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Hrm... Compared to that Halo spartan statue I saw...

An increase of 2/3rds... what exactly would it look like? Could you give me an idea? Compared to the modern man, how large would their hands or limbs be?

quick comparative sketch I did for an 8' marine
can do one for a 10' marine bt rather tired so apologies
will have a go tomorrow

Not sure how much to bulk out the chest
Am of the opinion that the head size would not alter.
just my take on that issue

To give some idea if you add on another 2' (ie the difference between the two figures) it would be 10'

That's pretty cool, man.

I'm pretty sure a Space Marine would have freakishly bulky chest muscles though, but I only bring it up because you did.

I think you are probably correct
Find it difficult to guage the extra bulk required tbh
Have very likely been too conservative.

Oh, I still wouldn't fight the guy!

I know that in the Horus Heresy books they talk about the humans being somewhat unnerved by the Astartes' freaky looking modified muscle bulk.

A Thousand Sons mentions it specifically.

So 9ft would be large enough.
But what I'm more concerned about is hand size. I know it's a little wierd, but I think handsize is detailed enough in fluff to be considered the measuring stick for how large a marine is. Because of proportions... and stuff...
Plus if you find the size of the hand you can roughly figure out the face.


Huh, people like them big I guess...

I was always under the Impression that the Astartes were atleast over seven feet tall, but never over ten unless in terminator armor.

Delephont wrote:I'm just reading the First heretic, and its funny, because this size thing has come up in the story as well.

Interestingly, regardig the Emperor himself, considering this particular discord comes from the same author, within two pages of each other, where in one paragraph he states the Emp is "just a man"...suggesting man sized! in relation to his Custodes, and in the next the Emp is described as a giant.

The Emperor is a special case. While Lorgar does look at the Emperor and see "just a man", it also says that his appearance "depended entirely on which facet of his face one focussed on". Lorgar looks at the Emperor and sees, among other things, his father. Meanwhile, Argel Tal looks upon the Emperor and sees his God, "a towering figure deep in a corona of agonising white light". The two descriptions are not contradictory when one considers influences his psychic abilities might have. Lorgar also doesn't see the light that blinds his Legion, and hears the Emperor speaking in a quiet voice, not the psychic roar that would bring line Astartes to their knees.
Also, I'm not sure that "just a man" really implies that he was man sized. The size of the Custodes isn't commented on in that paragraph, and "just a man" could mean that the Emperor lacks the genetic enhancements of the Primarchs or the Custodes. While a monstrously powerful psychic, the Emperor is still human.

blazinpsycho&typhooni wrote:and wasn't there something in the Iron Snakes novel, about how long they could hold their breath?

In Brothers of the Snake Astartes swim for over 20 minutes while holding the same breath of air. The world record for a human holding his breath underwater is eleven and a half minutes, although with up to 30 minutes of hyperventilating on pure oxygen beforehand times of twenty minutes have been achieved. Those records were set by people who were just sitting in a swimming pool, the Astartes was diving to the bottom of a trench and had no equipment.

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:quick comparative sketch I did for an 8' marine
can do one for a 10' marine bt rather tired so apologies
will have a go tomorrow
-snip-
Not sure how much to bulk out the chest
Am of the opinion that the head size would not alter.
just my take on that issue

Here's a picture of Jes Goodwin sitting in front of a 'life size' sketch of a Space Marine he did to figure out the proportions for Battle Brother Artemis in the Inquisitor range. Even though Jes is sitting and the Marine is only 7′ tall, you can get a feel for how massive an Astartes would actually be. You don't need to be 8′ tall to be freakin' intimidating.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Samus_aran115 wrote:9 feet. 3 metres= roughly nine feet

I dunno what's up with this obsession with them being 10 feet tall. There's multiple examples of them being approximately 3 metres tall.

A metre is 39.37 inches, so three metres is much nearer 10 feet than nine. (9.85 feet, roughly.)

I think that is a reasonable average. Some are smaller and some are larger. The armour probably adds another four inches.

That is probably the source of the confusion right there. I have been thinking about this for a while now, height of Space Marines. I mean some people say 8' some people say 10' etc. And I have been trying to think of WHY there would be confusion.

So there you go. 9.85 feet sounds pretty 10' to me.

Maybe it's the metre conversion and the different measuring systems that are messing with people's minds?

At 8ft with such wide chests and bulky muscles they'd be very stout and squat. This is a typical physical description of the smaller marines in the novels i've read. That is why they're not 8ft but rather taller then 8ft. More like 10ft

Aretak
8' tall is hardly squat! And while 10' is too tall imho I know what you mean. This is the problem of drawing the SM's
The proportions in the Jes Goodwin pic proportion looks wrong to me

okay I am gonna get a lot of flak for that but it doesn't look like it considers the human frame within the PA.
If you imagine the outline of the armour as a cross section and allow for the thickness of the armour to see the outline of the marine's body, hopefully you will understand why I have problems with it.
The main concern I have are the legs and hips.

Consider the stance. How is the SM supposed to walk like that? The legs will need to be much stonger to support the weight of the upper torso.
I guess the exo skeleton of the PA would help but the legs out of the PA would be too skinny to be strong enough when that marine was out of his armour.

Blazingpsycho
This is a good question
I can see that the marinification process would change the hand size, but afaik, there is no indication thathead size would need to change, so the head to hand size ratio would change.

I don't know, a 10foot giant with a tiny head seems rather odd to me.

I know what you mean.
It would be very odd!

Proportionally the head grows less as the child's head is already relatively large, even at birth. It is a different ratio to height for children than an adult.
It seems to me that there is less ability to enlarge the head than other parts of the body.

Personally, if some one did a True Scale Marine and made the head proportionally correct I wouldn't argue as it would look ... err.. correct

I guess there would be some bulking of the head mass as per people who do training. Also with the enanced senses there is an argument that would effect the head size.
I hadn't considered that before.

My Cognitive Science prof hypothesized that as we learn our brains grow, and if that was so then why dont we have huge heads? He put forward the idea that at a young age, we learn a lot, how to walk, how to talk, so our heads our quite large (they were large to begin with but the brain was a clean slate) due to the vast amount of information needed.

Now looking at all the SM's learn, through hypnosis and all that jazz, rituals (armour cleaning, gun shooting), and not to mention all the things techmarines have to learn within 30 years, though the implants would help. I'd say there is much they have to learn = bigger brain = bigger head

And taking into account all the enhanced senses as you pointed out (I had almost forgotten about them ), the brain would require more processing power to deal with all the extra stiumlus. So a bigger head indeed

I like to imagine them as eight feet, nine feet at the most. Ten feet is just ridiculous.

blazinpsycho&typhooni wrote:

IvanTih wrote:

blazinpsycho&typhooni wrote:Argh imp scale... where's the metric???

I think 2m is already quite daunting, but I am inclined to say 3m's. Mainly because I'm a short asian, so anything bigger than me is probably regular sized.

I think SM have to be huge to stand out from the crowd and show 'dem baddies who's boss. Plus it's pretty cool to have a 3m (10ft?) giant move faster than Usain Bolt.

One Marine was running 40 km/h and was still accelerating.

Lordy Lordy....

and wasn't there something in the Iron Snakes novel, about how long they could hold their breath?

They don't need to hold their breath, they can just activate their multi-lung.

blazinpsycho&typhooni wrote:My Cognitive Science prof hypothesized that as we learn our brains grow, and if that was so then why dont we have huge heads? He put forward the idea that at a young age, we learn a lot, how to walk, how to talk, so our heads our quite large (they were large to begin with but the brain was a clean slate) due to the vast amount of information needed.

Now looking at all the SM's learn, through hypnosis and all that jazz, rituals (armour cleaning, gun shooting), and not to mention all the things techmarines have to learn within 30 years, though the implants would help. I'd say there is much they have to learn = bigger brain = bigger head

And taking into account all the enhanced senses as you pointed out (I had almost forgotten about them ), the brain would require more processing power to deal with all the extra stiumlus. So a bigger head indeed

There's no medical evidence that intelligence is related to brain size, or that brains grow larger as people learn things. There is evidence that more connections are built up within the brain as people learn things, and this is related to development of intelligence.

The reason why babies have large heads is that they have large brains.

SMs' brains would not grow larger, but their skulls would grow thicker, so their head would be larger than a normal man but it would be a distorted mass of bone and might look quite weird.

The other thing that does grow with age is the cartilage that forms the external ears (the pinnae). Since SMs live a long time, the older ones among them will have very large ears. This is possibly the reason why sergeants and officers do not usually wear helmets.

On topic though: http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb308/Vespa7/DSC00279.jpg there's a picture of me standing with a space marine replica in real life. To be fair that's probably not exactly right but looks to be close enough. I'm about five foot five. Or 163 cm. That space marine looks a good foot or so taller than me, and he's not standing up straight. That'd lead me to believe they're about 8 feet tall.

Element206 wrote:i guess 9ft since I only have the 3 choices but I thought they were 7ft tall....8ft in armor?

Yeah, i heard it was 7ft too

I thought they were between 7-9 ft tall.

Any larger and they are pretty much unable to fit into any human structure, which would make them pretty crap at urban and any kind of enclosed combat.

"Captain! The 10ft tall Space Marines are coming!"

"Don't worry, we've made all the corridors 6ft tall, and all the doors 5ft tall - they can't get to us" [evil laughing]

SilverMK2 wrote:I thought they were between 7-9 ft tall.

Any larger and they are pretty much unable to fit into any human structure, which would make them pretty crap at urban and any kind of enclosed combat.

"Captain! The 10ft tall Space Marines are coming!"

"Don't worry, we've made all the corridors 6ft tall, and all the doors 5ft tall - they can't get to us" [evil laughing]

That's why all imperial doors and corridors are quite tall and wide.
Also in Kill Team a Space Marine is described as 2.5 m tall and being metre wide over the chest.

i'm fairly sure a space marine would just break through the wall

Mattieau wrote:i'm fairly sure a space marine would just break through the wall

That, or just shoot until either the wall isn't there anymore

Yes, and if you are infiltrating, say, a 3 mile long space ship, with corridors you have to crawl through, it will not be long before you get chewed to pieces by the defenders.

SilverMK2 wrote:Yes, and if you are infiltrating, say, a 3 mile long space ship, with corridors you have to crawl through, it will not be long before you get chewed to pieces by the defenders.

We don't see that in fluff(points to Terminators).

Æscholt wrote:

Delephont wrote:I'm just reading the First heretic, and its funny, because this size thing has come up in the story as well.

Interestingly, regardig the Emperor himself, considering this particular discord comes from the same author, within two pages of each other, where in one paragraph he states the Emp is "just a man"...suggesting man sized! in relation to his Custodes, and in the next the Emp is described as a giant.

The Emperor is a special case. While Lorgar does look at the Emperor and see "just a man", it also says that his appearance "depended entirely on which facet of his face one focussed on". Lorgar looks at the Emperor and sees, among other things, his father. Meanwhile, Argel Tal looks upon the Emperor and sees his God, "a towering figure deep in a corona of agonising white light". The two descriptions are not contradictory when one considers influences his psychic abilities might have. Lorgar also doesn't see the light that blinds his Legion, and hears the Emperor speaking in a quiet voice, not the psychic roar that would bring line Astartes to their knees.
Also, I'm not sure that "just a man" really implies that he was man sized. The size of the Custodes isn't commented on in that paragraph, and "just a man" could mean that the Emperor lacks the genetic enhancements of the Primarchs or the Custodes. While a monstrously powerful psychic, the Emperor is still human.

Fair point, I can see what the writer is trying to do.

Moving away from the book, I guess, I look at it from a wider view. Here we have a company that has invested much into creating its own universe, and yet goes to great length to contradict itself in almost every medium it choese to represent its universe in. Just seems silly to me.

The other point is the Primarchs, if an average human comes up to a Primarchs waiste, then roughly, if an average human is 5'8" then a Primarch would be just over 11ft tall, or there abouts.....thats ridiculous then if a Marine is 10ft tall, as that would mean a Primarch is merely 1ft taller than his sons.....

Still, I'm not sure why I'm so surprised it doesn't add up

115th Cadian Shock Troops wrote:

Element206 wrote:i guess 9ft since I only have the 3 choices but I thought they were 7ft tall....8ft in armor?

Yeah, i heard it was 7ft too

I remember it being 7ft 6in, and in armour about 8ft. It's worth remembering that a Dreadnought in the Codex is stated as being about three times as tall as an ordinary man, which would make it roughly 4 and a bit metres tall, and they are also supposed to tower over SM. They wouldn't be doing any towering if the SM in question was also over the 3-metre mark.

I'm going for 8 feet tall in armour.

At a Games Day UK 2009 display, in an art section (possibly a Jes Goodwin tribute) there was a large 'mat' that was a space marine height chart which came to him being 8 feet tall in armour.

Sadly, it didn't occur to me to take a picture.

Delephont wrote:

Æscholt wrote:

Delephont wrote:I'm just reading the First heretic, and its funny, because this size thing has come up in the story as well.

Interestingly, regardig the Emperor himself, considering this particular discord comes from the same author, within two pages of each other, where in one paragraph he states the Emp is "just a man"...suggesting man sized! in relation to his Custodes, and in the next the Emp is described as a giant.

The Emperor is a special case. While Lorgar does look at the Emperor and see "just a man", it also says that his appearance "depended entirely on which facet of his face one focussed on". Lorgar looks at the Emperor and sees, among other things, his father. Meanwhile, Argel Tal looks upon the Emperor and sees his God, "a towering figure deep in a corona of agonising white light". The two descriptions are not contradictory when one considers influences his psychic abilities might have. Lorgar also doesn't see the light that blinds his Legion, and hears the Emperor speaking in a quiet voice, not the psychic roar that would bring line Astartes to their knees.
Also, I'm not sure that "just a man" really implies that he was man sized. The size of the Custodes isn't commented on in that paragraph, and "just a man" could mean that the Emperor lacks the genetic enhancements of the Primarchs or the Custodes. While a monstrously powerful psychic, the Emperor is still human.

Fair point, I can see what the writer is trying to do.

Moving away from the book, I guess, I look at it from a wider view. Here we have a company that has invested much into creating its own universe, and yet goes to great length to contradict itself in almost every medium it choese to represent its universe in. Just seems silly to me.

The other point is the Primarchs, if an average human comes up to a Primarchs waiste, then roughly, if an average human is 5'8" then a Primarch would be just over 11ft tall, or there abouts.....thats ridiculous then if a Marine is 10ft tall, as that would mean a Primarch is merely 1ft taller than his sons.....

Still, I'm not sure why I'm so surprised it doesn't add up

There are other ways to look at these points.

The Emporer's Size
If he was inhumanly tall, like much over six feet, he would have stood out like a sore thumb on historical Earth.

The Primarchs's Height
If they were over 11 feet, I don't see why it is a problem for SMs to be a foot smaller. I would be surprised if they were only 2/3rds to 3/4 the size.

The Purity of the Canon
GW didn't carefully craft and maintain their universe. It has always been cobbled together from all sorts of stuff ripped from elsewhere. Of course there has been some editorial guidance, particularly around SMs, but the standards pare pretty lax, allowing writers to come up with a lot of their own stuff.