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As to the representation argument, I think people are importing a concept that is important when we’re talking about real life professions and it doesn’t really fit the context of pursuing a hobby. Plenty of women like watching NFL football despite there being no female players, whether as “poster boys” or otherwise, for example.

I voted for:

Release female/cultural themed miniatures freely mixed in with other units, adding variety to players' modeling options

With my Dark Eldar army i've had the choice to make models female or male. Except for some cases where it's specific, like Incubi vs Succubi, or Wyches. For Tyranids, I tell people it's Jurassic Park, they might be female but LIFE FINDS A WAY DUN DUNNNNN DUN DUNNNNNN DA DUN DUNNNN DUN DUN DUN DUNNNNNN

And in reality it's very easy to make any model female. There are numerous vendors that sell female heads. You can put them on nearly anything. Especially if the model is armored, as that would cover up all the "lady bits."

But at the end of the day i'm competitive, what's on the table first, and "MEH ARMIEZ GOT THE FLERF, HARE IS ME BACKSTRARY" isn't even second. Second is left blank.

 Crimson wrote:
Well, the issue kinda is that the Marines are crazy over represented in the fluff, so it may feel like that if you're not a Marine, you're a nobody. That is kinda problem even if we ignore the gender aspect.

Yeah, once we get past the whole

"so, there's a faction with only men?"

"yep, most popular faction. It's got 8 codexes and multiple unique recent plastic ranges."

"and there's a faction with only women?"

"yep, 20something 20 year old metal sculpts. They're still in the index and they cost twice as much per model as any other range."

I think this situation will improve somewhat.

the_scotsman hit the nail on the head - with GW to promising to give SOB some real thought and attention, a big part of this problem will be solved - the problem really isn’t that only male characters are interesting, it’s that GW is still working out that it spends way too many resources obsessing over Space Marines.

Right now, GW is working through a lot of dumb ideas that it has held up as sacred cows for a long time. Hopefully, the self-fulfilling prophecy that customers can only really care about Space Marines will be one of them!

 Manchu wrote:
the_scotsman hit the nail on the head - with GW to promising to give SOB some real thought and attention, a big part of this problem will be solved - the problem really isn’t that only male characters are interesting, it’s that GW is still working out that it spends way too many resources obsessing over Space Marines.

Right now, GW is working through a lot of dumb ideas that it has held up as sacred cows for a long time. Hopefully, the self-fulfilling prophecy that customers can only really care about Space Marines will be one of them!

I find it pretty unlikely. Space Marines are the big initial appeal of the universe, even if they're not all that interesting once they've lead you through the door. They're a lot like Jedi. Sure, once you're sold on Star Wars, the smugglers, crime lords, and bounty hunters are easily the more narratively rich and generally interesting part of the setting, but you only really learn to appreciate that after you grow tired of the kid holding up the laser sword fantasy that initially caught your attention.

That’s an accurate portrayal of the past but I don’t think it is a law of nature that must define what is possible about how the future can unfold.

 LunarSol wrote:

I find it pretty unlikely. Space Marines are the big initial appeal of the universe, even if they're not all that interesting once they've lead you through the door. They're a lot like Jedi. Sure, once you're sold on Star Wars, the smugglers, crime lords, and bounty hunters are easily the more narratively rich and generally interesting part of the setting, but you only really learn to appreciate that after you grow tired of the kid holding up the laser sword fantasy that initially caught your attention.

And that amount of tears and gnashing of teeth when they dared to give a girl a laser sword! Yeah, it is kinda similar indeed!

 Manchu wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
[So they didn't "make her a new, feminine crisis suit" they put her in a special stealth suit.

Remember that the “THEY” in that sentence is Games Workshop. As I carefully pointed out, I am not talking about this as a matter of in-setting “reality.” The XV22 exists solely because GW designed it to represent a female Tau character. Her male contemporary in the product line was Farsight, who in fact was just another GUY in an XV8.

No. The Scotsman is right. If you go and look the concept art for both you can see clearly how Shadowsun armor is a slightly bigger Stealth Suits. Compare the torso parts without the Stealth suits "collar". They are basically the same.





If Shadowsun's armour was made to be "femenine" then normal Stealth suits are too stilised to look "femenine". You could say Shadowsun's armor has a thinner waist and is more stilized than the blocky Crisis suits. But that is just the same for the normal stealth suit.

EDIT: The images are very small, let me fix it.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
[So they didn't "make her a new, feminine crisis suit" they put her in a special stealth suit.

Remember that the “THEY” in that sentence is Games Workshop. As I carefully pointed out, I am not talking about this as a matter of in-setting “reality.” The XV22 exists solely because GW designed it to represent a female Tau character. Her male contemporary in the product line was Farsight, who in fact was just another GUY in an XV8.

I wasn't talking about in-setting reality either. In armies of that era, Games Workshop almost always released named characters who were "special" versions of an existing normal character or unit.

See orks:

Ghazzy - special warboss on foot
Wazdakka - special biker
Badrukk - special flash git
Zogwart - special weirdboy
Snikrot - special Kommando
Grotsnik - special Painboy

So, you're saying that when GW redesigned the Stealth Team from a form that looked like a fire warrior with a bigger shoulderpad and a burst cannon into a smaller mark of battlesuit, they did so specifically in an attempt to make it look "feminine?"

I guess I'm going to need a bit more evidence behind that claim, because stealth suits don't look particularly feminine to me, they just look like GW wanted Tau to have a "terminator sized" unit.

While there is no doubt that Shadowsun is a special version of a basic unit, you may question why exactly she ended up in a stealth suit. She was introduced alongside Tau Pope to complement Farsight, Aun'Shi and Anghkor Prok. Notice how the female character is not the half-naked savage, the half-naked Eathereal, the one with the pope hat or the one with the blocky armor and instead the one with the sleekest lines Tau suits had at the time.

Might be coincidence. Might be design.

 Geifer wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
[So they didn't "make her a new, feminine crisis suit" they put her in a special stealth suit.

Remember that the “THEY” in that sentence is Games Workshop. As I carefully pointed out, I am not talking about this as a matter of in-setting “reality.” The XV22 exists solely because GW designed it to represent a female Tau character. Her male contemporary in the product line was Farsight, who in fact was just another GUY in an XV8.

I wasn't talking about in-setting reality either. In armies of that era, Games Workshop almost always released named characters who were "special" versions of an existing normal character or unit.

See orks:

Ghazzy - special warboss on foot
Wazdakka - special biker
Badrukk - special flash git
Zogwart - special weirdboy
Snikrot - special Kommando
Grotsnik - special Painboy

So, you're saying that when GW redesigned the Stealth Team from a form that looked like a fire warrior with a bigger shoulderpad and a burst cannon into a smaller mark of battlesuit, they did so specifically in an attempt to make it look "feminine?"

I guess I'm going to need a bit more evidence behind that claim, because stealth suits don't look particularly feminine to me, they just look like GW wanted Tau to have a "terminator sized" unit.

While there is no doubt that Shadowsun is a special version of a basic unit, you may question why exactly she ended up in a stealth suit. She was introduced alongside Tau Pope to complement Farsight, Aun'Shi and Anghkor Prok. Notice how the female character is not the half-naked savage, the half-naked Eathereal, the one with the pope hat or the one with the blocky armor and instead the one with the sleekest lines Tau suits had at the time.

Might be coincidence. Might be design.

And maybe it's maybelline.

I guess when I think of "suit of armor designed to be feminine" i tend not to think about big shoulder pauldrons, a bubble helmet and a big ol' crotchpiece that juts past the flat chestplate.

Sure, it's got sleeker lines than any of the marks of Tau battlesuit that had come out so far....because it was the second Tau battlesuit design...one of them has to have sleeker lines.

If you asked me to squint and say it was in reference to anything feminine, I would definitely say that the combination of the helmet shape and armguns could be a bit of a Metroid reference, which could explain why Shadowsun is female and has the ponytail? But Samus' armor is, if anything, famously un-feminine, since "WHAAAAAT, SHES A GUUUUURL???" is kind of the final twist of the original game.

first step would be to do some estimates of the sales increase or decrease over the amount of time and resources required to produce them

this can be a bit tricky as the most noise is often made by those with no intention to buy or will bemoan its the slightly wrong flavour of what they wanted and not buy it anyway

Don’t overthink the stealth suit thing. The issue is, Shadowsun was not put into a XV8 like Farsight. GW put her in a smaller, sleeker suit that even has a helmet option so you can see her glorious five foot long hear-me-roar pony tail. Unlike the dark, sinister looking XV25s, the studio paintjob for her XV22 was bright and clean.

 Manchu wrote:
That’s an accurate portrayal of the past but I don’t think it is a law of nature that must define what is possible about how the future can unfold.

Maybe, but at its core, 40k is really about self expression. Marines themselves are pretty blank slate for you to paste and express your identity on. Most of the established chapters are variations of that; someone who wanted viking marines or goth marines or cyborg marines or whatever. A huge appeal is the ability to make Captain You the HQ. That's why people expecting GW to reveal the Lost Legions are completely missing the point of the remaining blank slates. There's a ton of appeal in making squads that represent your friends. That's half the appeal of XCom as a recent popular example; putting people you care about in the game and trying your best to keep them alive. It's pretty dumb in this day and age for THE game that sells itself on "the hobby" and customization to be the one saying their generic superhuman templates can't be girls

Companies that get woke go broke.

People overwhelmingly dislike social justice: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majorities-dislike-political-correctness/572581/

Forcing this into business has never worked out well.

GW should continue doing what they're doing:
* Sisters & Escher are all female
* Eldars, Tau and Stormcast are mixed gender
* Space Marines are ALL male
* Nids & Orks are ALL female

It's fine.

That said, I look forward with uber-boobplate Femarines.

How is it forcing anything to produce models which accurately reflect the lore?

 Manchu wrote:
Plenty of women like watching NFL football despite there being no female players,

Plenty of men enjoyed watching Lingerie League "football", despite there being no male players.

Hell, I've gone to watch dance shows despite there being no male dancers. On top of the door fee and drink minimimum, it was only $1 tip for to watch each dance.

the_scotsman wrote:

Spoiler:

 Geifer wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
[So they didn't "make her a new, feminine crisis suit" they put her in a special stealth suit.

Remember that the “THEY” in that sentence is Games Workshop. As I carefully pointed out, I am not talking about this as a matter of in-setting “reality.” The XV22 exists solely because GW designed it to represent a female Tau character. Her male contemporary in the product line was Farsight, who in fact was just another GUY in an XV8.

I wasn't talking about in-setting reality either. In armies of that era, Games Workshop almost always released named characters who were "special" versions of an existing normal character or unit.

See orks:

Ghazzy - special warboss on foot
Wazdakka - special biker
Badrukk - special flash git
Zogwart - special weirdboy
Snikrot - special Kommando
Grotsnik - special Painboy

So, you're saying that when GW redesigned the Stealth Team from a form that looked like a fire warrior with a bigger shoulderpad and a burst cannon into a smaller mark of battlesuit, they did so specifically in an attempt to make it look "feminine?"

I guess I'm going to need a bit more evidence behind that claim, because stealth suits don't look particularly feminine to me, they just look like GW wanted Tau to have a "terminator sized" unit.

While there is no doubt that Shadowsun is a special version of a basic unit, you may question why exactly she ended up in a stealth suit. She was introduced alongside Tau Pope to complement Farsight, Aun'Shi and Anghkor Prok. Notice how the female character is not the half-naked savage, the half-naked Eathereal, the one with the pope hat or the one with the blocky armor and instead the one with the sleekest lines Tau suits had at the time.

Might be coincidence. Might be design.

And maybe it's maybelline.

I guess when I think of "suit of armor designed to be feminine" i tend not to think about big shoulder pauldrons, a bubble helmet and a big ol' crotchpiece that juts past the flat chestplate.

Sure, it's got sleeker lines than any of the marks of Tau battlesuit that had come out so far....because it was the second Tau battlesuit design...one of them has to have sleeker lines.

If you asked me to squint and say it was in reference to anything feminine, I would definitely say that the combination of the helmet shape and armguns could be a bit of a Metroid reference, which could explain why Shadowsun is female and has the ponytail? But Samus' armor is, if anything, famously un-feminine, since "WHAAAAAT, SHES A GUUUUURL???" is kind of the final twist of the original game.

The point was more that of the list of special characters we had at the time, traditional thinking takes me to the conclusion that the sleek armor is the most likely to get the female character treatment.

Remember that Tau are Japanese popular sci-fi filtered through traditional Western lenses. You wouldn't necessarily get a reference to something originally Japanese, just as you wouldn't get an overt pope dress or Swiss Guard uniforms for Tau Pope. But you know Tau are the anime faction and Tau Pope is Tau Pope regardless. For all the flak GW gets for "borrowing" ideas, their stated design philosophy at the time was to use what they called "strong archetypes". Which means thoughtless stereotypes specifically chosen for instant recognition.

In that context, it makes sense that she doesn't get the pope position (which is traditionally a male role) nor gets to run around half naked (half naked sci-fi babes is I assume something GW didn't want Tau females to be associated with), leaving the various combat roles. She could have been a tank commander, or the first Cadre Fireblade, or a Broadside commander (hardly unheard of for Tau characters to actually have fire power of their own, unlike the rest of the maniacs in 40k who like to wave their swords. Instead they chose a combat role thatt's sneaky with a model design that emphasizes sleek lines. Very similar to how often enough females in fantasy settings get the role of Rogue where cunning is valued much higher than brute strength, a traditionally male domain.

It's not the choice between two suits, one of which is bound to look sleeker than the other. It was the choice of any possible role a Tau character (specifically Fire or Ethereal Caste, as the others don't get proper representation) might fill, and it was specifically that one.

hobojebus wrote:
Companies that get woke go broke.

People overwhelmingly dislike social justice: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majorities-dislike-political-correctness/572581/

Forcing this into business has never worked out well.

Yeah, and I'm sure you'd get really big numbers if you asked "do you think racism is a problem in this country?"

Words and phrases are built to elicit particular responses. "Political Correctness" is one of them. it gets used because it elicits a negative response from a majority of people. I think there's also a lot of varied opinion on what constitutes "political correctness" on the subject of 40k miniatures.

IMO, the prevalence of actual, scary "SJW activists" in 40k is incredibly low. The presence of people who react to new female models in any form added to the game as if it was the invasion of the SJW body-snatchers seems like a pretty regular constant.

And yet according to GW what was the most strongly expressed opinion from enough of their playerbase to immediately shift gears and put an army into fast-track production? Demand for model support for Sisters of Battle.

There is an exhausted majority, tired of the constant arguments of the two extremes. In a hobby where the dominant demographic resides in one extreme, the exhausted majority is probably going to get even more sick of constant allergic over-sensitivity to anything that might be pointed at as Horrible SJW Infiltration than the opposite.

I voted for option 3 because Genestealer Cults, Inquisiton, Guard, and Mechanicus could all use some interesting female character options and more modelling options is always better in my book. Necrons could too, but the model would likely look a lot like the ones we have since Necron warriors are made of the civilian Necrotyr and that means men and women alike but their bodies are identical. Eldar and Tau already have a mix which works (sorry, but busty blueberries aren't canon so deal with the fact that the only difference we get to see is the shape of the face slit), and Tyranids are a faction who range from asexual to being largely female (Norn Queens namely) which works for their bug like nature. And Orks are friggin mushrooms and we don't need the 40k equiv of the Orc Cheerleaders from Blood Bowl in 40k.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
GW should continue doing what they're doing:
* Sisters & Escher are all female
* Eldars, Tau and Stormcast are mixed gender
* Space Marines are ALL male
* Nids & Orks are ALL female

It's fine.

That said, I look forward with uber-boobplate Femarines.

Orks are ALL female??? Nope.

 amanita wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
GW should continue doing what they're doing:
* Sisters & Escher are all female
* Eldars, Tau and Stormcast are mixed gender
* Space Marines are ALL male
* Nids & Orks are ALL female

It's fine.

That said, I look forward with uber-boobplate Femarines.

Orks are ALL female??? Nope.

<Insert that one picture of the Female Orc Bloodbowl Cheerleader with huge... tracts of land.>

 Crimson wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

I find it pretty unlikely. Space Marines are the big initial appeal of the universe, even if they're not all that interesting once they've lead you through the door. They're a lot like Jedi. Sure, once you're sold on Star Wars, the smugglers, crime lords, and bounty hunters are easily the more narratively rich and generally interesting part of the setting, but you only really learn to appreciate that after you grow tired of the kid holding up the laser sword fantasy that initially caught your attention.

And that amount of tears and gnashing of teeth when they dared to give a girl a laser sword! Yeah, it is kinda similar indeed!

This is a typical uninformed opinion. No one is shedding tears or gnashing teeth because a women got a laser sword it's the lazy way they made the girl wielding a laser sword so OP with no story or anything to explain it.

All-female Orks? Yeah no

As for the way to implement female guard etc: I always disliked the idea of boxes being inherently mixed. I mean you don't, for example, buy Cadian troops and Catachan troops from the same box, right? They're separate. So it should be the same for other types of models that are somewhat incompatible, such as male/female models. I'd do that for (Dark) Eldar and others too (in fact, I'd prefer if Scourges came in two box variants: all feather wings, or all bat wings, because I'd only want feather-wing Scourges).

So here's what I'd do: keep the current all-male boxes as they are, and make additional boxes full of female equivalent models for Guard, and split similary for other factions. This way, everyone wins: people who only want guys buy only male models' boxes, people who only want girls buy female models' boxes, people who want to mix and match can just buy whatever ratio suits their fancy.

 Manchu wrote:
That’s an accurate portrayal of the past but I don’t think it is a law of nature that must define what is possible about how the future can unfold.

well the things humanoids pick to play with are actually writen within those laws. Males and female chimps pick different things to play with, and you can't say that the female chimps are forced by some sort of social structure to pick toys, while male chimps pick trucks.

Orks are ALL female??? Nope.

Well if they are 1/3 fungi. Then orcs have like 2000-3000 types of genders depending on the fungi type, and if the fungi works like the earth ones.

* Nids & Orks are ALL female

tyrants, and some of the ammo tyranid organisms are male.

And that amount of tears and gnashing of teeth when they dared to give a girl a laser sword! Yeah, it is kinda similar indeed!

And as crazy as it maybe, and wrong based on what could have been they ended up being right. Ray could have been an awesome character, all the new star war stuff could have been great, on par with the old trylogy. But what we did get was the Last Jedi. And this gave the "no girls" allowed people a strong argument, again.
My dad was smart enough to show me the old ghostbusters, before we went to see last one. And it is hard to compare the first two, with last remake.

The last thing w40k needs is GW pulling off a last jedi, and giving all the people in the no new stuff camp an even stronger argument to never update any stuff. That is why I hope the SoB codex is going to be great. And stuff like a rogue trader that is a weapon hating vegan feels me with dread.

dkoz wrote:


This is a typical uninformed opinion. No one is shedding tears or gnashing teeth because a women got a laser sword it's the lazy way they made the girl wielding a laser sword so OP with no story or anything to explain it.

Suure!



Damn, if someone in the film would just have said that Rey's midichlorian count was off the charts it all would have been absolutely fine!

 Crimson wrote:

dkoz wrote:


This is a typical uninformed opinion. No one is shedding tears or gnashing teeth because a women got a laser sword it's the lazy way they made the girl wielding a laser sword so OP with no story or anything to explain it.

Suure!

But he is right after the force awakens came out, people had great expectation for Star Wars. What we got was someone who doesn't need training to learn anything, and where there is no struggle and no growth, you do not get a hero. An Ray in Last Jedi is exactly that.

I think for the most part as far as guard go, with female models the safest bet would be characters. Special commissar who is noticeably female, or a tank commander, a medic etc.

I'd think it's fair to say that when a new infantry squad kit comes out, whenever that may be, it'll have both genders. If I had to guess 7-3 ratio seems about right. And as said above somewhere an all female box would do terrible. Not cause people hate women or anything but most likely you'd only want 1 or 2 to flesh out your army. No, there needs to only be a couple ladies in the box so you need to buy more boxes.

Aos stormcast has a decent amount of ladies mixed in and in my opinion it was done right.

 fraser1191 wrote:
I think for the most part as far as guard go, with female models the safest bet would be characters. Special commissar who is noticeably female, or a tank commander, a medic etc.

I'd think it's fair to say that when a new infantry squad kit comes out, whenever that may be, it'll have both genders. If I had to guess 7-3 ratio seems about right. And as said above somewhere an all female box would do terrible. Not cause people hate women or anything but most likely you'd only want 1 or 2 to flesh out your army. No, there needs to only be a couple ladies in the box so you need to buy more boxes.

Aos stormcast has a decent amount of ladies mixed in and in my opinion it was done right.

Female Cadians would be harder to notice honestly. Unless they specifically make some of the hips wider on some models, the flak vest would hide the other obvious secondary sexual markers we'd use to identify them (aka boobs). Basically it'd come down to face sculpt for most models which would make it easier for people to make a choice on if they want guys or girls in their unts.

On the otherhand, female Catachan would be more obvious and would let us get Ripley from Aliens into our army (which would be awesome):


Honestly I kind of want an all ladies version of the Vostroyan First Born where it's the planets daughters who are sent off because they have a mutation that causes most of the planet's population to be women or something. Mostly because I love variety on the table and that would allow for a way to add in a new subfaction for Guard (maybe give them a kind of victorian era flair or base their uniforms off of the 1800s US Calvary or something) and would let the people who want the all female guard army to have one with less fuss with 3rd party companies.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
On the otherhand, female Catachan would be more obvious and would let us get Ripley from Aliens into our army (which would be awesome):

GW already did this: