Does Scale Matter? Games Workshop's Heroic Scale & Converting

 

                

My current WiP Space Marine

A towering Stormcast

    While I have worked with Primaris Space Marines for ‘True-scale’ Space Marines before, I decided to use Forge World’s Corvus Corax as the base model for my current Astartes. The added height and detail of a Primarch model would certainly make him stand out from the mortals and servitors who were to surround him, while also dwarfing the Primaris Bolt Rifle he was carrying, alleviating some scale concerns there. As a converter and hobbyist, I have always been mindful of scale in my projects, but it hasn’t been until the last year or two that I’ve actively gone about converting my miniatures for better proportions and scale. My first start with this was probably when I converted Forge World’s Angron miniature into a Stormcast Eternal commander for my Cities of Sigmar force; using the larger body, I was able to create a towering golem to dwarf the human populace of the army.

Some tiny Zombies

                In my recent Soulblight Gravelords project, when it came to the horde of townsfolk and zombies, I decided to add in some Lord of the Rings miniatures to accompany them, as they were a similar scale. This included six of Farmer Maggot’s Hounds, who are some of my favourite Games Workshop dog miniatures due to their realistic size when compared to other models. I love the new Dire Wolves kit, but they only work as huge wolves, as compared to the human miniatures, they’re about the size of horses. There is also a slight conflict in the army between the new Vampire Lord miniatures and the tiny zombies; the Vampires tower unnaturally over their lesser kin. While I waved this away as an extension of Vampiric growth (and not to mention, the Vampire Lord is a gorgeous model), it got me thinking further about how the way I build armies and convert miniatures is influenced by, and in turn, influences, scale.

                There is also the fact that most Games Workshop miniatures are considered to be what’s called “Heroically-Scaled”. Heroic scale is when the miniatures, which are generally 28-32mm tall, have their heads, hands and weapons enlarged, not proportional to the rest of their bodies, to draw the eye. This is a deliberate design choice too, as it allows painters to spend more time on the more interesting parts of the models, and to showcase the most important parts of the model on a crowded battlefield, as Games Workshop’s games are usually played with a hundred pieces or so aside. While there is little issue with this design choice when these models are built normally, when converting models, it can cause some internal discrepancies. Models from different kits which are supposed to be the same size, such as between old and new Stormcast, and human characters like Zombies and Genestealer Cultists, different parts of the models are emphasised, and you can end up with a model which is a bit Frankenstein’s-Monster esque. This can particularly be an issue with hands between kits. If you stretch your hand out across your face now, it should roughly cover it; the size of hands and heads specifically is something which our brains are trained to recognise, and so when they’re even slightly off, our models can end up looking a bit wrong. This problem is compounded when you’ve got models with open hands. As many Games Workshop miniatures hold weapons or equipment, there aren’t many bare hands available. While the Chainrasp Horde kit can be good, they’re often too large.

Scale examples

           So, how can we, as converters, fix these problems and be mindful of scale? And how can we use scale differences between models to our advantage?

                Firstly, I think there’s an important distinction to be made between internal consistency and external consistency. By internal, I mean the scale and proportions of parts that make up a single model, or in some cases, a unit. By external, I mean the scale and proportions of a model compared to other models in a range of miniatures, the army you’ve made, or in an ensemble piece. Of the two, I think it’s more important to start with focusing on the internal scale consistency of your models rather than external. Our brains will quickly recognise when one of our models in our army is holding a hammer which it could never possibly carry, or if its head is the size of its legs, but will take longer to discern similar dissonance between separate models and units. While I think both types of scaling consistency are important to strive towards when converting models, or indeed, just choosing models to make up an army, I think the first one is way more important to start with and is certainly more of a beginner’s step to getting conversions right.

                To start alleviating this problem then, we can categorise our miniatures and their parts into several groups which can be easily interchanged between the models in that group without looking strange. These groups are not complete and offer only examples of the kits you can use, but should be a good starting point. Note: this is usually for human-like models, as many other races have inbuilt reasons for size disparities, and due to them being alien, they don’t trip off the uncanny valley as much.

 

Group one: small and fiddly

-Deadwalker Zombies

-Necromunda heads, particularly Escher ones

-Lord of the Rings human miniatures

-Some of the older kits, such as Mordheim and Bretonnians

-One-handed weapons from larger models can become two-handed weapons for these ones

 

Group two: general

-Freeguild miniatures

-Repentia, and other modern human models

-Some Necromunda models, like Eschers and their weapons

-Genestealer Cultists

-Serfs, like the Dark Apostle’s acolytes

-Mymourn Banshee hands

 

Group three: Human plus

-Most modern aelves and Aeldari models

-Some Necromunda models, like Delaque and the Forge World kits

-Firstborn Space Marines

-Sisters of Battle

-Soulblight Vampires

-Most Warcry human models

-Most Blood Bowl models

-Most Nighthaunt accessories

-Chainrasp hands (just about)

 

Group four: Warrior scale

-Newer Stormcast Eternals

-Primaris Space Marines

-Older Terminator kits

-Some Necromunda kits, such as Goliath

-Putrid Blightkings

 

Group five: God/ Chad scale

-Primarchs

-Sigvald

-Newer Terminator parts

-Lauka Vai’s accessories

 

By no means is this a comprehensive list, but it should hopefully give you an idea of how I mentally group the parts I use when it comes to preparing conversions. It is also a list that can be broken at any time; if you can model one of your miniatures with parts from across groups and they look good, then go for it. I’ve been able to mix Repentia with Chainrasp hands to much success. It’s more of a sliding scale or spectrum than a hard set of boundaries. There is also the fact that both 40k and AoS may have lore reasons for scale discrepancy; mutations and such may occur, and these can be written into the lore of your models. It must also be noted that this matters less and less the further you get down the hierarchy of models in your army. Maybe it might be worth your time going out of your way to hunt down the right-sized hand for your Space Marine Commander, but not so much for every Scout.

Finding the right scale hands for these guys was a pain

Overcoming external scale inconsistency is a little different, and a harder beast to tame without serious conversion work and remodelling across entire armies. This isn’t something I will fully address here, but rather, I’d like to talk about how external scale inconsistencies can add to your army’s drama and impression. For example, earlier I talked about how I’ve specifically modelled Space Marines and Stormcast Eternals using Primarchs and larger parts than intended; this is a good way of creating a forced discrepancy between the human models in your army and those of a more posthuman or angelic status. Having a Stormcast tower above his serfs may (maybe even larger than in the lore), to the uninitiated, appear as inconsistency, but the point is made to highlight the uncanny nature of the character in question, as a mortal human who has ascended past their peers. Similarly, the increased size of my Space Marines, far beyond even Primaris, position them more as brutal conquerors and arms of a corrupt empire, as murderous zombies encased in shiny armour. Scale is as much of a part of the art of a miniature as freehand.

I would like to end on the note that none of this really matters. If your armies are made up of models converted from across scales, then that’s absolutely cool, and this is also no excuse to nit-pick your own, and certainly not anyone else’s, models. This is simply an aide for getting your conversions, dioramas and armies to have that little bit more realism and impact.

Thanks for reading!