It’s always seemed like a missed opportunity to me that there are no female space marines.
There are lore reasons for there not being any, but they’re a little flimsy and considering
how mutable Warhammer canon is it’s not as though they couldn’t be changed. The
lack of canon models though does mean that it presents an interesting challenge for a
converter. For my swing at creating a plausible lady marine squad I bought these two female
Stormcast miniatures to use as a base. They’re the correct scale to match up with space marine
limbs and equipment, read clearly as female, and don’t look overtly sexualized, since
as much as possible I wanted to avoid that with this build.
I started by replacing the stormcast torso with that of a scout marine. It helps offset
the fantasy visual language of the stormcast, and has a more minimal waist and deep chest
than standard space marine armor. While I wanted to avoid a sexualized look, I still
wanted a silhouette that was recognizably female so they wouldn’t just look like normal
space marines with female heads. It’s a delicate balance, but one I think the original
stormcast models hit really well. Combined with the stormcast legs, the scout torso gives
my lady marine a slim and subtly hourglass silhouette that matches the original stormcast.
The connection between torso and legs was a touch too thin, so I added a ring of pouches
from a primaris kit to bulk it out and hide any wonkiness. I also knew the pouches I were
going to be a key element in making sure my femmarines didn’t just look like they had
stormcast legs. I’m honestly not crazy about the amount of robes the Stormcast have on
for this build, but there aren’t any female Stormcast with regular armored legs. We’ll
just assume that these marines belong to one of those chapters that are really into robes
like the Black Templars or Dark Angels. This is the rifle from a Primaris Eliminator.
I really love their sniper rifles, and this one is held in an interesting way which I
thought would look cool lined up with her pose. One thing I wanted to avoid with my
lady marine squad is the trope of women always being either snipers or spellcasters or medics,
but for one of three marines I didn’t think it was too bad to have one of them as a sniper.
The scout isn’t designed to have a powerpack attached to it, so I had to cut it down to
create a flat surface for a solid bond. For the left arm I decided on this knife drawn
primaris arm. It gives the marine a good sense of motion, as though she’s whipping around
to face an enemy. I didn’t grab footage of it, but I did try dry fitting on the classic
marine shoulder pads on both arms, but they just didn’t fit either physically or aesthetically,
and I don’t think they’re really all that needed to read as a marine anyway..
The head I’m using here is a third party part from a company called Statuesque miniatures.
They’re really the only good source of female heads, even if they’re not quite stern or
tough enough for the warhammer universe. Still, this one worked pretty well. I glued it in
place farther back on the scourt torso than it was designed to go to give the deep chest
impression. For right now I didn’t worry about the lack of neck as I knew I’d sculpt
one later. For my second lady marine I used this female
stormcast from the ballista kit as a basse. I hate the gold color, but there’s only
a handful of female stormcasts in the whole line, so I didn’t really have any other
options. I repeated my steps from the first marine
and I snipped off her torso and replaced it with another scout marine’s. The connection
between it was even worse than it had been for my first marine’s, but just as with
her I used pouches to hide the seam. For her right arm I used a bolter arm. I wanted
her to have a really tough as nails look, and the drum magazine and robotic hand is
perfect for that. Unfortunately, I’d later have to change it to a Primaris Reiver’s
bolt pistol because it otherwise blocked the marine’s face and made her look like she
was just looking menacingly at her own gun. For the left arm I attached a chaos marine’s
chainsword. I like the design to them with the blade bit at the end a lot more than the
normal space marine ones which always kind of look like a box with teeth on it to me,
and the pose of the arm works well here, giving my marine a springing forward look.
Though the scout marine torsos had been working well, for my last lady marine I wanted to
try and use a classic marine breastplate for the front of her torso just for the challenge
of it. This chestplate has a really regal look to it, so I decided she’d be the captain
of the squad. To fit it on her I carved off the little of the torso from the stormcast
and glued on the marine chestplate. For her right arm I decided to use the same
drum magazine bolter as my last marine, and pair it with another bolter in her left hand.
Is it ridiculous? Yes. But this is Warhammer. Sometimes you just need two bolters to deal
with heretics and xenos filth. I attached a marine powerpack and dry fitted
on a Primaris Reiver helmet. I love these helmets with their skull faces, and wanted
to see if my femmarine was reading sufficiently female that she wouldn’t need a female head
to sell her as a chick. Unfortunately she wasn’t quite there, so I decided to give
her this Sequitor head. I don’t love it, but she does have a great stern expression.
While it was a good experiment, the classic marine breastplate just wasn’t working for
my marine captain. Something about her proportions are just really off and wonky, especially
compared to the scout torsos, so I went back and replaced her torso with one. It took some
pouch rearranging but looks significantly better.
And with her ironed out, my lady marine squad was finished. The sniper is my favorite of
the three, the chainsword one my second favorite, and the captain my least favorite, but I think
they all turned out pretty decent and recognizably both female and space marines which was the
goal. In the future I’d like to take another swing at trying to convert female space marines
without using Stormcast parts since there simply aren’t enough unique ones for it
to be a sustainable solution for filling a whole army, and the challenge of coming up
with a way to do that intrigues me. Do you have any suggestions on how to do it? Leave
it in the comments if you do. Also don’t forget to hit the subscribe button if you’re
interested in seeing more, like if you liked the video, and check out some of my other
conversions. Thanks for watching.