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I'm not sure about that. How well is Horus heresy doing? Horus heresy is nearly nothing but marines.
If marines are the only reason for the game's success, then HH would surely surpass 40k, no?

I'm not saying that marines don't make up a large part of 40k's sales, but saying that marines are the sole reason why 40k is successful, hence why they should only be the focus, seems off to me.
How do you know that the game wouldn't have been successful if they focused on guard, gave them the best artwork, the best attention, the most publicity, and most of the sculpts? Because to me guard are pretty damn bad arsed too. Even more so because they can do it without magical space gene steroids and power armour.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
I'm not sure about that. How well is Horus heresy doing? Horus heresy is nearly nothing but marines.
If marines are the only reason for the game's success, then HH would surely surpass 40k, no?

Not necessarily. Given that 40k has existed a lot longer and is generally more well-known (looking how many 40k video games there are compared to HH video games) and that it still supports all the same marine factions HH does plus a bunch more... It's hard to make the argument that you seem to be going for. They're just very different beasts. But think of it this way: Marines are popular enough that HH can be 90% marine content and still be successful enough to be its own game with enough success to make it into a second edition.

As someone whose mostly played Xenos factions since the mid 90s I think 40k would be a much shallower game if it was just Marines.

I think its difficult though to separate out the fact GW have pushed Marines since 40k's inception - but also that as a faction, its a good starter.

Its the same reason I think over the last few years Custodes might have been knocking on their door as the most common starting army.

Elite armies are generally cheaper to buy than horde armies.
They are usually easier to transport - which is an underrated concern if you don't just play in your own garage.
And for Marines and Custodes they are relatively easy to paint to a "battle ready" standard (or whatever GW is calling it these days). Undercoat, spray a colour, pick out some details, chuck something on the base and move on.

Obviously how much painting matters can be debated (my first models had about an inch thick of paint on them.) But, and maybe this is a bias - but if you pick something like GSC, I feel they look obviously "bad" if painted in a rush. There's so much detail that you need lots of different colours, before getting into shading/layering etc.

Another point is that Marines are jack-of-all-trades and pretty good at it. They are pretty durable and hit hard and most of their units are really simple to see what they do and use on the table.

All in all they are very beginner friendly. They aren't a glass cannon like Dark Eldar; or have quirky mechanics like the Necrons old "Phase out"

Couple that to marketing; being in big starter kits and boxed sets regularly and so forth and its no wonder a lot of people's first impression and exposure to 40K is the Marines and if that first exposure drew them in then its no shock marines sell well.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
I'm not sure about that. How well is Horus heresy doing? Horus heresy is nearly nothing but marines.
If marines are the only reason for the game's success, then HH would surely surpass 40k, no?

I'm not saying that marines don't make up a large part of 40k's sales, but saying that marines are the sole reason why 40k is successful, hence why they should only be the focus, seems off to me.
How do you know that the game wouldn't have been successful if they focused on guard, gave them the best artwork, the best attention, the most publicity, and most of the sculpts? Because to me guard are pretty damn bad arsed too. Even more so because they can do it without magical space gene steroids and power armour.

It could be argued that Space Marines are the only reason GW didn't go bankrupt throughout the years that they made somewhat dubious financial decisions and marketing strategies (or lack there of). Its certainly their top selling product line and hard carried the company financially just like how Magic the Gathering is the revenue backbone of many FLGS. Sure more attention could of been given to other factions to try and make them the center piece of the IP but Space Marines just seem to resonant with people more as it provides that power fantasy and has the right blend of medieval meets science fiction that is fascinating about 40k. It gets people to make the first step into the hobby and they are also relatively easy to paint which makes novice painters feel less horrible about their painting skills.

Like I said, it is understandable for GW to be rather cautious with the marines. But the primaris happened. They made marine players to rebuy their armies. And that did not drive people away. So I doubt female marines would, especially if they were just couple of extra heads people could choose not to use if they wouldn't want to.

Perhaps, but the marine range is already heavily saturated. I'd rather they spend that time, effort and money focusing on and expanding other ranges, than releasing yet another marine lieutenant, except with longer hair this time and a half-arsed fluff reason as to why marines get to have more even more stuff.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Perhaps, but the marine range is already heavily saturated. I'd rather they spend that time, effort and money focusing on and expanding other ranges, than releasing yet another marine lieutenant, except with longer hair this time and a half-arsed fluff reason as to why marines get to have more even more stuff.

I mean they're gonna release new stuff for marines anyway. If there is one thing that is certain about what GW will do it is that.

Yep. And after the changes they put in the recent Cadian kit, it is hardly a big leap to do the same for the next SM kit.

Hi all. I'm going to share my opinion (probably an unpopular one). Personally, I don't like Female Space Marines because I'm an old-school guy. I mostly play xenos factions, but when I play with Space Marines, I’m not looking for them to represent me in any way (just like when I play Tyranids or Necrons, I’m not seeking any kind of personal representation either). I also have a Sisters of Battle army, and I have no problem playing with them despite the lack of male miniatures. I mention this because of the argument often made that FSM should be added so women can feel represented in that faction.

For me, Primaris don’t exist, nor have the Primarchs been resurrected. I can’t imagine a Custodes army operating outside Terra. I want a xenophobic Imperium, with masculine (and misogynistic, why not) Space Marines, fanatical Sisters of Battle, and expendable humans.

In short, I want to play in a dark and grim dystopia. That said, I don’t mind if GW decides to add FSM or not, as I stepped away from the 'mainstream' 40k scene long ago and only play in private groups with like-minded people. So, I’m not opposed to the release of FSM; they just don’t—and never will—exist in my personal 40k lore, frozen in the year 999.M41 prior to the fall of Cadia. Cheers.

Are Space Marines actively sexist in older lore? Besides not including women in their ranks, I don’t recall any examples of Marines being misogynistic.

And I don’t think kidnapping young girls from their families, putting them through brutal trials that will kill many of them, then surgically altering and hypno indoctrinating the survivors is a good thing. It doesn’t make 40k less grim dark to say women are thrown into the meat grinder alongside men-but it does disarm bigots of a big tool they use.

There’s nothing I can think of in Codex type background. And we’ve examples of female ship Captains in Astartes fleets being no big deal to their Astartes masters.

Broadly speaking the Imperium doesn't really have sexism. Ignoring gender requirements to be a Marine or Sister of Battle, the Imperium doesn't really care if you're male or female.

Now of course some worlds might well have a cultural bias on them and there probably are worlds where one gender is more oppressed than the other. But in the grand scheme of things the top end of the Imperium doesn't care.

I would argue that there is a bias toward seeing more men in uniform than women and that many positions of power - being linked to the military in the setting, thus often have men in charge. But there doesn't seem to be the gender pressures and politics that we have in the real world today.

Basically "no one cares" or at least cares enough for it to ever get mentioned

Now granted a LOT of the lore we have focuses on the military side of things. So we can certainly say that the Military is like this - socially on worlds we can extrapolate that its likely the same

Space Marines would probably be more dismissive of the fact that they are unmodified humans rather than being women. Iirc, that is something that happens quite often in the fluff. Some chapters, such as Salamanders are happy with humans and get along fine. Others, such as the Marines Malevolent not so much.

Funnily enough, it seems that they do respect the Sisters of Battle despite being unmodified, as they are very well trained and disciplined.

In short, they aren't misogynist, just somewhat misanthropic due to losing part of their humanity through extensive modifications.


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 JNAProductions wrote:
Are Space Marines actively sexist in older lore? Besides not including women in their ranks, I don’t recall any examples of Marines being misogynistic.

And I don’t think kidnapping young girls from their families, putting them through brutal trials that will kill many of them, then surgically altering and hypno indoctrinating the survivors is a good thing. It doesn’t make 40k less grim dark to say women are thrown into the meat grinder

Except that's dumb, even by 40k standards.
Iirc, most marines get their recruits from feral worlds. How are such worlds going to maintain a healthy population if they keep giving their girls away to be sterilized?
Not to mention that marines are highly selective of their recruits, preferring the strongest and healthiest subjects as those have a higher chance of surviving the operation. Such subjects would typically be male, because that's how sexual dimorphism among humans works.

Grim Dark does not have to mean stupid. That seems to be a common misconception I've observed among the fan base.
"Of course they are going to throw 69 billion soldiers in to a death trap to gain 1 square centimeter of land. Its Grim Daaaaark! "

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Except that's dumb, even by 40k standards.
Iirc, most marines get their recruits from feral worlds. How are such worlds going to maintain a healthy population if they keep giving their girls away to be sterilized?
Not to mention that marines are highly selective of their recruits, preferring the strongest and healthiest subjects as those have a higher chance of surviving the operation. Such subjects would typically be male, because that's how sexual dimorphism among humans works.

Grim Dark does not have to mean stupid. That seems to be a common misconception I've observed among the fan base.
"Of course they are going to throw 69 billion soldiers in to a death trap to gain 1 square centimeter of land. Its Grim Daaaaark! "

Marines are tiny in number and many live very long lives. As a result their recruitment has almost no impact on world populations which is why many can recruit from only a very small number of worlds. This isn't like the Imperial Guard Tithe where its a large number of warriors. Even then we've seen worlds like Cadia provide vast numbers of troops without any problem of reproducing more.

Also you're forgetting that 40K comes from the era of "harsh living makes you stronger". So Marines will draw recruits from places like Necromunda Underhives. You know where chances are you've got infected lungs; probably burns and chemical scarring and god knows if you're even fully healthy. The transformation of the Marines is so vast to the body conditions that chances are the process doesn't really care too much about what you are going into the process - you'll come out changed at the genetic level anyway.



And yes the Imperium 100% does subscribe to the extremist WW1 approach of vast lives lost for small gains. OR somethings no gains at all.

Right. On the population thing.

Let’s look at the population of Medieval England alone, shall we? Pre Black Death. Pre Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland.

A relatively small island, estimates on population range between 3,700,000 and 6,500,000.

Now, at most, a Chapter is only after 1,000 full Astartes. And that’s assuming an entirely new Founding (less some senior members imported from existing Chapters).

And all would-be aspirants need to be pre-pubescent, or just entering puberty.

Thats…not going to be a large number in itself. And importantly? It’s not reducing the number of sexually mature individuals, is it? Because male or female, they’re less desirable as recruits. I say less desirable, as it was possible during the Great Crusade.

If losing a couple of hundred young girls scuppers your population? Your population wasn’t healthy to begin with.

Deathmosfear wrote:
Hi all. I'm going to share my opinion

Thanks for kicking this dead horse just to tell us that you don't have a real position on this subject.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Right. On the population thing.

Let’s look at the population of Medieval England alone, shall we? Pre Black Death. Pre Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland.

A relatively small island, estimates on population range between 3,700,000 and 6,500,000.

Now, at most, a Chapter is only after 1,000 full Astartes. And that’s assuming an entirely new Founding (less some senior members imported from existing Chapters).

And all would-be aspirants need to be pre-pubescent, or just entering puberty.

Thats…not going to be a large number in itself. And importantly? It’s not reducing the number of sexually mature individuals, is it? Because male or female, they’re less desirable as recruits. I say less desirable, as it was possible during the Great Crusade.

If losing a couple of hundred young girls scuppers your population? Your population wasn’t healthy to begin with.

Doesn't the marine creation process have a high rate of failure though? They are only going to recruit a 1000 individuals if they are all successful, which seems unlikely. If the conversion process is that dangerous and risky, its likely that they will keep recruiting more and more until they get enough successes.


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 Overread wrote:


And yes the Imperium 100% does subscribe to the extremist WW1 approach of vast lives lost for small gains. OR somethings no gains at all.

That seems contrary to the idea of not wasting the Emperor's "currency".
But then again, bad generals do exist in every timeline.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Doesn't the marine creation process have a high rate of failure though? They are only going to recruit a 1000 individuals if they are all successful, which seems unlikely. If the conversion process is that dangerous and risky, its likely that they will keep recruiting more and more until they get enough successes.

We are still talking about small numbers.
Marines recruit from specific worlds and typically different worlds for different Chapters.

Even with a high failure rate you're still dealing with numbers in the thousands for Imperial worlds that number in the billions for most worlds. Tens of billions for Hive Worlds.
They will lose more people to accidents than they lose to Marine Recruitment.

Even in the real world, 1000 people a year is a small number on the global population. Even in the UK we lose 1600 people to roadkill in a year; and we have generally very safe roads.



The Feudal/Feral worlds are also not even going to be touched by Marine recruitment. Where Marine recruitment DOES have an impact is more at the social level if they come and take a leader's child or such. Marines can recruit anyone so its more likely that any blowback would be them recruiting someone destined for a position of power/influence in the population.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Such subjects would typically be male...

Typically =/= exclusively.

And to counter the rest of your post, we know that not all Chapters look for physical strength and the current poster-boy for the Ultramarines, Titus, was selected for his willpower and lack of fear.

Unless I'm mistaken, literally the ONLY thing in the lore that prevents women from becoming Astartes is some failure of the geneseed to work without a Y chromosome.

 Overread wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Doesn't the marine creation process have a high rate of failure though? They are only going to recruit a 1000 individuals if they are all successful, which seems unlikely. If the conversion process is that dangerous and risky, its likely that they will keep recruiting more and more until they get enough successes.

We are still talking about small numbers.
Marines recruit from specific worlds and typically different worlds for different Chapters.

Even with a high failure rate you're still dealing with numbers in the thousands for Imperial worlds that number in the billions for most worlds. Tens of billions for Hive Worlds.
They will lose more people to accidents than they lose to Marine Recruitment.

Even in the real world, 1000 people a year is a small number on the global population. Even in the UK we lose 1600 people to roadkill in a year; and we have generally very safe roads.



The Feudal/Feral worlds are also not even going to be touched by Marine recruitment. Where Marine recruitment DOES have an impact is more at the social level if they come and take a leader's child or such. Marines can recruit anyone so its more likely that any blowback would be them recruiting someone destined for a position of power/influence in the population.

Not just failure rate, selection rate as well. Marines are supposed to be exceptional, after all, so its probably like less than 1% of the population that's viable for conversion or something ridiculous like that.
Which would probably not affect the population that much after all.
Given the Imperium's penchant for eugenics, its more likely that any viable woman would be left alone to ensure future generations of potential recruits, especially if they are trying to keep on good terms with a feral world.
It would probably go over better diplomatically if they turned such individuals into some sort of priestess class, rather than depriving a world of both their best sons and daughters.

In a world where Adepta Sororitas plastic models exist (and Sisters of Silence could possibly be expanded as a faction), the need for "female Space Marines" and another "we are modern and progressive look at us" retcon (hello Adeptus Custodes), seems like a very politically oriented agenda to me, that is unnecessary to the settings, and also to the model range.

That said, given what we have seen in the videogame industry during the last 10years, and the Custodes precedent, it is only a matter of time i guess.

 BorderCountess wrote:


And to counter the rest of your post, we know that not all Chapters look for physical strength and the current poster-boy for the Ultramarines, Titus, was selected for his willpower and lack of fear.

Unless I'm mistaken, literally the ONLY thing in the lore that prevents women from becoming Astartes is some failure of the geneseed to work without a Y chromosome.

Given that the conversion process is supposed to be physically taxing, I daresay that physical fitness is also something they look for.
I'm aware that it's within the fluff that the geneseed only works with a Y chromosome. I'm just skeptical of the idea that that's the only restriction, that there wouldn't be other factors in play, such as demographics or cultural norms.
Population probably wouldn't be affected that much though, I can concede on that point.

You can train an Aspirant to gain physical strength, though, but you can't teach psychological qualities in the same way.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Given that the conversion process is supposed to be physically taxing, I daresay that physical fitness is also something they look for.

Tell that to the Blood Angels.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 BorderCountess wrote:


And to counter the rest of your post, we know that not all Chapters look for physical strength and the current poster-boy for the Ultramarines, Titus, was selected for his willpower and lack of fear.

Unless I'm mistaken, literally the ONLY thing in the lore that prevents women from becoming Astartes is some failure of the geneseed to work without a Y chromosome.

Given that the conversion process is supposed to be physically taxing, I daresay that physical fitness is also something they look for.
I'm aware that it's within the fluff that the geneseed only works with a Y chromosome. I'm just skeptical of the idea that that's the only restriction, that there wouldn't be other factors in play, such as demographics or cultural norms.
Population probably wouldn't be affected that much though, I can concede on that point.

They turn little children into space marines, I'm not sure to what degree "strength" is that important for the actual physical process. The standars for physical fitness might be very technical. I'm sure there's a lot of cultural norms in how you select and what you select for, not the least in the target population you nab people from.

Plus, a big theme in 40K is that what the imperial administration says is what happens isn't actually what factually happens. No doubt there's a lot of instances of "I order you to perform X action" is correctly understood as "do Z". Euphemism and self-deception is not out of character for the people recruiting marines.

 Crimson wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Given that the conversion process is supposed to be physically taxing, I daresay that physical fitness is also something they look for.

Tell that to the Blood Angels.

Doesn't their recruitment process involve a bunch of gladiatorial combat and athletics? Pretty sure that counts as physical fitness.
Its not as if the Blood Angels grab some poor kid off the street and make him drink from a cup, and even that process is physically demanding, with most of their aspirants just dying from the sheer strain of the metabolic processes going on.

Again don't forget 40K is like Dune and a bunch of other things from its era. A core component of the story and setting is that growing up in harsh environment will push you to the edge to perform better and be stronger/fitter/smarter/more fighty.


Ergo someone from a hell-world who is under-fed; possibly has injuries; maybe a deformity - is going to win against someone from a "soft" world who grew up with plenty (but not excess). etc....

It defies the reality that we know that in the real world malnutrition, injury and so forth will result in a weaker person with physical limitations.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Crimson wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

Given that the conversion process is supposed to be physically taxing, I daresay that physical fitness is also something they look for.

Tell that to the Blood Angels.

Doesn't their recruitment process involve a bunch of gladiatorial combat and athletics? Pretty sure that counts as physical fitness.
Its not as if the Blood Angels grab some poor kid off the street and make him drink from a cup, and even that process is physically demanding, with most of their aspirants just dying from the sheer strain of the metabolic processes going on.

They specifically recruit miserable dregs suffering from radiation sickness.

Rosebuddy wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 BorderCountess wrote:


And to counter the rest of your post, we know that not all Chapters look for physical strength and the current poster-boy for the Ultramarines, Titus, was selected for his willpower and lack of fear.

Unless I'm mistaken, literally the ONLY thing in the lore that prevents women from becoming Astartes is some failure of the geneseed to work without a Y chromosome.

Given that the conversion process is supposed to be physically taxing, I daresay that physical fitness is also something they look for.
I'm aware that it's within the fluff that the geneseed only works with a Y chromosome. I'm just skeptical of the idea that that's the only restriction, that there wouldn't be other factors in play, such as demographics or cultural norms.
Population probably wouldn't be affected that much though, I can concede on that point.

They turn little children into space marines, I'm not sure to what degree "strength" is that important for the actual physical process.

Well the blood angels want their recruits to cross a desert full of canyons which would require a bit of athletic prowess and be able to win in gladiatorial combat, so it would seem that it matters.
But maybe that's an outlier, let's see what the Ultramarines do.
Oh, they make their recruit live out in the wilderness, with the world often being a death world. Pretty sure strength and endurance is important there too. Then they have to fight a battle-brother in a duel, with them being graded on how badly they fail because, well, no one is expecting the kid to actually win.