Rescaling, how necessary is/was it, and does it even matter?

[Evil Eye]

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?

[Mazer Rackham]

The Juan Diaz Space Marine Veterans I & II, plus the Sternguard models are some of the finest models ever created in the range. The 1998 plastic kits were the absolute bomb after the horrible monoposes that came before, and recaptured my love of RTB 01 Beakies. I think for a scale shock, you might want to put old metal IG next to old metal RT beakies.

 

Who am your giant now? 

 

I remember fourth edition well. Knew it upside down and backwards. Liked it a lot.

[Special Officer Doofy]

Nobody is making anyone buy new GW stuff. GW made Primaris marines and a majority of people bought into them, for whatever reason. I find alot of people that play 40k, particularly marine players who collect multiple marine armies, have a hard time practicing this "restraint" you speak of. That's why everytime GW does a price increase I see the same 20ish fraters here go "they are pricing me out I'm done". Well most of them are not done, and it doesn't matter when there are people out there buying multiple new stuff for their multiple armies. This might be a bad analogy but I heard alot of cellphone games with micro transactions make like 95% of their money off of 5% that play. Obviously 40k isn't nearly as bad as that, but as long as there are "whales" as people put it, then the like minded people like you won't make a dent into their sales.

 

As far as scale, it is all over the place and always has been, you're right. It only bothers me for my guys though. If my opponent has a bunch of older, smaller firstborn models and newer larger Primaris ones, the size differences doesn't bother me in the slightest. Usually matching paint jobs helps everything look coherent. But it does bother me for my army (my own OCD). I play death guard and the new death guard only stuff is larger and more detailed (whether you like the detail more is obviously debatable) than older chaos marine stuff. I won't use non DG specific stuff because of the smaller scale and worse detail (purely as in older), like rhino's, helbrutes and Predators (not to mention worse rules and no access to disgustingly resilient). But that's my own restriction I put on myself. 

 

You just got to get the most out of the hobby that works the best for you. If playing an older edition with older models and other locals that want to as well works for you, do it. This hobby is far too expensive to not be enjoying it.

Edited February 28, 2023 by Special Officer Doofy

[MegaVolt87]

Big marines in older units don't bother me. They are great as HQ's and unit sarge's. People have been using a CSM as a sarge or larger CSM like the havoc champ like this in HH with conversions. It works. Scale creep will always be there (GW can't help themselves), you have to work around it. 

[Firedrake Cordova]

It'd bug me if similar models within my army were obviously differently-sized, although if there's a lore explanation for it, then that's fine. Most all of the models for any of my armies tend to be from the same edition, so thankfully it's not an issue I've experienced.  

 

8 hours ago, Special Officer Doofy said:

You just got to get the most out of the hobby that works the best for you. 

That really is The Most Important Rule™, isn't it?  (and really, not just for this hobby, but life in general)

Edited March 1, 2023 by Firedrake Cordova

[Xenith]

10 hours ago, Evil Eye said:

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

 

The thing is, people don't buy models that they don't want. At least at the time, and if they change their mind it gets resold so GW loses a potential sale. Even allowing for that, warhammer players so very clearly want everything* GW is producing, that there is no drop in sales, in fact the opposite, to the point they've had to build additional warehouses and factories and have had consistent stock issues for the last 7 years. 

 

If people didn't like the first wave of new scaled primaris, they would have only got that wave, and then been consigned to the dumpster, like so many of the AoS armies, harlequins, Deathwatch, thousand sons etc. who have never received [significant] model support outside their initial release. 

 

*40k related anyway

 

True-scaling was always a funny one. I can see it in 40k, with the giant hands and giant guardsmen, however in the heresy 90% of stuff was marines anyway, so anyone true scaling would therefore find that their armies were actually out of scale for the setting, defeating the objective. 

 

I love the 4th ed sculpts and agree that they are some of the best - the librarians and chaplains are things of beauty, along with the veterans. One you're missing is the mace model, maybe one of the best ever, and he sits fine alongside other dudes of the same era.