Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Togusa wrote:
I'm not sure if this will end up being productive or not. However, every damn time this comes up in a thread, usually Imperial related but not exclusive, it's the same tired junk over and over again.

Do people really not understand that this issue is entirely a matter of aesthetics and is therefor entirely subjective? Every time I see a new post in a thread decrying helmetless faces and then the listed reasons as to why it's "silly" and not realistic all I can think of is the numerous cutscenes and aminations I've seen of bullets wizzing clean through space marine helmets as if they're not even there. Heck I remember seeing lots of unhelmeted models when I first began my hobby interaction years ago, and back then the common excuse was "it's a matter of those who can paint faces and those who cannot."

There are lots of reasons why someone likes one view over the other, why does it have to keep coming up over and over again? Is the helmet issue really that big of a deal for folks? It's gotten to the point I build helmetless models just to tick people off...

Try not to focus on what the dipschlits say, you know, the people who try to impose a fictional universe onto the real world. Just f-ing enjoy it folks. It's not real and if we use it as inspiration for future innovations, then it would look very different still.

Who needs narrative consistency in fiction anyways, amirite?

(For the record, IDGAF about helmets )

personally i do Helmets on grunts. special/heavy weapon troopers, leaders, and characters get the no helmet treatment

Azrael doesn’t wear a helmet; he has someone carry his helmet for him.

Nuff said.

A few years ago I read an amazing explanation about the no helmet thing. Basically, the author explained that 40k is not our culture or our life view points. And, gave an amazing "fits their culture" explanation for it.
I have been the last month or so wish I could remember where I saw it, or find it again.
It truly was a masterful explanation.

Helmets because I hate painting flesh, eyes and hair, especially on the old metal sisters models.

I did like the look of the old dominions with the respirator look but again hair, flesh and eyes....ugh

As for other people, as long as it looks like you are putting some effort into your models im cool with whatever. Especially conversions and 3D printings of stuff like mechanicum. I have seen some wild looking homebrew mechanicum armies that look like the stuff of my dreams ( actually dark mechanicum nightmares) and I loved it.

Clearly, the physics of the 40k universe have a flair for the dramatic. So chances are if you are awesome enough, you don't need a helmet. And my games seem to bare this out. Eerily, my Sergeants and Aspiring Champions (who I leave helmet-less for easy identification and make them just a little cooler than the rest of the squad) are not only the last to survive, but they are often also the sole survivors of many of my devastated squads.

And from a personal lore perspective, my Primaris marine chapter's apothecarium reviewed of casualty stats from missions discovered that sergeants were often leading from the front, were overly protective of junior squadmates putting themselves at risk, participated more in combat and less in squad leader/situational awareness and generally overconfident in full armor.

By encouraging not wearing a helmet, research found sergeants were less likely to endanger themselves and made better use of directing the squad and maintaining maximum situational awareness instead of focusing on fighting. And the squad was more inspired by the leadership and bravery of the sergeant, and in turn and fought more furiously and less likely to let harm occur to the less protected battle brother.

Literally, marine casualties went down when sergeants and line officers chose not to wear their helmets in combat. However, the choice to wear or not wear their helmet is entirely up to anyone of the rank of corporal (combat squad sergeant) and above. Some marines still choose to wear their helmet (usually Apothecaries, the few surviving Awoken Primaris of the chapter and the hoity-toity, let's follow the Codex to the letter Lieutenants) while the majority choose not to.

When they introduce giant slabs of armour, but they've all got heads poking out, it does seem a little odd to me.

I started reading the HH novels recently, and it's bizarre how often the authors painstakingly specify a character is going helmetless, deciding to take off their helmet, or having their helmet fall off, get torn off, or get damaged. It's almost like they were given a brief to illustrate why helmetless marines totally belong on the tabletop.

evil_kiwi_60 wrote:Honesty the main reason I go all helmet is to not have to paint faces. The armor is way easier haha. Though I personally do like the helmets better on most models.

Anyone trying to force the helmet for muh realism is full of it. Dudes are running around with chainsaws, fighting sentient mushrooms. Though on that note even in real life, everyone doesn’t have full kit on all the time every time. We’d drop just about everything but water and ammo during some patrols in Afghanistan because the mountains were just that rough.

Not really an argument with space marines, they are in power armor. they have no problem carrying full kit in any environment.

Insectum7 wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

However, the original reason for Command Models being lidless was of course to make them more visible on the tabletop at a glance.

Hey, that's what ye olde back banners are for!

Ah back banners.......and standards (one use per game), sure glad i still play the edition that has those, it is one of those core parts of grim dark that make it 40K. that story that goes with the artwork of Galatan holding the breach is one of the iconic scenes i always remember.

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/d/d2/UM_Cmd._Sqd.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/250?cb=20130924175551

infinite_array wrote:Always helmets, so I don't have to paint eyes.

Bingo. not wanting to paint faces is a big driver for me, but also not wearing full protection when you're in power armor doesn't seem right to me for my armies, what you do with yours is up to you.

My dark angels have a grand total of 1 model without a helmet on-because Azrael is a metal original. my salamanders have 3, 2 scouts (all the others have power armor helmets...mostly beakies) and a land speeder typhoon heavy bolter gunner...because i bought it second hand and it was a space wolf model already assembled that i repainted.

o people really get funny about no helmet? its a characterised representation of a unit in a game, there loads of other things that not practical for a combat zone about the poses etc off the models. what about that primaries unit that is dropping the grenade on the floor or the lack of obvious ammo

or the lack of obvious ammo

What your marines do not carry extra ammo?

I guess mine wear their helmets AND bring more bolt rounds.

 Altruizine wrote:
I started reading the HH novels recently, and it's bizarre how often the authors painstakingly specify a character is going helmetless, deciding to take off their helmet, or having their helmet fall off, get torn off, or get damaged. It's almost like they were given a brief to illustrate why helmetless marines totally belong on the tabletop.

I remember reading a part in a novel where it poked fun at people complaining about helmetless sergeants recently. A marine dropped his helmet to improve his field of vision against some hidden tau enemies and specifically commented on how the helm wouldn't help him anyways if a pulse round were to hit him in the head.

My main Imperial army is Space Wolves. I understand that going helmet-less is more for cinematic reasons and in most combat situations nearly all SW would be wearing helms.

I model them maybe 80/20 Helm/Bare but I make sure every bare-headed model has a helmet on the mini itself.

 aphyon wrote:

or the lack of obvious ammo

What your marines do not carry extra ammo?

I guess mine wear their helmets AND bring more bolt rounds.

Yep. Those sickle clips definitely fit in those straight pouches. You did it. Immersion is saved.

Why would they have clips in them? They are super fast, it is more efficient to carry separate packs of boltgun ammo then multiple banan clips.

Karol wrote:
Why would they have clips in them? They are super fast, it is more efficient to carry separate packs of boltgun ammo then multiple banan clips.

clips/mags are often mixed up, curved mags don't fit in the straight pouches.

still, thats nitpicking to the max and easily fixed by getting 3rd party bits.

I don't know it looks in the US army. But here, unless your in some sort of special forces unit or para troopers you get one banan clip and the rest of the ammo is in cardboard boxs you put in to square pouch. You run out of ammo, you take the clip out, take the box out and reload.

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Karol wrote:
Why would they have clips in them? They are super fast, it is more efficient to carry separate packs of boltgun ammo then multiple banan clips.

clips/mags are often mixed up, curved mags don't fit in the straight pouches.

still, thats nitpicking to the max and easily fixed by getting 3rd party bits.

MY marines etc have always used ammo coated in Pym Particles (see Marvel Comics/movies)

Miniaturized ammo is loaded into the clip, gets fed into the gun where it expands to normal size, and is then sent downfield.

 Togusa wrote:
all I can think of is the numerous cutscenes and aminations I've seen of bullets wizzing clean through space marine helmets as if they're not even there

One thing that was drilled into our heads, helmets are not just for bullets. They're 1000x more likely to save your head from some other head trauma than a bullet. Riding in a humvee, going over bumps can bounce you off the seat so hard you smack your head into the roof. While patrolling in mountainous terrain, guys walking above you can knock rocks down onto your head. You can trip and fall, or be knocked around by an explosion, and hit your head on a sharp rock. Considering how many guys still come out of the military with head trauma, I can't imagine how bad it would be if we didn't wear helmets. Now imagine all the extra hazards of a battlefield 30-40k years in the future that don't exist now.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Altruizine wrote:
I started reading the HH novels recently, and it's bizarre how often the authors painstakingly specify a character is going helmetless, deciding to take off their helmet, or having their helmet fall off, get torn off, or get damaged. It's almost like they were given a brief to illustrate why helmetless marines totally belong on the tabletop.

I remember reading a part in a novel where it poked fun at people complaining about helmetless sergeants recently. A marine dropped his helmet to improve his field of vision against some hidden tau enemies and specifically commented on how the helm wouldn't help him anyways if a pulse round were to hit him in the head.

I remember reading a Black Library novel where the Imperial Fists were fighting Iron Warriors and an IF Sgt had no helmet on. The IW observed "Does he want to get his head blown off?"

Thought that was quite amusing.

Only helmets for models in combat poses, but I can handle helmetless for models in resting or calm positions.

Here no one cares. But I must say we had a dude at my old store, who didn't like to paint faces , for many reasons so all his models had helmets. But so it happens that some primaris models came with helmets mag locked to their belts. So 3 of his squad leaders had two helmets. He didn't even notice it till someone pointed it out.

Helmets are just easier to paint, and in most cases look cooler.

I still haven't got around to my Howling Banshees as I went with the Ynnari look, and really want to do a proper job on them. I saw a picture of an almost-anime look to the Exarch's face and knew thats how I wanted mine to look, but despite tests on other models the confidence is gone. Why couldn't they have come with their 3rd edition helmets instead? I would have gone with those no problem!

Karol wrote:
But so it happens that some primaris models came with helmets mag locked to their belts. So 3 of his squad leaders had two helmets. He didn't even notice it till someone pointed it out.

I have guys like this. I was going to chop off the second helmet but I figured I can just say he's carrying his dead buddies helmet back to put on his grave. I'd rather have a guy w 2 helmets than paint faces...

As an Orks and Lotr player I wonder what's the matter with painting faces? And as a DG player I'd say usually helmets have more details to paint than a face, but I still prefer helmets on my Marines. Even gave one to the derpy caster from Dark Imperium though it was a real pain to get it under that coat.

 aphyon wrote:


Not really an argument with space marines, they are in power armor. they have no problem carrying full kit in any environment.

Good thing there’s plenty of other armies to play than just space marines, despite what GW wants you to believe.

There’s plenty of other justifications too across the lore. I enjoyed in fall of damnos where a dev squad has to remove their helmets to target some monoliths because of the necron EW systems.

 evil_kiwi_60 wrote:

 aphyon wrote:


Not really an argument with space marines, they are in power armor. they have no problem carrying full kit in any environment.

Good thing there’s plenty of other armies to play than just space marines, despite what GW wants you to believe.

Ah, what would the world be (except better) sans you SM/GW haters.....

Maybe your unaware of this, but - in addition to CSM & Horus Heresy - GW seems to be trying to sell me on Nu-Squats atm. And every now & then they also mention Demons. Seens about every day or three I get a GW email hyping them.
When I walk into the FLGS shop? I see the GW shelves pretty well stocked with plenty of non-SM/CSM offerings.
When I look at what's being played on the tables? Or at our escalation league roster? Again, plenty of non-Marine forces....

So if GWs trying to make me think that in the far dark future there's only Marines to be played?
They're failing hard.

Yeah, I'm like one of 3 loyalist Marine players in my group, pretty much the rest of the 60 are Chaos or Xenos. So definitely not the 24/7/365 wall-to-wall Marines that some complain about.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
When they introduce giant slabs of armour, but they've all got heads poking out, it does seem a little odd to me.

It’s a bit like the research that proved you lose more heat through your head than any other part of your body, proven in experiments where the subjects were fully clothed, but not wearing a hat


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 aphyon wrote:

evil_kiwi_60 wrote:Honesty the main reason I go all helmet is to not have to paint faces. The armor is way easier haha. Though I personally do like the helmets better on most models.

Anyone trying to force the helmet for muh realism is full of it. Dudes are running around with chainsaws, fighting sentient mushrooms. Though on that note even in real life, everyone doesn’t have full kit on all the time every time. We’d drop just about everything but water and ammo during some patrols in Afghanistan because the mountains were just that rough.

Not really an argument with space marines, they are in power armor. they have no problem carrying full kit in any environment.

And also the helmet is where the auto senses, command communications interface and heads up displays are. For Marines, not wearing your helmet is tantamount to heresy just due to the reduction in combat effectiveness that would entail.