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Why cant SM be a bit bigger (as models) everywhere i look they are as tall, and in some cases shorter than a guardsman. In background they are 3m tall, and thats just the regular marines....so what gives?

i am meatshield wrote:Why cant SM be a bit bigger (as models) everywhere i look they are as tall, and in some cases shorter than a guardsman. In background they are 3m tall, and thats just the regular marines....so what gives?

The fact that in the background they're not 3 metere tall?

Jes did a 1:1 drawing of a marine once and they are universally eight foot one.

About 2.5 metres then. As to the models...GW sucks with model scale consistancy, as a rule.

Ive always heard the SM were just over 7 foot tall. 8 feet is a new one to me.
Its GW man, they suck at that stuff

Bookwrack wrote:
The fact that in the background they're not 3 metere tall?

Ermmm....wrong! The height of a Marine depends greatly on who wrote the fluff. If you read the Soul Drinkers second Novel, Chalice of something or other....in the opening sequence it describes the Space Marine chaplin as being 3m tall. Again, if you read the third book ( I think ) in the Grey Knights series, it describes Alaric as "having to kneel down" to be the same height as a normal man.....

There is no fixed height for Marines.

@ I AM MEATSHIELD

Yes, its a major bug bear of mine as well, either scale your models correctly or correct the fluff. Why GW is so fixated on Marines having to be Giants is beyond me anyway, they could still have the "SUPER POWERS" and be the size of a normal to slightly taller male......

The argument that if the MArines were correct scale they wouldn't fit in the vehicles.....simple, correct scale the vehicles as well.....its not really that hard is it?

Can't say it matters. It don't really matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't really matter. Can't say it matters.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Can't say it matters. It don't really matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't really matter. Can't say it matters.

I never understand this point......( my firend says it alot! )......ok, if it didn't matter, we'd all be using proxies and card board cut-outs.....hell, it'd be cheaper at least. The whole point of buying Marines, and playing Marines is because you either like the fluff and the miniatures ( hopefully you take some pleasure from the game, but not always I guess! ) or you like the fluff and accept the miniatures as the closest thing you can buy to represent the fluff!

I'm sorry, but the hobby of miniatures and modelling it matter a big deal!

Marines aren't too short - Guardsmen are too tall.

In the far future of humanity, even basic troopers are 6' 6" tall.

I always figured they were like professional wrestlers after their years of indoctrination and modifications, at least 6.5 feet +. Any bigger than that and it gets ridiculous, they would be smart Ogryns.

There was an article that did a basic comparison of American soldiers from WW1, WW2, and current. The average kid joining up now weighs 50 lbs more than the average man signing up for WW1. Modern kids have more muscle mass and bone density because the kids a hundred years ago and 60 years ago didn't eat as well or as healthy and didn't have access to medicines we have today. We also eat processed food where meat is full of growth hormones making kids physically mature faster and larger than previous generations. No telling what it will be like on industrialized worlds in the future, depending on the technology/health level of the planet's population.

Primitive cultures tend to be a lot shorter and smaller, but tougher and healthier, people from cities are sicker compared to farmers because of pollution and population density and outbreaks of diseases. Once they go through SM indoctrination, they're all the same cookie cutter pattern of 'roided out Marine.

IG should be different depending on the planet they're based from and they are to a certain extent..

The reason why they don't make bigger (true scale) marines is that it would mean they'd have to get rid of the entire range consisting of 20 years of work. I doubt GW would willingly do that.

GW should be down-sizing Guardsmen back to RT-era sizes, for a scale height of 5' 9" for most troopers, 6' 0" for officers and such.

Everything would look better that way.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Can't say it matters. It don't really matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't really matter. Can't say it matters.

Agreed.

How long (in simulated time) is a turn or a phase?

What is an inch of table supposed to represent (Are we supposed to calculate based on the scales of the models or the scale of the ranges??????)??

Why can't things move (in simulated space) at the same time?

Does a model figure actually represent one man? A squad? A company?

GW doesn't care, doesn't say, and we are left to come to our own conclusions. GW games are not games of scale, they're just fun games that are easily enjoyed on their own merits.

-Tesseract
Who doesn't ask because they aint telling.

@tesseract, i have always thought that for 25-28mm miniatures an inch represents 5-feet, as this is what it is in DnD which uses about the same scale

utulien of the imperium wrote:@tesseract, i have always thought that for 25-28mm miniatures an inch represents 5-feet, as this is what it is in DnD which uses about the same scale

Yes....but strictly interpreting distances on the table off of that...a bolt pistol would have an effective range of 60 feet and a LASER weapon (Something that could in reality shoot an incredible distance) has a range of 240 feet (Not even the length of an American football field. Tiger Woods could ACCURATELY hit a golf ball much further than a laser targeted LASCANNON can shoot...IF 1:5 was the correct scale.).

Soooo, I don't worry about relative model sizes because it isn't important to the game. It goes even beyond true scale. Transports are too small to carry their game loadout, tanks have no room for ammo, yadda yadda yadda... none of that is part of the game.

It's fun to talk about and make fun of (If you are the evil troll type), but game scales have never been published by GW and that is more than indicative to ME that GW does not consider scale to be important in the game. (If it was, they'd tell you these things) That's perfectly fine with me.

-Tesseract
Who plays StarGrunt if he wants to think about scale in a sci-fi combat game

As I see it, the in-game scale is exponential.

The 1" on tabletop = 6' in-game only holds at the minimum tabletop distance of 1' or so.

As the tabletop distance increases, the scale distance increases exponentially, so that ranges make sense.

Thus, 24" isn't 150', but rather it's more like 700', and 36" isn't 200', but rather more like 1300 ft.

JohnHwangDD wrote:As I see it, the in-game scale is exponential.

The 1" on tabletop = 6' in-game only holds at the minimum tabletop distance of 1' or so.

As the tabletop distance increases, the scale distance increases exponentially, so that ranges make sense.

Thus, 24" isn't 150', but rather it's more like 700', and 36" isn't 200', but rather more like 1300 ft.

In essense 40K models are black holes that have their own reality event horizon (EVERYTHING IS RELATIVISTIC!!!)? That's new to me, but I like it!

I've heard another player created rationale that argues that the table scale is really 1:200 and that a troop model represented a "stand" of 32 troops. The rules actually make sense. The game rules, turn sequence, EVERYTHING actually makes sense!!! The current incarnation of 40K rules have always been more like Command Decision (which uses that scale) than a true 1:1 true scale tactical game.

The bottom line is that GW isn't telling and your guess is as good as mine. (I really do like your rolling relativity of scale though)

-Tesseract
Who knows no more but feels smarter for reading JohnHwangDD's post

The many:1 thing also works, but is really best represented by using Epic models for 40k (or Warmster models for WFB).

OGRE had a decent dodge saying that the models were "displayed" at several times their actual size relative to ground.

I think a lot of it is so that marines and various 40k and fantasy humans can exchange heads and other parts for conversion.

JohnHwangDD wrote:The many:1 thing also works, but is really best represented by using Epic models for 40k (or Warmster models for WFB).

OGRE had a decent dodge saying that the models were "displayed" at several times their actual size relative to ground.

Agreed.

Your second point also is relevant to the relative sizes of GW minis.

I think there's a good reason GW ignores scale. Ignoring scale also frees them from the rule conventions other games impose on their systems to keep their rule abstractions intact. Traditionally, wargames have tried to be at "some" level real life simulations and needed published scales to govern and justify their rules.

Rules as written has semantic challenges, but if you also imposed on most GW players the interpretation of a rule's intent in the context of published distances and timing and scales...chaos!

Command Decision (And I only use that game because "some" wargamers have described it as similarly scaled to 40K in terms of rule abstractions...and the rules are on the bookshelf next to me) has the published scales of one inch (on your table) is 150 feet, one game turn is 15 minutes of real time, one vehicle model is 4-6 actual vehicles, and one infantry base is 40-60 men. Can you imagine how GW fans would react if they realized that correct table scales means that their terrain is horribly overscaled (just to make sense of 40K weapon ranges), or that many rules simply make no sense if you also have more than a 1:1 relationship of model to troop (Even though at 1:1 with proportioned range scales mean that infantry in 40K is standing hundreds of yards from each other...I'm looking at you fluff NAZIs... )?

Ignoring scales allows GW to write more abstract rules that don't have to be justified as any kind of simulation (I think most can agree on that). This's a good thing. I think GW knows what its doing.

-Tesseract
Who has beaten this topic to death

love neals comment, guradsmen ARE too tall, an its funny when i see some small kid (novice) trying to shove 7 or so figurines into a rhino.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
its also confusing when there are several novices
gathered around the gaming table, some of their
models are huge while others are more conservative.
I agree that GW has left us (the gamers) to use our intuition to work out the relative sizes and to mainly
USE OUR IMAGINATIONS.

p.s thank you all for becoming involved

You know, its funny, to those that don't care about, essentially fluff to gaming top accuracy. I wonder how far you'd "spit the dummy" if GW brought out a new Gargant that was the size of a IG Walker? or an Emp Class Titan, the size of a SM Dread?

Would you buy it based on your current assertions that size "doesn't matter"? I'm willing to bet you'd avoid it like swine flu!

So, why this double standard I wonder? Is it because, no matter how much we complain, in reality GW won't change a damn thing? I would agree on this. However, just because the mighty GW turns a blind eye to this "minor indescretion"....does it make it OK?

To me, the whole thing could be easily solved by, in fact, altering the fluff....hell, its not like they haven't done that before, and make their "super human" warriors, just man sized.....oh look, problem solved. Sure the usual suspects would call foul on the dramatic change in the fluff, but anyone new to the game would accept it as is, and behold, no more threads like this!

However, in true GW style, they continue to beat themselves with a rod of their own creation. So why should I bother to excuse their idiocy with lame D.I.Y type solutions and "use your imagination" type response.

You know what, to all new players of WH40K, don't buy the new miniatures, simply cut out the middle man and imagine yourself an ork horde, just write on paper the the things you would have bought, and move plastic counters around the terrain....yay, a blue one is a whole marine battle company, and a green one is a complete Ork Waargh......imagine the money you can save, and the time painting a cleaning the minis.....

# Just as a final note.....the whole idea / ideal of miniatures is NOT have to imagine the army you are representing. To go to such lengths as to create the miniatures they do, I personally think its a small request that the minis they make adhere completely to the fluff they push#

Midget Marines?

Delephont wrote:You know, its funny, to those that don't care about, essentially fluff to gaming top accuracy. I wonder how far you'd "spit the dummy" if GW brought out a new Gargant that was the size of a IG Walker? or an Emp Class Titan, the size of a SM Dread?

Would you buy it based on your current assertions that size "doesn't matter"? I'm willing to bet you'd avoid it like swine flu!

5th edition GW is not a realistic game (Fluff wise or any other wise). It’s a fun game with great playing pieces depicting fantasy armies with some sci-fi gear (And skulls!). If you want to knock them for being unrealistic ... the size of their pieces is hardly the most significant issue. It's not a big deal either way, but the tone of your post suggests that your indignation should be shared by everyone. Actually, this kind of stuff is part of the charm of 40K. Poking holes in the continuity, logic, or reality of 40K is not that hard. GW games are about attitude not reality...movement not logistics...aesthetics not scale (Which is why I doubt they would warp sizes as much as you suggest). A game with attitude, movement, and aesthetics can be just as fun as one with reality, logistics, and scale.

There are other publishers who slave over simulation in their games. GW doesn't.

`Tesseract
Who used to slam GW for not being the company he wanted them to be, but has always enjoyed their games for what they are

BrookM wrote:Jes did a 1:1 drawing of a marine once and they are universally eight foot one.

He started the drawing 1 foot off the ground though, so it's actually 7 foot.

lalabox wrote:Midget Marines?

squats?