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I watched yesterday by chance the WOW movie for the first time and noticed the presence of female orcs. The last time I had anything to do with Warcraft was in the 90s when I played Warcraft I & II. These games lacked any green skinned women as well as WHFB and 40K. Afaik the only instance of female orcs GW made to order were BB cheerleaders and the people sculpting these models made sure that they weren´t top sellers.
So how would you feel about the inclusion of more attractive orc female models in your current AoS horde?


EDIT:
I own two Ork army books from WHFB (German version):

- Orks & Goblins (Priestly & Thornton, 2001)
- Orks & Goblins (Ward, 2006)

The fluff does not mention any Ork females and also no way in which the Orks or Goblins reproduce asexually (e.g.: fungi spores). I am not familiar, if GW changed this fluff up to this day but for the sake of the discussion let´s PRETEND that there are Ork females in the background.

A bit rusty on my AoS lore, but aren't they the same as in 40k, where they're a fungus-based life form that grows, rather than is birthed?

Going off that assumption and trying to think of how female orruks would be included in the game is hard. A specialized life-form, like how some are born with inherant knowledge? What would 'female' orruks purpose be? To exist as an alternate model for kits that already exist, or do something different?

Thadin 40K orks are indeed fungus and grown. That being said they are definetivly based on males and are quite maskuline. In their defense the 40K orks veru eraly took inspiration from american football and rugby player in their appearance and army design. While I am a big fan of female models, I think orks is the one place there are strong cases for not doing it.

I would like to se female necrons, tau (some are already) imperial guard, space marines (retcon it or introduce it in the fluff, some head swaps would be enough as space marines are post human) and eldar. Interestingly the two races that do gender representation very well are dark eldar with multiple genders within each unit, and tyranids that are gender neutral (with the exception of the termagon baby mashine.)

But, this is the Fantasy Forum and the original poster asked about fantasy. The awnser is whole heartedly yes. I would like to see more female models. I do not remember if a lot of female orks existed in Warcraft 3, but by the time world of warcraft (2004) comes out you have gender options for all races. Including the tauren female cow with udders and all. I really liked that.

Contrast that to some GW licened computer game that never came out. I remember reading the question about gender where they said "All races will have both gender options. Except ogres. Nobody want to play a female ogre." Contrast this to Wow, where you get udders. Not only do you get udders, but you have armour that have the equilant of boob armour for the udders. It is a glorius example of representation.

Most age of sigmar armies could do with more female representation. (Preferably not with boob armour.) It should be mentioned this is hard to do with undead skeletons. I should know, I kitbashed a Khemri blood bowl team with 5 females on the team. :-(

I suppose I should have been more clear in the intention of my post. It was meant to be inquisitive, looking for input in to WHY Orruks needed or should have female-style models. What would the point be?

While not opposed to the possible inclusion, I don't see a reason beyond just including them. Being fungus based, it could just be natural evolution or forced evolution that lead to a female-like orruk type but... for what purpose.

I'm on the side too, that we could all use more female models on the table, but I want to keep it reasonable and within lore. Or, if the lore has to change, at least make it good writing.

But god yes, if they do make female orruks a thing, please don't go the trash korean/japanese MMO route, and make them green female humans. Make them proper female orruks.

There is one way that's fluffy.
You know how there are hair squigs? There are now tit squigs. They make beer instead of milk.

Cough cough cough...

it works in AOS

less so in 40k but who cares.

Blood Bowl, actually. Which I don't think is canon.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Blood Bowl, actually. Which I don't think is canon.

Oh. :( boourns

Thadin, why do you keep bringing up the fungus thing? Only the 40K are fungus, no?

As to why. Some reasons of the topp of my head:

1. Aesthetic pleasure. Warhammer is a visual game. Other models can make for a more varied and pleasent experience.

2. Variations in modelling. New models are great. Females can have slender builds while still being orky. Also, you get more models to kitbash in,

3. Representation. The more people can identefy with at least some of the models the bigger chance that they will jump onm the band waggon. More female players or other players that like a wider specter of representation is good,

4. Realismn. Many of these rases are only warriors. Do you think their females are at home birthing babies? Not if they want to be in charge. They wanne winn gold and glory.

They are Fungus in WHFB too. Their spores came to the world with the Old Ones by accident.
Yes, the Old Ones are in WHFB too. They created the Lizardmen and built the warp gates.
Page 159, 8th Edition Rule Book.

Yup, fungus in fantasy too. I'm for no Ork/Orruk females in Warhammer-it fits with the fluff. Give us females for races that do have them in the fluff but don't have miniatures. It doesn't have to be a ton of them (actually it makes more sense for it to be less, given that military tends to be a male-dominant pursuit) but some representation would be great. Especially as GW tends to do a pretty good job with females.

Aelves have always had that well covered (well, not -literally- in the case of DoK), Stormcast have a great lineup of badass women now, and Death is good where it can be. Let's see some ogors (other than the one maneater), humans (bring back the fem-warpriests especially), and more females for khorne, nurgle, tzeentch, and undivided. Maybe duardin, but I get the sense that their society has rigid social constructs that don't tend to involve female warriors. Beasts of chaos is a grey area since I don't think they have ever illuminated anything about females in their society.

But the others? Seraphon & greenskins don't even have females, daemons are their own thing, and skaven females are just something else entirely.

Are there ogre women? I don't remember reading anything about that. Then again, I haven't really read their Army Book. All I know is that they killed Sky Titans, they are really hungry and they are basically Fantasy Mongols.
Edit : Huh, the wiki page talks about "siring" and progeny, so I guess they do reproduce sexually.

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Ogre-Kingdoms-Female-Maneater

Legit Ogor cleaveage there bro.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Ogre-Kingdoms-Female-Maneater

Legit Ogor cleaveage there bro.

Oh wow, I guess there are.
I saw that model before, but I assumed it was in drag, because are you going to tell an ogre not to? Unless those breasts are man boobs. Its hard to tell.

Well. If the orks in fantasy are fungus then they are not male, they are gender neutral.

In that case there is no reason why orks need to be represented masculine. They could also be represented femenine, gender fluid or gender neutral. Bring it on I say.

Why would they be presented as female if they are already gender neutral? There is no reason for them to have breasts, except as a joke. Hence Bloodbowl.
If you want ork tits that badly, sculpt them yourself.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Why would they be presented as female if they are already gender neutral? There is no reason for them to have breasts, except as a joke. Hence Bloodbowl.
If you want ork tits that badly, sculpt them yourself.

They also dont have nipps.

i recall seeing some with nipp rings and gauges though and wonder... why.

Much like Niiai I'd love to see more female models for any future factions/updates period, and the female orcs in WoW are pretty cool after all.

Sadly don't see orks getting any female models simply because their male* look has been pretty much set in stone for about what, 30+ years now, and it doesn't really need to change.
I could on the other hand see a future ork-like destruction faction featuring female models, maybe demi-ogres, a crossbreed between ogres and savage humans living in Ghur.


*Are orks even male, I thought they were genderless, or is that 40k?

I would have no problem with Orc Women models. I wouldn’t give a fart in the wind if tomorrow GW put out a notice saying...

“Hey folks. We decided we want to release some Orcish Women miniatures. We like how they look, and we hope you will too! We’re changing the fluff to accommodate, so don’t be surprised when future fluff snippets mention gendered Orcs. Also, please replace all instances of the word “Orc” with the proper trademarked version... my phone keeps autocorrecting it.”

And since I’m a well adjusted human being, I’d say...

“Neat. If I ever start an AOS army, it would be Orcs and Goblins (again) so this would increase my model options.”

Make female orcs.

Make female Iron Jawz.

Paint female Iron Jawz blue.

There. Female ultramarines. Now everyone can shut up.

Heh... bear with me on this one...

I once heard a story about this fantasy race of all males, that were always depicted as living around fungus. I reasoned, they weren’t male, but reproduced by spore, which is why they all looked so darned similar.

An evil wizard was attempting to destroy this race, and with arcane sorcery created a simulacrum, an artificial member of this race, to infiltrate and spread disharmony, even as it spied. But, for his dark knowledge, the wizard did not understand their life cycle, or their lack of gender. So, he made his infiltrator female...

As a result, she was caught quickly, and through their own magic brought into the control of the race she was meant to destroy. Soon, among the spawn of this race, “females” began to appear. The female aberration, introduced by a human who knew no better, was now recreating more like herself, creating a permanent female sub strain of the species.

That’s the origin story of Smurfette.

But, I think it would work for Orruks too.

 greatbigtree wrote:
I would have no problem with Orc Women models. I wouldn’t give a fart in the wind if tomorrow GW put out a notice saying...

“Hey folks. We decided we want to release some Orcish Women miniatures. We like how they look, and we hope you will too! We’re changing the fluff to accommodate, so don’t be surprised when future fluff snippets mention gendered Orcs. Also, please replace all instances of the word “Orc” with the proper trademarked version... my phone keeps autocorrecting it.”

And since I’m a well adjusted human being, I’d say...

“Neat. If I ever start an AOS army, it would be Orcs and Goblins (again) so this would increase my model options.”

You read my mind. The fluff is obviously the biggest hindrance for people to accept female orcs. So it would just take a retcon to remedy the situation. Though when I watched the WoW movie, the two greenskin genders looked off as if they were of two different species. The orc woman was a slightly altered human and I was okay with that but the male orcs looked like ogres because of their massive body frames. GW´s orcs have a similar problem. According to the designers, male orcs are inspired by gorillas and have therefore a much more bestial look. As a result of this, GW would need to overhaul the male orcs in order for them to look more human.
When writing this post, another thought came to my mind. Both orc genders have in common that they are big and buff. Would you think that the average GW customer would feel threatened in his masculinity by buff orc women? This is not a troll question as it would directly impact sales of said models.

There's no reason for orks to be "male" or "female" since they are fungus people. As someone mentioned above the reason we even read them as "male" is because they are somewhat based off of male gorillas. It could be fun to have "female" presenting orks, no doubt, and the "fluff" of AoS is such a hot mess anyway I certainly wouldn't care less if they changed it or came up with a fun reason why they existed. They did as much with why some orks have "hair."

That being said I think they would do better to focus on the races that do have sexual dimorphism to have more variation in model lines and respresentation. The Stormcast females so far are pretty bad ass...though I wish the ratio was closer to 50/50. Seems like they will continue this trend on newer kits and I love it.

 exliontamer wrote:
There's no reason for orks to be "male" or "female" since they are fungus people. As someone mentioned above the reason we even read them as "male" is because they are somewhat based off of male gorillas. It could be fun to have "female" presenting orks, no doubt, and the "fluff" of AoS is such a hot mess anyway I certainly wouldn't care less if they changed it or came up with a fun reason why they existed. They did as much with why some orks have "hair."

That being said I think they would do better to focus on the races that do have sexual dimorphism to have more variation in model lines and respresentation. The Stormcast females so far are pretty bad ass...though I wish the ratio was closer to 50/50. Seems like they will continue this trend on newer kits and I love it.

As has already been stated, the fungi thing is 40k only. It's never been like that for Fantasy or AoS. And how is the fluff a hot mess?

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:

 exliontamer wrote:
There's no reason for orks to be "male" or "female" since they are fungus people. As someone mentioned above the reason we even read them as "male" is because they are somewhat based off of male gorillas. It could be fun to have "female" presenting orks, no doubt, and the "fluff" of AoS is such a hot mess anyway I certainly wouldn't care less if they changed it or came up with a fun reason why they existed. They did as much with why some orks have "hair."

That being said I think they would do better to focus on the races that do have sexual dimorphism to have more variation in model lines and respresentation. The Stormcast females so far are pretty bad ass...though I wish the ratio was closer to 50/50. Seems like they will continue this trend on newer kits and I love it.

As has already been stated, the fungi thing is 40k only. It's never been like that for Fantasyor AoS. And how is the fluff a hot mess?

Wrong
159 of the 8th ed BRB explicitly states that the orcs came to the world as spores, heavily implying that greenskins in both 40k and WHFB are the same.
If the orcs from AoS are the same as the ones from WHFB, then logically they would be fungus based too.

Fantasy and 40K cross over their lore in many ways, in fact at its core 40K is basically just fantasy in space; or fantasy is just 40K in fantasy settings.


As for orks specifically I think that I'd be ok if GW decided to change orks from spores to a regular male-female based species for Age of Sigmar. It would be a prime time to make such a change. That said orks in fantasy are less developed than in 40K in some ways. I think they suffered somewhat from being the generic second-bad (the core bad bieng chaos). Orks were the faceless henchmen of evil and thus i think some aspects of their history were simpler to make it easier.

Orks could change to have females and I'd be ok with that in AoS, but I'm equally happy with them being spore-born and running with that line of story too. Both open up wide options for variety and design and story choices. I don't think GW has done much with AoS orks and greenskins in general thus far, they've been on the back-burner in terms of armies and stories so hopefully with BadMoon coming next (for AoS at least in terms of new Battletomes) we can get a better idea of where they are in the AoS realms.


Note - even if orks get womenfolk they don't have to appear in the armies, they could be protected so heavily that the orks never let them into battle at all, even within the heavily war torn world they live and even within the violent ork society. A bit like Skaven females in that they are kept hidden, kept safe and kept well away from rank and file armies.

Skaven females aren't capable of a combat role--they are large grotesque breeders continually birthing more Skaven.

I now want to see/make an ork army of either game as Smurfs. My issue now though, is I can't not see GW orks as anything but Smurf ripoffs as Smurfs were created in 1958. All male inhuman colored fungus people. Instead of Dakka Dakka Dakka! It's La La Laa Laa Laa Laa, La Laa Laa Laa Laaaa!

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Skaven females aren't capable of a combat role--they are large grotesque breeders continually birthing more Skaven.

Yes but we are talking about skaven here. They can certainly get one female, strap her to enough warpstone, bits of machinery and stuff and send her out to war! Or she can force the issue herself possibly probably somehow. Heck Tyranids manage to get Tervigons on the battlefield and Skaven already have those huge abonination mutations rolling around. Ergo it "could" be done but might never be done.

That said what a lot of thsi really is is gamers expressing a desire to look beyond battles. What can move a 1 dimensional character into fully fleshed out is often taking a view of them (or their race) outside of the core focus. So for Warhammer this means looking at warriors at rest, at play, living life outside of war and battle and politics. Once you start to add that layer of detail to a faction and character they become far more real.

Meanwhile something like a hollywood evil character or "goon" is often seen as such because we only ever see them doing one single thing. Of course the same is also true of heroes!

Female orcs - happy to see 'em

Hell put those blood bowl minis on a table as a force.