Creating diversity in your tabletop army.

I was recently involved in a discussion thread on BOLS (Bell of Lost Souls) regarding the "need" for GW to add more "diversity" into their games.  The discussion was mainly about increasing the number of female miniatures, but there were also some calling for GW to present more "ethnic" miniatures.

Like many GW customers, I'd love to see more female minis for most human/human-ish factions in tabletop games, or even just female head options on every sprue, since this would keep me from having to go to 3rd party manufacturers who cast such heads in resin (I prefer working with plastic).  I think GW really missed a trick by not having the current Escher gang come with heads that could easily be added to other GW human miniatures.

One thing I said that some found controversial is this: "female Space Marines" already exist in the 40k universe - and they are called Adeptas Sororitas - so there is no need to change the backstory of the 40k universe to "create" gender integrated Space Marine chapters with female space marines.  That said, it has taken forever for the AS/SoB (Sisters of Battle) to get a revamp, but the new models are finally arriving.

Another apparently "controversial" statement I made was that I don't really see a need for GW to manufacture "different ethnicities" of each human model line.  This is not because I want the dark future to be "lilly white", but because I see this as something hobbyists can do for themselves, during the painting process.*

Hopefully, this is not going to come across as a rant, but more as an explanation of how to add ethnic diversity, without it being hand-fed to you.  Please note that I didn't paint anything up specially for this, just used a recent project.

From early on in my GW hobby experience, I have had ethnically mixed armies, due to experimenting with painting faces differently.

Here are some classic RT era scouts I recently painted up.   Notice the faces.

Having a variety of skin tones is one way to individualize monopose models, adding some visual variety to your army.

Different skin shades.

Different skin shades.

Different skin shades.

Different "caucasian" skin shades.

The "mohawk" hair style can easily be painted in colors that fit any ethnicity.

And here are the Sgts (one is repeated in both pictures):

Light and dark.

Dark with and without reddish tint.

The "block cut" is another hairstyle that can be painted to work as any ethnicity, as can another popular option with minis - the "cue ball".

Even a wilder hairstyle can be painted up to represent more than one ethnic look.

Sometimes a close up totally ruins the effect.

And, as you may have noticed, I'm not even a particularly good painter.


Perhaps what they should be asking GW for is an expanded range of "flesh tone" paints.

* And if you have a "sealed helmet" army, who is to say what color the skin is under those helmets?

What's your favorite color baby?