How would people here go about adding more diversity to the 40k universe. I hear things about female space marines need to be added in. I'm personally not too bothered about that as it currently doesn't exist in the fluff. I get that maybe it should amd feel free to discuss it. However I do believe that distinctly female options should be made for Guard and Tau. Both of these have female warriors in the fluff yet not properly represented (at least with gw minis) on the table.

It's your toy soldiers do what you want. There are a number of third party companies that make parts to customize your army, you don't have to wait for GW to release bits.

More Xenos -- currently we have:

Green humanoids.
Metallic humanoids.
Blue humanoids.
Pointy-eared humanoids (of three varieties).
Nomnomnom non-humanoids (the only non-humanoid Xenos).

We really, really need more Xenos that aren't humanoid.

I'd like to see GW make some female heads for Guardsmen, though It'd be great to see any new infantry models for the Guard. The current ones are a little.... lacking to say the least

This topic has already been discussed 564738293456278903872 times, here on Dakka.

I'd like to see female IG, Lieutenant Mira was great in Space Marine and it'd brilliant to have a character like her on the tabletop.

More Xenos in general would nice, maybe something from the Ghoul Stars, or even some crazy machines from the Dark Age of Technology that are emerging out of some obscure bit of space.

I don't like the notion of female Space Marines though. The Imperium is regressive, brutalized and archaic, pretty much a Holy Roman Empire in space. I quite enjoy the historical vibe, the Imperium's struggle with Chaos is not too unlike the religious wars caused by the Reformation in early modern Europe. Space Marines are monastic orders as much as super soldiers, they already have a female analogue in SoB (even if the SoB are languishing on the verge of squatdom).

 Hawky wrote:
This topic has already been discussed 564738293456278903872 times, here on Dakka.

Not everyone was here for those discussions.

A race of eldritch mind-controlling aliens. That don't use or serve the warp, please.

Oh, and black dewds. And wimminz.


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A race of battle-suit wearing squid-aliens. They don't have a centralised brain, but are like a hyper-evolved cephalopod, what with a lack of emotions, and limbs that act of their own accord. Just something that is far removed from humans.

The tau already have a female HQ (Shadowsun). I think the only visible difference between male and females is the slit on their foreheads: male have a vertical slit, while females have a "reversed Y" (but I'm not sure about that, maybe someone more familiar with the tau fluff could confirm).
Most tau units have suits or helmets, but some firewarriors have an exposed face, and the sprue does contain faces with that "reversed Y" slit.

Eldars have plenty of females minis. For instance, the harlequin jetbikes are 50/50 male/female, the shadowseer is female only, the troupes must be assembled with 2 or 3 females (out of 6 figurines).

I want to see female guard models but most races are decently gender diverse

Sisters is a whole army of woman
Tau have female minis and the difference between the two isn't as pronounced as humans
Eldar of all varieties have a nice balance between male and female
Orks are monosexual
Necrons are monosexual in physical features
Tyranids are (not even going to try and touch this one)

That leaves marines which would require a massive retcon and that's not something I'm willing to support.

HoundsofDemos wrote:
I want to see female guard models but most races are decently gender diverse

Sisters is a whole army of woman
Tau have female minis and the difference between the two isn't as pronounced as humans
Eldar of all varieties have a nice balance between male and female
Orks are monosexual
Necrons are monosexual in physical features
Tyranids are (not even going to try and touch this one)

That leaves marines which would require a massive retcon and that's not something I'm willing to support.

This pretty much sums up the thread, the only arguemnt people have are muh wimminz spahs muhreens

Which for lore reasons they dont exist, and there are sisters of battle which are the female space marines.

This is an easily baited topic if I ever saw one.

 Chute82 wrote:
It's your toy soldiers do what you want. There are a number of third party companies that make parts to customize your army, you don't have to wait for GW to release bits.

I do if I ever want to use those models at an official GW store. Which is where I'd be playing if I end up playing anywhere but at home.


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 Backspacehacker wrote:
This pretty much sums up the thread, the only arguemnt people have are muh wimminz spahs muhreens

Which for lore reasons they dont exist, and there are sisters of battle which are the female space marines.

...Did you just bring up the most neglected army in the game which hasn't actually been squatted outright as an example of how women are well represented in 40k?

 Pouncey wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
This pretty much sums up the thread, the only arguemnt people have are muh wimminz spahs muhreens

Which for lore reasons they dont exist, and there are sisters of battle which are the female space marines.

...Did you just bring up the most neglected army in the game which hasn't actually been squatted outright as an example of how women are well represented in 40k?

I think the point was that space marines themselves don't need to be 'diversified' when GW made the SoB. Rather than retcon space marine fluff so that female space marines can excist GW should actually support the female faction that they created.

Personally I'd like to see Chaos varied a bit more. It's been so heavily codified into the 4 gods only, and apparently all working together most of the time now, that Chaos really feels quite bland. Where are the innumerable smaller Warp entities? Where are all the big scary warp monsters that eat spaceships? We have some non-dedicated units like Furies, but they're crappy afterthoughts. Get some more animosity in there between the rival gods and get some more unaligned units in.

Likewise, it'd be interesting to see more of the smaller Xenos races like the Hrud or Enslavers.

 Pouncey wrote:

 Chute82 wrote:
It's your toy soldiers do what you want. There are a number of third party companies that make parts to customize your army, you don't have to wait for GW to release bits.

I do if I ever want to use those models at an official GW store. Which is where I'd be playing if I end up playing anywhere but at home.


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 Backspacehacker wrote:
This pretty much sums up the thread, the only arguemnt people have are muh wimminz spahs muhreens

Which for lore reasons they dont exist, and there are sisters of battle which are the female space marines.

...Did you just bring up the most neglected army in the game which hasn't actually been squatted outright as an example of how women are well represented in 40k?

No, but it is a good example of that fact that no one actually cares about diversity in the game.

Wimminz space marines added, not even supported anymore.

 mrhappyface wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
This pretty much sums up the thread, the only arguemnt people have are muh wimminz spahs muhreens

Which for lore reasons they dont exist, and there are sisters of battle which are the female space marines.

...Did you just bring up the most neglected army in the game which hasn't actually been squatted outright as an example of how women are well represented in 40k?

I think the point was that space marines themselves don't need to be 'diversified' when GW made the SoB. Rather than retcon space marine fluff so that female space marines can excist GW should actually support the female faction that they created.

I agree, but they're not and have never shown any intention to do so.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
No, but it is a good example of that fact that no one actually cares about diversity in the game.

Wimminz space marines added, not even supported anymore.

Except the people asking for it, you mean?

They really could add more guard regiments again.

they had a gak ton of variants.

hell i think there was one of only women for those we are so inclined.

all the minor xeno in wd mini codexes could be fine too.

 Pouncey wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
This pretty much sums up the thread, the only arguemnt people have are muh wimminz spahs muhreens

Which for lore reasons they dont exist, and there are sisters of battle which are the female space marines.

...Did you just bring up the most neglected army in the game which hasn't actually been squatted outright as an example of how women are well represented in 40k?

I think the point was that space marines themselves don't need to be 'diversified' when GW made the SoB. Rather than retcon space marine fluff so that female space marines can excist GW should actually support the female faction that they created.

I agree, but they're not and have never shown any intention to do so.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
No, but it is a good example of that fact that no one actually cares about diversity in the game.

Wimminz space marines added, not even supported anymore.

Except the people asking for it, you mean?

you mean the almost non existent group lol, we went over this in the other thread. Even when Dakka tried to organize a 'protest' where like 50~100 people bought the sisters models then wrote GW saying they wanted more, GW did not give a crap.



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 Desubot wrote:
They really could add more guard regiments again.

they had a gak ton of variants.

hell i think there was one of only women for those we are so inclined.

all the minor xeno in wd mini codexes could be fine too.

I want more Lt Mira's Best 40k waifu

The last thing 40k needs is more "diversity". Focus on satisfying the current demographic before you start pissing everyone off by saying "nvm lol anyone can be space marines k thx".

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
The last thing 40k needs is more "diversity". Focus on satisfying the current demographic before you start pissing everyone off by saying "nvm lol anyone can be space marines k thx".

Uhh, Overwatch is a video game with a degree of diversity in its cast that many people consider to be gratuitous.

It sold 15 million copies in under 4 months.

 Pouncey wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
The last thing 40k needs is more "diversity". Focus on satisfying the current demographic before you start pissing everyone off by saying "nvm lol anyone can be space marines k thx".

Uhh, Overwatch is a video game with a degree of diversity in its cast that many people consider to be gratuitous.

It sold 15 million copies in under 4 months.

To be fair

overwatch doesn't have you buy a 40 dollar book, and 3-500$ worth of miniatures to play each character

 Pouncey wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
The last thing 40k needs is more "diversity". Focus on satisfying the current demographic before you start pissing everyone off by saying "nvm lol anyone can be space marines k thx".

Uhh, Overwatch is a video game with a degree of diversity in its cast that many people consider to be gratuitous.

It sold 15 million copies in under 4 months.

What does overwatch have to do with it, lol cant compare one to the other.

Overwatches lore accomodated for it, it was heros and soldiers from all over the globe, blizzard could do it.

40k has had established lore for over 20 years.

Changing lore for changes sake is a bad idea, See AoS.

More diversity means more people playing the game. Even putting the obvious social implications totally aside, it has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that making your game more diverse means more people will play it. That means more money in GWs pocket which means a better game for everyone overall.

There is literally zero negative impact to GW or fans if they make the game more diverse.

Qlanth wrote:
More diversity means more people playing the game. Even putting the obvious social implications totally aside, it has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that making your game more diverse means more people will play it. That means more money in GWs pocket which means a better game for everyone overall.

There is literally zero negative impact to GW or fans if they make the game more diverse.

In a game where the players can make their models how every they want, and create any chapter, regiment, band, ect ect ect they want.

The game does not need forced diversity, the game is already diverse through the player base, that does not need to be force represented in the game. No one likes when that kinda stuff is shoe horned into a game.

I would like to see female options for guard that said, like i said, LT Mira, my 40k waifu.

Well, like most players I would be more than happy with more diversity in the models available to us for each armies. It would indeed be nice to have women guardsmen or Scions, new revamped SoB, but while we talk about diversity, we might as well talk about xenos representation. I think we could benefit from more xenos. Maybe GW could produce a «Dogs of War» style expension with new xenos to serve as auxilary for various factions and maybe expend latter on the most popular ones. We could also benefit from a real lost and damned codex with its own unique models and units.

epronovost wrote:
Well, like most players I would be more than happy with more diversity in the models available to us for each armies. It would indeed be nice to have women guardsmen or Scions, new revamped SoB, but while we talk about diversity, we might as well talk about xenos representation. I think we could benefit from more xenos. Maybe GW could produce a «Dogs of War» style expension with new xenos to serve as auxilary for various factions and maybe expend latter on the most popular ones. We could also benefit from a real lost and damned codex with its own unique models and units.

Indeed

they already have a gak ton of non represented or squatted options to bring in or back before they even need to add new things.

but i have a feeling it all comes down to them wanting to updated what they already have before exploring new ventures.

Well, i mean eldar are pretty much 50 50 when it comes to men and women.

Tau there is not difference between the male and female members of their race.

Guard i want to see more female bits in there even if its a like a head or 2

Orks dont have any sex

Space marines are men only, that has been established lore for a long time.

But SoB while cool just dont really sell.

As with representation in general; I don't like nor support being inclusive for the sake of it, especially if it requires shoehorning.

The vast majority of elite warriors are and have been male, because men are (most often) better suited for war (historically).
The genetic enhancement from a male making it impossible for females to be enhanced that way makes sense, the Imperium is not exactly progressive and the space marine chapter system is very patriarchal. Shoehorning women into the Astartes for the sake of having women makes no sense and achieves nothing special.

Having females (and a variation of ethnicity) where it does make sense is a good thing though. Tau and eldar already do this, Guard should. CSM have the same problem as SM I think, but if there were chaos mortals that were never marines having some inclusion would be good (no, no one cares about cultists ). Why not corrupted SoB or assasins? A Tzeentch witch model?

As for Nid's Tervigons are technically female as far as I can tell.

It also shouldn't just be about xenos and females ether

There was definitely a ton of skin color variance between different guard regiments and i think it would be super cool to explore all of that and the crazy cultures of different worlds.

instead of all the same Canadian military types.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

Qlanth wrote:
More diversity means more people playing the game. Even putting the obvious social implications totally aside, it has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that making your game more diverse means more people will play it. That means more money in GWs pocket which means a better game for everyone overall.

There is literally zero negative impact to GW or fans if they make the game more diverse.

In a game where the players can make their models how every they want, and create any chapter, regiment, band, ect ect ect they want.

The game does not need forced diversity, the game is already diverse through the player base, that does not need to be force represented in the game. No one likes when that kinda stuff is shoe horned into a game.

I would like to see female options for guard that said, like i said, LT Mira, my 40k waifu.

Saying that no one likes when diversity is added to game directly contradicts what most businesses have identified as an objective fact in the last 15 years: More diversity means more sales. You may make a handful of vocal people angry but those people are completely overshadowed by new business you bring in.

Overwatch is a recent example but it isn't the only one. Lots of video games have taken this approach and it has not hurt the industry or those games in any way whatsoever.

And for people complaining that the lore doesn't match. The lore didn't include Necrons or Tau or Imperial Knights until GW saw a way to make some more money and added them to the game. People complain about them but I bet GW isn't complaining about all the cash they get from selling those units. Where there's money there is a way, and diversity == money.

More xenos.

Tau should have human auxilalries, and even more than they do now.

We also need another two Xenos races added with their own codices. They don't necessarily need to be super big factions like others. Think of AoS's one off races which all look great and hopefully occasionally get the occasional model.

 Desubot wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
The last thing 40k needs is more "diversity". Focus on satisfying the current demographic before you start pissing everyone off by saying "nvm lol anyone can be space marines k thx".

Uhh, Overwatch is a video game with a degree of diversity in its cast that many people consider to be gratuitous.

It sold 15 million copies in under 4 months.

To be fair

overwatch doesn't have you buy a 40 dollar book, and 3-500$ worth of miniatures to play each character

My point was that there's clearly a market nowadays for a more diverse cast of characters.

Also, you don't have to buy literally EVERY army in WH40k.


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 Backspacehacker wrote:

Qlanth wrote:
More diversity means more people playing the game. Even putting the obvious social implications totally aside, it has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that making your game more diverse means more people will play it. That means more money in GWs pocket which means a better game for everyone overall.

There is literally zero negative impact to GW or fans if they make the game more diverse.

In a game where the players can make their models how every they want, and create any chapter, regiment, band, ect ect ect they want.

The game does not need forced diversity, the game is already diverse through the player base, that does not need to be force represented in the game. No one likes when that kinda stuff is shoe horned into a game.

I would like to see female options for guard that said, like i said, LT Mira, my 40k waifu.

The only reason that Space Marines have ever been male-only has been, "Because I said so."

There's nothing saying you can't do an equivalent process to a female human that you do to a male human to make a Space Marine.

But fine, keep the Space Marines male-only. Even keep the Orks male-only. Just start adding more female parts to the armies that lore-wise have females as an option.

Craftworld Eldar have very few models that are actually female. Apart from the Banshees, which aren't actually female-only in the lore, none of the other Aspects have any female models. Dire Avengers don't even come with female torsos anymore (which they used to). Farseers and Warlocks have no female models.

Start adding female parts to the Imperial Guard kits. Or offer a plastic conversion kit you can buy separate from the main kit, if you don't want to alter an existing kit.

Start actually supporting the one all-female army you actually have.

Are you trying to say that people bought Overwatch solely because of the inclusion of female characters?

Because that's the only way you could justify arguing there was a market for it. Otherwise it's likely just a tiny percentage of the development costs dedicated to offering a wide variety of choice for the player as one designer spent a couple of afternoons adding in some options.

Miniature games aren't as simple as left for bloke, right for a woman.

Besides, there's a market for everything, the issue is whether it offers sufficient return on the costs of tapping into it.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Are you trying to say that people bought Overwatch solely because of the inclusion of female characters?

Because that's the only way you could justify arguing there was a market for it. Otherwise it's likely just a tiny percentage of the development costs dedicated to offering a wide variety of choice for the player as one designer spent a couple of afternoons adding in some options.

Miniature games aren't as simple as left for bloke, right for a woman.

Besides, there's a market for everything, the issue is whether it offers sufficient return on the costs of tapping into it.

The gaming industry for the past 15 years has proven time and time again that diversity only helps sales.

And no, the developers of Overwatch didn't spend a couple of afternoons cranking out some random female models to use. They put a hell of a lot of effort into them.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Personally I'd like to see Chaos varied a bit more. It's been so heavily codified into the 4 gods only, and apparently all working together most of the time now, that Chaos really feels quite bland. Where are the innumerable smaller Warp entities? Where are all the big scary warp monsters that eat spaceships? We have some non-dedicated units like Furies, but they're crappy afterthoughts. Get some more animosity in there between the rival gods and get some more unaligned units in.

Likewise, it'd be interesting to see more of the smaller Xenos races like the Hrud or Enslavers.

I can't agree more. Chaos is THE arch enemy. They should be the second more diversified faction, just after the Imperium. We NEED Chaos xenos, not just humains worshipers.
And then, just one or two more xenos species (like the gencult codex, or some units added in the Tau Empire codex).
It is really that easy to do. They have tons of xenos backround lying into their lore, they should use some.

And make plastic vostroyans, steel legion and mordians (just the basic infantry, the heavy weapons team and a crew sprue for the tanks. I'm not asking for a lot !!! )

 Pouncey wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
The last thing 40k needs is more "diversity". Focus on satisfying the current demographic before you start pissing everyone off by saying "nvm lol anyone can be space marines k thx".

Uhh, Overwatch is a video game with a degree of diversity in its cast that many people consider to be gratuitous.

It sold 15 million copies in under 4 months.

To be fair

overwatch doesn't have you buy a 40 dollar book, and 3-500$ worth of miniatures to play each character

My point was that there's clearly a market nowadays for a more diverse cast of characters.

Also, you don't have to buy literally EVERY army in WH40k.

Twas meant to be a semi sarcastic joke.

 Pouncey wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Are you trying to say that people bought Overwatch solely because of the inclusion of female characters?

Because that's the only way you could justify arguing there was a market for it. Otherwise it's likely just a tiny percentage of the development costs dedicated to offering a wide variety of choice for the player as one designer spent a couple of afternoons adding in some options.

Miniature games aren't as simple as left for bloke, right for a woman.

Besides, there's a market for everything, the issue is whether it offers sufficient return on the costs of tapping into it.

The gaming industry for the past 15 years has proven time and time again that diversity only helps sales.

And no, the developers of Overwatch didn't spend a couple of afternoons cranking out some random female models to use. They put a hell of a lot of effort into them.

Yes, but I think most people (I have no statistics to support this, but nor do you) who bought Overwatch got it because:
A) It looked good with the graphics and gameplay
B) It would have lots of multiplayer opportunities because...
C) It's new

I don't think the dealbreaker at all was "It has multiple non-offensive ethnic and gender representations" - if that was the case, would we not see a massive decrease in the popularity of games like Call of Duty and Battlefield, which pump out very similar, very popular, hyper-masculine*, American-centric games?

*Yes, I will note that in Black Ops III, there are compulsory genders assigned to certain callsigns.

Again, all I can ask for in diversity is in the Imperial Guard range, in the form of new regiments and optional gender packs, and in xenos (Tau auxiliaries, Hrud, Barghesi, Slaugth).
I don't need to see SM changed. I don't want that. SM are all male, SoB are all female. Guardsmen can be both. Tau can be both. Eldar can be both. Everything else is just neutral.

 Pouncey wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Are you trying to say that people bought Overwatch solely because of the inclusion of female characters?

Because that's the only way you could justify arguing there was a market for it. Otherwise it's likely just a tiny percentage of the development costs dedicated to offering a wide variety of choice for the player as one designer spent a couple of afternoons adding in some options.

Miniature games aren't as simple as left for bloke, right for a woman.

Besides, there's a market for everything, the issue is whether it offers sufficient return on the costs of tapping into it.

The gaming industry for the past 15 years has proven time and time again that diversity only helps sales.

This smells an awful lot like you're making an assumption. Got any studies or other solid data that games sell better when there's diversity in the protagonists? Remember, that means that the diversity is a key reason people by the game, not incidental to the fact that the game was already a AAA title that people would have bought even if the main character was a chipmunk.

And no, the developers of Overwatch didn't spend a couple of afternoons cranking out some random female models to use. They put a hell of a lot of effort into them.

Again, smells rather assumptiony. But I was exaggerating for humour and/or effect, it's a thing.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Are you trying to say that people bought Overwatch solely because of the inclusion of female characters?

Because that's the only way you could justify arguing there was a market for it. Otherwise it's likely just a tiny percentage of the development costs dedicated to offering a wide variety of choice for the player as one designer spent a couple of afternoons adding in some options.

Miniature games aren't as simple as left for bloke, right for a woman.

Besides, there's a market for everything, the issue is whether it offers sufficient return on the costs of tapping into it.

The gaming industry for the past 15 years has proven time and time again that diversity only helps sales.

And no, the developers of Overwatch didn't spend a couple of afternoons cranking out some random female models to use. They put a hell of a lot of effort into them.

Yes, but I think most people (I have no statistics to support this, but nor do you) who bought Overwatch got it because:
A) It looked good with the graphics and gameplay
B) It would have lots of multiplayer opportunities because...
C) It's new

I don't think the dealbreaker at all was "It has multiple non-offensive ethnic and gender representations" - if that was the case, would we not see a massive decrease in the popularity of games like Call of Duty and Battlefield, which pump out very similar, very popular, hyper-masculine*, American-centric games?

*Yes, I will note that in Black Ops III, there are compulsory genders assigned to certain callsigns.

Again, all I can ask for in diversity is in the Imperial Guard range, in the form of new regiments and optional gender packs, and in xenos (Tau auxiliaries, Hrud, Barghesi, Slaugth).
I don't need to see SM changed. I don't want that. SM are all male, SoB are all female. Guardsmen can be both. Tau can be both. Eldar can be both. Everything else is just neutral.

As with most things in life it's much more subtle than that. Of course no one decides to buy Overwatch because there are women in it. They decide to buy Overwatch because they think it looks fun to play like any other person buying a game. The difference is that unlike commercials for Call of Duty, commercials for Overwatch have a lot of women in them. Which women watch. Which leads them to think this thing looks cool, simply because the person on screen looks like they do. Call of Duty never had a commercial with someone who looked like they do. So they didn't care about it.

Next time you watch TV pay special attention the commercials. You'll probably find that the TV commercials for a given product are a lot more diverse than your typical store selling those exact same products.

This isn't something I'm making up. This is the science of advertisement. Making something appear more diverse makes more diverse people interested in it. it works for movies. it works for TV. it works for video games. It works for yogurt. It works for popular board games. I promise it would work for Warhammer 40k as well.

 Pouncey wrote:


The only reason that Space Marines have ever been male-only has been, "Because I said so."

There's nothing saying you can't do an equivalent process to a female human that you do to a male human to make a Space Marine.

But fine, keep the Space Marines male-only. Even keep the Orks male-only. Just start adding more female parts to the armies that lore-wise have females as an option.

Craftworld Eldar have very few models that are actually female. Apart from the Banshees, which aren't actually female-only in the lore, none of the other Aspects have any female models. Dire Avengers don't even come with female torsos anymore (which they used to). Farseers and Warlocks have no female models.

Start adding female parts to the Imperial Guard kits. Or offer a plastic conversion kit you can buy separate from the main kit, if you don't want to alter an existing kit.

Start actually supporting the one all-female army you actually have.

I tend to agree with all of this. All male marines is a real interesting issue in itself. There's clearly historical reasons for this aspect of the fiction in the first place, but modernity has continued to erode all of those precedents for the better. Which makes all male marines in the future a backwards concept, but culturally backwards is sort of the entire premise of the Imperium. In a way it's right because it's wrong. (maybe not 'right' but OK?) On the issue as a whole I'm a little split.

All those other factions though? Eldar, IG, Tau. Every faction that actually has 'gender' should have ample representation of diversity. I really appreciate that Eldar Guardians have at least some female torsos, and they should have more. TBH half (or all) Tau Fire Warriors could be female under their armor. Sort of a double edged sword with the potential with female models though. . . you don't want "female" to simply be "this one has bewbs" (as is the case with the Guardians). I've seen plenty of tasteless "female soldier" models. I'll take Vasquez over Barb Wire. Just some alternate heads for Guard would go a long way. Just release them in the same way that chapter specific shoulder pads were, for starters, until updating the basic box set.

IMO one of the best things about the SOB line is that the aesthetic is sexualized but in what I feel is an empowering way. It's both obviously femenine and very much not "come hither", and much more "I will take no **** and put my boot in your face." I think it's a real win for design. I'd be interested to hear others thoughts about it though.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Are you trying to say that people bought Overwatch solely because of the inclusion of female characters?

Because that's the only way you could justify arguing there was a market for it. Otherwise it's likely just a tiny percentage of the development costs dedicated to offering a wide variety of choice for the player as one designer spent a couple of afternoons adding in some options.

Miniature games aren't as simple as left for bloke, right for a woman.

Besides, there's a market for everything, the issue is whether it offers sufficient return on the costs of tapping into it.

The gaming industry for the past 15 years has proven time and time again that diversity only helps sales.

And no, the developers of Overwatch didn't spend a couple of afternoons cranking out some random female models to use. They put a hell of a lot of effort into them.

Yes, but I think most people (I have no statistics to support this, but nor do you) who bought Overwatch got it because:
A) It looked good with the graphics and gameplay
B) It would have lots of multiplayer opportunities because...
C) It's new

I don't think the dealbreaker at all was "It has multiple non-offensive ethnic and gender representations" - if that was the case, would we not see a massive decrease in the popularity of games like Call of Duty and Battlefield, which pump out very similar, very popular, hyper-masculine*, American-centric games?

*Yes, I will note that in Black Ops III, there are compulsory genders assigned to certain callsigns.

Again, all I can ask for in diversity is in the Imperial Guard range, in the form of new regiments and optional gender packs, and in xenos (Tau auxiliaries, Hrud, Barghesi, Slaugth).
I don't need to see SM changed. I don't want that. SM are all male, SoB are all female. Guardsmen can be both. Tau can be both. Eldar can be both. Everything else is just neutral.

Call of Duty actually has playable female characters nowadays. Not sure about Battlefield though.

Also there's a game called Rust where many people have left negative feedback about how the game wouldn't let them play as a character that looked like themself. Often in the context of why they're not playiing it anymore.

And yes, fine, Space Marines can stay male. And yes, Guardsmen and Eldar and Tau can be both, but that's not actually represented in the official models outside of a handful of special characters, 20% of Eldar Guardians, and one Aspect.

 Azreal13 wrote:

Again, smells rather assumptiony. But I was exaggerating for humour and/or effect, it's a thing.

As a member of the gaming industry, and as a guy who has overseen character production, I'll tell you that it's a HUGE amount of work. Definitely not something you can crank out in an afternoon or two, and much more something that takes months of intense effort.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Are you trying to say that people bought Overwatch solely because of the inclusion of female characters?

Because that's the only way you could justify arguing there was a market for it. Otherwise it's likely just a tiny percentage of the development costs dedicated to offering a wide variety of choice for the player as one designer spent a couple of afternoons adding in some options.

Miniature games aren't as simple as left for bloke, right for a woman.

Besides, there's a market for everything, the issue is whether it offers sufficient return on the costs of tapping into it.

The gaming industry for the past 15 years has proven time and time again that diversity only helps sales.

This smells an awful lot like you're making an assumption. Got any studies or other solid data that games sell better when there's diversity in the protagonists? Remember, that means that the diversity is a key reason people by the game, not incidental to the fact that the game was already a AAA title that people would have bought even if the main character was a chipmunk.

Nope.

There's actually a case which might counter it. City of Heroes. It was a superhero MMO with the most diverse character creation options out of any game in existence, not just in looks but in gameplay, and it died fairly quickly.

And no, the developers of Overwatch didn't spend a couple of afternoons cranking out some random female models to use. They put a hell of a lot of effort into them.

Again, smells rather assumptiony. But I was exaggerating for humour and/or effect, it's a thing.

Every character in Overwatch has completely unique graphics, backstory, personality, weapons and abilities. The female characters in Overwatch aren't just female versions of a male character, they are completely unique.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

Again, smells rather assumptiony. But I was exaggerating for humour and/or effect, it's a thing.

As a member of the gaming industry, and as a guy who has overseen character production, I'll tell you that it's a HUGE amount of work. Definitely not something you can crank out in an afternoon or two, and much more something that takes months of intense effort.

And as an overall percentage of the development of the whole game?

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:


The only reason that Space Marines have ever been male-only has been, "Because I said so."

There's nothing saying you can't do an equivalent process to a female human that you do to a male human to make a Space Marine.

But fine, keep the Space Marines male-only. Even keep the Orks male-only. Just start adding more female parts to the armies that lore-wise have females as an option.

Craftworld Eldar have very few models that are actually female. Apart from the Banshees, which aren't actually female-only in the lore, none of the other Aspects have any female models. Dire Avengers don't even come with female torsos anymore (which they used to). Farseers and Warlocks have no female models.

Start adding female parts to the Imperial Guard kits. Or offer a plastic conversion kit you can buy separate from the main kit, if you don't want to alter an existing kit.

Start actually supporting the one all-female army you actually have.

I tend to agree with all of this. All male marines is a real interesting issue in itself. There's clearly historical reasons for this aspect of the fiction in the first place, but modernity has continued to erode all of those precedents for the better. Which makes all male marines in the future a backwards concept, but culturally backwards is sort of the entire premise of the Imperium. In a way it's right because it's wrong. (maybe not 'right' but OK?) On the issue as a whole I'm a little split.

All those other factions though? Eldar, IG, Tau. Every faction that actually has 'gender' should have ample representation of diversity. I really appreciate that Eldar Guardians have at least some female torsos, and they should have more. TBH half (or all) Tau Fire Warriors could be female under their armor. Sort of a double edged sword with the potential with female models though. . . you don't want "female" to simply be "this one has bewbs" (as is the case with the Guardians). I've seen plenty of tasteless "female soldier" models. I'll take Vasquez over Barb Wire. Just some alternate heads for Guard would go a long way. Just release them in the same way that chapter specific shoulder pads were, for starters, until updating the basic box set.

IMO one of the best things about the SOB line is that the aesthetic is sexualized but in what I feel is an empowering way. It's both obviously femenine and very much not "come hither", and much more "I will take no **** and put my boot in your face." I think it's a real win for design. I'd be interested to hear others thoughts about it though.

Regarding the Marines being male, the Imperium actually was at its most progressive when Space Marines were created by the Emperor.

And regarding the aesthetic of Sisters of Battle being heavily sexualized, I too love that about it. I really like it when a design of female armor manages to be sexy without being demeaning, and fully-covering plate armor that still makes the woman wearing it look sexy is awesome in every way.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Are you trying to say that people bought Overwatch solely because of the inclusion of female characters?

No, but their portrayal did tip the balance for me, from a pass to a get.

Pouncey wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Are you trying to say that people bought Overwatch solely because of the inclusion of female characters?

Because that's the only way you could justify arguing there was a market for it. Otherwise it's likely just a tiny percentage of the development costs dedicated to offering a wide variety of choice for the player as one designer spent a couple of afternoons adding in some options.

Miniature games aren't as simple as left for bloke, right for a woman.

Besides, there's a market for everything, the issue is whether it offers sufficient return on the costs of tapping into it.

The gaming industry for the past 15 years has proven time and time again that diversity only helps sales.

And no, the developers of Overwatch didn't spend a couple of afternoons cranking out some random female models to use. They put a hell of a lot of effort into them.

Yes, but I think most people (I have no statistics to support this, but nor do you) who bought Overwatch got it because:
A) It looked good with the graphics and gameplay
B) It would have lots of multiplayer opportunities because...
C) It's new

I don't think the dealbreaker at all was "It has multiple non-offensive ethnic and gender representations" - if that was the case, would we not see a massive decrease in the popularity of games like Call of Duty and Battlefield, which pump out very similar, very popular, hyper-masculine*, American-centric games?

*Yes, I will note that in Black Ops III, there are compulsory genders assigned to certain callsigns.

Again, all I can ask for in diversity is in the Imperial Guard range, in the form of new regiments and optional gender packs, and in xenos (Tau auxiliaries, Hrud, Barghesi, Slaugth).
I don't need to see SM changed. I don't want that. SM are all male, SoB are all female. Guardsmen can be both. Tau can be both. Eldar can be both. Everything else is just neutral.

Call of Duty actually has playable female characters nowadays. Not sure about Battlefield though.

Did you miss the part where I said that? I *did* mention that Black Ops III has female characters assigned to callsigns. However, it is still very much male dominated, not to mention that the most popular Call of Duty games are ones which are male-only (Modern Warfare 3, according to total units sold).

Also there's a game called Rust where many people have left negative feedback about how the game wouldn't let them play as a character that looked like themself. Often in the context of why they're not playiing it anymore.

Well, considering Rust doesn't put you in the role of a character (a la Overwatch or even CoD campaign), rather an unnamed nobody, I'd say it a valid critique that the player can't alter something about their devoid shell of a 'character'.

And yes, fine, Space Marines can stay male. And yes, Guardsmen and Eldar and Tau can be both, but that's not actually represented in the official models outside of a handful of special characters, 20% of Eldar Guardians, and one Aspect.

Which is what we, at least myself, are asking for. I haven't seen anyone yet saying "NO FEMALE CHARACTERS ALLOWED IN MY 40K NO SIR"

 Pouncey wrote:

Regarding the Marines being male, the Imperium actually was at its most progressive when Space Marines were created by the Emperor.

Yeah that's very true, and it's also one of the more interesting aspects of the fiction. But his "Space Marine vision" was intensely patriarchal, regardless of whatever other enlightenment ideals he was pushing. For better or for worse. . .

 Azreal13 wrote:

And as an overall percentage of the development of the whole game?

That's sort of a complicated question, since games are tremendously varied, and as such, the importance of characters or avatars is also tremendously varied. A game like Counter Strike can afford a lot less effort on the characters, since they are all effectively the same basic skeleton with a different mesh and textures, and share all the same animations. While Overwatch puts a huge amount of emphasis on having very different characters with a whole load of different abilities, proportions, aesthetics, animations, etc. For Overwatch, I would honestly not be surprised if each character involved literally thousands of hours of work, from concept through to final product. Blizzard is known for iterating until they feel it's really "right".

As a percentage? I really couldn't guess, I haven't played the game (to try to observe any balance of effort, which believe me, could be quite faulty in itself) and I don't work there (teams can be balanced for production in many different ways) but since characters play a central role I'd say relatively high when compared to other games.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Are you trying to say that people bought Overwatch solely because of the inclusion of female characters?

Because that's the only way you could justify arguing there was a market for it. Otherwise it's likely just a tiny percentage of the development costs dedicated to offering a wide variety of choice for the player as one designer spent a couple of afternoons adding in some options.

Miniature games aren't as simple as left for bloke, right for a woman.

Besides, there's a market for everything, the issue is whether it offers sufficient return on the costs of tapping into it.

This.

Honestly bringing up overwatch and trying to compare that to table top is really really bad, its apples to oranges.

And on why spacemarines are only men

The Big E made 20 son, said marines where modeled after said sons, ergo, all marines are men.

They already tried to tap into the space marine women with sisters which as we already know did not do so well.

Aside from that, almost all other races have a vast male to female diversity, or are incapable of it, IE nids, orks, necrons.

I would not even try to bring race diversity into it because again, they are paint able toy soldiers, you can make em what ever race you want.

Further more at the end of the day, when im charging my terminators at a group of Chaos, im wondering if that guy with the plasma gun is going to take out one of my terminators, the last thing im going to care about is if they have tits on their models. Besides they never last long enough on the table for me to give a crap.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

And yes, fine, Space Marines can stay male. And yes, Guardsmen and Eldar and Tau can be both, but that's not actually represented in the official models outside of a handful of special characters, 20% of Eldar Guardians, and one Aspect.

Which is what we, at least myself, are asking for. I haven't seen anyone yet saying "NO FEMALE CHARACTERS ALLOWED IN MY 40K NO SIR"

Why do you think I'm asking for something different then?

 Pouncey wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

And yes, fine, Space Marines can stay male. And yes, Guardsmen and Eldar and Tau can be both, but that's not actually represented in the official models outside of a handful of special characters, 20% of Eldar Guardians, and one Aspect.

Which is what we, at least myself, are asking for. I haven't seen anyone yet saying "NO FEMALE CHARACTERS ALLOWED IN MY 40K NO SIR"

Why do you think I'm asking for something different then?

I think most people, my self included dont want diversity for diversities sake in the story.

Peolpe could care less about diversity on the game. But things like shoe hornning in female space marines for reasons always leaves a bad taste in peoples mouths.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

Honestly bringing up overwatch and trying to compare that to table top is really really bad, its apples to oranges.

Sort of. . .

But in some ways it can look worse. The cost of diversifying a video game like Overwatch would, at least outwardly, appear to be much, much greater than sculpting some female heads to be put on Guardsmen, er Guards-people.

Then again, maybe they can look at a release of SM shoulder pads and say "these will sell", and look at the prospect of doing female Guards-people heads and say "these will not sell." Although they could include some with whatever the next guardsmen set it, whenever that will be.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

Peolpe could care less about diversity on the game. But things like shoe hornning in female space marines for reasons always leaves a bad taste in peoples mouths.

Some people care about diversity, you can't argue that. Of those that do care, I don't think a majority of them are asking for female Space Marines though.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

Honestly bringing up overwatch and trying to compare that to table top is really really bad, its apples to oranges.

Sort of. . .

But in some ways it can look worse. The cost of diversifying a video game like Overwatch would, at least outwardly, appear to be much, much greater than sculpting some female heads to be put on Guardsmen, er Guards-people.

Then again, maybe they can look at a release of SM shoulder pads and say "these will sell", and look at the prospect of doing female Guards-people heads and say "these will not sell." Although they could include some with whatever the next guardsmen set it, whenever that will be.

The reason i think the overwatch comparison is silly is because over watch was built with it in-mind, 40k has been around for 30 years and injecting it with the muh diversity for diversity sake always ends up getting handled very very messy.

Really the onlything they need to change is add a extra sprue with female healds in the guard box. BOOM done!

But in some ways it can look worse. The cost of diversifying a video game like Overwatch would, at least outwardly, appear to be much, much greater than sculpting some female heads to be put on Guardsmen, er Guards-people.

So if it's ok to just stick new heads on male models and call them female, it's ok just to reskin the head of a male video game avatar and call it done?

Women are proportionately different, and for them to look 'right' then the whole model needs to be redone, even without going down the cheesecake route.

I'm 6'5", but as a proportion of height, my 5'2" female friend has longer legs than me.

Then we have different body fat distribution, different musculature, pelvis carried and configured differently etc etc..

A lot of this would be lost at tabletop scale, but most detail is lost on the tabletop, it's in promo pics and when we look closely that this stuff becomes relevant.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
I think most people, my self included dont want diversity for diversities sake in the story.

Peolpe could care less about diversity on the game. But things like shoe hornning in female space marines for reasons always leaves a bad taste in peoples mouths.

There are cases, though, where females are supposed to make up roughly half of the fighting forces of various factions, and the official models do not actually represent anything close to that.

And how many times do I have to keep saying that you can keep Space Marines male-only? Because I've said it a lot and people seem to think I've been asking for female Space Marines.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

The reason i think the overwatch comparison is silly is because over watch was built with it in-mind, 40k has been around for 30 years and injecting it with the muh diversity for diversity sake always ends up getting handled very very messy.

Really the onlything they need to change is add a extra sprue with female healds in the guard box. BOOM done!

Well I guess we're in agreement about the guard heads then, move along...

The uncomfortable thing about the history of our 30 year old company is that there used to be more diversity (when Sisters were a supported faction) to where we are now. The ratio of human female models in the 40K universe seems to have dropped. There might be more dog-men (Wulfen) models than ladies.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Azreal13 wrote:

But in some ways it can look worse. The cost of diversifying a video game like Overwatch would, at least outwardly, appear to be much, much greater than sculpting some female heads to be put on Guardsmen, er Guards-people.

So if it's ok to just stick new heads on male models and call them female, it's ok just to reskin the head of a male video game avatar and call it done?

Women are proportionately different, and for them to look 'right' then the whole model needs to be redone, even without going down the cheesecake route.

I'm 6'5", but as a proportion of height, my 5'2" female friend has longer legs than me.

Then we have different body fat distribution, different musculature, pelvis carried and configured differently etc etc..

A lot of this would be lost at tabletop scale, but most detail is lost on the tabletop, it's in promo pics and when we look closely that this stuff becomes relevant.

I'm not entirely sure what you're saying. For a video game it depends tremendously on the aesthetic of the game. For a game where everyone is in a space suit, just having a different head on the model, inside the helmet, would work fine.

For a miniature game where the models are small scale and everyone is wearing some sort of bulky standardized uniform, a head swap also works fine. It's totally dependent on the aesthetic direction of the case involved. If you compare an image serach between "sci-fi female sniper figurine" and "woman combatant in the peoples army of china figurine", there's a stark difference in treatment of body proportion.

And as a rule, women don't necessarily have longer legs by proportion than men. It's more that culturally it's a preferred aesthetic, so you see it get more exposure. High heels and waist-fit clothes are intended to visually lengthen the legs, even though biologically there is more variation between individuals than between gender overall. On the flipside, pants hung low and long shirts are intended to lengthen the torso.

If we start getting all PC with 40k then you'd have no option but to AoSify it completely. First it would be female space marines, then trans etc. Then someone would suggest the Imperium should stop with the (by our standards) war crimes and be nicer by adhering to the Geneva Convention and maybe adopting pacifism and becoming vegans, as well as welcoming Chaos worshippers into their new multi faith society. Eventually it wouldn't be Warhammer 40,000 it would just be 40,000, where games involve taking objectives but no weapons or violence of any kind, just a kind of tabletop sport like Subutteo.

No thanks.

Qlanth wrote:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Are you trying to say that people bought Overwatch solely because of the inclusion of female characters?

Because that's the only way you could justify arguing there was a market for it. Otherwise it's likely just a tiny percentage of the development costs dedicated to offering a wide variety of choice for the player as one designer spent a couple of afternoons adding in some options.

Miniature games aren't as simple as left for bloke, right for a woman.

Besides, there's a market for everything, the issue is whether it offers sufficient return on the costs of tapping into it.

The gaming industry for the past 15 years has proven time and time again that diversity only helps sales.

And no, the developers of Overwatch didn't spend a couple of afternoons cranking out some random female models to use. They put a hell of a lot of effort into them.

Yes, but I think most people (I have no statistics to support this, but nor do you) who bought Overwatch got it because:
A) It looked good with the graphics and gameplay
B) It would have lots of multiplayer opportunities because...
C) It's new

I don't think the dealbreaker at all was "It has multiple non-offensive ethnic and gender representations" - if that was the case, would we not see a massive decrease in the popularity of games like Call of Duty and Battlefield, which pump out very similar, very popular, hyper-masculine*, American-centric games?

*Yes, I will note that in Black Ops III, there are compulsory genders assigned to certain callsigns.

Again, all I can ask for in diversity is in the Imperial Guard range, in the form of new regiments and optional gender packs, and in xenos (Tau auxiliaries, Hrud, Barghesi, Slaugth).
I don't need to see SM changed. I don't want that. SM are all male, SoB are all female. Guardsmen can be both. Tau can be both. Eldar can be both. Everything else is just neutral.

As with most things in life it's much more subtle than that. Of course no one decides to buy Overwatch because there are women in it. They decide to buy Overwatch because they think it looks fun to play like any other person buying a game. The difference is that unlike commercials for Call of Duty, commercials for Overwatch have a lot of women in them. Which women watch. Which leads them to think this thing looks cool, simply because the person on screen looks like they do. Call of Duty never had a commercial with someone who looked like they do. So they didn't care about it.

Next time you watch TV pay special attention the commercials. You'll probably find that the TV commercials for a given product are a lot more diverse than your typical store selling those exact same products.

This isn't something I'm making up. This is the science of advertisement. Making something appear more diverse makes more diverse people interested in it. it works for movies. it works for TV. it works for video games. It works for yogurt. It works for popular board games. I promise it would work for Warhammer 40k as well.

I disagree. This notion that diversity equals mores guaranteed sales and new blood is nonsense. It does in some sectors or some markets, but you're making broad assumptions. Especially when it comes to genres that many consider iconic. The paid reviewers and hawkers in the media can butter up a product that's been altered for the sake of "muh duhversity" all they want, but that doesn't mean that people are going to bite. Just ask the comics industry's Big Two what happens when you start screwing around with iconic titles and characters.


Leave the female space marines where they belong: In lurid fan fiction and 1d4chan. If there are more female options from GeeDubs, let it be the Sororitas getting some badly needed love, or adding female options to the Guard regiments that make use of female troops (like the Valhallans and Vostroytan). Or, better yet, make generic female bits for people who want to include them in their own unique armies.


As for minorities, whats stopping somebody from painting their minis up as blacks, Asians, Arabs, etc?

text removed.

reds8n

Just to nitpick about Overwatch. You're not actually supposed to have a favorite character you play to the exclusion of the others. You're supposed to play whatever character is required to adapt to the current enemy team composition and the situation on the battlefield. Switching characters frequently is supposed to be a major thing.

But I will now drop the subject about Overwatch if you want.

 Quickjager wrote:

40K has always been about faceless hordes killing each other that will eventually culminate into the largest hordes killing each other. The characters aren't nearly as important, their past isn't either. Because even if all the named characters die in the next starter set for Tau, the story demands that another hero or champion for each faction will rise in the hour of need.

40K has always been about forces with a crapload of backstory killing each other. Heck, it started out as more of an RPG. The hordes have faces and character, and the draw of people to different armies is often that background story, character and aesthetic. 40K encourages you to make your own stories and champions on top of that rich backdrop. Each army can be storied through and through with heroes, or can be faceless, up to the players choosing.

I prefer my Tyranids to be faceless, but my Chaos champions to be individuals with back story. Some people like to put more character and story into their armies than others.

One of the specific issues raised is that the background supports women in the Imperial Guard, but there are no models supporting that background that I can think of. Well, except maybe the old female commissar model, and maybe that's not the greatest example.

No I like Overwatch, its just to compare a TT game to a video game made by Blizzard is disingenuous on multiple levels. Especially when one is a new IP and the other has DECADES of history behind it.

EDIT: Also I never said you pick a main, I said you have a favorite character that is a huge difference.

 Quickjager wrote:
No I like Overwatch, its just to compare a TT game to a video game made by Blizzard is disingenuous on multiple levels. Especially when one is a new IP and the other has DECADES of history behind it.

EDIT: Also I never said you pick a main, I said you have a favorite character that is a huge difference.

Uhh... is there a single fictional universe in existence that does not have most of its fans having a favorite character or faction?

If you want to be deliberately obtuse there is little I can do for you.

 Quickjager wrote:
If you want to be deliberately obtuse there is little I can do for you.

How am I being obtuse?

How did you mean "having a favorite character" if you meant neither playing one character over any others, nor simply having a character you like more than any others?

Is there in fact a third way to interpret that?

Ashiraya wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Are you trying to say that people bought Overwatch solely because of the inclusion of female characters?

No, but their portrayal did tip the balance for me, from a pass to a get.

How does a women's character portrayal affect a hero-shooter and how fun/buy-worthy it is?

Snake Tortoise wrote:If we start getting all PC with 40k then you'd have no option but to AoSify it completely. First it would be female space marines, then trans etc. Then someone would suggest the Imperium should stop with the (by our standards) war crimes and be nicer by adhering to the Geneva Convention and maybe adopting pacifism and becoming vegans, as well as welcoming Chaos worshippers into their new multi faith society. Eventually it wouldn't be Warhammer 40,000 it would just be 40,000, where games involve taking objectives but no weapons or violence of any kind, just a kind of tabletop sport like Subutteo.

No thanks.

And to everyone asking for half female everything, consider men are scientifically proven better fighters than women, and if you're in a guardian squad getting blown apart by bolts and your leg gets blown off and you need to get carried out of the battle, who would you want carrying you? The person with more muscle mass, or less? There is a reason there isn't many female soldiers today.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

And to everyone asking for half female everything, consider men are scientifically proven better fighters than women, and if you're in a guardian squad getting blown apart by bolts and your leg gets blown off and you need to get carried out of the battle, who would you want carrying you? The person with more muscle mass, or less? There is a reason there isn't many female soldiers today.

Eldar and Tau aren't sexually dimorphic like humans are. Having an all female, all male or a 50/50 split wouldn't make much of a difference for the Xenos. I would also venture to say that in the 41st millenia, humans range incredibly when it comes to muscle build. I wouldn't say the Catachans are anything like your average soldier.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
And to everyone asking for half female everything, consider men are scientifically proven better fighters than women, and if you're in a guardian squad getting blown apart by bolts and your leg gets blown off and you need to get carried out of the battle, who would you want carrying you? The person with more muscle mass, or less? There is a reason there isn't many female soldiers today.

Eldar have very much less gender dimorphism (but still enough that they warrant having different torsos to distinguish male and female guardians), Cadians need every human soldier they can get so their mandatory enlistment includes women too, Catachan women are likely physically strong enough that it doesn't matter, and in real life those strength differences will start to matter less once we start implementing the powered exoskeletons humanity's been building into military organizations and a woman is just as capable of carrying you off the battlefield as a man would be.

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

And to everyone asking for half female everything, consider men are scientifically proven better fighters than women, and if you're in a guardian squad getting blown apart by bolts and your leg gets blown off and you need to get carried out of the battle, who would you want carrying you? The person with more muscle mass, or less? There is a reason there isn't many female soldiers today.

Eldar and Tau aren't sexually dimorphic like humans are. Having an all female, all male or a 50/50 split wouldn't make much of a difference for the Xenos. I would also venture to say that in the 41st millenia, humans range incredibly when it comes to muscle build. I wouldn't say the Catachans are anything like your average soldier.

Of course things are bound to change in 40k years, and alien species would be slightly different, but they are all humanoid. And humanoids have a tendency of one common trait: Women take care of preserving the species as a whole, (in terms of reproducing and care) and men defend the homeland and do the heavylifting. (I don't care how bigoted you call me or how progressive you are) And considering 40k is largely inspired by a time period in which it was very patriarchal, I am still inclined to believe that men are instinctively better fighters and/or stronger.

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

And to everyone asking for half female everything, consider men are scientifically proven better fighters than women, and if you're in a guardian squad getting blown apart by bolts and your leg gets blown off and you need to get carried out of the battle, who would you want carrying you? The person with more muscle mass, or less? There is a reason there isn't many female soldiers today.

Eldar and Tau aren't sexually dimorphic like humans are. Having an all female, all male or a 50/50 split wouldn't make much of a difference for the Xenos. I would also venture to say that in the 41st millenia, humans range incredibly when it comes to muscle build. I wouldn't say the Catachans are anything like your average soldier.

The Guardian kit comes with two female torsos. The Howling Banshees have only female models. The fact that we are clearly able to distinguish a male Eldar from a female Eldar suggests that humans would be able to tell a female Eldar from a male one.

Guardians have about half their numbers being female. Howling Banshees are not actually exclusively female so should have some male models. And none of the other Aspects are male-only so they should have some female options.

I'll give you Tau though.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

And to everyone asking for half female everything, consider men are scientifically proven better fighters than women, and if you're in a guardian squad getting blown apart by bolts and your leg gets blown off and you need to get carried out of the battle, who would you want carrying you? The person with more muscle mass, or less? There is a reason there isn't many female soldiers today.

Eldar and Tau aren't sexually dimorphic like humans are. Having an all female, all male or a 50/50 split wouldn't make much of a difference for the Xenos. I would also venture to say that in the 41st millenia, humans range incredibly when it comes to muscle build. I wouldn't say the Catachans are anything like your average soldier.

Of course things are bound to change in 40k years, and alien species would be slightly different, but they are all humanoid. And humanoids have a tendency of one common trait: Women take care of preserving the species as a whole, (in terms of reproducing and care) and men defend the homeland and do the heavylifting. (I don't care how bigoted you call me or how progressive you are) And considering 40k is largely inspired by a time period in which it was very patriarchal, I am still inclined to believe that men are instinctively better fighters and/or stronger.

I think you need to reread the Eldar and the Tau fluff. They operate much different than the traditional gender roles of humans.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

Ashiraya wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Are you trying to say that people bought Overwatch solely because of the inclusion of female characters?

No, but their portrayal did tip the balance for me, from a pass to a get.

How does a women's character portrayal affect a hero-shooter and how fun/buy-worthy it is?

Snake Tortoise wrote:If we start getting all PC with 40k then you'd have no option but to AoSify it completely. First it would be female space marines, then trans etc. Then someone would suggest the Imperium should stop with the (by our standards) war crimes and be nicer by adhering to the Geneva Convention and maybe adopting pacifism and becoming vegans, as well as welcoming Chaos worshippers into their new multi faith society. Eventually it wouldn't be Warhammer 40,000 it would just be 40,000, where games involve taking objectives but no weapons or violence of any kind, just a kind of tabletop sport like Subutteo.

No thanks.

And to everyone asking for half female everything, consider men are scientifically proven better fighters than women, and if you're in a guardian squad getting blown apart by bolts and your leg gets blown off and you need to get carried out of the battle, who would you want carrying you? The person with more muscle mass, or less? There is a reason there isn't many female soldiers today.

The difference here being the lore directly states women join the IG (the only place it really matters, for all we know female Tau/Eldar may be the stronger sex of their species) Not all regiments have them obviously, and I'd imagine most planets prefer single sex regiments for ease of logistics/men are more expendable, but they are a thing that shows up in the lore time and again. I dont know if youre trying to argue that there should be no women or just 1/2 per box, but they are in the background and have even had models in the past. Granted the only two female models I can think of are balloon tits commissar and the "not Vasquez" with her nipples poking through her tank top, but they exist. You also have to remember that most IG regiments aren't exactly spec ops or the best of the best necessarily. Some planets tithes are literally them just herding a bunch of lower class people onto a ship and letting the Munitorum deal with it. They're not going to be looking for ideal muscle mass or physical make up, theyre going to be checking for a pulse and enough brain cells to rub together to point the correct end of the lasgun at the enemy.How many chromosomes you have really doesn't matter to the guard, you'll stop a bullet just as well as the next guy/gal/whatever.

Its different than female space marines, where there's no basis for it in the lore whatsoever. If we saw a box of female IG tomorrow, that would be absolutely fine and a lot of people would be happy because thats a part of the background finally being shown on the tabletop. Its not like if a box of female space marines showed up, where most of the community would be confused and expecting some sort of major lore revamp to explain it.

This is ignoring the elephant in the room of course, which is that sisters need a friggin revamp badly. I'm running out of things to jokingly refer to getting done before them. Mechanicus, Genestealer cults, deathwatch, and even plastic titans have appeared. If a plastic thunderhawk gets released I dont know what I'll do

If there's a bone to pick with diversity in 40k, let it be that. At least with race you can just paint differently. Bit more difficult to have to make the models to a faction yourself or from 3rd party because the metal models are outrageously expensive and difficult to obtain sometimes.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

And to everyone asking for half female everything, consider men are scientifically proven better fighters than women, and if you're in a guardian squad getting blown apart by bolts and your leg gets blown off and you need to get carried out of the battle, who would you want carrying you? The person with more muscle mass, or less? There is a reason there isn't many female soldiers today.

Eldar and Tau aren't sexually dimorphic like humans are. Having an all female, all male or a 50/50 split wouldn't make much of a difference for the Xenos. I would also venture to say that in the 41st millenia, humans range incredibly when it comes to muscle build. I wouldn't say the Catachans are anything like your average soldier.

Of course things are bound to change in 40k years, and alien species would be slightly different, but they are all humanoid. And humanoids have a tendency of one common trait: Women take care of preserving the species as a whole, (in terms of reproducing and care) and men defend the homeland and do the heavylifting. (I don't care how bigoted you call me or how progressive you are) And considering 40k is largely inspired by a time period in which it was very patriarchal, I am still inclined to believe that men are instinctively better fighters and/or stronger.

And in the lore there's actually an IG regiment that is all-female.

 Pouncey wrote:

 Tactical_Spam wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

And to everyone asking for half female everything, consider men are scientifically proven better fighters than women, and if you're in a guardian squad getting blown apart by bolts and your leg gets blown off and you need to get carried out of the battle, who would you want carrying you? The person with more muscle mass, or less? There is a reason there isn't many female soldiers today.

Eldar and Tau aren't sexually dimorphic like humans are. Having an all female, all male or a 50/50 split wouldn't make much of a difference for the Xenos. I would also venture to say that in the 41st millenia, humans range incredibly when it comes to muscle build. I wouldn't say the Catachans are anything like your average soldier.

The Guardian kit comes with two female torsos. The Howling Banshees have only female models. The fact that we are clearly able to distinguish a male Eldar from a female Eldar suggests that humans would be able to tell a female Eldar from a male one.

Guardians have about half their numbers being female. Howling Banshees are not actually exclusively female so should have some male models. And none of the other Aspects are male-only so they should have some female options.

I'll give you Tau though.

I was more referring to combat prowess and physical might. Eldar males and females are pretty equal as far as I have read. The Aspect Hosts are in dire need of a recasting. There isn't any reason the future ones, if there are any, would not have both female and male torsos.

 Pouncey wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
And to everyone asking for half female everything, consider men are scientifically proven better fighters than women, and if you're in a guardian squad getting blown apart by bolts and your leg gets blown off and you need to get carried out of the battle, who would you want carrying you? The person with more muscle mass, or less? There is a reason there isn't many female soldiers today.

Eldar have very much less gender dimorphism (but still enough that they warrant having different torsos to distinguish male and female guardians), Cadians need every human soldier they can get so their mandatory enlistment includes women too, Catachan women are likely physically strong enough that it doesn't matter, and in real life those strength differences will start to matter less once we start implementing the powered exoskeletons humanity's been building into military organizations and a woman is just as capable of carrying you off the battlefield as a man would be.

Exo-skeletons? You need to get off infinite warfare for a while bud. I haven't heard of these but I'm sure they won't become widely used until they are relatively cheap and accessible. So until they become those, you're stuck with good ol' fashion muskels! And besides, I believe there was a study in which men were more inclined to save their squadmates life if it were a woman more than a mans, even when it endangered the mission and themselves. Gotta love them instincts!

And I get cadians, and it very much does matter for catachans. Get a female body builder and get a male body builder (assuming these are about the average catachan) and get them to carry each other. It'll be a cakewalk for the man.

Edit: I realize these warring factions need as many soldiers as possible, but breeding is still necessary for more soldiers, and when you can either enlist a man that is most likely stronger and a better soldier, or a woman who is a valuable asset to keeping the human/eldar/tau race alive and is (in the case of tau and humans) most likely weaker, I know which I'd pick.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
And to everyone asking for half female everything, consider men are scientifically proven better fighters than women, and if you're in a guardian squad getting blown apart by bolts and your leg gets blown off and you need to get carried out of the battle, who would you want carrying you? The person with more muscle mass, or less? There is a reason there isn't many female soldiers today.

Eldar have very much less gender dimorphism (but still enough that they warrant having different torsos to distinguish male and female guardians), Cadians need every human soldier they can get so their mandatory enlistment includes women too, Catachan women are likely physically strong enough that it doesn't matter, and in real life those strength differences will start to matter less once we start implementing the powered exoskeletons humanity's been building into military organizations and a woman is just as capable of carrying you off the battlefield as a man would be.

Exo-skeletons? You need to get off infinite warfare for a while bud. I haven't heard of these but I'm sure they won't become widely used until they are relatively cheap and accessible. So until they become those, you're stuck with good ol' fashion muskels! And besides, I believe there was a study in which men were more inclined to save their squadmates life if it were a woman more than a mans, even when it endangered the mission and themselves. Gotta love them instincts!

There are dock workers using them in Japan right now.

They haven't been used for military purposes yet, and I did say that, but it's gonna happen.

And I get cadians, and it very much does matter for catachans. Get a female body builder and get a male body builder (assuming these are about the average catachan) and get them to carry each other. It'll be a cakewalk for the man.

And Cadians are the biggest IG model line right now.

Edit: I release these warring factions need as many soldiers as possible, but breeding is still necessary for more soldiers, and when you can either enlist a man that is most likely stronger and a better soldier, or a woman who is a valuable asset to keeping the human/eldar/tau race alive and is (in the case of tau and humans) are most likely weaker, I know which I'd pick.

And the humans in 40k give two damns most of the time, since women are still fully capable of firing a lasgun and wearing flak armor and given that humans number in the quadrillions their population is in no danger of going extinct.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
Edit: I realize these warring factions need as many soldiers as possible, but breeding is still necessary for more soldiers, and when you can either enlist a man that is most likely stronger and a better soldier, or a woman who is a valuable asset to keeping the human/eldar/tau race alive and is (in the case of tau and humans) most likely weaker, I know which I'd pick.

Eldar live are practically immortal. They will have a few children in their life time; no need to rush. Tau, for all we know, lay eggs. Tau control a very small region of space and do not wage the galactic wars the Imperium/Orks/Chaos do. They have the time to have children as do the rest of the Imperium's citizens.

 Pouncey wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
And to everyone asking for half female everything, consider men are scientifically proven better fighters than women, and if you're in a guardian squad getting blown apart by bolts and your leg gets blown off and you need to get carried out of the battle, who would you want carrying you? The person with more muscle mass, or less? There is a reason there isn't many female soldiers today.

Eldar have very much less gender dimorphism (but still enough that they warrant having different torsos to distinguish male and female guardians), Cadians need every human soldier they can get so their mandatory enlistment includes women too, Catachan women are likely physically strong enough that it doesn't matter, and in real life those strength differences will start to matter less once we start implementing the powered exoskeletons humanity's been building into military organizations and a woman is just as capable of carrying you off the battlefield as a man would be.

Exo-skeletons? You need to get off infinite warfare for a while bud. I haven't heard of these but I'm sure they won't become widely used until they are relatively cheap and accessible. So until they become those, you're stuck with good ol' fashion muskels! And besides, I believe there was a study in which men were more inclined to save their squadmates life if it were a woman more than a mans, even when it endangered the mission and themselves. Gotta love them instincts!

There are dock workers using them in Japan right now.

They haven't been used for military purposes yet, and I did say that, but it's gonna happen.

And I get cadians, and it very much does matter for catachans. Get a female body builder and get a male body builder (assuming these are about the average catachan) and get them to carry each other. It'll be a cakewalk for the man.

And Cadians are the biggest IG model line right now.

Edit: I release these warring factions need as many soldiers as possible, but breeding is still necessary for more soldiers, and when you can either enlist a man that is most likely stronger and a better soldier, or a woman who is a valuable asset to keeping the human/eldar/tau race alive and is (in the case of tau and humans) are most likely weaker, I know which I'd pick.

And the humans in 40k give two damns most of the time, since women are still fully capable of firing a lasgun and wearing flak armor and given that humans number in the quadrillions their population is in no danger of going extinct.

Those dock workers aren't getting shot at by crazy terrorists though.

And it was mentioned that it didn't matter for catachans. I refuted that.

Quadrillion can go pretty quick when you've got a trillion madmen trying to kill you to save their quadrillion.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
Those dock workers aren't getting shot at by crazy terrorists though.

Yeah, my point was that the technology currently exists in real life, not that it's currently being applied to the military.

I DID say that in the near future it would matter less. NOT that it matters less now.

And it was mentioned that it didn't matter for catachans. I refuted that.

I thought I said Cadians and dropped the Catachans thing altogether.

Quadrillion can go pretty quick when you've got a trillion madmen trying to kill you to save their quadrillion.

Except the IoM has had female IG for literally thousands of years and their population is STILL in the quadrillions.

And the IoM has been in the same situation for thousands of years.

It will matter when Abbadon actually breaks the gate/tyranids unite/any universe ending apocalypse.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
And the IoM has been in the same situation for thousands of years.

It will matter when Abbadon actually breaks the gate/tyranids unite/any universe ending apocalypse.

Yes, I'm sure having few to no women in the IG military will save the Imperium in those cases.

Azreal13 wrote:

But in some ways it can look worse. The cost of diversifying a video game like Overwatch would, at least outwardly, appear to be much, much greater than sculpting some female heads to be put on Guardsmen, er Guards-people.

So if it's ok to just stick new heads on male models and call them female, it's ok just to reskin the head of a male video game avatar and call it done?

Women are proportionately different, and for them to look 'right' then the whole model needs to be redone, even without going down the cheesecake route.

I'm 6'5", but as a proportion of height, my 5'2" female friend has longer legs than me.

Then we have different body fat distribution, different musculature, pelvis carried and configured differently etc etc..

A lot of this would be lost at tabletop scale, but most detail is lost on the tabletop, it's in promo pics and when we look closely that this stuff becomes relevant.

Okay, raise your hand if you have actually every been to combat or in a situation where you have both sexes in body armor and helmets and matching baggy uniforms.

*raises hand*

At 10 feet away, I might be able to pick out the females in a unit. It'd be harder if none wore make up or had jewelry. In the heat of battle, it's damn near impossible to pick that sort of thing out. Feminine facial contours on Cadian heads would indeed get the job done. Body armor? Gonna squish the boobies down. Hips? Bagginess of the uniform and body armor will blend it in unless you're talking Kim Kardashian or Iggy Azalea.

With the exception of the Eldar, the xenos in the game really don't have the male/female differences that we have. So you can identify them however you see fit.




What I'd like to see is more people painting Elven/Eldar faces brown. You never see that. Ever.

But every woman out of combat could mean anywhere from1-10 soldiers. So assuming about half are women, thats 2 trillion out of action. However, that means they will have more time and safety to bare children. Most will have 2. That means they take out 2 trillion, and they get 4 trillion. Remove some more women from the 4 trillion and repeat.

 Just Tony wrote:
Okay, raise your hand if you have actually every been to combat or in a situation where you have both sexes in body armor and helmets and matching baggy uniforms.

*raises hand*

At 10 feet away, I might be able to pick out the females in a unit. It'd be harder if none wore make up or had jewelry. In the heat of battle, it's damn near impossible to pick that sort of thing out. Feminine facial contours on Cadian heads would indeed get the job done. Body armor? Gonna squish the boobies down. Hips? Bagginess of the uniform and body armor will blend it in unless you're talking Kim Kardashian or Iggy Azalea.

With the exception of the Eldar, the xenos in the game really don't have the male/female differences that we have. So you can identify them however you see fit.




What I'd like to see is more people painting Elven/Eldar faces brown. You never see that. Ever.

:: keeps hand down ::

In Iron Man 1 though, Tony Stark didn't know his Humvee's driver was a woman until she actually spoke.

And Tony Stark's the kind of guy you'd expect to notice if someone's a woman or a man moreso than most people.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
But every woman out of combat could mean anywhere from1-10 soldiers. So assuming about half are women, thats 2 trillion out of action. However, that means they will have more time and safety to bare children. Most will have 2. That means they take out 2 trillion, and they get 4 trillion. Remove some more women from the 4 trillion and repeat.

And half of all human children are female. So if human women aren't allowed into combat under any circumstances, you're removing one soldier, and getting an average of one in return.

You're not actually increasing the IG's numbers by doing so.

Nobody said they weren't allowed in combat, I was simply making a point they could be used for more than just another soldier, and should be treated as such and be removed from combat if it would benefit the human race more. So you would get more. (and even then, 2 is the average for today, in 40k it might be more because of conscription tithes or something similar.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
Nobody said they weren't allowed in combat, I was simply making a point they could be used for more than just another soldier, and should be treated as such and be removed from combat if it would benefit the human race more. So you would get more. (and even then, 2 is the average for today, in 40k it might be more because of conscription tithes or something similar.

Their numbers are fine even though they do use a lot of female troops. There are simply enough women in the IoM that it doesn't hurt the humans' numbers to so.

And since Cadians in the lore conscript both men and women equally, and are ultimately the flagship IG regiment at this point, they should be getting female conversion kits for their infantry.

And if your argument is that the lore doesn't make sense to you, I'm going to reopen the idea of female Space Marines since there's nothing whatsoever in the process of becoming a Space Marine that actually requires being male, and had the Emperor wanted to, he could easily have had some daughters as well as sons and worked out the tech to make it happen (women's lack of strength in the upper body doesn't matter as much when Astartes power armor provides a huge boost to their physical strength), making the only reason for not having female Marines being, "Because I said so."

But I don't want to get into that argument. I'd rather you just recognize that if "Because I said so." and "Because it's always been that way." is a sufficient argument for not having female Space Marines, then it SHOULD be a sufficient argument for actually having female models for the factions which, in the lore, have enough female troops to warrant it.

Iirc correctly I heard form someone that the Emperor was originally planning on having 10 sons and 10 daughters. The idea being the daughters would keep the sons conflicting nature and aggressiveness in check with more responsibility and better judgment. However it couldn't go to plan because there was some reason as to why women couldn't accept the modification (such as chromosomes or inherent biological differences between men and women).

Don't know if this is cannon or just people making up a reason for all male marines. However it would be simple to make female heads for cadian because of how similar the males and females would be. They both undergo the same training, for the same amount of time, to try make uniform soldiers of a set level of effectiveness. Plus I'm pretty sure that they operate off a ome size fits nobody system for uniform and gear, so bodily shapes would not come across as much due to baggy fatigues and tight body armour.

There's only male Space Marines for the same reason there's only female Adeptus Sororitas. Nobody cares and there's a special snowflake army for everyone.

Want more female presence in the game? Yeah that's fine, but how do you do it? Long hair on a couple of Guardsmen or your precious female Space Marines? Everyone's hair is probably shaved or kept very short. Throw tits on the models? They look very silly; Howling Banshees are pushing that boundary of looking okay and looking ridiculous.

 HANZERtank wrote:
Iirc correctly I heard form someone that the Emperor was originally planning on having 10 sons and 10 daughters. The idea being the daughters would keep the sons conflicting nature and aggressiveness in check with more responsibility and better judgment. However it couldn't go to plan because there was some reason as to why women couldn't accept the modification (such as chromosomes or inherent biological differences between men and women).

Don't know if this is cannon or just people making up a reason for all male marines. However it would be simple to make female heads for cadian because of how similar the males and females would be. They both undergo the same training, for the same amount of time, to try make uniform soldiers of a set level of effectiveness. Plus I'm pretty sure that they operate off a ome size fits nobody system for uniform and gear, so bodily shapes would not come across as much due to baggy fatigues and tight body armour.

I recall there were some 40k players a number of years ago who were custom-making female Cadian models by modifying the male ones, and they ended up with a result that was distinctly female while also fitting in with the male Cadian models.

Oooh this took a fun turn.

While it's true that men are generally stronger, it means much less when combat is based on guns rather than clubbing each other. In a world with advanced technology, I'll take intelligence, discipline and professionalism over mere physical might any day.

As for the strength factor and carry weights expected of a modern soldier, the modern kit is currently ruining legs and knees for life. That's one of the reasons why those exoskeletons are being developed. Even those tough guys are getting permanently messed up from carrying all that weight. The military would love to have a solution for having to carry around all that ****.

 Insectum7 wrote:
Oooh this took a fun turn.

While it's true that men are generally stronger, it means much less when combat is based on guns rather than clubbing each other. In a world with advanced technology, I'll take intelligence, discipline and professionalism over mere physical might any day.

As for the strength factor and carry weights expected of a modern soldier, the modern kit is currently ruining legs and knees for life. That's one of the reasons why those exoskeletons are being developed. Even those tough guys are getting permanently messed up from carrying all that weight. The military would love to have a solution for having to carry around all that ****.

The IG's solution to that problem is to not have their soldiers carry around much equipment since they're probably going to die really fast once they get into a battle.

Also the IoM's main melee weapon is the chainsword, where you're not so much supposed to swing it around a lot but instead push the spinning blade against the opponent and let it cut through them.

HANZERtank wrote:Iirc correctly I heard form someone that the Emperor was originally planning on having 10 sons and 10 daughters. The idea being the daughters would keep the sons conflicting nature and aggressiveness in check with more responsibility and better judgment. However it couldn't go to plan because there was some reason as to why women couldn't accept the modification (such as chromosomes or inherent biological differences between men and women).

Where that story comes from is an incident where Malcador, half jokingly, suggested to the Emperor that half of the Primarchs should be female, supposedly to serve as a buffer against any potentially "brotherly" rivalry escalating beyond manageable levels. The Emperor was not amused, and simply replies that it wasn't possible.

Pouncey wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
Nobody said they weren't allowed in combat, I was simply making a point they could be used for more than just another soldier, and should be treated as such and be removed from combat if it would benefit the human race more. So you would get more. (and even then, 2 is the average for today, in 40k it might be more because of conscription tithes or something similar.

Their numbers are fine even though they do use a lot of female troops. There are simply enough women in the IoM that it doesn't hurt the humans' numbers to so.

And since Cadians in the lore conscript both men and women equally, and are ultimately the flagship IG regiment at this point, they should be getting female conversion kits for their infantry.

Most Cadian females serve in the Cadian Interior Guard (since every Cadian is technically a military reservist, with their homeworld literally being a fortress planet). There are females in the Cadian Imperial Guard regiments, just not in the numbers you see with males. Mostly because Cadian females are expected to push out as many future recruits as possible, both to meet tithe requirements, as well as hold the Gate from the Ruinous Powers.


As for the rest, it depends on the world and it's culture. Valhalla is one world that makes heavy use of female personnel. It's just that mixed regiments are uncommon. Another is Vostroyan. If you don't have a first-born son to enter the Emperor's service, then your first-born daughter gets the spot.

I seriously doubt that the Death Korps has female personnel serving in it's regiments, considering that both Krieg women, along with "vitae womb" technology, are both connected to Krieg keeping up it supply of fanatically suicidal gas masked mooks. You probably won't find many females in the Scintillan Fusiliers either, mostly because the system of Imperial nobility has a strong patriarchal bent.

It wouldn't surprise me if Brimlock, Tallarn, and Catachan has numerous females in their ranks. Especially, the Catachan. Everybody from that world is a tough mofo.

 oldravenman3025 wrote:
Most Cadian females serve in the Cadian Interior Guard (since every Cadian is technically a military reservist, with their homeworld literally being a fortress planet). There are females in the Cadian Imperial Guard regiments, just not in the numbers you see with males. Mostly because Cadian females are expected to push out as many future recruits as possible, both to meet tithe requirements, as well as hold the Gate from the Ruinous Powers.


As for the rest, it depends on the world and it's culture. Valhalla is one world that makes heavy use of female personnel. It's just that mixed regiments are uncommon. Another is Vostroyan. If you don't have a first-born son to enter the Emperor's service, then your first-born daughter gets the spot.

I seriously doubt that the Death Korps has female personnel serving in it's regiments, considering that both Krieg women, along with "vitae womb" technology, are both connected to Krieg keeping up it supply of fanatically suicidal gas masked mooks. You probably won't find many females in the Scintillan Fusiliers either, mostly because the system of Imperial nobility has a strong patriarchal bent.

It wouldn't surprise me if Brimlock, Tallarn, and Catachan has numerous females in their ranks. Especially, the Catachan. Everybody from that world is a tough mofo.

So maybe not half then.

How about enough to make a playable army with a decent mix of male/female IG models if you so choose? If you did it with conversion kits (or a separate kit if you go with the female models having different bodies too) you could even let the player decide how many of their IG are female.

Because right now our options for female IG are limited to, what, 3 models? One's a Last Chancer, one's a Commissar in a style that should never have existed outside of adult fan art to begin with, and the third's an OOP Catachan with a grenade launcher.

And yes, of course, if an IG regiment has lore that means there aren't going to be women in their ranks on the battlefield, then you don't have to create a female variant for them. The lore's the entire reason that there aren't female Space Marines or male Sisters of Battle, and few people are pushing for the former and literally no one for the latter.

I think 40k is incredibly diverse. We have humans, superhumans, demons, elves, evil elves, orks, bugs, fish people, female nun warriors, etc. Anyone can paint there army in any scheme and come up with whatever back story they want.

There, question answered. If anyone complains there isn't enough of whatever in official cannon, they need to get over it. This is toy soldiers that were left for folks to use their imagination and creativity with.

 455_PWR wrote:
I think 40k is incredibly diverse. We have humans, superhumans, demons, elves, evil elves, orks, bugs, fish people, female nun warriors, etc. Anyone can paint there army in any scheme and come up with whatever back story they want.

There, question answered. If anyone complains there isn't enough of whatever in official cannon, they need to get over it. This is toy soldiers that were left for folks to use their imagination and creativity with.

How does a paint job let me turn a male Guardsman into a female Guardsman?

 Pouncey wrote:

 oldravenman3025 wrote:
Most Cadian females serve in the Cadian Interior Guard (since every Cadian is technically a military reservist, with their homeworld literally being a fortress planet). There are females in the Cadian Imperial Guard regiments, just not in the numbers you see with males. Mostly because Cadian females are expected to push out as many future recruits as possible, both to meet tithe requirements, as well as hold the Gate from the Ruinous Powers.


As for the rest, it depends on the world and it's culture. Valhalla is one world that makes heavy use of female personnel. It's just that mixed regiments are uncommon. Another is Vostroyan. If you don't have a first-born son to enter the Emperor's service, then your first-born daughter gets the spot.

I seriously doubt that the Death Korps has female personnel serving in it's regiments, considering that both Krieg women, along with "vitae womb" technology, are both connected to Krieg keeping up it supply of fanatically suicidal gas masked mooks. You probably won't find many females in the Scintillan Fusiliers either, mostly because the system of Imperial nobility has a strong patriarchal bent.

It wouldn't surprise me if Brimlock, Tallarn, and Catachan has numerous females in their ranks. Especially, the Catachan. Everybody from that world is a tough mofo.

So maybe not half then.

How about enough to make a playable army with a decent mix of male/female IG models if you so choose? If you did it with conversion kits (or a separate kit if you go with the female models having different bodies too) you could even let the player decide how many of their IG are female.

Because right now our options for female IG are limited to, what, 3 models? One's a Last Chancer, one's a Commissar in a style that should never have existed outside of adult fan art to begin with, and the third's an OOP Catachan with a grenade launcher.

And yes, of course, if an IG regiment has lore that means there aren't going to be women in their ranks on the battlefield, then you don't have to create a female variant for them. The lore's the entire reason that there aren't female Space Marines or male Sisters of Battle, and few people are pushing for the former and literally no one for the latter.

I'm with you 100% on GW offering more female options for the Guard. It's sorely lacking, especially for people who want that option for their homebrew armies.

I dunno gay space marines?

On one hand diversity could be interesting after deployment... opponent smiling at your small force, hoping for a crushing victory..... "sorry brah but all these cultists, they actually identify as terminators" (said in whiny SJW voice)

 Ashley_Chaos wrote:
I dunno gay space marines?

On one hand diversity could be interesting after deployment... opponent smiling at your small force, hoping for a crushing victory..... "sorry brah but all these cultists, they actually identify as terminators" (said in whiny SJW voice)

Gay Space Marines would require Space Marines to actually display any interest in sex.

Though if you wanted to, there are some fan theories that Dark Angels as a Legion have some allusions to real-world stuff regarding homosexuality.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
But every woman out of combat could mean anywhere from1-10 soldiers. So assuming about half are women, thats 2 trillion out of action. However, that means they will have more time and safety to bare children. Most will have 2. That means they take out 2 trillion, and they get 4 trillion. Remove some more women from the 4 trillion and repeat.

So what? The babies female guardsmen might have had if they hadn't been conscripted are a tiny rounding error in the vast masses of humanity. Remember that, for all the jokes about flashlights and t-shirts, guardsmen are taken from the elite of the elite in a whole planet's military. They simply do not exist in large enough numbers relative to the population of a planet for anything related to IG recruiting to have any meaningful effect on planet-scale birth rates.

 Peregrine wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
But every woman out of combat could mean anywhere from1-10 soldiers. So assuming about half are women, thats 2 trillion out of action. However, that means they will have more time and safety to bare children. Most will have 2. That means they take out 2 trillion, and they get 4 trillion. Remove some more women from the 4 trillion and repeat.

So what? The babies female guardsmen might have had if they hadn't been conscripted are a tiny rounding error in the vast masses of humanity. Remember that, for all the jokes about flashlights and t-shirts, guardsmen are taken from the elite of the elite in a whole planet's military. They simply do not exist in large enough numbers relative to the population of a planet for anything related to IG recruiting to have any meaningful effect on planet-scale birth rates.

Except for the planets that just round up X members of their lower class when the tithe is coming and let the Munitorum take care of things.

Because apparently those exist.

Edit: I'm gonna guess the reason that a few posts just disappeared before my eyes is because they were related to RL politics and not even question why.

We do have female Tau models. They're called Fire Warriors, Battlesuits, and vehicles. Female Tau are almost indistinguishable from males when they have their helmet on, because the only difference is the Y-shaped forehead hole. Yes, most helmetless Tau have the I-shaped "blowhole", but that doesn't mean the helmetted ones can't be female. The Ghostkeel pilot is explicitly female, so is Shadowsun.

Addendum: And Tau lay eggs (if I recall correctly), so the breeding argument doesn't hold up.

 Insectum7 wrote:
While it's true that men are generally stronger, it means much less when combat is based on guns rather than clubbing each other. In a world with advanced technology, I'll take intelligence, discipline and professionalism over mere physical might any day.

Amusingly enough, if the Israeli are to be believed, their world-unique all-female combat unit actually performs better in terms of marksmanship than their men do.

Something about less of a 'I totally got this, guys' mindset and instead actually listening to the instructors.

Male or female, you can fire a lasgun either way and you are blown apart by a bolt either way, so differences are superficial.

 Pouncey wrote:

 Chute82 wrote:
It's your toy soldiers do what you want. There are a number of third party companies that make parts to customize your army, you don't have to wait for GW to release bits.

I do if I ever want to use those models at an official GW store. Which is where I'd be playing if I end up playing anywhere but at home.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
This pretty much sums up the thread, the only arguemnt people have are muh wimminz spahs muhreens

Which for lore reasons they dont exist, and there are sisters of battle which are the female space marines.

...Did you just bring up the most neglected army in the game which hasn't actually been squatted outright as an example of how women are well represented in 40k?

Using female mini heads on your IG should not be an issue.

 Verviedi wrote:
We do have female Tau models. They're called Fire Warriors, Battlesuits, and vehicles. Female Tau are almost indistinguishable from males when they have their helmet on, because the only difference is the Y-shaped forehead hole. Yes, most helmetless Tau have the I-shaped blowhole, but that doesn't mean the helmetted ones can't be female. The Ghostkeel pilot is explicitly female, so is Shadowsun.

Addendum: And Tau lay eggs (if I recall correctly), so the breeding argument doesn't hold up.

Actually, I heard the latest Tau sprues for Fire Warriors actually contained bare female heads, so I assumed that was taken care of since most of them wear helmets and Tau generally don't have much sexual dimorphism in comparison to Humans and Eldar. I'm not even sure Tau women have breasts, since they're not mammals.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
How does a women's character portrayal affect a hero-shooter and how fun/buy-worthy it is?

Because it makes the characters more interesting.

In games I am typically just as interested in the characters as I am in the gameplay, and it needs a healthy dose of both to warrant a purchase. If Overwatch had identical gameplay mechanics but all characters had been generic middle age white American men, I would not have bought it, period. Its sheer diversity gives everyone something to identify with and understand, vastly broadening its appeal.

Characters like Zarya and Mei in a videogame are all but unprecedented, especially in a game that is of such a high quality overall.

This may be a viewpoint that is difficult for you to understand, since the vast majority of video games are made to cater to you, and so this is a problem you have never had to even consider.

Troy wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

 Chute82 wrote:
It's your toy soldiers do what you want. There are a number of third party companies that make parts to customize your army, you don't have to wait for GW to release bits.

I do if I ever want to use those models at an official GW store. Which is where I'd be playing if I end up playing anywhere but at home.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
This pretty much sums up the thread, the only arguemnt people have are muh wimminz spahs muhreens

Which for lore reasons they dont exist, and there are sisters of battle which are the female space marines.

...Did you just bring up the most neglected army in the game which hasn't actually been squatted outright as an example of how women are well represented in 40k?

Using female mini heads on your IG should not be an issue.

I'd like to get those from GW since I hate working with metal, strongly prefer plastic, and pretty much every female head thing I come across is either metal or resin.

Also GW should really be making them anyways since female IG are very much a thing that exists.

Troy wrote:

Using female mini heads on your IG should not be an issue.

Can be in a GW. There used to be a 25% rule - your minis can have up to 25% non-gw bitz. Some managers seem to have been told to enact a eugenics programme on bitz swappers.

The best part about this is its so moot because again, no ones really going to care because said models is most likely going to die a horrible horrible death on the battle field haha

But female IG are supposed to be rarer than men, guuuuys. That is why they don't get models.

And now back to our latest new Space Wolf flyer...

 Ashiraya wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
How does a women's character portrayal affect a hero-shooter and how fun/buy-worthy it is?

Because it makes the characters more interesting.

In games I am typically just as interested in the characters as I am in the gameplay, and it needs a healthy dose of both to warrant a purchase. If Overwatch had identical gameplay mechanics but all characters had been generic middle age white American men, I would not have bought it, period. Its sheer diversity gives everyone something to identify with and understand, vastly broadening its appeal.

Characters like Zarya and Mei in a videogame are all but unprecedented, especially in a game that is of such a high quality overall.

This may be a viewpoint that is difficult for you to understand, since the vast majority of video games are made to cater to you, and so this is a problem you have never had to even consider.

Uhh, I'm a 27-year-old white Canadian man. I'm even strongly attracted to a shapely female form, if that matters for this purpose.

And I've preferred playing female characters in video games since I was in my early teens and my fondness for doing so has grown over the years to the point where letting me play as a female character is actually one of the first things I check when I'm looking at playing a new game. Doesn't mean I won't play the male options if I like them enough for one reason or the other, but my decision to even TRY Planetside 2 (a game I wound up loving to death) was ultimately decided by the fact that yes, I could play a female character. And then my decision to play Eternal Crusade and even pre-purchase it while it was in Alpha testing was solely on the grounds that when Eldar were added to the game, they would have the option to play a female character (and as more than just a Banshee, too! : D).

So it's not like the ability to play a female character only appeals to women. I'm living proof of multiple games getting an extra customer because they included the option to play a female character instead of just a male one.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Selym wrote:

Troy wrote:

Using female mini heads on your IG should not be an issue.

Can be in a GW. There used to be a 25% rule - your minis can have up to 25% non-gw bitz. Some managers seem to have been told to enact a eugenics programme on bitz swappers.

I play at home currently, but one day the reason why I don't play at my local GW might not be an issue anymore, and I'd like to not have to re-do tons of my models to be able to do so.

 Pouncey wrote:
So it's not like the ability to play a female character only appeals to women. I'm living proof of multiple games getting an extra customer because they included the option to play a female character instead of just a male one.

I am aware, my point is rather that it is a major selling factor for us on the other side of the fence.

I am also very much aware that being able to play an attractive female is very popular among men, though for different reasons. I play WoW, you know. There is a reason pretty much everyone plays a blood elf.

 Selym wrote:

Troy wrote:

Using female mini heads on your IG should not be an issue.

Can be in a GW. There used to be a 25% rule - your minis can have up to 25% non-gw bitz. Some managers seem to have been told to enact a eugenics programme on bitz swappers.

There's no need to make things sound worse than they really are. Head swaps are absolutely allowed in any reasonable GW store, and I have yet to see anyone get in trouble for bitz swapping.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
The best part about this is its so moot because again, no ones really going to care because said models is most likely going to die a horrible horrible death on the battle field haha

Why even ask for people to paint their minis since the visual appeal of a miniature is wholly irrelevant?

 Pouncey wrote:

 Verviedi wrote:
We do have female Tau models. They're called Fire Warriors, Battlesuits, and vehicles. Female Tau are almost indistinguishable from males when they have their helmet on, because the only difference is the Y-shaped forehead hole. Yes, most helmetless Tau have the I-shaped blowhole, but that doesn't mean the helmetted ones can't be female. The Ghostkeel pilot is explicitly female, so is Shadowsun.

Addendum: And Tau lay eggs (if I recall correctly), so the breeding argument doesn't hold up.

Actually, I heard the latest Tau sprues for Fire Warriors actually contained bare female heads, so I assumed that was taken care of since most of them wear helmets and Tau generally don't have much sexual dimorphism in comparison to Humans and Eldar. I'm not even sure Tau women have breasts, since they're not mammals.

They don't, that's terrible, people who draw female Tau with breasts are deviants to the Tau'va, and will be disappeared.

Addendum:
It's also arguable that Tau are actually several different similar species (air caste are very different from fire caste, and interbreeding between castes is discouraged).

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:
So it's not like the ability to play a female character only appeals to women. I'm living proof of multiple games getting an extra customer because they included the option to play a female character instead of just a male one.

I am aware, my point is rather that it is a major selling factor for us on the other side of the fence.

I am also very much aware that being able to play an attractive female is very popular among men, though for different reasons. I play WoW, you know. There is a reason pretty much everyone plays a blood elf.

I also play WoW. : D

I'm sorry so many of my fellow Alliance players (and high-ranking NPCs) are incapable of setting aside the assumption that the Horde betrayed us long enough to realize that the Horde betraying the Alliance would be stupid, since the Horde wanted Gul'dan dead too and the Alliance hadn't actually killed him yet, and then reasonably conclude that the Horde weren't trying to get us killed and instead had to retreat for some very, very important reason.

I'm also sorry that the Alliance leadership is wholly unwilling to actually meet with the Horde leadership and discuss what happened like anyone actually would, as such a discussion would only result in the Alliance leaders (except Jaina and maybe Genn) concluding that the Horde weren't trying to get the Alliance killed but simply avert a more immense disaster than what actually happened.

But it's ultimately a result of the fact that modern writing doesn't focus on a good story where people do things that make sense to them, but instead manufactures emotional moments of various sorts regardless of the effect to the story.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Verviedi wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

 Verviedi wrote:
We do have female Tau models. They're called Fire Warriors, Battlesuits, and vehicles. Female Tau are almost indistinguishable from males when they have their helmet on, because the only difference is the Y-shaped forehead hole. Yes, most helmetless Tau have the I-shaped blowhole, but that doesn't mean the helmetted ones can't be female. The Ghostkeel pilot is explicitly female, so is Shadowsun.

Addendum: And Tau lay eggs (if I recall correctly), so the breeding argument doesn't hold up.

Actually, I heard the latest Tau sprues for Fire Warriors actually contained bare female heads, so I assumed that was taken care of since most of them wear helmets and Tau generally don't have much sexual dimorphism in comparison to Humans and Eldar. I'm not even sure Tau women have breasts, since they're not mammals.

They don't, that's terrible, people who draw female Tau with breasts are deviants to the Tau'va, and will be disappeared.

Addendum:
It's also arguable that Tau are actually several different similar species (air caste are very different from fire caste, and interbreeding between castes is discouraged).

Well, some of the ones who draw female Tau with breasts can be excused since they're simply creating adult artwork for adults to "enjoy" and adherence to the lore has always been secondary to creating something sexy.

However, we shouldn't excuse the Eldar having breasts just because they're mammals. Most female mammals don't actually have enlarged breasts like humans do. We're actually kind of a rarity in that way, and since it ultimately developed due to humans in particular finding it sexy for some reason, there's no reason the Eldar's natural evolution would actually result in their women having breasts beyond the designers simply wanting to make them look more like humans.

You can also apply that to any sci-fi or fantasy species that has their female members having enlarged breasts.

Agreed. I am likely allowing my personal favoritism towards Tau to interfere with other's preferences. Eldar can be excused (possibly!) because likely the Old Ones got lazy and made humans and Eldar share some features. That's pretty much the only reason I can think of for them having enlarged breasts like humans.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
While it's true that men are generally stronger, it means much less when combat is based on guns rather than clubbing each other. In a world with advanced technology, I'll take intelligence, discipline and professionalism over mere physical might any day.

Amusingly enough, if the Israeli are to be believed, their world-unique all-female combat unit actually performs better in terms of marksmanship than their men do.

Something about less of a 'I totally got this, guys' mindset and instead actually listening to the instructors.

Male or female, you can fire a lasgun either way and you are blown apart by a bolt either way, so differences are superficial.

Except strength does matter, in any and every situation. Cultists get into the trenches? Rusty cleaver to your throat? Some way you've got to get out of that.

Bewbs and a handy-j will do for some of them.

Draw me like one of your titanicus girls!

 Verviedi wrote:
Agreed. I am likely allowing my personal favoritism towards Tau to interfere with other's preferences. Eldar can be excused (possibly!) because likely the Old Ones got lazy and made humans and Eldar share some features. That's pretty much the only reason I can think of for them having enlarged breasts like humans.

So literally, "the creators made them look alike because they didn't want to come up with an original design for everything."

I'm not sure whether to be upset or happy that the lore reason is identical to the meta reason... I'm very confused.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
While it's true that men are generally stronger, it means much less when combat is based on guns rather than clubbing each other. In a world with advanced technology, I'll take intelligence, discipline and professionalism over mere physical might any day.

Amusingly enough, if the Israeli are to be believed, their world-unique all-female combat unit actually performs better in terms of marksmanship than their men do.

Something about less of a 'I totally got this, guys' mindset and instead actually listening to the instructors.

Male or female, you can fire a lasgun either way and you are blown apart by a bolt either way, so differences are superficial.

Except strength does matter, in any and every situation. Cultists get into the trenches? Rusty cleaver to your throat? Some way you've got to get out of that.

Are you suggesting that a woman trained for war cannot kill a man trained for war?

If you're suggesting that the male cultist would have an advantage over a female Guardswoman, yes, that's true. But there are also female Cultists too and often they'd be going up in melee against male Guardsmen, and since both sides are human there's a fairly equal amount of men and women on both sides (though Chaos might actually have a higher proportion of female Cultists in combat than the IG has female Guardswomen due to Chaos giving literally zero feths about it and the IG generally preferring to send its men into combat instead of women).

Ashiraya wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
How does a women's character portrayal affect a hero-shooter and how fun/buy-worthy it is?

Because it makes the characters more interesting.

In games I am typically just as interested in the characters as I am in the gameplay, and it needs a healthy dose of both to warrant a purchase. If Overwatch had identical gameplay mechanics but all characters had been generic middle age white American men, I would not have bought it, period. Its sheer diversity gives everyone something to identify with and understand, vastly broadening its appeal.

Characters like Zarya and Mei in a videogame are all but unprecedented, especially in a game that is of such a high quality overall.

This may be a viewpoint that is difficult for you to understand, since the vast majority of video games are made to cater to you, and so this is a problem you have never had to even consider.

How do you know what caters to me? I've never once expressed my race, religion, or sexuality (or gender even, but I'm playing 40k, I'm sure you can guess from the majority). Sounds like you're making assumptions. I play Skyrim, I'm sure some other people here do too. My first character was an Argonian, because I thought they were cool. Not because they properly represented me, or my feelings, but because I thought they were cool. If you have to bring in your political stance on women in video games to enjoy it, I feel bad for you.

Lore reason is identical to meta reasons all the time. The Horus Heresy exists because GW didn't want to make different sculpts in the original Adeptus Titanicus box, so they used the civil war excuse to have both sides using the same models.

 Pouncey wrote:

 Verviedi wrote:
Agreed. I am likely allowing my personal favoritism towards Tau to interfere with other's preferences. Eldar can be excused (possibly!) because likely the Old Ones got lazy and made humans and Eldar share some features. That's pretty much the only reason I can think of for them having enlarged breasts like humans.

So literally, "the creators made them look alike because they didn't want to come up with an original design for everything."

I'm not sure whether to be upset or happy that the lore reason is identical to the meta reason... I'm very confused.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
While it's true that men are generally stronger, it means much less when combat is based on guns rather than clubbing each other. In a world with advanced technology, I'll take intelligence, discipline and professionalism over mere physical might any day.

Amusingly enough, if the Israeli are to be believed, their world-unique all-female combat unit actually performs better in terms of marksmanship than their men do.

Something about less of a 'I totally got this, guys' mindset and instead actually listening to the instructors.

Male or female, you can fire a lasgun either way and you are blown apart by a bolt either way, so differences are superficial.

Except strength does matter, in any and every situation. Cultists get into the trenches? Rusty cleaver to your throat? Some way you've got to get out of that.

Are you suggesting that a woman trained for war cannot kill a man trained for war?

If you're suggesting that the male cultist would have an advantage over a female Guardswoman, yes, that's true. But there are also female Cultists too and often they'd be going up in melee against male Guardsmen.

Not that she cannot, there is far too many variables to give it a flat yes or no, but a man will always be stronger than a woman if they both get the same training. Whether it be man or woman, cultist, or guardsmen.

 Selym wrote:
Bewbs and a handy-j will do for some of them.

Draw me like one of your titanicus girls!

Oh my, how lewd :3

 Selym wrote:
Bewbs and a handy-j will do for some of them.

Draw me like one of your titanicus girls!

Flak Armor now comes with a chest zipper, for all your lewd distraction needs.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Selym wrote:
Bewbs and a handy-j will do for some of them.

Draw me like one of your titanicus girls!

Flak Armor now comes with a chest zipper, for all your lewd distraction needs.

Aye yi yi. That's worse than the female commissar models.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
Not that she cannot, there is far too many variables to give it a flat yes or no, but a man will always be stronger than a woman if they both get the same training, whether it be man or woman, cultist, or guardsmen.

And those Cultists probably have a higher percentage of female humans than the IG do on the battlefield since the IG overall prefer either recruiting men or sending the men they do have into battle while having the female Guardswomen guard things, while Chaos doesn't give a feth one way or another about its cultists. And if you're going up against daemons, there is no physical advantage a male Guardsman can have against them. Astartes? IG are gonna get wrecked whether they're male or female, makes no difference. Tau prefer to shoot things and hate melee in its entirety, and a human woman would kill a Tau in melee as easily as a human man. Eldar melee units are going to full-on annihilate Guardsmen as they're generally composed of Aspect Warriors. Guardians are probably still going to kill an average unit of humans, male or female, due to Eldar being taller and having similar sexual dimorphism, so they have a size advantage against the men. Necrons are literally robot killing machines, there is no comparison in physical strength. Guardsmen fighting Hormagaunts in melee is ludicrous regardless of gender. Orks are going to wreck Guardsman in melee, even male ones.

Generally, the opponents that IG face are either humans themselves, who would have the exact same strengths and weaknesses, or aliens of various sorts who would generally slaughter humans in melee regardless of whether they're male or female. Or Tau, where the human is going to win regardless of their sex.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Verviedi wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Selym wrote:
Bewbs and a handy-j will do for some of them.

Draw me like one of your titanicus girls!

Flak Armor now comes with a chest zipper, for all your lewd distraction needs.

Aye yi yi. That's worse than the female commissar models.

I agree, but... doesn't modern kevlar come with a zipper up the middle of the vest? I've never actually seen one in person and certainly never worn one.

No, they don't. The zipper would be a massive failure point. And also I googled it.

 Verviedi wrote:
No, they don't. The zipper would be a massive failure point. And also I googled it.

Cool, thanks. : D

How do you get it on/off then? Just slip it over the head, I presume?

While I agree with most of what you say, orks can actually get defeated in melee by humans. In the Yarrick armageddon book a Sororitas leads a zealous penal army into a horde of orks and in the perspective of the lunatic the writing is in, he actually kills 3-4 before he dies.

And strength is not just about melee, it's about carrying supplies, carrying the wounded, pretty much everything that makes women soldiers ineffective today.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Pouncey wrote:

 Verviedi wrote:
No, they don't. The zipper would be a massive failure point. And also I googled it.

Cool, thanks. : D

How do you get it on/off then? Just slip it over the head, I presume?

Yep. And I know the ones the police where have straps on the side so they're extra form fitting

Sorry, I'm a dumbass. I must have got old results or something when I googled it. Some have zippers in front, some have zippers in back, some are slipped over the head. Depends on model.
Most results have zippers in back, although some of them with inbuilt pouches have them in front.

 Pouncey wrote:

I agree, but... doesn't modern kevlar come with a zipper up the middle of the vest? I've never actually seen one in person and certainly never worn one.

No. Most use velcro/velcro-like fasteners.

That's the layout of the USMC's "Modular Tactical Vest", of which many other vests share similar styles(lots of fasteners and buckles).

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
While I agree with most of what you say, orks can actually get defeated in melee by humans. In the Yarrick armageddon book a Sororitas leads a zealous penal army into a horde of orks and in the perspective of the lunatic the writing is in, he actually kills 3-4 before he dies.

And strength is not just about melee, it's about carrying supplies, carrying the wounded, pretty much everything that makes women soldiers ineffective today.

A Sister of Battle leading a zealous unit of humans into battle is going to result in those humans having some help from the God-Emperor.

Supplies are mostly irrelevant, as IG don't carry much of those into battle in general since they're expected to die quickly and modern militaries have them carry tons of stuff under the assumption their goal is to survive.

Wounded are irrelevant since the IG have medical technology (and occasionally Hospitallers) capable of healing grievous wounds right on the battlefield to get them right back into battle.

What are the other things that makes women less suitable than men?

Also should we consider women being better at handling physical pain than men since in the 40k universe Guardsmen are expected to get shot a lot but keep fighting until death? Your ability to handle pain would be important then.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Pouncey wrote:

 Verviedi wrote:
No, they don't. The zipper would be a massive failure point. And also I googled it.

Cool, thanks. : D

How do you get it on/off then? Just slip it over the head, I presume?

Yep. And I know the ones the police where have straps on the side so they're extra form fitting

Cool.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
Sounds like you're making assumptions. I play Skyrim, I'm sure some other people here do too. My first character was an Argonian, because I thought they were cool. Not because they properly represented me, or my feelings, but because I thought they were cool.

This is the crux of the problem; you are assuming everyone thinks like you, and those who do not are the deviants.

Has the possibility struck you that those who disagree with you may not be as insignificant as you think?

Or, alternatively, if you need another justification; what if other people think other things are 'cool'?

If you have to bring in your political stance on women in video games to enjoy it, I feel bad for you.

If you had to deal with most guys in your favourite media format serving as side characters at best or simple romances, often in suggestive poses and with inexplicably revealing clothes, over and over again for a very long time, I suspect you too would put value in every exception.

As said, I doubt it is a problem you can even imagine because it is so far from your status quo, but that does not mean it does not exist.

If the guard doesn't carry their supplies, who does? Someone has to carry all the rations and tents etc. Some wounds can't be healed by plot device #365, unless that morphine can grow back an arm.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
If the guard doesn't carry their supplies, who does? Someone has to carry all the rations and tents etc. Some wounds can't be healed by plot device #365, unless that morphine can grow back an arm.

I dunno. They never go into much detail about the logistics. I'm basing it partly on the fact that we almost never see IG models or art where they're carrying a ton of equipment.

Also they basically conduct warfare as though military strategy progress stopped at World War 1.

Also the IG medkit can't grow back an arm, but it CAN heal the stump to the point you don't need any further treatment in seconds.

Imperial tech is actually amazing, they're just gak at understanding it.

Ultimately though, my strongest argument is the same argument used to say that male Sisters of Battle don't exist and female Space Marines don't exist also applies to this situation. The reason male SoB and female Astartes aren't things is "Because the lore says so." And the lore ALSO says that the Imperial Guard use female humans a hell of a lot more than we actually see shown on the models. Whether it makes sense or not is irrelevant, since you're perfectly willing to accept the lore saying something is true as a valid reason for it to be true in those other cases, even when it's ridiculous. Male Sisters of Battle should be a thing, or Sisters of Battle shouldn't be a thing if the lore made sense, because the Sisters of Battle are almost completely equivalent to Astartes in terms of combat prowess in the lore, yet a reasonable and fairly low-ball estimation of their numbers according to the lore we DO have on their numbers says that the Imperium SHOULD have 10,000 of them for every single Space Marine they have, even assuming that 99% of all people who are Sisters of Battle are currently inactive for any reason whatsoever. Making the Ecclesiarchy MORE than capable of taking out the entirety of the Astartes in a war since the minor advantage Astartes have over Sororitas individually is outweighed by being outnumbered 10,000 to 1. They probably have the combat strength just in Sororitas alone to control the entire Imperium any time they want to, to say nothing of the non-Sororitas squads of zealots that would be raised in such a war! They probably have the numbers to even take on the ENTIRE Imperial Guard in an Imperium-wide war and WIN! And since the reason for Sororitas being allowed at all was a technicality in a law passed to say the Ecclesiarchy could NOT have a powerful army, it's a ludicrous situation! Either someone should have stepped in and said the Ecclesiarchy CAN'T have Sisters of Battle, or the position should've been opened to men too since no one cares about the Ecclesiarchy's power!

 Ashiraya wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
Sounds like you're making assumptions. I play Skyrim, I'm sure some other people here do too. My first character was an Argonian, because I thought they were cool. Not because they properly represented me, or my feelings, but because I thought they were cool.

This is the crux of the problem; you are assuming everyone thinks like you, and those who do not are the deviants.

Has the possibility struck you that those who disagree with you may not be as insignificant as you think?

If you have to bring in your political stance on women in video games to enjoy it, I feel bad for you.

If you had to deal with most guys in your favourite media format serving as side characters at best or simple romances, often in suggestive poses and with inexplicably revealing clothes, over and over again for a very long time, I suspect you too would put value in every exception.

As said, I doubt it is a problem you can even imagine because it is so far from your status quo, but that does not mean it does not exist.

Overwatch isn't exactly an exception, D.va, Widowmaker and Mercy are all wearing skintight body suits.

And don't give me this "oooh, you couldn't even imagine the struggle of a fictional character wearing a shirt that shows cleavage! The misogyny! What will we ever do?" crap. I fully understand your "struggle", but it doesn't make it any less silly you spend your money on whatever panders to your political views.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
If the guard doesn't carry their supplies, who does? Someone has to carry all the rations and tents etc. Some wounds can't be healed by plot device #365, unless that morphine can grow back an arm.

It does in CoD, iirc. Why not here?

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
And strength is not just about melee, it's about carrying supplies, carrying the wounded, pretty much everything that makes women soldiers ineffective today.

wat.

 Pouncey wrote:
They probably have the combat strength just in Sororitas alone to control the entire Imperium any time they want to, to say nothing of the non-Sororitas squads of zealots that would be raised in such a war! They probably have the numbers to even take on the ENTIRE Imperial Guard in an Imperium-wide war and WIN!

The IG has trillions of soldiers, does it not? They will outnumber the SoB by quite an amount.

 Selym wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:
They probably have the combat strength just in Sororitas alone to control the entire Imperium any time they want to, to say nothing of the non-Sororitas squads of zealots that would be raised in such a war! They probably have the numbers to even take on the ENTIRE Imperial Guard in an Imperium-wide war and WIN!

The IG has trillions of soldiers, does it not? They will outnumber the SoB by quite an amount.

The SoB have 10 billion Sisters of Battle PLUS all Imperial citizens INCLUDING Imperial Guard willing to obey the state religion in a coup.

Would 10,000 Space Marines be WAY more than sufficient to conquer an average Imperial world?

YES.

And the Sisters of Battle DO have the numbers to put 10,000 Sisters of Battle on EVERY Imperial world AT THE SAME TIME.

Does "all Imperial Citizens" include the traitors, heretics, xenotech-lovers, space marine recruit potentials and the garrison at the Sol system?

If not, you may have issues.

 Pouncey wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
If the guard doesn't carry their supplies, who does? Someone has to carry all the rations and tents etc. Some wounds can't be healed by plot device #365, unless that morphine can grow back an arm.

I dunno. They never go into much detail about the logistics. I'm basing it partly on the fact that we almost never see IG models or art where they're carrying a ton of equipment.

Also they basically conduct warfare as though military strategy progress stopped at World War 1.

Also the IG medkit can't grow back an arm, but it CAN heal the stump to the point you don't need any further treatment in seconds.

Imperial tech is actually amazing, they're just gak at understanding it.

Ultimately though, my strongest argument is the same argument used to say that male Sisters of Battle don't exist and female Space Marines don't exist also applies to this situation. The reason male SoB and female Astartes aren't things is "Because the lore says so." And the lore ALSO says that the Imperial Guard use female humans a hell of a lot more than we actually see shown on the models. Whether it makes sense or not is irrelevant, since you're perfectly willing to accept the lore saying something is true as a valid reason for it to be true in those other cases, even when it's ridiculous. Male Sisters of Battle should be a thing, or Sisters of Battle shouldn't be a thing if the lore made sense, because the Sisters of Battle are almost completely equivalent to Astartes in terms of combat prowess in the lore, yet a reasonable and fairly low-ball estimation of their numbers according to the lore we DO have on their numbers says that the Imperium SHOULD have 10,000 of them for every single Space Marine they have, even assuming that 99% of all people who are Sisters of Battle are currently inactive for any reason whatsoever. Making the Ecclesiarchy MORE than capable of taking out the entirety of the Astartes in a war since the minor advantage Astartes have over Sororitas individually is outweighed by being outnumbered 10,000 to 1. They probably have the combat strength just in Sororitas alone to control the entire Imperium any time they want to, to say nothing of the non-Sororitas squads of zealots that would be raised in such a war! They probably have the numbers to even take on the ENTIRE Imperial Guard in an Imperium-wide war and WIN! And since the reason for Sororitas being allowed at all was a technicality in a law passed to say the Ecclesiarchy could NOT have a powerful army, it's a ludicrous situation! Either someone should have stepped in and said the Ecclesiarchy CAN'T have Sisters of Battle, or the position should've been opened to men too since no one cares about the Ecclesiarchy's power!

You're right on the medical part I guess. And I would assume they leave it at their base, and only take the equipment they need like their canteens, a knife, etc.

Sororitas don't have all the extra organs and stuff though, so they are still a step down from SM.

And the reason there is no SoB that are dudes is because the ecclesiarchy signed some contract where men couldn't raise arms for them, so they got women to. Pretty cheeky. And we all know the SM's story by now.

Sure, throw in some girl bits for 40k, but I doubt it will ever happen because that requires money to do, and I don't think GW will ever see it as a sound investment. The best you can do is 3rd party bits probably.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
Overwatch isn't exactly an exception, D.va, Widowmaker and Mercy are all wearing skintight body suits.

It doesn't matter to me if a game has slim bodysuits too and the like.

What I want is diversity - ie, like Overwatch, it has plenty of things that are not bodysuits.

I fully understand your "struggle", but it doesn't make it any less silly you spend your money on whatever panders to your political views.

And why the hell is this politics suddenly?

 Ashiraya wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
Overwatch isn't exactly an exception, D.va, Widowmaker and Mercy are all wearing skintight body suits.

It doesn't matter to me if a game has bodysuits too and the like.

What I want is diversity - ie, like Overwatch, it has plenty of things that are not bodysuits.

I fully understand your "struggle", but it doesn't make it any less silly you spend your money on whatever panders to your political views.

And why the hell is this politics suddenly?

Plus I feel like the very way the statement is phrased and "struggle" being in quotes implies it's very much untrue.

 Selym wrote:
Does "all Imperial Citizens" include the traitors, heretics, xenotech-lovers, space marine recruit potentials and the garrison at the Sol system?

If not, you may have issues.

Traitors and heretics aren't going to be helping the Imperium anyway. I'm unfamiliar with xenotech-lovers so I dunno. Space Marine recruit potentials just plain might help the Ecclesiarchy since they're still Imperial citizens and at that point follow the state religion.

Sol would be a hell of a war, but any Astartes defending it this time are not going to be facing anything NEAR equal numbers. Also in this hypothetical scenario, the Ecclesiarchy doesn't actually want to kill the Emperor or even most Imperial citizens, just control it.

Also, answer me this.

If you were able to put 9,000 Space Marines (accounting for even a 10% effectiveness loss) on EVERY Imperial planet at the same time, with them having the backing of most of the citizens, could you conquer the Imperium?

Selym wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
If the guard doesn't carry their supplies, who does? Someone has to carry all the rations and tents etc. Some wounds can't be healed by plot device #365, unless that morphine can grow back an arm.

It does in CoD, iirc. Why not here?

BossJakadakk wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
And strength is not just about melee, it's about carrying supplies, carrying the wounded, pretty much everything that makes women soldiers ineffective today.

wat.

I'm serious. Look at the research, you can't tell me with a straight face that a woman can do everything a man can. It's literally scientifically disproven. Women weren't in the drift for a reason, not just because muh sexism.

inb4 hurr GI jane!

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
You're right on the medical part I guess. And I would assume they leave it at their base, and only take the equipment they need like their canteens, a knife, etc.

Yup

Sororitas don't have all the extra organs and stuff though, so they are still a step down from SM.

Considering one of their duties is to cull Space Marine chapters, that's not a huge issue, especially since they outnumber Space Marines 10,000 to 1.

And the reason there is no SoB that are dudes is because the ecclesiarchy signed some contract where men couldn't raise arms for them, so they got women to. Pretty cheeky. And we all know the SM's story by now.

Correct. BECAUSE THE LORE SAYS SO.

The EXACT reason you're IGNORING when you argue AGAINST female Imperial Guard.

Sure, throw in some girl bits for 40k, but I doubt it will ever happen because that requires money to do, and I don't think GW will ever see it as a sound investment. The best you can do is 3rd party bits probably.

GW will never see it as a sound investment because they don't actually care much about their lore and don't do any market research. New models only come to exist because some random developer at GW wanted to make them.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
Overwatch isn't exactly an exception, D.va, Widowmaker and Mercy are all wearing skintight body suits.

It doesn't matter to me if a game has slim bodysuits too and the like.

What I want is diversity - ie, like Overwatch, it has plenty of things that are not bodysuits.

I fully understand your "struggle", but it doesn't make it any less silly you spend your money on whatever panders to your political views.

And why the hell is this politics suddenly?

You said you value video games that treat women they way you wanted them treated a lot more than ones that don't, and I couldn't help but notice your signature and you can't tell me that opinion doesn't have at least some roots in your feminist ideology?

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

Selym wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
If the guard doesn't carry their supplies, who does? Someone has to carry all the rations and tents etc. Some wounds can't be healed by plot device #365, unless that morphine can grow back an arm.

It does in CoD, iirc. Why not here?

BossJakadakk wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
And strength is not just about melee, it's about carrying supplies, carrying the wounded, pretty much everything that makes women soldiers ineffective today.

wat.

I'm serious. Look at the research, you can't tell me with a straight face that a woman can do everything a man can. It's literally scientifically disproven. Women weren't in the drift for a reason, not just because muh sexism.

inb4 hurr GI jane!

Why do you hate 40k lore?

Is there in fact any reason to play 40k other than you like the game's lore or your friends play it instead of anything else?

The models are crazy-expensive and becoming gak with the tons of extra details. The rules are worse than gak and you'd probably get a more balanced and better game by eschewing the rules, using the models as army men, rolling no dice and arguing with your opponent, "I shot you!" "Nuh-uh!"

Let's face it. If you actually care about 40k at this point, the lore is important to you.

And the lore says that female Imperial Guard both exist and are effective enough to continue existing.

DEAL WITH IT.

 Pouncey wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
You're right on the medical part I guess. And I would assume they leave it at their base, and only take the equipment they need like their canteens, a knife, etc.

Yup

Sororitas don't have all the extra organs and stuff though, so they are still a step down from SM.

Considering one of their duties is to cull Space Marine chapters, that's not a huge issue, especially since they outnumber Space Marines 10,000 to 1.

And the reason there is no SoB that are dudes is because the ecclesiarchy signed some contract where men couldn't raise arms for them, so they got women to. Pretty cheeky. And we all know the SM's story by now.

Correct. BECAUSE THE LORE SAYS SO.

The EXACT reason you're IGNORING when you argue AGAINST female Imperial Guard.

Sure, throw in some girl bits for 40k, but I doubt it will ever happen because that requires money to do, and I don't think GW will ever see it as a sound investment. The best you can do is 3rd party bits probably.

GW will never see it as a sound investment because they don't actually care much about their lore and don't do any market research. New models only come to exist because some random developer at GW wanted to make them.

I'm not saying women don't serve in 40k, plenty do, I'm just saying there would be less than men.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Pouncey wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

Selym wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
If the guard doesn't carry their supplies, who does? Someone has to carry all the rations and tents etc. Some wounds can't be healed by plot device #365, unless that morphine can grow back an arm.

It does in CoD, iirc. Why not here?

BossJakadakk wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
And strength is not just about melee, it's about carrying supplies, carrying the wounded, pretty much everything that makes women soldiers ineffective today.

wat.

I'm serious. Look at the research, you can't tell me with a straight face that a woman can do everything a man can. It's literally scientifically disproven. Women weren't in the drift for a reason, not just because muh sexism.

inb4 hurr GI jane!

Why do you hate 40k lore?

Is there in fact any reason to play 40k other than you like the game's lore or your friends play it instead of anything else?

The models are crazy-expensive and becoming gak with the tons of extra details. The rules are worse than gak and you'd probably get a more balanced and better game by eschewing the rules, using the models as army men, rolling no dice and arguing with your opponent, "I shot you!" "Nuh-uh!"

Let's face it. If you actually care about 40k at this point, the lore is important to you.

And the lore says that female Imperial Guard both exist and are effective enough to continue existing.

DEAL WITH IT.

I don't, surprisingly enough. I know women soldiers exist in both real life and 40k, but it's not as tactically sound as it could be.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
I couldn't help but notice your signature and you can't tell me that opinion doesn't have at least some roots in your feminist ideology?

It's the other way around. I do not want diversity because I am a feminist, I am a feminist because - among plentiful other reasons - I want diversity.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
I don't, surprisingly enough. I know women soldiers exist in both real life and 40k, but it's not as tactically sound as it could be.

So WHAT?

The Imperium does TONS of stuff that's tactically unsound. It's just part of the setting.

The IG's tanks should logically get stuck on the first patch of any terrain that's not 100% solid, yet they keep using them.

The fact that women are less physically strong than men when they're still plenty strong to hold and fire a lasgun and carry their small amounts of equipment, when they're an army that focuses entirely on shooting combat and their main melee tactic is simply the enemy not having the numbers too kill them all is irrelevant, both by itself and in comparison to the massive technical problems the IG should have but somehow doesn't.

Ok.

So there's lore support for why Marines aren't female, and Sisters are a counterpoint to this and also supported by lore.

There are female options for Craftworld and Dark Eldar and Tau.

Tyranids are mostly sexless, but with some essentially female units and one sort of male.

Necrons are asexual, as ostensibly are daemons, who do still have male and female archetypes within the faction.


So this whole thread is basically just calling for a small number of female components to represent the occasional Guardsman?

 Azreal13 wrote:
Ok.

So there's lore support for why Marines aren't female, and Sisters are a counterpoint to this and also supported by lore.

There are female options for Craftworld and Dark Eldar and Tau.

Tyranids are mostly sexless, but with some essentially female units and one sort of male.

Necrons are asexual, as are ostensibly are daemons, who do still male and female archetypes within the faction.


So this whole thread is basically just calling for a small number of female components to represent the occasional Guardsman?

Craftworld Eldar do not have a suitable amount of female options. Outside of Banshees, their Phoenix Lady, and 20% of Guardians there are NO female Craftworld Eldar models. Aspect Warriors are not actually segregated by gender, most of them should be roughly half male and half female. The Banshees should have more than half being female, but they should have male options too since there are actually a not-insignficiant number of male Howling Banshees in the lore. Scorpions lean more towards men so they should remain mostly men, but still have some females. There should be female Warlock and Farseer models too.

The IG issue could fairly easily be solved through conversion kits though.

 Pouncey wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
I don't, surprisingly enough. I know women soldiers exist in both real life and 40k, but it's not as tactically sound as it could be.

So WHAT?

The Imperium does TONS of stuff that's tactically unsound. It's just part of the setting.

The IG's tanks should logically get stuck on the first patch of any terrain that's not 100% solid, yet they keep using them.

The fact that women are less physically strong than men when they're still plenty strong to hold and fire a lasgun and carry their small amounts of equipment, when they're an army that focuses entirely on shooting combat and their main melee tactic is simply the enemy not having the numbers too kill them all is irrelevant, both by itself and in comparison to the massive technical problems the IG should have but somehow doesn't.

I know that. I'm not refuting that, no need to caps lock, I don't even know why this discussion is going on anymore. We've both met an impasse and I don't see a way to get through it.

40k is an odd setting, to say the least. Where one can make 6 pages of text arguing if fake women would be just as good as killing as fake men in a fake universe.

Now you're just making me get existential.

So, have a good day I guess?

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
I don't, surprisingly enough. I know women soldiers exist in both real life and 40k, but it's not as tactically sound as it could be.

So WHAT?

The Imperium does TONS of stuff that's tactically unsound. It's just part of the setting.

The IG's tanks should logically get stuck on the first patch of any terrain that's not 100% solid, yet they keep using them.

The fact that women are less physically strong than men when they're still plenty strong to hold and fire a lasgun and carry their small amounts of equipment, when they're an army that focuses entirely on shooting combat and their main melee tactic is simply the enemy not having the numbers too kill them all is irrelevant, both by itself and in comparison to the massive technical problems the IG should have but somehow doesn't.

I know that. I'm not refuting that, no need to caps lock, I don't even know why this discussion is going on anymore. We've both met an impasse and I don't see a way to get through it.

40k is an odd setting, to say the least. Where one can make 6 pages of text arguing if fake women would be just as good as killing as fake men in a fake universe.

Now you're just making me get existential.

So, have a good day I guess?

Uhh, you're the one who brought that up. Not me. I was perfectly willing to just leave it at "The lore says there are a lot of female IG, so there should be enough female IG miniature options to actually show that."

Also, one of the things I get pissed off about in Internet arguments is people using an argument that they're unwilling to recognize as valid when used against them.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:


I'm serious. Look at the research, you can't tell me with a straight face that a woman can do everything a man can. It's literally scientifically disproven. Women weren't in the drift for a reason, not just because muh sexism.

inb4 hurr GI jane!

What does that have to do with 40k? Get your chocolate out of my peanut butter!

 Pouncey wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Ok.

So there's lore support for why Marines aren't female, and Sisters are a counterpoint to this and also supported by lore.

There are female options for Craftworld and Dark Eldar and Tau.

Tyranids are mostly sexless, but with some essentially female units and one sort of male.

Necrons are asexual, as are ostensibly are daemons, who do still male and female archetypes within the faction.


So this whole thread is basically just calling for a small number of female components to represent the occasional Guardsman?

Craftworld Eldar do not have a suitable amount of female options. Outside of Banshees, their Phoenix Lady, and 20% of Guardians there are NO female Craftworld Eldar models. Aspect Warriors are not actually segregated by gender, most of them should be roughly half male and half female. The Banshees should have more than half being female, but they should have male options too since there are actually a not-insignficiant number of male Howling Banshees in the lore. Scorpions lean more towards men so they should remain mostly men, but still have some females. There should be female Warlock and Farseer models too.

The IG issue could fairly easily be solved through conversion kits though.

But this isn't about your personal line in the sand, there ARE options. If you're not happy with 20% female guardians, buy more bits, or buy extra boxes and just assemble the females. Banshees are almost exclusively female, a male one would be a notable rarity, plus there's the likes of Scorpions, Reapers and Spiders whose armour is heavier and would be hard pushed to represent feminine attributes and Farseers and Warlocks wear masks and are in a dress, the gender is an assumption.

It's not a dress, it's a robe! A wonderful, flowing robe!

BossJakadakk wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:


I'm serious. Look at the research, you can't tell me with a straight face that a woman can do everything a man can. It's literally scientifically disproven. Women weren't in the drift for a reason, not just because muh sexism.

inb4 hurr GI jane!

What does that have to do with 40k? Get your chocolate out of my peanut butter!

People were arguing the equality of men and women in war for 40k, the closest comparison we can get is men and women today, hence the post.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Ok.

So there's lore support for why Marines aren't female, and Sisters are a counterpoint to this and also supported by lore.

There are female options for Craftworld and Dark Eldar and Tau.

Tyranids are mostly sexless, but with some essentially female units and one sort of male.

Necrons are asexual, as are ostensibly are daemons, who do still male and female archetypes within the faction.


So this whole thread is basically just calling for a small number of female components to represent the occasional Guardsman?

Craftworld Eldar do not have a suitable amount of female options. Outside of Banshees, their Phoenix Lady, and 20% of Guardians there are NO female Craftworld Eldar models. Aspect Warriors are not actually segregated by gender, most of them should be roughly half male and half female. The Banshees should have more than half being female, but they should have male options too since there are actually a not-insignficiant number of male Howling Banshees in the lore. Scorpions lean more towards men so they should remain mostly men, but still have some females. There should be female Warlock and Farseer models too.

The IG issue could fairly easily be solved through conversion kits though.

But this isn't about your personal line in the sand, there ARE options. If you're not happy with 20% female guardians, buy more bits, or buy extra boxes and just assemble the females. Banshees are almost exclusively female, a male one would be a notable rarity, plus there's the likes of Scorpions, Reapers and Spiders whose armour is heavier and would be hard pushed to represent feminine attributes and Farseers and Warlocks wear masks and are in a dress, the gender is an assumption.

If I want any female Eldar miniatures whatsoever that I and my opponent can agree on as female, my options are limited to:

-Banshees.
-20% of Guardians and buying extra boxes to even approach an even number.

That is all.

IG have female models too. They have a Last Chancer, a female Catachan with a grenade launcher, and a female Commissar.

If I wanted, I could make an IG army where all my infantry with missile launchers, all my grenade launchers, and all my commissars are female.

Yet that is unacceptable.

And so is the situation with Eldar.

Also your argument about the armor being too heavy is silly. I could also play female Space Marines by just building them with helmets and saying they're female, yet no one would actually believe it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

BossJakadakk wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:


I'm serious. Look at the research, you can't tell me with a straight face that a woman can do everything a man can. It's literally scientifically disproven. Women weren't in the drift for a reason, not just because muh sexism.

inb4 hurr GI jane!

What does that have to do with 40k? Get your chocolate out of my peanut butter!

People were arguing the equality of men and women in war for 40k, the closest comparison we can get is men and women today, hence the post.

You were comparing human warfare in the modern era to 40k Imperial Guard warfare?

Are you daft?

 Pouncey wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Ok.

So there's lore support for why Marines aren't female, and Sisters are a counterpoint to this and also supported by lore.

There are female options for Craftworld and Dark Eldar and Tau.

Tyranids are mostly sexless, but with some essentially female units and one sort of male.

Necrons are asexual, as are ostensibly are daemons, who do still male and female archetypes within the faction.


So this whole thread is basically just calling for a small number of female components to represent the occasional Guardsman?

Craftworld Eldar do not have a suitable amount of female options. Outside of Banshees, their Phoenix Lady, and 20% of Guardians there are NO female Craftworld Eldar models. Aspect Warriors are not actually segregated by gender, most of them should be roughly half male and half female. The Banshees should have more than half being female, but they should have male options too since there are actually a not-insignficiant number of male Howling Banshees in the lore. Scorpions lean more towards men so they should remain mostly men, but still have some females. There should be female Warlock and Farseer models too.

The IG issue could fairly easily be solved through conversion kits though.

But this isn't about your personal line in the sand, there ARE options. If you're not happy with 20% female guardians, buy more bits, or buy extra boxes and just assemble the females. Banshees are almost exclusively female, a male one would be a notable rarity, plus there's the likes of Scorpions, Reapers and Spiders whose armour is heavier and would be hard pushed to represent feminine attributes and Farseers and Warlocks wear masks and are in a dress, the gender is an assumption.

If I want any female Eldar miniatures whatsoever that I and my opponent can agree on as female, my options are limited to:

-Banshees.
-20% of Guardians and buying extra boxes to even approach an even number.

That is all.

IG have female models too. They have a Last Chancer, a female Catachan with a grenade launcher, and a female Commissar.

If I wanted, I could make an IG army where all my infantry with missile launchers, all my grenade launchers, and all my commissars are female.

Yet that is unacceptable.

And so is the situation with Eldar.

Also your argument about the armor being too heavy is silly. I could also play female Space Marines by just building them with helmets and saying they're female, yet no one would actually believe it.

How is that inacceptable? It'd get boring with the same 3 models, but whatever floats your boat... And the only reason people wouldn't believe you is that it is pre-established lore. Not because of the model.

BossJakadakk wrote:
It's not a dress, it's a robe! A wonderful, flowing robe!

You omitted the Eldar keyword of fabulous !

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Ok.

So there's lore support for why Marines aren't female, and Sisters are a counterpoint to this and also supported by lore.

There are female options for Craftworld and Dark Eldar and Tau.

Tyranids are mostly sexless, but with some essentially female units and one sort of male.

Necrons are asexual, as are ostensibly are daemons, who do still male and female archetypes within the faction.


So this whole thread is basically just calling for a small number of female components to represent the occasional Guardsman?

Craftworld Eldar do not have a suitable amount of female options. Outside of Banshees, their Phoenix Lady, and 20% of Guardians there are NO female Craftworld Eldar models. Aspect Warriors are not actually segregated by gender, most of them should be roughly half male and half female. The Banshees should have more than half being female, but they should have male options too since there are actually a not-insignficiant number of male Howling Banshees in the lore. Scorpions lean more towards men so they should remain mostly men, but still have some females. There should be female Warlock and Farseer models too.

The IG issue could fairly easily be solved through conversion kits though.

But this isn't about your personal line in the sand, there ARE options. If you're not happy with 20% female guardians, buy more bits, or buy extra boxes and just assemble the females. Banshees are almost exclusively female, a male one would be a notable rarity, plus there's the likes of Scorpions, Reapers and Spiders whose armour is heavier and would be hard pushed to represent feminine attributes and Farseers and Warlocks wear masks and are in a dress, the gender is an assumption.

If I want any female Eldar miniatures whatsoever that I and my opponent can agree on as female, my options are limited to:

-Banshees.
-20% of Guardians and buying extra boxes to even approach an even number.

That is all.

IG have female models too. They have a Last Chancer, a female Catachan with a grenade launcher, and a female Commissar.

If I wanted, I could make an IG army where all my infantry with missile launchers, all my grenade launchers, and all my commissars are female.

Yet that is unacceptable.

And so is the situation with Eldar.

Also your argument about the armor being too heavy is silly. I could also play female Space Marines by just building them with helmets and saying they're female, yet no one would actually believe it.

How is that inacceptable? It'd get boring with the same 3 models, but whatever floats your boat... And the only reason people wouldn't believe you is that it is pre-established lore. Not because of the model.

It's unacceptable because in the lore, Imperial Guard are not limited to having their women be Commissars, rocketeers, and grenade launcher wielders. And Eldar are unacceptable because female Eldar are not limited to being Banshees and a small portion of Guardians.

It's unacceptable because the lore says these armies have lots of women, that those women look different from men, and yet the models are almost all male.

 Pouncey wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Ok.

So there's lore support for why Marines aren't female, and Sisters are a counterpoint to this and also supported by lore.

There are female options for Craftworld and Dark Eldar and Tau.

Tyranids are mostly sexless, but with some essentially female units and one sort of male.

Necrons are asexual, as are ostensibly are daemons, who do still male and female archetypes within the faction.


So this whole thread is basically just calling for a small number of female components to represent the occasional Guardsman?

Craftworld Eldar do not have a suitable amount of female options. Outside of Banshees, their Phoenix Lady, and 20% of Guardians there are NO female Craftworld Eldar models. Aspect Warriors are not actually segregated by gender, most of them should be roughly half male and half female. The Banshees should have more than half being female, but they should have male options too since there are actually a not-insignficiant number of male Howling Banshees in the lore. Scorpions lean more towards men so they should remain mostly men, but still have some females. There should be female Warlock and Farseer models too.

The IG issue could fairly easily be solved through conversion kits though.

But this isn't about your personal line in the sand, there ARE options. If you're not happy with 20% female guardians, buy more bits, or buy extra boxes and just assemble the females. Banshees are almost exclusively female, a male one would be a notable rarity, plus there's the likes of Scorpions, Reapers and Spiders whose armour is heavier and would be hard pushed to represent feminine attributes and Farseers and Warlocks wear masks and are in a dress, the gender is an assumption.

If I want any female Eldar miniatures whatsoever that I and my opponent can agree on as female, my options are limited to:

-Banshees.
-20% of Guardians and buying extra boxes to even approach an even number.

That is all.

IG have female models too. They have a Last Chancer, a female Catachan with a grenade launcher, and a female Commissar.

If I wanted, I could make an IG army where all my infantry with missile launchers, all my grenade launchers, and all my commissars are female.

Yet that is unacceptable.

And so is the situation with Eldar.

Also your argument about the armor being too heavy is silly. I could also play female Space Marines by just building them with helmets and saying they're female, yet no one would actually believe it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

BossJakadakk wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:


I'm serious. Look at the research, you can't tell me with a straight face that a woman can do everything a man can. It's literally scientifically disproven. Women weren't in the drift for a reason, not just because muh sexism.

inb4 hurr GI jane!

What does that have to do with 40k? Get your chocolate out of my peanut butter!

People were arguing the equality of men and women in war for 40k, the closest comparison we can get is men and women today, hence the post.

You were comparing human warfare in the modern era to 40k Imperial Guard warfare?

Are you daft?

Maybe, but how much do you think physical structure and basic human evolutionary traits have changed in 40k? Probably not much, considering they still speak english, Earth exists they still smoke cigars, etc. (my point is they still keep many traits from today)

What is the difference between a bullet-proof vest for the military today and flak armour for the Guard, the difference between an autogun in 40k and a rifle today? I can tell you, not much.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

BossJakadakk wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:


I'm serious. Look at the research, you can't tell me with a straight face that a woman can do everything a man can. It's literally scientifically disproven. Women weren't in the drift for a reason, not just because muh sexism.

inb4 hurr GI jane!

What does that have to do with 40k? Get your chocolate out of my peanut butter!

People were arguing the equality of men and women in war for 40k, the closest comparison we can get is men and women today, hence the post.

The closest comparison we can get is the fluff for 40k, wherein women are pretty active in war. It being a science fiction setting completely made up in people's imaginations, comparing it to the real world really doesn't work, especially considering if you were to, you're basically discounting entirely 38,000 years of social growth and medical advancements that could potentially allow women to physically equal men in strength and endurance. Or that somehow men may get weaker, because in the 40k fluff and art they're carrying just as much as their female counterparts. How do you account for that?

It's by nature a fallacy to compare made-up universes to real life, and can not be used as definitive evidence for what *should* happen in a fictional story.

Also, where did you get the info on the draft? I'm genuinely curious, because I wouldn't have thought that at the time of the draft, such science would have been done. Plus, if you didn't know, it would seem women are being added to the draft, I believe starting in 2018. I can't look it up, though, because work blocking.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
What is the difference between a bullet-proof vest for the military today and flak armour for the Guard, the difference between an autogun in 40k and a rifle today? I can tell you, not much.

Can you? How do you know they're not just amped up equivalencies given roughly the same power-to-armor difference yet are both actually much stronger in comparison to what we have today? Did you visit the fictional future of the 41st millennium and perform testing?

The same can be said for my argument though, it's a fictional setting and therefore you have no proof that any of that stuff happened either.

And no science needed to be done, put your average man and woman through training, the man will do better.

(not saying women did not contribute, they were huge for the war effort)

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
Maybe, but how much do you think physical structure and basic human evolutionary traits have changed in 40k? Probably not much, considering they still speak english, Earth exists they still smoke cigars, etc. (my point is they still keep many traits from today)

What is the difference between a bullet-proof vest for the military today and flak armour for the Guard, the difference between an autogun in 40k and a rifle today? I can tell you, not much.

Considering that in the last 10,000 years human evolution has actually accelerated by a factor of 100, I imagine that after another 38,000 years we will be very different as a species compared to what we are today.

They speak various forms of Gothic, not English. The english in the lore exists solely to provide a translation for the players which we can read, and the accents used serve to denote a tone.

Earth still exists but in 40k is actually almost completely covered in enormous cities and religious structures and monuments.

Smoking tobacco, yeah, they still do that.

The difference is that flak armor actually protects against an autogun and most Imperial Guard use laser weapons called lasguns instead of any sort of projectile weapon. Which eliminate recoil from even being a thing IG infantry have to worry about or compensate for with their weapons since lasers have no mass to cause recoil and their transfer of energy back into the firing weapon would create heat, not kickback.

So, apparently a HELL of a lot will be different.

BossJakadakk wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

BossJakadakk wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:


I'm serious. Look at the research, you can't tell me with a straight face that a woman can do everything a man can. It's literally scientifically disproven. Women weren't in the drift for a reason, not just because muh sexism.

inb4 hurr GI jane!

What does that have to do with 40k? Get your chocolate out of my peanut butter!

People were arguing the equality of men and women in war for 40k, the closest comparison we can get is men and women today, hence the post.

The closest comparison we can get is the fluff for 40k, wherein women are pretty active in war. It being a science fiction setting completely made up in people's imaginations, comparing it to the real world really doesn't work, especially considering if you were to, you're basically discounting entirely 38,000 years of social growth and medical advancements that could potentially allow women to physically equal men in strength and endurance. Or that somehow men may get weaker, because in the 40k fluff and art they're carrying just as much as their female counterparts. How do you account for that?

It's by nature a fallacy to compare made-up universes to real life, and can not be used as definitive evidence for what *should* happen in a fictional story.

Also, where did you get the info on the draft? I'm genuinely curious, because I wouldn't have thought that at the time of the draft, such science would have been done. Plus, if you didn't know, it would seem women are being added to the draft, I believe starting in 2018. I can't look it up, though, because work blocking.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
What is the difference between a bullet-proof vest for the military today and flak armour for the Guard, the difference between an autogun in 40k and a rifle today? I can tell you, not much.

Can you? How do you know they're not just amped up equivalencies given roughly the same power-to-armor difference yet are both actually much stronger in comparison to what we have today? Did you visit the fictional future of the 41st millennium and perform testing?

Unfortunately, no. However we can assume from the lore that describes both of these they are VERY similar. Autoguns have bullets, magazines, the whole deal. Flak armour has some plate/kevlar equivalent protecting the wearer, however the Imperium and other races have advanced so much Flak can't stop most stuff anymore.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

Not that she cannot, there is far too many variables to give it a flat yes or no, but a man will always be stronger than a woman if they both get the same training. Whether it be man or woman, cultist, or guardsmen.

That's assuming there are no inherent differences between individuals. People start with different baselines, and respond physiologically to training differently. This is noted among professional athletic trainers, who will tell you that despite inherent athletic talent, some individuals take to training much more than others, and some people plateau.

The long and short of it is that there are small men, and there are big women. I've met a firewoman who could have picked up my 6'2" self and thrown me. At the same time not all Special Forces guys are 6' up and swoll, there are weedy looking 5'6" dudes who will get the job done. So while it's true that yes, statistically speaking, men are bigger and stronger than women, the variation between individuals leaves plenty of room for capable women to perform as necessary.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
The same can be said for my argument though, it's a fictional setting and therefore you have no proof that any of that stuff happened either.

And yet they have technology that instantly heals wounds. But you're right, so maybe just accept the facts as they are, that in the fluff there are a good number of women soldiers, and that they seemingly pull just as much weight as the men. That's all we have to go off of, and that's what the people that were arguing with you were using as their evidence. Take away what you and I propose we take away, and they still have an argument, while you do not.

And no science needed to be done, put your average man and woman through training, the man will do better.

(not saying women did not contribute, they were huge for the war effort)

So despite the fact that you said it wasn't just "muh sexism," it was pretty much just "muh sexism" at the time.

Pouncey wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
Maybe, but how much do you think physical structure and basic human evolutionary traits have changed in 40k? Probably not much, considering they still speak english, Earth exists they still smoke cigars, etc. (my point is they still keep many traits from today)

What is the difference between a bullet-proof vest for the military today and flak armour for the Guard, the difference between an autogun in 40k and a rifle today? I can tell you, not much.

Considering that in the last 10,000 years human evolution has actually accelerated by a factor of 100, I imagine that after another 38,000 years we will be very different as a species compared to what we are today.

They speak various forms of Gothic, not English. The english in the lore exists solely to provide a translation for the players which we can read, and the accents used serve to denote a tone.

Earth still exists but in 40k is actually almost completely covered in enormous cities and religious structures and monuments.

Smoking tobacco, yeah, they still do that.

The difference is that flak armor actually protects against an autogun and most Imperial Guard use laser weapons called lasguns instead of any sort of projectile weapon. Which eliminate recoil from even being a thing IG infantry have to worry about or compensate for with their weapons since lasers have no mass to cause recoil and their transfer of energy back into the firing weapon would create heat, not kickback.

So, apparently a HELL of a lot will be different.

Are you trying to tell me Gothic isn't a form of English? Please tell me you're not telling me it isn't a form of English.

So nothing on Earth changed.

And yeah, they use lasguns but it'd be a little silly comparing a firearm to a laser weapon, don't you think?

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
The same can be said for my argument though, it's a fictional setting and therefore you have no proof that any of that stuff happened either.

And no science needed to be done, put your average man and woman through training, the man will do better.

(not saying women did not contribute, they were huge for the war effort)

Yes we do have proof that in 40k the women are equal to men in combat prowess.

The fictional universe's official lore says that in the IG, women are equal to men in combat prowess.

I.E. the exact reason why female Space Marines don't exist. Because the official lore says so.

Pouncey, you are aware of the numerous, high quality female conversion bits available for Guard from 3rd party manufacturers, correct?

I believe that has been told to him a few times in this thread, and each time he has pointed out that he does not believe his local store will accept them.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

Pouncey wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
Maybe, but how much do you think physical structure and basic human evolutionary traits have changed in 40k? Probably not much, considering they still speak english, Earth exists they still smoke cigars, etc. (my point is they still keep many traits from today)

What is the difference between a bullet-proof vest for the military today and flak armour for the Guard, the difference between an autogun in 40k and a rifle today? I can tell you, not much.

Considering that in the last 10,000 years human evolution has actually accelerated by a factor of 100, I imagine that after another 38,000 years we will be very different as a species compared to what we are today.

They speak various forms of Gothic, not English. The english in the lore exists solely to provide a translation for the players which we can read, and the accents used serve to denote a tone.

Earth still exists but in 40k is actually almost completely covered in enormous cities and religious structures and monuments.

Smoking tobacco, yeah, they still do that.

The difference is that flak armor actually protects against an autogun and most Imperial Guard use laser weapons called lasguns instead of any sort of projectile weapon. Which eliminate recoil from even being a thing IG infantry have to worry about or compensate for with their weapons since lasers have no mass to cause recoil and their transfer of energy back into the firing weapon would create heat, not kickback.

So, apparently a HELL of a lot will be different.

Are you trying to tell me Gothic isn't a form of English? Please tell me you're not telling me it isn't a form of English.

So nothing on Earth changed.

And yeah, they use lasguns but it'd be a little silly comparing a firearm to a laser weapon, don't you think?

Do you have any evidence that is actually IS a form of English? If so, what?

Except the entire planet's surface being covered with cities, instead of most of it being covered with oceans and most of the land being totally devoid of human life, you mean?

Yes. It is silly. Because the IG use lasguns as their main weapon, NOT autoguns.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ashiraya wrote:
I believe that has been told to him a few times in this thread, and each time he has pointed out that he does not believe his local store will accept them.

That, combined with the fact that almost all of them are resin or metal and I pretty much flat-out refuse to work with those materials.

GW has not been using metal or resin for any of their new models, so if they make a conversion kit it will in fact be plastic. Like everything else they've been making.

BossJakadakk wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
The same can be said for my argument though, it's a fictional setting and therefore you have no proof that any of that stuff happened either.

And yet they have technology that instantly heals wounds. But you're right, so maybe just accept the facts as they are, that in the fluff there are a good number of women soldiers, and that they seemingly pull just as much weight as the men. That's all we have to go off of, and that's what the people that were arguing with you were using as their evidence. Take away what you and I propose we take away, and they still have an argument, while you do not.

And no science needed to be done, put your average man and woman through training, the man will do better.

(not saying women did not contribute, they were huge for the war effort)

So despite the fact that you said it wasn't just "muh sexism," it was pretty much just "muh sexism" at the time.

Of course there are female soldiers, but it doesn't make GW have to pump out 50% female guard sculpts.

So nature is sexist? Oh my...



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Pouncey wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
The same can be said for my argument though, it's a fictional setting and therefore you have no proof that any of that stuff happened either.

And no science needed to be done, put your average man and woman through training, the man will do better.

(not saying women did not contribute, they were huge for the war effort)

Yes we do have proof that in 40k the women are equal to men in combat prowess.

The fictional universe's official lore says that in the IG, women are equal to men in combat prowess.

I.E. the exact reason why female Space Marines don't exist. Because the official lore says so.

Citation needed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Pouncey wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

Pouncey wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
Maybe, but how much do you think physical structure and basic human evolutionary traits have changed in 40k? Probably not much, considering they still speak english, Earth exists they still smoke cigars, etc. (my point is they still keep many traits from today)

What is the difference between a bullet-proof vest for the military today and flak armour for the Guard, the difference between an autogun in 40k and a rifle today? I can tell you, not much.

Considering that in the last 10,000 years human evolution has actually accelerated by a factor of 100, I imagine that after another 38,000 years we will be very different as a species compared to what we are today.

They speak various forms of Gothic, not English. The english in the lore exists solely to provide a translation for the players which we can read, and the accents used serve to denote a tone.

Earth still exists but in 40k is actually almost completely covered in enormous cities and religious structures and monuments.

Smoking tobacco, yeah, they still do that.

The difference is that flak armor actually protects against an autogun and most Imperial Guard use laser weapons called lasguns instead of any sort of projectile weapon. Which eliminate recoil from even being a thing IG infantry have to worry about or compensate for with their weapons since lasers have no mass to cause recoil and their transfer of energy back into the firing weapon would create heat, not kickback.

So, apparently a HELL of a lot will be different.

Are you trying to tell me Gothic isn't a form of English? Please tell me you're not telling me it isn't a form of English.

So nothing on Earth changed.

And yeah, they use lasguns but it'd be a little silly comparing a firearm to a laser weapon, don't you think?

Do you have any evidence that is actually IS a form of English? If so, what?

Except the entire planet's surface being covered with cities, instead of most of it being covered with oceans and most of the land being totally devoid of human life, you mean?

Yes. It is silly. Because the IG use lasguns as their main weapon, NOT autoguns.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ashiraya wrote:
I believe that has been told to him a few times in this thread, and each time he has pointed out that he does not believe his local store will accept them.

That, combined with the fact that almost all of them are resin or metal and I pretty much flat-out refuse to work with those materials.

GW has not been using metal or resin for any of their new models, so if they make a conversion kit it will in fact be plastic. Like everything else they've been making.

Besides the Gothic English style that was popular for the time that 40k is based on? And that the Emperor started on Earth, a mainly English dominated planet? Besides that, no.

But...haven't you also stated that you primarily and overwhelmingly play at home? Plus, unless you live near literally the worst GW ever, I can't imagine any owner refusing you a table because you have some heads swapped out.

I don't know why you'd refuse to work with resin, especially the likes of Vic Minis, but sure I guess. The options are there anyways, and they're excellent.

I hope for your sake you overcome your dislike of resin because it would single-handedly fix your issue with not having enough female guard.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
Of course there are female soldiers, but it doesn't make GW have to pump out 50% female guard sculpts.

I agree. Providing a conversion kit for anyone who chooses to use it would be sufficient, and it can include more than just heads (and no, I'm not asking for huge boobs. There are third-party sculptors who have made replacement female IG torsos that are not ridiculous yet still look female.

And relying on a third-party sculptor is something which I shouldn't HAVE to do when the company making the official stuff is unwilling to negotiate a deal with anyone to allow them to operate, and when those third-party bits don't meet my criteria anyways.

So nature is sexist? Oh my...

Nature is irrelevant in a fictional universe where the rules that describe that universe say that what we know of humans today either does not apply to humans in that universe or is totally irrelevant to their operation in that universe.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

Of course there are female soldiers, but it doesn't make GW have to pump out 50% female guard sculpts.

I agree, but people aren't asking for 50%. They're asking for "more." I'm just pointing out that your arguments lack credibility and validity.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

So nature is sexist? Oh my...

Um. Yes? I asked you for the science you asserted existed at the time the draft was implemented. You said there wasn't any, so basically invalidated your point. If it wasn't studied, it was based entirely on anecdotal evidence, meaning broad assumptions were made so as to not include women.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:


Citation needed.

Yes, indeed. We're all still waiting eagerly on yours that proves your claim that women can't be equal in a fictional universe as well.

Not to mention there is an incredibly good reason WHY men and women would be considered equal in the guard: the imperial tithe. 10% of the population has to go. Remember what happened to the population of France, Germany and England after the world wars when all the young men in a generation died?

The guard just does. Not. Care that one man is some percentage physically stronger than one woman. Can the woman move in a formation of tens of thousands? Can the woman fire a recoilless laser rifle by rank? Congratulations! You're in the guard!

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
The same can be said for my argument though, it's a fictional setting and therefore you have no proof that any of that stuff happened either.

And no science needed to be done, put your average man and woman through training, the man will do better.

(not saying women did not contribute, they were huge for the war effort)

Science also says that biotech doesn't work, there is no such thing as the Warp and large walkers are horribly impractical as machines of war. We all have to give up our natural understanding of the universe in many other areas of 40k. Female soldiers in 40k is somehow a deal breaker for you?

the_scotsman wrote:
Not to mention there is an incredibly good reason WHY men and women would be considered equal in the guard: the imperial tithe. 10% of the population has to go. Remember what happened to the population of France, Germany and England after the world wars when all the young men in a generation died?

The guard just does. Not. Care that one man is some percentage physically stronger than one woman. Can the woman move in a formation of tens of thousands? Can the woman fire a recoilless laser rifle by rank? Congratulations! You're in the guard!

Yer in the guard, ma'am!

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
Citation needed.

I distinctly recall an old IG Codex having a specific mention of how many Imperial Guard regiments have women and some are female entirely, and though the Abbithan Banshees don't have their own Lexicanum article I found exactly one reference to the actual genders of Imperial Guardsmen.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Astra_Militarum

If any regiment survives for long enough, it can eventually receive reinforcement from children born to the Guardsmen who have been raised inside the regiment and can normally be expected to join it upon reaching the required age. These new recruits, officially designated as "probiters", but more commonly called Whiteshields, are formed into their own platoons where they receive their latter combat training by taking part in actual combat, until they are ready to join the regiment as Guardsmen proper.[5]

This means that there are enough women in the Imperial Guard for reinforcements from female Guardsmen giving birth and those children reaching the required age is common enough for there to be an official term and separate command structure for those children.

Which means there are a hell of a lot of women in the Imperial Guard.

Besides the Gothic English style that was popular for the time that 40k is based on? And that the Emperor started on Earth, a mainly English dominated planet? Besides that, no.

At the time the Emperor was born, English was not actually a language anyone spoke yet and the Roman Empire was not even a thing.

BossJakadakk wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

Of course there are female soldiers, but it doesn't make GW have to pump out 50% female guard sculpts.

I agree, but people aren't asking for 50%. They're asking for "more." I'm just pointing out that your arguments lack credibility and validity.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:

So nature is sexist? Oh my...

Um. Yes? I asked you for the science you asserted existed at the time the draft was implemented. You said there wasn't any, so basically invalidated your point. If it wasn't studied, it was based entirely on anecdotal evidence, meaning broad assumptions were made so as to not include women.

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:


Citation needed.

Yes, indeed. We're all still waiting eagerly on yours that proves your claim that women can't be equal in a fictional universe as well.

They lack validity? I'm basing mine off what little evidence I can from today, and yours is "Hey, it's fictional so anything goes" which could entirely go my way too.

I didn't check if there was any because I know basic human nature that men are stronger than women, and thus you can infer that they probably wanted their strongest people on the front, and the instinctively nurturing people on the backlines caring for the soldiers and keeping the grease in the wheels back home. I'm not going to the efforts of proving common sense by googling some random study.

See first sentence.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

TheCustomLime wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
The same can be said for my argument though, it's a fictional setting and therefore you have no proof that any of that stuff happened either.

And no science needed to be done, put your average man and woman through training, the man will do better.

(not saying women did not contribute, they were huge for the war effort)

Science also says that biotech doesn't work, there is no such thing as the Warp and large walkers are horribly impractical as machines of war. We all have to give up our natural understanding of the universe in many other areas of 40k. Female soldiers in 40k is somehow a deal breaker for you?

For the last time, yes, they exist, yes they will continue to exist, but I'm trying to make a point of why GW sells man dominated sculpts.

Pouncey wrote:

 #1ShieldBrother3++ wrote:
Citation needed.

I distinctly recall an old IG Codex having a specific mention of how many Imperial Guard regiments have women and some are female entirely, and though the Abbithan Banshees don't have their own Lexicanum article I found exactly one reference to the actual genders of Imperial Guardsmen.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Astra_Militarum

If any regiment survives for long enough, it can eventually receive reinforcement from children born to the Guardsmen who have been raised inside the regiment and can normally be expected to join it upon reaching the required age. These new recruits, officially designated as "probiters", but more commonly called Whiteshields, are formed into their own platoons where they receive their latter combat training by taking part in actual combat, until they are ready to join the regiment as Guardsmen proper.[5]

This means that there are enough women in the Imperial Guard for reinforcements from female Guardsmen giving birth and those children reaching the required age is common enough for there to be an official term and separate command structure for those children.

Which means there are a hell of a lot of women in the Imperial Guard.

Besides the Gothic English style that was popular for the time that 40k is based on? And that the Emperor started on Earth, a mainly English dominated planet? Besides that, no.

At the time the Emperor was born, English was not actually a language anyone spoke yet and the Roman Empire was not even a thing.

So? He still existed in a world that was eventually dominated by English.