One of the perennial debates of the hobby is whether or not there should be female Space Marines. To me, the answer is some mix of “Obviously yes” and “Belisarius Cawl is sitting right there”. But leaving that aside, one of the common rejoinders (and one of the least toe-curlingly offensive ones at that – but that is a very, very low bar) is that the Sisters of Battle already exist.
Let’s explore a little bit of why “We have female Space Marines at home…” doesn’t count the way some folks think it does.
A Disclaimer
Because invariably this starts to devolve into “You Ess-Jay-Dubs are invading our hobby!” and gatekeeping…I’ve been playing this game since 3rd edition. I’ve been wargaming longer than that, but it tended to be with hex-and-counter games. And in that time, I’ve had a number of both Space Marine and Sisters armies. My very first army was a homebrew Space Marine chapter called The Huntsmen. The army I played after that, when I found myself in Ireland a 10 minutes walk from a GW store, in need of meeting people, and without the Space Marines was a Sisters army. They got me to the top tables at the Dublin GT the year I was there before I promptly got crushed by a Slaanesh Demons army. The actual quote from my opponent, “If you roll a 6 you’ve won.” when firing my Exorcist is the seed from which this blog grew.
One of the models I was the most proud of for a very long time (and indeed still rather like her, she’s just a bit small), was a converted Celestine.
I fielded her a a jump pack Cannoness, because this was also the era of people being pretty opposed to special characters, at least in my local group. Those are the metal wings from Balthsar Gelt’s pegasus pinned to her back, and her base has a bunch of coins glued to it to keep her from toppling over.
Right now, I’ve got both Space Marines and Sisters as armies – a small force of Black Templar, a metric ton of Heresy-era Imperial Fists, and about 100 PL of Sisters, which are being painted with agonizing slowness because the models deserve care and attention, whereas the end of the Fists scheme is “And now literally cover it in an enamel wash”.
I love both of these armies.
So now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, there are three broad reasons why “You can just have Sisters” doesn’t actually, you know, work. There’s some Philosophical Reasons, some Aesthetic Reasons, and some Practical reasons.
The Philosophical
The first reasons are some philosophical ones for why they’re not a 1:1 match. And those come down to theme. Putting a woman in powered armor doesn’t make a Space Marine any more than putting a random male Inquisitor in powered armor makes him a Space Marine. Space Marines Aren’t People.
The Horus Heresy does a good job of communicating this. Space Marines are genetically engineered monsters, who evoke what is best described as a prey response in most humans who meet them. Their bodies are literally hollowed out and many of their organs replaced. What’s left is something vaguely person shaped, but not actually a person.
The Sisters of Battle fundamentally are people. They are extremely, fragiley, human. That is one of the most enduring parts of their theme – orphans of the Imperium, raised in (frankly horrific) academies so that they might serve that same Imperium, armed and armored with the best humanity has, but still fundamentally human. “What can a super-human genetically engineered super soldier do when set against the Imperium’s foes?” and “What can an extraordinary human being do when set against the Imperium’s foes?” are fundamentally different questions. In this, it’s been my experience that Sisters players often find more in common with the Guard than with Space Marines.
Beyond that, and because of that human fragility, the primary theme of the Sisters of Battle is sacrifice – or martyrdom if you prefer. It’s baked into their lore. It’s baked into their mechanics. It is problematically common in the fluff that how you know something is serious is a few hundred Sisters die casually so the Space Marine Heroes can do Space Marine Hero things (this occurred during both the Rise of the Primarch series and the Fury of Magnus series, even ignoring the works of one Matt Ward). A long while back on Twitter I wrote a thread talking about why I so very much wanted the Paragon Warsuit to be good – it was one of the vanishingly few units in the Sisters codex that had room for narrative heroics that didn’t imply either Death or Repentance or both.
Almost no Space Marines have that theme – indeed, it would be weird if the Space Marines were narratively centered on dying an awful lot, given how hard it is to make a Space Marine. You have the Space Wolves and the Blood Angels, both playing with “What if humanity’s greatest protectors are actually monstrous?” using different approaches. The Ultramarines, putting a veneer of heroic practicality on a dystopian setting. The Black Templars, drowning in joyless fanaticism. The Dark Angels, exploring why being a complete tool makes other people not like you.
And that’s one of the reasons people want female Space Marines. Space Marines are the heroes of the setting (for values of hero), and they have tons of room for different themes, playing off different imagery and historical references, etc. That sort of freedom really isn’t available to Sisters players, and while I rather dig the thematic notes for the Sisters, it is only one flavor, and it is not to everyone’s taste. There’s also things the Sisters can explore that the Space Marines can’t – the Sisters are far more numerous, so are much better set up for “A small priory on an isolated world…” types of stories and campaigns than the Marines, who tend to be deployed more rarely.
The Aesthetic
I love the Sisters aesthetic. But it is not for everyone. It’s baroque, and there’s plenty of joy in painting more streamlined figures (Mk VI Heresy Marines are a joy). Or the modern, somewhat tactical aesthetic of the Phobos-armored Primaris marines. When it comes down to it, the Space Marine is the iconic image of the Warhammer 40,000 franchise, and it has a very specific aesthetic to it.
People who want an army in that aesthetic aren’t looking for the Sisters aesthetic. And vice versa.
It’s also off-putting to some people, for justifiable reasons. While Games Workshop has made some significant strides in de-fetishizing the Sisters line, between actually giving Repentia clothing, having veteran Sisters officers look like older women who have seen some shit, etc., it is still an army that emphasizes certain visual themes, including heavily exaggerated femininity (aka boob plate) and a number of units running a bit lean in the clothing department. It’s an aesthetic that fits their theme, in my opinion, but it doesn’t fit all themes, or even a broad swathe of them.
The only way the Space Marines and the Sisters could be a 1:1 correspondence is if “Powered armor, but girl” was the only relevance anyone uses to decide which models are cool, and we know that isn’t true.
The Practical
The Sisters of Battle aren’t Space Marines rules-wise either. The Sisters have a very specific play style. They’ve often been a sort of “close quarters” army, excelling at close range, whether that’s actually melee, or with brutal short range shooting. Acts of Faith are a wonderful (albeit somewhat less unique in late 9th-edition) variance manipulation method. They are fairly fragile, hit very hard, and get a lot of mileage from an army-wide 6++.
The Space Marines have an entirely different remit. First, the sheer bulk of the Space Marines codex (leaving aside the faction-level ones), allows for a lot of different play styles just because of how many units they can draw from. The second is that, when it comes down to it, the Space Marine stat line does a lot of work, as do their base rules. Intercessors aren’t bad in combat – they’re not great, but they’re durable, and have a surprising amount of attacks. That non-specialized variety has been the hallmark of the Space Marines for a very long time now.
Someone saying “I want to play Space Marines” and being handed a Sisters army is, unless they had a very narrow concept that happened to overlap, is going to be disappointed.
Closing Thoughts
This feels like it should be an absurd argument to need to address. If someone wants to see more representation in the iconic mainline faction for the game they play, the answer is not “Oh, there’s a niche faction over there with an extremely shallow bit of similarity”. It just isn’t. It cheapens both factions – in theme, in playstyle, and aesthetics – to classify them as “Powered Armor, Boy” and “Powered Armor, Girl”.
The ask for female Space Marines isn’t a big one. The conspicuous absence of a couple lines of text, built off of the dubious 1980’s biology that pervades Warhammer 40K. A sprue of head options scaled correctly. There you go, that’s it. That’s the whole thing.
And no, the answer to that isn’t the Sisters of Battle, as much as I love my fanatical gun-nuns and their baroque armor. They’re just not the same. It’s a silly argument to claim they can substitute for each other. You’ll note no one tells Chaos Space Marine fans that things are fine and they don’t need releases because the Primaris Whatever-the-next-word-starting-with-I just got released. It’s a red herring to do so for the Sisters. Always has been.
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I have a female space marine in my Smurf army using a Bombshell Miniatures ‘female marine’ with primaris arms & backpack. Periodically when playing at the FLGS, some 20-something will notice her and point out that there ‘can’t be female space marines’ to which I reply that she’s trans-gendered. After a few dumbfounded moments, the usual response is ‘That’s impossible’.
Pointing out that if the Imperium can turn a mere human into not only a space marine, but even further into a primaris marine, then why can they not turn a male primaris marine into a female primaris marine when current science & technology can turn a man into a woman and vice versa.
Usually their closed little minds are unable to offer anything more than ‘because they can’t’ after which they soon wander off and never bring it up again.
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“Space Marines are genetically engineered monsters, who evoke what is best described as a prey response in most humans who meet them. Their bodies are literally hollowed out and many of their organs replaced. What’s left is something vaguely person shaped, but not actually a person.”
Okay, so thanks for proving that we don’t need female Space Marines. After all, if they’re already a bunch of genetically engineered monsters that are only vaguely person shaped who are you to say that the models we have aren’t already partly female? It seems to me what you actually want is an extremely identifiable ‘thing’ to point at and say “See, this is a female space marine” as if that would matter at all per your own descriptor. Person goes in > genetic monstrosity comes out. Seeing as the mold is based on 18 extra special genetic monstrosities why would any of the marines look female at all? If they started as a woman they would still come out looking like the freakshow that marines are.
The reality is what you’re asking for is exactly what you decry the Sisters of being. You are asking for a visual distinction between one power armored monster and another, and that distinction, in this case one of them being female, would only be achieved by expressly putting emphasis on their feminine traits, othering them from the rest of the army. You can’t have female space marines without it becoming fetish fuel or a parody of itself on release, because any emphasis on that femininity will have them stand out, and not enough emphasis will beg the question of why bother doing it in the first place.
I find it strange also that you go on about the aesthetics of the Sisters army and how they’re different from Space Marines…without mentioning what the Space Marine aesthetic is, which is a warrior brotherhood, emphasis on brotherhood. Why does this faction need to have its well defined themes and aesthetics be altered at all? Do you think the Tau, the Tyranids, the Eldar should be altered to suit some strange idea of ‘fairness’ or ‘inclusivity’? At one point can someone say “Why not leave well enough alone”?
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I’m replying to this because you’re actually *so close*. You’re right – there wouldn’t be much of a visual distinction. That’s the point. The “No Girls Allowed” aspect of the Space Marines is entirely a textual artifice.
As for the Space Marine aesthetic being brotherhood – I disagree. That’s a theme in some, but not all, Space Marine stories, but I have a hard time looking at say, a Phobos-armored Infiltrator and thinking “Yeah, that’s all about Brotherhood.”
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The models probably wouldn’t change. What would change, however, is the stories and fluff text that could and would be developed.
At the end of the day, this is a war game but we like it so much because of the setting and stories and heroes.
The sisters, as mentioned in the original post, have a specific play style and specific stories told about them.
People want more.