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 odinsgrandson wrote:
To be fair, I don't think they've always been that large.

The Chapter Approved article printed in White Dwarf 98 (February 1988) it says, in the Ossmodula section, '...and a general increase in the size of the recipient's skeleton.'

Asherian Command wrote:

 Furyou Miko wrote:
The Black Carapace does not add to a Marine's height at all. It is a thin layer of plastic that sits over their fused ribcage only, and its only job is to act as an circuit board into which all the neural connections between the armour and the marine can be implanted.

Space marines also have the black caraparace underneath their skin that might add to their height.

Read that word

Might:past of may, used especially.
May: meaning Maybe

I am not saying definately I am saying it might. As I didn't know how thick it was.

If you don't want an answer, don't phrase your points as a question. You stated that it might have an effect, so I explained why it wouldn't.

Maximus Bitch wrote:
does anyone know why space marines have to be so large?

The Emperor of Mankind said in a HH novel that "back in the day" people were more scared of people that were "large of shoulder" and "broad of chest" to prove they were champions. (or something along those lines)

So making Astartes large was the right thing to do ... well, that and the fact that he probably knew what an Ork was and he knew they got quite large and he needed a Galaxy spanning empire to be maintained by something equally as powerful.

Astartes are designed to be intimidating warrior knights rather than realistic or subtle soldiers.

Being very large helps with that.

In the same way, you're likely to be more afraid of a dog who reaches your shoulder than one who reaches your knee.

 Gogsnik wrote:

 odinsgrandson wrote:
To be fair, I don't think they've always been that large.

The Chapter Approved article printed in White Dwarf 98 (February 1988) it says, in the Ossmodula section, '...and a general increase in the size of the recipient's skeleton.'

So COOL!

I'm adding this to the references, even though it isn't very specific. Actually, they might have only meant for the skeleton to be getting bulkier, but hey.

 Ashiraya wrote:
In the same way, you're likely to be more afraid of a dog who reaches your shoulder than one who reaches your knee.

Still will not swim anywhere near those little fish called piranha .

Well imagine a piranha that reaches your shoulder, then.

Just what you want to meet when you are out swimming.

 odinsgrandson wrote:

So COOL!

I'm adding this to the references, even though it isn't very specific. Actually, they might have only meant for the skeleton to be getting bulkier, but hey.

Everything else hangs off the skeleton, so if the skeleton is bulkier, the person will be taller (because their vertebrae will be thicker).

 Furyou Miko wrote:

 odinsgrandson wrote:

So COOL!

I'm adding this to the references, even though it isn't very specific. Actually, they might have only meant for the skeleton to be getting bulkier, but hey.

Everything else hangs off the skeleton, so if the skeleton is bulkier, the person will be taller (because their vertebrae will be thicker).

Ah, but you need to remember: in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war. That leaves no room for logic like that.

It is possible for the bones to become larger, but not proportionally in all directions. I cite the miniatures themselves as reference here.

Clearly, Space Marines have dwarf-like proportions, so the skeleton does not grow proportionally. Also, most imperial guarsmen grow up on worlds where the humans have evolved to have similarly strange proportions.


Edit: It is difficult to convey sarcasm on the internet, hence this note is necessary.

Another reference for the first post:

"...well over two metres tall..." Xenos, page 171, Dan Abnett; from a description of The Emperor's Children Chaos Marine, Mandragore.

I'd like someone to find all the quotes of Dan Abnett saying that Gaunt, Corbec, Bragg etc are slightly above average height at two meters, and then that there are other baseline mortal humans are "truly tall" and who tower over them. I think he is also really bad at knowing how long a kilometer is. My impression is that he thinks a kilometer is much longer than it is, and that two meters is about 6'2".

I'd like that someone to be me, but maybe it will take a few years.

I think being a pretext for the existence of Gaunt's Ghosts, Riders of the Dead, Legion, and Prospero Burns are about 50% of the reason GW should ever has existed. I love Dan Abnett. I think all his references should go under one heading, though. He just seems confused, is all.

pelicaniforce wrote:

I haven't read any more of the thread, I'm not going to read any more of the thread.

I'm going to edit a screen cap in to this post in a few minutes.

But seriously, self, you are the worst person alive.

For the record, 2 meters is just below 6' 7" so the traditional 7' tall space marine is 5" taller than two meters.

Abnett has a reputation for having super tall marines, but this reference doesn't make them so huge.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Well imagine a piranha that reaches your shoulder, then.

Less dangerous. Part of what makes the piranha frightening is their numbers. Each one is biting away a bit of your flesh, and you just cannot fight them all at the same time. Giant piranha is a big fish that you can easily see coming, and can potentially kill or avoid.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
Well imagine a piranha that reaches your shoulder, then.

Less dangerous. Part of what makes the piranha frightening is their numbers. Each one is biting away a bit of your flesh, and you just cannot fight them all at the same time. Giant piranha is a big fish that you can easily see coming, and can potentially kill or avoid.

Actually Piranha's are largely all hype and very little bite. Schools of them aren't dangerous (in fact several species are herbivores). Among the most dangerous fish in those murky waters are Arapaima, which can grow to the size of several men. Because of their mass, when startled, they can inflict enough blunt trauma to stop your heart. Piranha only attack in their memetic style feeding frenzies from prolonged starvation.

Of course if you want the nastiest "fish" ever in the modern world, that would be the Bull Shark.

Something along these lines is a visual reference of what can be considered an 'average' (if there is such a thing!) going by the fluff I've read. Purely my opinion though.

I expect Marines to have bodyshapes more like strongmen (think Gregor Clegane) than bodybuilders.

Not to mention that space marines don't have abs. Fused ribcage, nothing for the muscles to anchor themselves to but a sheet of bone.

Found a new reference- fluff for the "Space Marine" Video game from THQ- quoted from another member of Dakka:

 bedeporter wrote:
I recently picked up a copy of a promotional magazine for the upcoming game, 'warhammer 40000: Space Marine' at my local games workshop and on the center pages there is a breakdown of the physiology of a space marine.
Height: 7"2
Weight: 700lbs or 50 stone in power armour.

Along with those it also had descriptions of the other modifications space marines undergo such as the insertion of the progenoud glands and the catalepsean node in the brain.
Several other modifications are also detailed and if anybody would like to know more of them then I would be happy to put the details up.

I thought I would share thise with the Dakka community.

Bede.

So, 7'2" is the number here.

If you've ever seen a proffessional athlete in the flesh, just walking down the street, you would see that a slightly above average height guy with incredible fitness has a ton of physical presence withput being outright massive. A 7 foot guy, with an even greater level of fitness plus some feature distortion because he wasnt quite human anymore, would be terrifying. Thats before the huge armor.

On the minis- one thing people should consider is how large a Heroic Human is.

I've often heard a size of 6'6" cited as the height of the average heroic scale mini.

What I find interesting about the whole thing is the eras. Honestly, I played 40k for a decade before hearing that Space Marines were massive. It wasn't a major point in the fluff in as much as it existed at all.

The first reference I heard was the Movie Marines article- that article was an elaborate joke about how the Black Library fiction distorts the fluff in favor of presenting Marines as unstoppable heroes, so the 7 ft figure there might have been meant as an exaggeration rather than a true average.

Andre the Giant was 7'4" and was proportioned similar to a Space Marine (kind of like Dwarf proportions, actually). Stick some pauldrons om him and he might actually be a really good size reference- but his size was also sometimes exaggerated with camera tricks (he would stand on a box during filmed interviews, for example).



One other thing to point out- Heroic scale humans tend to be presented at 6'6" or 6'8" rather than average heights. That means that the Cadian to marine scales are about right.

The thing I can't really understand is the size difference for Wold Scouts (since they aren't initiates like the other chapters, I can't figure out why they're so much smaller than their brothers that the heads can't be swapped).

I'm 2.02m tall and 275lbs, I would assume that a space marine would probably be somewhere a little taller and heavier than me.

When I walk up to the new Dark Imperium space marine display if both if our feet were at the same level I would be looking directly in the eyes of the marine in power armour.

They've always been a little inconsistent on actual measurements for Marines. I would also assume that depending on geneseed and each marines own genetic make up, you could have a large discrepancy in heights across the astartes.

 Wyzilla wrote:
Not to mention that space marines don't have abs. Fused ribcage, nothing for the muscles to anchor themselves to but a sheet of bone.

What does a fused rib cage have to do with not having abs? Any ways forgetting that there aren't ribs under your abs, are you saying SM's don't have tendons and are unable to connect muscle to bones? So that's why they needed powered armour...

About 7'5" is how I imagine them.
The GW Facebook page claimed that Primaris marines are 9' tall, which is slowed as hell. I imagine the Primarii to be around 8' tall and Custodians around 8'5" up to 9'.
Funny enough, Primaris marine models are bigger than Custodes

I always imagined: Average marine 7-7.5 foot, primaris around 8-8.5 primarch between 9-10 foot.

123ply wrote:
About 7'5" is how I imagine them.
The GW Facebook page claimed that Primaris marines are 9' tall, which is slowed as hell.

Did they? Got a link?

Clearly marines vary in height, not everyone takes to the process equally (many fail). 7ft gets consistently thrown about. I'd say most marines are around there.

You may get the occasional 'runt' who responded poorly to most of the processes but somehow did not die or get rooted out. They are still young boys put through huge hormone/surgical treatments so I imagine these would still be at the upper limits of common human height (so 6'4 for a very short marine).

Conversely a few space marines respond very well to all of the treatments (perhaps their soul already has a special affinity with the characteristics of their chapter/primarch? the transformation is as much a spiritual thing as a pseudoscience). I suspect the 'best' examples of these would be pushing towards 8 foot (a number occasionally mentioned), but these primaris-like marines are more the exception than the rule.

In the instance of 'half as tall as the man in front of him again', I think we need to remember that 40k is a late 70s/early 80s interpretation of 'The Dark Ages in SPAAAACE', so we need to look at what the popular interpretation of a serf's height would have been (5'2 to 5'6), which gives a figure in the ball park of a 'tall' marine (7'10 to 8'3), which I feel is reasonable as a few marines may grow this tall and narrators are often hyperbolic.

Imperial_Wolf wrote:
I always imagined: Average marine 7-7.5 foot, primaris around 8-8.5 primarch between 9-10 foot.

Well it used to be noted that anything 11 foot or above was classed as a Monstrous Creature.

I have heard 7 foot as a common measurement. Of course chaos marines, being more manly, are larger, at least 8 feet. Not like you puny Imperium chumps.

Where did it talk about 11 foot tall being monstrous creatures? The term didn't used to exist in 40k as a game term, and the sizes of most creatures weren't given.

That sounds a little like an RPG term- I know D&D has heights associated with each size category (and the range of medium size is pretty big). I know someone who took the D&D sizes to Warmachine minis (Warmachine started out as a D&D setting) and showed that the small minis were larger, and the large minis were smaller than reported in the RPG book.

Racerguy180 wrote:
I'm 2.02m tall and 275lbs, I would assume that a space marine would probably be somewhere a little taller and heavier than me.

When I walk up to the new Dark Imperium space marine display if both if our feet were at the same level I would be looking directly in the eyes of the marine in power armour.

They've always been a little inconsistent on actual measurements for Marines. I would also assume that depending on geneseed and each marines own genetic make up, you could have a large discrepancy in heights across the astartes.

There's an interesting thing. I'm wondering- should I use that as a citation?

First of all- is it meant to be a life-size statue? I'm guessing yes, since it is so close to being the right size. And on top of that, can we accurately say that it is the same size as you (2.02 meters, or about 6'6")?

BTW, comparing to the GW's normal humans, the Primaris Marine models are scaled to be about seven and half feet.

ADB puts the Night Lords in his novels at 3 meters tall, so there's always that too.

Basically?

They're as tall as they need to be?