True Scale vs Primaris

[Warmachine90]

So since Primaris got released i had mixed feelings for the new and shiny angels of death. I feared a replacement of my miniatures and started to deny Primaris where i could. 

But the flesh is weak and i bought two sets of Dark Imperium. And it was kind of allright until new Primaris units came up.

Lost much interest in Space Marines thanks to the primarisfication and 40k because of the power creep.

 

But today I had an idea. Why even bother with the size problem between noble Astartes and these heretical abominations? Why not just enlarge the Astartes as the same hight as Primaris, convert Rhinos with antigrav-tech-heresy (maybe just magnetize to just cover the tracks?) and fight on for the glory of our beloved Emperor?

 

I'm at the starting point, muttering in my chapter forge in binary tong. Has anyone of you got in touch with converted true scale Marines for count as Primaris? Do you have similar idea for a brain storming?

 

Let me hear your wise words, brothers.

 

The Emperor protects!

[Hymnblade]

Primaris are truescale marines. That's kind of the point. Yes, GW didn't handle the lore for their introduction well, but "official truescale marines" was obviously the idea behind them in the first place.

 

Why not just... field them and say they're truescale marines, rather than do a ton of conversions to end up at the same place?

 

Or are you specifically looking to convert your existing collection rather than getting new miniatures? It's going to be pretty hard to take an assembled, painted miniature and make it truescale.

[Robbienw]

Primaris aren’t truescale, they are still heroically proportioned in many areas.

[Hymnblade]

"Truescale marines" has never meant "not heroic scale" though, just "legs an appropriate length for the body, and taller than a Guardsman".

[Robbienw]

If that’s true it’s a bit of a misnomer then :lol:

[Lucerne]

Truescale Marines would be the best of both worlds and lots of people- hi Doghouse, hi Apologist- have done their takes on them. A few might whinge about us fans, but frankly truescale Marines are a great way to make a good looking and art-accurate army and we'd be better off if GW would treat their iconic range half as seriously as they have random chaos warriors or stormcasts.

 

Sadly, the only people that could make a perfect truescale Marine are GW, by taking two minutes with their file and upscaling the space marines 110% vertically in their 3D design program from Heroes scale, then adjusting the torso to be less cramped. Bizarrely, they aren't doing that, likely out of some misplaced sense of avoiding backlash or just simple laziness.

 

As a hobbyist you have three realistic options for truescaling.

 

1)Convert Primaris/terminator parts into something roughly approximating oldmarines. Doghouse and Apologist and Markus_ did this.

2)Plasticard spacers in the regular marines to add height. (Try 1mm in shin and thigh and add a waist spacer.) Anvils of Konor does good work here, as do other hobbyists.

3)Somehow get a full, accurate 3D file that has the Space Marine Heroes proportions and print it at 110% size vertically. As for who might do this? I can't say.

 

These are all headaches to do and none are perfect but all will give decent results for a lot of time energy and money invested.

 

1 is straightforward but involves a lot of filing and greenstuffing.

2 is...very hands on. Lots of cutting, reposing, and filing but can be very subtle.

3 is the future but I'm not sure we're there yet.

 

As for the definition of truescale?

 

I'd call it art-accurate Marine height next to the current human models (ie: blackstone guardsmen or starstriders or new cultists). Literally head and shoulders taller than guard.

 

 

This is a good "minimum" height for a truescale attempt.

 

In terms of the models themselves, "classic" Marine designs, including the Heroes and nuCSM have three major problems.

 

1)The torso is squashed. Always. There's not enough room for the chest details (seriously compare the aquila on models to the aquila on artwork and it's hilariously divergent) and it's anatomically bad. This may be the single worst part of old Marine sculpts. It also can be "wasp waisted"- remember, there needs to be room for the chest and waist inside the armour of a Marine.

 

2)Thighs, shins, and sometimes boots are a bit too short.

 

GW would solve these by just stretching the torso and legs by 110%.

For example, through the magic of paint edits:

https://i.imgur.com/gRoQ8Df.png

https://i.imgur.com/mZMCscN.png

 

As hobbyists, we instead need to get creative to do it for them.

 

Intercessor rules work well for "lore accurate" Tactical Marines that brought a lot of bolters but no special/heavy weapons, as well as representing things like the stalker bolter more than oldmarine rules did. Hellblasters can be counts-as "devastators with plasma cannons". Anything else is a bit neglected for Primaris counts-as, sadly. I think the best way to make a "lore Marine" force with primaris rules is just HQs and vanguard (infiltrators as sternguard veterans)/Intercessors, depending on your Chapter's theme.

Edited February 16, 2020 by Lucerne

[Warmachine90]

Thank you, Lucerne. Your post helped me a lot :).

 

@Black Blow Fly: Don't play with the powers of the treacherous warp too easily ;)

[Marshal Rohr]

There’s Primaris-scale, truescale, and artscale. Primaris scale is bringing old marines into the new GW house style by converting up Primaris marines with various Oldmarine parts (Apologist’s new Word Bearers log). There’s truescale, which focuses on increasing the all around beefiness of the legs and torso, frequently by using terminator parts (Apologist’s praetors follows Calth or the Doghouse methods). Artscale is using existing kits imbigulated to stay within GW house style and matching the Paul Dainton/Karl Kopinski/Adrian Smith style artwork (Capt. Jacks’s models or Brother Heinrich and Dan the Daemons Night Lords). Each one has its own pros and cons. Primaris scale and Truescale pretty much mean vehicles for oldmarines will always appear a little off without extensive conversion. Artscale can use vehicles without much issue (it can help to add about 2mm between the track sections and main body of each vehicle. Artscale essentially brings oldmarines in line with the new chaos range, which is great is keeping models as close to their original form as possible is your goal. Primaris scale oldmarines gives you great opportunities to hyper-detail marine models (check out Sus-an membrane on IG). Truescale is really its own league of aesthetic that walks right off of a Neil Roberts cover to grind your army into dust and conveys the tankiness of space marines.

 

None of these are for players who just wanna pop some models out of the box, glue parts together, and game because each requires a significant investment in time to make the scale carry across. The effect of any army converted like this is undeniable though. Apologist, Doghouse, Jack, Dan the Daemon, and Heinrich frequently show up at the top of google searches for conversions because they’re models are so popular.

[Philip S]

I'm thinking the Primaris will make a good base for true scale marines, and with the higher stats, we'd have proper marines as they were always meant to be.

[Dracos]

A rose by any other name . . .

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

I'm thinking the Primaris will make a good base for true scale marines, and with the higher stats, we'd have proper marines as they were always meant to be.

Maybe in another universe.

[War Angel]

 

I'm thinking the Primaris will make a good base for true scale marines, and with the higher stats, we'd have proper marines as they were always meant to be.

Maybe in another universe.

Curious as to what you mean by this

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

GW has the Series 2 via the Asian market. It is not an extensive range by any means and that is as good as it’ll ever get for official plastic kit. Is silly to think anything else as GeeDubs is heavily invested in Primaris and for good reason.

[Doghouse]

Well the term "Truescale" was coined by Elusive71 with his method of using spacers to bulk out the multipart plastic kit and was applied to anything else that came after. Although I was doing a lot of experimenting at the time that took me in other directions he made the first truescale model.

 

When I actually made my version of truescale the idea behind it was to make Heresy models. They were inspired by the 54mm Artemis model by Jes Goodwin and the artwork of Karl Kopinski, they were also made the way they were to make them look like greek heroes of old. The first truescale marine using my method was an Alpha Legion marine.

 

My general idea was to set the Heresy apart from 40k in an almost historical way. to make the Astartes larger than life. Bearing in mind that at the time we only had a handful (seven I think at the time) of heresy novels and the IA articles it was a seriously niche thing and we treated it very much in a similar way to historical wargamers would. Synapse over on Warseer was the first to complete a truescale army with his really nice World Eaters and his truescale terminators. Then Ed (Apologist) did his Praetors but I was too busy helping people with projects, helping people with their army lore and tutorials and trying to push truescaling further to get an army done. It was a very innovative time where a lot of us were experimenting wildly with stuff but the general Truescale term became to mean 42mm from eyes to soles of the feet.

 

Truescale for me peaked with my Cataphracti  based model (actually have about 60 of these nearly completed sat in a box somewhere) then the Primaris were released and I was done with truescaling because it was already an official thing now.

 

While i can personally see the Astartes being replaced by the Primaris line at some point I do kind of like the idea of them being two different sizes, I'd like to know the actual size of a primaris out of interest.

 

You could convert primaris into older astartes for an army but it might be worth keeping the primaris weapons intact for wysiwyg purposes. Truth is from a lore perspective a great deal of time has passed and with more Astartes being upgraded to Primaris that some may incorporate "their favourite helmet" to quote Jes Goodwin giving them a much more relic appearence to the guys fresh off the line.

[Lucerne]

GW has the Series 2 via the Asian market. It is not an extensive range by any means and that is as good as it’ll ever get for official plastic kit. Is silly to think anything else as GeeDubs is heavily invested in Primaris and for good reason.

Wow, I didn't realize we had someone from GW home office here to tell us how things are going to go!

Edited February 22, 2020 by Lucerne

[Bryan Blaire]

Pretty sure that Jes Goodwin even said in one of his VoxCasts that the Primaris models started as a rescaling of the Marines project...

[Volt]

Part of the problem is that Primaris themselves aren't even to Primaris scale! They're just the size of what a marine should be compared to the guard models, but at the same time Primaris are supposed to be nebulously taller than that. How tall exactly we don't know, could be as little as a single foot or as much as two. The only real metric to go by is the original 8th edition Space Marine Codex showcasing units from one of the Ultramarines companies, with primaris and oldmarines drawn side-by-side.

 

 

So if you want truescale primaris, you'd better bust out that plasticard

[Jings]

Part of the problem is that Primaris themselves aren't even to Primaris scale! They're just the size of what a marine should be compared to the guard models, but at the same time Primaris are supposed to be nebulously taller than that. How tall exactly we don't know, could be as little as a single foot or as much as two. The only real metric to go by is the original 8th edition Space Marine Codex showcasing units from one of the Ultramarines companies, with primaris and oldmarines drawn side-by-side.

 

 

I've found it's better for my sanity to just ignore anything GW put out regarding Space Marine size and just run Marines as 7 1/2-8' tall, with Primaris being 8-8 1/2'. Means Custodes are 9' and taller than the lot.

 

Without getting into a rant about Primaris lore, it grinds my gears that GW didn't just make all new Astartes models Primaris sized and instead made Chaos dudes slightly smaller and ignored Firstborn Loyalists entirely. It's just such a baffling decision that could have been entirely resolved by increasing the size in Blender by like 10% either way.

[Marshal Rohr]

For anyone interested it’s less labor intensive to elongate the new chaos marines and deathwatch than any previous kits. If you go for real life proportions, just extend the thighs by about 1.5-2mm, the neck and waist by .5. If you go for heroic scale just add 2mm to the shins and .5 at the neck and waist. The heroic scale will look a *little* weird when you pick it up but from the table you won’t notice at all.

[Philip S]

 

I'm thinking the Primaris will make a good base for true scale marines, and with the higher stats, we'd have proper marines as they were always meant to be.

Maybe in another universe.

 

Philverse? :P

 

+++

 

Perhaps we need a truescale Primaris marine project?

When I designed the space marine 3D model for my Black Library covers back in the day, truescale was all the rage, I thought one day I could use my 3D models as a base for a 3D print on day in the far future (the technology was not that developed back then, but I could dream!). This would give continuity between the artwork and the models, with the art as a more detail version of the 28mm scale models, but also have the option for highly detailed collector pieces larger than 54mm! Mind you I also thought they could be used for a comics :P

I would be nice to have a range of 'historic' 40K miniature, all built to scale.

[Doghouse]

Technically a truescale primaris already exists.

 

 

The limited editon lt is pretty huge, even bigger than a regular Primaris and that is after removing the base and taking into account the stance of the legs being straight. By my measurements he's about a head taller which should be about the right size when compared to a truescale space marine.

[Volt]

For anyone interested it’s less labor intensive to elongate the new chaos marines and deathwatch than any previous kits. If you go for real life proportions, just extend the thighs by about 1.5-2mm, the neck and waist by .5. If you go for heroic scale just add 2mm to the shins and .5 at the neck and waist. The heroic scale will look a *little* weird when you pick it up but from the table you won’t notice at all.

My main criticism actually is with armor thickness, space marine thighs are way too thin, as are some other body parts such as the abdominal cavity to both fit armor, subsystems, and the actual wearer. Part of the reason why I actually like the base Primaris MK X armor is that it is appropriately chunky, but besides MK 3 marines most of the marine armor is too thin to properly fit a superhuman inside of it with any kind of muscle.

[D3L]

when truescaling, never, repeat never extend the shins, anatomically it's the daftest thing you can see people attempting to do is make and army of Captain Shin-McShinson, embiggen the chest and thighs if you have to, but good lawd, not the shins, even Peter Crouch doesnt have shins longer than his thighs, and when would it end? truescaling cadians back down? 

go easy on yourself, embrace the heroic scale

Edited February 23, 2020 by D3L

[Veteran Sergeant]

when truescaling, never, repeat never extend the shins, anatomically it's the daftest thing 

Hmm...  The Vitruvian Man seems to disagree with you.  You can see where the model's right knee matches up with the diagram's right knee, and the lower leg on the model is consistent with the length of the diagram's lower leg.  If anything, the shin section is still slightly too short with an extension.

 

 

And that's because the upper leg is under the soft armor where it meets the pelvis, not just the plating.  Most of the reason you're confused is the average model's stance is awkward, so lengthened shins make the lower leg look too long, but the boot also has a platform to it, meaning the foot isn't flush with the ground, and the thigh armor gives the illusion that the upper leg is shorter than it is. However, both sections need to be more or less equally extended to result in a properly proportionate leg compared to the arms and an extended torso.  The legs of humans also attach on an angle, not straight up and down, so a single plate of thigh armor cannot encircle the entirety of the upper leg without impeding the range of motion.  Space Marine armor "solves" this by incorporating the "soft" armor at the joints, which is largest and most pronounced where the leg meets the hip, because unlike an elbow or knee, the leg has a significantly higher range of motion. The shoulder's weak point is covered by the pauldrons. Mk 8 and Primaris armor supplements the pelvic joints with additional plates.

 

The whole basic Space Marine model was borked, proportionately. It's why all these modeling projects came about in the first place.  Big long gorilla arms, big heads. It wasn't like all the modelers just started arbitrarily making the legs and torsos longer, lol.  I did the models originally with just thigh extensions, until by observation and anatomical comparison I realize that the legs were still too short compared to the arms, and the discrepancy was now below the knee. 

 

For further reference, and I invite you to test if on your own legs, from the top of my ankle to the bottom of my kneecap is 13 inches.  From the top of my kneecap to groin is a little over 10.  About a 1.3:1 ratio. The outside length of my upper leg is closer to 14, or roughly the same length as my lower leg. With shin extensions, the lower leg and outer thigh lengths are almost identical (to the extent I can accurately measure in millimeter fractions). An unmodified shin is, unsurprisingly, roughly 1 full mm shorter on a model roughly 40mm in height (bottom of foot to top of head),  leaving it vastly out of proportion. 

Edited March 16, 2020 by Veteran Sergeant

[jaxom]

 

For anyone interested it’s less labor intensive to elongate the new chaos marines and deathwatch than any previous kits. If you go for real life proportions, just extend the thighs by about 1.5-2mm, the neck and waist by .5. If you go for heroic scale just add 2mm to the shins and .5 at the neck and waist. The heroic scale will look a *little* weird when you pick it up but from the table you won’t notice at all.

My main criticism actually is with armor thickness, space marine thighs are way too thin, as are some other body parts such as the abdominal cavity to both fit armor, subsystems, and the actual wearer. Part of the reason why I actually like the base Primaris MK X armor is that it is appropriately chunky, but besides MK 3 marines most of the marine armor is too thin to properly fit a superhuman inside of it with any kind of muscle.

 

I forget where I first saw it, but the adding spacers without messing with the other proportions (basically just getting rid of the gorilla arms by extending legs) was referred to as Tall Scaling and I've used that mentally ever since. 

 

There's a lot of issues with how space marines are put together, with the armour, but none of them are unique. It's an issue a lot of IPs run into when dealing with power armour. The worst offenders tend to be comic books. There's a reason why the majority of the movie Iron Man armour is CGI; to get the right comic book look the armour has to be skintight, but look layered. And that's a big part of it, there's the question of: how much space does the non-armour portion take up? In many ways it comes down to conveying the right fantasy. One reason I love how the models were sized and moved in the Space Marine video game is they felt like they had heft, weight, and could plow through a group of people, but they were also not so Juggernaut-y that they couldn't swagger with the confidence a genetically-engineered hyper-competent supersoldier should have.