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Same here, I've played the game for over twenty years and it was the Ultramarine Dreadnought in White 203 that made me a firm 40K fanatic after playing Lizardmen initially although my very first Citadel Miniatures were some pre-slotta dwarfs.

When a were a 'wee lad' the space marine models were always too small even though they were what drew me to 40K in the first place! Making them bigger is not 'mutilation', 'madness', 'insanity', 'futile' or denying the 'proper' look.

lliu wrote:

 Snrub wrote:

 Gantoris wrote:
You have to remember that the guard do benefit from some light genetic manipulation and cybernetic implants,

Uh.... No. Care to provide a source on that? Outside of the Mechanicus based Skitarii and probably some inquisitorial based troops I think you'll find that this just isn't the case.

they are not supposed to just be your average joe.

Yes. Yes they are.


If memory serves me right then some troops like the Kasrkin do receive minor cybernetic upgrades. Kasrkin are far from basic troops though.

Do Solar Auxilia receive implants?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
A TS marine should be a bit higher than a Tau. Check Tau Codex, 6th ed softback for proof.

...I'm a big Tau fan, but ANY Astartes is MUCH larger then any Tau - that's just a fact of the matter. The OP forgets that Marines are fething MASSIVE in comparison to even Orks - who only the biggest of can really provide a real one-on-one threat.

In short: No, the current Astartes models are NOT to scale with the other 40k models - and most of the 40k races have scale fudging to make them more compatible.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gogsnik wrote:
Same here, I've played the game for over twenty years and it was the Ultramarine Dreadnought in White 203 that made me a firm 40K fanatic after playing Lizardmen initially although my very first Citadel Miniatures were some pre-slotta dwarfs.

When a were a 'wee lad' the space marine models were always too small even though they were what drew me to 40K in the first place! Making them bigger is not 'mutilation', 'madness', 'insanity', 'futile' or denying the 'proper' look.

^^^ This. Thank you.

 Alpharius wrote:
Er, I started 40K right around the transition from Rogue Trader and 2nd - and I'm a huge True Scale fan!

me too!!!
i started collecting Citadel minis before Rogue Trader and Space Marines even existed, and i'm a huge True Scale fan...
once 40K came along, i knew i had found my favorite setting ever, but SM minis have always seemed too dinky to me, through all the iterations...
when i go back and look at the size of my RT era minis, i just have to laugh at how tiny they are...
the latest version of the Tac Squad kit seems to have straightened the legs a bit, and looks a scosh bigger than the previous kit, but it doesn't equal the impression that the art and fiction have always given me of a Space Marine's size relative to a Guardsman...

now that we have the Tartaros armor from FW, i think i have found what is the perfect scale for a Space Marine mini...
i don't mind the plastic Termie legs and arms for True Scale, but i am a bit intimidated by all the sculpting it would take to change the look of the leg armour...
without Greenstuff filling in the spots between the reinforcing rods of the thighs and calves, it just looks too much like a Termie, and seems like lazy modelling, to me...
oh well, at least if i do jump in with plastic bits, it will make me have to practice my sculpting more...

cheers
jah

 Gantoris wrote:
Just imagine the glory of a 50 foot grot

Marines look amazingly cool and the proportions are fine :(,

No, actually the arms are way too long, and the legs too short. Hands too large, and heads too big as well.

the only way they could look better is if they all went back to being beakies! 9 times out of 10 when people truescale marines they end up looking like spindly legged freaks.

What, like Beakies?

While I think the SM scaling is off, I think its only modestly so. Whether you think a SM needs a little more material like the image right above, or a little less like the slightly spindlier (relative to the plastics) of FW's marines... that's really about as far as things need to go. That's just my opinion but people are entitled to want their marines in whatever scale they want. Im certainly in the camp that believes its more the IG and standard human minis in the 40k range that are problematic. You only have to look at FW or even WFB humans to see how GW's screwed up IG.

 Gantoris wrote:

 Gantoris wrote:
Yeah but i don't think the scale difference between IG and SM is as big as people think it is so ultimately you do more harm than good stretching Marines, smaller Guard is defiantly the way to go if this is a huge problem for someone. And i still don't agree IG are just utterly green hopeless civilians, they are cannon fodder for sure but they are trained and equipped en-route over a decent amount of time. And it really isn't much of a stretch to think they probably get performance enhancing drugs, steroids and testosterone during this period because it would be a very cheap way to increase performance of your ground army. This explains perfectly the chunky body builder look of GW imperial guard and further negates the problem with height vs Space Marines.

I stand by this assumption, they get months of training and no one cares about the long term health of these men. I have always just assumed the body builder buff look of guard was due to extreme training regime and performance enhancing chemicals. This fits the design choices and is perfectly reasonable to imagine in the lore.

You thinking it, doesn't make it true, The imperial guard have always been shown as like the Russian army from WW2, here is a gun there is the puny enemy go die. It is always mentioned that the imperium has one thing in abundance and that is manpower, normal soldiers are just cannon fodder, i can understand that they do it on Veterans though. And the look of the Imp guard could be that they rather get their conscripts from a planet with higher gravity than earth than from a planet with lower gravity.

I like the look of True-scale marines, but i don't want to spend hours of time modifying my marines instead of starting to just put them together, looks nice for a diorama but not for an army to play with (at least for me)

Guess my little thought it might be kind of a generational thing was way of then lol .

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

 Gantoris wrote:
Just imagine the glory of a 50 foot grot

Marines look amazingly cool and the proportions are fine :(,

No, actually the arms are way too long, and the legs too short. Hands too large, and heads too big as well.

When i say the proportions are fine i mean in relation to the comic style they are trying to achieve, the look "works" its just a matter of taste weather you like it or not. The beakie in the picture you linked was a very old mini i don't think anyone would deny GW have improved dramatically in sculpting and molding minis over the years particularly with plastic, the current Beakies that you can get (Forgeworld or GW) are excellent. To be honest tho if pressed i would say the newer look is a lot cooler overall but i do have a nostalgic fondness for the 'ol Beakie marine, its why ive chosen Raven Guard as my new army .

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
You thinking it, doesn't make it true, The imperial guard have always been shown as like the Russian army from WW2, here is a gun there is the puny enemy go die. It is always mentioned that the imperium has one thing in abundance and that is manpower, normal soldiers are just cannon fodder, i can understand that they do it on Veterans though. And the look of the Imp guard could be that they rather get their conscripts from a planet with higher gravity than earth than from a planet with lower gravity.

I like the look of True-scale marines, but i don't want to spend hours of time modifying my marines instead of starting to just put them together, looks nice for a diorama but not for an army to play with (at least for me)

I realize im working from quite a bit of assumption here and cant really remember specific sources to quote which makes it hard to argue with this but to your Russian army IG example, your right for some regiments for sure (Death Korps?) but not all. Even if you accept my assumptions it would never cover every single regiment, the variety of training and equipment quality would no doubt vary substantially. I only brought up any of this to point out that the GW sculpted IG arnt as crazy as people often make out and that the muscle bound look many of them have isn't totally inconceivable within the lore.

Ultimately what im trying to say is that all the GW minis are consistent in style in relation to each other so trying to drastically alter this for just one faction creates more problems that it solves.

I have seen it touched on lightly a few times, but not concretely stated. So I'm just going to ask this, everyone is aware that the Horus Heresy legion marines have slightly tweaked proportions compared to the normal plastics and are both slightly taller and have longer torsos and limbs and essentially are a step towards true scale all by themselves? My Emperors children palatine blades are a good 5 millimeters taller then normal plastics, not even counting the huge plumes some of them have on their heads.

I like a good true scale conversion to but the op here has a point, nearly all the actually good ones are made from terminators and might as well be complete re-sculpts. Peoples opinions are of course their own, and honestly i can't fault someone for pouring blood sweat and tears into true scale conversions to personalize their armies to their own visions. But i do agree that some people take it to far, and marines really don't need to grow a head and a half in size with spindly wobbly leg syndrome to look right.

This is one of the reasons I drifted away from 40K, and now tend to only pay attention to (or own) the Tau, whose proportions are more realistic.

I grew older and began to find the comical proportions to be too hard to accept.

I wanted to see realistic proportions on the miniatures I have.

And those realistic proportions can seem to be very strange to people who are used to looking at the fat, squat proportions GW uses for the Space Marines, and for the rest of the 40K line to a lesser degree.

But other than sculpting a set of Space Marines myself, there are no options available for such things on the market.

I suppose that doing a SM in Maya or Mudbox would not be too terribly difficult...

I will have to give it a try, and see what it looks like (I have fully rigged humans of varying proportions available as a doll for such a project). And it isn't as if SM armor is overly complex.

MB

Tau have their own bug bear in that regard (namely the squat crisis suits). The infantry are alot better but the xv8s suffer the same problem in that they're proportioned like marines and it is laughable that a fire warrior is in that chest in anything other than curled up into a ball. Some of the best conversions in the past stretched out the dwarf arms and legs to something more normal. The new enforcer suit also addressed that issue as well which is why I decided to buy one as my first new GW tau model in years.

 warboss wrote:
Tau have their own bug bear in that regard (namely the squat crisis suits). The infantry are alot better but the xv8s suffer the same problem in that they're proportioned like marines and it is laughable that a fire warrior is in that chest in anything other than curled up into a ball. Some of the best conversions in the past stretched out the dwarf arms and legs to something more normal. The new enforcer suit also addressed that issue as well which is why I decided to buy one as my first new GW tau model in years.

Well, if the rumors are true, we may be getting new Crisis Suits later this year...

It would be cool to do an Alpha Legion army with TS marines. They were noticeably taller than other marines... so much so that they could pass as their own Primarch.

 Gantoris wrote:
People going on about truescale marines and mutilating the minis to make these mutants is a real bugbear for me,

I am not a fan of "truescale" marine conversions - I find the current plastics to be fine.

The real problem is that the Catachan and Cadian plastic infantrymen stand a half-head too tall, compounded by being too bulky. The superscale humans are making the Marines and everything else look too small by comparison.

I have all metal infantry, and it's partly because the models are physically smaller, making big monsters look bigger.

 warboss wrote:
Tau have their own bug bear in that regard (namely the squat crisis suits). The infantry are alot better but the xv8s suffer the same problem in that they're proportioned like marines and it is laughable that a fire warrior is in that chest in anything other than curled up into a ball. Some of the best conversions in the past stretched out the dwarf arms and legs to something more normal. The new enforcer suit also addressed that issue as well which is why I decided to buy one as my first new GW tau model in years.

Which is exactly why I have no Crisis suits.

I did think of getting some and doing some conversions (I have done real-life work on a prosthetic leg - preparing for when I eventually lose my own - that I modeled after theTau Crisis suits, except for in proportion. I hear that it is popular, but I could apply the same standards to the model).

I can be so incredibly dim at times.

MB

 Kepora wrote:

 warboss wrote:
Tau have their own bug bear in that regard (namely the squat crisis suits). The infantry are alot better but the xv8s suffer the same problem in that they're proportioned like marines and it is laughable that a fire warrior is in that chest in anything other than curled up into a ball. Some of the best conversions in the past stretched out the dwarf arms and legs to something more normal. The new enforcer suit also addressed that issue as well which is why I decided to buy one as my first new GW tau model in years.

Well, if the rumors are true, we may be getting new Crisis Suits later this year...

I hope they're not as it would indicate that GW is extending the insanity of a 2 year edition life cycle to invalidating $50 hardback codex books in the same timeframe.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

darkcloak wrote:
It would be cool to do an Alpha Legion army with TS marines. They were noticeably taller than other marines... so much so that they could pass as their own Primarch.

You should check out Alpharius' (the dakka mod who posted earlier in the thread) pic gallery then since that is what he has.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

BeAfraid wrote:

 warboss wrote:
Tau have their own bug bear in that regard (namely the squat crisis suits). The infantry are alot better but the xv8s suffer the same problem in that they're proportioned like marines and it is laughable that a fire warrior is in that chest in anything other than curled up into a ball. Some of the best conversions in the past stretched out the dwarf arms and legs to something more normal. The new enforcer suit also addressed that issue as well which is why I decided to buy one as my first new GW tau model in years.

Which is exactly why I have no Crisis suits.

I did think of getting some and doing some conversions (I have done real-life work on a prosthetic leg - preparing for when I eventually lose my own - that I modeled after theTau Crisis suits, except for in proportion. I hear that it is popular, but I could apply the same standards to the model).

I can be so incredibly dim at times.

MB

While I can't comment on real life biomechanics, I'd probably not recommend using the tau ankle joint. Those things always break even in foam cases! You don't want to put your body at risk on a joint that is always broken on ebay used tau sale pics.

darkcloak wrote:
It would be cool to do an Alpha Legion army with TS marines. They were noticeably taller than other marines... so much so that they could pass as their own Primarch.

Ooh, ooh! Check my gallery!!!

(And well said! People always seem to forget that part of the Alpha Legion IA!)

 warboss wrote:

BeAfraid wrote:

 warboss wrote:
Tau have their own bug bear in that regard (namely the squat crisis suits). The infantry are alot better but the xv8s suffer the same problem in that they're proportioned like marines and it is laughable that a fire warrior is in that chest in anything other than curled up into a ball. Some of the best conversions in the past stretched out the dwarf arms and legs to something more normal. The new enforcer suit also addressed that issue as well which is why I decided to buy one as my first new GW tau model in years.

Which is exactly why I have no Crisis suits.

I did think of getting some and doing some conversions (I have done real-life work on a prosthetic leg - preparing for when I eventually lose my own - that I modeled after theTau Crisis suits, except for in proportion. I hear that it is popular, but I could apply the same standards to the model).

I can be so incredibly dim at times.

MB

While I can't comment on real life biomechanics, I'd probably not recommend using the tau ankle joint. Those things always break even in foam cases! You don't want to put your body at risk on a joint that is always broken on ebay used tau sale pics.

I am aware of that. The joints on the real leg are different. The appearance is only (mostly - some structural design is included) cosmetic, as people are starting to want prosthetics that don't look like titanium sticks with ball joints or hinges at either end. Plus with a meso-scaled limb of that design, made from metal, you would find the joint, as designed to be much stronger than that of the model.

We have begun using more ergonomic design on top of aesthetic design to get higher performing prosthetics (if you look at the Paralympiat Amiee Mullins, she can run about 8mph faster than an Olympic Athlete with actual legs. And that is restricted from the optimized prosthetics, which could have her running faster than a horse).

But anime styled prosthetics are a thing now, and the Tau have that aesthetic.

Even with all of that, though.... The current Tau Crisis Suits are a mess.

MB

 warboss wrote:

 Kepora wrote:

 warboss wrote:
Tau have their own bug bear in that regard (namely the squat crisis suits). The infantry are alot better but the xv8s suffer the same problem in that they're proportioned like marines and it is laughable that a fire warrior is in that chest in anything other than curled up into a ball. Some of the best conversions in the past stretched out the dwarf arms and legs to something more normal. The new enforcer suit also addressed that issue as well which is why I decided to buy one as my first new GW tau model in years.

Well, if the rumors are true, we may be getting new Crisis Suits later this year...

I hope they're not as it would indicate that GW is extending the insanity of a 2 year edition life cycle to invalidating $50 hardback codex books in the same timeframe.

Models, not codex. There's supposedly a Tau/Space Marine battle set (Like the Stormclaw set), so hopefully it'll be a tie-in for that!

It's a bit off topic but they haven't done that so far to my knowledge in the campaign boxes. They use existing squad kits and add a single 1-sprue character to each side. We may get a Tau HQ but I doubt it'll be an xv8 and even if it is it'll only be available in that set. They could just redesign the xv8 models but I doubt they'll do that. They needed to do the broadsides because it was a combo metal/finecast and plastic kit. In any case, I hope they do and hope they don't end up being chibi again.

Yeah, any Tau/Raven Guard boxed set will be called something like BirdStorm and feature LE ICs for each faction, and then some previously existing kits. They've all been loss-leader style affairs thus far.

Though, after working with the Tau models pretty extensively (see sig link), I've been vastly underwhelmed by them. If there's one faction other than Chaos Marines that badly needs a revamp of its core kits, it's Tau. The FW kit is bland and uninspired, and the Crisis Suits are downright awful.

Wait what? theres a bloody Raven Guard boxed set commin out!? [MOD EDIT - Language, please. - Alpharius] ace man, when?

He's taking a wild guess based on a shady rumor.

This is one rumor im hopin is true, would mean at the very least a mini codex for me and a couple of new characters. On top of that i wont need to consider FW prices for a bunch of Raven Guardey stuff to cool up my army.

This thread has inspired me to take on modeling some Truescale Marines (I will be doing Mk VI and VII armor first) and to do some Tau Crisis Suits or maybe a Tau MBT (Since I don't care for the "Everything is built off the same chassis" models they have now) this summer when I am done with the Goblins.

MB

I've always thought that GW could make an absolute killing by releasing an adult or 'artist' marketed model line of art scale models. I think true/art scale Marines look so good but I have no knowledge when it comes to making them myself.

 Davylove21 wrote:
I've always thought that GW could make an absolute killing by releasing an adult or 'artist' marketed model line of art scale models.

That is more or less what =I=nquisitor was supposed to be.

Larger scale artist-marketed models. Inq. Covenant is very nice, along with the large Kroot, Genestealer, and other models. Good stuff.