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Does anybody like Squats out there? I really like the Squats, and reading about them. I feel that Games Workshop should make Squats an army again.
History of the Squats (5 sections)
The Age of Founding is equivalent to the Dark Age of Technology as described in Imperial records. This is not technically the first period of the Squats' history, as they had yet to evolve their current physical forms, but is the time of the founding of the mining colonies that would become the Squat Homeworlds. Almost 20,000 standard years ago interstellar transportation and communication between these planets and Terra was continuous, testament to the importance of these colonies to the human homeworld and the great federation of planets it once led. Terra also kept the mining worlds well supplied with that which they could not produce for themselves in adequate amounts, primarily food. This period of contact and interaction lasted until the start of the Age of Strife in the 25th Millennium.
The Age of Isolation corresponds with the earlier part of the Age of Strife - around 18,000 to 16,000 standard years ago. The galactic core was cut off from the rest of human space by the devastating Warp Storms that marked the dawn of the Age of Strife and the beginning of the gestation of the Chaos God Slaanesh in the Immaterium. Many worlds were swallowed by the Warp and disappeared forever, while others were trapped in stasis and became lost. Most survived this terrible period, although they were separated from Earth and all contact was lost with the rest of the galaxy. During this time of isolation and danger the Squat worlds still in contact with each other began to organise for their mutual defence. It was at this time that the Squats began to refer to their worlds as the Homeworlds. The Homeworlds remained isolated for thousands of years and their inhabitants learned to survive in a universe that was becoming increasingly hostile. Those that survived grew and prospered. Settlements were enlarged and fortified into impregnable strongholds. They soon developed alternative technologies to make up for the lack of supplies from Earth. During this isolation the Squat Guilds were formed as politically and culturally important parts of Squat society, and the Squat colonies joined together in Leagues formed from complex trade and political agreements. The engineers produced by the Guilds were true engineers rather than the religious dogma-bound Tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus who understand very little about the true scientific principles that underlie most of the technology they so ardently hoard.
The Age of Trade took place during a slight abatement of the Warp storms that marked the Age of Strife and led to the Squats encountering other intelligent races, including the Orks and Eldar. At the beginning of the Age of Trade, some Squat strongholds were attacked, but the aliens quickly realised that the Squats were determined and tenacious fighters, and that trade was a more practical arrangement. The Squats took full advantage of their tremendous mineral wealth, which they traded for weapons, foodstuffs and high-technology systems. To this day, Squat hydroponic plants, developed with Eldar help, are among the most efficient food sources in the Imperium. The Squats remained carefully neutral in the numerous conflicts between Eldar and Orks, maintaining trade links with both sides. There were inevitably small wars from time to time, but for the most part the Squats' complex structure of treaties and trade agreements maintained a stable peace.
The Age of Trade lasted for nearly three millennia, but finally collapsed when an enormous Ork battle-fleet, under the command of the Warlord Grunhag the Flayer, attempted a full-scale invasion of the Squat Homeworlds. Losses on both sides were astronomical, with vicious tunnel-fights through the mine workings and bloody pitched battles in the Squats' underground settlements. The Squats appealed to their Eldar trading partners for help against the invading Orks, but none was received, resulting in the development of a deep animosity among the Squats towards their former trading partners. The Age of Wars, as it became known, is regarded by the Squats as the blackest chapter in their history, and the double betrayal by Orks and Eldar gave rise to a cultural enmity for both races which still persists. Many strongholds were wiped out by the Orks, and the traditional epic ballad known as The Fall of Imbach commemorates one such destruction. Even today expeditions are mounted from the Squat Homeworlds in search of lost strongholds, and these expeditions are often accompanied by Adeptus Mechanicus priests, eager to rediscover lost Squat technology.
he Age of Rediscovery was the most recent phase of Squat history, corresponding to the Great Crusade and the current Age of the Imperium for the rest of humanity. As the Imperium recovered from the Age of Strife and began to reunite the scattered worlds of humanity, the Squat Homeworlds were rediscovered and contact with the Imperium of Man was established. The Imperium found that a distinct culture had developed on the Squat Homeworlds, and that the Squats had moved outwards through the galaxy, extending their domains. Often they settled harsh planets similar to their own Homeworlds, but they also occupied more conventional worlds able to support normal human civilization.
Well, I am a huge fan of Squats, and hope to find some other fans out there. So, what is your opinion of Squats?
I know I shouldn't get drawn on this... but... can't... resist
Seriously, a couple of points just so you can have an informed debate based on the real reasons that Squats are no longer available. Be warned, it is going to be hard reading for people that like the Squat background.
First of all, Squats were *not* dropped because they were not selling well. There were then, and are now, plenty of other figure ranges that sell in the sort of % quantaties that the Squats pulled down, especially when you look across all of the ranges produced by GW rather than just those for 40K.
No, the reason that the Squats were dropped was because the creatives in the Studio (people like me, Rick, Andy C, Gav etc) felt that we had failed to do the Dwarf 'archetype' justice in its 40K incarnation. From the name of the race (Squats - what *were* we thinking?!?!) through to the short bikers motif, we had managed to turn what was a proud and noble race in Warhammer and the other literary forms where the archetype exists, into a joke race in 40K. We only fully realised what we had done when we were working on the 2nd edition of 40K. Try as we might, we just couldn't work up much enthusiasm for the Squats. The mistake we made then (deeply regreted since) was to leave them in the background and the 'get you by' army list book that appeared. With hindsight, we should have dropped the Squats back then, and saved ourselves a lot of grief later on.
Anyway, the Squats made it into 2nd edition, and since we were doing army books for each of the races, we started to try and figure out what to do with them. Unfortunately we just couldn't figure out a way to update them and get them to work that we felt was good enough. The 'art' of working on an army as a designer is to find the thing that you think is cool and exciting about an army, and work it up into a strong theme. This 'muse' didn't strike any of us, and so, rather than bring out a second-rate product simply re-hashing the old background, we kept doing other army books instead, with stuff we did feel inspired by.
Now, while this was all going on for 40K, we were actually doing some rather good stuff for the Squats in Epic. On this scale there was a natural tendancy to focus on the big 'hand-made' war machines the Squat artisans produced, and this created an army with a feel that was very different to the biker hordes in 40K. However, this tended to reinforce the problems we saw in the Squat background rather than alleviate them, underlining what we *should* have done with the Squats in 40K.
In the end (and it took years to really get to the roots of the problem) this led to a realisation that we were going to have to drop the Squats in their 'Squat' form from the 40K background. There was little point having a major race that we weren't willing to make an army book for, and their inclusion in the background meant that people kept asking us when we'd do a Squat Codex. Instead we decided that we'd write the Squats out of the background by saying that their Homworlds had been devoured by a Tyranid Hivefleet. This would give us the option in the future to return to making a race based ont he Squat archetype for 40K. This race was given the name of Demiurg, and a certain amount of preliminary work was done to get a 'feel' for what the race would be like. At present the only hint of the Demiurg in 40K is the Demiurg spaceship for BFG. However, we do have this race 'in our back pocket' as a possible new race for 40K, or an interesting character model in Inquisitor, or whatever. So far the Demiurg have lost out to other projects, and it may be that their time never actually comes, as they will have to win through on their merits, not simply because we once made some Squat models in the past. At present, I have to say that it is more lilely that they *don't* make the cut than do, as there is a certain predudice these days to simply taking races from Warhammer and cross them over to 40K like we did in the early days, so it may be that the Squats/Demiurg end up remaining a footnote in the history of the 40K galaxy. Only time will tell...
The second point I'd like to make is about 'old moulds'. In the past, Mail Order in the UK and US used to be the place that we kept all of the retired moulds for Citadel Miniatures, and we used to offer a service where you could order any Citadel Mniature ever made from MO. However, there are now so many of these 'back catalogue' miniatures that it is simply impossible to keep all of the old moulds in Mail Order and offer this service. Instead, we pick and choose which back catalogue miniatures are kept available. At present we're still struggling to produce special catalogues for these ranges (in the US there is the 'Phone Book' catalogue with everything in it, while the UK has special 'collectors guides' that are themed round a race). Once we've ironed out the kinks in the way we deal with the range of collectors models we want to keep permenantly available, the plan is to offer up other parts of the back catalogue for limited periods of time. In effect this will divide the back catalogue into three parts: a range of classic models that are permenantly available, a range of classic models we dip into and bring out for a limited release, and a range of retired models that will no longer be sold either because we've decided that they are embarrassingly bad, or because we are no longer allowed to sell them due to licencing agreement changes. So far we're still slowly working on deciding which classic models we want to keep permenantly available, and its going to take several years to work through just those. The old Squat range is most likely to end up as retired models, I have to say, though there is a good chance that the Squat war engines they could simply into the limited release classic range. Once again, only time will tell...
I'll finish off by saying that whatever we decide to do 'officially', there is nothing stopping players with Squat armies from using them, either in Epic or 40k for that matter. There is no GW 'rule' against using old Citadel Miniatures, as long as you use them with exisiting army lists and in a way that won't cause confusion for other players. I recommend taking a positive stand by saying "Have you seen these cool old models? They're called the Squats and GW used to make them back in the late eighties/early nineties. I love 'em, so I count them as Imperial Guard and use them with the current rules..." Put like this I can't imagine that anyone would stop you from using your army.
Best regards,
Jervis Johnson
Head Fanatic"
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2011/09/16 01:16:15
A lot of good reasoning in why they canned them, but I like the idea of space dwarves as much as I do space elves - substantially. The original vision of them was pretty bad though. Bringing a small sector of space dwarf worlds into the imperium and having them as abhumans could work well imo.
The official line about having the Squats written out of the 40k universe by oops the Tyranids ate them seems to me to have been far to casual and not nearly grimdark enough of an ending for the Squats.
If it were up to me I would have said if them must go for the reasons stated in the JJ letter, then they should instead be gathered up out of where ever they are hiding and be shaken down, spun down, brains in a jar to be interrogated for their technical knowlege by the Adeptus Mechanicus. So in effect have it be that the Mechanicus ate them.
Ruthlessness is the kindness of the wise.
>Raptors Lead the Way <
I can see why they thought they had to scrap them - though I do believe there would have been alternatives, like Yonan mentioned. Yes, there were some silly aspects about the Squats, but other armies (Orks, SW, ...) have them as well and are deemed fitting.
Well, let's see how they will go with the Demiurg. Personally, I'd find it cool if they would "honour" these roots by making them get derogatorily nicknamed Squats by Imperials or something like that. I'm sure it would be easy to create some kind of connection there!
I love the idea of squats. They have some good potential for a fun story line. The problem is that there is no formal structure to the design studio, the only project that gets done are the ones that the designers at the time are interested in. Until someone on the design team has an interest in them those of use with squat armies are relegated to IG or SW count as armies.
When I began playing Warhammer 40,000, Rogue Trader was still the current edition, and Squats were still playable, and yet not once did I see a Squat army. Aware as I am that my experience may not have been entirely typical, I am nevertheless strongly inclined to think that people only want the Squats now because they can't have them.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2011/09/16 17:38:55
Red Hunters: 2000 points Grey Knights: 2000 points Black Legion: 600 points and counting
Aren't they making a return in the new Tau Codex? I swear I was looking at picture of them a few months ago. And there are drawings by Jes Goodwin too. I prefer their new look, as little rockmen, as opposed to space dwarves. If anyone is interested I have two Tin Boys sitting in my bitz pile.
Those aren't squats. They are called the Demiurg, and they're similar in that they're based off of the dwarf archetype, but they are not squats. They were featured in BFG.
English Assassin wrote:When I began playing Warhammer 40,000, Rogue Trader was still the current edition, and Squats were still playable, and yet not once did I see a Squat army. Aware as I am that my experience may not have been entirely typical, I am nevertheless strongly inclined to think that people only want the Squats now because they can't have them.
I think this really speaks of the truth. Squats get brought up all the time because they're unavailable, just like Chaos Dwarves in WFB. But, if we could actually have them, 90% of the players saying they'd love to play Squats would quickly change their minds.
I had a full army of them , converted from palstic dwarves and IG bits.
(which I sold) check my gallery shots.. they are probably the old paint scheme though.. (EDIT) they are my old scheme. I had repainted them all to be the old-school green and yellow Brotherhood colors.. and then sold them to a friend of mine, since I play pretty much only FoW now.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2011/09/16 19:53:43
I liked what I've read about them as I tend to like dwarfy things and space dwarfs sounds good to me. I guess it became a win for GW when I couldn't get my hands on them and decided instead to get regular dwarfs in addition to the 40k army.
Personally I love Squats, I'm trying to start a Squat Armored Company (With Tanith guards, of course) called the Frost Giants.
Dwarves - 3000+ Points (The Best Army in the entire universe)
The Inquisitor's Private Army Salamanders 2nd Company WIP (Retired)
(GW Loyalist & Hobby Butterfly)
Eldar 
-5000 points 
750 points
1000 Points
>Raptors Lead the Way < 
Red Hunters: 2000 points 
Grey Knights: 2000 points 
Black Legion: 600 points and counting 
3000
4000 Deamons - Mainly a fantasy army now.
2000 Points Athonian 39th
15 pts 0-0-0
1,000 pts 3-1-0
Dwarves - 3000+ Points (The Best Army in the entire universe)
The Inquisitor's Private Army 
Salamanders 2nd Company WIP (Retired)
GW Loyalist & Hobby Butterfly