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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.

The Shortest Space Marine He'd Ever Seen proving that at least one space marine is below average astartes height Deathwatch p.72


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)
I think it is noteworthy that the statblock for a larger than Russ wolfguard is very unimpressive by 2nd ed standards..


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


Night Haunter could conceal his identity among normal humans 2nd ed Codex Chaos as well as later references to Night Huanter- a detail that seems to contradict his status as a giant.

 warboss wrote:
I've always seen the ballpark figures of 7' for the space marine and 8' in armor.

I think I've heard that one too, but I'm not sure where it comes from.

That doesn't seem to match the minis either (at least mark 1-8 power armor doesn't have epic elevator boots, and the helmets aren't adding that much height either, since we've got so many examples of marines without helmets).

Terminator armor is probably adding a whole foot to the height, though.



On a side note, I just went through my old 2nd ed "Codex Imperialis" and it didn't have any reference to Space Marine height. Doesn't even claim that they're tall. It does say that they can spit corrosive poison and have fused rib cages, though.


My 2nd ed Space Wolves codex states that they are "Huge, Burly Warriors" in comparison to normal Fenrisian citizens, but it doesn't give a number.

Hey, he's got a point. And he knew the current reference right away (honestly, it was the one that got me thinking about it).

Truth be told, I didn't do some math, I let the internet do it for me.

My conversion came from Google, which I figured would be more precise. I let it convert each step one at a time, so here's a breakdown of my process:

210 cm in inches is 82.6772 inches, or 6.88892 feet, or 6 foot, 10.667 inches.

I'm guessing that you used a simple 1 inche=2.5 cm instead of 1 inch=2.54cm (which is clearly what Google uses). In that case you get 210 cm= 84 inches=7 feet. Less precise conversion, but simpler math that gives you nice, round numbers on both ends. Since we're talking about fluff for our fantasy universe, I doubt that GW think that precision is really necessary.

I'll go ahead and make a note of that in my original post.

Anybody have references for those?

I found one in the 2nd ed Space Wolf codex- the tallest Space Wolf was as big (or bigger) than Leman Russ. But it didn't give any numbers there either (and I've never found any specific references to Primarch height).

Does anyone have any of the novels that give space marine heights? I've heard Guant's Ghosts have them.

I honestly want to know where the variety of different ideas on marine height come from- clearly there are some very different ideas on marine height.

 Crimson wrote:
Current Chaos Marine Codex says marines (and it is talking about normal. non-chaos marines) are seven feet. Studio has been really consistent with this over the years: Marines are about seven feet tall. Some BL books might sometimes portray them as larger, but even those tend to be pretty damn vague, just like Ashirya's quote earlier (anything that uses descriptions like 'hands as big as shovels' is not a mathematically accurate description.)

Thanks for the reference. Don't happen to have a page number as well, do you?

Nice picture reference there.

By the way, does anyone have the Deathwatch books? It seems like most RPGs are very precise about these kinds of number, and I'd like to hear their opinion.

Thanks

 Keep wrote:

Also, what makes you think people in the imperium are as tall as people are today?

Well, Catachans...

But I see your point. I think the average male height in North America is 5'9" but it is much lower in South America.

I'd expect the "Average" person in the 40k universe to be similar to people from current Nottinghamshire.

the ancient wrote:
Black Library had them at 8' in a line up not long ago.

Cool- is that still around? I'd love to add it to the citations.

Hey- do you have any references on those Primarch heights? I found one about how Leman Russ was pretty tall in comparison to other Space Wolves, but that's all the references I could find.

Ok, we aren't really talking about the practicality of creating giant robots, are we? Ok, I'm going to invoke the "Giant Robot Paradox." It goes like this:


"If you have the technology to create a giant combat robot, you can spend fewer resources to create a tank that is better than your giant robot."

We love titans, and indeed all kinds of mechs, because they're cool. But realistic, they aren't.

 Ashiraya wrote:

9' (ish, it could be 9'1" or 8'11" or something around there) is canon. Of course, 7' is also canon. But dismissing either as false is false in itself.

This is the truth, here. Sure, we can argue whether Wolverine had bone claws, but in the end, the fluff is not consistently making the same statements.

I know a lot of people argue that the Black Library stuff isn't cannon, but it is at least official Warhammer 40,000. I find it funny that the Movie Marines put them at 7' tall, because the stated purpose behind those rules was to create a rules set that represented the Black Library books.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Brothers of the Snake lists them as 8', I believe.

Ooh, can you find that reference so that I can add it to the list?

 Keep wrote:

i'm still waiting for a explicit proof of 9' marines, that hasnt been a vague quote and an explanation why it would make more sense to have marines that big to justify having them considerably larger then the "between 7 and 8 foot" mark given by so many sources.

To be fair, the number given by the largest number of sources right now is "Marines are 7 feet tall" and not "between 7 and 8 feet tall." That would imply that a 7 foot marine is the average, not that a seven and a half foot marine is average.

However, most people on this thread seem to think that a seven and a half average is better (and clearly some of the minis are larger than others). I'm actually not sure why that is (there seem to be no references putting them at seven and a half feet).

So far, it does look like the Black Library has marines at a larger scale than the other fluff sources as well (I've no doubt that our preferences depend a bit on where we prefer to get our fluff).

 Keep wrote:

 Icculus wrote:
Well my quote earlier in the thread puts a marine at 8.2' tall. So not quite 9 but definitely over 8.

Saying "Two and a half" is often vague, just as "half something" is. The former would be fitting for a size between 2.3 and 2.7 meters, because "two and a half" is closer then "two meter" and "three meter" in both cases. Therefore it is not a definite that he is over 8'. 8' would be 2.44m ... mathematically rounded 2.5m

Hey, it is a legit reference that gives us a precise number. It is as precise as most of the other numbers given here, and deserves to be represented in the list.

A quick question- is there any reason to believe that the 2.5 meter marine was exceptional?

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

"Why have you stopped battle-brother?"

"I can't get in the bloody door!"

Someone is playing Space Hulk.

 Keep wrote:

The 4 of them are pretty special though, dont you think? They are the highest ranks, apart from horus, in their legion. They are not the average marine from their skills, and strength. So its not unlikely that their size is exceptional as well...

You know, for a second I wanted to say, "Hey, they aren't Orks- they don't promote based on height, to they?"

Then I remembered all of the special characters I've painted over the years. It seems like most races DO often promote based on size.

The Ork fluff is probably meant as satire of the whole thing (like when ork scale creep was canonized).

 Bobthehero wrote:

 odinsgrandson wrote:


I find it funny that the Movie Marines put them at 7' tall, because the stated purpose behind those rules was to create a rules set that represented the Black Library books.

No, its meant to represent what would happen if SM were the protagonist of a silly action movie, nothing more.

The article goes like this:

We get at lot of letters from people who read our fluff and say "A space marine is super powerful in the fiction. Why doesn't your game represent them properly?"

Well, there's game balance to consider. But we think that exaggeration is fun, and we think that fiction is a good place for that sort of thing- heck, Hollywood has been doing it for years.

So, we imagine our books are like films shown in the Imperium. So here are the rules to represent space marines this way.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 odinsgrandson wrote:
So, we imagine our books are like films shown in the Imperium.

This is canon saying that Space Marines performance in BL books are over-the-top, and that actual marines are to BL marines what Expendable soldiers are to real U.S. soldiers! Interesting.

Also, Ashiraya, were you not explaining to me a few days ago that a 7" marine was an outlier? That is was on the same level as you interpretating bad prose into saying a marine run faster than the speed of sound? Ah !

Well, the article had a massive "CHAPTER UNAPPROVED" stamp on it, so...

 Xenomancers wrote:
Marines are 7.5 - 9 feet tall. They have .75 cal assault rifles with explosive rounds - their punch is as deadly as their .75 cal rifle. I've read these accounts from so many different sources it would be hard to site it.

Can you find any of those sources? I'd love to add them to the list.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Gee Dubz says 7'. So they're 7' tall.

We're collecting statements that are from official sources, and they do not always agree with one another.

They also do not always agree with the fandom (which is apparent here).

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Oh, well, there goes me not reading gak again. Appologies.

No need to apologize. But if you have any other references of where GW said that, please post them, and I'll add them to the list.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Imperial structures are huge. Just look at the doors on your average Imperial terrain kit and compare it to a Guardsman. They must be like 10 feet tall.

GW also said that the tabletop is out of scale, specifically that the Guardsmen are too large.

Ooh, ooh, ooh! Really!?!

I would absolutely love getting a source for that one.

 Bobthehero wrote:
GW main line is too large, or so it is said. Don't remember who said it. But I've seen it before.

FW line is a lot better as far as scale goes.

I know I've heard that as well (also that the vehicles are all out of scale). But I've never of any source for it- especially one from GW.

I have read GW sculptors talk about "heroic" proportions, and having to reel them in when working in larger scales, but that's not quite the same thing.

Terminator armor definitely makes the minis taller. As I understand it, almost no one accepts the miniatures as a legitimate source of fluff when a question arises.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
I am here to save the thread.

 odinsgrandson wrote:
Hey- do you have any references on those Primarch heights? I found one about how Leman Russ was pretty tall in comparison to other Space Wolves, but that's all the references I could find.

I do.

In Descent of Angels an unarmoured Lion El'Jonson is said to be slightly over three meters tall, and towering over armoured Marines. So we have a Primarch never said to be particularly tall or short standing at about ten feet tall.

In Battle for the Fang, Magnus the Red (who was explicitly taking on the same form he took during the Great Crusade) is said to be five meters tall. So a fething massive height of nearly seventeen feet. He was said to be a giant even among his brothers.

Anyway, for another reference to Space Marine height, there's this thread I made:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/567966.page

I found this finding most interesting because of Abnett's reputation for having Marines be truly gigantic.

In the Deathwatch RPG, Marines are said to be over 210 cm on average, so about seven feet.

Battle of the Fang has some references on Marine height as well, but I can't really recall them. I think a Marine in Terminator armour was nearly three meters, but this novel went with the common "Terminator armour makes you really tall" idea, which I've never really been able to stomach.

We'll need to add those to the list.

Any page numbers on those? I'd especially like on from the Deathwatch book (as it is the second one to give the 210cm height).

 Wyzilla wrote:
Also, considering how Astartes are sometimes described as having massive "paws", it's likely the augmentation increases the size of their hands...

I was thinking this when we first saw the reference that included the "Hands like shovels" description.

I felt it was a dig on the older Heroic asthetics that Space Marines had (the 2nd ed marines all had massive hands). They took the size of the marine hands down with the 3rd edition (after the guys in charge of the BloodQuest cartoon pointed out the massive size of marine hands- the film didn't get finished, but we have smaller marine hands as their legacy).

Yeah, it isn't accurate, and it isn't going to tell us what size the characters are (not adding any of the hand or finger references to the list). I still think the description might have come from someone considering what happens when you scale up those minis.



I mean, his hands get to be HUGE. Imagine him at full size- even if he were only six foot, or a little taller, you'd think he had elephantitis.

Finlandiaperkele wrote:
- The marine. Human height varies, so why not Astartes?

Well, I have minis, you know, and their heights do not vary. Except based on rank- which is to say that, like Orks, the Astartes do tend to promote based on height.

Actually, the trouble with "varying heights" is that the fans never seem to think it varies downward. If an average marine is 7 foot tall (probably the most cited number, especially in contexts that give an average marine height) and a tall marine is close to 8 foot tall, that's all good. But then a short marine should be 6 foot tall, right?

GW have given the 7 foot number as an average (marine height without specifying the marine). But we want to say that they vary, and that the 'average' marine is the shortest possible marine.

 Wyzilla wrote:



Did you seriously just suggest the miniatures are any example of accurate size? That anyone should even take them seriously for a second? That they aren't worthless as a source of information and horribly out of scale with godawful proportions?

Not seriously. I mean, everyone just assumes that the minis are wrong whenever there's an inconsistency.

I think that the minis are a source of fluff- as are the rules of the game, the artwork, the history, the videogames and novels. They are all objects that tell us a story- and the stories aren't all the same. I don't see what's so much different about the minis being off scale in comparison to the books or history- they're just one more bit of fluff. Sure, there are inconsistencies and mistakes on them, but how is that different from the books/pictures/videogames/histories/rules?

The miniatures do tell us a story- just not one that most of us accept, because the story is that the 41st millenium is inhabited by heroically proportioned, large people who are subject to an evolving scale creep. And that's a little silly, so we have all agreed to dismiss it.

I thought it was hilarious when they made the scale creep of the orks into cannonized fluff in the history sections.

 Wyzilla wrote:

The miniatures are for a game, seperate entirely from the "actual" reality of 40K, along with the rules...

I feel like you've sort of put your argument into a strange place here. Clearly, none of that which we call 40k has any kind of 'reality.'

I mean, ultimately, we're talking about Wolverine's bone claws -every answer is just as right, and they contradict one another, so we simply have to choose which one we'd like to accept. Then we fight about it when someone else thinks a different source is the right one.

And on top of that, it seems like all of our sources for 40k fluff is suspect, because all of it is very stylized (from the minis proportions, the Blanchian grit on the canvass, or the exaggerations of the novels and even the perspectives of the history-style fluff).

I just think it is odd that no one thinks the minis are the one that is 'right.'

Updated the thread with the new sources. Thanks.

By the way, the miniatures definitely tell a story in which there isn't very much divergence for human height at any given moment, but that humans are getting taller over time (old Cadians are quite a bit shorter than the new ones). Oh, and they grow larger with rank, similar to orks.

Ashiraya wrote:But the 7' canon is just as canon. Same level of canonicity.

Yes- the truth is, many of the different heights are cannon. GW is not consistent, so I prefer to give us a bunch of sources, and not necessarily choose one as the 'right' one.

War Kitten wrote:I believe they're described as being anywhere from 8-9 feet tall in the fluff, although i'm not sure where it's described.

We have quite a few sources in the first post, and if you find more, I will add them. There is quite a bit of range in what the sources say.

Mellow wrote:There are parts of HH novels that describe normal human women only coming up to just higher than an Astartes' waist.

I'd love to add that to the first post, if you can find a source to cite.

Cool. Any idea where it came from? Or does anyone else recognize the story and know the source?

Ashiraya wrote:I'm 5'9"-5'10"ish, and I've never felt very tall. My brother is six foot six.

No one can feel tall with a sibling over half a foot taller than them.

Mellow wrote:Astartes growing with age has never been mentioned before.

Except maybe in a post modern way, right? I mean, I can compare my 2nd ed and Rogue Trader marines to today's lot, and it is very clear that marines grow with age...

And Ragnar Blackmane was an absolute monstrosity in his day.


One more note- for people who want to figure out a realistic range in height differences, consider finding out what the minimum and maximum heights are for armed services around the world. The military will reject applicants who are too large or (more often) too small for them.

Maximus Bitch wrote:
does anyone know why space marines have to be so large?

To be fair, I don't think they've always been that large. I don't have access to all of the oldest Rogue Trader fluff, but the 2nd edition Codex Imperialis has a large section on all of the effects of the Geneseed, and all of the extra organs, and none of them mention a change in height. It just seems like that's something too large to miss, given how detailed the write up of the changes is.

I'm not sure when the idea that marines are larger than normal humans started up, but I can't find references to it in any of the older materials. I think I first heard about it during the forth edition, but it might have come about during the third, or even something I missed in the latter portion of the 2nd.


By the way, does anyone think I should include that reference in my list? It is kind of a 'lack of evidence as evidence' sort of thing, so I'm not sure if it belongs.