Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I came across these while browsing online... space marine dwarfs, or 'squats.' The are an unreleased 40k army that didn't make the initial cut! Brilliant!

http://www.collecting-citadel-miniatures.com/wiki/index.php/Squats_-_Unreleased


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh wait - they we're discontinued in the 90s.... maybe lots of you have already seen these, but they we're new and exciting to me!

Umm. Not sure if serious...

Most squats were released in 2nd edition. The ones you listed are just the unreleased models.

Also, they were never space marines.

Looking through these mini's I am starting to feel a bit relieved Squats aren't still around...

They are adorable though

Harriticus wrote:Looking through these mini's I am starting to feel a bit relieved Squats aren't still around...

But, they are. They're just known as the Demiurg now. To the OP, Squats were one of the original armies that appeared in Rogue Trader. They were abhumans who lived on high gravity worlds that stunted their growth. GW phased them out, not because they were unpopular, but because they didn't know how to handle the dwarf archetype in the 40k universe. They were resurrected in a fashion known as the Demiurg - mysterious deep space miners who allied themselves with the Tau. What you've linked up to above were the 2nd edition re-work of the some of the Squats, Exo-Armour, Cyberslayers and warriors. They were available during Games Day 1994, I think. Also, this post gives me a good excuse to post a particular Rogue Trader favourite. Yes, I do love Slam Sector!

Check out Mantic's line of Forge Fathers if you're looking for Space Dwarves. Even comes with 25mm bases, how convenient is that?
A bit of green stuffing and conversion work, and you got yourself an army of pint sized Space Marines.



Link to site:
http://www.manticgames.com/Shop-Home/Warpath/Forge-Fathers.html

People on the internet are obsessed with them, I've no idea why. They were gakky, boring, and never popular when they were actually around.

Joey has a point. Not that they were boring exactly, but they weren't popular enough for GW to continue supporting them.

Hopefully Mantic will find a niche for Space Dwarfs in their game.

Joey wrote:People on the internet are obsessed with them, I've no idea why. They were gakky, boring, and never popular when they were actually around.

kinda like the original Star Trek *puts on tinfoil hat

Joey wrote:People on the internet are obsessed with them, I've no idea why. They were gakky, boring, and never popular when they were actually around.

You were around during Rogue Trader, or is that just speculation?

Kind Regards,
Vladsimpaler

zedmeister wrote:

Harriticus wrote:Looking through these mini's I am starting to feel a bit relieved Squats aren't still around...

But, they are. They're just known as the Demiurg now.

THE DEMIURG ARE NOT SQUATS.

Ahem.
Sorry.

The Demiurg are not "Squats".
Squats were abhumans, the result of humans settling on a high gravity world.
Demiurg are Xenos, who look nothing like the "Squats".

The only relation between them is that they use the generic archetype of Dwarves(short, clan-based hierarchy, excellent craftsmen) as a basis.
The Demiurg are not miners who've settled on one world or a divergent branch of humanity. They are a nomadic race, living on board their ships and gathering resources via trade and by harvesting asteroids.

pretre wrote:Most squats were released in 2nd edition. The ones you listed are just the unreleased models.

You're half right. Almost no Squats were released in 2nd Edition. They were all from Rogue Trader. I think the last new catalog Squats were released in 1991, and 2nd Edition began in 1993, but there were some Epic models as well as some other limited edition stuff like linked above.


As far as the Squats go, there was really nothing wrong with them. Calling them "too silly" is kinda narrow minded. Everything in Rogue Trader was silly. Rival Ork and Human biker gangs, somersaulting Eldar clowns, half-eldar astropaths wearing Space Marine armor, gene stealers teamed up with Chaos cultists joyriding in armored limousines, power armored nuns with wimples (oh wait, that one is still around, lol). And that's just scratching the surface. Eventually, the game's world was consolidated in 2nd Edition and the more modern vision of 40K began. You can see the surface of the new vision for Squats in Codex Imperialis. The army just didn't make it to a new vision like everyone else did. If GW had decided to re-do the Squats, they'd have been suitably grim-darked up just like all the other armies were.

I think ultimately, unless the issue was simply sales related, there wasn't a way to suitably differentiate the Squats from the Imperial Guard. I imagine Games Workshop couldn't figure out how to make the Squats something other than slower IGuard (remember, 2nd Edition still had a movement characteristic), and they felt that the trikes and bikes just weren't congruent with the rest of the universe's fluff anymore. I think the Squats omission probably came down to a business decision. And the write-out came because somebody higher up got bored of being asked about them, lol.

I remember I read an interview with Gav thorpe I think regarding the squats. Long story short-
"hey, what about those squats?"
"Squats? Oh yeah. We swept them under the rug a long time ago for obvious reasons"
"Undoubtedly"
"Cheers"


Personally I didn't mind the idea of them back when they were released through Rogue trader, but it was a hard sell in the 40K universe to find a place for the dwarven folk. RIP.

I feel like if they had continued with Squats they could have made them like the Tau are now. Lots of battle suits with ultra-advanced tech and a rigid caste system. Seems like a perfectly reasonable solution to me, but I uses that ship has already sailed...