War, guns and swords have always been, since the dawn of history, a man’s domain, in which women are at best secondary or supporting characters. Being a graduate of History/Classics, I know this is the truth, but Warhammer, and even more so 40K are supposed to be representations of science fiction and fantasy universes. Unfortunately, to the initiate girl player, on a surface glance, most armies are very masculine. The lords, heroes and HQ choices are predominately male. I know not all women are like me, but I do like to reflect a bit of myself into the figurines representing my army.
Sometimes this is a little bit of a challenge. For example when I started my first 40K army, Dark Eldars, I was fascinating with playing a Wyche cult army led by Lilith Hesperax. I chose Dark Eldar since they had the largest variety of female figurines. In order to increase their numbers I eventually came across the female witches from the Warhammer Dark Elf range and immediately included them into my Wyche Cult army. They barely needed any conversation and for a newbie player like me that made things much easier. Nowadays, I am always looking for something a little more challenging in terms of conversions.
When we look at the various choices of armies for Warhammer, there is only one real choice if you want to play females that would be Wood Elves. There is a sprinkling of female High Elves and Dark Elves and two Bretonnians but then again all the lord choices are predominately male, so in general I just tend to convert myself a female champion/HQ. Because I am so fanatical about this issue, I purchased the Everqueen and her Handmaidens, I couldn’t resist owning them since they are beautifully sculpted and would make a fine addition to my high elf army.
For Wahammer 40K, there is only one female army; Sisters of Battle. Beyond that you can go with Dark Eldar and Eldar, which have a nice variety of female figurines both as HQ choices and Troop choices. But where are the Imperial Guard women? Where did Iyanna go and why did Prince Yriel Autarch of Iyanden take her place?
If you look at every single army there is normally, if you are lucky, one token female character. I was always lead to believe guys had a fancy for gun toting chicks like Lara Croft, so why don’t we see more of this in figurines? Such beautifully sculpted figurines such as Saint-Celestine, Lilith Hesperax and Alarielle the Everqueen are stunning pieces which complement any army and it is unfortunate that we don’t see more of these figurines. Through a quick calculation, I noticed there was a 1:11 female to male ratio in figurines for 40K.
As my fellow Grey Knights have testified in previous editorials, we meet a large variety of people and I think bolstering the female figurine presence in both lines could only help attract female gamers. For now, I am tremendously enjoying converting figs; it gives me a sense of pride and accomplishment not to mention allowing me to give a personal touch to the females who lead my army.
Hope you are all looking forward to my blasphemous piece: a female space marine!
Happy gaming everyone and see some of you hopefully in November at Arena: Montreal!
