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[Digital Hellhound]

I know it's mostly lore people here, but on my second day of obsessing over tiny plastic dudes, I've gone on a mad kitbashing spree. I'm basically putting together Feudal World Guardsmen, and was wondering if you had tips for good models/kits to use for this.

I've got this guy, who I call Captain Hogan for his similarity to Hulk Hogan. I see him as an old hunter who got his own specialist unit, devoted to his king, whose proclamation he carries on his back. He lost one arm in battle, but it was replaced by the regiment's finest blacksmiths with an arm of iron.

He's made up of a pair of Cadian Shock Troop legs, a Fantasy torso from some Empire kit, one musket from the same kit with a lasgun head replacing the musket head and a Space Marine Command Squad scope on top, one armored arm (a crude augmetic), an Empire head with a Cadian helmet on it, and a Space Marine something on his back. Might add a pouch or something still.

Spoiler: Pics (click to show/hide)

He's got obvious problems - his legs and torso don't match, his lasmusket scope prevents one arm from fitting, his head is out of position, and some of my cutting looks pretty bad. Still, I like the way he's shaping up. I can fix most of these when I get my hands on some putty.

So, any tips? Ideas for characters? Other comments?

admech skitarii rangers box has lots of awesome baroque looking guns and vanguard helmet(which are really really sallet helmet design inspired)
This is personal opinion, but cadian helmet sort of unmakes whole feudal worlder thing, especially if there is access to fantasy battles empire set.

That seems perfect, thanks. I think the Cadian helmet with the Empire head has a lot of character, myself. The idea is to mix and match feudal and modern equipment here. Even Feudal World regiments get issued regular Guard equipment. It's just that these guys never understood that regulations weren't just vague suggestions. They've just grabbed whichever pieces of gear they liked and discarded what they didn't. The leader wears a helmet to appear marginally more professional, since he needs to interact more with other Imperial personnel.

I made two more yesterday, below. They don't have proper backstories yet, but I call the guy on the left Five-Knives-Jonny, because, uh, of his five knives (well, knives and swords). I spotted an arm with a knife strapped to it after finishing him, so he could easily have been Six-Knives-Jonny. The thing you need to know about Five-Knives-Jonny is that he has five knives and that he is always screaming. I'd say more, but I'm scared he'll come to life and stab me.

The other guy doesn't have a name, but the way he lovingly gazes up at his weird-ass laspistol tells you all you need to know. I thought I might make him a vox operator 'cos the thing on his chest looks a bit like a radio part, but it doesn't really fit with his torso. Still feel like adding something to him.

Spoiler: More Pics (click to show/hide)

(Yes, ugly cutting and some remaining fabrication lines there, so it is. I'll fix 'em, I swear!)

Next guy is going to have a grenade launcher and every grenade I can find strapped to him. And a Dwarf tankard because I found a Dwarf kit. With a grenade inside it. I'm also looking to build the regimental commander who is also the King - any suggestions for what to use for him? I'm thinking of grabbing the IG command staff set thing for a base. I have a laurel wreath from the SM Command Squad kit that will do perfectly as a crown of sorts.

In other news, I'm trying painting again after... seven years?

Spoiler: Pics (click to show/hide)

Nice painting dude.

Heh, well, I think it could get there with some practice. It's not terrible! Thank you.

[Craftsdwarf boi]

In other news, I'm trying painting again after... seven years? I have no idea, but it's been a long while. Had a lot of unpainted models ready and base coated, so I sacrificed a few LOTR Rangers of Gondor and a Guardsman to my paints. The Ranger's not 40k but let's say he's a Feral Worlder Guardsman.

I was never good as a kid and still have poor color sense, unsteady hands and colorblindness... but I'm still enjoying this a lot.

Spoiler: Pics (click to show/hide)

I swear they look better in the flesh, haha. The Ranger's cloak is this really vibrant caramel color. He needs a better paint job on the front side though. The details pop out on the Guardsman too. Oh well.

I found that just painting made me imagine the Guardsman's regiment and backstory and what the colors mean. The regiment's colors are sky blue and white, as they come from a world where they live in archaotech plateaus over the clouds, or something. The various skulls and whatnot are gold for the glory of the Emperor. The gear on the belt and the rifle are not regimental issue; thus they're in not in regimental colors, but mass-produced brown. The bayonet and knife are streaked with white for camo in the snowy conditions the regiment's fighting in (but the blue flak is not, so, uh, go figure). The boots are flaked with white to represent snow spatters - though elsewhere it's just my unsteady brush hand, lol.

I'm gonna paint more of my Guard dudes in these colors. I have a metal one with what I think is a melta waiting, so this fellow will have a comrade sometime soon.

These look very pleasing, although it still looks a tiny bit rough.
There are official tutorials on the citadel paint site if you are interested.

[Tack]

Frankly the amount of people with the patience to just sit down and paint models and enjoy it is a dwindling subset of the community.

Ugh. I am once again sharing my opinion on this and I hate it.

Female Space Marines is the archetypal example of this for 40k - fashy fans don't explode at FSM because it violates Sacred Lore, they're exploding at the question of "Why are there no Female Space Marines" because the answer to that is obviously "Because the Emperor and the Imperium are sexist", which incidentally is an answer that actually maintains the lore of there being no FSM.

Hello yes. I don’t like the idea of FSM. It’s absolutely due to sexism, and fascism. Law of %’s.
Take the top 0.1% of a population specifically if you are filtering for brute strength and the number of women in there would be incredibly few. Could there still be some outliers in there? Absolutely, and that at least is an identifiable form of sexism. But there is no equal opportunity in fash, only the law of averages. The neckbeards complaining about no girls allowed wouldn’t be eligible either.

Meanwhile in Russia, if you’re taking 50% of a population then excluding women is plain idiotic. So yeah IMO female guardsmen should come first by a long way.

Want a really fun argument? Sororitas, Commissarat and Tempestus all recruit from the Schola Progenium- a limited population, with one of those being a female-only order.  So what’s the order of ops there? How many women would be commissars, or slip through the cracks to be Stormtroopers?

[LordPorkins]

If they do implement FSM (extremely unlikely.) I just want them to do it because they want to, not because some organization is screaming at them about inclusivity. The result of the latter has like a 99% if being a worse result than the former.

Female guardsman would be awesome though. Honestly they could just make a sprue of female heads. flak armor is pretty bulky yo. Simple, relatively cheap, everyone’s happy

[ArchAIngel]

I'm pretty sure lady IG are 100% lore friendly, just not model maker friendly. More expensive you see.

[nenjin]

It's up to each regiment, whether or not it's coed.

[Telgin]

I don't see Games Workshop making female marines any time soon.  If they wanted a chance to break with established lore to do it, they had that with primaris marines and didn't take it.

[Kot]

I don't see Games Workshop making female marines any time soon.  If they wanted a chance to break with established lore to do it, they had that with primaris marines and didn't take it.

It's not about "would they/when would  they" but rather why would they in first place. Also, in my opinion they absolutely could have fucked off and not add Primaris Marines too, but oh well.

[Rolan7]

We agree about that, at least.  They definitely aren't going to, the only "question" is why didn't they
I almost didn't post the following but meh, might as well.  I don't feel upset, just thinking outloud.

It's up to each regiment, whether or not it's coed.

Yeah the worlds of the Imperium are countless (arguably literally, lol @ Ministorum) and diverse.  The many feral and feudal worlds in particular are understandably unenlightened, even by the Imperium's grimdark standards.  From what I've heard the Imperial Guard makes a point of standardizing the Guard tithe in many ways, like unit size, but keeps regiments divided by world to promote unit cohesion and a certain amount of unique tactical diversity.  Also they actually speak the same language, a plus.

This also gave me a thought about the gender composition of the Imperial Guard.  The text I was reading insisted that planetary governors tend to not only pay the full tithe, but send their best PDF soldiers.  Apparently their greed is generally outweighed by their fear of drawing the Imperium's ire (or even its disfavor, since they rely on the IG to protect against significant foes).

I think we can agree that the strongest 10% of their armies are going to be disproportionately male.  Since this is 40k, where melee is magically rendered relevant in all but the bluest conflicts, raw physical strength is as or more important than any other factors.  So I conclude that Guardsmen are mostly male.

This doesn't apply to the aristocratic officer corp (upward mobiliity: still not a thing), or the commisars from the orphan-academy.  Just the conscripted enlisted.

And maybe it applies to Space Marines, maybe it doesn't, I don't think it matters.  I think the excuse that the geneseed "just doesn't work" is nonsense and could easily be noncanon.  The real question is why bother?  Do battle sisters really need to eat brains and spit acid, and act out the insanities of the primarchs?  I say no.  They're nearly as effective without all that, and substantially cheaper.  Sure they're shorter and less strong inside their powered armor.  They still more than hold their own in close combat (either by fanatic swordplay or flamers).  They don't have the sheer power and reactions of space marines, but they make up for it in numbers and Ecclesiarchal cohorts.  And their fancy daemon princess Living Saint.

We're in this situation because early GW was understandably macho (and silly), and they only dropped the silly part.  That's alright, it's just worth acknowledging I think.

Lore-wise I think it's concerning that the avatar of humankind is excessively male and only wanted sons, but maybe that's a reaction to the Only War galaxy (which he's partly to blame for, with his xenophobic crusades).
Heck 3.5 of the ruinous powers are male too.  Maybe this is sort of metaphysical commentary on the inherently macho nature of the setting

I think GW has come a looong way in making the setting deeper and less silly.  The amount of women in positions of power is a sign of that.  I really don't mind that the Imperium believes it can't make FSM, because the Imperium is incompetent and terrified of change.  "Big E did it that way" is fine *even if he didn't actually*, heh.  I wouldn't be surprised or unhappy if CSM started fielding FSM, though, if only to see the Imperium's reaction.

[Kot]

Yeah the worlds of the Imperium are countless (arguably literally, lol @ Ministorum) and diverse.  The many feral and feudal worlds in particular are understandably unenlightened, even by the Imperium's grimdark standards.  From what I've heard the Imperial Guard makes a point of standardizing the Guard tithe in many ways, like unit size, but keeps regiments divided by world to promote unit cohesion and a certain amount of unique tactical diversity.  Also they actually speak the same language, a plus.

This also gave me a thought about the gender composition of the Imperial Guard.  The text I was reading insisted that planetary governors tend to not only pay the full tithe, but send their best PDF soldiers.  Apparently their greed is generally outweighed by their fear of drawing the Imperium's ire (or even its disfavor, since they rely on the IG to protect against significant foes).

I think we can agree that the strongest 10% of their armies are going to be disproportionately male.  Since this is 40k, where melee is magically rendered relevant in all but the bluest conflicts, raw physical strength is as or more important than any other factors.  So I conclude that Guardsmen are mostly male.

Probably yes. Many of the mixed regiments are very rarely 50/50, and quite a few have a reason behind including women (Cadia where essentially everyone starts to carry a Lasgun as soon as they can, so on). As a side tangent - I don't think the melee relevancy makes it necessary for raw physical strength. Most human soldiers won't hold their own against most enemies they could encounter in melee in terms of strength anyway, and the fact they're swinging chainswords (or bayonets) removes striking power as a major requirement, so it's more of an endurance thing, even despite the sword being surprisingly light, and even then there's not much difference since at the point at which it would become a problem with high probability the guardsman in question is long dead anyway.

And maybe it applies to Space Marines, maybe it doesn't, I don't think it matters.  I think the excuse that the geneseed "just doesn't work" is nonsense and could easily be noncanon.

I think it could be easily non-canon but it doesn't really seem that nonsensical to me. Difference in hormones could easily screw with gene-seed implants, and while transplants between females and males are completely normal IRL, there have been papers which mention that the gender difference can have an impact on the probability of rejection. Considering making a male Marine is already extremely dangerous, the "well the same things wouldn't work on females" doesn't seem like a completely unfounded explanation. Of course Emperor could just make a female version back then, but eh.

I think GW has come a looong way in making the setting deeper and less silly.  The amount of women in positions of power is a sign of that.  I really don't mind that the Imperium believes it can't make FSM, because the Imperium is incompetent and terrified of change.  "Big E did it that way" is fine *even if he didn't actually*, heh.

I'm pretty sure they can't. Emperor was a pretty significantly exceptional, and nobody since then came close to making any significant changes due to simply not having the scientific capabilities to do s- oh, wait, fuck, right, Cawl and Cawlmarines, I forgot we're now in Nu-WH40k, fuck, yeah, so, they probably could do that because Cawl is so amazing.
Actually, even then, Cawl only really worked with adding Primarch stuff back into Marines, with notably being unable to recreate the lost parts, so creating FSM might have been beyond him.

I wouldn't be surprised or unhappy if CSM started fielding FSM, though, if only to see the Imperium's reaction.

Some Slanneshi CSM already have boob plates (usually one, because of course they do), and the question of what's behind the loincloth is probably best left unexplored, so the reaction wouldn't be really that different from usual.

[LordPorkins]

There was reference in one of the Horus Humbug books about a group of creatures that were referred to as feminine that were “once Space Marines.”

So apparently that’s already a thing
Making models probably wouldn’t be smart. People would start yelling at GW for demonizing transgender people or some weird shit.

[Trekkin]

  Do battle sisters really need to eat brains and spit acid, and act out the insanities of the primarchs?  I say no.  They're nearly as effective without all that, and substantially cheaper.  Sure they're shorter and less strong inside their powered armor.  They still more than hold their own in close combat (either by fanatic swordplay or flamers).  They don't have the sheer power and reactions of space marines, but they make up for it in numbers and Ecclesiarchal cohorts.  And their fancy daemon princess Living Saint.

They might be as effective mechanically and from an in-universe military perspective, but looking at the lore as fiction, they're two very different organizations in terms of the stories to which they lend themselves.

See, if there's one underlying theme to the Marines, it's that they don't really fit into the Imperium of Man despite being integral to its defense. They're special-cased around being under the administration of the Lords of Terra, and they have an arrangement with the Ecclesiarchy regarding their heterodox veneration of the Emperor (Black Templars excepted). They also notably hold themselves aloof from humanity, whether with the Salamanders' paternalism or the naked contempt of the Marines Malevolent. They reflect both the Emperor's magnificence and a measure of his monstrousness, and that can be interesting.

Sororitas, on the other hand, are explicitly part of the Ecclesiarchy and are, when all is said and done, indisputably human. They fit in, so to speak. That doesn't mean there aren't interesting stories to tell with them, but it does mean that they aren't equivalent to each other.

[Tack]

I mean the only space marines who do any sort of legitimate administration would be the Ultramarines, and that’s really going against what the Emps intended.

It’s kind of why I have a little soft spot for the dark mechanics. Warpsmiths can really throw their genetically-enhanced weight around.

[LordBaal]

SM were made to serve and protect, not rule mankind.

A while ago I remember having a conversation on TWC about if SM even still had members and gonads and the implications that they being fertile and the possibility of female SM. One of the things I concluded was what if they are still fertile, what status would their children have, and even more so if it were with an hypothetical female space marine. And that's not even touching the how they would be physically, which traits, if any, would they get from the genetherapy their parents underwent.

[Kot]

And that's not even touching the how they would be physically, which traits, if any, would they get from the genetherapy their parents underwent.

Probably very few, if at all, considering they're implants, unless Male/Female Space Marines had specific organs dedicated to passing some of them to the offspring. Considering the rules of "magic space technology" I guess some genetic material could somehow get into the kid, but it could not be advantageous, and even if, certainly not enough to create a full-on Space Marine.
All things considered it'd be somewhat more likely for Custodes to reproduce this way (though at the same less likely for them to be fertile in first place), considering they do not use implantation but instead actual on-the-fly genetic modification, so they are actually remade whole.