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SemperMortis wrote:

 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.

:: slams own face against desk repeatedly ::

Sisters of Battle are NOT female Space Marines in ANY way, shape, or form.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I have a new thing to bring up.

Apparently, while most planets do take both men and women into their forces, most IG forces are segregated by gender in some way.

So while the overall Imperial Guard and even most planets' overall contributions to it are likely half male and half female, mixed-sex units aren't actually very common. So the 100-ish models in a tabletop army being all-male or all-female wouldn't normally be a product of random chance.

However, you don't actually have to field the models that came in one box as their own unit, so you could divide up your male and female models into squads that are entirely male or entirely female (or keep them a mix, if your IG force works that way instead), even if all the boxes came with half male models and half female models.

I think this idea of monogender regiments being the norm only comes up as an aside in Sandy Mitchell's Flashman meets Black Adder comedy novels so it's the sort of canon the Studio regularly steamrolls over when they want to make new kits. Does is really make any sense that across a million worlds, the IG is recruiting both men and women but segregating them into separate regiments? I think not.

I think Pouncey just really wants an all female plastic IG line.

I would rather have a mixed-gender kit with about 50-50 ratio since that seems to be representative of an average Guard regiment. And have unique parts to make each gender.

 Manchu wrote:
I think this idea of monogender regiments being the norm only comes up as an aside in Sandy Mitchell's Flashman meets Black Adder comedy novels so it's the sort of canon the Studio regularly steamrolls over when they want to make new kits. Does is really make any sense that across a million worlds, the IG is recruiting both men and women but segregating them into separate regiments? I think not.

I don't know. It would help if the IG lore actually brought up the subject at all.

No doubt there could be all-female regiments. In a million worlds, there are bound to be some with cultural norms that would require gender segregation. The notion that it would be the galactic-wide norm, however, seems pretyy unlikely.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
I think Pouncey just really wants an all female plastic IG line.

I would rather have a mixed-gender kit with about 50-50 ratio since that seems to be representative of an average Guard regiment. And have unique parts to make each gender.

Yes I would, but I've been trying very hard not to make this about me.

And I'd like to see the lore that says anything whatsoever about the IG's general opinion on gender segregation.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Manchu wrote:
No doubt there could be all-female regiments. In a million worlds, there are bound to be some with cultural norms that would require gender segregation. The notion that it would be the galactic-wide norm, however, seems pretyy unlikely.

The only reference to women being in the IG at all on Lexicanum's Astra Militarum page is one reference to Guardsmen giving birth to their own reinforcements.

Generally the lore avoids saying anything at all on the subject of female Guardsmen...

Lexicanum isn't the end all be all to 40k lore. It is missing a lot of fluff in the interest of having very high standards of citations.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Lexicanum isn't the end all be all to 40k lore. It is missing a lot of fluff in the interest of having very high standards of citations.

Then go outside Lexicanum and tell me what you find.

So far as I know, there have been several characters in licensed products, like video games, who are female Guardsmen. The other thing is the afore-mentioned Sandy Mitchell novels.

Lieutenant Miranda from Space Marine, the Only War RPGs and the Cain novels. There are also passing mentions in other 40k novels.

There is also a female IG officer in the Slitherine game, Armageddon.

Yes, I know that there are female Guardsmen in the official lore. Even Lexicanum has reference to them. And there are references to planets who exclusively recruit men or women into their IG regiments.

But there is no lore, to my knowledge, of how the majority of planets choose to segregate their Guardsmen by gender, if at all. The idea that most planets choose not to segregate is supported as little as the idea that most planets choose to segregate in some way.

And the reason for that is that the IG are recruited from a million different planets, who each have their own way of doing things, so there are very, very likely to be plenty of planets who choose to do things either way.

And the entire point of not increasing the cost for going away from a 1:1 ratio is that it makes it easier for each player to decide how their own, personal part of the IG does it.

There being two boxes of the same type of IG unit, with the same kind of uniform, only distinguished in that one is all male sculpts and the other is all female sculpts, strikes me as a pipedream. Just for reference, I think we are much, much more likely to see boxes of SM power armor marks before something that.

How many people would care to micromanage the exact amount of each particular gender in each squad? I mean, choice is nice but it seems like a lot of extra costs just to sastify a few people.

 Manchu wrote:
There being two boxes of the same type of IG unit, with the same kind of uniform, only distinguished in that one is all male sculpts and the other is all female sculpts, strikes me as a pipedream. Just for reference, I think we are much, much more likely to see boxes of SM power armor marks before something that.

Doesn't Forge World already make boxes of specific Astartes power armor marks?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
How many people would care to micromanage the exact amount of each particular gender in each squad? I mean, choice is nice but it seems like a lot of extra costs just to sastify a few people.

Fair point.

Still, you'd basically double the cost of an IG army for anyone who wants an all-female or all-male army.

Welcome to the Guard, Pouncey. If you want any specific load out/look outside of what comes in the box prepare to pay out the ass for it.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Welcome to the Guard, Pouncey. If you want any specific load out/look outside of what comes in the box prepare to pay out the ass for it.

Well okay then. If doubling the cost isn't an issue, then problem solved, I guess.

 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.

Pictures are stronger that words. So I went on Google.

Those seems to look pretty nice to me. If I played IG I would definitely be very interested in adding them to my army. YMMV.


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 Pouncey wrote:
Still, you'd basically double the cost of an IG army for anyone who wants an all-female or all-male army.

Unless you rely on finding other IG players to exchange bits on a 1-to-1 ratio. Then it would just cost more time and efforts \o/.

Those lasgun modifications look pretty awesome too.

Are those Statuesque Miniatures' heads? They're pretty sweet! I like the autogun conversions too.

Yeh, exactly, so now there's even less argument to adding in some female heads to the Cadian boxes! The Catachan sets would almost certainly need new torsos though, on the grounds of "Flak vests are for the WEAK!"

As far as the background goes, the 3rd Edition Guard Codex shows an all female regiment (the Xenonians) who look like Escher gangers, and a mixed regiment (the Dneipr) illustrated with a male infantryman and a female tank commander. Then you have the Vervunhivers, the Last Chancers (admittedly they draw from penal units, so... even more likely to be mixed gender than a 'standard' unit), and the latest unit to be folded into the Tanith First has female troopers in it too (and is I think led by a woman as well).

I think, off the top of my head, most Imperial Guard regiments are shown to be male, but there are definitely regiments that are mixed or all-female mentioned in the background - both in Codexes and in books.

I don't like that they are all the same height and why no helmets. Can't stand "soldiers" without helmets.
Plastic Cadians look like they're on steroids.

 warhead01 wrote:
I don't like that they are all the same height and why no helmets. Can't stand "soldiers" without helmets.
Plastic Cadians look like they're on steroids.

More than half of my Sisters of Battle have no helmets...

Also, all Cadian infantry are the same height, so that's nothing new.

+1 to warhead01

The guy who did those conversions is no slouch but "just head swap 'em" is a band aid solution - only relevant because there is already a problem; i.e., no female sculpts.

Seems silly to advocate a 'solution' that assumes the problem it addresses should not be solved but just mitigated.

Again: female sculpts aren't too expensive, too hard, or too controversial. There is just no reason not to have female IG scultps in the kit the next time it gets refreshed.

 Manchu wrote:
+1 to warhead01

The guy who did those conversions is no slouch but "just head swap 'em" is a band aid solution - only relevant because there is already a problem; i.e., no female sculpts.

Seems silly to advocate a 'solution' that assumes the problem it addresses should not be solved but just mitigated.

Again: female sculpts aren't too expensive, too hard, or too controversial. There is just no reason not to have female IG scultps in the kit the next time it gets refreshed.

I think the headswap solves the problem just fine.

If you can make a female model that looks good and looks female just by changing the head on a male model, how is that not a solution?

 Manchu wrote:
+1 to warhead01

The guy who did those conversions is no slouch but "just head swap 'em" is a band aid solution - only relevant because there is already a problem; i.e., no female sculpts.

Seems silly to advocate a 'solution' that assumes the problem it addresses should not be solved but just mitigated.

Again: female sculpts aren't too expensive, too hard, or too controversial. There is just no reason not to have female IG scultps in the kit the next time it gets refreshed.

I mean, I completely agree, but at the same time, the head swap does work... and looks more realistic than what I'm afraid GW might do. If they produced something like Victoria Miniatures' Arcadian Guard, well, more power to them!

Regulation 53728.76(a)(ii) - No female recruit may at any time wear a helmet.

I don't think that is canon ...

If anyone can find those conversions posed next to male Cadians, I'd be grateful if they could post the pics. As it stands, I believe the illusion of womanhood is pretty good thanks to the way our brains focus on the hair-dos. Like I said, the hobbyist responsible is no slouch. But you're not going to get a fully equipped Guardswoman with the band aid approach.

I don't see female models I see cadians with female heads.
I'm not knocking the person who modeled and painted those.
Cadian plastics have always been too large when compared to Metal IG models and Plastic Space Marines.
I also don't think changing the heads goes far enough. I like models and sculpts are important to me.

For a little kit bash they're ok. I wouldn't buy them or pay anyone to make them for me. I wouldn't own them.
The only company I would shop with if I wanted female guardsmen or even guardsmen at this point is Victoria...what ever the name of the company is called, it's been mentioned a few times in this thread already. Their product line is very well thought out and looks like oldschool IG models.

Gen.Steiner wrote:
nd looks more realistic than what I'm afraid GW might do

We're assuming a world in which GW redesigns the Cadians kit to include female sculpts. In that world, I trust GW to make decent female Cadians. (In other words, the former assumption has longer odds than the latter.)

 warhead01 wrote:
I don't see female models I see cadians with female heads.

So do I.

You know what I don't see though?

Men with female heads.

Gen.Steiner wrote:
Hear hear!

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

I really like that idea.