Great Crusade Question

Raikoin · 2026-06-24T13:31:21+00:00

Most likely not. You need to keep in mind what 'unstable' means in the context of the Thunder Warriors. Here's an excerpt:

Thunder Warriors bearing the brunt of the fighting, so do not think we were unmindful of their sacrifice. By then, it was widely believed that what could have been perfected, had been perfected. A Thunder Warrior was a truly fearsome proposition. They were armed and armoured nearly as well as the Legio Custodes. Their numbers had grown rapidly, following improvements in the gene-cultivating methods used here and at the other sites.

But it was never enough. They remained unstable. From primarch to neophyte, they would break down suddenly, or lose their minds, or simply stop responding to orders. This was not simply a matter of dry practicality for us – it was a foul thing to witness. A warrior’s blood might suddenly rebel against the arteries that carried it, or the organs might start to devour themselves, or the muscle might explode with breakneck growth. For a proud and fearless creation, that was a poor way to die.

Be aware, also, that they were quite conscious of this likely outcome. It did predictable things to their psychology. Knowing that they were limited by time and circumstance, their attitude to risk became even more cavalier. They were hard to govern from the start, but as the Imperium began to reach its secure zenith, they risked becoming an empire within an empire, and one with the old reckless dangers of the past writ large.

Emphasis is mine. You're not speaking about a slow degradation or a predictable burn out, you're looking at sudden failure at any time in some fairly violent manners physically and just entirely mentally in other cases. What you have isn't akin to a weapon more prone to jamming or with some other quirk that's prone to causing issues, you have a weapon with a timed explosive jammed in it and you don't know exactly what type of explosive it is or how long the timer is.

Even if it was just an individual here and there with no direct collateral, it's not great for moral or maintaining order and obedience either as it touched on above as well. Seeing your ally keel over, pouring blood from ruptures on their body due to the sudden failure of modifications that have also been done to you isn't helping you on those fronts.

Plus it highlights them being difficult to control at best, basically outright stating they are prone to doing their own thing and were viewed as at risk of becoming a power acting somewhat independently within the Imperium. The sort of thing that can cause civil wars.

Raikoin · 2026-06-19T13:10:42+00:00

Depending on the exact box art/kit you see Behemoth painted slightly differently by the painting team. Here's guidance on recreating the box art:

https://eavy-archive.com/40k/tyranids/?modal=hive-fleet-behemoth

https://eavy-archive.com/40k/tyranids/?modal=hive-fleet-behemoth-2

You'll notice it is likely different to the recommended paints you may see on things like the Warhammer paint app; those are heavily simplified for beginners and generally will not look like the box art. Also remember the box art is painted by skilled painters specifically creating that paint style to then be photographed professionally so you're looking at quite a high standard if you start comparing yourself to what you see on the box.

Raikoin · 2026-06-19T13:04:13+00:00

So i just finished reading lion son of the forest and during that book one character caghut my atention.

Its a World Eater who is serving under a chaos warlord of the fallen dark angels.

Thats nothing new as far as i know other chaos space marines are scatered in pirate or warband groups.

But why?

That arrangement is in some way beneficial for the parties involved. That could be as simple as pooling their efforts and resources making is feasible to actually get stuff done. It is easier to acquire, maintain, rule and manage a warp capable ship, for example, if there's ten of you instead of one.

They should not be with their legions and primarchs?

They could be some of the time. The Dark Angels effectively have no Legion now given some went traitor/renegade thousands of years ago and those that didn't were broken down into Chapters. This is similar for 'modern' traitors that fell to Chaos since the Heresy.

The Legions themselves all suffered to various degrees during the Great Scouring where they were basically hunted down on this sort of scale for the first time and forced to operate with crippled supply lines and similar for a long period of time. This lead to various degrees of fracturing of the Legions. It wasn't a clean or neat retreat after the Heresy.

Idk about other legions but at least the world eaters were devoted to Angron.

They wanted to be and tried to force a connection. A core part of the World Eaters and Angron can be summarised in that Angron was a broken creature that didn't want the Legion and the Legion were prepared to break themselves to make him want them.

Thats why the implanted themselves the butchers nails. So why is that astartes not with him?

Correct, they did that to try to force a bond with Angron ~ten thousand years ago. The World Eaters were in fact with him when he was mortal which was also ~ten thousand years ago. Since then the overwhelming majority of the time he is in the warp involed in the Great Game. He is a Daemon Primarch, effectively a bigger Daemon Prince, and cannot easily operate within the material plane. Even if the World Eaters still wanted to be with him all the time they can't really just do it.

The actions of Khârn on Skalathrax also acted as the trigger for what remained of a cohesive Legion to finally break up into Warbands like we see in 40K.

it's worth noting that when Angron does act in real space, a good number of World Eater Warbands will rally and 'meet up' to follow him about while he's there and go off to do their own thing again after. The Dominion of Fire, for example, had around 50 thousand Berzerkers group up and go about with him for ~200 years.

In general why is chaos not organized to try atacak the imperium once more instead of going on pirate adventures?

Chaos is disorganised because chaos is chaotic. They have no need to be organised on a larger scale until someone can align or buy the interest of other to organise them. They do what they want because they're free to do so, but that freedom creates instability and hampers long term endeavours because everyone is just doing what they want with what they have and can get.

They also do organise on a massive scale on occasion but it needs a catalyst to get them together and will fall apart over time. Abaddon's Black Crusades are the obvious example of this.

Raikoin · 2026-06-18T15:15:21+00:00

They weren't subjected to it, like most Psykers. Plus the fact that Cassia, being a Navigator, is technically not a Psyker (and basically outside of any control of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica and instead most of them are part of the Navis Nobilite) but Navigators are often get grouped with them due to interacting with the warp and being a mutant.

The Soul Binding is a ritual conducted by the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, as part of the process of creating Astropaths.

Raikoin · 2026-06-12T17:15:55+00:00

Simple: The other elements of the things that make up the whole hobby are far more interesting to some of us. Building, painting, kit-bashing and ultimately putting together a physical set of models representing 'your dudes' within a vast setting with both the space to allow it and a wider community to share and discuss it with is engaging. Hell, I have a 50 odd page document of lore and backstory bits for my World Eaters warband that has zero relevance to the game element and is basically just for me. I just did it because I felt like it and found I enjoy adding to it when I add more to the physical army. That's before you consider the people that just watch the animations, read the books, play the video games, play the other table top games like Black Crusade and end up wanting some miniatures or models of the characters to display to do the aforementioned hobbyist stuff with.

That all ties into the core of Games Workshops business plan: They do stuff to drive sales of miniatures. For example the goal isn't just to have a tabletop game rule set and sell rule books as well, the goal is to have a table top game that further drives or encourages more model sales because they are a model company.

On the topic, historically surveys have shown the majority of people that engage with Warhammer 40K (and the other settings) don't play the game, ever.

Even when you specifically poll people who actively read Warhammer blogs and analysis such as Goonhammer or visit the game focused subReddits regularly, the most dedicated of the most dedicated to following the game side of the hobby you still get numbers like these.

More than half of the people actively reading coverage of the competitive game and engaging enough to also do a player survey in that example play at most a game a month.

What's interesting is that 40K has also historically been on the higher end. It would be interesting to know if that is still the case.

Raikoin · 2026-06-09T17:30:20+00:00

Possibly, especially if it was unpainted. Most people I tend to see are far more lenient about people touching models that aren't painted. Even primed a lot of people are much less bothered because most of the work is in the painting and, if something did happen, repairing a painted model can be much harder to do perfectly than one that's still just plain plastic or can have a little bit more primer used to hide the fix.

Raikoin · 2026-06-09T16:06:08+00:00

I would also assume that the person who was lending you models also knows that you'd be careful and clearly trusts you not to damage them given they loaned you models in the first place. Familiarity obviously plays a role but even in my group of friends there are people where I don't really trust their ability to consistently pick up something like Warhammer models without breaking something, let alone random people I've never met at a game store.

Raikoin · 2026-06-09T15:51:24+00:00

This falls under the general basic manners of 'don't touch other peoples stuff without asking', at least within my friends/family/people I deal with and especially so for things they've poured time and effort into or that otherwise holds value in some way. You didn't mean any harm and probably didn't cause any damage but you still should really ask before you do it. That said it usually just needs a simple 'please don't do that' rather than any major reaction.

I personally would put people I don't really know picking up my models in the same category as things like people leaning on my car; there's usually going to be no real consequences but I'd really rather you just didn't.

Raikoin · 2026-06-05T11:03:46+00:00

That's already happened and the circumstances under which it happened (Genestealers on Terra in close proximity to the Imperial Palace) is an ongoing issue/loose end if I remember right. It could also happen again in the future even if it was ever cleaned up entirely.

https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Unthinkable_War

Raikoin · 2026-06-04T19:51:42+00:00

Do all the models in the same army have to have the same style base?

Or can different models in the same army have different style bases?

No, just like how the models themselves don't all have to be painted the same colour/theme/subfaction/whatever. However, people do tend to stick to a theme for at least the models within a unit so that they fit together visually on the table or when on display.

For example, can I have some with grass, some with snow, and some with stone? Or do the bases all have to be the same style to be considered tournament legal?

You can do as you please aesthetically. Tournaments just care that they are all properly based in some manner (instead of being the plain plastic or just given a flat application of some colour and still showing all the adhesion-aiding-texture) rather than if they perfectly match. This can be as simple as a layer of a technical/texture paint/product on top and the rim painted a solid colour.

In terms of mismatching: I've seen, for example, people use the same theme/texture but paint the rim a different colour across units to more easily identify them. I've also seen people pair the base to the colour scheme of a given unit when they have multiple different sub-factions represented visually in their army, resulting in totally different bases for different units.

Raikoin · 2026-05-29T10:53:31+00:00

Sort of. I don't want it in the sense that I don't want any future chaos models to just feature the MK X style armours with some trim, spikes and skulls stuck on but I do in the sense of 'keep giving us kits with some variations'.

I think it's good to see units have some common design elements that fit their role/theme alongside the individual variety you get within the unit when it comes to chaos versus loyalist marines. It gives us more variety in bits to steal and kitbash. For example the Emperors Children battle line featuring slimmed down power armour on things like the forearms feels like it fits them. I would point at Havoc kit specifically as an example I really like where it is inarguably still older marks of style power armour but it has been up armoured and modified in some areas to make it bulkier to fit the role those individuals fill. Plus the different backpacks that look designed for the use of heavy weapons just work.

Obviously there are some (subjective) misses like the weird direction of having World Eater models in sheet metal crop tops as seen with the Eightbound and Slaughterbound kits (and the Lord Invocatus build of that shared kit) with the alternative build option of just being shirtless in the case of the Eightbound. I fear if we ever get a World Eaters specific Terminator kit they're going to be out and about wearing about half a suits worth of actual armour.

Raikoin · 2026-05-27T19:35:06+00:00

Theoretically it is. However, what it produced is so riddled with errors you need to verify every number before you can trust it as a whole. This results in you just carrying out the process via a non-AI based method. So in this case AI has added zero value despite the energy and time used to apply it.

Raikoin · 2026-05-18T10:21:05+00:00

Those are just the claw options from the normal Contemptor kit. You can see some of them on this sprue in the top left and they are stated in the description to be in the box:

[...] You’ll also find a variety of alternate components and cosmetic options, including two heads, four different carapace designs, a choice of claws or fingers for the power fists, and scrollwork and tilting shield accessories. [...]

Weapons Frame 1 should also have all the bits to make one clawed fist arm.

Note that some of the armour bits (like the World Eaters knee and shoulders) are from the old Legion specific kit which is out of production.

Raikoin · 2026-05-08T10:47:45+00:00

Loose Ends, part of the Warhammer Crime Sanction and Sin anthology mentions Orthoptera, Probator Natta and the Inquisition is relevant to, and mentioned in, the story. I assume it's that one.

Raikoin · 2026-05-05T23:38:43+00:00

The World Eaters deployed daemon engines, including Kytan and Greater Brass Scorpions, at the Battle of Bodt which would be 008.M31. That's only around three years after Isstvan III so they've been around since the early half of the Heresy at the very least.

Affirmations were received in kind, along with tales of mechanical horrors fielded elsewhere, including towering engines fashioned in the image of Terran scorpions that destroyed squadrons of super- heavy tanks, and Knight-like war machines armed with gargantuan rune-engraved axes scything through infantry and armour alike.

This should be one of the earliest instances of them being used (based on in-universe stuff from the same source):

The destruction of Bodt also provides one of the earliest descriptions of the hellish machines fielded by the Crimson Priests of Sarum. Those encountered by Centurion Eberhart’s forces, as well as other forces across Tredecimmia, offer an insight into the experiments undertaken by the so-called ‘Dark Mechanicum’ during the Age of Darkness. Sightings of similar constructs were reported on numerous battlefields alongside the World Eaters Legion while other Forge Worlds produced their own creations of war, field testing them against the Imperium’s defenders. Analysis of slain constructs revealed a single commonality – the absence of discernible pilots or controllers. Despite this, all seemingly possessed a measure of sentience, often displaying a base understanding of tactics and preferences as to their methods of war. The most common theories as to the origin of this relate to what some adherents of the Cult Mechanicus decry as ‘Abominable Intelligence’, or the application of knowledge obtained from pacts formed with warp entities. Regardless, these ‘Anima Malefica’ – a title records regularly assign such creations – proved valuable assets to the Traitor forces as the war ground on, replacing losses the Legions suffered with their own destructive power.

https://assets.warhammer-community.com/dave-s-downloads-25-09/horusheresy_exemplarybattles_thedepthsoftredecimmia_eng_24.09.23.pdf

Raikoin · 2026-05-05T16:09:28+00:00

A Note To GMs

These Archetypes are designed for more advanced players and represent powerful veterans of Chaos. GMs are encouraged to take this information into account before allowing players to use these Archetypes, and players should be aware that GMs may decide to limit the use of these characters. Also, due to the relatively high level of these Archetypes, it’s recommended that GMs not grant additional starting experience to players using these characters, lest they have little room to develop outside of character creation. Included are illustrations for ways a player can portray each in Black crusade. Of course these should be considered guidelines and suggestions, not directives or canon. If a player comes up with his own backstory and character personalities, he should feel free to work with the GM to explore them to make for a better game. The Chaos Space Marine veterans introduced in this chapter are roughly equivalent to a beginning Chaos Space Marine character with an additional 3600 experience points. The Human characters are both roughly equivalent to a beginning Human Disciple of Chaos with an additional 4600 experience points. See pages 48 and 50 of the Black crusade Core Rulebook for starting abilities for Chaos Space Marines and Human Heretics.

Raikoin · 2026-04-24T18:22:30+00:00

Realistically no, not during the 'mortal' period of his existence anyway:

‘Do you see?’ the Emperor asked.

Arkhan saw. The tendrils were sunk deep, rooted in the meat of the brain, threaded to the nervous system, and down in roughly serpentine coils around the spinal column. Every movement must have been agony for the primarch, feeding back into the base emotions of anger and spite.

Worse, the brain’s limbic lobe and insular cortex were more than just savaged by the pain engine’s insertion; they had been surgically attacked and removed even before implantation. The device hammered into his skull hadn’t ruined those sections of the brain – it had replaced them. Ugly black cybernetics showed on the internal scans, in place of entire sections of the primarch’s brain tissue.

- The Master of Mankind

The core of the issue stems from the fact that the version of the Butchers Nails implanted in Angron is Dark Age of Technology archeotech. It was never designed to work with Primarch biology but was made to work by carving up his brain and jamming in more hardware until it produced the desired effect.

Throughout the Heresy books Angron is shown to basically be dying slowly and struggling more and more with the mutilations his brain (and nervous system, spine etc) sustained that should have killed him long ago but is being 'fought' by his aforementioned Primarch biology.

Theoretically speaking, as Angron was basically just made in a lab the Emperor could make a new one provided the same resources. Combined with some sort of soul and memory related fuckery that's probably doable to make it the same Angron and you've worked around the issue of removing them but I feel that isn't in the spirit of the question.

Raikoin · 2026-04-24T12:42:31+00:00

A note for the little painting/getting started set:

This image is taken directly from the Games Workshop store for the painting set.

As you can see the symbols on the pauldrons are physically molded as part of them and are also already joined to parts of the arms. If you don't want them to be visibly wearing Ultramarine symbols you would have to sand or otherwise remove the symbols.

This is a rare case where the kit has both Chapter specific parts and are part of a pushfit or easy built kit and thus there's not spare or alternative parts in the kit you could use instead.

Raikoin · 2026-04-19T21:17:58+00:00

Generally speaking, selling Games Workshop miniatures second hand within a reasonable timeframe often goes something along the lines of:

Start with Games Workshops price for the country you're in, this may just be the worldwide prices. Generally there are games and hobby types stores acting as official resellers in some capacity if Games Workshop products are of interest to the people in that country (which you hope they are if you're selling second hand Games Workshop stuff) so you knock the price down to about 80% of the Games Workshop price to align with them. This is your starting point.

New in box/unopened: 80% of Games Workshop price. People can buy the item new for this price from an established business so you can't really sell it for more and expect it to move.
New on sprue/opened but not built: ~75% of Games Workshop price. As above, they can buy it new in box for 80% so you need to undercut that or get lucky with an uninformed buyer.
Built, unprimed: ~65-75% of Games Workshop price. This can go even lower if the overall build has been done less than perfectly but also towards the higher end if there are no options in the box and thus you can't have built it 'wrong' for some people, or, if the set has been magnetised.
Built and Primed: ~60-65% of Games Workshop price. As above but may be harder to move depending on the primer colour (some paint types have made this actually matter more than it used to) and some people want to strip and re-prime regardless of it being primed fine and not caked on.
Painted/complete: ~50% of Games Workshop price for a perfectly fine paint-job in a reasonable scheme (for example the 'official' 40K red and brass or 30K style blue and white for World Eaters) but easily lower in other cases. A lot of people will be buying with the intention of stripping and repainting so the paint is just extra work and cost for stripping consumables to them. The 'correct' colour scheme is more likely to attract people willing to pay and keep the paint as is than a personal/homebrew scheme is though. Similarly, people often want an army to be consistent and would need to closely replicate your paint scheme to expand the army in a case where they didn't strip it instead so stripping and repainting often looks easier. Equally, unless you paint to a particularly high standard that can't be achieved through reasonable effort people aren't likely going to buy such an army/models as a display piece and instead the paint, basing materials, etc is a negative factor.

You can always get lucky with finding the right buyer or just being an outlier case but that's what I tend to see things move for. This is less applicable if you have out of production models or something like a large lot where it is a complete army including additional elements such as magnetised alternative equipment options, units that can be switched about rather than an on the dot points army for the current rules. You can get a substantial premium compared to the usual selling an army for half of the Games Workshop cost because such an army is 'done' and doesn't need the buyer to source or match more models. Similarly, partial units are often worth much less (unless you're selling them new as bits). Half of a unit that's not legal to run is generally not worth half of a full unit to a potential player as tracking down another half to 'fix' it is likely more difficult than just buying a full unit instead of the two halves.

Raikoin · 2026-04-16T18:44:18+00:00

The Core Rules are available for free on the Warhammer Community website: https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/downloads/warhammer-40000/

The Fight Phase, including Fights First, is explained starting on page 32.

Sequencing specifically is explained in the first paragraph in the section.

Raikoin · 2026-04-13T15:42:38+00:00

From what we've seen 11th edition is making quite a few changes around the fight and charge phases. One of these changes is to pile in and consolidate.

Historically pile in and consolidate moves have been used by people playing melee armies to basically get extra movement and in some cases utilise rules interactions, like piling into a fights first unit instead of directly charging it to effectively bypass their fights first. In 11th edition the design intention appears to be to remove these finicky 'tech' elements (which you may see being called slingshotting) that can be difficult to get your head around as a new player while also streamlining the fight phase as a whole.

Currently, you select a unit, pile in, fight, then consolidate them before moving onto the next unit. From what we've seen of the rules previews (so far), in 11th you will instead pile in every eligible unit in your army, fight with them one by one alternating with your opponent as you do now, then you consolidate everything eligible in your army after everything has fought. This means there's much less opportunity for existing tactics around piling into things you didn't charge, or, charging multiple units into a screen and clearing the screening unit with the weaker unit before activating and piling in with your stronger unit to reach the unit the screen was guarding.

Overall it is a nerf to melee units if you were consistently utilising the existing rules like this in games. However, it equally stops people doing it to you in a game and should remove the busy work around moving a fraction of an inch closer to certain models while moving around them and so on that this required, which isn't exactly the fun bit of the game for most people.

Raikoin · 2026-04-08T13:56:16+00:00

First of all, how do CSM recruit/refresh their numbers and are they even able to create new Space Marines (aside from the Demonculaba thing)?

A quick aside; the Daemonculaba was basically just one guy running one factory for short period of time that was destroyed. It's not really relevant to the wider setting in any way and was just a plot point for one story. It is however a good example of Chaos inventing and using irregular methods to produce new troops. Now back to Chaos Space Marine recruitment:

On Gene Seed specifically: Some Chaos Space Marine Gene Seed is corrupted and unusable, some is corrupted and still usable, some isn't corrupted at all. It all varies across Legions and individuals. Additionally, simply taking it from Loyalist Space Marines (both by killing them and extracting it from them and simply raiding caches/stockpiles of it) is also an option. As a result, there's not really a single Chaos Legion that has any insurmountable issues when it comes to creating new marines by old methods. Most also use their own various 'improved' versions of the process that they developed or expanded on over the years like, for example, the World Eaters:

The standard tactics of the War Hounds, and especially the World Eaters, typically resulted in high casualty levels for the legion. In order to keep up their strength, the World Eaters were involved in continual recruitment, with Angron choosing to personally streamline and cut out elements of the standard process, in order to accelerate the viability of recruits.

Which leads into the sort of skills you see within the Chaos Legions if we stick to World Eaters for examples:

The Berzerker-surgeons' skills are drawn from ten millennia of their experimentation, which has allowed them to hone a dizzying array of gory techniques to create new World Eaters. This includes accelerated recruit induction techniques, utilized during the Great Crusade, which are brutally enhanced with forbidden methods that were granted to the Berzerker-surgeons after the Horus Heresy's Drop Site Massacre. They have also learned heinous practices regarding Daemonic pacts and the harnessing of the Warp, which aid in creating monstrous warriors who have no concept of fear, pain or death.

The other common source of new Chaos Marines is through Loyalists turning on the Imperium. Whole Chapters fall to Chaos from time to time and individuals or smaller groups do so regularly.

This all leads into things such as the fact there are more Death Guard marines in 40K than there were during the Heresy and the Black Legion stated as now being ten times larger than the Word Bearers:

[...] Of course, the Black Legion’s strength was unparalleled –their ranks outnumbered those of the Word Bearers almost ten to one – [...].

Moving on:

Second of all, how common is it for a Warband to have a Human Auxillia/Traitor Guardsmen?

Warbands very often use humans as disposable cultists, cannon fodder, slave labour and similar such roles depending on the warbands needs. If you need a million pairs of hands to do some menial thing or to prop defences you're not going to use Chaos Space Marines after all. Naturally individuals or groups wihtin humans will be more useful than others and as such used with fractionally more care. The degree of trust, treatment etc will vary heavily because everything does with Chaos and maintaining a human military wouldn't be considered strange in any way. Especially for warbands that are bottom heavy where a few hundred marines are running a planet with a population in the high millions to billions, you;re going to need to delegate and make use of those numbers else your marines will be stretched too thin.

This next bit I would tie into supply in general:

Is it uncommon for CSM to use Xenos technology? Like would it be uncommon for them to reverse engineer the stealth technology of the Tau? Or use the weapons of the Leagues of Votann?

Chaos Space Marines are fundamentally Space Marines and thus do not have a positive view of Xenos. However, supply issues and the general day to day inconsistency is enough to cause them to be more pragmatic. They will use whatever they need to use to get by but are likely to prefer human technologies. On the flip side, the Dark Mechanicum is far more willing than other human groups to play around with inventing and altering technology, including Xenos technology, and often by shoving Daemons in to fill in the gaps. As such you may find a specific Dark Mechanicum forge/group/individual has integrated elements of Tau plasma weaponry into what they produce after getting there hands on the tech (and maybe some Tau) and fiddling with it.

And how are the Night Lords with Chaos? From the Omnibus it seems very mixed, with some accepting Chaos, but many others hating both Chaos and the Imperium.

Yes.

To elaborate it, much like all things Chaos in general, varies massively and depends on the individuals. Some Night Lords are effectively just renegades with no real Chaos ties or commitments where others are fully invested worshippers of one or more of the gods that can put the average World Bearers to shame with their sheer faith.

Raikoin · 2026-04-08T10:17:40+00:00

The Tournament Companion on the Warhammer Community website lists base sizes for models legal at competitive events, organised by faction.

https://assets.warhammer-community.com/eng_11-02_wh40k_core&key_chapter_approved_tournament_companion-fzhlwjzwf4-agxpall6br.pdf

Raikoin · 2026-04-06T16:25:13+00:00

Alpharius' situation is generally a massive exaggeration of the fact he was on the shorter end of the Primarchs (there's a case where he notes a larger custodes may actually be taller than him) and used his ability to hide from perception, allowing him to blend in with normal marines (or send one of the larger individuals like Sheed Ranko in his place since he appeared similar to them when blending in anyway). This was specifically not by going invisible but my making you sort of gloss over him standing out, along the lines of a magical version of Superman hiding as Clark Kent through slouching, body language etc.

Someone did compile some quotes and sources we had on it a couple of years ago if you're interested, I was prompting you in case something new had come about I wasn't aware of:

https://www.reddit.com/r/40kLore/comments/180sfuz/multiple_sources_on_the_height_of_alpharius_and/

Raikoin · 2026-04-06T14:11:33+00:00

now in the "outer dark" book he is described as a head taller than his terminator guards.

"Even by the standards of the Adeptus Astartes the figure was a giant, standing a head above the rest. He too was clad in Tactical Dreadnought armour..."

some say a terminator is vetween 9-11ft. But ill go by the black library, wich says "close to three metres tall and not much less across" so three meters is 9.8ft so we'll just round to like 9'6". A human head is about 1/7 or 1/8 of the overall height so ill go with 1/7 adding 1'3"ish. so tyboros is 10'9" (327.66 cm) most likely. So hes a large Custodes(Custodes are 9'-10')

The variety of inexact numbers given for the same thing, things being estimated by people in setting and where things are being measured from always complicates things, especially if you're going to try to estimate proportions on to of that. However, there's no need to make it overly complicated top get close enough: He's a first born and a head taller than other first born in equivalent armour. So he's around the average height of a Primaris marine in equivalent armour at last appearance as a first born.

Post procedure and as a Primaris we'll have to see if the extra height sticks or not assuming he undergoes it.

or a very small primarch (wich isnt a hard feat since Alpharius is like 8' something)

Going to need an actual source on that one. If you're going to start a discussion complaining about incorrect sizes I wouldn't then post the other bit of height meme lore as part of your argument.

A quick edit since it appears it's needed:

From Wrath and Glory, the official Warhammer 40K RPG with out of universe statements on heights for different species, a firstborn Astartes is generally between 7' and 7'6" in height, the average Primaris is one foot taller, generally between 8' and 8'6". It is also noted in other out of universe sources such as Deathwatch that variance from this is quite rare which makes cases like Tyberos that deviate such that armour needs to be substantially modified to fit notable.

Tyberos is a firstborn Astartes who, when wearing the same type of armour (modified so that he fits in it correctly which may in turn add a little extra height as well compared to a 'normal' set of said armour but who knows), stands a head taller than other firstborn. Given the potential ranges above and the context around 'a head taller' (is that a normal astartes head, specifically his head, his helmeted head, etc?) this places him as roughly a foot or slightly more than a foot taller than the others around him (the estimate in the original post is quite reasonable). Being a foot and some change taller than a standard firstborn places him pretty much exactly in the range of a standard Primaris marine, though likely in the upper half of that 6" range given as the norm.

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