The Ladies in the AoS Novels and Models

[Wailslake]

Slaanesh has always suffered from the battlefield focus of Warhammer (also including 40k in this).  A god of depravity and lust is a fun one to explore in a role playing game setting (such as WFRP) but on the battlefield it is an odd thing to try and "model".  Deamonettes ended up being crabs with ****** at one point which doesn't exactly exude eroticism!

Although, for this all this talk of Slaanesh being "pulled" in AoS we have seen no models being removed, full support of the line in terms of Warscrolls etc and in fact the background has arguably been expanded with the idea of the separate factions vying for the throne of the Dark Prince(ss)

[MechaBriZilla]

6 minutes ago, Wailslake said:

Slaanesh has always suffered from the battlefield focus of Warhammer (also including 40k in this).  A god of depravity and lust is a fun one to explore in a role playing game setting (such as WFRP) but on the battlefield it is an odd thing to try and "model".  Deamonettes ended up being crabs with ****** at one point which doesn't exactly exude eroticism!

Although, for this all this talk of Slaanesh being "pulled" in AoS we have seen no models being removed, full support of the line in terms of Warscrolls etc and in fact the background has arguably been expanded with the idea of the separate factions vying for the throne of the Dark Prince(ss)

Truthfully, I think Slaanesh needs to exist in AoS.  he/she is just too much of a core concept of the game.  I have a feeling the absence of Slaanesh doesn't mean we've seen the end of him/her.  I would guess, that whatever he/she is involved in, it will mean a re-imagining of the faction, rather than the end of it.  Something tells me when the followers of Slaanesh finally find and free him/her, they will be the least happy about what's happened.

Slaanesh is a god of excess, and there are so many wonderful ways that could be explored without putting uncovered ta-ta's on models.  Certainly this faction should be the most 'sexualized' if you will, but that still doesn't mean it needs to be over the top adult (NC-17 style adult, which actually has nothing to do with being adult anyway).  Anyway the current range doesn't do Slaanesh's concept any justice.  I mean, who's going to be attracted to women with crab claws anyway... Wait, don't answer that.  I'm not attracted to women with crab claws.  There, better?

I think Slaanesh demons should be alluring and of indeterminate gender, with hints at their deadliness, but little that is obvious, or at least the ones dedicated to the sexual excess side of Slaanesh.  Also, remember Slaanesh, as a god of extremes can also be used to explore gluttony, drug abuse, avarice,  rage, etc.  Some of this will obviously step on the toes of other chaos gods, like rage/Khorne.  But lets be honest, Khorne is sort of lame anyway.  Really? a god of slaughter that uses pawns to enact his will?  Seriously, he should be the 'god of cowardly manipulating others to fight his fights', but I suppose that's a bit long for a title.  

Ok, I'm troggothing you all a bit...

Anywho...  All I'm really saying is that Slaanesh is about the most underutilized of the chaos gods, and could use a serious re-think, but I really don't want him/her/it to go away.

[Caffran101]

It would be interesting to see if they develop Slaanesh to cover more of the "pleasure" sins (pride / gluttony / greed / envy to a degree).

You could create some really interesting models / rules around these different sins / emotions.

Pride models could have magical mirrors. Or be eyeless so they cannot see anyone else.

Gluttony - Bit fat models with huge mouths for eating people (careful not to make it look too nurgle though)

Greed - Can bribe opponents forces to fight for them etc

Envy - Go into a jealous murderous rampage.

 

Totally agree that this god / faction should include sexualisation as it is a pleasurable "sin" (to some!).

However, completely appreciate the fact that GW want to be family friendly and dont want to sell models that look like bondage clad maniacs. (although how cool would they look!).

 

As to the representation of women, fantasy (high fantasy in particular) has always struggled with portraying women, and when they do include them, then not portraying them as scantily clad Xena warriors.

It is clear to see that GW have tried to include them - Alarielle / Valkia for example, and it would be great to see more female miniatures. GW need to ensure that these would need to work though, they cant just be thrown in as token female characters.

Create a bunch of khorne female berserkers with hockey sticks! Female hockey players are lethal!

[Ollie Grimwood]

Slaanesh isn't going anywhere if they were getting rid of him/her they'd have done it the same time as Brets and Tomb Kings. 

The Slaanesh models don't come across sexualised to me at all let alone over sexualised. 

What they are doing through the stories I've read so far is refocusing people so that they remember that Slaahesh isn't the God of Kinky Sex but one of pleasure, sensation and excess. Pain, pleasure, gluttony, pride all these thing fall in Slaanesh's focus (and more) and always have done it's just people seem to have focused on the Sex aspect. 

 

[MechaBriZilla]

38 minutes ago, Ollie Grimwood said:

The Slaanesh models don't come across sexualised to me at all let alone over sexualised. 

Gimmie some claw sugar?

No, not really all that sexual are they...  there are some ****** on some, but not designed in anyway to be appealing.  Which I guess is how it should be.  I feel like I want to say that they should be covered, but the truth is, I feel hypocritical (and would probably be hypocritical) saying that the saggy ****** on the Slaanesh demons should all go away, but all of the violence and gore is just fine on the rest of the range.

 

 

[Shadowspite]

Well, Slaanesh's daemons probably shouldn't look conventionally sexy to people with mainstream tastes. But if the people who get all hot and bothered while watching the Hellraiser films find them appealing, then I think they work just right.

Based on an admittedly small sample size, IME they do indeed work just right.

(They could benefit from some more hooks and chains and partially flayed body parts, though...)

***

Anyway, what does it say about us that a discussion of female characters and models in the game so quickly turned into a discussion of Slaanesh and just how sexy his 28mm followers should be? It's maybe a bit problematic that people still think of Slaanesh first and foremost when considering female Chaos worshippers. I'm not judging anyone (I have a Slaanesh army with lots of women in it myself), but of all the Chaos armies you've seen with female models, how many have been followers of Khorne (except Valkia), Tzeentch or Nurgle? Any at all?

In my experience, including my time working GW retail, no woman has ever said she wanted to get into the GW hobby but was turned off by the existence of Witch Elves or Daemonettes. Nor has any parent said they were going to allow their child to start the hobby until they saw a bare-breasted Deamonette.

Again, this is just IME, but prospective female players are turned away from the GW hobby by two things. One is the lack of female models in armies they might otherwise be interested in (i.e. anything other than elves). The other is the attitude of a minority of the existing male playerbase (casual misogyny, personal hygiene, obvious terror of talking to a woman, creepy over-eagerness to talk to a woman...). And (I don't need to keep saying 'IME', do I?) parents who have a problem with their little darling getting involved in a hobby that includes the occasional 28mm-scale nipple are already heading for the door because of the violent imagery, demons/magic/occult themes, or (and this is the biggie) the extortionate cost involved.

I should add that most of this experience is from a decade ago (and exclusively in the UK), so things might be different now. But the 'current' Daemonette models when I worked for GW were the Juan Diaz ones, and I never had a single parent express any misgivings about them.

[TerrorPenguin]

Malifaux has a mechanic whereby models are 'drawn' towards those which are alluring, this pulls them into contact to do other horrible things, but in aos could reduce charge range etc

[MechaBriZilla]

13 hours ago, Shadowspite said:

Well, Slaanesh's daemons probably shouldn't look conventionally sexy to people with mainstream tastes. But if the people who get all hot and bothered while watching the Hellraiser films find them appealing, then I think they work just right.

Based on an admittedly small sample size, IME they do indeed work just right.

(They could benefit from some more hooks and chains and partially flayed body parts, though...)

***

Anyway, what does it say about us that a discussion of female characters and models in the game so quickly turned into a discussion of Slaanesh and just how sexy his 28mm followers should be? It's maybe a bit problematic that people still think of Slaanesh first and foremost when considering female Chaos worshippers. I'm not judging anyone (I have a Slaanesh army with lots of women in it myself), but of all the Chaos armies you've seen with female models, how many have been followers of Khorne (except Valkia), Tzeentch or Nurgle? Any at all?

In my experience, including my time working GW retail, no woman has ever said she wanted to get into the GW hobby but was turned off by the existence of Witch Elves or Daemonettes. Nor has any parent said they were going to allow their child to start the hobby until they saw a bare-breasted Deamonette.

Again, this is just IME, but prospective female players are turned away from the GW hobby by two things. One is the lack of female models in armies they might otherwise be interested in (i.e. anything other than elves). The other is the attitude of a minority of the existing male playerbase (casual misogyny, personal hygiene, obvious terror of talking to a woman, creepy over-eagerness to talk to a woman...). And (I don't need to keep saying 'IME', do I?) parents who have a problem with their little darling getting involved in a hobby that includes the occasional 28mm-scale nipple are already heading for the door because of the violent imagery, demons/magic/occult themes, or (and this is the biggie) the extortionate cost involved.

I should add that most of this experience is from a decade ago (and exclusively in the UK), so things might be different now. But the 'current' Daemonette models when I worked for GW were the Juan Diaz ones, and I never had a single parent express any misgivings about them.

I have a seriously difficult time imagining anything in 28mm (heroic scale or not) that I would be able to find remotely appealing.  In a sexual manner.

Though I agree that lack of female armies are the primary issue with the game, most of the women I know also find oversexualized models (though more common in other mini-ranges) to also be misogynistic.  Generally what they'd like to see on the table are mini's that aren't designed to appeal to little boys.  Regardless of their preferred forms of kink or fetish.  

Truthfully, I'd prefer to see images of women in the game to be move as far away from women as sex object as possible.  As I do personally see it as a misogynistic representation.  If it weren't a misogynistic representation, you would see male models in the same sort of styling, and we just don't.

[Shadowspite]

In all seriousness, I agree that less-sexualised female models are the thing to aim for going forward. I wouldn't want to see Witch Elves go away, as they're an iconic part of WH now, but I'm glad their latest incarnation at least looks somewhat reasonable for acrobatic unarmoured fighters, not like the previous angry strippers with their silly high heels and fishnets. And I think one unit like that in the game is probably enough.

IMO, the Wanderer range is the best example of how GW should continue to do female minis. Mixed in roughly 50:50 with the males, wearing essentially identical clothing and armour, with just enough curve on the breastplate (on the female Rangers/Eternal Guard and the Sisters of the Watch) to make it clear at 28mm that the warrior is a woman but without looking like she's stuck a couple of soup bowls to her chest.

One problem is that GW seems obsessed with giving every male model a ridiculously over-muscled steroid-junkie physique, which makes it much harder to mix female mini parts into a kit. See the Tree-/Spite-Revenants for example. The one female torso you get does not fit the muscular weapon-wielding arms used for the Tree-Revs without a bit of conversion work, hence you're 'supposed' to only use that torso to make a unit leader for the Spite-Revs. I'm sure GW didn't intend to imply that only male spirits are suited to be noble, defendery Tree-Revs, while female spirits are so vicious and emotional that they can only be Spite-Revs, but that's the unfortunate implication you're left with by this kit.

The stories in the Legends of the AoS: Sylvaneth book makes clear Tree-Revenants include both genders, incidentally. Shame the models (otherwise awesome though they are) don't match that straight out of the box.

[Lissë-Prime]

On 01/09/2016 at 1:34 PM, Ollie Grimwood said:

So boob armour all the way then ?

Stromcast are supposed to be reforged in Sigmar's image why the hell would they forge lady parts* on the armour. The background  states that there's female Stormcasts so job done, female Stormcast models already exist. It's a bit like the female Stormtroopers in the new Star Wars they look exactly the same in armour. 

Actually it would not be distinguished even if there's female inside the stormcast armour. Think Phasma.

 

I'd love to see female though.

In WM/H I built all of my Retribution forces with pure female, even some character are clearly male, just replace their heads.

I have an idea to build all Stormcast heroes to be female, a sexualised one.
I love anime fanservice style  so I design this way and had my friend sketched it. The result:

Lady-Celestant Hoshiko 'Starfang'

And this one:

Lissë-Prime

Would love to see a miniature out of these but right now I'm finding a decent 3D printer one to print them out.

[Oppenheimer]

At least Death gets its share of ladies. I do love my Neferata. I even created a spectral dragon out of a phoenix and zombie dragon head and put a mix up of the ladies from the coven throne on it (already comes with a blood chalice!).

Can you let me know which novels have Celemnis, Sharizard, and Alzheer?

[Ollie Grimwood]

2 hours ago, Lissë-Prime said:

Actually it would not be distinguished even if there's female inside the stormcast armour. Think Phasma.

 

 

Yep that's what I was trying to say. 

In fact I think the same would be true of most of the models in all enclosing armour they could easily accommodate a male or female. 

[Hedgehog39]

Gee Dubs could take some partial steps toward rectifying the problem and make some bank in the process by producing conversion sprues of female heads for heavily armored models with head selections.

It wouldn't be that easy with the less-armored models, particularly those with bare chests, like chaos marauders. But Best chaos warriors are heavily-armored enough that it could be anything (or nothing) beneath the chaos-forged steel. Just put an with angry, snarling female head (with it without spiky helmets) onto a knight and you've got a unit of Phasma stand-ins.

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