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DeffDred wrote:

Right... You say that, then post an image showing the exact opposite. Nice work killing your own argument, makes my job that much easier.

Yeah, cause we all know how to count. 2, 3, 4, 5... wait... did I forget a number?

[Derpface] You forgot 0, stoopid! Hurr... [/Derpface]

Kaldor wrote:Haven't forgotten about the thread, just want to point out that Astartes are 7' high in armour.

Sir, I present to you the Golden Space Marine Award for Unintentional Humor.

BeRzErKeR wrote:
Sir, I present to you the Golden Space Marine Award for Unintentional Humor.

The scale starts at 1 and ends at 8. That makes 7 feet.

Whether or not you want to use that in preference to various other material is up to you.

Well in the stairwell leading up to the Warhammer World museum there is a 'scale' mural of a Space Marine with the height given as 7'. However it depends which bit of background you read and by whom. Marines seem to be inbetween 7' & 9' depending on the source.
I personally interpret 8'6'' being a reasonable size for them to a) tower over humans and b) be smaller than the Primarchs. When it comes to Astartes I love the idea of them being abnormally huge, hulking, earth-shaking angels of death - 7' is a little underwhelming I think, considering that the average Imperial male citizen is 6' tall? Can't recall source for this though so I may be wrong.

If anything, howeveer, GW have proven that old fluff can and will be rewritten (*cough* Ollanius Pius *cough*) so perhaps 7' will be their old size in old GW 40k stuff (back when it was more of a joke), but now?

I would be VERY interested to see this thread on the Bungie forums....

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

BeRzErKeR wrote:
Sir, I present to you the Golden Space Marine Award for Unintentional Humor.

The scale starts at 1 and ends at 8. That makes 7 feet.

Whether or not you want to use that in preference to various other material is up to you.

Maybe they were wrong?
Marines are described as 8 feet tall solders in new fluff.
They were 9 in the old one.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

vodo40k wrote:I would be VERY interested to see this thread on the Bungie forums....

So, let someone post it and tell us the results.

Berzerker, I do still plan on replying to your post when I find the time, you make some interesting points!

And yeah, the scale on that image is missing a number, making it 7', not 8.

Brother Coa wrote:Maybe they were wrong?
Marines are described as 8 feet tall solders in new fluff.
They were 9 in the old one

Considering that is Jes Goodwin sitting in front of that picture, I'm going to go with it not being wrong.

vodo40k wrote:I would be VERY interested to see this thread on the Bungie forums....

already been done.

Kaldor wrote:Berzerker, I do still plan on replying to your post when I find the time, you make some interesting points!

And yeah, the scale on that image is missing a number, making it 7', not 8.

Brother Coa wrote:Maybe they were wrong?
Marines are described as 8 feet tall solders in new fluff.
They were 9 in the old one

Considering that is Jes Goodwin sitting in front of that picture, I'm going to go with it not being wrong.

I dunno, they have a point. Almost all of the fluff points to Marines being 8ft tall, I think Jes just made a mistake there.

The one thing that always gets me about these discussions is how they always seem to come at it from a frame of reference assuming the Sci-fi Fantasy is the dominant genre in the discussion rather than the MilSciFi. And this is why these discussions always fail:

a) 40k fluff is wildly inconsistent because it is hard to tell what is and isn't canon after 25 years. Back in RT you may have been able to make a case for a matchup between Spartans and Marines because the latter used to be more MilSciFi-based (along with a smattering of Imperial Sardaukar). But now it would be like asking who would win in a fight between Gilgamesh and a Green Berret. The genre gap is too wide to fathom. It is the same reason you would have troubles with a Mobile Infantry vs. Space Marines argument as well. Because MI are MilSciFi and just lack the reference points to compare to Sci Fi Fantasy or Space Opera stuff.

b) Linked to above the very different assumptions of each genre play havoc when applying rules from one to the other. In Space Opera it is common to have a juggernaut in armour that cannot be harmed by small-arms fire. In MilSciFi you are not safe and even an insurgent with a slug rifle could end your life despite the suit of power armour and all the tech you have. Even a Cap Trooper learns how to throw a knife in Starship Troopers. So applying mortality rules from 40k to Halo and vice versa will be doomed to fail. For example, the bolter, converted to MilSciFi would probably be about the same as a Spartan BR55 which uses a 9.5X40 armour piercing/explosive slug. At most, since marines are in heavy power armour it would be like a SAW but on every basic trooper. It is important to remember that different genres play by different rules and that this can make it really hard to play the "vs. game".

c) People love to short-sell the other side. It mostly comes about because of unfamiliarity with the other source material of course. But this is moot because when you are comparing different genres even knowing the source material on each side can lead you astray because its like trying to compare two things with different inherent laws of physics.

For an example of 40k thrust in to a MilSciFi frame of reference there is a silly short story written from the eyes of a grunt in the Stargrunt II universe facing down a squad of Space Marines. They are tough and capable but have this odd idea that they don't need cover and are soon cut apart when they get pinned out in the open. Because moving non-genre-appropriate things in to the wrong genre and not changing their behaviour and tropes to fit will often leave them looking silly.

That is why people keep on getting hung up on LOLbolter and LOLpowerarmour because in Space Opera you can have stuff that works like that and seems reasonable. But in MilSciFi everything is deadly so a Spartan with an assault rifle or a battle rifle is still a walking god of death even though he isn't lugging a .75 gyroc cannon around (though the battle rifle compares pretty well to being the MilSciFi bolter equivalent due to the dual-purpose ammo and the three-shot burst mode).

So yeah, needless to say I can't see anything coming out of the discussion, especially since the inherent bias of the forum already has most coming at it from the frame of reference of the Warhammer-verse and the genre tropes therein. If we were to convert Spartans and Space Marines in to a MilSciFi system like Tomorrow's War and Stargrunt II I can assure you that things would look fairly different, especially if the Marines didn't change their tactics to suit the genre.

So I'd suggest finding more genre appropriate foes to fight. With 40k being more along the Space Opera side of things you could probably make a case for other high power universes like The Culture or the Total Annhilation universe. In the case of Halo I'd love to see a comparative look at them and the human military from Old Man's War instead. Soldiers trained from childhood and augmented into super-human killers vs. 100 year olds given new bodies with superhuman abilities. Much more interesting matchups in my mind (though the IoM vs. the Culture would probably be pretty short all things considered; more interesting would be how Contact would bend the Imperium to being another vassal state of the Culture).

Marzillius wrote:Can't this thread, and all threads like these, be ended with this? Warhammer 40k is extremely over the top, everything is designed to be über-powerful. Halo on the other hand, is designed to be more "realistic". No sci-fi universe can stand up to 40k simply because of it's sheer OOT (except Supreme Commander perhaps, that one is actually even more OOT).

But how else can the boys in puberty get a epeen boost?

Jes later admitted he messed up the scale for that marine drawing.


"Towering over other humans" might have led him to saying 7' was a good height because no one in the GW headquarters is over 5'4" and they don't realize that there are lots of people 6' and over in the world. 7' isn't even odd to see.

Kaldor wrote:Berzerker, I do still plan on replying to your post when I find the time, you make some interesting points!

Great! Yeah, it's a massive chunk of text, I don't blame you for taking some time. . . I just got started looking things up and then bam, suddenly it's been two hours.