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 Hairesy wrote:
Let's put it this way. Were the old Marines so bad that you felt the need to chop them up and give them shin implants? If you never made a truescale army, then it didn't bother you that much.

There exists a realm between "hate them so much and have the free time to convert them into truescale marines that end up looking like monkeys anyway because the torso is still too small" and "love them so much the way there are".

Complaints about Space Marine's scale, from my memories, goes back at least to the start of 3rd edition, maybe earlier.

Just because people weren't going out and wasting their time converting marines to truescale doesn't mean they liked the existing Space Marine models.

Besides, I thought this was "heroic" scale! I'm pretty generally not worried about realistic proportions when it comes to transhuman super soldiers, hot space elfs, evil hot space elfs, killer robots, killer bugs, or green people who come from mushrooms. Just don't keep making the damn models bigger! Lol!

There was a time, again probably around the start of 3rd, where hero scale went a bit crazy and people really started to notice how badly scaled many of GW's figures were. There was also LotR, which some of us really liked for their more realistic proportions.

Notable models of this time for me were the plastic Cadians, who are as broad as a barn with the proportions of a chubby child, and the WHFB Bretonnians who went from "heroic scale" with the Perry twin's models to "bobble head scale" with the 6th edition abominations. But Space Marines have long copped flak for their proportions also.

If you've always been happy with GW's models, cool, nice for you, but complaining about Space Marine models predates Primaris by a long time, though perhaps some additional players now can't unsee the horrible proportions upon seeing the Primaris models.

Personally, when GW released the Primaris it really put a bullet in the head of my desires for a Space Marine army because I wish they'd just taken one for the team and rescaled the regular marines at that point rather than creating the 2 tier system of SuperSpaceWarriors and ExtraSuperDuperSpaceWarriors!

I didn't mind how Cadians looked, in fact I quite liked them, fairly decent for the time, but just seeing them next to marines kind of killed the marine fantasy for me. Observe 8ft tall genetic monstrosity encased in enough plate to armour a tank vs malnourished hiveworld trash, something doesn't add up here and it took them over a decade to fix.

JWBS wrote:
I didn't mind how Cadians looked, in fact I quite liked them, fairly decent for the time, but just seeing them next to marines kind of killed the marine fantasy for me. Observe 8ft tall genetic monstrosity encased in enough plate to armour a tank vs malnourished hiveworld trash, something doesn't add up here and it took them over a decade to fix.

Spoiler:

I didn't hate Cadians, they were just a bit meh, I have about 50 of them painted up and a bunch more in boxes. I liked the general starship trooper style but didn't like the proportions.

When DKoK started showing up I found it hard to keep buying Cadians though (other than the price discrepancy of course!).

 Hairesy wrote:
Let's put it this way. Were the old Marines so bad that you felt the need to chop them up and give them shin implants?

Yes! Yes, I did that!

If you never made a truescale army, then it didn't bother you that much.

I think that is completely unreasonable. Having build a truescale marine force using the old models, painstakingly converting each and every one of them, it is a lot of work! Everyone doesn't have time/patience/skills for that. Doesn't mean they cannot recognise the flaws in available models.

JWBS wrote:
I didn't mind how Cadians looked, in fact I quite liked them, fairly decent for the time, but just seeing them next to marines kind of killed the marine fantasy for me. Observe 8ft tall genetic monstrosity encased in enough plate to armour a tank vs malnourished hiveworld trash, something doesn't add up here and it took them over a decade to fix.
[]

Of course space marines aren't 7 feet. Primaris 8. Firstborn 7. Unless you claim average humans are 7 feet hard to see how marines, feet taller than humans, can be 8.

IIRC, the source image that people quote to back up Proper Marines at 8ft has a scale where the bottom of the foot is at the 1ft marker...

 Dysartes wrote:
IIRC, the source image that people quote to back up Proper Marines at 8ft has a scale where the bottom of the foot is at the 1ft marker...

Yep, along with a tiny Jes Goodwin...

Right. Marines are about seven feet. And if you do the maths*, the primaris models are scaled to be barely that. The old marines were hopelessly out of scale.

* GW's normal human models are about 30-34mm tall. Primaris are about 38mm. If we assume 33mm to be about six feet, then that makes 38mm about seven feet. In this scale eight feet tall creature should be something like 44mm, which is roughly ogryn sized.

That is such a weird picture.

 Dysartes wrote:
IIRC, the source image that people quote to back up Proper Marines at 8ft has a scale where the bottom of the foot is at the 1ft marker...

Remember to add the 1ft of tactical rock the Marine is stood on, those things come as standard now.

 Geifer wrote:
That is such a weird picture.

How?

I remember when that was fresh, Jes was pleased with his creation and from what I remember wanted to be shown next to it, but also didn't want to obscure it too much. Hence the sitting down next to it.

Regarding Marine scale being wrong, well we have to separate the lore/fluff from the game, otherwise it would be unplayable. Marines would be a few dudes against Swarms of enemies that they slaughter in droves while facing little resistance. Best to think of the fluff/lore as propaganda about things being at their desired best.

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned but the biggest problem with the old marines isn't the size but the proportions. In that drawing behind Jes, the marine is about 6 heads tall. The plastic mini next to the cadian us about 4 and a half heads tall. Looking at a classic firstborn next to a sister it's kind of ridiculous that the bodies are the same size but the head on the space marine is literally twice as big as the sister's. The primaris are about 6 heads tall like the picture, which seems to be what Jes wanted all along.

A regular human is about 7 heads tall so even with the scale increase the marines are still a little squat. The new beakies look to be between 5 and 6 heads tall which gives them much better proportions than the old minis while still being compatible with shoulder pads helmets and weapons. To me that seems pretty ideal.

The thing I hate most about primaris is now they are showing up on trophy racks and bases for CSM models so if you want to make a historical 13th Black Crusade era CSM army (before the fluff took a turn for the stupid) you have to chop things up.

 Abadabadoobaddon wrote:
The thing I hate most about primaris is now they are showing up on trophy racks and bases for CSM models so if you want to make a historical 13th Black Crusade era CSM army (before the fluff took a turn for the stupid) you have to chop things up.

Really? The only time that I like seeing a primaris is when it's little "bits" of them attached to my models, whether it's the ones that come with them, or the ones that I add myself.

 stonehorse wrote:

 Geifer wrote:
That is such a weird picture.

How?

Why provide a scale if the numbers are wrong? Why not fix the numbers before the presentation? I don't know the context of what the picture was taken for. If it was for private use I'm not sure I could be bothered either, but if it was in any way meant for publication, that's not something I'd just leave like that. Not the least because it's such an easy fix.

 stonehorse wrote:
I remember when that was fresh, Jes was pleased with his creation and from what I remember wanted to be shown next to it, but also didn't want to obscure it too much. Hence the sitting down next to it.

I don't mind that. But since you bring it up, couldn't he have just stood next to it? Cameras back then were capable of 3:4 aspect ration, and he's quite slim.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Abadabadoobaddon wrote:
The thing I hate most about primaris is now they are showing up on trophy racks and bases for CSM models so if you want to make a historical 13th Black Crusade era CSM army (before the fluff took a turn for the stupid) you have to chop things up.

Really? The only time that I like seeing a primaris is when it's little "bits" of them attached to my models, whether it's the ones that come with them, or the ones that I add myself.

I hear paper bags are a way to make a mug look better. Try it on your trophy racks, should work fine. Maybe paint a smiley face on the bag.

 Abadabadoobaddon wrote:
The thing I hate most about primaris is now they are showing up on trophy racks and bases for CSM models so if you want to make a historical 13th Black Crusade era CSM army (before the fluff took a turn for the stupid) you have to chop things up.

I mean, Primaris helmets are nearly identical to Mark IV ones, so...

Chikout wrote:
I'm not sure if this has been mentioned but the biggest problem with the old marines isn't the size but the proportions. In that drawing behind Jes, the marine is about 6 heads tall. The plastic mini next to the cadian us about 4 and a half heads tall. Looking at a classic firstborn next to a sister it's kind of ridiculous that the bodies are the same size but the head on the space marine is literally twice as big as the sister's. The primaris are about 6 heads tall like the picture, which seems to be what Jes wanted all along.

A regular human is about 7 heads tall so even with the scale increase the marines are still a little squat. The new beakies look to be between 5 and 6 heads tall which gives them much better proportions than the old minis while still being compatible with shoulder pads helmets and weapons. To me that seems pretty ideal.

I understand what you're trying to say, but your numbers are a bit off. That drawing with Jes the marine is 7 heads tall, the helmet takes up 1 square and the rest of the body is another 6 squares. The marine standing next to the guardsmen is pretty much 5 heads tall, but maybe in reality it's a bit taller because of the angle the photo is taken. And regular humans are about 7.5 to 8 heads tall (8 being on the more "ideal" or "artistic" side and 7.5 being closer to normal).

The Cadian is in the 5 to 6 head range tall, which is why it looks like a child, those proportions are more child like.

Funnily enough we call warhammer scale "heroic scale", but I think it's more common in art to go the opposite way, a heroic figure would have a bigger body and longer legs with a similar sized head, getting further away from child proportions and beyond regular adult. Michelangelo's David was one where the head and hands were quite large, though he's more of an exception and it might have been done to accentuate the small stature and youthfulness of David versus other heroic figures. By contrast, Hercules is often depicted larger than normal humans in terms of number of heads.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Chikout wrote:
I'm not sure if this has been mentioned but the biggest problem with the old marines isn't the size but the proportions. In that drawing behind Jes, the marine is about 6 heads tall. The plastic mini next to the cadian us about 4 and a half heads tall. Looking at a classic firstborn next to a sister it's kind of ridiculous that the bodies are the same size but the head on the space marine is literally twice as big as the sister's. The primaris are about 6 heads tall like the picture, which seems to be what Jes wanted all along.

A regular human is about 7 heads tall so even with the scale increase the marines are still a little squat. The new beakies look to be between 5 and 6 heads tall which gives them much better proportions than the old minis while still being compatible with shoulder pads helmets and weapons. To me that seems pretty ideal.

I understand what you're trying to say, but your numbers are a bit off. That drawing with Jes the marine is 7 heads tall, the helmet takes up 1 square and the rest of the body is another 6 squares. The marine standing next to the guardsmen is pretty much 5 heads tall, but maybe in reality it's a bit taller because of the angle the photo is taken. And regular humans are about 7.5 to 8 heads tall (8 being on the more "ideal" or "artistic" side and 7.5 being closer to normal).

The Cadian is in the 5 to 6 head range tall, which is why it looks like a child, those proportions are more child like.

Funnily enough we call warhammer scale "heroic scale", but I think it's more common in art to go the opposite way, a heroic figure would have a bigger body and longer legs with a similar sized head, getting further away from child proportions and beyond regular adult. Michelangelo's David was one where the head and hands were quite large, though he's more of an exception and it might have been done to accentuate the small stature and youthfulness of David versus other heroic figures. By contrast, Hercules is often depicted larger than normal humans in terms of number of heads.

Yeah I was just eyeballing the minis. I'm not an expert but the point stands that the firstborn minis were ridiculously stubby and even the latest marines are a bit more squat than you might expect. I'd rather they deal with that issue now rather than continuing to put out minis that look kind of awful compared to other minis that are coming out these days.

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

 Abadabadoobaddon wrote:
The thing I hate most about primaris is now they are showing up on trophy racks and bases for CSM models so if you want to make a historical 13th Black Crusade era CSM army (before the fluff took a turn for the stupid) you have to chop things up.

I mean, Primaris helmets are nearly identical to Mark IV ones, so...

Disney trilogy stormtrooper helmets are nearly identical to classic ones. And my reaction to them is the same.

 Abadabadoobaddon wrote:

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

 Abadabadoobaddon wrote:
The thing I hate most about primaris is now they are showing up on trophy racks and bases for CSM models so if you want to make a historical 13th Black Crusade era CSM army (before the fluff took a turn for the stupid) you have to chop things up.

I mean, Primaris helmets are nearly identical to Mark IV ones, so...

Disney trilogy stormtrooper helmets are nearly identical to classic ones. And my reaction to them is the same.

It is a bit annoying that there arent as many classic helmets around, and all the new dead marine on bases are primaris. I know CSM terminators have firstborn helmets on racks and I think they also have the option for a primaris helmet as well. That makes me think it wasn't a "these models were designed before primaris existed, but are only released now" situation, so at least some models occasionally reference the firstborn.

However, I can kind of justify the CSM wanting trophies of the new, tougher space marines since they are more impressive to display. Still, I agree that there should be the option for first born helmets, or even other CSM helmets on trophies. Heck, they really should have the option for older marks of armor too, since many CSM are from the Heresy.

 Geifer wrote:

 stonehorse wrote:

 Geifer wrote:
That is such a weird picture.

How?

Why provide a scale if the numbers are wrong? Why not fix the numbers before the presentation? I don't know the context of what the picture was taken for. If it was for private use I'm not sure I could be bothered either, but if it was in any way meant for publication, that's not something I'd just leave like that. Not the least because it's such an easy fix.

The numbers aren't wrong, though. You're just fixed on measuring from 0.

Maybe its a context thing and I spent to long in museums and archives, but the bottom edge of a piece (or measuring device) is the most likely to get damaged, so its normal to me to measure from the '1' mark rather than fiddle with the potential rough edges/slants/whatever or the imprecision at the base of a ruler (I generally deal with smaller objects) where the edge is often a just a smidge past the zero mark. Even on a tape measure, the metal bit isn't exactly at zero and over time that tends to be loose anyway. So if you want real accuracy, you move up to the next mark and subtract one from the total.

I use 8' in my head canon because it seems right. 7 is too short, that's achievable right now w/o the Emperor's gift. I'd want all that gene work to add a bit more that a single foot in height, so unless we shrink significantly in the next 30k years, 7 isn't enough. The only mention I can remember in the fluff is that Blood Angel story in one of the second edition books (wargear I think) where the BA is said to be 7 foot. I imagine they give numbers in the BL books but I only read a select few authors and I can't bring any to mind.

JWBS wrote:
I use 8' in my head canon because it seems right. 7 is too short, that's achievable right now w/o the Emperor's gift. I'd want all that gene work to add a bit more that a single foot in height, so unless we shrink significantly in the next 30k years, 7 isn't enough. The only mention I can remember in the fluff is that Blood Angel story in one of the second edition books (wargear I think) where the BA is said to be 7 foot. I imagine they give numbers in the BL books but I only read a select few authors and I can't bring any to mind.

And scaled to GWs current normal humans that would mean marine models would be size of ogryns.

Voss wrote:

 Geifer wrote:

 stonehorse wrote:

 Geifer wrote:
That is such a weird picture.

How?

Why provide a scale if the numbers are wrong? Why not fix the numbers before the presentation? I don't know the context of what the picture was taken for. If it was for private use I'm not sure I could be bothered either, but if it was in any way meant for publication, that's not something I'd just leave like that. Not the least because it's such an easy fix.

The numbers aren't wrong, though. You're just fixed on measuring from 0.

Maybe its a context thing and I spent to long in museums and archives, but the bottom edge of a piece (or measuring device) is the most likely to get damaged, so its normal to me to measure from the '1' mark rather than fiddle with the potential rough edges/slants/whatever or the imprecision at the base of a ruler (I generally deal with smaller objects) where the edge is often a just a smidge past the zero mark. Even on a tape measure, the metal bit isn't exactly at zero and over time that tends to be loose anyway. So if you want real accuracy, you move up to the next mark and subtract one from the total.

Exactly this.
It’s 7 feet in the picture.
You don’t have to measure from 0 to be able to count, just need to start at one point and stop at another.
I always start at the 1 on a tape measure where I can do so, to get a more accurate read.

Danny76 wrote:

Voss wrote:

 Geifer wrote:

 stonehorse wrote:

 Geifer wrote:
That is such a weird picture.

How?

Why provide a scale if the numbers are wrong? Why not fix the numbers before the presentation? I don't know the context of what the picture was taken for. If it was for private use I'm not sure I could be bothered either, but if it was in any way meant for publication, that's not something I'd just leave like that. Not the least because it's such an easy fix.

The numbers aren't wrong, though. You're just fixed on measuring from 0.

Maybe its a context thing and I spent to long in museums and archives, but the bottom edge of a piece (or measuring device) is the most likely to get damaged, so its normal to me to measure from the '1' mark rather than fiddle with the potential rough edges/slants/whatever or the imprecision at the base of a ruler (I generally deal with smaller objects) where the edge is often a just a smidge past the zero mark. Even on a tape measure, the metal bit isn't exactly at zero and over time that tends to be loose anyway. So if you want real accuracy, you move up to the next mark and subtract one from the total.

Exactly this.
It’s 7 feet in the picture.
You don’t have to measure from 0 to be able to count, just need to start at one point and stop at another.
I always start at the 1 on a tape measure where I can do so, to get a more accurate read.

True Chads start from 10 so they don't have to subtract 1 from everything.

The "don't use 0 on a ruler" thing doesn't really apply though because there is no zero on that scale, it's just a weird way of doing it.

Maybe the reason for starting from 1 is the base?

Or maybe it's more simple than that, they started writing numbers from the top and got to the bottom and thought "oh gak, I miscounted, should have used a pencil instead of a pen so I can erase it.... oh well... it's not like 25 years from now nerds will still be discussing this on an internet forum".

Little did they know....

Danny76 wrote:

Voss wrote:

 Geifer wrote:

 stonehorse wrote:

 Geifer wrote:
That is such a weird picture.

How?

Why provide a scale if the numbers are wrong? Why not fix the numbers before the presentation? I don't know the context of what the picture was taken for. If it was for private use I'm not sure I could be bothered either, but if it was in any way meant for publication, that's not something I'd just leave like that. Not the least because it's such an easy fix.

The numbers aren't wrong, though. You're just fixed on measuring from 0.

Maybe its a context thing and I spent to long in museums and archives, but the bottom edge of a piece (or measuring device) is the most likely to get damaged, so its normal to me to measure from the '1' mark rather than fiddle with the potential rough edges/slants/whatever or the imprecision at the base of a ruler (I generally deal with smaller objects) where the edge is often a just a smidge past the zero mark. Even on a tape measure, the metal bit isn't exactly at zero and over time that tends to be loose anyway. So if you want real accuracy, you move up to the next mark and subtract one from the total.

Exactly this.
It’s 7 feet in the picture.
You don’t have to measure from 0 to be able to count, just need to start at one point and stop at another.
I always start at the 1 on a tape measure where I can do so, to get a more accurate read.

How is that more precise ? Very curious here !

On a flexible tape there is often a fitting on the end that is not calibrated to the scale. On a lot of metal rules the scale goes right to the end, but the end can get worn or dinked. In both cases you don’t have an accurate zero, so you should start inboard at a convenient increment (normally 1); this was one of the first things I was taught when I learnt technical drawing.

 Jadenim wrote:
On a flexible tape there is often a fitting on the end that is not calibrated to the scale. On a lot of metal rules the scale goes right to the end, but the end can get worn or dinked. In both cases you don’t have an accurate zero, so you should start inboard at a convenient increment (normally 1); this was one of the first things I was taught when I learnt technical drawing.

The end of a flexible tape usually is calibrated so that if you're on the inside and pull the tape you'll get the correct measure, and if you're on the outside and push the tape you'll get the right measure. It's just they end up damaged a lot of the time (at least at my work with shared tools I never trust them, but I know carpenters with their own tools that do).

But yeah, if the 0 mark is at the end of the device it will often be a bit inaccurate either because of wear or because of inaccuracies in how the device was cut, so you measure from some distance along the device rather than zero.

None of this applies to the Space Marine where the sheet doesn't start at 0 anyway. I think the more likely explanation is what I said in my previous post, they probably marked the 8' first and started counting down before realising there was only 7 squares, lol.

Voss wrote:
The numbers aren't wrong, though. You're just fixed on measuring from 0.

I am. Because it produces the same result but removes a step to get to it. No extra math involved if you can just read the correct number from the beginning.

I don't disagree, damaged or faultily calibrated tools need to be taken into consideration when you work with them, but if you put a grid on a piece of paper or cloth, you've made a new scale copied from your tool that's otherwise self-contained. At that point you had every chance to compensate for the inaccuracy at the end of your tape measure and not copy the flaw onto your grid. Why perpetuate a deficiency when you can just fix it?

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
True Chads start from 10 so they don't have to subtract 1 from everything.

I start at 13 and count down. I have no idea how you people can get accurate measurements with your backwards ways of doing things.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Or maybe it's more simple than that, they started writing numbers from the top and got to the bottom and thought "oh gak, I miscounted, should have used a pencil instead of a pen so I can erase it.... oh well... it's not like 25 years from now nerds will still be discussing this on an internet forum".

Little did they know....

True life lessons are always learned too late.