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 adamsouza wrote:
I would have bought sprues of Necromunda bulk heads $5 a piece, and they really are not as flexible as these Mantic ones will be.

The biggest hurdle for them is the mind set of gamers, like myself, who are used to making their own terrain, as opposed to buying it.

I'm for strike force, and I appreciate the terrain tiles that will be part of it, but I won't be buying more of those tiles beyond that.

I just realized, if you can figure out how thick the tiles are, you can make roofs and maybe walls out of plasticard for your buildings, and try and save on your tiles. Maybe scribe a few panel lines in, since most roofs are unadorned.

 Bolognesus wrote:
"hey mantic, a game with dozens of models and not one of them is a pony?!? nice going!" would make just about as much sense.

Don't give the nutjobs of the offical forums any ideas, there might be a few bronies in there as well; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p6LVZFLSfw

--Chris
www.chrisvalera.com

 Vermonter wrote:

We do disagree on the guy in the exo-suit, though. I take your point that you can paint your figures to be whatever race you like, or imagine them to be whatever race you like under their helmets. But it's another thing when you sculpt a figure to represent a race, in this case as an African-American, and then you make the one figure you sculpt that way over-muscled and huge. You can paint him white and name him Bernhard Schadenfreude if you like, but his features are still going to be African-American, and he's still going be the African-American character in the IP, the story, and any official publications. We might not agree, but yes, I think that's a problem. I can still enjoy the game, but yeah, I'd rather the one figure they'd sculpted to be African American hadn't been defined by being the biggest, burliest figure of the bunch. I like Sedition Wars a lot, both for the imaginative Strain villains and for many, if not all, of the human figures, male and female. But that guy was a disappointment to me.

Well, I haven't been on the McVey bandwagon from the limited-edition resin days, and I'm not exactly excited about the fluff for the game anyway (because it seems generic at best) but I'm not sure how many specific characters they've actually created to date? I only got on board from the advent of their KS, and so I could be wrong, but disregarding the dozen or so KS "homage" characters (which cross race and gender boundaries anyway) - the "named" characters from this game that I've noticed appear to be one white woman and one black man. It's not like there's a dozen well-established named-and-modelled skinny white guys being dwarfed by Bobby Lashley, after all. Anyway, again - does The Mighty Zug have black, white, hispanic features? I painted mine with dark skin, though I also painted a bunch of my other human BB figures with dark skin as well. racist or realistic?

DiabolicAl - I think you're concerned I'm somehow saying all games, or all gamers are racist. I'm not, and I don't believe that. Imagine your forces any way you like, because if you don't have that private freedom, what's the point? But given that my last post was over the top, I don't blame you for getting that impression. Generally I think games culture has the same problems most of pop culture has with race and gender, no more, no less.

Scarletsquig - Good visual points - thank you for that. I shouldn't have given Mantic such short shrift on the race / gender thing, especially since the Marauder issue is really an apples and oranges comparison.

This is it. Compare the depiction of the Mantic DB corporation females, to say, real-life female athletes. I could have some real fun with google images here , but pick out some female hockey players, netball players, female WWE "divas", Roller-derby girls.. which ones are "sexist" and which are neutral and which are celebrations of femininity? Roller derby girls might look like they're all just tits and tattoos, but I'm sure they's also good at putting your teeth out. ...they're like the Escher gangers of real-world sports.

Female soldiers. sure, should generally dress the same way as their counterparts. People with a defined uniform obviously should be in that uniform. After that, it's much more amorphous. It doesn't mean that I want all female figures to look like these

- but you know, I'll probably buy those anyway. If they produce good models of properly-dressed, non-cheesecake females, I'll buy those, too. The main difficulty we've had is that no-one has dared to really produce non-cheesecake military females - though Statuesque Miniatures has put out some nice models recently. There's a bit more luck in the fantasy genre though, if you look through Reaper's catalogue. They also have tons of cheesecake - but c'est la vie.

My apologies to everyone for going too far, exhibiting some painfully sloppy thinking, and writing something unfair and even insulting. You all have my respect, and my thanks for letting me know I was being an ass.

No problem - just remember that while Dakka is often an argumentative place, it's not nearly the same kind of atmosphere as a screaming match in Kickstarter comments. Stay for the discussion.

510k reached.

Azazelx - I'll keep this short, as I got to hit the hay, so apologies for only addressing part of your post.

I guess for me there are two (Jekyll / Hyde?) ways I could approach depictions of females in games. I could get on a soapbox and make a pseudo-academic argument about how women are portrayed, but honestly, while I am a (pseudo?) academic and despite what my last post suggested (or maybe, come to think of it, exactly what it demonstrated), gender issues aren't my thing. So let's skip that one, (surprise! That one was Hyde!), I'm sure we'll all be better off.

Instead, I'll speak simply as a gamer. As a gamer, I want my models to make sense. I want Orx Marauders, if they are supposed to be hard-core Mercs, to look fierce, independent, and capable - not like buffoons. Likewise, I want my female soldiers to look like soldiers, wearing practical protective gear that has some sense of military utility about it, even if it's futuristic. Female soldier figures whose poses, or whose outfits seem designed primarily to show off their busts or butts really annoy me, because they make no sense. Yes, I know that man-sized rat creatures with drill weapons also make no sense, but that's the point: Good miniature sculpts make them LOOK like they do. Bad miniature sculpts can make the most "realistic", up-to-date miniature of a contemporary soldier look absurd.

Generally speaking it seems that while some sculptors learned a long time ago that miniature poses should "tell a story" and / or look purposeful, some haven't yet. There's clean purpose in the way the Rebel soldiers line up their guns to aim, and there's a nice sense of "aha, THERE you are" - "oh gak! It's seen us!" suggested by the 1st gen sculpt's attitude and facial expression. The Marauders are an old issue, I know, but they're a classic example of the opposite. The Marauder with two guns at his side, pointed in the air, defies explanation. What is the sculptor trying to say with that pose? What is the message? The only one I can detect is, "since there's a gun on either side, he won't tip over." When that's the primary thing your model's pose communicates, it calls attention to itself because of its own bad design. People don't even want to put them on the table, because their mediocrity actually distracts players from the game world.

For me, over sexy female soldier types likewise yank me out of the "suspension of disbelief" zone and interrupt the atmosphere of the game. That doesn't mean I don't want female soldier figures, it means I want female soldier figures that are consistent with whatever standard of battlefield realism is being set by the rest of the game. In a wargame, when a female soldier's bust is exposed to be sexy, it's also presumably exposed to bullets, knives, etc., in a totally foolish way for someone on a battlefield. While it's not exactly the same, just as the Marauder's pose says to me, "I make no sense but I won't tip over!", the pointlessly sexy female figure's pose says to me, "I make no sense but I'm eye candy!" It's an unwanted distraction from the world of the game.

^ No need to apologize, I agree with everything you said. Just wasn't sure if you'd seen the female dreadball minis or not.

And that's a far more reasonable post on the female soldiers topic than normally gets posted.

So far Mantic have been fairly good about making realistic women, I think they know they'd get murdered if they took a walk down cheesecake alley at this point now that they have a good reputation for doing it right.

Only exception is Mars Attacks, where they'll need to go down the gore/porn route to stay true to the IP.

I understand what you're saying, but frankly the "chainmail bikini syndrome" is a well-worn trope of gaming, fantasy and sci-fi. It runs deep in out little niche, through film, television, videogames and everything else. I alternately laugh at it, make fun of it, stare at it (mmm... booo-bies...), embrace it, undermine it and ultimately disregard getting too passionate about it. In one of my other hobbies - 1:6 scale modelling, the syndrome is known as "tactical hookers". Both these figures came from the same manufacturer. Both sold well, but the second one took them by surprise and got a re-issue with grey fatigues.
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4132/5039644770_2cd937f846_b.jpg
http://i731.photobucket.com/albums/ww316/BIO55/p90-2.jpg

Ultimately, all you or I can do is tell producers of miniatures like Mantic, or Vic, or whoever what we'd like to see, and then if they produce something fitting that description, buy them. It does little good to be railing against Sedition Wars because Kev White sculpted the female troopers posing their booties when in many ways they're as good as female (sci-fi) troops have gotten. If they don't get bought, we end up with more of these rather than tilting the market further towards properly-uniformed figures because "the last ones we tried didn't sell well":


Sisters of Battle sadly didn't sell all that well. I've heard a friend's wife complain about them because they're wearing corset-armour. Female miniatures are often hard, because it seems people are more interested in tearing down the various attempts that aren't hyper-sexualised because they don't match their own personal standards or vision. In short, angry tirades don't really do much. Calm discussion with those few who are willing to listen, and then following up on it by buying them (or squads, regiments, armies - depending on what you play) and then showing those off once painted for the "wow, cool!" factor will do more than being angry on the internet.

Me? I'll buy both types as long as I like the figures. Still, Chainmail bikini figures are going to be much more one-offs, individuals, while uniformed and geared females that fit into something like Imperial Guard will be bought in larger numbers. Let's see how the Raging Heroes attempt pans out...

 Azazelx wrote:
Sisters of Battle sadly didn't sell all that well.

For the most part, that's less to do with their design and more to do with the fact that they're expensive and have spent so much time over the years with no available, official codex.

 chris_valera wrote:

 adamsouza wrote:
I would have bought sprues of Necromunda bulk heads $5 a piece, and they really are not as flexible as these Mantic ones will be.

The biggest hurdle for them is the mind set of gamers, like myself, who are used to making their own terrain, as opposed to buying it.

I'm for strike force, and I appreciate the terrain tiles that will be part of it, but I won't be buying more of those tiles beyond that.

I just realized, if you can figure out how thick the tiles are, you can make roofs and maybe walls out of plasticard for your buildings, and try and save on your tiles. Maybe scribe a few panel lines in, since most roofs are unadorned.

Not a bad suggestion at all.

Going one further than that, I've already made these.

 insaniak wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
Sisters of Battle sadly didn't sell all that well.

For the most part, that's less to do with their design and more to do with the fact that they're expensive and have spent so much time over the years with no available, official codex.

I'm talking about from release onwards (after the initial splash)

So am I. But that's ultimately a discussion for a different thread.

Yes, all metal armies haven't usually sold well, and I can probably count on one hand the number of times I have played SoB (from hundreds & hundreds of games of 40k). I used to have an all metal Steel Legion army that I bought way back in the day when I was a staffer - this was in the days of 'metal by weight' that staff members could enjoy. Think I paid about £70-80 for something that would have cost well over £500 had I bought it new! I understand in modern pricing context this is not as unreasonable (considering Forge World DKoK armies and the like), but it explans why you hardly saw any of them on the tabletop and by extension the likes of SoB.

Not saying that they would have been as common as Marines or IG, but a nice box of plastic sisters for £15 I think would have made them a lot more prevalent. The same argument could be made for Specialist Games and the like - if you want something to sell, you have to make it easier to buy (in terms of both its presence on the website, in White Dwarf etc, and its price).

@Vermonter - don't worry about apologising! Nice to have someone making such well written posts, regardless of whether I agree with your points. I think it's the nature of internet forums for communication and communicators intent to be difficult to understand at times - excessive use of smilies is a good way around it! I can write something like "Azazelx please don't go so heavy on the new guy, you might scare him away!" followed by many to show that it is just some good-natured finger-wagging

Regarding that topic, I think 'cheesecake' goes back a long way in the fantasy/sci-fi setting; From King Kong holding a semi-naked, screaming blonde woman while he is climbing up the building, right through the B-movies of the 50's and 60's, to the iconic Frank Franzetta fantasy artwork that is synonymous with Dungeons and Dragons. As Azazelx and ScarletSquig have said though, I think it has to have it's place - the chainmail bikini (and don't forget the thong!) goes alongside the bulging musculature and loin cloth of the Barbarian, of Arnold Schwartzneggar, as a way of illustrating the primal, bestial (and sexualised/un-civilised) nature of that setting. Again I think a different version of over-sexualisation works for Infinity, as part of that game's anime/manga heritage (although there have been many hard discussions about that very topic!).

It would look completely out of place in 40k however, despite lots of hopeful(?) artwork of female commissars wearing bikinis! Same too with Deadzone, I would be very surprised if we saw a Kingdom of Death style 'pin-up' strutting her way in high-heels while shooting plague troopers with a machine gun in each hand.
Going on Mantic's track record however, I see no real cause for concern at this point.

@adamsouza - those look great, where did you get that terrain from? And is that a set-up for Dreadball Xtreme?

It's very easy to cross the line with female models, both with the look and the volume. And no matter what Mantic does, someone will claim its not enough. I personally don't understand why some feel it would be needed to add boobs to an Orc, Robot, or Reptile. Bit it will continue to be asked for daily in the KS comments by someone.

I am thinking of doing a kickstarter where I fashion a line of resin dongs in various states of arousal, or perhaps codpieces - the King Arthur, the Black Russian etc - to tap a previously untapped market. I am sure if the market is there for boobies, it must also be there for wangs too, right? I mean we want people to be able to identify the miniatures as male surely? Why not do so with something that makes that unambiguously so?

So, it seems to me that a good thing people could do, is, if they play dreadball to go out and buy the human female team.

There's nothing sexualised about those models and it's a good way to let mantic know that there is a market for them.

And they're £11.99 from Wayland and less from TotalWargamer.

Time for everyone to pump the brakes and stay on topic here, please.

Thanks!

OK! So... now they have hit the 510,000 figure (and unlocked the addiitonal scenery sprue), are they likely to add new ones beyond or will we now have to wait until 525 or 530 until the next stretch goals are revealed?

Well, I don't know if the digital short story compilation is going to set the world on fire... frankly the sexism in games discussion is probably more interesting...

Although that discussion can be had, and is held elsewhere on the boards.

I would like a not-dead version of Gayle as an add-on at a later time.

Well the next streachgoal (after the fiction of course) is probably this


Not bad, damaged buildings.

Personally I have a huge issue with Simmonds concept art.

She looks anything but her background and more zombielike than any 3rd gen sculpted or illustrated, actually its the only plague member that looks like a zombie.

I like it, though she seems to be scratching her boob.

Yeah, I kind of like it myself.

Its a great concept art for a zombie, but can you imagine her especially with such posture be in a lab researching stronger mutagens for the plague?

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
Its a great concept art for a zombie, but can you imagine her especially with such posture be in a lab researching stronger mutagens for the plague?

That's fair, but at the same time, would she be on a battlefield holding beakers and flasks and a nice white lab coat? I guess I think this works for what she's doing while the game is taking place.

What I meant is, she looks and is posed as a zombie, a mindless thing, not a genius, her overall appearance is not bad, her pose is.

I'm not sure that Gayle looks 'more zombielike' or 'further gone' than the other 3rd gens that have been presented. She still has very distinct human-like features, mixed in with the beginnings of plague infection. Most of the 3rd gens shown have gone completely plague-tastic. I think it may be the mix of human and plague features which makes her seem more like a traditional zombie, but it makes sense how they got there to me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
What I meant is, she looks and is posed as a zombie, a mindless thing, not a genius, her overall appearance is not bad, her pose is.

She doesn't look particularly mindless to me. She looks pissed.

I think she looks fine. More of 4th Gen. Less mutant and more infected.

Look at her feet. Pissed people do not stand like that.

Depends where you live in the world - when I used to live in Korea I used to have to dodge at least half a dozen people like that on the walk home from work.

Looking forward to seeing what the new damaged terrain is going to turn out like..

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Look at her feet. Pissed people do not stand like that.

They do if they have a broken leg. I'm not suggesting Gayle is a fit specimen of taut athleticism; her body has clearly seen better days. I can very easily see someone who is pissed off and seeking vengeance on those who did this to her in this concept art though. And, of course, the actual mini? Well, we'll see what happens with that.

I like the Doc. Looks like she's being wracked by mutation while dragging herself towards cause of her condition (too-slow corp forces) filled with hate.

I mean yeah, she looks more like a zombie than the other 3rd gens, but I dont think she's going to look bad lined up next to them.