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Raging Heroes Continue With Next Kickstarter Teasers
April 17, 2014 by brennon
Raging Heroes have been showing off a few more pieces of art for their upcoming Kickstarter that is going to add Dark Elves and the Sisters of Eternal Mercy to your tabletop. See what you think of these ladies below...
First up we have the rather deadly looking Krassh with her snarling pets. She's very much the Beast Master of the Dark Elf/Dark Eldar style range that Raging Heroes are going for and while it doesn't do much new in the looks department I'm sure it's going to be an exquisite miniature.
The Davidians are pretty much the same in respect to their 'not doing much new' when it comes to the look and feel of zealous dark future females but Raging Heroes do make exceptional miniatures and they are usually as close as possible to the concept art which is nice.
It's going to be interesting to see whether or not the Kickstarter for these ladies goes as well as the last one. A lot of people continue to say that they are bored of this style of design and yet their last Kickstarter which featured a fair few women presented in this way blasted through pretty much every stretch goal.
I'm sure we will see the results soon.
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backed the original kickstarter project. really cant wait for them to arrive! i will make my decision based on those… looking good though
booooooobs! 😮
I also backed their Toughest Girls of the Galaxy kickstarter and I’m keen to see where they go next.
I’m not so interested in Dark Elves, but since RH are saying they will be available as both fantasy and sci fi versions, as given the completely weird and sinister look of some of the concept art, I will be keeping an eye on possible minis to use as Chaos Cultists.
I am a lot more interested in their not Sisters of Battle. The concept art looks good and RH are probing to be one of the better sculptors of female minis.
The not-Dark Elf/Dark Eldar Beastmaster is to be expected. It is petty much in line with the established imagry of that kind of character, as problematic as that can be.
The Davidians on the other hand look rather like a group of Adepta Soritas Sisters Repentia that have left even more of their clothes behind than usual.
So, a sect of fanatical warriors chooses to go to war wearing nothing but votive prayer scrolls and strangely heavily armoured boots… why?
Why is protecting one’s shins, ankles and feet (incidentally, how would you actually even walk in those things without the ability to flex your ankles? It makes GW power armour almost look practical by comparison) so vitally important when you don’t bother to protect your heart, lungs, brain, femoral arteries or abdominal organs?
And what is with the hoods? Why do all these concept characters wander around with nothing but paper to cover most of their bodies, yet their eyes are always uniformly obscured in a rather dehumanising fashion?
While not actually topless (a small improvement over Brother Vinni’s stuff, I suppose), frankly I would prefer it if the concept artists showed rather more restraint when it came to keeping their personal fetishes out of the miniature design process.
Artwork like this, and the sulpts that will probably be based upon them, seem to betray and attitude toward women that is rather disturbing, leading me to wander what kind of person would even want to buy those types of miniatures.
As for the success of the Kickstarter, many people are truly sick and tired of the misogynistic tropes that dominate the design of female minis, but unfortunately even if you take into account every single person who posts on sites like BoW, they only make up a relatively small fraction of the gaming public. It seems that the old truism that ‘sex sells’ still holds true, and those of us who object to its ubiqitous character corroding wargaming are voices in the wilderness.
That said, there is also the fact that the toughest girls in the galaxy kickstarter (‘girls’ notice, not ‘women’ – the warning signs were there from the off I suppose) was originally pitched as attempting to combine ‘sexy’ design with a depiction of more capable and credible female characters (always a difficult balancing act even with the best of intentions), and it seems that, over time, the project has moved further and further away from that goal and lurched every more toward the depressingly familiar standard ‘cheesecake’ territory that so afflicts wargaming,
Ace post, couldn’t agree more. After my experience in Salute with my girlfriend, I’d say that the negative connotations associated with wargaming that you point out are well deserved, this project is simply an extension of that.
Shiney figures or no.
While I’ve no wish to rerun that old debate about the way miniatures portray women, I do find it odd that that you automatically equal the portrayal of sexuality as misogynistic.
I do not, nor have I ever, equated female sexuality with misogyny. Such a thing would, ironically, be rather misogynistic, since it would deny women the ability to express their own sexuality.
That said, the portrayal of an objectifying sexuality is often misogynistic. There is also the fact that the wargaming design process is still dominated by men, many of whom employ a rather narrow set of sexualised artistic conventions when depicting most female characters. That plays into issues of the male gaze and the lack of female agency in the design process.
It is very important to remember that a woman choosing to present herself in a sexualised manner, or creating sexualised imagery of female characters other than a representation of herself, is a very different proposition to a man creating sexualised imagery of women, if for no other reason than the dominant power gradients between men and women in society, and the ubiquitous character of sexualised images of women in our culture that are created by men and explicitly calaibrated to appeal to men.
I invite you to imagine a male Davidian mini with the same penchant, when it comes to clothing, for tight thongs paired with votive papers and little else. With the same thrusting hip and chest pose. With the same obscured eyes. Leaving aside the fact that the creation of such a mini would be, to put it mildly, somewhat unlikely (something that in itself bears examination – why is it OK to openly sexualise female minis but not male ones?), would you honestly see nothing strange with such a mini in terms of pose and composition of nothing else?
@vetruviangeek don’t get me wrong, I pretty much agree with most of what you’ve said. I also think these Davidian miniatures look very odd with their current outfit. Going into battle naked except for a pair of enormous boots just looks wrong. I would actually have preferred them to be naked from the knees down as well. A warrior who chooses to fight naked does have historical precedent and is far more believable than one who wears a fetish outfit.
It’s all about context though isn’t it? It some showed you a similarly dressed miniature and told you it was a Slaaneshi cultist the view on the believability of the miniature might (might that is) be different.
Now personally, I think we are victims of our society’s twisted morals here. Most of us live in countries where the depiction of violence is far more acceptable than the portrayal of human anatomy. We make games out of mass death but think our children should be protected from seeing a female nipple.
No, I don’t think nudity is automatically wrong, it is all about context and the way it is done. That will always be personal judgement. You might find these miniatures offensive, I find them silly and other people will like them.
For me the biggest problem with the sexualisation of women in wargaming is the context. Wargaming is inherently violent – it’s the depiction of war, after all. You are on very thin ice when you put sexuality and violence into the same box. Then you get into debates about whether depicting something is advocating or condoning it. We don’t assume that every one who buys WW2 Germans is a nazi but we tend to sneer at people who buy a mini with boobs.
At the end of the day, we have to let people make their own decisions about what they find acceptable. I for example, could never play a WW2 game. The real WW2 is the reason my mother grew up without a father and making a game out of it feels weird and uncomfortable to me. I would never try to force that view on other people though and I would never think badly of anyone who loves their WW2 games. Perhaps we should trust people to draw their own lines?
I don’t think the reaction would be much different if it was a Slaaneshi cultist. If you were inclined to like it then you still would, to dislike it then you still would, and to feel that it perpetuates harmful gender stereotypes then you would think the Slaaneshi thing is a flimsy excuse to portray the stereotype.
@redben probably so, but then we get into a debate about whether a stereotype is harmful or harmless.
It’s more each individual’s reaction I’m referring to rather than whether it is or isn’t harmful 🙂
The tropes surrounding the warrior who goes into battle naked relates back to a specific period in history when certain warrior groups did this to express disdain for their opponents. In an age where ballistic weaponry was comparatively primative and rare, and melee combat was dominant, it was a way of saying that you had such a low opinion of your foe’s abilities as a warrior that you won’t even bother wearing armour (though a shield was still common), since they don’t even have the skill to land a blow on you.
There is nothing specifically sexual about this type of nudity (though one could certainly argue about the potential for an unacknowledge homoerotic subtext). It is all highly masculinarised imagery playing into the more stupid end of male power fantasies, which makes it an odd basis on which to try to justify the clearly sexualised partial nudity of female minis.
The idea of mocking the enemy’s warrior prowess in this fashion makes some (very, very small) degree of sense given the technology of the era (though it still smacks of the kind of arrogance that will get you killed sooner rather than later), but it is utterly ridiculous in any more modern setting. No one would even dream of behaving in such a manner today, and if they did they would not be viewed as fearless warriors but rather as sadly deceased eccentrics who really should have known better.
I have never accepted the argument that explaining the model as being a Slanneshi cultist (or a similar idea of belonging to an explicitly decadent faction) really helps with this. As Redben says, that does nothing to mitigate the harmful character of gender stereotyping or the fact that such imagery is so ubiquitous in wargaming. If it was a one off sculpt here and there it really wouldn’t matter very much, but as it stands, there are an awful lot of Slanneshi (or equivalent) aligned female minis out there for some reason, even when they are supposed to belong to a more… shall we just say ‘conservative’ faction. It is the fact that it is rare not to see a female character like this which is the heart of the issue.
I agree that our society is far more accepting of violence than it is of sexuality, and that is obviously a problem, but we must remember that we are not talking about generalised depictions of anatomy or sexuality here. It is the specific depiction of idealised female anatomy and a form of overblown setereotypical female sexuality that is so dominant within wargaming,
Whether or not an individual has an aesthetic appreciation for a given mini is a matter of personal taste, as you say, but it really has become impossible to argue in good faith that there isn’t an overabundance of sexualised female minis in wargaming that all seem to be created with similar goals and types of depiction in mind. It is stiflingly samey and homogenised, which is bad for artistic expression, but more importantly this stuff does not remain solely the domain of personal artistic taste. It plays a role, however small or peripheral, in the ongoing replication and reinforcement of misogynistic tropes in broader society.
The idea that female sexuality should be a certain way; specifically, that women should be sexually available to men at all times and in all places, and that even lesbianism can be subverted to that end.
That women should have a certain appearance in order to be considered desireable (as if ‘desireability’ is an objectively determined, monolithic phenomenon), and another, mutually exclusive, one in order to be taken seriously in any context other than the bedroom.
That womern who don’t conform to an effectively unobtainable (for most people, at least) physical ideal somehow lack femininty, while those that do approximate that look must accept that they will never be viewed in any other terms than through the lens of their notional sexual ‘worth’. The list goes on.
I also tend to avoid WW2 and other historical wargaming, preferring fictional conflicts. The difference is that these wars ended decades (or often centuries or even millennia) ago, whereas toxic misogyny and the harm that it does to women is happening right now. Every day, women encounter the effects of the glass ceiling and wage inequality in emplyment. They have to endure either judgement for failing to be sufficiently ‘sexy’, or undesired advances if they are conventionally attractive. They are subject to the poisonous influence of a rape culture that blames the victims and tells women every day of their lives that they must be careful to avoid sexual assault without ever suggesting that the burden not to rape should lie solely with the rapist. It is not forcing my opinion on anyone to acknowledge that this is a real social issue that is happening right now, and that our hobby is a part of it.
Everyone is free to draw their own lines about taste and artistic preference, but they are not free to silence the voices of others who have concerns about the social consequences of certain dominant trypes of imagery. Free expression cuts both ways.
@vetruviangeek please don’t think I disagree with you because I really don’t. I agree totally with 99% of everything you’ve said! I’m just arguing about the details.
I really wish that all miniatures of women were realistic and respectful and positive too. However, I get uneasy whenever I see people trying to tell others what they should and shouldn’t be making or buying. I’m always reminded of the infamous Lady Chatterly trial where the prosecuting council asked the jury ” Would you want you wife or servants to read this?” We run the danger of falling into the condescending stance of, ” well of course we can look at these things and see them for what they are, but there are people out there who aren’t as educated and intelligent as we are who need protecting from this” I’m not saying that is your stance, but it is certainly the way some people talk.
If we have a blanket ban on nudity then I think that is so very dangerous. A society which says nudity is wrong is one in which people learn to be ashamed of their own bodies. So, we can say nudity is ok, but only good nudity, non-harmful, non-sexual nudity, but that is impossible to enforce in anyway other than each of us making a judgement about what we think is acceptable and voting with our wallets.
I will be voting with my wallet by only buying the miniatures from RH that I like. Their Toughest Girls of the Galaxy range contains some excellent sculpts of female soldiers with realistic equipment.
But it is important to remember that this is not a trial, and we are not in a court of law. I do not have the power to tell anyone what they should or shouldn’t buy or sculpt. All I am doing – all I can do – is discuss the potential social impact of the sculpts and by extension of the decison to buy them. That discussion is not oppressive, and does not amount to censorship. I am not saying that buying these models makes someone a bad person for ever and always (though as I have said I don’t understand why someone would want to buy moels like the Davidians, and I do think that the display of such models could legitimately be read as seeming to endorse a harmful view of women), or that any sanction should be applied to those who do. The conversation itself is not coercive.
I am also not suggesting that I can look at them, but others should not because I am somehow ‘superior’. It is not an issue of looking at the models somehow corrupting the viewer’s morals or ‘soul’ (the common anti-erotica argument). It is a question of how widepread this imagery is and how it plays into existing harmful tropes surrounding the notionally ‘proper’ or ‘acceptable’ expression of womanhood and female sexuality. As I have said upthread, if it was only a few sculpts it wouldn’t matter, but it is so very commonplace that one is often hard pressed to find a female mini that isn’t grossly, almost freakishly sexualised (though some of the other minis from this kickstarter do a fair job, which makes one wonder why they chose to go down this path with the Davidians) . Combined with so many other artistic and pop culture spheres that have a similar tendency to depict women in this limiting, monochrome way, this becomes socially toxic very quickly indeed.
It is your right to vote with your wallet, but that decision can only be an informed one if we discuss the issue, and if everyone is fully aware of what is at stake here. With so much effort being put into discrediting and demonising the feminist and gender theorist viewpoint, we cannot simply assume that all sides of the debate are known by all interested parties.
I wish you well with your purchases, and please don’t think that I am trying to be impossible out of some grumpy, misanthropic impuse toward negativity. I have nothing against sex or sexuality, just so long as it is not warped into something that is used to make the lot of women in society worse.
@vetruviangeek Then I think we are pretty much in agreement. I totally agree that it is terrible that this is the prevailing way in which women are portrayed in our hobby. To me the problem isn’t that this stereotype exists, it’s that other portrayals are so rare. As consumers we should be demanding a much wider and varied portrayal of women, not this one stereotype.
Don’t care about sexism, could be a bloke or a women dressed like that for all I care, it’s just that the concept is just awful.
Looks pretty tame compared to a night out at Torture Garden… And yes that is an actual fetish club… Google if you dare.
On the basis that the Davidians are filling the zealot / flagellant role ala Warhammer (not something I’m interested in, in either male or female form to be honest!) I will be more interested to see the concepts of the ‘regular’ Sisters in their sci-fi and fantasy incarnations. Presumably they come with more clothes and don’t buy their boots from New Rock.
..although they probably *will* have heels instead. I guess you can’t have everything.
RH have already shown a concept for a more standard ‘sister’. You can find it here;
Thanks for that. So yeah, pretty much what I expected – SoB re-drawn with RH’s particular aesthetic. I’m sure there will be a few minis that I can cherry pick from their line-up 🙂
for all that people frown upon them they do get talked about a lot probably the idea
At the end of the day I, personally at least, always give eh shall we say “busty-fantasy” a pass if the model shows some skill and craftsmanship (which is present here). It merely falls under Erotica and I have nothing with that so long as it’s not sold to kids – or teens if nudity is involved. (A miniature is a piece of art technically).
No one has ever, ever, come out of a Woman’s Studies class smarter than when they entered: women’s studies is not interested in reason or actual equality of the sexes, it’s all smoke and mirrors. The kind of pure shite that is spread in those lessons and across youtube (i forget the name but a particularly idiotic woman did a series of deceptive videos on imaginary sexism in video games, lying through her teeth at every corner) very easily distorts what is going on here. It also obscures the same sexist process which is applied to the male sex for the sake of selling products to women. They’re making erotica, they’ve guessed it will sell. They’ve put a great deal of skill into it.
If the primary audience of plastic models were teenage girls then you would see see topless male Space Marines and probably willies. It’s that simple. That being said, yes some girls would be offended by such Raging Heroes models (as above), other women would find them quite wonderful, sexes do not think in uniform. The reason there are limited sexualised male figures is simply no one would buy them because the primary audience are males. Duh.
I do think, and this put me off Infinity, the desire to have so many cartoon busty women in miniature form .. and then KILL them, is not my cup of tea. The idea of women being shot and torn up horrifies me, even in a toy solider game and why some are desperate to integrate this into a game is a bit odd I find. The mixing of sexuality and violence is always something that should at least make us rise an eyebrow.
These models are all beautiful pieces of art – so long as you’re over 18, erotica is fine – but… do they belong in a wargame as such at all? Clearly the “pg13” version of these models have found a massive place in games like Infinity and perhaps that links to the very East Asian influences (Manga etc) that that game takes from.
I take it that the woman you are referring to is the Canadian -American feminist Anita Sarkeesian who created the Tropes versus Women videos posted on the website feminist Frequency? If you are going to accuse her publicly of lying, then I hope you have some evidence of her deliberatly misrepresenting particular games or elements of the gaming industry with a clear intent to deceive. Merely asserting that she is lying when she isn’t even here to defend herself is out of order.
You also state that ‘women’s studies’ (the broader field is gender studies of political feminism) is somehow disinterested in actual equality and forms some kind of evil conspiracy. You might want to have something to back up that rather extreme claim as well.
if people don’t like a certain mini don’t buy it. or a certain game or a certain company or a certain anything. But please spare us all the lectures. I am sick to death of hearing about how offensive to women any gaming hobby is. Guess what? it’s for guys. and if my girlfriend doesn’t like it who cares.
This may shock some, but plenty of girls enjoy and adore images of scantly clad women.
Yes, it enforces a horrible body-image, but males suffer that too.