Representation in Rebel Units

By ndogg229, in Star Wars: Legion

Just finished Solo and was super excited to see all the different species represented in Enfys Nest. Made me think how boring the current Rebel trooper units are (male humans). So FFG, lets get some better representation for future Rebel units! First, how about some women units? Second, let's have some majority alien units. Twilleks, Rodians, Ithorians! Unlike those boring Imperials the possibilities are endless!!

Maybe we can just start with an Enfys Nest Expansion?

Rebel ion trooper in the corps is a female. There is a Duros in the unit too.

In the commandos, there’s a Mon Cal sniper and another alien team member.

Wookies are 100% non-human. :)

Also, if the new x34 and pathfinders are a hint of things to come, Rebels will get more variety in their minis.

Edited by ScummyRebel

There are two females in the rebel trooper set. You just have to look at them properly! 😎

There are females in every unit released and previewed so far.

They do however look like female soldiers rather than a catwalk version with exaggerated assets and impractical armour.

Edited by aniron
16 minutes ago, Triangular said:

There are two females in the rebel trooper set. You just have to look at them properly! 😎

yes and a female in in commandos the only all male human unit is the fleet wait there one female in it as well I think but i made some mine into alien's and I have one unit that has no humans in it do to model swamping. it seem that most imperial i play try kill that unit first the are terrified of alien's

Edited by Fistofriles
mistake
40 minutes ago, ndogg229 said:

Just finished Solo and was super excited to see all the different species represented in Enfys Nest. Made me think how boring the current Rebel trooper units are (male humans). So FFG, lets get some better representation for future Rebel units! First, how about some women units? Second, let's have some majority alien units. Twilleks, Rodians, Ithorians! Unlike those boring Imperials the possibilities are endless!!

Maybe we can just start with an Enfys Nest Expansion?

Rebel Troopers: 1 of the base troopers is a woman, and the MPL weapon user is a woman too, as well as that they have a Duro in their unit.

Fleet Troopers: 1 of the base troopers is a woman, the one running.

Rebel Commandos: The unit leader is a woman, and one of the base troopers is a woman as well, furthermore we get a Mon Calamari sniper, and a Prune Face/Dressellian

Wookie Warriors: Pretty obvious

Pathfinders: 1 of the base troopers looks to be female, and 1 looks to be a Weequay as well as that the heavy weapon option adds either Bistan or Pao who are both aliens.

X-34 Speeder: The passanger upgrades both add aliens, one being a Rodian and the other a female Twi'lek.

There is a decent selection of them thrown in there, I'd like to have more aliens overall but the films generally show more humans than aliens so they are likely trying to keep that in mind. I hope we will see more Twi'leks, Rodians, and an Ithorian would just be grand. Of course, I'd also like to see more droids too as objectives or like the personnel ones that drop this week

The good news is that if we ever get a Partisans corps or special forces unit one of them will likely be sculpted to look like Two Tubes, or they might even have him as a Heavy Weapon option like the Pathfinders are getting.

People on Shapeways have some great high detail heads for swapping as well.

There was even a Spaceballs option with a Lord Helmet head for Vader... 😁

As above, every single released Rebel unit has at least one female model.

Plus, who knows how many of the Stormtroopers are female, the armor is canonically the same visually.

Between head swaps, and using near-human skin colours, none of my Rebels (except Luke because of lack of lightsaber wielders in GCW), are human.

As mentioned, there's two females in the core-corps squad. One of them has an ion gun though so she doesn't get seen much. However, you can easily convert her into a Z6 so she gets onto the table. There are examples of this in my Hoth rebel painting thread.

9 minutes ago, Animewarsdude said:

Rebel Troopers: 1 of the base troopers is a woman, and the MPL weapon user is a woman too, as well as that they have a Duro in their unit.

Fleet Troopers: 1 of the base troopers is a woman, the one running.

Rebel Commandos: The unit leader is a woman, and one of the base troopers is a woman as well, furthermore we get a Mon Calamari sniper, and a Prune Face/Dressellian

Wookie Warriors: Pretty obvious

Obviously all 4 Wookiees are female. That's why you write them with " ee " at the end, e.g. like "fianc ée "!

9 minutes ago, Triangular said:

Obviously all 4 Wookiees are female. That's why you write them with " ee " at the end, e.g. like "fianc ée "!

But fiancee is gender neutral

1 minute ago, thepopemobile100 said:

But fiancee is gender neutral

No. Fiancé is male and fiancée is female. At least if you speak French. 🤨

4 minutes ago, thepopemobile100 said:

But fiancee  is gender neutral

1 minute ago, Triangular said:

No. Fiancé is male and fiancée is female. At least if you speak French. 🤨

The words are directly borrowed from French, the usage is intended to be the same in English as far as I'm aware and Merriamm Webster indicates.

I am not a fan of "racial" units. By which I mean segregated to one species. I was a little disappointed with the wookiees. I had hoped for a mixed heavy close combat unit with a gigoran, a wookiee and a taalz. But I love the new rodian and twilek on the speeder!

1 hour ago, Triangular said:

Obviously all 4 Wookiees are female. That's why you write them with " ee " at the end, e.g. like "fianc ée "!

I've talked about this before. Humans show little gender dimorphism compared to other mammals, and virtually none compared to many non-mammalian species. Therefore, it's entirely likely that if that trend continued across the common sentient SW species, we wouldn't be able to tell their sexes apart by looking at them, nor they ours. Imagine trying to tell an alien how to differentiate the men from the women:

"Well, SOME of the women have bumps in their shirts, and their hip/leg to body ratio is USUALLY noticeably different without needing a tape measure. SOME of the men of SOME of their nations have held the custom of keeping shorter hair. USUALLY the males have a sharper jawline? Females with facial hair are rare but plausible: adult males are likely to have facial hair, but males without facial hair, either naturally or through customary grooming, are very common. Also, the adult males are on average 20% bigger than the adult females."

And yet, we can all look at other humans and know their sex with a very high rate of accuracy. But compared to other species? Other mammal species can show an average gender based size difference of 100%. And when you get into birds and insects, often the two genders can look like completely different species to the human eye.

Edit: Forgot the point about aliens and sentience. Read on, if you dare.

Having it be (relatively) impossible to tell the genders apart seems to be part of the natural history of the evolution of our sentient species, so, it might be common in sentient aliens as well. Humans are way, way more intelligent than we need to be to knap our stone knives and tame fire, which is basically all we need to survive. And that comes at a serious caloric price, which is the currency of biology. When you make it really hard to figure out who a viable mate is, and stop using scent or other things to plainly communicate availability, you start rapidly selecting for intelligence. Like how some species use mating to select out for artificially colorful bodies. Compared to an animal level of intelligence, humans have basically said "if you wouldn't be considered the Einstein of rats or crows, we don't want you in the gene pool at all" and thus we created a feakishly high level of intelligence which is necessary for true sentience and not just clever survival tools. Crows can bend wire into a hook to get a treat: looking up at the stars and wondering why we are here takes something more. Therefore it's entirely likely that gender dimorphism would likewise have waned in sentient Star Wars aliens, and we human players would not be able to tell a real, let alone 30mm plastic, mon cal or wookie female vs male. This is all assuming the alien species in question even has gender forms recognizable to a Terran biologist. Aliens might only have 1 gender, or require more than two individuals for reproduction. That's the thing about aliens: they're alien.

And this is without even getting into different senses. Cats and dogs have terrible eyesight by human standards, but they seem to be able to smell whether we're male or female. Yet we usually can't look at a strange cat* or dog across the street, with our ridiculously sharp vision, and tell their gender. So if we dealt with real aliens it could get even weirder pretty fast.

*Unless it's a tri-colored cat. Then it's overwhelmingly statistically likely to be female, but you have to academically know that fact for the trick to work.

Edited by TauntaunScout

I think they're fine.

I'm glad to hear that diversity in not unprecedented in the current units! That mean's there is the ability to add a lot more!! I want Quarrens, Mon Cala, Bothans, Sullustans, Lasat!!! Way more possibilities than those drab Imperials...

8 minutes ago, ndogg229 said:

I'm glad to hear that diversity in not unprecedented in the current units! That mean's there is the ability to add a lot more!! I want Quarrens, Mon Cala, Bothans, Sullustans, Lasat!!! Way more possibilities than those drab Imperials...

1. There will be no Bothans. For whatever reason, Disney has erased their appearance from canon. We have no canon source to describe them.

2. Hey now, our forces pride themselves on shedding individuality and adopting the uniform of law and order. Imperial troopers are indistinguishable from each other on the outside because they agree to have their individuality put on hold for the collective good of the galaxy!

Just now, ScummyRebel said:

1. There will be no Bothans. For whatever reason, Disney has erased their appearance from canon. We have no canon source to describe them.

2. Hey now, our forces pride themselves on shedding individuality and adopting the uniform of law and order. Imperial troopers are indistinguishable from each other on the outside because they agree to have their individuality put on hold for the collective good of the galaxy!

While I doubt there is any art direction for them yet, we "know" Bothans communicate with a series of growls from the canon novel Bloodlines (according to Wookiepedia). Hopefully Disney bring them back at some point.

The bothan thing makes me really sad because with Wookiees out now we're this close to a Battlefront II (2005) line up, just need Bothan Infiltrators with tiny flamethrowers and rebels with rocket launchers.

hqdefault.jpg

Of the 7 members of the rebel infantry squad 3 of them are non male humans, almost 50%

Of the 7 members of the rebel commandos 4 of them are non male humans, over 50%

Diversity checkmate achieved.

3 hours ago, Animewarsdude said:

a woman as well, furthermore we get a Mon Calamari sniper, and a Prune Face/Dressellian

Wookie Warriors: Pretty obvious

Pathfinders: 1 of the base troopers looks to be female, and 1 looks to be a Weequay as well as that the heavy weapon option adds either Bistan or Pao who are both aliens.

I can't tell if the wookiee warriors are male or female 😲

3 hours ago, Triangular said:

Obviously all 4 Wookiees are female. That's why you write them with " ee " at the end, e.g. like "fianc ée "!

But fiancee is gender neutral

No. Fiancé is male    and fiancée is female. At least if you speak French. 

Wookies are French?!?!?

Well, that explains the brown pants....er....I mean the brown fur....I mean.................oh never mind.

🤡

24 minutes ago, Chili-52 said:

Wookies are French?!?!?

Well, that explains the brown pants....er....I mean the brown fur....I mean.................oh never mind.

🤡

No they speak French. They are Canadian.