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| {{topquote|Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.|Douglass Adams, ''The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy''}}
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| {{topquote|'''Scale''' in [[Transformers]] is, not to put too fine a point on it, screwed.|The first words of the "Scale" article on the TFWiki. Yes really.}}
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| [[File:Titan sizes comparsion chart.jpg|thumb|The closest thing to trying to scale everything out.]]
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| The multiple Warhammer franchises are quite infamous for often having wildly inconsistent scaling of various aspects. 40K is the most notorious and has the most examples, but even WFB and AoS are not immune to wonky scaling.
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| ==28mm "Heroic"==
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| Something common to Warhammer 40k/Sigmar/Old World is that their model's scale is over all a bit... Off. If you hold a 40k Imperial Guardsmen up against a 28mm model of, for example Napoleon's Imperial Guard, the 40k Guardsmen would look weird. The gun would be overly sized while the head would be massive among other differences. This is because Games Workshop uses 28mm "Heroic" scale. Unlike normal 28mm scale model the weapons and head are inflated to be larger than would be proportional in order to make them 'pop' and be more visible. You can paint a space marines helmet's lens, don't even try with a bolt action model that has goggles. This is why when you try to proxy 40k vehicles, 32mm models tend to fit better than the nominally 'correct' 28mm, 28mm Heroic is almost between the two. While constant between games it's still mostly inconsistent with the broader industry so it gets a quick mention here.
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| ==[[Warhammer 40000]]==
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| In general, a lot of things in 40K can be difficult to figure out how "big" something is, since the 28mm scale means you can only fit in so much detail on a miniature. As such, it's not uncommon to see a dissonance between "official" artwork vs the miniature in question. One example is the [[Leman Russ Battle Tank]], where the Demolisher cannon can look oversized on the miniature but look more proper in artworks, while the supposedly 120mm battle cannon is excessively wide both on minis and in art.
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| There is also the problem of 40k books and sources using a combination of 'unreliable narrator' and 'the Imperium can't standardize for shit', so even people who say in a book they know how big something is may be wrong.
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| ===Titans===
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| We'll start with the big boys first. As mentioned on the main page for Warhammer 40K Titans, the basic sizes for some of the titans are given different stats by different authors, and even the "official" stats from sources such as Adeptus Titanitus can be suspect. Way back when in things like Epic, numbers like "100ft" were thrown around willy-nilly in an attempt to make the Titans sound as cool and imposing as possible, which you will note is also the only non-metric unit on the page to add to the confusion.
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| For instance: [[Graham McNeill]] says an Imperator (specifically Dies Irae) is 43 metres tall, [[Dan Abnett]] says an Imperator ([[Derp|also specifically Dies Irae]]) is over 140 metres tall, and the cover of the graphic novel ''Titan II: Vivaporius'' shows a smaller Warlord with access ladders on its guns suggesting each barrel is the size of a house - meaning the Titan itself would be over half a kilometre tall, and the Imperator would be even larger. A lot of artwork can also have heavily skewed depictions of Titans, often shown to be far larger than "official" sizes. Most recently is the case of the Emperor Titan in SM2 being [[Wat|over a kilometer tall]].
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| ===Space Marines===
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| How big Space Marines are is mostly consistent in "larger than the average Imperial citizen" and "bigger than an Imperial Guard grunt". For instance, [[Deathwatch (RPG)]]'s 1st edition claims they're about 2.1 meters tall, while the ''Eisenhorn'' series puts them at "well over two meters" for a Firstborn Marine and a few Horus Heresy novels (''Horus Rising'', ''First Heretic'', ''Pharos'', etc.) paint them as being around seven feet tall, albeit with exceptions. Similarly, Primaris per [[Wrath and Glory]] are "at least" 8 foot tall - the specific stats being 7 feet + 1d6 inches for a Firstborn, 8 feet + 1d6 inches for a Primaris compared to about 4 feet + 6d6 inches for a human.
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| However, some artwork and the miniatures (especially older stuff) can show the two about the same size. This is particularly notable when comparing a Primaris mini to a 'regular' Marine, as despite their supposed extra foot or so in height and stronger build, the Primaris has barely a head or so's advantage over the Firstborn and is about the same broadness. This can be excused by limitations of model making of being a balance between trying to be in-scale and having details to make a mini stand out.
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| [[File:Marine Comparisons.webp|thumb|center||Were you lot always this big? (L-R: Primaris, [[Fafnir Rann]], Generic Marines but from two different editions of the tactical marine kit]]
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| ===Lore Numbers===
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| In a more abstract sense, it's often been noticed by people that GW does not have a clue about how big armies are supposed to be. To explain what we mean, lore tells us that there were roughly 4,000,000 or 4 million Orks at the third war for Armageddon, a supposedly 'gigantic number' that the imperials barely managed to stop putting all the effort and energy they could to stem the green tide: over 4.5 million Allied soldiers died in WW1. 4,833,404 to be wiki exact. An apocalyptic win at all cost war for the fate of an entire planet, involved fewer Orks then the number of soldiers who died on one side of an early 20th century war.
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| Space Marines are another example of this misunderstanding of scale. There's (supposedly) 1,000 space marine chapters which average about 1,000 astartes each meaning there's 1 million Space Marines meant to defend a galaxy with threats at every corner across roughly 1 million worlds. Context: there were 16 million US soldiers in WW2 alone not counting anyone else. With the introduction of [[Primaris Space Marines]], it makes this unlikely due to the sheer amount of specialist units that would need more than 10 dudes in a chapter along with the firstborn who still have old weapons they revere as relics. Not only does one company typically make a scout company (meaning 100 of that 1000 are all backups) but specialist formations and first company terminators and veterans. Even excluding the various specialist roles like Apothecaries, Dreadnoughts, Chaplins, Librarians, Techmarines, etc., that's not leaving a lot of room for people who drive the Rhino or operate its turrets, let alone the Primaris units like Infernus squads, Desolation squads, the elite Vanguard forces, Inceptors, Aggressors, Eradicators, Hellblasters, and the various flavours of Intercessors which all assuredly carry more than a handful of men each at any given time. The Great Crusade is actually worse with us expected that a single legion could take a planet, when it took eight million men, 5 years to fight over one sub-continent of old Earth? Perhaps Geedubs will fix this by having old Bobby G write a Codex 2.0 that multiplies everything by 10 like the old fan rule of thumb says, but only time will tell - especially because this is GW we're talking about.
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| A particularly funny one is the Imperium is said to consist of 1 million worlds over 100,000 lightyears of space, making it the largest empire in the galaxy. Except, the Milky Way Galaxy consists of 100 billion stars across that same 100,000 lightyears with an estimated 300 million-5 billion estimated habitable worlds with current technology. So not only has imperium and humanity during the Dark Age of technology failed to colonize most of the habitable worlds, they outright chose to colonize the hellholes like the tidally-locked [[Mordia]] where life is much more uncomfortable. Given the Imperium also still has some terraforming technology, this seems a little bit silly given the entire state of the galaxy. Even considering the quarter of the galaxy consumed by warp storms and other factions, the comedy from the Imperium being constantly restated to be so massive yet in canon is comically small compared to our own real-world makes 40k being very conservative with its numbers really, really funny.
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| It's often advised to just treat the numbers given as unreliable narrators and to add a zero to every number given to us. It was not 4 million Orks but 40 million, a much more respectable number, albeit one that less than half the total number of soldiers in WW1 but getting closer.
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| ===The God-Emperor of Mankind===
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| While He's definitely called Big E, ''how'' big He is can be contentious based upon the artist, artwork, and era you're going on. While it's generally agreed upon that He's huge, the fact that His appearance can vary based upon who's looking at Him and is implied to be a shapeshifter of shorts makes figuring out His size difficult. Post-Heresy, how big His body/bones are upon the [[Golden Throne]] don't really help since the Golden Throne is isolated from others most of the time, as well as expanding to an absolutely ''ridiculous'' size. As in, 'A Custodes at the entrance to the throne room could ''barely'' see a scrap of Emps' body', entire kilometres of the Imperial Palace are technically part of the Throne levels of ridiculous size. And, on top of that, the Golden Throne is actually a fake and subject to psychic projection. The actual body of the Emperor is hooked to life support in a hidden chamber where a Custodian was able to at the very least see it in full.
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| At the very least it has been made clear that Big E can shape shift.
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| [[File:Tim Remin's height-scale chart.jpg|thumb|center|In the grimdarkness of Warhammer 40K, everyone is a body builder.]]
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| ==[[Warhammer Fantasy Battles]]==
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| Warhammer Fantasy Battles unfortunately isn't above this either.
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| * The worst offenders are the [[Sky Titans]]. Granted, their semi-mythical status helps rectify this issue somewhat, but descriptions range from a bit bigger than a [[Bonegrinder Giant]] to literally BEING the titular mountains of the Mountains of Mourn. It's unclear if the [[Ironblaster]]s are pistols to them or cannons - though the former is more likely in this anon's opinion.
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| * Similar to the issue above, the [[Dragon Ogre]]s and the [[Dragon Ogre Shaggoth]] both are described as being MUCH bigger than their miniatures suggest - though part of the issue is scale creep. Shaggoths are meant to be as big as the mountains, but [[derp|on tabletop they're shorter than a giant]]. Much like [[Orks]] and [[Orc]]s, as Dragon Ogres age and feed on lightning they grow in size and all the Dragon Ogres alive now lived before the coming of the Old Ones - so unless they started out comically small, realistically the Shaggoths should be as big as a [[Chaos War Mammoth]] at least otherwise it's just kinda sad.
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| * A lesser example but in art and the games [[Bone Giant]]s are depicted as big as a pyramid and towering above pretty much everything, whereas on tabletop they aren't even the size of Giants due to scale creep.
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| * [[Nekaph]], right hand to [[Settra the Imperishable]], is supposed to be incredibly tall and built like a brick shithouse as he's from the far North (or at least has Norse ancestry), but he tends to be depicted as the same height as the rest of the Tomb King mummies.
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| * The heights of the Dawi can seem inconsistent, ranging from reaching your average man's chest or their waistline. The Chaos Dwarfs can have it worse, not helped by the fact many wear massive hats (possible as the result of a height complex, if Total Warhammer is any indication). <s>The writers probably decided they were too short</s>. {{Blam}} {{Blam|Short?!}}
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| * The Ogres are generally considered to be both tall and wide, but <i>how</i> much can vary; either they can look like giant sumo wrestlers or almost round.
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| * A REALLY small example (no pun intended) - [[Gnoblar]]s tend to be bigger in their miniatures than goblins or [[Night Goblin]]s despite part of why they defected was their small size. If it weren't for their hunched backs, they would be as tall as a hobgoblin at least. [[Just as planned|This inconsistency may be deliberate, however]], as it adds a certain bit of tragic irony to the Gnoblars. Art tends to put them the same size as [[Snotling]]s, however.
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| * The assorted vehicles and chariots of the races can look undersized or oversized, depending on what they're being compared to.
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| *[[Arabyan War Elephant]]s suffered this in the game [[Warmaster]]. One of the minis depicts them as roughly the size of a [[Khemrian Warsphinx]] with infantry in the howdah, and the other has an entire building on the back.
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| * Finally, [[Grimgor Ironhide]] in lore is the biggest Orc in the Warhammer World. On tabletop, however, he's the size of any ol' [[Black Orc]], which is smaller than the [[Savage Orc]]s. There's a common theory that Grimgor was the one who lead the Black Orc Rebellion against the Chaos Dwarfs to begin with, in which case he should be at least the size of Ghazghkull. At least in the Total War games, his character model eventually got beefed up to look larger, but he's still not absurdly large by Orc standards.
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| ==[[Warhammer: Age of Sigmar]]==
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| Given how a lot of the units/models got renamed/recycled into AoS, a lot of scaling problems are still around (eg, Gnoblas/Grots in the Ogor Mawtribes).
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| *The most extreme case is the size of each of the realms; GW hasn't really been keen on giving how "big" each one is other than the fact they seem endless, despite many realms showing maps with defined borders. The only realm that's mapped out is [[Hysh]], and even then, it looks kinda small.
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| *A lot of the minis that get refreshes (such as some of the Stormcast Eternals, or updated Skaven miniatures) can look drastically different despite technically representing the same thing.
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| ==The Video Games==
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| [[Dawn of War]], like many RTS games, suffers the issue of trying to depict everything on screen while also keeping some semblance of scaling. Things can get <i>really</i> out of whack when mods are installed; whether it's new maps, visual updates or entire new units.
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| [[Total War: WARHAMMER]] has make of the scaling issues with your average Total War game (e.g., oversized units on the map, distorted map, etc.), but that's considered part and parcel for the game and doesn't detract too much from playing. Meanwhile, when playing battles things are better, but if you're battling near settlements and walls a lot of infantries can seem oversized. Additionally, the design of the game around large blocks of units means the siege maps themselves are forced to have strange scaling in regard to the width of walls and streets. A lot of the scaling issues mentioned in the previous sections are better (eg, Grimgor, Gnoblars, etc.) but things can still seem off. Some mods can fix these scaling issues, but hope you have a powerful enough computer to run them.
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| The Space Marine games are often considered to be the best depictions of everything in Warhammer 40K, with the characters, enemies and environment considered to be "properly" scaled to each other. Then there's the whole Emperor-class titan.
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| ==Why this happens?==
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| [[File:Brel-class scaling.jpg|thumb|[[Star Trek Starships|The Brel class Bird of Prey]]: cruiser, fighter, frigate or battleship as the script requires]]
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| To answer the obvious question of: Why does this happen?
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| Usually, in the writing, some combination of lazy writing, bad notes, and writers and editors not paying attention to small (''[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-4-gLlF0uw ahem]'') details like height is a notable contributor. In a more generous view, visualizing and comprehending scale in writing has its own issues regarding statistics and storytelling which a writer has to balance for better or worse. Scale may be purposefully inaccurate in order to not get in the way of the story/scene or because the realistic numbers would be considered so unrealistic it would seem ridiculous and break immersion. It is especially bad when when moving from the micro-scale to the macro-scale view which can certainly twist things (the human body typically has about 20-100 trillion cells and 38 trillion bacteria with a lot of variance, how big do those numbers grow when factoring in a small city?)
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| With the models it's usually because of some combination of size requirements, game balance, being able to play the game, the cost needed to make the model and somebody not paying attention to the aforementioned small details.
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| Nor is this by any means a Warhammer-specific problem; Dungeons and Dragons media have had a few cases of this problem, and to name a particularly notorious non-/tg/ case, [[Transformers]] is another notable frequent victim of Scale weirdness. Any work with anything too much larger than humans is probably going to have this problem, as having characters of different sizes interact can lead to all sorts of weirdness when the people involved aren't properly coordinating nor thinking things through; alternately, sometimes scale is the thing that is sacrificed for pliability or other reasons.
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| In some rare cases, a scale inconsistency is not the fault of an author but on the fan/reader's side of thing. A notable example that propagated for years is regarding the Worldships of the Yuuzhan Vong in [[Star Wars]]. For the longest time, it was thought that the average Vong Worldship length was 100km, which was used by fans for about a decade and change. However, it was eventually revealed that the 100km statistic was completely wrong from the get-go. The real average length for the Worldships, as stated in the source material, were ''10''km on average with the 100km statistic being a collective reading comprehension failure that wasn't cleared up until '''2019''' at the earliest. In other words, [[EPIC FAIL|there was a scale inconsistency due to the fact fans either just parroted the statistic or failed to double-check the source material for '''nearly 20 years straight''']]. [[Skub|When this was revealed, it was taken at face value and didn't cause a lot of discourse.]] So many VS debates ingloriously invalidated...
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| ==See also==
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| *[https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Scale The Transformers Wiki's take on this problem in their franchise.]
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| *[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale If you were wondering if this problem was widespread, yes, it is.]
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