What Minis Are You Painting?

I've long lamented the loss of old school pencil and paper character sheets in board games. Think Heroquest or Advanced Heroquest. You could use any fig you wanted, of any gender, because there was no image on a card you had to worry about matching. All these character cards, and useless tokens, are my least favorite trend in modern boardgaming.

The thing is, I can see a character image on a character sheet in an rpg as there is no in game avatar representing a player, so an image on the sheet is helpful. For games with minis though...let the mini represent the character and just put stats on the card. What if I paint my Stormcast silver or purple...now they don't much the card. It's lame.

Anyway...

I too also think a lot about gender and ethnicity representation in games, and this is one area GW really needs to work on. PPand FFG are definitely a little more progressive here. However, we're in a little bit of luck because there are blank Silver Tower character templates out there. All we have to do is transfer, say, the warpriest's abilities and numbers to a blank card, then crop an image of a sister of sigmar (or not) and we're good to go. Sure it's a little customization on our end, but....welcome to the hobby...

Oh, the 40k Saint Celestine model could be a potential female stormcast knight.

Mr. White wrote: Oh, the 40k Saint Celestine model could be a potential female stormcast knight.

Sisters of Sigmar seems to be nuts prices. But I really like the idea of Celestine. She'd make a great proxy for the Knight-Azyros.

I've always imagined that the non-white people in the 40k universe get along just fine and are off somewhere else living in a beautiful, peaceful Utopian society while all the white folks go off and wallow in the never-ending war of the grimdark.

Gender and race are scary, frightening issues for socially awkward white males...so game companies stay away from them. It creates a vicious circle where you have an audience that is white male and then the games reflect white male perspectives. So you get all of the boob warriors, thong mages, the 178th White Man's Legion, White People Plus (elves).

It was pretty surprising to see GW do a black Warpriest. I can't think of another black figure they have done. But why not have dark-skinned dwarves, elves and so forth? Mantic's Forge Fathers are actually black, which is nice to see.

That is an interesting point about girls wanting to see themselves in the game...guys want to see what they want to screw, girls want to see a representation of themselves. It's sad that games aren't more progressive than that, but there again- socially awkward white males.

I've read that the Stormcast, being resurrected heroes, can be actually be female underneath the gold plate. Which is a fluff cop-out. The armor doesn't read male, the figures aren't male, and no one is calling these dudes ladies.

GW's Sisters of Sigmar and Sisters of Battle lines are actually really on point so far as design goes. They are well armoured and look as bad@$$ as any dudes figs in the game. Unfortunately, Mordheim is oop and the Sister of Battle line is dead...so we're not left with much.





GW also has some neat sisters of the thorn, but I don't think they're in Silver Tower


So, current GW is severely lacking in female options, but when the do do it they've shown it can be done tastefully. I mentioned PP and FFG. They do have more female characters, but it's all of the tight fitting, big busts, suggestive poses, childish superhero flavor, so they could do some work here as well...

Yes, the warpriest in Silver Tower is a cool dude and I'm really glad they included him in Silver Tower. Yeah, that Stormcast line is a co-op, but maybe AoS is an opportunity to make some changes as they roll out the other armies. The only downside is that it may not be enough and you end up with low selling figs that end up being discontinued (my guess as to what happened to 40K's Sister of Battle faction).

Mr. White wrote: IOh, the 40k Saint Celestine model could be a potential female stormcast knight.

Michael Barnes wrote: I've read that the Stormcast, being resurrected heroes, can be actually be female underneath the gold plate. Which is a fluff cop-out. The armor doesn't read male, the figures aren't male, and no one is calling these dudes ladies.

Voila!


Think I'll have to get one now.

Michael Barnes wrote: It was pretty surprising to see GW do a black Warpriest.

Yeah. Step in the right direction, at least, but they need to be bigger, faster. That said I'm going to have to mix up or buy some black skin tone for him, if I ever get round to painting it, because it's not something I've used before, which is poor.

Looks awesome, Matt, great job!

Totally agree, the tabletop hobby has a lot of catching up to do in regards to diversity. RPGs are pretty popular with women in conjunction with a movement for more reasonably clothed and armored depictions of women, but that still has a ways to go.

Mantic has some well-clothed and armored warrior women, who would make great stand-ins for Sisters of Sigmar in Mordheim too

MattDP wrote: Most come without bases, which I expected. What I didn't expect was that the screamer tails are moulded into the underside of the chariot. I have no idea how I can realistically get them out without a ridiculous amount of work. You can see the problem here - the tails are in among all the tentacles mid-left of the picture:

hobby-games.com.ua/shop/published/public...es02_873x627_enl.jpg

Any ideas? Or anyone got any spare Screamer tails ?

I would trim the tails off the basing as close as possible to the tail. After that, a hobby knife or file should be able to clean it up to mostly smooth. A touch of green stuff or Liquid Green Stuff and you are good to go.

Alternatively, you could drill a hole in the body, insert a bent paperclip to make an armature and then sculpt a new tail with green stuff. That would probably be more difficult and finicky than the first method.

When the Battle for Armageddon campaign or whatever hit, there were many Salamanders armies going around and people were painting their flesh black, not sure if that was from the fluff for people from Nocturne. You'd think with a name like that the planet would be pretty dark (it's a volcanic world shrouded in ash clouds) and the inhabitants would have pretty pale skin, so who knows what they were thinking?

Edit: Well, here's the explanation :

It should be noted that the people of Nocturne have been slightly mutated by their constant exposure to the high levels of radioactivity present on their world due to the radioactive rare earth elements often uncovered by the extreme volcanism. They have developed deep ebony skins and the irises of their eyes now glow red in the darkness because they developed over many generations the ability to see in the infrared levels of the electromagnetic spectrum to deal with the constant volcanic pollution that blocks out their world's sunlight. These same physical characteristics are also present in every Salamanders Space Marine. The Imperium's Ecclesiarchy does not consider these mutations heretical as the Salamanders and the Nocturnans themselves have always been among the most staunchly loyal to the Emperor of the Space Marine Chapters and the Promethean Cult prevalent on the world is an accepted variant of the Imperial Cult.

So black people are literally white people that turned black, are mutants, have evil red eyes, and borderline heretics.

Good job, GW

I have no issue with race/gender (and sexuality) representation in both warhammers. Funny thing is, most of the people having issue with this are male white dudes. I mean, the I like oldhammer because it's a twist of the old fantasy europe, which is full of white dudes. Of course there are arabs and african dudes, but they're pretty well represented considering the actual demographic. On sex, it's pretty much male dominance back then.

I'm pretty sure GW did not creat SoB to promote gender equality or female representation, at least not mainly. They're a twisted form of catholic nuns.

Now, 40k? It cuts both way. It's both in the future (when races assimilate one another), and also grimdark. The emperor isn't white I think? Also there are various versions of imperial guards.

Sure, if it's contemporary or "clean" sci-fi, yeah, equal representation is an issue for me. But even now, in America, over 60% are white. Gender equality, sure. But personally it feels more real to me if the race representation matches the reality.

Either way, I don't think much of it. That also means I don't have to think what skin tone should I give to my next minis.

BTW, I just failed my saving throw and bought a box of vanguard marines and venerable dreadnought at rock bottom price (25.5 pound delivered to Indonesia).

While it may not be 100% ethnically accurate due to the physical features sculpted as white people, you can still paint them up whichever ethnicity you want.

Was going to keep painting my Lost Patrol genestealers while my wife was away this weekend. Instead, spilled an entire bottle of Seraphim Sepia on our carpet.

I did that with Reikland Fleshshade. You have to IMMEDIATELY flush it with tons of water.

I don't like dropper bottles, but that is one clear advantage to them.

Now you tell me.....

I ended up using a carpet cleaner/steamer combo the next day after flushing it out (with not enough water apparently) when it happened. Carpet is still a bit stiff, so will probably need to go over that again.