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It is amazing how often this comes up...

Still...

Marines in armor 8' tall
Primarchs in armor - varies, as some were significantly taller than others (Magnus being the tallest), but most likely they were around 10' tall. Magnus is often described as a giant, so possibly he was 12' to 13' tall?

As previously noted, the problem is definitely that GW has ridiculously distorted the 'regular' human models in 40K.

So, there you go.

The Catachan command squad models are way closer to scale than the Cadians and even other plastic Guardsmen. Just throwing that out there.

Brother SRM wrote:The Catachan command squad models are way closer to scale than the Cadians and even other plastic Guardsmen. Just throwing that out there.

Would you happen to have some pictorial evidence to back this claim up?

Corrode wrote:It's interesting that player expectations of how big Marines are supposed to be have also crept up.

Actually, on the opposite, I find it interesting that player assumptions of how big Marines are supposed to be are so low... 8' is barely "large" for a god-like warrior!! Space Marines are supposed to be 9 or 10 feet tall!!!

Why would they be so big? If they are 7 feet or so then they can still use the same weapons, ride the same rhinos, walk in the same ships, etc as regular humans, especially while in armor. If they are all 9'6" giants, how do they fit in the same rhinos that are driven comfortably by sisters, stormtroopers, inquisitors and the like? Why doesn't the fluff descrbe them having to stoop through doors and down ship corridors? How do they manage to use the same meltas, flamers, bolt pistols, etc as humans? These weapons are depicted as being similar in size to real flamethrowers or lmgs- large and heavy, but quite able to be comfortably wielded by one average sized man. At 7', marines would be able to wield them casually much like humans wield light rifles. At 10', marines would dwarf their weapons and have difficulty fitting their giant fingers into the trigger guard or doing sensitive maintenance to the interiors. I don't think you realize how big 7 feet of solid muscle, with an extra foot of thick metal, really is. Especially when you consider that marines are also thicker and wider than an average human. An impossibly muscular 10 foot tall man would have to have ridiculous proprtions to fit through a door widthwise, even if it was tall enough.

the general consensus is that marines are 7 to 8 feet in height without their armor(which adds another 6 inches)


only a few people mistakenly say marines are 10 feet tall.


Terminators are 10 feet tall.




Now, 8 foot tall may not seem like super human size to some people because there are humans who can reach that height. this is true, but said humans don't fill out that frame. Astartes will be at least 3 feet wide at the shoulders and have muscles to match.

an 8 foot tall human is NOT going to look super human. 8 footers tend to have genetic disorders or mutations and are not proportional to their size(tending to be on the thin side)

a Space Marine fills his frame out completely.

Grey Templar wrote:only a few people mistakenly say marines are 10 feet tall.

Aaron Dembski-Bowden is thus in the wrong?

Yes, the HH books are cannon for storyline but not always for their physical descriptions.

I always wondered how they explained 9ish foot super humans fitting in Rhinos.

But yeah, GW IG are out of scale (Which makes me grin to assume anything is in scale). Still, IG aren't supposed to be the 9-10 foot tall Space Marines---so I don't know why they sculpted them that tall.

Well if the storyline requires a space marine to be 10 feet tall, then that would make it cannon correct? if the story is cannon, the details behind it need to be then as well?

Also, doesn't Abnett describe the marine in his Eisenhorn trilogy as roughly 10 feet tall?

No,

there was a Carthangen women in his band. Carthangens are described as being as tall as Astartes, but the book never mentions an exact height.

she couldn't be 10 feet tall as that would just be odd and something worth mentioning. and how can you honestly consider romantic relations with someone 4 feet taller then you?

Grey Templar wrote:How can you honestly consider romantic relations with someone 4 feet taller then you?

That's heightism!

Grey Templar wrote:No,

there was a Carthangen women in his band. Carthangens are described as being as tall as Astartes, but the book never mentions an exact height.

she couldn't be 10 feet tall as that would just be odd and something worth mentioning. and how can you honestly consider romantic relations with someone 4 feet taller then you?

Face in boobs while doing missionairy, Voila!

Also, Space marines (IMO) are avarage at 8', exceptions make it higher (or lower as is the case with that dimwit in the Salamander books). The other guy in the Ultramarines book (forgot his name) Should be around 10 feet, since they had to repurpose terminator armour parts to make his regular armor.

So yeah, I agree with the 8 footers, with a side dish of exceptions.

Olso, bolt pistols used by Marines are (as far as I know) not the same as bolt pistols that regular humans use. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that they actually had a different caliber all together. (don't prod me for this, can't remember the source)

Grey Templar wrote:No,

there was a Carthangen women in his band. Carthangens are described as being as tall as Astartes, but the book never mentions an exact height.

she couldn't be 10 feet tall as that would just be odd and something worth mentioning. and how can you honestly consider romantic relations with someone 4 feet taller then you?

What?

How could you NOT!

the color purple wrote:Why would they be so big? If they are 7 feet or so then they can still use the same weapons, ride the same rhinos, walk in the same ships, etc as regular humans, especially while in armor.

Actually many pieces of the fluff describe the bolters & weapons wielded by Marines as "larger-scale versions of the human-sized ones", that a human firing a Marine Bolter would "ruin his shoulder socket", and so forth... IIRC, there's one recent description like this one in the Rogue Trader RPG rulebook...

Oh god lets hope GW HQ don't find this thread-

'We can shorten our guardsmen models, thus saving plastic, pleasing the little remaining fan base AND giving us a cast iron excuse to raise prices!

Gentlemen, let us raise a goblet to the Skull Throne....'

Grey Templar wrote:she couldn't be 10 feet tall as that would just be odd and something worth mentioning. and how can you honestly consider romantic relations with someone 4 feet taller then you?

One doesn't get the choice...

Brother SRM wrote:The Catachan command squad models are way closer to scale than the Cadians and even other plastic Guardsmen. Just throwing that out there.

I haven't seen the models in person, but if this is true I imagine they might have been sculpted as such because GW may intend to eventually release new standard Catachan plastics that match them, while the Cadian command was left in the same scale as their plastics because GW does not intend to redo them any time soon.

Yggdrasil wrote:

the color purple wrote:Why would they be so big? If they are 7 feet or so then they can still use the same weapons, ride the same rhinos, walk in the same ships, etc as regular humans, especially while in armor.

Actually many pieces of the fluff describe the bolters & weapons wielded by Marines as "larger-scale versions of the human-sized ones", that a human firing a Marine Bolter would "ruin his shoulder socket", and so forth... IIRC, there's one recent description like this one in the Rogue Trader RPG rulebook...

The FFG books make it clear they are NOT using the same weapons. 40k is a broad scale game so details get fudged, we don't care that Inquisitor Bob has a Mars pattern bolter while Battle Brother Frank has an Ares Pattern Astres bolter, they're all bolters.

but the RPG explicitly says that human scale bolters are just pale shadows of the marine bolters, and the rules in Death Watch back that up.

Where the warp do people get these ideas of such massively oversized Space Marines from?

Click Me

Lifesize drawing of a Space Marine in full power armour, made by Jes Goodwin (also on the picture, for comparison). Look at the scale on the left (and note it begins at 1, not 0) --> Space Marines in armour (including the backpack which ends above the helmet) are ~7 feet high, or 2.13 meters. Without the helmet a Marine seems to stand at a full 2 meters. And yes, normal humans can grow that big, especially Catachans, so I'd say it depends on the IG Regiment's homeworld.

The FFG books are not canon (and neither is the silly idea of two bolter classes), but at least they got the Marine height right.

the Codices make it clear there are 2 different kinds of bolter sizes.


the WH codex has the sisters using bolters which are stated to be purpose built for humans, rather then the massive examples used by the Astartes.

The Munitorum Manuel says that some officers may aquire a specilized bolter for their use, but it cautions the guardsmen to never fire a bolter on full auto(implying that the only bolters a guardsmen will likely find will be Astartes versions), but only ever on single shot.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Soladrin wrote:

Grey Templar wrote:No,

there was a Carthangen women in his band. Carthangens are described as being as tall as Astartes, but the book never mentions an exact height.

she couldn't be 10 feet tall as that would just be odd and something worth mentioning. and how can you honestly consider romantic relations with someone 4 feet taller then you?

Face in boobs while doing missionairy, Voila!

more like face in Bellybutton, unless the height is all in the legs.

Grey Templar wrote:the WH codex has the sisters using bolters which are stated to be purpose built for humans, rather then the massive examples used by the Astartes.

I suggest you read again. Nowhere does it state what you claim. What the Codex does say is that the armour and weapons the Sisters use are, and I quote, "the equal of any Space Marine Chapter". (see page 2)

All studio sources say boltguns use caliber 0.75 ammunition - this means they all have the same barrel size, regardless of who wields them. Most Marine versions just have some additional armour slapped around it for increased survivability in the field (given how the Astartes fight), but some additional weight doesn't change anything about their performance. I even recall a somewhat older fluff blurb mentioning that at least one boltgun pattern - the Mars Beta - has been issued to both Sisters and Marines.

Grey Templar wrote:The Munitorum Manuel says that some officers may aquire a specilized bolter for their use, but it cautions the guardsmen to never fire a bolter on full auto(implying that the only bolters a guardsmen will likely find will be Astartes versions), but only ever on single shot.

Actually the description in the Munitorum Manual specifically implies that there is only a single kind of boltgun:

"The boltgun is most commonly recognised as the standard weapon of the Adeptus Astartes and, though it is not unknown for certain high-ranking officers to bear such advanced and powerful weaponry, it is incredibly rare. Bolters are more effective weapons than the standard pattern lasguns and are able to punch through most forms of armour with little or no effort. They are, however, much more complex and are generally only ever carried by stocky individuals of great strength, given that they are incredibly heavy and generate enormous recoil when they fire what is essentially a miniature missile.
A bolter can fire a single shot, a four-round burst or fully automatic fire, though without bionic augmentation it is not recommended that anyone other than one of the Space Marines fires on anything other than the single shot setting."

I know that Marine Propaganda likes to play up their bolters as better, but GW still thinks otherwise.