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Not only do they have a great game with fantastic minis

they have a sense of humor

The new SSU Chinese special character



FYI the rules mean-
-enemy commanders using the reactivate unit special action have to re-roll successes and the enemy medic cannot heal any infantry units as long as he is on the table....because there is sumtingwong with the medicines.

Sense of humour or casual racism, you decide!

Honestly, this kind of thing was bad in the late 80's when FASA had some frankly juvenile puns in Battletech (a Chinese descended Capellan character called Nih Ten Do, for example), now its just tired imo

Yeah, casually racist Chinese names are about as far from evidence of a sense of humour as anything could be.

Definitely a case of casual racism and it’s good to see that there are people willing to call it out.

I remember a board game we played when I was a kid called mysteries of old Peking that had a character by the same name in it, amongst others (racism can be quite inventive). The mechanics of the game, for a child, were a lot of fun. The racism, as I later learned, is less so.

This garbage should not be condoned and I too am heartened to see people calling it out.

Yeah, a Chinese guy with a Chinese name... THAT's RACIST!!!! ...

I'm not a DUST p[layer, but I really could use this guy in other games. Either as the Mastermind, or a sidekick, good looking figure.

I think it`s about as racist as Hugh Mungus is to white english speaking people or In Soviet Russia jokes.

Not as funny though.

When a word or a name sounds funny in an another language, it`s not racist.
Yeah, this one is made up, but so what?

Nice looking mini as well. The pose is pretty great.

Definitely not a case of casual racism and I am happy to see it!
It is good that we can make fun of things, especially when the media screws up and chan pranksters make a fool of them.
This is a fun little call-out to a media flub and I am so glad the company has a sense of humor.
Oh if you think this is racist, the problem might not lie with FFG.

In theory the concept of a "bilingual pun" exists, and could be amusing rather than casually racist, but for something to be a bilingual pun it has to work back the other way. "Sum" isn't a syllable in Mandarin (I know what I'm doing with Mandarin more than any other dialect and am making assumptions based on the outfit), "wong" is Wade-Giles for "wang", so the closest you'd get (rendered the way I usually see names in Pinyin written down) would be Sun Tingwang.

Fortunately for the joke Sun(1) is on the surname list, ting(2) can mean "stop moving", and there are renderings of wang that mean variously ruling, flourishing, or moving in a direction, so you could turn this into an actual bilingual pun (and possibly a more subtle one) by calling the character something like Sun(1) Ting(2)wang(2) ("stop commanding") or Sun(1) Ting(2)wang(4) ("stop hoping") and get an English pun both off the Chinese characters and off the unit rules.

Unfortunately the Dust Studios designers decided to be lazy and stick with just the casual racism bit.

 ImAGeek wrote:
Yeah, casually racist Chinese names are about as far from evidence of a sense of humour as anything could be.

Yeah casual accusations of racism are meaningless when everything is an accusation of racism.

especially from a game company deciding to have fun with silly names of fictional people for all of it's special characters across every faction...including things like an axis zombie leader named frank von stein.

If you think this is racism you are no better than the thin skinned snowflakes who took personal offense when a DJ in england played the song "kung fu fighting" as part of his set list in a club and was subsequently arrested because of their complaint.

I bet 2 pounds, that this thread is about to be locked or about to get a mod warning.

 Grot 6 wrote:
Yeah, a Chinese guy with a Chinese name... THAT's RACIST!!!! ...

I'm not a DUST p[layer, but I really could use this guy in other games. Either as the Mastermind, or a sidekick, good looking figure.

I don't think its a real Chinese name, a lot like how Bigus Dickus isn't a real roman name.
So yeah, jokes are jokes and wordplay is wordplay.

I do like alot of DUST stuff

Good for them. It's an old joke, but a solid one.

Humor to some, racism to others.

Good thing GW doesn’t make names like this

Vulcan Hestan He’s tan, because he is black
Mag Uruk Thraka- Margaret Thatcher- because she was such a brutish woman
Dozens of others.

You want to criticize DUST for anything, look at the blatant sexuality, over priced models and poor management that keeps them a third rate business.

I dunno, as a Chinese person myself and as a personal fan of puns, I find it pretty funny. As far as names go, it's not bad as like calling a black character Captain Negro or something. It also seems like a one-off joke rather than them promoting an actual underlying racist overtone.

 Grimskul wrote:
I dunno, as a Chinese person myself and as a personal fan of puns, I find it pretty funny. As far as names go, it's not bad as like calling a black character Captain Negro or something. It also seems like a one-off joke rather than them promoting an actual underlying racist overtone.

Hence the ‘casual’ part of casual racism. Doesn’t make it okay.

If only this was just about a name. The character also plays into old racist tropes about the wily oriental, evil genius.

This joke is older than Kentucky Fried Movie, a film that made fun of people making "funny" Chinese names. It would be easier to dismiss the joke as harmless if the character mini weren't such a call back to yellow peril villains.* Still, he looks like he'd fit right in with my Fireforge Mongolians.......




*Is the Doctor Who serial The Talons of Weng Chiang still considered problematic? It seems like it might be old enough to be grandfathered into the "it was a different time" exception.

The entire Dust line is trope-laden, with evil Nazi scientists, etc. It's a 1950's comic book, so the style is perfectly in line with the game's other aesthetics.

You want to criticize DUST for anything, look at the blatant sexuality, over priced models and poor management that keeps them a third rate business.

Now that i take issue with-the entire line is cleche-

Nazi zombies-Japanese school girls *ahem* naval cadets, ninjas, Cthulhu monsters, sexy mechanics etc... that's kinda of the point. we see the same kind of thing in infinity models as well.

Overpriced......only if you want to buy fully painted models. yeah those are kinda spendy. but given you don't need near as many to play the game as 40K or warmachine or flames of war. coupled with the fact that they are effectively half the price of GW models while still being very good quality. especially considering the fantasy flight releases were the same quality at 1/3 the cost of GW minis. i was getting heavy walker tanks, aircraft and such for $15 fully primed and decal'd during that run.


The only thing that i see a problem with is the lack of promotion and support in the gaming community because it seems like everybody i teach the game to has never even heard of it or doesn't know how it is played even though it has a well balanced and well written rules set with alot of love and attention from the creator.

DUST was pretty big when FFG was selling it. Of course, it was a range of plastic minis back then, and FFG toned down many of Paolo Parente's excesses, which made it much more mainstream. The reason DUST is mostly forgotten now is because of how they handled their Kickstarter a few years ago. Gamers can forgive a lot of 'isms, but deliver badly on a Kickstarter and they're out for blood.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
In theory the concept of a "bilingual pun" exists, and could be amusing rather than casually racist, but for something to be a bilingual pun it has to work back the other way. "Sum" isn't a syllable in Mandarin (I know what I'm doing with Mandarin more than any other dialect and am making assumptions based on the outfit), "wong" is Wade-Giles for "wang", so the closest you'd get (rendered the way I usually see names in Pinyin written down) would be Sun Tingwang.

Fortunately for the joke Sun(1) is on the surname list, ting(2) can mean "stop moving", and there are renderings of wang that mean variously ruling, flourishing, or moving in a direction, so you could turn this into an actual bilingual pun (and possibly a more subtle one) by calling the character something like Sun(1) Ting(2)wang(2) ("stop commanding") or Sun(1) Ting(2)wang(4) ("stop hoping") and get an English pun both off the Chinese characters and off the unit rules.

Unfortunately the Dust Studios designers decided to be lazy and stick with just the casual racism bit.

Better said, with more research, than I could do. Yeah, Sum Ting Wong is about as authentic a Chinese name as some of the American names in old Nintendo games.

Laziness isn't quite the same as racism (if you put everything at the level of racism you've lost all perspective) but it's lazy, not funny, and stereotypical. Racism's unambitious second cousin if you will.

it was a range of plastic minis back then,

It still is. the models have not changed one bit in terms of quality or materials. i have both old FF and newer dust studios releases.

Old folks gotta old folk I guess, I'm eagerly awaiting Leutnant Schwartz Negger, in full blackface to infiltrate the americans. I mean, it's just casual fun.

Cronch wrote:
Old folks gotta old folk I guess, I'm eagerly awaiting Leutnant Schwartz Negger, in full blackface to infiltrate the americans. I mean, it's just casual fun.

Come on, really?

Thanks for completely missing the point, and taking the conversation to wherever you think your taking it.
NEVER go full slow.

 Elbows wrote:
The entire Dust line is trope-laden, with evil Nazi scientists, etc. It's a 1950's comic book, so the style is perfectly in line with the game's other aesthetics.

I guess some tropes maybe aged better than other?

 Grot 6 wrote:

Cronch wrote:
Old folks gotta old folk I guess, I'm eagerly awaiting Leutnant Schwartz Negger, in full blackface to infiltrate the americans. I mean, it's just casual fun.

Come on, really?

Thanks for completely missing the point, and taking the conversation to wherever you think your taking it.
NEVER go full slow.

How is my inappropriate, if the Yellow Menace straight from 1910s political cartoons is?

I've seen threads like this on Gamefaqs: either trying to start something(like with the last Necromunda thread) or trying to get banned.

Either way, nothing to see here, just ignore him.....

Also,sorry to ask, Kyoto, but since you posted, mind doing the honours?

 aphyon wrote:

it was a range of plastic minis back then,

It still is. the models have not changed one bit in terms of quality or materials. i have both old FF and newer dust studios releases.

That's news to me. I thought they moved to expensive, boutique resins after the KS.