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The models are generally regarded as being "too short" hence the large amount of "True Scale" conversions being done to make the astartes models look bigger than any guardsmen.
There wouldn't be such a difference in height if you could get the orks to, you know, stand up straight!

mwnciboo wrote:Doesn't one of the HH Books detail "Little Horus" the captain of one of the companies as being a short arse (don't quote me for some reason i think his name began with a T?? Please correct me).

Edit : Was it something XXXXX Aximand?

That was 'Little' Horus Aximand

With the 'T' thing, you may have been thinking of Torgaddon. Captain of the 2nd company, also part of the mournival.

sourclams wrote:Orks are all hunched over. If they stood up properly and quit slouching they "should" be at least as tall as a Marine.

No ork shorter thank a WB 'stands up' and their heads are positioned far lower on their shoulders as part of their physiology, I don't think 'they'd be taller if they stood up' is fair given we already know - orks are bigger than a regular 'umie - and marines are head if not head annnd shoulders taller an easy ten feet I reckon

I am deeply concerned by this poll. The tallest recorded instance of a human just short of nine feet tall. Does anyone really want to claim that a Space Marine could be shorter than a regular human?

There need to be at least two more taller options added to the poll so that reasonable options can be chosen.

A nine foot tall person is a regular human?

Well, hopefully they are not, 10ft tall, genetically engineered mutants?

Quite, but 9' is exceptional in human terms.
10' for a marine is too big.

From everything I have read, marines vary in height with an average being approx 9 feet tall. Some space marines can be as tall as 10 feet but these are not the norm, any more then Shaquille O'Neill is the norm for modern humans.

Fairly confident that in Eisenhorn, he described the Space Marine captain as being a "9 foot tall giant of a man".

I thought they described the Captain as being larger than the other Marines in the detachment. Even then the Captain was in his Power Armor so out of it would most likely be eight foot something.

So Im still shooting for 7-8 feet out of PA average.

No, I think they were all about that height. And he didn't have a helmet on. I'm sticking with 9 feet.

In armor.

Ouze wrote:From everything I have read, marines vary in height with an average being approx 9 feet tall. Some space marines can be as tall as 10 feet but these are not the norm, any more then Shaquille O'Neill is the norm for modern humans.

Fairly confident that in Eisenhorn, he described the Space Marine captain as being a "9 foot tall giant of a man".

The full quote is "9 foot tall giant of a man, a bit of a tiddler for an SM".

What's a tiddler?

I agree with Ouze, size varies. An average of 9 feet seems logical, as there are statements saying that marines are 7 feet while others say 10 feet. 11 feet is a little iffy, 6 feet is right out, even though I feel that 7 feet is a little small. I'd say smallest marine is 8 feet, largest is 10 and a half

blazinpsycho&typhooni wrote:What's a tiddler?

A tiddler is a 9' tall SM, a.k.a, a ChibiMarine. SM in 40k are 10' in armor.

Says you! 9 Feet in armour. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Im sticking with 8-9 feet in armor because Daemonic Stature lists monstrous creatures as being 10 feet tall or larger. SM do not have Monstrous Creature as a rule.

I'm amazed no one has posted the image Jes drew of a full scale Marine in power armour. That imo is probably the most accurate source about the size of Marines in existence. That stood 7'6" feet tall in power armour (which realistically wouldn't add more than a few inches of height, they aren't wearing high heels) so just on 7' out of their armour sounds about right. The picture is known to cause some confusion due to the messed up scales along the side (its starts at 2').

Even ignoring the fact that some of the 40k books out there aren't considered canon, its not that unusual for writers to push the boundaries on how big they can make their main characters which makes them fairly unreliable sources. Every writer wants to make their main characters stand out from the regular guys which means they add on a foot or so and writers also tend to build off what has previously been published and further increase the height of their characters to match previous books. I would certainly put much more stock in the accounts in past and present codices than in the various novels about Marines.

There is also this http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?community=&catId=&categoryId=&pIndex=4&aId=9400003&start=5 interview with Jes where he states Marines are roughly 7'6 allowing for some natural variation (obviously some chapters are going to be bigger than average as well as natural variations within a chapter).

Also of interest could be this http://www.philipsibbering.com/WH40KRP/40K_9_Marine_1_Morphology.shtml page. Quite a bit of the advanced background/technology stuff appears to be unofficial or just totally made up, but the pictures and diagrams look pretty accurate and show just how massive a 7' Marine is going to be.

...that is pretty convincing. I prefer the non-ginormous marine anyway. I think the 10.5 foot tall 1500lbs monstrosity that some are invoking here is actually getting to the point of battlefield impracticality.

How does one survive the wrath of the mighty Space Marines!? by having stairs in your city...


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what the? According to that Astartes still grow for their first 200 years. Veterans are actually bigger - how orky! Well frankly that's case closed for me as it also explains why Loken, a captain, is over 8 feet tall.


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oh that's just fan fiction Nevermind! I do like it though. Seems well thought out.

Yes, Jes did draw that thing once and someone took a picture of him with it. None of that really makes it canon. And people say lots of things in interviews. Still not canon. Meanwhile, there's a ton of PUBLISHED info that would suggest SM are taller than NBA players.

Manchu wrote:Yes, Jes did draw that thing once and someone took a picture of him with it. None of that really makes it canon. And people say lots of things in interviews. Still not canon. Meanwhile, there's a ton of PUBLISHED info that would suggest SM are taller than NBA players.

I would lose a lot of respect for a Space Marine if he wasn't looking down on Shaq.

but Shaq is huge! I'm sure there are short Space Marines out there that do look up to him. Give them a break, they get teased by their brethen enough!

solkan wrote:I am deeply concerned by this poll. The tallest recorded instance of a human just short of nine feet tall. Does anyone really want to claim that a Space Marine could be shorter than a regular human?
There need to be at least two more taller options added to the poll so that reasonable options can be chosen.

Robert Wadlow, 8′11″ tall at the time of his death, was not a regular human. He suffered from hypertropy of the pituitary gland, which lead to him growing constantly throughout his life. He was not an appropriate benchmark for human height.
But I agree, the poll options are too limited. However, I think that there should be a number of shorter options added. Games Workshop has on many occasions described Space Marines as being around 7′ tall, which is somewhat shorter than a portion of the "regular humans" alive today.

Ouze wrote:Fairly confident that in Eisenhorn, he described the Space Marine captain as being a "9 foot tall giant of a man".

Eisenhorn describes a Space Marine Librarian as being "a giant of a man even without his armour", but I don't believe it puts a figure to his height. It also describes a Chaos Marine as "giant", saying he stands "well over two metres tall".

Powerguy wrote:I'm amazed no one has posted the image Jes drew of a full scale Marine in power armour.

...I did. Twice.

Powerguy wrote:That stood 7′6″ feet tall in power armour [...]

The Marine Jes drew was 7′ to the top of his helmet, with the top of the backpack being perhaps an inch higher.

Powerguy wrote:Even ignoring the fact that some of the 40k books out there aren't considered canon,[...]

I object to this. If it's published under the 40K logo, I consider it canon. It may not be accurate, but it's canon.

Powerguy wrote:There is also this [link] interview with Jes where he states Marines are roughly 7'6 allowing for some natural variation (obviously some chapters are going to be bigger than average as well as natural variations within a chapter).

Jes Goodwin states that Marines are "seven to seven foot six". He then expands, and says that "I say seven to seven foot six because actually if you read the novels they get progressively bigger every time they write a novel", and after talking about the life size drawing he did says, "it's seven to seven foot six, if you see that drawing against the wall, they're absolutely massive".

KamikazeCanuck wrote:I think the 10.5 foot tall 1500lbs monstrosity that some are invoking here is actually getting to the point of battlefield impracticality.

The 1500lb Marine is actually one of the 7′ tall ones.

Manchu wrote:Meanwhile, there's a ton of PUBLISHED info that would suggest SM are taller than NBA players.

And there's a fair number of "PUBLISHED" sources that suggests that Marines are shorter than the taller basketball players out there, including the current Codex: Chaos Space Marines and the Deathwatch Core Rulebook.
Marines are certainly a lot more massive than basketball players, as Jes Goodwin said in the interview above "you need to bolt about four of them together to get the bulk". They're just not necessarily taller than them.

blazinpsycho&typhooni wrote:What's a tiddler?

A small fish that if you caught it, you would throw it back to let it grow to a proper size.


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Æscholt wrote:

solkan wrote:I am deeply concerned by this poll. The tallest recorded instance of a human just short of nine feet tall. Does anyone really want to claim that a Space Marine could be shorter than a regular human?
There need to be at least two more taller options added to the poll so that reasonable options can be chosen.

Robert Wadlow, 8′11″ tall at the time of his death, was not a regular human. He suffered from hypertropy of the pituitary gland, which lead to him growing constantly throughout his life. He was not an appropriate benchmark for human height.
But I agree, the poll options are too limited. However, I think that there should be a number of shorter options added. Games Workshop has on many occasions described Space Marines as being around 7′ tall, which is somewhat shorter than a portion of the "regular humans" alive today.

but its not perpetual unlike Wadlow or even Andre the Giant.

7-8' is what I have always used as that's what I remember from when I started, but if the standard has changed to 10' then I can see why Marines are quite as ferocious as they are portrayed to be... The growing pains they suffer must be fierce. I'm 6' 7" and mine were bad enough.

Manchu wrote:

blazinpsycho&typhooni wrote:What's a tiddler?

A tiddler is a 9' tall SM, a.k.a, a ChibiMarine. SM in 40k are 10' in armor.

Wait, you serious, Manchu?
There's actual stuff in the codex that states that 10' is huge, even for a SM. Where are you even getting that data?

I don't think 10 feet is average, but if nine feet is average it stands to reason that 10 feet is not very unusual.

10ft is very close to Dreadnought height. I think it's pretty unusual. Still, given the variance in fluff, there may not be an accurate way to tell.

Doesn't it say in the Codex that a Dreadnought stands "Three times the height of a man" or something like that?

A 10-foot tall Space Marine would only be just over halfway as tall as a Dread.

Well, if we take 1.6 metres as the average height of a man:

Dreadnought is 4.8 metres tall.

10ft: 2 and a bit metres.


Hey, you're right. Fair enough then. Probably should have done the maths beforehand.