case, they might measured to the top of the ridiculous erect bat wings on the helmets which might skew the results.

FWIW, in the official Deathwatch rpg, the now secondus marines were listed in armor at "over 2.1 meters tall" and "500-1000kg" with variation around that. Obviously primaries didn't exist at the time so can't comment on that.

 Alpharius wrote:
Let's go with 8' ± 6" in armor and call it a day!

Pfft...9 foot if its a day.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 odinsgrandson wrote:
Where did it talk about 11 foot tall being monstrous creatures? The term didn't used to exist in 40k as a game term, and the sizes of most creatures weren't given.

You got me. 3rd? 4th edition? I get them confused.

 Alpharius wrote:
ADB puts the Night Lords in his novels at 3 meters tall, so there's always that too.

Basically?

They're as tall as they need to be?

Well, half a meter of that is bat wings, top knots and/or horns


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Crimson wrote:
If Cadians are two metres tall, then how tall are tall human models like Greyfax? Yeah, I'm not buying that.

I base my calculations on assumption that 30mm model represents 180cm person. That is already taller than average and even many GW's non-character human models are 32mm, making them over 190cm in this scale. This leads 35mm Deathwatch marine being about seven feet and 38mm Primaris being seven and half feet. Seems to make sense to me.

I choose to believe GW doesn't use a consistent scale for it's minatures, and just produces minatures in sizes that 'feel right' and are 'practically sized'.

You can have one space marine, who is very tall in the fluff have a miniature which is shorter than another character which isn't meant to be particularly tall.

pelicaniforce wrote:
If Cadians averaged 6'8", that would mean there are many millions of 7'0" and taller Cadian guardsmen, just as part of the normal height distribution.


Cadian models cannot mean that Cadians are 6'8". The printed studio and WD background for those models is that they represent Cadians, regiments from worlds conquered by Cadians which have different nutrition, gravity, and preexisting human populations, and they also represent regiments from worlds with no relation at all to Cadia except for using commonly imitated patterns. So it wouldn't just be that Cadians are remarkably tall, it would be that billions of diverse and unrelated guardsmen are a foot taller than the average height of a male in the western world.

Cadians can be especially tall in background but there aren't any specifically Cadian models except Creed, Kell, and Bastonne?, which is not a representative sample.

So that is a reference.

You have misunderstood me. Find some major miniatures sculptor, and they'll tell you plainly that they don't every sculpt average anything (I wonder if "This War of Mine" was an exception). The face shapes and proportions they use are based on some "ideal" not "average."

What I'm saying is that "heroic" minis are never designed to represent the average Cadian, or average Imperial Guardsman, or Averag anything. They're meant to represent "Heroic." guardsmen.

Heroic scale is about exaggerating the strength and size of the characters. In a D&D game, no one plays an Average person- they all play heroes that are especially powerful and stand out among a crowd. That's where the scale comes from- but it gets funny when pretty much every mini you make is meant to stand out from the crowd- so Scale Creep happens.

Games workshop has taken that approach to all of their minis (I got this confirmed in an old WD interview). It is unfortunate that they have taken that approach to Imperial Guardsmen- because the fluff on them is about how they're the peons of the universe who have an average active lifespan of 14 hours (including down time).

Also of note- it has been a common practice for GW to make the game's proper heroes in a larger scale than the other models (this is also what Avatars of War does). I mean, the fluff doesn't talk enough about Creed's enormous appetite and ogre like proportions to justify the way his mini doesn't fit on a 25mm base. Or Ragnar Blackmane's absolutely massive size (of note- there was another wolf character noted for his massive size back in Ragnar's heyday- and they never made a mini for him).


What I'm saying is that in a game where the most elite force in the universe is played by half the gamers, the humans represented are all non-average.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 warboss wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
ADB puts the Night Lords in his novels at 3 meters tall, so there's always that too.

Basically?

They're as tall as they need to be?

In that particular case, they might measured to the top of the ridiculous erect bat wings on the helmets which might skew the results.

FWIW, in the official Deathwatch rpg, the now secondus marines were listed in armor at "over 2.1 meters tall" and "500-1000kg" with variation around that. Obviously primaries didn't exist at the time so can't comment on that.

Thanks. Do you have a page number on that?

Edit- scratch that- we have that reference listed (it is page 28). Although, if you have the book, can you confirm that it reads "Over" 210 cm? That would change the reading a little.

Racerguy180 wrote:
I'm 2.02m tall and 275lbs, I would assume that a space marine would probably be somewhere a little taller and heavier than me.

When I walk up to the new Dark Imperium space marine display if both if our feet were at the same level I would be looking directly in the eyes of the marine in power armour.

They've always been a little inconsistent on actual measurements for Marines. I would also assume that depending on geneseed and each marines own genetic make up, you could have a large discrepancy in heights across the astartes.

Yours must be bigger than the one at my shop.
I'm only 6'2 and can look the marine in the eye, and he's standing on a large rock.
Still what was mentioned about bigger physically impressive guys seeming bigger still is true, he's still a massive looking dude. My guess is Marines have variable height depending on their height as "normal" humans which is also dependent on location, even in our neighbourhood of Holy Terra there's noticable differences in the average height of different nationalities - the average height across Northern Europe's Viking countries is 5'10, the average height in Mongolia is 5'6, the average height in South American countries is 5'4. Take that to a literal universal scale and you'd have some pretty messed up differences between "normals" let alone what Space Marine upgrades would do to them - it's not hard to imagine your average six foot something Fenrisian being the same height as the average Marine for a planet and an eight foot tall Space Wolf being an absolute collossus to that planet's "normals".

As for the need and use for overpriced marines just look at professional football, doesn't matter which code, overpaid muppets who dive for the ground to get penalties. The most interesting part of any soccer match is when the crowd decides to brawl over some percieved insult to their idols.
There's a lot more strength in the power of an idol than just their physical abilities, people will risk their lives in riots to defend their ideal of a player who might not even know their name.

We do have record of some space marines being particularly tall (2nd ed Codex Space Wolves features a particularly tall Wolf Guard character- although his exact height is not included). Maybe I should include it in the references anyway, just because a lot of people want to discuss the variances in marine height.

The minis reference this some as well- but depending on the era of mini you have, almost every race works the same as the orks (ie- with rank comes size). I'm willing to call this a sort of artistic interpretation to express their power rather than a comment on literal size.

I'm of two minds about this.

- The human races is pretty diverse- and spending the next forty millenia on different planets with vastly different environments than anywhere on earth can provide should make the human race even more diverse. People from planets with a little less or a little more gravity would shake things up that even our genetic diversity can't. I mean, Ratlings, Squats and Ogryns are all humans (and might even be genetically capable of becoming space marines, even if the inquisition and brother-chaplains won't allow it).

It doesn't seem too unlikely that the universe was populated by ships that were racially non-diverse (we have things like Atilla or Chogoris for example). There might even be some advantages to colonizing planets with monocultures like this (although I personally think that so long as all members of the colony are capable of communicating, they'd probably develop a distinct colonial culture).

But I know that Games Workshop doesn't really attempt to create credible speculative fiction. They're more about having themes and the rule of cool- hence we have Space Vikings and the Space Mongol Horde, but not a lot of racial diversity among the Dark Angels (who recruit from many planets).

 Bottle wrote:
Migs from Ironsleet (the Blanchitsu crew) has already created some true scale MK7s and MK6s using the Primaris.

Behold their glory:

Spoiler:

Thank you for the glory.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I just reread the fluff on Wolf Guard Ranulf. I had thought it put him as "nearly as tall as Leman Russ" but it doesn't. The entry puts this dude as both taller and stronger than Russ.

And he's just a plain old marine- not even a captain or wolf lord.



It goes on to tell about how he and his wolf guard killed thousands of orks in battle- and that when he finally fell, the orks created a shrine, convinced that he was a god.

Then it gave him an unimpressive statline deserving of a character veteran sergeant from his era.



It seems clear to me that Primarchs weren't the ten foot tall giants that we see now. I guess the old Leman Russ mini wasn't any larger than your average Space Wolf Captain (and quite a lot smaller than Ragnar Blackmane).

As a side note- I found a picture of Ranult from the internet. It looks like an official GW photo, but I can't find the source on it. Does anyone here know where it comes from?



(the pic is clearly meant to show scale on Ranulf- and remember, Russ is shorter than Ranulf here).

 odinsgrandson wrote:
I just reread the fluff on Wolf Guard Ranulf. I had thought it put him as "nearly as tall as Leman Russ" but it doesn't. The entry puts this dude as both taller and stronger than Russ.
As a side note- I found a picture of Ranult from the internet. It looks like an official GW photo, but I can't find the source on it. Does anyone here know where it comes from?

The story is probably just legend, or the Primarchs were still considered nothing extra in size at that time (Ranulf is from a 2000 WD). Or a combination of both.

The pic is apparently fan-made, though in GW style. Far as I can tell Ranulf is just a newer WG Termy kit, maybe with modded face, while the smaller termy is an old metal Wolf Guard. And the guy has put the new model on the older smaller base to make it seem even bigger.

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/File:Ranulf_the_Strong.jpg

 odinsgrandson wrote:
Ok, Space Marine sizes have been something of a strange bit of fluff. People I talk to say the size of a marine is anywhere between six and twelve feet tall. I'm pretty sure that both Games Workshop and the fandom have been pretty inconsistent about the average Space Marine height, so I'd like to compile a list of references, along with the sizes that they each claim a Space Marine to be.

They started out as being undefined, but larger. Then they were 7'. Then it was 8'. Then it was 9', with some outliers that could reach 12'. Then there were fanwanks that could have them at any size, so long as it was more than 2' higher than the tallest human the author knew.

Correct answer: They're bigger than humans, easily matched by Orks and some Eldar, shorter than MC's.

 odinsgrandson wrote:




(the pic is clearly meant to show scale on Ranulf- and remember, Russ is shorter than Ranulf here).

Big fella kind of reminds me of a Sabre-Tooth Cat.
So much more than just a Long Fang.

 Selym wrote:

 odinsgrandson wrote:
Ok, Space Marine sizes have been something of a strange bit of fluff. People I talk to say the size of a marine is anywhere between six and twelve feet tall. I'm pretty sure that both Games Workshop and the fandom have been pretty inconsistent about the average Space Marine height, so I'd like to compile a list of references, along with the sizes that they each claim a Space Marine to be.

They started out as being undefined, but larger. Then they were 7'. Then it was 8'. Then it was 9', with some outliers that could reach 12'. Then there were fanwanks that could have them at any size, so long as it was more than 2' higher than the tallest human the author knew.

Correct answer: They're bigger than humans, easily matched by Orks and some Eldar, shorter than MC's.

Correct answer is correct (if dissatisfying for people who want to pin down a particular number). For all we know, one 'Imperial Foot' in the year 40,000 is actually 5mm, which puts Cadians at exactly 28mm tall and the models are, in fact, life-size

Grot<Tau><Human><Ork/Eldar/Marine/Necron Warrior><Primaris/Nob/Necron Immortal><Ogryn

Where Primarchs fit is probably variable, and these are also average heights so I'm sure there are particularly tall Marines (Alpha Legion) and short-ass Ogryns. Also, for the record, ~7.5" fits for Marines for me. I tire greatly of the fanwank of making them taller and taller and taller. I quite like the fact that Marines are, actually, small fry in terms of the truly horrible things the galaxy holds. The novels paint them as unkillable supersoldiers I'm sure, but at the end of the day they're T4 with a 3+ sv. They die like...well...Marines.

The thing is, that's a good thing. It gives them a real underdog feel that's honestly missing in a lot of their fluff. Plus, I also like the fact that you have to do all of that to a baseline human just to put them on par with some of the galaxy's gribblies.>

I just came across a picture from the rogue trader days- but I'm not sure what book it is from:



The two marines pictured look Shorter than the ganger that they seem to be arresting... man, the fluff has come a long way since then.

 odinsgrandson wrote:
I just came across a picture from the rogue trader days- but I'm not sure what book it is from:

It's from the main Rogue Trader rulebook.

 Crimson wrote:

 odinsgrandson wrote:
I just came across a picture from the rogue trader days- but I'm not sure what book it is from:

It's from the main Rogue Trader rulebook.

Awesome- do you happen to have a page number?

 odinsgrandson wrote:

Awesome- do you happen to have a page number?

Seems to be 226.

We've got the references:

Old fluff- Marines. Primarchs and the Emperor are human sized- with somewhat superhero proportions. Primarchs could pass as human, but they were clearly extra powerful.

Spetulhu wrote:

 odinsgrandson wrote:
I just reread the fluff on Wolf Guard Ranulf. I had thought it put him as "nearly as tall as Leman Russ" but it doesn't. The entry puts this dude as both taller and stronger than Russ.
As a side note- I found a picture of Ranult from the internet. It looks like an official GW photo, but I can't find the source on it. Does anyone here know where it comes from?

The story is probably just legend, or the Primarchs were still considered nothing extra in size at that time (Ranulf is from a 2000 WD). Or a combination of both.

The pic is apparently fan-made, though in GW style. Far as I can tell Ranulf is just a newer WG Termy kit, maybe with modded face, while the smaller termy is an old metal Wolf Guard. And the guy has put the new model on the older smaller base to make it seem even bigger.

I've got an older source on Ranulf's fluff and character- he's from the 2nd ed Codex Space Wolves- making him a 1994 special character (back when GW didn't feel the need to release a mini for all of their characters).

The Ranulf pictured looks like a newer terminator for the size comparison- but there are some things that look off about that- the eagle, for example, doesn't look like a newer kit (it is too big at the edges) and the area around Ranulf's head look soft (like a less professional sculptor made it). Also, the storm bolters look like they're exactly the same size on both of these minis (I haven't compared old storm bolters to newer ones).

He looks to me like a kit bash with a lot of original sculpting. It makes me wonder if it was a custom mini featured in a white dwarf at some point.

 Ynneadwraith wrote:

 Selym wrote:


Correct answer: They're bigger than humans, easily matched by Orks and some Eldar, shorter than MC's.

Correct answer is correct (if dissatisfying for people who want to pin down a particular number). For all we know, one 'Imperial Foot' in the year 40,000 is actually 5mm, which puts Cadians at exactly 28mm tall and the models are, in fact, life-size

Grot<Tau><Human><Ork/Eldar/Marine/Necron Warrior><Primaris/Nob/Necron Immortal><Ogryn

Where Primarchs fit is probably variable, and these are also average heights so I'm sure there are particularly tall Marines (Alpha Legion) and short-ass Ogryns. Also, for the record, ~7.5" fits for Marines for me. I tire greatly of the fanwank of making them taller and taller and taller. I
;

Just a quick q maybe you can fill out some of your idea for me. If average 7'6" marines are matched by average orks and eldar, how does that relate with modern humans globally being like 5'7", and still under 5'9" if you exclude everyone but fighting aged males?

pelicaniforce wrote:

 Ynneadwraith wrote:

 Selym wrote:


Correct answer: They're bigger than humans, easily matched by Orks and some Eldar, shorter than MC's.

Correct answer is correct (if dissatisfying for people who want to pin down a particular number). For all we know, one 'Imperial Foot' in the year 40,000 is actually 5mm, which puts Cadians at exactly 28mm tall and the models are, in fact, life-size

Grot<Tau><Human><Ork/Eldar/Marine/Necron Warrior><Primaris/Nob/Necron Immortal><Ogryn

Where Primarchs fit is probably variable, and these are also average heights so I'm sure there are particularly tall Marines (Alpha Legion) and short-ass Ogryns. Also, for the record, ~7.5" fits for Marines for me. I tire greatly of the fanwank of making them taller and taller and taller. I
;

Just a quick q maybe you can fill out some of your idea for me. If average 7'6" marines are matched by average orks and eldar, how does that relate with modern humans globally being like 5'7", and still under 5'9" if you exclude everyone but fighting aged males?

Take humans. Add 2-3 feet. That's the relation.

It's pretty simple.

pelicaniforce wrote:

 Ynneadwraith wrote:

 Selym wrote:


Correct answer: They're bigger than humans, easily matched by Orks and some Eldar, shorter than MC's.

Correct answer is correct (if dissatisfying for people who want to pin down a particular number). For all we know, one 'Imperial Foot' in the year 40,000 is actually 5mm, which puts Cadians at exactly 28mm tall and the models are, in fact, life-size

Grot<Tau><Human><Ork/Eldar/Marine/Necron Warrior><Primaris/Nob/Necron Immortal><Ogryn

Where Primarchs fit is probably variable, and these are also average heights so I'm sure there are particularly tall Marines (Alpha Legion) and short-ass Ogryns. Also, for the record, ~7.5" fits for Marines for me. I tire greatly of the fanwank of making them taller and taller and taller. I
;

Just a quick q maybe you can fill out some of your idea for me. If average 7'6" marines are matched by average orks and eldar, how does that relate with modern humans globally being like 5'7", and still under 5'9" if you exclude everyone but fighting aged males?

Well! That format hasn't worked as I'd hoped. Lets try a different thing. Descending in order of tallest to shortest:

Ogryn/Tyranid Warrior
Primaris/Nob/Immortal
Ork/Eldar/Marine/Necron Warrior
Human
Tau
Grot

You make a good point though, and something I was thinking. Everyone's assuming people in the 41st millennium are roughly 6ft tall. However, height is quite strongly correlated with a high energy diet. For instance, Napoleon at 5'6" was actually quite tall for his time (whereas me at the same is a bit of a short-arse!). Question is, do we think the population of the 41st millennium is well fed? I certainly don't.

The other thing to consider is that 'human' is pretty damn broad in the 41st millennium. People on high gravity worlds would be significantly shorter, and people on low gravity worlds/voidborn would probably be much taller. That's before you get into abhumans like Squats, Ratlings, Longshanks etc. 38,000 years under really quite strong selection pressures is more than enough time for humans to have evolved waaaay away from what we are now.

 Selym wrote:
Take humans. Add 2-3 feet. That's the relation.

It's pretty simple.

This I really like. So far, it's the only thing that actually takes into account that both humans and Marines are variable in height. (although I still think 9' tall Marines are plain silly). Looking at little size comparison charts people have made has sort of cleared that up for me. By far and away, my favourite is this:



The giant Terminator doesn't make a great deal of sense seeing as it's the same Marine inside that as the power armoured guy, so Terminator suits would have to incorporate platform heels that would make Disco Stu feel ashamed. Apart from that, everything seems to fit nicely. Tau slightly shorter than human. Eldar slightly taller (I'm fine with them splitting the difference between humans and Marines). Ork would be as big as a Marine, but doesn't stand upright. That's with humans at 6' and Marines at 7' 6"

I like that chart too, it just feels right.

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/826/691/098.jpg

I would have to say that size chart is the best one so far.

Actually, looking at it again, I think this video provides the best overview and comparison of Space Marine heights compared to average humans, Custodians etc.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Actually, looking at it again, I think this video provides the best overview and comparison of Space Marine heights compared to average humans, Custodians etc.

Rick truly Roll'd, but he will eventually be found by the Inquisition and shot for the heretical act of singing anything other than the benedictions of The Most Merciful And Holy God Emperor Of Mankind!

Something that I find very strange is the way that so many fans here add half a foot to the average marine's height.

GW is currently rather consistent at labeling them 7' tall (Black Library is another matter, putting them at minimum 8 ft tall). Neither of those references justify a 7'6" marine average.

The only official reference that uses 7'6" is Jess Goodwin- and he puts 7'6" as the upper limit to marine height (his statement makes marines between 7 and 7.5 and a half feet tall). So while a 7'6" marine is possible, he is tall- probably tall without being freakish, while an 8 ft tall marine would be freakishly tall.



I just see no justification for people continually creating the myth of the average 7'6" marine, but it seems to prevail among fans and fan art.

7' inside armour with 3" thick plate?

'Cause marines need 3" heels? Or elevator boots?

Actually, the references to height either do not specify whether they're in armor or out of it, or they specify 'in armor (the image references all show marines in armor- sometimes labeling the height at the top of his head crest as 7'). Just like the fans, GW and BL want to give us the armored average size.


But there's this odd consistency. There are a lot of fans who either add half a foot to the GW numbers, or subtract anywhere from half a foot to two feet from the Black Library numbers. Even though not a one of them gives us a 7'6" average.




I've thought about this way too much, so here are three theories as to why people think 7'6" is the 'average' size.


1- People are reading 7' to mean any height starting with 7'- so 7'-7'11'. The same psychological phenomenon that makes 79.99 seem more like $70- except in this case, it is reversed, because our bias wants marines to be larger.


2- People are probably trying to pull a compromise between the Black Library and GW numbers (which absolutely do not match). GW says that marines are 7' and BL says that marines are at least 8' tall. Fans who aren't too attached to one side or the other probably just average all the numbers they hear at 7'6" The fact that GW doesn't often put marine height into their core books makes the numbers become a sort of hearsay anyway.


3- All Space Marines are Above Average, so any "Average" number given is clearly an indication of the lowest possible height for a marine., making the believed average necessarily larger. If this is the case, then over time, it will create a sort of scale creep to the marines (ie. once 7'6" is accepted as the "Average," then exceptional marines will have to get taller).

While this is a funny idea, I think it does match the presentation. There are marines whose height is not mentioned, and marines who are exceptionally tall (like Ranulf). But there aren't ever any notably short space marines.

Now, let's say that 7' is the average size, and there's variance from there. If we think it varies from there, then it is perfectly fine for a taller marine to be 7'6"- but only if it is acceptable for a marine to be 6'6". Given how people react when I say marines average 6'10"... I have my doubts that any 6'6" marine can be acceptable to fans.

Or anyone in GW's book, for that matter. Even their game rules define "average" statlines as popcorn for xenos/chaos. Do they have shorter than average special characters? Not a one- but there are plenty that are super tall.

3" soles would be perfectly reasonable. Armour plating plus grip pads. Or, hell, 2" soles and a 4" crest on the helmet above the head. Perfectly reasonable (although, as you mention, apparently without source).

I do get the impression that the wild inconsistency in the information given is so that you can essentially pick and choose yourself. Nothing has been stressed to be more canon than anything else and since you don't know which of it is propaganda - if any - I see no other way to reconcile the values than simple preference.

I know I have my preference - not quite as big as ADB's 3m marines but still a good 9' (2.78m or thereabouts). I really love that 'half again the height of a man' description from The Last Detail and have built a mental image using that as a reference point. It is exactly what I feel is right grimdark for 40k; this is a war of gigantic post-human warriors and sanity-rending horrors, and this is the war the common man with a flashlight is sent into!

A picture I assembled years ago to illustrate my impression, spoilered because absolutely humongous:


In hindsight the ork boy should be a bit bigger but it's not something I can change now unfortunately (not at home this week).

I know why there are inconsistencies- the fluff was written by a large group of people who come and go. A lot of the people who were in charge of the older fluff aren't there anymore.

It used to be a standing GW policy not to clean up the edges of the fluff- Andy Chambers said as much when he pulled the bits of fluff about the C'tan for the Necrons.


But look over the references and try to put them in order:

- RT- Marines become super soldiers without becoming taller. They even released a Leman Russ mini that wasn't taller than your average RT marine.

That continued throughout the 2nd edition- Marines might be tall because only the homeworld's best population was ever selected for the geneseed, but there was no indication that they were inhuman in their height- even Primarchs weren't portrayed as being particularly large.



- During the 3rd ed, the Black Library starts up. Dan Abnett (and others) start portraying marines as super giants. Please note- this wasn't true before the BL. BL readers are the ones who are most into the fluff. They start taking the BL fiction as correct and insist to the general fandom that all of the miniatures and artwork misrepresent marine height.

- In the 4th ed, White Dwarf fights back. The Movie Space Marine article states that BL fluff is all propaganda and non-cannon. It presents us with super-amazing over the top marines- and says they're 7 ft tall as part of the exaggeration.

- However, since the guardians of the fluff are now all Dan Abmett fans, the fandom embraces the idea that BL presents real space marines, while the official game rules, artwork, minis and fluff are incorrect.
As BL marines get to be bigger and bigger, GW proper embraces the 7 ft figure whenever it comes up, but they don't make opportunities for it to come up.

- In the 6th ed Chaos Codex, for the FIRST TIME in any core codex or rulebook, a height is given for Space Marines. They're 7 ft tall. For the previous 25 years, you could read ever codex and every core book for fluff on Space Marines and never know that they were taller than humans.


Remember- the official fluff writers for GW are far from consistent throughout the years, so it isn't like one guy changing his mind.

But consider that GW could at any point rein in ADB and his 3m marine shenanigans should they so desire.

That they do not implies a level of acceptance.

You're right, it does imply a level of acceptance.

Or it denotes a level of ignorance or apathy.

For example, I knew a lot of people who got into the Star Wars Expanded Universe in the '90s. They claimed to know all about how the Clone Wars were about people trying to clone Jedi, along with stories of the "light" side of the force that was separate from the stuff in the films.

At the time, I told them that none of that was cannon, but they assured me that absolutely every word in the EU went through George Lucas, and he made sure that it would fit with the prequels.

Then, episode 1, midichlorians and such... well, you know how that went.


To be perfectly honest, game companies seldom have much in the way of continuity editors. All together, their fiction editors are usually not up to industry standards, so I think that they're not terribly likely to go through the books and look for references to Marine heights so that they can reign them all in.

Especially since half of the characters in the books are special snowflakes anyway (who are allowed to be especially tall, but are absolutely never notably short).

Andy Chambers and Rick Priestly told us about how the fluff doesn't really need to all fit together that well anyway. If that's what you value then it would explain why we have a completely inconsistent picture of what their most popular miniatures lines should look like.

I really do not feel like Star Wars vs its EU is the same as Black Library vs the codices and campaign books of main GW.

Star wars (well, until Disney anyway...) has a canon tier system that GW does not have.

 Ashiraya wrote:

Star wars (well, until Disney anyway...) has a canon tier system that GW does not have.

And thank the God-Emperor for that. Toxic bloody thing. Works for a big film franchise like Star Wars, but would cripple the creativity that 40k's popularity is built upon.

 odinsgrandson wrote:

As a side note- I found a picture of Ranult from the internet. It looks like an official GW photo, but I can't find the source on it. Does anyone here know where it comes from?



(the pic is clearly meant to show scale on Ranulf- and remember, Russ is shorter than Ranulf here).

That photo is legit GW, taken from a White Dwarf. I may still have a copy of it. The featured article is about the collection of either a studio member or someone connected, iirc. I'll try to dig it up if I find a little time.

Edit: Weird. It was literally the first old WD I picked up, top of the pile. Issue 185, pg. WD56 Artist is Kim Syberg, who was, at the time, a member of the 'Eavy Metal painting team.

Thank you so much, I have added that to the references. I thought too many details were off for it to simply be one of the newer terminators (the eagle crest is too large, and there's a sort of softness to the detailing right above his head). Nothing that couldn't be greenstuffed of course, but there's not a lot of point if the normal plastic terminator kit will do.

Personally, I started playing during the Rogue Trader era (I started out with Space Crusade and Advance Space Crusade, and bought 2nd ed opening day). That is after the fluff started solidifying well, but well before the Black Library, Necrons, and Tau.

Part of me wants to make a conversion of Ranalf to make him current. I think I'd need to start out with Robout Guillian to get him large enough (and his stats are really just a vet sergeant). I'd probably want to give him a walrus head like this one.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
I like that chart too, it just feels right.

Yeah. Orks would be as tall as Marines if they ever stopped hunching over. But hunched over is their default stance, presumably built in to their biology.

Interestingly, Ork scale creep was canonized in the 3rd edition.

I believe that was in the 3rd ed core book.

So- there has been some major fluff upheaval since I started collecting sources.

Do we have any newer references to Marine heights?

And do we have any proper numbers on how tall Primaris Marines are?

GW seems to be upscaling marines across the baord right now (new Chaos Marine minis seem to be larger than their older counterparts) but they've been doing that with every race in their other games (Age of Sigmar, Necromunda, Blood Bowl).

Since we've been talking about sizes of primarchs as well, I think it is useful to add in a few of those references.

I'd like to get page numbers on them, but I know that the 2nd ed Codex Ultramarines states that Marneus Calgar's power fists were used by Robout Guilliman (having been taken from a chaos champion he killed). So Calgar's hands are comparably sized with Guilliman's.

Also, in Angels of Death, Commander Dante is wearing the Death Mask of Sanguinious (indicating that Sanguinious' head was not monstrously larger than Dante's).

Those are concrete examples that clearly indicate that marines aren't smaller than Primarchs.

Well Guilliman was a pencil pusher and Calgars a bit of a brute, never mind that the gauntlets are a chaos artifact so they probably shrink and enlarge depending on who puts what where. You know usual khaos shenanigans.

The difference between a 7ft guy and a 5ft guys head isnt monstrously different either. It could be over sized for Dante. Slap a extra inch or 2 for padding, sensors, Dante might just have a tiny head.

 odinsgrandson wrote:
Since we've been talking about sizes of primarchs as well, I think it is useful to add in a few of those references.

I'd like to get page numbers on them, but I know that the 2nd ed Codex Ultramarines states that Marneus Calgar's power fists were used by Robout Guilliman (having been taken from a chaos champion he killed). So Calgar's hands are comparably sized with Guilliman's.

Also, in Angels of Death, Commander Dante is wearing the Death Mask of Sanguinious (indicating that Sanguinious' head was not monstrously larger than Dante's).

Those are concrete examples that clearly indicate that marines aren't smaller than Primarchs.

Also, the Lion Helm looks like a regular sized marine helmet. Giant Primarchs is a relatively recent BL invention.

 odinsgrandson wrote:
Ok, Space Marine sizes have been something of a strange bit of fluff. People I talk to say the size of a marine is anywhere between six and twelve feet tall. I'm pretty sure that both Games Workshop and the fandom have been pretty inconsistent about the average Space Marine height, so I'd like to compile a list of references, along with the sizes that they each claim a Space Marine to be.

Please add any references you can find that tell us how tall Space Marines are. I'm going to be looking through my old books and see if I can find references there as well.

Here are the sources for Space Marine height we've gathered so far:



210 cm - (a little over 6'10" or 7 foot exactly if you use a 1 inch=2.5 cm conversion) Games Workshop competition (http://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Competition?_requestid=15836007) probably the most recent reference (February 2015)

2.1m and 7' Image to go along with the competition- clearly showing that 7ft is exactly the same as 2.1 meters (in the grim darkness of the far future, math is simple).

7 foot tall - White Dwarf 300, p134 "Space Marines in the Movies"

"half as tall again as the man in front of him" - Paul Kearny, The Last Detail, p94- calculates at a little under 9 ft. tall depending on the height of the man in question.

7' tall- 6th edition Chaos Codex, p36

Barely under 8' tall - Black Library Weekender scale picture: http://i.imgur.com/6jjsiar.jpg

7 feet -Jess Goodwin's picture of a 1/1 scale space marine The head is at 8 feet, ground is at 1 foot.

Two and a half meters tall and taller or 8'2"+ -Dan Abnett, Horus Rising- description of Gavriel Loken and two other marines who are taller

"...well over two metres tall..." ie. above 6'7" - Xenos, page 171, Dan Abnett; from a description of The Emperor's Children Chaos Marine, Mandragore.

7'-7'6"- Jess Goodwin, Design Philosophy IV

210 cm - DeathWatch RPG, p28

Over 7'4"- Dan Abnett, Ravenor- compiled from several references to a 7'4" woman who is described as being nearly Astartes height

Approaching 3 Meters Tall/ Close to 3 Meters Tall- Aaron Dembski-Bowden Night Lords Omnibus pp 459, 494

"...a general increase in the size of the recipient's skeleton."- White Dwarf 98, February 1988 description of effects of Ossmodula. Possibly the first reference to size increase in Astartes.

No suggestion of increased height in Space Marine Physique- Rick Priestly and Andy Chambers, "The Physique of a Space Marine" Codex Imperialis 1993 p18. (the Ossmodula merely increases bone strength in this version).

7'2" Promotional material for THQ's video game: "Space Marine."

Human Sized- can be shorter as shown in artwork Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader p226 Contrast that against THQ's presentation in Space Marine


"Larger in girth and mightier of arm than even Leman Russ" (2nd ed Codex Space Wolves p. 67). A studio converted mini for Ranulf was featured in White Dwarf (#185, pg. 56- sculpt by Kim Syberg) Entry for Wolf Guard Ranulf- a Wolf Guard Leader with a less than impressive statline (he wasn't killing any greater daemons anytime soon). It should be noted that this predates fluff turning the primarchs into giants.



Primarch Size References

The Primarchs seem to have grown even more than the Space Marines over time. Let's get some size references for them:


Leman Russ was considered large, but he was not the largest of the Space Wolves (2nd ed Codex Space Wolves p. 67)


Roboute Guilliman can use the same power fists as normal marines 2nd ed Codex: Ultramarines, 72 and Guantlets of Ultramar Wargear card.

A cast of Sanguinius's face can be worn by marines, indicating that they're about the same size- - 2nd ed Codex Angels of DeathDeath, Mask of Sanguinius wargear card

You are forgetting that the Horus Heresy novels say that Marines are 10 foot tall.

regarding primarch head sizes, Gulliman's head on his mini doesn't apper to be any bigger then a space Marines head, the size differances of the HEADS might be pretty minimal.

BrianDavion wrote:
regarding primarch head sizes, Gulliman's head on his mini doesn't apper to be any bigger then a space Marines head, the size differances of the HEADS might be pretty minimal.

Well I wouldn't use the game as evidence as its not to scale, but I would assume like with growth hormones, when body builders take growth hormones everything grows, even their organs, so I would imagine that the same is true for the process of growth that happens with space marines, it would be odd to have growth that was pinpointed in areas more than they are in others, just from a biological way, but from a genomics kind of way, the Emperor did fine tune them, so he could have thought that, the Primarchs don't need massive heads, which is actually reasonable because brain size matters the bigger you are, as the dinosaurs had to have little brains because their heads were so massive as the neck wouldn't be able to hold it, due to the fact that brains are so dense (no pun intended), but space marines go through the more biological growth hormone way as they aren't born marines they go through a process of becoming marines.

 Crimson wrote:

 odinsgrandson wrote:
Since we've been talking about sizes of primarchs as well, I think it is useful to add in a few of those references.

I'd like to get page numbers on them, but I know that the 2nd ed Codex Ultramarines states that Marneus Calgar's power fists were used by Robout Guilliman (having been taken from a chaos champion he killed). So Calgar's hands are comparably sized with Guilliman's.

Also, in Angels of Death, Commander Dante is wearing the Death Mask of Sanguinious (indicating that Sanguinious' head was not monstrously larger than Dante's).

Those are concrete examples that clearly indicate that marines aren't smaller than Primarchs.

Also, the Lion Helm looks like a regular sized marine helmet. Giant Primarchs is a relatively recent BL invention.

The Lion helm isn't the Lion's helmet, which should have been obvious for a very long time because it's MK 7, and Lion and the rest of the First Legion would have never even had access to the mark that was released during the Siege of Terra which the First wasn't present for. Even by early 2000's fluff it's obvious the Lion's Helm didn't actually belong to the Lion.

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 odinsgrandson wrote:
Since we've been talking about sizes of primarchs as well, I think it is useful to add in a few of those references.

I'd like to get page numbers on them, but I know that the 2nd ed Codex Ultramarines states that Marneus Calgar's power fists were used by Robout Guilliman (having been taken from a chaos champion he killed). So Calgar's hands are comparably sized with Guilliman's.

Also, in Angels of Death, Commander Dante is wearing the Death Mask of Sanguinious (indicating that Sanguinious' head was not monstrously larger than Dante's).

Those are concrete examples that clearly indicate that marines aren't smaller than Primarchs.

Also, the Lion Helm looks like a regular sized marine helmet. Giant Primarchs is a relatively recent BL invention.

The Lion helm isn't the Lion's helmet, which should have been obvious for a very long time because it's MK 7, and Lion and the rest of the First Legion would have never even had access to the mark that was released during the Siege of Terra which the First wasn't present for. Even by early 2000's fluff it's obvious the Lion's Helm didn't actually belong to the Lion.

It is said to have been worn by the Lion, but granted that is old lore its in the 3rd edition codex, but Primarchs have their own custom armour, maybe MK7 helmet was a homage to the Lions helmet. But agreed that they are different sizes otherwise Azrael would be wearing the thing. Don't know where he got the idea that Primarchs are the same size.

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:

You are forgetting that the Horus Heresy novels say that Marines are 10 foot tall.

Thanks. Do you have a specific novel and page reference? We have quite a few of the novels cited here (most of them give more vague height references, like "half again as tall as the guy standing next to him" and such. It would be awesome if you have a page number for "10 foot tall."

Just to chip in, all the quotes I've read have suggested 7-7.5 feet tall. To the poster quoting a novel saying a marine is 'half again as tall' as a human with hands big as shovels, I believe it said 'seemed' in front of that description. It's therefore not an omniscient narrator it's more free indirect discourse, where the descriptions are coloured by the characters.

I think, apart from a few outliers, the consensus is 7 feet or so.

I've never heard of a marine being described as 10 feet tall. To put that in perspective, a ten foot tall marine would mean his shoulders would be where your ceiling and walls meet. The top of his head would be two feet above that.

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 odinsgrandson wrote:
Since we've been talking about sizes of primarchs as well, I think it is useful to add in a few of those references.

I'd like to get page numbers on them, but I know that the 2nd ed Codex Ultramarines states that Marneus Calgar's power fists were used by Robout Guilliman (having been taken from a chaos champion he killed). So Calgar's hands are comparably sized with Guilliman's.

Also, in Angels of Death, Commander Dante is wearing the Death Mask of Sanguinious (indicating that Sanguinious' head was not monstrously larger than Dante's).

Those are concrete examples that clearly indicate that marines aren't smaller than Primarchs.

Also, the Lion Helm looks like a regular sized marine helmet. Giant Primarchs is a relatively recent BL invention.

The Lion helm isn't the Lion's helmet, which should have been obvious for a very long time because it's MK 7, and Lion and the rest of the First Legion would have never even had access to the mark that was released during the Siege of Terra which the First wasn't present for. Even by early 2000's fluff it's obvious the Lion's Helm didn't actually belong to the Lion.

It is said to have been worn by the Lion, but granted that is old lore its in the 3rd edition codex, but Primarchs have their own custom armour, maybe MK7 helmet was a homage to the Lions helmet. But agreed that they are different sizes otherwise Azrael would be wearing the thing. Don't know where he got the idea that Primarchs are the same size.

I get my own personal biases from a lot of the older lore. I spent decades playing a game and reading the lore that never indicated that marines and primarchs were impossibly large, and I realized that GW hasn't kept their fluff straight at all- and that there even seems to be deliberate contradictions from the different writers (the Movie Marines article- from the 4th edition and WD #300- actually argues that Black Library fiction should not be taken as accurate lore).

A lot of the lore has changed over the years, but GW still has a hard time keeping its retcons straight.




The idea that primarchs are the same size as marines comes from:

- The lack of any indication that they were tall throughout many editions of fluff. Saying nothing about their size for over a decade, while telling TONS of stories about them seems to indicate that their size is literally not noteworthy.


- Many of the Primarch's fluff falls apart if they're twelve feet tall:

Night Haunter used a secret identity to hide from the police ("You say the suspect was twelve feet tall- I'm sorry, but that could be anyone").

Alpharius and Omegon were supposed to have hidden among their marines like Sparticus.

The older stories of how the Emperor identified local tales of Primarchs was by their great deeds- and never by the "12 feet tall factor" which you'd think would be a dead givaway. I mean, either that or emps is dumber than an ork (they can always tell who's bigger).



- Several pieces of wargear indicate that wargear can be used by both primarchs and non-primarch marines. The Lion's Helm aside, the Guantlets of Ultramar were used by a random chaos champion, then Robourte Guilliman, then by non-primarch Ultramarines.

Likewise the Death Mask of Sanguinious was literaly a Death Mask of Sanguinious. Death isn't just a random adjective to make things more grimdark- death masks are real world objects. It is is a casting taken of the primarch's face after he died that was crafted into a helmet that is clearly of a size that normal marines can wear it.




- The first Primarch mini was the same size as the space marines of its time (and is way behind current scale creep). Yes, the miniatures are fluff, and the fact that the Lion's Helm is exactly the same size as a marine's helm was not a 'mistake.' It was made before the size difference existed in the fluff.

- Early artwork of primarchs and the emperor fail to show them being particularly larger than humans. This stretches into Mike McVey's famous diorama that uses normal terminator marine minis for the Emperor and Horus.

- The Space Wolves Codexs, 2nd ed states very clearly that Leman Russ wasn't the largest of the Space Wolves. It describes a particularly large veteran sergeant who was bigger than Russ (and his stat line was really unimpressive) They even put a picture.




I would also love to include more references to giant primarchs as well. I'm looking through the 8th ed core book now, but if you get me page numbers and books and I'll include them.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Banville wrote:
Just to chip in, all the quotes I've read have suggested 7-7.5 feet tall. To the poster quoting a novel saying a marine is 'half again as tall' as a human with hands big as shovels, I believe it said 'seemed' in front of that description. It's therefore not an omniscient narrator it's more free indirect discourse, where the descriptions are coloured by the characters.

I think, apart from a few outliers, the consensus is 7 feet or so.

I've never heard of a marine being described as 10 feet tall. To put that in perspective, a ten foot tall marine would mean his shoulders would be where your ceiling and walls meet. The top of his head would be two feet above that.

What I have observed is this:

- Old GW fluff did not feature particularly large marines. Lack of early remarks on marine size seems ti indicate that marine height was unremarkable.


- GW current fluff has been pretty consistent about naming Space Marines as 7 feet tall- starting sometime during the 3rd edition, and after the rise of the Black Library. They've used that number for years now, and have been consistent.


- Black Library is consistent about saying that marines are very impressive in their size. They're not as concrete about it, but the words they use to describe the hugeness of marines can sometimes get out of hand. BL also tends to focus on extraordinary individuals- meaning that quite a few BL characters are exceptionally large, and are never below average height.


- Fans believe that marines can't all be exactly 7 foot tall- and that there would have to be taller and shorter ones. This is reasonable- but then they take the 7 foot number as the minimum rather than the average, and insist on adding half a foot to create "average" marine height os 7.5 feet.

The 7.5 foot number is not supported anywhere in official fluff- it is a complete fan invention.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'd really love to gather citations for primarch sizes. Does anyone have any references?

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
regarding primarch head sizes, Gulliman's head on his mini doesn't apper to be any bigger then a space Marines head, the size differances of the HEADS might be pretty minimal.

Well I wouldn't use the game as evidence as its not to scale, but I would assume like with growth hormones, when body builders take growth hormones everything grows, even their organs, so I would imagine that the same is true for the process of growth that happens with space marines, it would be odd to have growth that was pinpointed in areas more than they are in others, just from a biological way, but from a genomics kind of way, the Emperor did fine tune them, so he could have thought that, the Primarchs don't need massive heads, which is actually reasonable because brain size matters the bigger you are, as the dinosaurs had to have little brains because their heads were so massive as the neck wouldn't be able to hold it, due to the fact that brains are so dense (no pun intended), but space marines go through the more biological growth hormone way as they aren't born marines they go through a process of becoming marines.

I disagree that the minis and artwork cannot be used as fluff. They tell a story, just like the fiction and other lore, and the story tell does contradict much of the other fiction and lore.

The story that the minis tell us is that humans have "heroic" proportions with comically large heads and hands- but that they're evolving into something both larger and closer to ancient human proportions. Why it is that humans are undergoing these changes is a complete mystery and the inquisition is afraid to document these changes- even among abhumans (although they do document similar changes happening among the Ork people).


I get why most fans dismiss the story that the mini proportions tell, and it is definitely unsupported by the rest of the fluff.


I've considered citing sculpts (the old Leman Russ and the FG primarch minis) but I think that I am the only one who woudl find that entertaining or relevant.

I got a PM based on bringing up this topic on another thread.

Essentially, I said that the Black Library novels present all space marines as above average space marines- and especially taller than average space marines. I believe that this bias in the novels has led to many fans believing that whatever number GW releases as the height of all space marines to be a minimum height rather than an average height. And I think fans inexplicably add half a foot and call that the average.

He presented a glorious counterpoint with a citation:

[q]I didn't want to derail the train wreck of the thread any more than it already is but read your comment on no book describing a marine of average height. As far as I know there is only one. The novel Deathwatch has an Imperial Fist character stated as the 'shortest marine he had ever seen". Page 72 has the first mention of his height.

Just had to add one counter-point at any research about marine height [/]

So there you go, Deathwatch Page 72 refers to a space marine of below average height. I don't have the book, so I really wonder how short the shortest marine could be.