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Having been slightly disillusioned with the current 40K ruleset and the increasingly annoying trend for older models and indeed units to get completely sidelined or even invalidated in favour of shiny new ones, I've been looking back to 4th edition for gaming purposes; the rules are reasonably cheap to acquire on the second-hand market, it's a solid edition, and the wealth of plastic kits, 3D printable models and (depending on what you want) back-catalogue of unwanted models on eBay play very nicely with the high degree of customizability of most units, to say nothing of good experiences from friends with it and personal bias. Plus, being a very old edition, it's not in danger of a surprise FAQ/PDF patch changing everything and thus throwing plans into disarray, leaving the edition "stable". Hopefully I should be able to find some like-minded players in my area (I have a fantastic FLGS so I'm reasonably optimistic). Anyway, whilst I intend to backport my Tyranids to 4th (glory days of the Carnifex!) I also suckered myself into starting a little 1000 point force of Space Marines. Nothing too fancy, just a nice little army of regular, non-truescaled Marines circa the early 2000s. I had been considering upsizing everyone to make them a bit more proportionate, but between the amount of work it would require, the fact I quite like the standard Marine models even with their more "heroic" proportions, and the fact there's a lot of older sculpts that, whilst definitely small by today's standards, are still really nice models (see: every metal Chaplain ever) I decided I'd save any "truescaling" efforts for INQ28 and the like, where the much lower modelcount and emphasis on conversion would make it more appropriate. So naturally I went on eBay and bought the 4E Codex and also 3 metal Veterans (and one bonus Jes Goodwin '86 Chaos sorcerer that happened to be there too). Having them in hand they're wonderful models; full of character and delightfully sculpted. They actually feel bigger than they are, partially due to the heft andpartially due to the particular sculpting making the fudged proportions a lot less obvious. I had printed some backpacks in anticipation of their arrival (along with an entire Dreadnought I found on Cults!), wrote up a list and started assembling them ready for painting. As I was doing so, just for fun I took some size comparison pictures with some other minis, and I made a few interesting observations. Firstly, next to older "human" minis, whilst still a bit short they are noticably bigger. I feel the size difference between man and Astartes has been slightly flanderized over the years, and honestly this feels acceptable. I know newer mortal models are a touch bigger, but it shouldn't be too noticable, especially given the foes I'm likely to be facing. Secondly, newer parts still look relatively at home on them. The company standard bearer there has a WIP banner arm made from Tor Garadon's arm of all things (only Loyalist arm I had and I couldn't be bothered printing another one at the time) and whilst close inspection reveals it's a touch big, it's not really noticable from tabletop distance and with the banner it shouldn't be noticed at all. (He did come with his power fist but I have other plans for that!) Thirdly, and this is where things get interesting, whilst Primaris are definitely bigger than Firstborn by some amount, I actually don't think they make their older friends look patently absurd. Now if you put an unconverted metal Librarian next to some Intercessors, he would be a little small in comparison for sure. However, this converted Marine (based on Primaris but being converted into a truescaled Firstborn) could easily pass as just a very large Astartes next to his metal battle-brothers, and for a leader character this would honestly be fine. Some Marines are noteworthy for being unusually large after all; even when stuck with a very small miniature, Abaddon was always described as gigantic by the standards of his legion, and it's not out of the question that there would be vastly differing statures of Marine in the same chapter, let alone the same galaxy. Also, just for fun I compared my printed Dreadnought to a FW Mk. IV (technically occupied by a Sororitas because that's a thing I'm doing?) and realized it's actually a bit bigger! Not drastically so, and certainly in a ballpark that is could be explained away as an artificier model of Dreadnought that is just slightly bigger. For rules purposes I don't think anyone would get particularly riled up by either Dreadnought. One is not sufficiently bigger than the other to have any great LOS advantage and they're both on the same base. But it did get me thinking on whether the pursuit of more "realistic" scale is actually all that necessary, desirable, or indeed worth paying too much attention to. Case in point, the humble Rhino. We all know that unless you're playing with RTB001 Marines (you jammy git) there is no way 10 Marines will fit in the back. It's not really a big deal, because at the end of the day it's a wargame and some degree of abstraction for convenience is required. If everything were true to scale, to fit 10 Marine and their wargear inside (assuming a "true scale" Marine is the size of a Primaris) the Rhino would be absolutely massive. Massive enough it would cost a lot more, take up a large amount of battlefield space and be a bit of a nightmare to actually use. Now, obviously vehicles are a bit of a separate case from infantry, and even historicals often have "representative" scale for vehicles, but I do wonder if the pursuit of a more "accurate" scale has at best been focused too heavily on, and at worst has been used as an excuse by GW to deliberately make people's armies obsolete for no very good reason. For sure, the newer Marines definitely scale better than the old ones, but at least in my opinion I'd say the upgrade is marginal enough that outside of really old models I don't think old-scale Marines really look all that terrible. Heck, to my eye they can actually coexist in the same collection and look pretty damn fantastic if planned out well. There may be cases where the scale gets a bit odd but 40K's scale is so utterly borked on every level- such as the Rhino- that honestly I really don't think the difference between existing Firstborn models and their Primaris counterparts is the most egregious thing in the world. Even the Chaos range can be explained away by them being over 10000 years old/jacked up on Chaos juice/both and thus being physically larger than their loyalist foes. Honestly, the inconsistent scale of the Marines bothers me far less than the weird scale creep of everything else. Human-sized models are steadily getting bigger, and for seemingly no reason. Older scale humans scale better with Firstborn and Primaris, whereas the newer ones don't even scale particularly well with each other! This obviously doesn't apply to xenos, who being completely fictional (and, well, inhuman) are less blatant next to human/Astartes models if they aren't quite to scale, but still. I'd actually find the difference between modern and classic Marine sizes far less bothersome if human sized models had remained the same, as it would make the "Primaris are bigger than Firstborn" angle a bit more believable and less like a cover for the entire miniature range being slowly replaced with weirdly larger successors. However, I would like to end on a happy note and say I think that by virtue of 40K sucking at scale on a level that makes Getter Robo seem fairly grounded, if you can remember that 40K has never been true-scaled anyway and just collect models that appeal to you, GW's replacement scheme falls apart a bit. Having better scaled models as a carrot on a stick to get you to buy your entire army again doesn't work quite so well when you remember "better scaled" basically means "0.03% less ridiculously out of proportion". Combined with the availability of alternative miniatures being much greater nowadays (and if you have access to a printer they can be whatever scale you want!) and I'd say if people can learn to restrain themselves and not buy models they don't actually want, GW could maybe, possibly, learn from the resultant drop in sales that their current planned obsolescence/BUY NEW THING model isn't sustainable. Or they won't, but you'll be comfortable in the knowledge that you don't have to give GW your money for the new Primaris Discombobulators if you're happy with regular Terminators (or for that matter non-GW alternatives). As a TLDR to all that; 40K scale is far too messed up to care that much about, and that can actually work in our favour. ...This of course does not apply to actual sculpting quality; I think it's safe to say new Catachans would be welcome (from anyone) regardless of size, because, oof. Anyway. Ramble/excuse to post models over. Thoughts?

http://i.imgur.com/diCjF4Y.jpg http://i.imgur.com/twaNIFr.jpg

Made upon request over on Warhammer Empire. I've not sculpted lamellar before, and have no showcase miniature to accompany the tutorial, so this was made up on the spot. Better results are probably achieved by taking it in steps and waiting for one stage to dry before continuing to next, but this tutorial is quick 'n' dirty. Hopefully it's of some use to someone somewhere: ____________________________ More Reference http://www.hoashantverk.se/hantverk/hoas_rustningar/image/suit_of_armour_no_25_front.jpg http://i45.tinypic.com/4zvv4z.jpg http://swedisharmory.se/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/IMG_2807.jpg http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RAdjQgXbIHk/U3i1FddKtLI/AAAAAAAAD1I/KFaAvTyQyJ8/s1600/Varangian_Guard.jpg