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It's heroic scale. All I would want from it is models that are subtly female, while being identifiably female. So no Battle Bras, but instead full flak armour. Heroic scale works on comparisons. Women in general have narrower waists, so make one or two torsos have slightly narrower waists. Give a few heads feminine faces maybe? Perhaps ones that don't look like crossdressers (see the High Elf Maiden Guard or whatever they're called).

Although I support the idea of single-gender fighting units, so why not have a male box set and a female? People can mix them if they are that way inclined, or ignore one in favour of the other. Maybe include different options in each kit, maybe not. I don't know, and GW ain't going to do it any time soon.

I get what you're saying, you don't want an anorexic little girl to go toe to toe with a World Eater. Women that look like women can and have been in combat. Its not like we're asking the impossible. I've seen it first hand. Heck, even Bonnie of Bonnie and Clyde fame could tote around a shotgun and BAR and she was a tiny woman. Russians used women a great deal during the Great Patriotic War.

And a modern look that would fit the IG. Yes, its hard to tell gender from a distance, but just a little touch of femininity would go a loooooong way.

Well this thread has gone to the bad place.

So I'll leave Sergeant to discuss whether or not having balls matters when facing down a Hive Tyrant in melee combat.

There are still posters who don't have him on ignore? Such things is what these sorts of threads descend into, time and time again, despite all evidence to the contrary. Coupled with the fact that it's a sci-fantasy setting, genres of fiction that have used gender equality, and discrimination, to good effect in its history, setting the precedent for there being good reason for women in the service.

Just for the record, In Iraq I saw combat and a female sergeant was with me from another unit and she kicked as much butt as anyone else.

 MWHistorian wrote:
Just for the record, In Iraq I saw combat and a female sergeant was with me from another unit and she kicked as much butt as anyone else.

I reckon this is the message we need to see.

 MWHistorian wrote:
I get what you're saying, you don't want an anorexic little girl to go toe to toe with a World Eater. Women that look like women can and have been in combat. Its not like we're asking the impossible. I've seen it first hand. Heck, even Bonnie of Bonnie and Clyde fame could tote around a shotgun and BAR and she was a tiny woman.

Clyde Barrow and some of the less famous male members of the gang were the ones who used the BARs. Bonnie Parker typically carried a small, cut down 20 gauge shotgun, using it on at least two occasions to murder police officers. But that's neither here nor there. It really isn't relevant what she would hold for a few minutes at a time during a robbery. Nor really is the use of women snipers in WW2 by the Russians (something historians believe was true, but vastly overstated by the Russians for propaganda purposes). It's not about whether or not there are roles women can serve in a combat capacity.

I was really just commenting on the idea of putting female heads on the sprue. People don't want thick, burly models with lady heads on them. They wants space action ladies. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Just the examples people give for the kinds of figures they want are amusing when transposing it against the idea of wanting "Female IGuard". Honestly, some of the old Escher figs weren't all bad. The juves were tiny, but the ganger models were half decent. I have them lying around somewhere. I'll get a picture of them next to the modern plastic Cadians though. I haven't done it before, but based on the size difference between the old metal guardsmen and the new plastics, it'll be pretty funny. There was a guy who had a P&M blog with converted Hasslefree female figs with modern plastic lasguns, and they looked ridiculous.

I actually bought one of the Hasslefree figs because I wanted to use her in my metal Cadian command squad. The difference in the scale was, to say the least, striking.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:Nor really is the use of women snipers in WW2 by the Russians

... or machine gunners, artillery crews, tankers, pilots, ...

 MWHistorian wrote:
Just for the record, In Iraq I saw combat and a female sergeant was with me from another unit and she kicked as much butt as anyone else.

Not that I don't doubt women saw combat in Iraq, because I knew female Marines who were in units that saw and returned fire, but what exactly was the situation you described?

The real difference is that I've always posited, and it gets shouted down by nay-sayers who point to stories like the anecdote you just provided, but use them without any context. The Imperial Guardsmen in the game are depicting infantry platoons. There's a significant difference between serving in an infantry platoon and, say, an MP or Motor Transport soldier whose convoy came under fire, and had to dismount to engage. The physical requirements to be able to sustain protracted ground operations are entirely different than putting on a vest, and carry your own personal weapon and ammunition for relatively short periods of time. If there are women serving in Imperial Guard line units, then they would be those who were physically capable of such an operation. And it's not impossible that in the grim darkness of the far future, there are women who have developed the genetic traits to sustain muscle mass similar to men (lol, the Russians and East Germans figured out how to do it in the 80s). But they aren't going to look like Lieutenant Mira, who was designed in a computer lab by a guy who was making a mass market video game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lynata wrote:

Veteran Sergeant wrote:Nor really is the use of women snipers in WW2 by the Russians

... or machine gunners, artillery crews, tankers, pilots, ...

Like I just said, this isn't about the imaginary version of the Soviet military you read a brief account of one time. But I already wrote one long post citing academic sources which you ignored in the past that disproved most of the common myths about the widespread use of women in the WWII Soviet military. I'm not going to do it again just because you enjoy being combative on the Interwebs just for the sake of being combative. I'll leave you to your 5 foot, 90 pound Valhallan Sniper fantasy.

After all, 40K is a fantasy game.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
*Snip*.

So tell me all about how a human male's physiology will help them at all when a Tyranid warrior with a bonesabre and lashwhip gets into melee range. Or when you're staring down a Bloodcrusher charging down your ranks. Or when a Wraithknight is about to step on you. Or when you're stuck in close combat with a Nob in mega-armor. Or when that Sorcerer of Tzeentch looks at you funny and now your head's exploded. Or when a Dark Eldar wych is ready to drag you off to the slave pens of commoragh.

Or heck just in combat with an Ork boy who is already superior enough to a human to pull his arms out of his sockets and club him to death with them without much effort and use HMG equivalents like assault rifles.

I don't ignore, I dismiss. Just like you seem to have done (or at least I would hope you've at least read the stuff) with the other academic sources that I have cited, including a contemporary analysis of the UK's Department of Defense about the expanding role of female soldiers in modern militaries, as well as evidence for how academic sources can be influenced by bias. Your choice of words regarding the issue just now is quite telling of yours.

I too would like to avoid such debates as every time this topic comes up it ends up going in circles, but I can't simply shut my yap when you feel like propagating your stories again. Just like you can't resist doing so in the first place.

 Kain wrote:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
*Snip*.

So tell me all about how a human male's physiology will help them at all when a Tyranid warrior with a bonesabre and lashwhip gets into melee range. Or when you're staring down a Bloodcrusher charging down your ranks. Or when a Wraithknight is about to step on you. Or when you're stuck in close combat with a Nob in mega-armor. Or when that Sorcerer of Tzeentch looks at you funny and now your head's exploded. Or when a Dark Eldar wych is ready to drag you off to the slave pens of commoragh.

Or heck just in combat with an Ork boy who is already superior enough to a human to pull his arms out of his sockets and club him to death with them without much effort and use HMG equivalents like assault rifles.

It's a long, drawn out explanation that you have no context for understanding and will just nay-say anyway.

It's not an arrogance thing, just one of best time use. I'm not going to take the time to explain how warfare actually works for you while I can do other things that bring me entertainment. If you think combat is all about standing in one place and pulling the trigger when something runs at you, then I'm sure everything you just said makes sense.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

 Kain wrote:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
*Snip*.

So tell me all about how a human male's physiology will help them at all when a Tyranid warrior with a bonesabre and lashwhip gets into melee range. Or when you're staring down a Bloodcrusher charging down your ranks. Or when a Wraithknight is about to step on you. Or when you're stuck in close combat with a Nob in mega-armor. Or when that Sorcerer of Tzeentch looks at you funny and now your head's exploded. Or when a Dark Eldar wych is ready to drag you off to the slave pens of commoragh.

Or heck just in combat with an Ork boy who is already superior enough to a human to pull his arms out of his sockets and club him to death with them without much effort and use HMG equivalents like assault rifles.

It's a long, drawn out explanation that you have no context for understanding and will just nay-say anyway.

It's not an arrogance thing, just one of best time use. I'm not going to take the time to explain how warfare actually works for you while I can do other things that bring me entertainment. If you think combat is all about standing in one place and pulling the trigger when something runs at you, then I'm sure everything you just said makes sense.

Except that most enemies in 40k are already ridiculously superior to humans in most ways that count.

Gaunts are much more numerous and deadlier in close quarters. And the big Tyranids are far stronger and more durable to the point that one Carnifex can bowl over an entire tank column if it's hemmed in.

The Tau have far better precision fire than the Imperial Guard and are much more mobile and fluid.

The Eldar are even more precise, have specialists who completely out do anything humanity has to offer in their appointed task, and even more mobile.

The Dark Eldar are even faster still and have some of the nuttiest weaponry around.

Chaos followers tend to be altered or mutated in some way and the Chaos Space Marines are Space Marines and all that entails, before we even get into the Daemons who disregard physics entirely.

The Orks outnumber humanity, they are stronger than humanity, they do not know or appreciate fear, they tend to throw down more weight of fire within visual engagement ranges than equivalent humans do, and they've so far been shown to have an equivalent to just about every class of human weapon.

And the Necrons are antedeluvian gods who overwhelmed sixty Imperial worlds in just a hundred days with the forces of just one Major dynasty and it's clients, throw chunks of degenerate matter at near light speed as opening moves in space battles, drop anti-matter shards as bombs, have limited reality warping combat scientists, and can cause stars to burst into a solar storm that can fry everything on the dayside of a nearby planet. Oh and not only are they absurdly tough, but they regenerate really well and get back up if you kick them down.

The physical differences between male and female humans is rather meaningless when the Guard's only advantage is numbers (though Orks and Tyranids frequently outnumber the guard), Organization (though many armies are better organized than them) and weight of fire (they still are the best in terms of long ranged artillery fire). The only species that is used as a primary combatant in all of 40k we're definitively the physical superiors of has much better standard kit and superior training anyway.

Given that the Guard throws teenagers as young as thirteen into the field of battle on a fairly regular basis recruiting women for more corpses to try and grind the enemy's gears is neither to be unexpected nor abhorred.

I mean, this is an organization that condones Chenkov executing his own men for combat engineers to make stuff out of or use them to clear mines for his tanks by marching them across obviously trapped areas. They clearly only care if you can shoot and take orders.

The enemy is stronger than you, he has better guns than you, he can outnumber you, he is smarter than you, but by the Emperor you're going to keep on throwing ordinance at them in increasingly creative ways until something breaks.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

 Kain wrote:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
*Snip*.

So tell me all about how a human male's physiology will help them at all when a Tyranid warrior with a bonesabre and lashwhip gets into melee range. Or when you're staring down a Bloodcrusher charging down your ranks. Or when a Wraithknight is about to step on you. Or when you're stuck in close combat with a Nob in mega-armor. Or when that Sorcerer of Tzeentch looks at you funny and now your head's exploded. Or when a Dark Eldar wych is ready to drag you off to the slave pens of commoragh.

Or heck just in combat with an Ork boy who is already superior enough to a human to pull his arms out of his sockets and club him to death with them without much effort and use HMG equivalents like assault rifles.

It's a long, drawn out explanation that you have no context for understanding and will just nay-say anyway.

It's not an arrogance thing, just one of best time use. I'm not going to take the time to explain how warfare actually works for you while I can do other things that bring me entertainment. If you think combat is all about standing in one place and pulling the trigger when something runs at you, then I'm sure everything you just said makes sense.

I think the problem is that you are forgetting one important thing. 40k is sci-fantasy and grimdark where savages are grabbed and then promptly sent to war with a lasgun placed in their hands saying shoot the enemy. We are comparing guardsmen (conscripted some strong some weak) to hold the line. They fight monsters of such might that in reality their capabilities rarely mean anything unless it involves strategic wits (which many races can challenge) and going psyker or bionic. If there is one thing I've learned about 40k, it is that regardless of our own modern view of warfare, warfare in 40k is very different and unrealistic more often than not.

Anyways, I hope the poster has gained their answer about women in IG being there but not having models to represent them.

RL-stuff aside, there is also the point that the setting does allow for relative physical equality when one keeps in mind that human physiology has evolved from current local standards. Be it due to environmental conditions and mutation or pre-imperial genetical engineering, there now exists a wide array of different human strains that can be categorised based on their homeworld. For example, the average Catachan will be considerably stronger and tougher than the average Necromundan, whilst the latter may have an advantage in dexterity or cunning. Indeed, such developments have even led to abhuman mutations such as Ogryns or Ratlings. How difficult, then, is it to believe that one planet has males and females on equal grounds, or even females being the stronger gender?

Society plays a large role in how a species develops, which is why the males and females of the Neandertals, whose nutrition was almost entirely focused on hunting animals, had much more similar builds compared to the males and females of our ancestral Homo Sapiens Sapiens, who practiced the hunter-gatherer division [src], and considering the massive cultural differences between the various human colonies in 40k (and the setting's apparent rapid evolution/mutation phenomenon), it should not be hard to consider possible "what if" scenarios and how they might influence a colony population physiologically.

Also, I don't think anyone here is really argueing that this is a fictional setting with its own rules.

On a sidenote, I also think that the technology of the setting as well as a society's preferred fighting styles play a considerable role in "evening out" the advantages or disadvantages of both the various genders as well as the various homeworlds and their respective strains of humanity. I'd still expect Feral or Feudal World regiments to be male-dominated based on a higher chance for thusly shaped warrior societies on their planet (although real life examples for mixed or even all-female formations exist for human tribal societies as well), but the further you go towards a more modern environment and fighting force with mechanised infantry etc, the more likely it becomes that drafting requirements become more open or simply focused on other areas.

Really, even if women are overall slightly weaker than men in the 41st millennium, the difference will be miniscule compared to the foes the IG is called to face.

Even fighting other humans the difference isn't enough. We aren't training body builders here. We just need humans capable of sustained endurance, good physical health, and the ability to fire and maintain a lasgun. Anybody can do that.

A man will be just as dead if hit by a fleshborer beetle as a women would be.

 Mr Morden wrote:
luckily lots of other model ranges out there to plunder to fill the ranks

No... not really. Not very many that matc hthe Imperial Guard aesthetic anyway. Most of them are just "hurr naked gurlz". There's almost no miniatures out there which can be used for female IG that don't require some conversion, and if you're gonna do that, might as well just convert IG minis.

Regardless, the question's been answered-- the Imperium employs women in the Imperial Guard. The miniatures simply don't reflect this. It's sad, but that's how it goes.

Hey Sarge, go ahead and tell a combat vet about the realities of combat. Oh, but you knew a female marine once...yeah, that trumps first hand experience. Im also a combat vet (two tours in Iraq, US Army) and ill say that most of the female soldiers i knew there could hang with the infantry if given the chance. When they did see combat, they kicked butt with the rest of them. Being a combat soldier is alot more about mental fortitude than physical strength.

Where is that picture somebody had of "beating a dead horse?"....

What is that screenshot from? Space Marine game?

 ultimentra wrote:
What is that screenshot from? Space Marine game?

It sure is.

I want full armor. All I ask is for the bust to show through the slightest bit, so as to have any idea you're dealing with a female model.
A peak (batman not strongman) human can't bruise a World Eater unarmored, let alone draw blood from a wound that would close in 2 minutes anyway. Male anatomy won't help worth a damn with that.
As to this, ladies men are more suited to warfare (dodges streams of debris).
The male body has more adrenaline in it's system (this actually helps, you can't hurt a space marine, maybe you can at least dodge) and (god help me, for pointing out biology) men are on average slightly-mildly stronger (20-50 percent)
Of course none of this will stop you from exploding from being within a mile of the sheer power of Daemon Primarchs or Lords of Change.
In the end the more bodies to inevitably bury our enemies the better.
Seriously I actively play Deathwatch and the average marine bench is like 6000lbs (12x Worlds Strongest Man) and World Eaters it's like 10000lbs (20xWSM), And then it's possible to get stats where you can toss terminator Berzerker lords full on 150ft away.
These are the actual stats the game gives..........
Again the more bodies the better.

 Melissia wrote:
There's almost no miniatures out there which can be used for female IG that don't require some conversion, and if you're gonna do that, might as well just convert IG minis.

Well, on a purely miniatures related note, Victoria Miniatures is doing up a whole slew of female 28mm heroic 'not-guardsmen'. You can check out the initial sculpts here.

Comes in a variety of flavours, including not-Mordians, not-Praetorians, not-Cadians, and so on.

Your whole regiment doesn't have to have all women it could feature a couple of them or even have some as officers like in the Ciaphas Cain novels ( 597th Valhallan)

Musashi363 wrote:Hey Sarge, go ahead and tell a combat vet about the realities of combat. Oh, but you knew a female marine once...yeah, that trumps first hand experience. Im also a combat vet (two tours in Iraq, US Army) and ill say that most of the female soldiers i knew there could hang with the infantry if given the chance. When they did see combat, they kicked butt with the rest of them. Being a combat soldier is alot more about mental fortitude than physical strength.

Now, now. Your experience surely doesn't compare to VS's supposed decade of Marine experience, during which he dated a bunch of hawt models before entering a business career and finally becoming a writer. You should be thankful he still has the time to offer his sage advice on an internet message board for wargame nerds instead of considering running for PotUS or something.

Blacksails wrote:Well, on a purely miniatures related note, Victoria Miniatures is doing up a whole slew of female 28mm heroic 'not-guardsmen'. You can check out the initial sculpts here.
Comes in a variety of flavours, including not-Mordians, not-Praetorians, not-Cadians, and so on.

Wow. Hats off to the sculptor, and thanks for the link - this looks pretty much exactly like what people are asking for?

I suppose they'd warrant a small bit of tweaking before being added to an existing army of Cadians or Mordians - such as switching the lasgun, or adding shoulder pauldrons to the not-Cadian mini - but all in all there is little left to wish for here!

 Lynata wrote:
Wow. Hats off to the sculptor, and thanks for the link - this looks pretty much exactly like what people are asking for?

I suppose they'd warrant a small bit of tweaking before being added to an existing army of Cadians or Mordians - such as switching the lasgun, or adding shoulder pauldrons to the not-Cadian mini - but all in all there is little left to wish for here!

Yeah, Vic does some pretty top quality work.

I understand switching the guns and other small bits to fit in with an existing force. I will not be having that problem, cause I'm selling off all my metal Mordians and going full in on Vic minis after the line comes out in resin.

Certainly the best looking female not-guardsmen I've seen yet.

Oh, and remember that the torso and heads are sold seperately, so all you have to do is swap the normal Cadian/Catachan torso and head with the female version.

Vic's pretty ace. The news thread can be found here for updates and other shiny pics.

 Blacksails wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
There's almost no miniatures out there which can be used for female IG that don't require some conversion, and if you're gonna do that, might as well just convert IG minis.

Well, on a purely miniatures related note, Victoria Miniatures is doing up a whole slew of female 28mm heroic 'not-guardsmen'. You can check out the initial sculpts here.

Comes in a variety of flavours, including not-Mordians, not-Praetorians, not-Cadians, and so on.

The proportions are perfect and the models look good. They're still idealized in a different (possibly worse aesthetically) form though: They look way too warscarred, and just plain nasty. Regular guardsmen should just look like fit young people.
Edit: I just now caught a decent resolution through the zoom feature of my I-phone. So damn hard with no Images in the actual article. They look pretty much perfect.

 TheSaintofKilllers wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
There's almost no miniatures out there which can be used for female IG that don't require some conversion, and if you're gonna do that, might as well just convert IG minis.

Well, on a purely miniatures related note, Victoria Miniatures is doing up a whole slew of female 28mm heroic 'not-guardsmen'. You can check out the initial sculpts here.

Comes in a variety of flavours, including not-Mordians, not-Praetorians, not-Cadians, and so on.

The proportions are perfect and the models look good. They're still idealized in a different (possibly worse aesthetically) form though: They look way too warscarred, and just plain nasty. Regular guardsmen should just look like fit young people.

Strange, I don't think they look particularly warscarred at all, at least not more than any of the current plastic or metal GW figures. Care to explain what you mean? I also think they look like fit, normal women of a universally expected fighting age. But then again, at this point we're simply debating the finest of points, which can only end once we've discussed the available haircuts, or the size of their noses.

Either way, I think most people will find these models fill the gap almost perfectly for any GW-based IG force.

EDIT* Just saw your edit. I'll leave in my original comment in case you want to answer it anyways.

Victoria Miniatures is one of the few exceptions to my statement, yes. But what I meant was when I think of things like Infinity, I don't think of quality sci-fi infantry designs. And despite that, Infinity is still better than most in terms of designs of female sci-fi soldiers that aren't mind-bogglingly stupid. The standards are just so impossibly low.

But that's really a rant for another thread, since this is about the background, not the minis.

As for women kicking butt, I literally wrote the book on it. Just saying.
http://www.amazon.com/Fearless-Powerful-History-Zachary-Hill/dp/1490934340/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1378392705&sr=1-1&keywords=fearless+powerful+women+of+history