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I am doing some basic marines and notriced something I hadn't noticed before.

The backpacks: are they rigidly fixed to the backplate or are they supposed to have some give swivelling to left and right.

I find that some backpacks fit better if not directly aligned level with the shoulders but tilted one way or another, and I am wondering if they are supposed to be moving parts or not. Any suggestions.

I'm pretty sure the pack is supposed to be aligned straight up and down with the back plate.

Agreed!

Although My BT chaplain has his slightly off centre however that was the only way it'd look right.

I'd imagine they have a certain amount of give, especially having bits wider than the back-plate of the armour. Otherwise they'd severly restrict the movement of the wearer, which is a bad thing in combat.

ive notice this also ... but only on my metal marines ... i have a few old school marines with metal backpacks and they seem to be off center, when "centered"

to solve this problem i just mix up a very small amount of green stuff and mold the backpacks straight

I think they should have flexibility. When putting mine together I rarely put them straight. I think the design of the model was partly due to ease of moulding and partly not being updated from the previous plastic design (the plastic marines are quite an old design, I'd say getting on for 10 years) Back then GW were still experimenting with the multi part plastics.

They would need to move around to give the arm flexibility when those shoulder plates move out of the way. The plates can't go up far or they'd block the wearers visions so would need to move backwards (I've started builing mine with the arms slightly lower like the new terminators, or dropping the forward shoulder pad to increase vision - this also had the effect that when the arms are dropped slightly the gun also changes position and gives a much more realistic firing pose!). I can see the back packs also acting as a sort of moving balast, with the armour constantly shifting it to keep the wearer comfortably balanced. In the older fluff it says that a normal human in most cases wouldn't be able to lift a bolter never mind use the thing, if they are this heavy then a marine may be able to use it but would need some sort of counter weight behind them to make it easyer in a fast moving combat situation. in the same way it's just as easy to carry 2 weights one in each hand as it is to carry just the one as you're more balanced.