Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Pouncey wrote:
Enforcing a standardized ratio of men to women is the opposite of being indifferent about the troops' genders altogether.

But we're talking about packaging a model kit. The production line isn't going to simulate the Imperium's recruitment policies at any more accurate a rate than 50/50 for practical reasons, again assuming that the Imperium is indifferent to gender when it comes to IG recruitment.

 Manchu wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:
Enforcing a standardized ratio of men to women is the opposite of being indifferent about the troops' genders altogether.

But we're talking about packaging a model kit. The production line isn't going to simulate the Imperium's recruitment policies at any more accurate a rate than 50/50 for practical reasons, again assuming that the Imperium is indifferent to gender when it comes to IG recruitment.

I'm actually willing to give up on my point entirely because I just remembered that Imperial Guard Regiments consist of enough troops that in almost all cases there would be a fairly equal mix. If the gender of any trooper in a Regiment can be tied to the flip of a coin, the overall Regiments would be almost all very close to 50-50, and the idea that a Regiment ended up with 100% one or the other would be 1 in... Actually I plugged a crude estimate of 20,000 coinflips landing the same way up into a calculator and it's rare enough that statistically even the IOM probably hasn't ever seen it.

I don't actually know how rare it is, because it's using a notation I don't know how to convert into a number. I think it's saying there are over 6,000 digits in it though.

...Which I just realized means it surpasses a googol. By a LOT. Like, a googol is not even comparable to this number. If you wrote out enough zeroes to have written one googol you would be one sixtieth of the way to having enough zeros to have written this number.

If you took every human who ever lived in the IoM for the past 10,000 years, conscripted them into regiments of 20,000 each, with randomized men and women, you probably still would not actually have any IG regiments that are 100% men or 100% women.

So we are agreed that adding female figures to the Imperial Guard and other human forces (with the exception, obviously, of Marines) is a Good Thing?

Good. I'm glad.

Now we can start talking about new Xenos species, and adding ethnic facial features to all human factions, Marines included.

Gen.Steiner wrote:

 Pouncey wrote:
Thoughts on whether a simple torso and head swap on a standard Cadian model would be sufficient to make the model look adequately female instead of a bizarre mix and match of male and female body parts?

I think it'd work fine. All you really need is a female head. A torso option is just because, GW being GW, they'd add boobs.

This pic right here is why I stressed that you can do female troops in an IG regiment with little to no work. Some of the heads (mostly the ones with chin straps on) are reasonably androgenous enough that accents to the eyes and lips would get the job done. However, maybe somebody somewhere can do a quick resin add on kit. That'd help a ton.

Gen.Steiner wrote:
So we are agreed that adding female figures to the Imperial Guard and other human forces (with the exception, obviously, of Marines) is a Good Thing?

Good. I'm glad.

Now we can start talking about new Xenos species, and adding ethnic facial features to all human factions, Marines included.

I don't think anyone on the past page has actually been arguing in favor of not adding female models to IG and other human stuff.

If you took my comments like that, I was simply in favor of selling the female and male models in separate kits to let people create the ratio they wanted in their army. Essentially it was an argument in favor of increasing player choice to customize their army without increasing their cost to do so.

Also yes, more xenos, more ethnicities, and even more abhumans. Felinids would be cool to see in particular.

Seperate kits seems like a waste. Just have multiple options in one kit.

pm713 wrote:
Seperate kits seems like a waste. Just have multiple options in one kit.

And thus increase the cost of making an army that is anything but the exact ratio in the kit.

I'm okay with either separate or mixed, but Pouncey does make a good point.

I still think separate kits sends exactly the wrong message, if the point of making female IG figures in the first place is to communicate that women serve in the regiments as a matter of course. I really can't imagine any meaningful number of consumers who just have to have exactly 1 male for every 3 female troopers or something.

 Manchu wrote:
I still think separate kits sends exactly the wrong message, if the point of making female IG figures in the first place is to communicate that women serve in the regiments as a matter of course. I really can't imagine any meaningful number of consumers who just have to have exactly 1 male for every 3 female troopers or something.

If you go with headswaps being the only difference between the male and female models you can actually get the best of both worlds really, REALLY easily.

Have a box that makes 10 models. Include 10 male heads and 10 female heads.

Any combination of male and female models you want to make is thus covered by one kit without making any difference in how much your army costs.

And personally, I don't see someone wanting their personal tiny, miniscule slice of IG being male-only as much of an issue. I mean, I'd make my IG female-only, so I'd be a huge hypocrite if I said that the opposite shouldn't be allowed. It's also easier to justify the 100-ish infantry that actually make up someone's army being all one gender than it is the 20,000 that make up an entire regiment, and ultimately, since it's more important that the female models actually exist and are easily available than it is that every player's IG be equally men and women, I wouldn't shun anyone who eschews the female heads as much as I eschew the male ones.

Yikes I am completely opposed to the headswaps only idea. I know it sounds fine in theory but in miniature it just doens't seem to work. Certainly headswaps would never be sufficient with the current Cadian set, you just end up with very awkward miniatures. I think even a true scale miniature figure of a man, like something from the Perry Twins' WW2 ranges, with the head swapped out for a female head would look strange. I really don't think that GW making female-specific sculpts would necessarily translate into Gw making T&A figs, if that is really the concern.

 Manchu wrote:
Yikes I am completely opposed to the headswaps only idea. I know it sounds fine in theory but in miniature it just doens't seem to work. Certainly headswaps would never be sufficient with the current Cadian set, you just end up with very awkward miniatures. I think even a true scale miniature figure of a man, like something from the Perry Twins' WW2 ranges, with the head swapped out for a female head would look strange. I really don't think that GW making female-specific sculpts would necessarily translate into Gw making T&A figs, if that is really the concern.

Did you miss the numerous photos of real female soldiers who are indistinguishable from men apart from their faces when wearing all their equipment?

Male and female soldiers only being distinguishable through their face is... realistic.

The snark won't be necessary. As I just mentioned, I know the idea seems fine in theory but things tend to look different in miniature. If you want male and female IG that are totally indistinguishable then just buy and assemble the current kit and tell your friends that you imagine some of them are women. Then you can have any ratio you desire.

 Manchu wrote:
The snark won't be necessary. As I just mentioned, I know the idea seems fine in theory but things tend to look different in miniature. If you want male and female IG that are totally indistinguishable then just buy and assemble the current kit and tell your friends that you imagine some of them are women. Then you can have any ratio you desire.

That ignores the issue that Imperial Guard models do not look reasonably androgynous like real life soldiers do; they are exaggeratedly masculine.

 HANZERtank wrote:
How would people here go about adding more diversity to the 40k universe. I hear things about female space marines need to be added in. I'm personally not too bothered about that as it currently doesn't exist in the fluff. I get that maybe it should amd feel free to discuss it. However I do believe that distinctly female options should be made for Guard and Tau. Both of these have female warriors in the fluff yet not properly represented (at least with gw minis) on the table.

Sisters of battle are Female SMs and they are written into the fluff and beyond that it actually makes sense.

Is this really about more diversity or "We need more female models" There is a difference.

Actually I in fact just posted that even true scale 28mm figs tend to look pretty clearly male, giving a specifc range of minis as an example ...

Then what is the problem? If you are able to satisfyingly represent a model's sex on a 28mm scale without any exaggeration of scale or proportions being necessary, by all means, it is something I have been asking for for years.

Unfortunately, I am commonly met with responses that such exaggeration is indeed necessary, as a female model is supposedly pointless unless it is so distinctly female that a drunk elephant could stumble over it and feel its gender with its toe, leading me to believe that many do not agree.

I am arguing that "androgynous" soldiers in 28mm really just look male. So you end up with male-looking bodies with ponytails.

I took a look at those Dreamforge soldiers from earlier, and they look satisfyingly different for me at least.

YMMV.

I think Warlord has done a good job of doing mixed sex units with their Freeborn from the Beyond the Gates of Antares line. Of course those are all mono-pose.

Well, there's two ways of adding female figures to the Guard range.

The first one is the Victoria Miniatures way, which is to have seperate arms, legs, torsos, heads, all of them male or female. This is probably the best way, but it's not the way that GW does things, nor - I think - is it the way we should be hoping for.

The second, most likely, way, is the Lieutenant Mira option. That is to add a couple of female-specific torsos and a set of female heads into every Guard set. This is the easiest option, it fits with previous GW male/female sets (High Elves, Dark Elves, Eldar, Dark Eldar, etc), and it's the cheapest in terms of time and money for GW.

I also think that a new Xenos race would be awesome, or, even better, something like Codex: Mercenaries, covering Loxatl, Barghesi, Hrud, and various other strange and wonderful races that can ally with any other army. I think there were rumours of something like this back when Codex: Xeno Hunters was in the works at the end of 3rd Edition.

 Pouncey wrote:

pm713 wrote:
Seperate kits seems like a waste. Just have multiple options in one kit.

And thus increase the cost of making an army that is anything but the exact ratio in the kit.

Bearing in mind I mean having a decent amount of choice it's better than seperate kits. My idea you can choose how much female guard you want and pay nothing extra. Your idea is paying extra for literally any.

Here is how you make female IG/SM/Eldar/DEldar/Tau/Crons/Whatevers:

Honestly I think it does deserve more work than that. But that is the bare absolute minimum effort outcome.

You can already pretend your existing IG are women, I don't see how the pony tail adds much: now you can pretend that your men with pony tails are women, big deal.

The only worthwhile way to add female sculpts is to actually, you know, add some female sculpts. It'snot too hard. It's not too expensive. It's not too controversial.

This boys only treehouse attitude (OMG GURLZ) when it comes to female IG and SoB is hilarious.

Hear hear!

Also, it would have been nice to have some female Chaos cultists and some female Genestealer hybrids... but maybe next time!

Those are both great ideas!

Left for a couple days on holiday and come back to this. So glad to hear people are not only willing, but actively wanting more diversity. So many great ideas, especially loving the idea of new non humanoid creatures and aliens.

It's a tricky needle to thread but it's reasonable to have the representation of the races/genders be equitable in line with the fluff. War in the Grimdark is not the exclusive purview of men after all.

Forgeworld could produce gender specific torsos/legs/arms/heads for existing ranges, they have pseudo-precedent with making conversion kits for HH. That's a "relatively" inexpensive place to start while the various plastic sprues come up for re-tooling/re-sculpting in their natural schedule.

Even with saying that though I am reminded of the statement by Lucasarts on the armour for Captain Phasma. "It's armour. On a woman. It doesn't have to look feminine."

I love the idea of non-humaniod races but the difficulty is having enough variation for them to be more than a scenario driven faction.

Would love to see GW engage with this.

 Ossified wrote:

I love the idea of non-humaniod races but the difficulty is having enough variation for them to be more than a scenario driven faction.

Really easy, I would have thought, especially with 7th Edition and the effective junking of the Force Org Chart, and the precedent of the Skitarii Codex (no HQ!?).

Codex: Mercenaries, with lots of different non-humanoid aliens and weirdness in it, tempered perhaps with human mercenaries/pirates and Ork Freebootaz. Then you make them usable with Xenos, Guard and Chaos armies, et voila! Aliens that really are alien.

I mean, let's think: Loxatl - shotcannon things, operate in triads, dewclaws that can feth you up big time, stealthy and basically immune to lasfire. So perhaps a Fast Attack or Elites choice, with Cavalry or Beast movement, rending in close combat, a 5+ armour save, Stealth, and something like a 12" S4 AP5 Assault 3 gun? Or the shapeshifting and vampiric Xenos horribilis Lacrymoles, whose true form is a hideous mass of tentacles and limbs? Or maybe the frog-like Galg, or the psychic leeches of the Krave (who apparently favour weapons made of solid immaterium!), or Rak'Gol, or Tarellian 'dog-soldiers', or Nicassar psykers, or...