Women Sculpts in Age of Sigmar

Howdy Friends,

Given my previous article on here discussing women sculpts in miniature wargaming, (part 1 / part 2) I thought it would be a appropriate to revisit the topic in light of Games Workshop's recent push to include female miniatures in new releases for the 'Stormcast Eternals', the flagship army for it's Age of Sigmar fantasy game.

With the release of Soul Wars boxed set, an overview of how GW is working to incorporate women into the Stormcast Eternals range might offer a focused discussion on how they are trying to change their sculpting practices when it comes to female representation.

I think we can now definitively conclude that GW is making a conscious effort to include women stormcast characters given the content of this box, we get the Knight-Incantor character as a hero, as well as the Castigator-Prime. Recently announced follow-up releases to the Soul Wars box offers numerous female sculpts in units associated with the newly released Sacrosanct Chamber, a major faction of the Stormcast Eternals. Women sculpts in units of Castigators, Sequitors, Evocaters and Celestar Ballista represent the first woman figures from the Stormcast line to be part of a standard unit and not a hero or named character. Additionally the cover art for standard core book for AoS 2.0  features a lone battle-hardened woman stormcast eternal.

Knight-Incantor

Castigator - Prime

The female representation within the Soul Wars box and subsequent Sacrosanct Chamber releases seems like a natural extension of GW testing the waters for women Stormcast models with Neave Blacktalon from the Blightwar box, as well as Angharad Brightshield from the Shadespire starter.

Angharad Brightshield

Neave Blacktalon

So how problematic (if at all) are they as depictions of women figures?  How do they conform or subvert larger trends in depicting women in fantasy?  How do they appear in relation to other representations of women in the GW range?

In my view all of these stormcast figures, from the shadespire box onwards, do a few things well that I think really make them stand out in regards to depictions of women in miniature wargaming:

• Muscle-mass and size. I love that the women depicted here are the same size as their male stormcast brethren and are huge hyper-muscled badasses. Is it realistic? Not really, but then again neither is every guy looking like Hafthor Bjornsson. Is it cool as hell? Abso-goddamn-lutely. This is exactly the type of unrealistic power-trip depictions of bodies that men have been enjoying in their fantasy and sci-fi representation for decades. Yet I would posit the idea of having a really powerful body is in no way a specifically male fantasy, and there is no need to contain oneself within the limits of what is “realistic” given the completely fantastical nature of most miniature game settings. I like this idea of equalizing powerful bodies and making sure that whatever body types are being depicting are done so across genders. I also think that, in general, having everyone be muscly is a much more practical and less problematic choice than trying to “make male figures sexy too” and apply the male gaze to both genders. Special mention goes to the cover of the Core Book with its lady stormcast who looks seriously intimidating.
• No boob cavities. The boob armor is definitely still there outside of the cloaked Sequistors, but at least it is a uniform piece of armor that doesn’t have a cavity in the chest to better accentuate the breasts. I know this doesn’t sound like much but this is actually huge in women miniature designs. Individual “boob slots” in female armor is ubiquitous within wargaming miniatures across most systems. Now, I'd still posit that there really isn’t any actual need for armor to clearly depict breasts to imply a figure is a woman. I'd refer you to the excellent "Bikini Armor Battle Damage" tumblr which has been pointing this out effectively for years. Androgyny is a hallmark of properly-equipped combatants, and sculpts can make use of proportions to clearly communicate a combatant is a woman without relying on noticable boob armor. Despite this I still feel the stormcast women look a lot better than other sculpts with a pronounced chest cavity. Although unfortunately the artwork for the Core Book seems to bring this cavity back, which is my only criticism of said art.
• In general I think that the amount of armor stormcast eternals wear works well to communicate the combat-readiness of the women sculpts, there is almost no skin on display with any of these figures beyond Blacktalon and the Knight-Incantor having their heads exposed. (and blacktalon has a helmet option which is awesome)
• All the posing is good, these ladies are clearly fighting and not trying to draw the eye to boobs/bums/etc. Post-2012 GW is pretty good about posing women figures appropriately across the board,  even when other parts of the sculpt might be more problematic
• The Castigator-Prime model, and subsequent box of Sequitors that feature numerous women sculpts, are easily some of the best female sculpts i’ve seen across any game system. Specifically because they manage to make effective use of non-sexualized proportions to clearly communicate that a given figure is a woman without revealing (any!) skin or employing weird armor design. They are clearly a part of the Castigator unit, armored and equipped in the same way, and there is no boob-plate to be seen. I also like that each is part of a standard unit and isn’t singled out as a named character or hero figure, it suggests that we might see more women amongst the ranks of human-like AoS/40k armies and I’m all for it.

Conclusions: I’m very positive about these figures and what they indicate in regards to GW trying to make their systems more inviting to women players. They aren’t perfect but they are a big leap forward for GW and compare favourably with general depictions of women in fantasy settings across films/books/rpgs etc. Given how big GW is as a company, and the way it sets trends and precedents within the miniature wargaming industry, I really hope this is a sign of things to come.

Caveats: While I think the women stormcast eternals are the best of what GW has to offer in regards to women figures across all of their ranges (with the possible exception of the Tau who are very gender-neutral in appearance), that doesn’t mean we can ignore their other women sculpts that are less positive. In particular i would single out the Daughters of Khaine and the Adeptus Ministorum (aka: Sisters of Battle) as ranges that remain, at best, ambiguous in regards to how problematic they are in their depictions of women. None of the post 2012 sculpts for either of these ranges has been deeply problematic, but none have struck me as being particularly great either. I think with the stormcasts we are seeing GW get the opportunity to set new standards for how they want to depict women, whereas with the DoK and SoB they are struggling to break out of the orbit of earlier highly-sexualized design choices. I really do think that the Sisters of Battle plastic releases are going to make-or-break my thoughts as to whether GW is genuinely pushing for better representation or is fine with  just being “okay” when it comes to depicting women in their sculpts.

So that's my initial thoughts on these figures. I'm extremely happy to see this sort of work coming from Games Workshop and I'm hoping that they continue the trend across their own line and have an influence on the industry as a whole. Thanks for reading and i'll leave you with some of the other fantastic women sculpts from the new Sacrosanct Chamber range!

Sequitor Leader

Sequitors Unit - excellent stuff here!
I also like that we're seeing a combatant of colour in the official studio schemes as well!

Evocaters

Lord Arcanum

Celestar Ballista - more great design work here!

What's New: Gundam, Shadespire, and Arkham Horror!

Howdy friends,

It’s been a while! I’ve now moved to Toronto and am trying to figure out what to do with my life. Hobby has taken something of a backseat since my return to Canada and I haven’t been playing any systems at all. However I remain extremely interested in Gundam models and have built several Bandai kits. The engineering and plastic quality on these models is superb, particularly for anything released from 2012 onwards.

So far I’ve worked exclusively with “high grade” kits, which are the cheapest and most extensive scale for Gunpla kits. See this link for more detailed description of the different scales. They cost between $15-$35 Canadian, and produce a mech figure about six inches tall.

I was rather frustrated by my attempt to do a full paintjob on the Kotobukiya Frame-Arms model before I left the UK, even with the airbrush, and am now just painting small portions of kits using some paint-on surface primer to pick out mechanical details and the like. I’ve also started using enamel panel-liner to pick out etched on details in the plastic that help separate and distinguish parts. Currently I’ve built three such kits so here they are in order...

Frame Shiden – Gundam Iron-Blood Orphans

This was my “test” kit with Bandai and I haven’t done any detailing on it whatsoever, this is as it appears assembled directly out of the box. I just went with a design I liked knowing nothing about the product but was extremely impressed.

 As you can see the articulated poses these kits are capable of is uhhhhh... extensive.

Gundam Barbatos – Gundam Iron-Blood Orphans

As I’ve always been one to devour the ‘fluff’ behind whatever models I happen to be building at a given time I’ve started working my way through some of the Gundam anime series to get a better sense for the figures I have the choice of building. There’s a huge number of series taking place in various timelines (see this link for detailed descriptions) and while few of them are truly brilliant there is a lot of really enjoyable viewing throughout.

“Iron-Blood Orphans”, one of the most recent series, has been a personal favourite. This is a totally new story/setting focussed on a group of child soldiers who form a mercenary group. I liked the small-scale but brutal combat encounters, complex political manoeuvring in the background, and the focus on family bonds.

Naturally I wanted to make my first “proper” build the lead Gundam unit in the series. This is a very recently released kit and is a joy to build, although it does make relatively extensive use of stickers, which I opted to paint details for instead. I also painted some mechanical details on the inner frame that shows beneath the armor.

After a varnish I did some panel-lining enamel washes using Tamiya panel liner, which is essentially a pre-thinned enamel paint that runs into the recesses of the details on the kit very easily, and can be cleaned up neatly with some enamel thinner afterwards. I’m quite impressed with the product and it definitely felt a lot easier than any of my previous attempts to tidy up detail-work with acrylic.

Gundam Barbatos before the use of Tamiya Weathering Powder

Another varnish layer and I added some weathering by sponging Vallejo ‘heavy charcoal’ on areas that would see a lot of wear, and then added some Tamiya Weathering Powder ‘Gunsmoke’ in the same areas to further dirty it up a bit. The weathering powder acts a bit like a pigment with a mild adhesive in it so it doesn’t get removed as easily. I’m relatively pleased with the overall effect!

Zaku II – Gundam "The Origin"

 For my second kit I wanted something that was a little less time intensive and closer to a straight assembly. I loved the retro-futurist look of the original Zaku’s from the original 1979 Mobile Suit Gundam animation and there were some new high-grade kits recently released to coincide with the “Gundam the Origin” movies that act as prequels to the original animation.

The kit went together really nicely, the only details I added outside of its included sticker sheet is some panel lining. The level of the detail etched into the plastic was extraordinary and the panel lining process really made the kit pop. Overall it was an extremely pleasant build experience!

Currently I’m building another Iron-Blood Orphans kit that will include some detailing and customization, and then probably another Origins one. I’m really enjoying the process of gradually figuring out what to do with these model kits rather than jumping in the deep-end as I attempted to with the Frame Arms kit. I’m also trying to get figures of various colors so that they will look great together on display!

While I haven’t been playing stuff very much I did get a chance to play a few games of the following! So here are some impressions after spending a few hours with some new collectible systems!

Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire

This is a really elegant little system that feels fun and competitive. It’s balanced in quite an interesting way by introducing small amounts of luck along multiple axes. Between drawing from a customized deck, rolling dice, and randomized objectives it feels like you always have some degree of flexibility/control even if you get unlucky in one of these areas. Games are also wonderfully quick and efficient as they never last more than three rounds. So even if you get stomped it won’t last more than 30 minutes and doesn’t leave one feeling too salty.

The miniatures are superb and I like the way the game is costed. Overall I’m really impressed and feel like it’s the best skirmish game Games Workshop has put out so far, with obvious potential for continued support and development.

While I don’t feel like I’m making it out to a hobby shop often enough to justify diving into it quite yet, the next (inevitable) instance that I feel the itch to pick up a GW system this will definitely be what I go with.

Arkham Horror: The Card Game

This is the latest Living Card Game (LCG) from Fantasy Flight games, although it has a couple major differences from my previous experience with their Game of Thrones LCG. It is a co-operative game in which each player takes part in an extended campaign with a strong narrative focus as you attempt to stop eldritch horrors in various settings/scenarios. It includes a campaign book for each scenario and you build customisable decks for your chosen investigator.

If that sounds like a lot for a card game to handle that’s because it is, but I am extremely impressed with AH’s ruleset and system. The way in which the game is organized means that you are always have a lot of control over your choices and the co-operative nature of the game is executed extremely well. The narrative elements are incorporated very and do actually make the game feel like a focussed story. Outside of the scenario itself each card drips with flavour text and mechanics that appropriately reflect their use. Each of the investigators plays really differently, and it also offers a pretty solid solo play experience. For more details you can check out the Shut Up & Sit Down review that sold me on the game here. The replayability of these scenarios/campaigns isn’t too much of an issue, as I’ve run through the base set campaign about 3 times in quick succession without feeling bored. Although I do feel like to continue enjoying play I’ll need to either take a break for a while or start to purchase expansions.

A scenario set up and ready to play!

That leads me to the only significant drawback to the game, which is the amount of potential money involve. As with all Fantasy Flight ongoing games there is an aggressive expansion schedule that will provide new campaigns and scenarios, but it will cost you to keep up with everything. This has stopped me from purchasing more than the base set so far but I’ll mull it over more and see how I feel down the line. Additionally the game can sometimes feel very punishing, although in almost all cases the narrative/scenario can proceed from failure and therefore failure simply becomes part of the ongoing game rather than an end condition.

Overall I’m extremely impressed with the design work that went into the Arkham Horror card game and I will likely end up picking up some expansions down the line.

Tips on Finding a Gaming Group

Howdy friends,

This post originally started as a script for a video I was going to do with my local shop Element Games. They've been trying to build up their online presence with a youtube channel you can check out here. Unfortunately the shoot wasn't able to happen before I left Manchester, but I thought people would still find it interesting.

I also thought it was appropriate as it's about offering some tips on how to find a gaming group in a new place, something that I will have to do very shortly once I've got myself set up here in Canada!

So firstly, I should preface this by saying these tips are not just pulled out of thin air. I moved to England four years ago to a city I had never been with no connections or friends there whatsoever. I ended up having my closest friends group stem from my miniature hobby, and it was one of the most fulfilling experiences I had in the UK. I developed my hobby skills hugely and built a really close relationship to Element, its employees, and its patrons. Element originally asked me to give these tips specifically because I'd ingratiated myself within the community so effectively. So without further ado:

Finding a play group in a new place.

There were three main routes that I took to start building connections. Note that this also works for boardgame/roleplaying/cardgame hobbies as well.

1. Check out all the gaming shops in your area and speak to the employees. Tell them outright that you're new to the area, what systems you play, and ask about the community there. I recommend checking out as many shops as you can so you can see if there's one you really connect with, whether through the space itself or the attitude of the employees.
2. Online forums for your system are a great resource, and most have "find a player" threads or sections. I originally found out about Element Games through the Infinity forums when a player invited me to meet there for a demo game. I would note that army-specific forums are probably too limited for doing this effectively, ideally you should be looking at forums that deal with whole game systems.
3. Local Facebook groups for the systems or shops you are interested in are definitely really useful, and probably the main method local players organise games. However, I would suggest introducing yourself properly when you first join. A one-line post from a stranger saying "when is 40k played?" is not particularly thrilling to an established play group who know nothing about you. Introduce yourself, toss up a picture of your army, how you like to play, tell a joke, briefly give that community a sense of who you are.

Connecting to a gaming community.

In my mind there are two main approaches to take if you're new to a community and want to ingratiate yourself.

Be Flexible - If you are unable to put lot of time and effort into the community I strongly encourage having a bit of flexibility in what you play and how you play it. Adapt yourself to your local scene. This is true both within the game and outside of it. Adapt to a group if it leans more towards a competitive or casual play styles. Maybe try a different system if your chosen one isn't popular at the moment. This is especially easy for skirmish level games where you can get a new army up quickly. Game systems tend to come in and out of popularity in cycles so your preferred one will probably pop back up soon!

Be a Leader - If you are able to put in time and effort you can make a positive impact on your playgroup by organising and introducing new things. If you want to play a different system, or play an established one in a different way, then you can absolutely make that happen on your own initiative. There is no better way to bring value to your local community than by taking the time to get people interested and excited about new things. During my time in the UK I ran a 40k narrative campaign, joined a bunch of RPG games, and built playgroups around the Game of Thrones card game and Infinity miniatures game by offering demos and organising weekly play nights. The great thing about this hobby is that people tend to be really open minded and up for trying different things. We all have systems or playstyles we want to try but haven't had a chance to yet.

Voicing issues within a gaming community.

If you do find there are some issues in your local scene that you can’t look past these can typically be solved by politely communicating to either players and/or the shop what your grievances are. In my experience about 90% of these problems can be solved through communication, and being upfront yet understanding about these problems is a great way to contribute to the quality of the community.

Some good examples I've dealt with myself is there not being enough terrain, people not showing up to gaming meetups, poor store support for a product, etc. Keep in mind it's good to phrase your complaints in a positive way. Instead of saying "it's annoying there isn't enough Infinity terrain" you can say "I really want to bring more Infinity players in but there isn't enough terrain, would you be able to help support the game a bit more?"

Obviously this gets a bit more complicated if we're talking about problem players. Not getting along with someone is heavily context dependant, and I'd encourage you to defer to how the established gaming group handles things.

Keeping up a hobby as a student.

I've been a University student for nine years and kept up a miniatures hobby for almost that entire time. I've got some good tips, especially for undergraduate students.

• Work on a smaller scale. Smaller armies. Less hobby supplies. Less storage needs. Don't buy too much. You're going to be moving a bunch. You're probably using public transportation. Keep it streamlined. As much as this might be a little painful, it does help in many ways, it keeps your budget tight, it means you have less to paint, it keeps you very focused. Be a hobby ascetic, take pride in the fact that you still manage to have a great time without the luxury of lots space, money, or a car.
• Quality instead of quantity with your supplies and purchases. Unless your really tight for cash buy a box at a time rather than getting a huge unpainted second-hand army.  Again it’s about keeping focused and keeping the hobby lean. Spend more time on a smaller number of figures rather than trying to shift through a huge backlog. This will also help improve your painting!
• Don't feel bad about taking breaks from the hobby. Being a student means that workload tends towards extremes of leisure and intensity. There might be months where you barely have time to pickup a brush, nevermind get games in. There also might be periods where you just lose interest for a while, burnout happens to everyone but because your space is so limited as a student its often tempting to jettison parts of the hobby entirely. That's okay, don't feel bad about it, don't beat yourself up about it. You can always come back.
• On the opposite end of the spectrum, do not let your hobby take over your life. Between the hobby and the gaming aspect it’s very very easy to go down a rabbit hole with miniature gaming. Like any sort of hobby it can lead to an obsessive mindset that's ultimately going to hurt you, and students are particularly vulnerable because it can be a way to procrastinate and still feel like you've done something productive. Be aware of how you're thinking about it and know when to ease off.
• Do some stuff that isn't geek-centric. It's always good to have variety in life, especially stuff that involves not sitting at a table or desk. Whether its hiking, going out with friends, playing music, sport, whatever, do try to have other stuff to focus on. Even if it’s largely secondary to your hobby you'll be very glad to have it!

With those pieces of advice in mind, I will say that being a geek is a magnificent way to spend your student years. It's communal, it’s competitive, you build skills as both a hobbyist and a gamer, it is a superb way to relax and decompress. Get out there and have a blast!

Farewell United Kingdom - Hello Gundam Plastics!

So here is my first post in 2018, and a lot has happened! I passed my PhD defence and am now officially Dr.Tom. I am also back in Canada and looking for work.

The last six months of my time in the UK were spent in the Welsh countryside with family. It was a lovely way to say goodbye, and it feels very much as though I've left some pieces of myself in the water and hills of England/Wales.

Coast of Pembrokeshire, Wales.

Rock formation near my family's house. With cousin to boot!

My hobby during these six months was necessarily rather light as I was in the process of selling off a lot of excess and unpainted miniatures and hobby supplies. Most notably I had to part with my airbrush compressor and the 40k Orks that I hadn't started painting. But I've managed to keep all the figures I've painted and some of my best tools/paints so I'm looking forward to eventually establishing a small-scale hobby setup once I'm settled here in Canada.

However this did get me to do some thinking about what I could see myself doing with the hobby in the future. I decided I wanted to undertake something a bit more oriented towards individual projects rather than large-scale armies. To that end I started to look at busts and larger models without any sort of tabletop usage that would force me to approach them as a properly focused hobby project.

Eventually I remembered reading about Gunpla (short for "Gundam Plastics") and took a dive into researching it online. These are plastic figures depicting large bipedal combat suits at various scales. They originally started in the early 90's and were made by the Japanese company Bandai to tie-in with the Gundam anime series it produced. Since then it's become a huge industry and Bandai remains the largest producer of Gunpla figures. Good quick overviews of what Gunpla kits are can be found here and here

I eventually decided to dip my toe in the water and ordered a kit to see how I like it. I went with one produced by Kotobukiya, which is Bandai's biggest competition. Unlike Bandai, Kotobukiya has no anime series to accompany their figures, but this means they have some really cool original designs that look a lot more modern than the classic Gundam stuff.

The kit I went is called the "Ji-Dao". It's part of Kotobukiya's "Frame Arm" series of figures, which all come with a pre-built inner frame that you essentially add the armour components on top of. One thing to note is that Gunpla figures are all articulated, meaning you can move all the joints and pose them. Given that I had never built an articulated model kit before the apparent simplicity of the frame arms line appealed to me.

Promo shot of the Ji-Dao.

An example of the way you can pose it.

I'll go into detail profiling my experiences building the Ji-Dao, and more generally my pros/cons impressions of Gunpla at a later date. But as a quick bullet point summary this was my first time attempting the following:

• Building an articulated kit.
• Painting in components and then assembling a figure.
• Using Tamiya paints.

The components after a test assembly before I started painting.

I decided to give my airbrush one last hurrah before selling it off by trying to paint the kit. I went with the method typically used by Gunpla builders which is to paint the individual components and then assemble it. I don't doubt my process of doing so was rather sloppy but I learnt a lot! My colour scheme adhered pretty much exactly to the original scheme for the sake of simplicity. This was more about giving the build a try than trying to get super creative.

Undercoating the components before painting them.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to finish the build before I had to pack everything up and leave for home, but I did manage to get all of the base painting done with the airbrush before selling it, as well as doing some sponge weathering on the components.

I re-assembled the kit and packed it up, but took some pictures before I did:

Current state of the Ji-Dao.

Rearview

Natural Light!

It still needs to be panel-lined, which is where you trace the grooves in armour plating to help visually separate the components. Additionally I'd like to do some dirt streaking using some oil paints or weathering effects to make it look properly dirty and not just chipped. I really think these two elements will tie the kit together nicely.

Overall i'm pleased with the result of the test build but I confess I had some issues during painting that might discourage me from attempting it again until I have a proper setup in Canada. However the assembly was a blast so maybe i'll stick to unpainted Gunpla figures for the foreseeable future. I've been watching some of the anime series so I'm quite excited to try my hand with a Bandai kit!

Thanks for reading and look forward to more updates soon!