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!