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Sisters of Sigmar, anyone???
any variety of Elf, Sisters of Battle, Chaos, Eldar, Guard, Dwarfs, Vampires, Tomb Kings, Kislevites, and Dark Eldar have all had female models direct from Citadel...
there are a lot of models that get overlooked every time this issue comes up...

personally, i don't care if they put some female characters into the Stormcast Eternal Brotherhoods, or not...
there are plenty of cool female characters in GW's settings already...

cheers
jah

 Spinner wrote:


Well, in that case, I would absolutely love to see your source on that data. Likewise, this isn't meant as offensive to you as a person, but it's a very broad statement and when making that kind of generalization, you need to back it up with some kind of evidence.

Precise data on a sample that's never been measured? Impossible. The best actual number we have is tournament participants. Estimating the % of female players to 3-5% or less. Other than that, you're looking at tons of anecdotal evidence, you'd have to measure by a personally done survey etc. Nah. In the end, it boils down to anecdotal experience of a lot of people reported over various media, design strategies and marketing decisions. Tabletop is one of the most male-centric fields you could come across. Geek, niche hobby.

I know! Sisters of Battle!!

Oh, wait...

On the bright side, there are Dwarvish females in the GW model line. It's just that, true to Tolkeinesque lore, they look and dress just like the males (beards and all!), so much so that humans can't tell them apart

 Sigvatr wrote:

 Spinner wrote:


Well, in that case, I would absolutely love to see your source on that data. Likewise, this isn't meant as offensive to you as a person, but it's a very broad statement and when making that kind of generalization, you need to back it up with some kind of evidence.

Precise data on a sample that's never been measured? Impossible. The best actual number we have is tournament participants. Estimating the % of female players to 3-5% or less. Other than that, you're looking at tons of anecdotal evidence, you'd have to measure by a personally done survey etc. Nah. In the end, it boils down to anecdotal experience of a lot of people reported over various media, design strategies and marketing decisions. Tabletop is one of the most male-centric fields you could come across. Geek, niche hobby.

That's not the same as saying that male players prefer male characters in pretty much any media, though. At all. I'm not going to argue that most tabletop gamers aren't males, but that's, er, not quite what was being discussed.

In the end, I'm not really all that bothered about it - it's nowhere near the top of reasons why I'm not interested in AoS - but it would be nice if they had said some of them were a resurgent sect of the Sisters of Sigmar or something, instead of going "Iunno, you figure it out". They seem like perfect candidates.

Then again "Iunno, you figure it out" seems like a popular GW attitude these days...

Making all the stormcast eternal models masculine is understandable, if a bit cheapskate, because making separate feminine models requires more design work and a larger variety of casts and various other costs.

It's the fluff where GW's being inexplicably cowardly. Forgeworld only makes masculine solar-auxiliary models yet almost always refers to "men and women" when talking about them and cults and everything else.

In the case of the stormcast eternals, like many other models that aren't completely human or aren't even biological at all, GW has always inexplicably either proclaimed "Man!" (Knights, Necrons) or in this case, "Brotherhood of guys referred to only with male pronouns and all the named characters are confirmed to only be male, but if you go ask a designer about female stormcast eternals, he'll say "Maybe."!

I mean, really, all you have to do is add an "s" in front of the "he" or change the "is" to "er" in the "his" every once in a while (not all the time, obviously) and you're pretty much good to go. That's what Forgeworld did a lot of the time (they have a female necron, female knight, etc). Stormcast Eternals are ab-human-ish enough that GW could have gotten away with either saying "Oh, yea, some of them are women but since they're souls-reforged, they all take on a similar build and bulk" or "Oh, it's a woman under the armour on some cases. It's just that the armour is too bulky to tell", or "There are female stormcast eternals. We just didn't make any models for them."

Instead, they say nothing. And continue to refer to stormcast eternals with male pronouns and only have male named-characters in the fluff.

Again, I HIGHLY doubt GW will lose that many customers just because they dared to say "Some stormcast eternals are female." In the case of 18% of the players choosing female Shephard, how many people do you think refused to buy Mass Effect just because female shepherd was an option? I'd hope it'd be zero (or a few very very disturbed individuals). Meanwhile they'd at least give a lot more leverage and flexibility to Black Library authors and to female-loving players who are trying to be consistent with the fluff (sure, "mabye" means those players could make female eternals anyways, but it's still gonna look out of place when all actual fluff sources only EVER mention males)

Forgeworld, Fantasy Flight Games, and Black Library have realized this. So why hasn't GW?

again, GW has had quite a few females in the fluff...
Empire novels, Elf novels, Dwarf novels, and Vampire novels just in Fantasy alone...
i have never felt there was a shortage of female characters in the fluff...

will we see any females fighting for Sigmar???
we just might...
it is a bit early to tell...

cheers
jah

 jah-joshua wrote:
again, GW has had quite a few females in the fluff...
Empire novels, Elf novels, Dwarf novels, and Vampire novels just in Fantasy alone...
i have never felt there was a shortage of female characters in the fluff...

will we see any females fighting for Sigmar???
we just might...
it is a bit early to tell...

cheers
jah

Novels are all Black Library.

And of course, even GW itself has women and women models here and there. They just inexplicably make some FLUFF cases to be male-only even when they didn't need to (Knights are explicitly stated to only be men, Necrons never have any female ones mentioned by GW, and now, besides a "Maybe" from a designer, Sigmarines are male-only in practice, as shown by their mascule pronouns and lack of mention of any female ones anywhere).

Really, in the case of knights, necrons, and (to stay on topic) the Sigmarines, the models have enough excuses that GW could have just said "Some are female." ("were female" in the necrons' case) like Forgeworld, Black Libary, and FFG do and left it at that, yet they don't. At most, we get a "maybe" if you ask a designer while the official fluff for Stormcast Eternals continues to only be men and refer to male pronouns.

A wasted opportunity.

 jah-joshua wrote:
again, GW has had quite a few females in the fluff...
Empire novels, Elf novels, Dwarf novels, and Vampire novels just in Fantasy alone...
i have never felt there was a shortage of female characters in the fluff...

will we see any females fighting for Sigmar???
we just might...
it is a bit early to tell...

cheers
jah

You mean like those plentiful female space marines?

I'm talking 10 feet tall with gene-seed and augmentation, etc.

Yup, no female marines exist, no female sigmarites will either.

 PlaguelordHobbyServices wrote:


You mean like those plentiful female space marines?

I'm talking 10 feet tall with gene-seed and augmentation, etc.

Yup, no female marines exist, no female sigmarites will either.

Yea, I need to repeat this again. It would have helped at least a little to deflect those "Sigmarines!!!" criticisms if GW went out and boldly stated "Some stormcast eternals are female!" (bonus points if they actually mention one by name in the fluff stories!). I imagine the benefit of that would have exceeded the amount of customers they'd lose for daring to confirm that female stormcast eternals exist (again, I'd like to hope that they'd lose ZERO customers for doing that. Unless you think there really are a lot of people out there who would have said "WHAT!? SOME STORMCAST ETERNALS ARE FEMALE? EW, SCREW YOU GW!")

Ah, female space marines, Dakka's own Godwin's Law. Good times.

TiamatRoar wrote:
Again, I HIGHLY doubt GW will lose that many customers just because they dared to say "Some stormcast eternals are female." In the case of 18% of the players choosing female Shephard, how many people do you think refused to buy Mass Effect just because female shepherd was an option? I'd hope it'd be zero (or a few very very disturbed individuals). Meanwhile they'd at least give a lot more leverage and flexibility to Black Library authors and to female-loving players who are trying to be consistent with the fluff (sure, "mabye" means those players could make female eternals anyways, but it's still gonna look out of place when all actual fluff sources only EVER mention males)

Forgeworld, Fantasy Flight Games, and Black Library have realized this. So why hasn't GW?

Maybe it's not what boys in their pre- or early teens (a time often marked by a disdain for anything "girly" and a seeking of masculine figures to identify with) want.

Or it could be laziness.

 Elemental wrote:


Maybe it's not what boys in their pre- or early teens (a time often marked by a disdain for anything "girly" and a seeking of masculine figures to identify with) want.

What's sad is that, like several others have stated, this is most likely GW's thinking on the matter. I myself wonder what kind of study or marketting research they're using, if any, to determine that those boys would avoid AoS like the plague just because there's one or a few stormcast eternals in the fluff that's a woman (named or not). While they might be looking for masculine figures and wouldn't like to put any female models on the table or have any women in their own stormcast brotherhood, I'm pretty sure most boys have gotten over the "GIRLS HAVE COOTIES!" stage by then so that they wouldn't be saying "I'm not going to buy AoS because some stormcast eternals in the story are women!"

Market research is otoise.

In anycase GW can prove pre-teen boys don't like girls and think they are icky by looking at the SoB sales.

The above may or may not have been sarcasm.

If I see another "otiose" joke I may punch someone,

Otiose jokes are otiose, is what you're saying?

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Ah, female space marines, Dakka's own Godwin's Law. Good times.

I thought it was Mat Ward? Or maybe the rule has shifted since he left the company.

Regarding the M/F issue, it's probably just simple laziness. That doesn't make it better, but it goes a long way to explaining the mindset. They've got X number of special character models, and it just doesn't occur to them to make any of them female. The Sigmarines are all in big, bulky, vaguely-masculine armor, so the author just uses male pronouns. Most instances of sexism don't come from a guy thinking to himself, "Grrr, I hate women!" It's laziness, and it still sucks. Thankfully, there are other companies that are at least trying to do better.

TiamatRoar wrote:

 PlaguelordHobbyServices wrote:


You mean like those plentiful female space marines?

I'm talking 10 feet tall with gene-seed and augmentation, etc.

Yup, no female marines exist, no female sigmarites will either.

Yea, I need to repeat this again. It would have helped at least a little to deflect those "Sigmarines!!!" criticisms if GW went out and boldly stated "Some stormcast eternals are female!" (bonus points if they actually mention one by name in the fluff stories!). I imagine the benefit of that would have exceeded the amount of customers they'd lose for daring to confirm that female stormcast eternals exist (again, I'd like to hope that they'd lose ZERO customers for doing that. Unless you think there really are a lot of people out there who would have said "WHAT!? SOME STORMCAST ETERNALS ARE FEMALE? EW, SCREW YOU GW!")

I hope you didn't take my position as against female anything.

It would be refreshing to see female sigmarites, just as it would be refreshing to see a female space marine or two.

Heck, even HALO had female Spartans... Look at Noble Team from Halo: Reach. Sure, it was just *one* but the implications were enough.

 Guildsman wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Ah, female space marines, Dakka's own Godwin's Law. Good times.

I thought it was Mat Ward? Or maybe the rule has shifted since he left the company.

Regarding the M/F issue, it's probably just simple laziness. That doesn't make it better, but it goes a long way to explaining the mindset. They've got X number of special character models, and it just doesn't occur to them to make any of them female. The Sigmarines are all in big, bulky, vaguely-masculine armor, so the author just uses male pronouns. Most instances of sexism don't come from a guy thinking to himself, "Grrr, I hate women!" It's laziness, and it still sucks. Thankfully, there are other companies that are at least trying to do better.

To be honest, that's what I thought BEFORE Reynolds said "Maybe" to women. The fact that he said "Maybe." instead of "Sure!" (potentially implying that he knew the company didn't want to be straddled with officializing female stormcast eternals in the fluff, ) kinda makes me pretty sure they actually DID put some thought into this.

Alternatively, "Maybe" means "Hmm, that's a good idea. Why didn't I think about that?" but that sounds overly optimistic to me.

It's also hard for me to imagine this as a mere accident/laziness when they go out of their way to refer to pre-Stormcast mortals as "mortals" instead of "men", yet DIDN'T go out of their way to think of another term besides "brotherhood". Or at least, like FFG and Forgeworld (who's just down the hall!) have done numerous times, include a disclaimer that the masculine term doesn't exclude women.

It's like they want their cake of not comitting to women eternals yet want to eat the cake too by leaving it open but in the end, it just resulted in them missing a big opportunity to differentiate Sigmarines from Space Marines and to give a lot of flexibility to the fluff, Black Library, female-loving players (IE, a missed opportunity for more untapped customers and revenue that would have costed them nothing)

Now (Unless GW does a 360 on this stance) the fluff as well as Black Library are forced to never have female eternals, restricting them unnecessarily, and AoS's eternals won't attract as many female loving players because they'll feel out of place when there aren't any examples of female stormcast eternals in any fluff source.

I honestly feel like the simplest answer is probably the most likely, making female Eternals costs money and might negatively impact sales.

Now I'm not implying that making female models is more expensive or somehow will make people not want to buy Eternals, but there is definately a tradeoff to offering the option.

If GW added female SE into the box then everyone who buys a box is forced to either use them, or buy extra boxes. Considering people were already complaining about not being able to buy gryphounds seperate from the Castellent I don't see people wanting to field either all male or all female SE being happy with buying twice the number of boxes.

Alternatively, if they added conversion bits into the box I can guarentee it would up the price (whether or not you consider it good value), and we all know how much people love GW prices.

Honestly, I love mixing female miniatures into my armies, but I really feel these complaints are unwarrented. No one has complained at the lack of females in other ranges both for GW or other companies like Mantic. Female miniatures in general seem to unfortunately be relegated to boutique lines in metal or resin.

Edit: Just read the complaints about the lack of explicit female SE in the lore, fair enough. I mean to be fair though, AoS just came out. Theres really no reason to think yet that there wont be any female SE characters introduced in the future. I mean there was a female Skitarii Alpha in oneof the books I believe, and they are close to essentially genderless anyway.

Heck I wouldn't even be surprized to hear the lack of women in GWs products is the result of a lack of female writers.

Jack Flask wrote:
I honestly feel like the simplest answer is probably the most likely, making female Eternals costs money and might negatively impact sales..

Like I said earlier, they don't need new models. Forgeworld doesn't have any female models yet continues to mention females in the fluff. And GW could have just simply said one of three things with stormcast eternals:

They could have explicitly confirmed men AND women (and maybe orcs/aelfs/whatever if they want) can become stormcast eternals BUT:

Option 1) The reforging makes them all look alike in the end. So while a stormcast eternal might be a woman, she looks like the men. They're angels so gender differences don't exist.

Option 2) The armour is so bulky that while they wear the armour, you can't tell if it's a man or woman underneath it, but there are woman in there sometimes.

Option 3) They just didn't bother to make any female models, but female eternals do exist.



Instead they just cop out with... well, "Maybe." (and only if you go ask a designer. It's not stated anywhere in the fluff or rules or a "forging a narrative" tip section)

 Dryaktylus wrote:
I don't think it's that much of a specific business decision to sell more male troops and characters than female ones. It's just... common. Especially in a war game. Female troops are over-represented in GW's range if you look at human history for comparison, and this is the usual source.

Feth human history. If I wanted a game about historical warfare, I'd be playing a historical wargame. I like sci-fi and fantasy precisely because it has an excuse to tell this idea that "women aren't soldiers" to go die in a ditch.

 AlexHolker wrote:
Feth human history.

What? Surely the great wyrm Drakkenvald attacking the allies in the schwarzlager during WWII is the single and solitary source for Chaos Dragons with Chaos Lords on them? Where is your sense of HISTORY?! And I'm pretty sure allied forces depended on their Life Mages to get through the SS's Death and Shadow wizards at Battle of Dwarf's Beard! Man, don't even get me started on the Elves! Or the atrocities the Skaven committed when battling the Ogre Kingdoms in...


well, you get the idea. Anyone using "HUMAN HISTORY!" as limitations for a Fantasy game is really stretching it.

TiamatRoar wrote:

Jack Flask wrote:
I honestly feel like the simplest answer is probably the most likely, making female Eternals costs money and might negatively impact sales..

Like I said earlier, they don't need new models. Forgeworld doesn't have any female models yet continues to mention females in the fluff. And GW could have just simply said one of three things with stormcast eternals:

They could have explicitly confirmed men AND women (and maybe orcs/aelfs/whatever if they want) can become stormcast eternals BUT:

Option 1) The reforging makes them all look alike in the end. So while a stormcast eternal might be a woman, she looks like the men. They're angels so gender differences don't exist.

Option 2) The armour is so bulky that while they wear the armour, you can't tell if it's a man or woman underneath it, but there are woman in there sometimes.

Option 3) They just didn't bother to make any female models, but female eternals do exist.



Instead they just cop out with... well, "Maybe." (and only if you go ask a designer. It's not stated anywhere in the fluff or rules or a "forging a narrative" tip section)

I mean fair enough, and I agree, but the setting only just got released. Sure they could've had itmto start, but with almost nothing written in the setting so far there's still plenty of time for it to be explored further.

 Guildsman wrote:
Regarding the M/F issue, it's probably just simple laziness. That doesn't make it better, but it goes a long way to explaining the mindset. They've got X number of special character models, and it just doesn't occur to them to make any of them female. The Sigmarines are all in big, bulky, vaguely-masculine armor, so the author just uses male pronouns. Most instances of sexism don't come from a guy thinking to himself, "Grrr, I hate women!" It's laziness, and it still sucks. Thankfully, there are other companies that are at least trying to do better.

It's maybe laziness with the IG in 40k. And that's it. No female (special) characters? You're kidding.

And the Sigmarine armour isn't 'vaguely' masculine.

 AlexHolker wrote:

Feth human history. If I wanted a game about historical warfare, I'd be playing a historical wargame. I like sci-fi and fantasy precisely because it has an excuse to tell this idea that "women aren't soldiers" to go die in a ditch.

Sci-Fi and Fantasy could have such excuses, most of the settings don't do it more than GW do.

Is there a thread about this topic? Don't know. but the whole discussion doesn't belong to this one.

I mean, perhaps it'd make a cool bitz pack, you know, sell a blister of Sigmarette parts that you can use your extra weapons from the Liberator box to get a better value for your $50 purchase. Personally, I don't want women in my grunt units. It wouldn't keep me from buying units if there were a woman here or there, and I have no issue with female specialists, but I don't think women belong on the front line, and it tends to be reflected in my armies. But these are toy soldiers in fantasy land we're talking about at the end of the day, and if people want lady warriors and it sells, then they should be available.

So, got my AoS box today. The Sigmarites are great, but with the exception of the Bloodreavers, the Khorne models are plain ugly. The football helmets, the skulls everywhere (there are muscles that are skulls), heck the Chaos Lord looks like an Infested Terran from StarCraft. I couldn't help but notice that in the big, colorful hobby book that common, non Chaos humans who aren't chilling with Sigmar are generally referred to as tribes. Does anyone think this means that our mortals down the road might be a little more primitive, maybe like Visigoths or something of the like?

 Dryaktylus wrote:

It's maybe laziness with the IG in 40k. And that's it. No female (special) characters? You're kidding.

Is there a thread about this topic? Don't know. but the whole discussion doesn't belong to this one.
.

I'm pretty sure the IG Codex does mention "men and women", actually. Yes, there aren't any female special characters (or female models for generic characters even), but it at least acknowledges their existence in the setting(far as I remember, at least. Not including the part where GW retconned out female storm troopers and (IIRC) female commissars, of course).

As for the discussion being here... well, the discussion comes from the latest leaks and their... odd choice of wording (being gender neutral for the stormcast eternals' origins yet NOT gender neutral for the eternals themselves) as well as a designer's statement on the matter, all of which are relevant to the topic (at least, initially). Well, that' was the reasoning I had when I brought it up, myself, at any rate.

Can you guys keep the social justice out of here for christ sake? Dark eldar and eldar have plenty of female special characters. Also as far as 40k and fantasy goes being 'family friendly' means in general you don't see overly sexual themes which is probably why slaanesh is getting replaced by the horned rat.

-----

Slightly more on topic i got my first few games of Age of Sigmar in. I fought 3 battles with 10 stormvermin and 1 warlock. In my opinion the game made skaven under-powered with the exception of warp lightning possibly but then the warlord load-out worked for somebody else. It's ridiculously easy to avoid magic missiles now as long as you stay out of the enemy wizard's range. In fact it's pretty pathetic how much that helps.

I almost won my first game and luck helped a ton but lost on the dice roll whose turn it'd be next and he smeared the warlock with his sigmarine hero.

2nd game went even worse as he kept winning each turn to go first and luck was almost always in his favor. It was skaven vs skaven and he had a warlord with stormvermin.

Finally the last battle was against 3 ogre ironguts and a leader of some kind.

If anybody is wondering the game included i think the minimum unit size of 5-10 for units so mostly core and semi-elite (basically included stormvermin, plague monks and similar) and any unnamed hero.

Final thoughts are the game type we did was agreed by most to put ogres on top by a lot. Command powers are nice as are wizard abilities but normally anybody will learn really fast to just stay out of your wizard range by the end of your turn so you can never blast them with awesome spells like warp lightning which leads to buff heavy wizards. The random turns for players is absolute garbage so if you try to stay at range they can get lucky with 2 turns in a row and close in to assault you in that time. It's a lot more like 40k and buildings can't be garrisoned which is weird. Also the game is smaller so random chance goes way, way up. On the plus side you can probably play a good sized game with 100 USD pretty easily.

Overall i still prefer warhammer fantasy. I don't hate Age of Sigmar as much as i did before playing but it still needs point systems of some kind even if players decide on different ones.

TiamatRoar wrote:

 Dryaktylus wrote:

It's maybe laziness with the IG in 40k. And that's it. No female (special) characters? You're kidding.

Is there a thread about this topic? Don't know. but the whole discussion doesn't belong to this one.
.

I'm pretty sure the IG Codex does mention "men and women", actually. Yes, there aren't any female special characters (or female models for generic characters even), but it at least acknowledges their existence in the setting(far as I remember, at least. Not including the part where GW retconned out female storm troopers and (IIRC) female commissars, of course).

You misunderstood my post. I meant that it's lazy not to do some female parts in the IG troop boxes. But there are plenty of female characters in other armies in 40k and WHFB. /offtopic

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Can you guys keep the social justice out of here for christ sake? Dark eldar and eldar have plenty of female special characters. Also as far as 40k and fantasy goes being 'family friendly' means in general you don't see overly sexual themes which is probably why slaanesh is getting replaced by the horned rat.

Cause women = sex, amirite?

(....I mean, is that what you seriously think of first when you think of women in the fluff? That's just wrong.)

Also, the social justice wouldn't be so blatant if the guys down the hall (Forgeworld) weren't so blatantly contrasting with GW's handling of the matter.

That said, I think all the points for the most part on the matter (at least, that could be anywhere near the original topic of the stormcast eternals' handling of the matter, itself) have been made by now, anyways. So I don't have anything else I need to say on the matter (at least, as long as someone else doesn't come up with something new about it)

No i'm saying GW has the most sexually modest female models in general which is generally what people complain about. That also has nothing at all to do with 'Age of Sigmar' which is something i was actually trying to discuss and is infinitely more on topic than what you said. If you want to discuss that there's a million threads on it in off-topic that will inevitably be closed due to devolving into a hate fight between those 2 major groups that won't shut up.