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Maybe a little off topic but I have to ask, if you make a squat Sly Marbo stand in will he look like a Squat Chuck Norris?

Well from my perspective he would be short enough... but I think the beard is lacking.

Apologist- your paint job is great and you're right, the Elysian lasgun looks great on him.

Doctor Optimal - have you tried ordering those Scrunts? They do look bad ass but it seems like they were bought out by someone else?

So, I won this lot on eBay for $76. I thought I got a steal, well unless I never get it LOL. Should be coming in the either today or Monday. Here's what it consists of:

12 various Exo Armour Squats
1 Squat Tech Priest
2 Squat Servitors
7 Squat Warriors
5 Warhammer Dwarves
1 Scratch built Landraider MK I

Small world, I was thinking about getting that myself! You do know that some of those are Chaos Squats though?

Nice catch!

Thanks. Yeah, I know some of the Exo Armour guys are Chaos but the torso's have no chaos markings. I would just have to modify the arms a little. I was planning on giving most of them power fists and storm bolters so they would be modified anyways.

Kasrkinlegion wrote:

da big mek skarfang wrote:ive never seen squats before,when did gw make em

You've never seen them because they're some of the worst selling models GW has ever produced. I worked in a few gaming shops back in the 90's and we had enough squats on our shelves to create a barrel of lead ingots. GW started producing them in the late 80's, early 90's back when 40k was in its first edition called Rogue Trader. Probably some of the worst models GW has ever made, but there's a very, very small subset of 40k players who like them. Probably the only set of models that ever sold worse than Squats were Chaos Dwarves... hmm... see a pattern?

My answer to you friendo. Straight from the horses mouth!

"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

Actually.. these are the original Squat Command Squad models. The guy with the big horns would be the Warlord, seems to be missing the ancestor lord model, bald guy with a long robe and sword.

Oh ok. I knew they are "Hearth Guard". Not really sure what that means though. I know a hearth is the floor of a fire place.

Hearth Guard are the "Champion" class warriors. Basically an elite choice that could be taken as a retinue for the warlord. They included options for the exo armor and various weapon tradeouts.

Here is a pic of the full 6 pack (wip... making some adjustments to weapons and bases.) the ancestor is the 2nd from the right.

Yeah, I'm not sure how I feel about these models. They have the Warhammer and Warhammer 40k feel mixed into them. I don't think they are going to fit into the army scheme I'm going for. I'd be willing to trade them for regular metal squats if anyone is interested.

Finished building my Veterans with shotguns.

That's an absolute bargain. You got the hearth guard which are pretty uncommon, but the exo-suits easily sell for $20+ each and you have the AdMech Squat too. There's probably about $200 worth there if you broke it up and sold it with some careful listing.

Well, I'm going to start building my Exo Armour Squats. Problem is, almost half of them are chaos squats so I'm going to have to modify the arms. I decided to start with my new Squat Commander. Squat Commander with lightning claws! I'm probably going to make the armor gold since they are miners by trade, they can probably come across precious metals easily. I used the Berserker Dwarf's head and some terminator lightning claw arms. I still have to add some more hoses and bits but the build is 90% complete.

Looks great! May have to steal the idea though... How'd you cut the head off?

Here a website listing most Squat like miniature ranges (starting with Olley and Hasslefree of course):
http://wk.frothersunite.com/sc/spacedwarf/spacedwarf.htm

Then there is this newcomer: http://pegaminidesign.vendder.com/

Dawi-Marine'Va wrote:Looks great! May have to steal the idea though... How'd you cut the head off?

I don't want to start a whole debate about it again but let's just say maybe it wasn't made out of metal and it was easy to cut off.


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Kroothawk wrote:Here a website listing most Squat like miniature ranges (starting with Olley and Hasslefree of course):
http://wk.frothersunite.com/sc/spacedwarf/spacedwarf.htm

Then there is this newcomer: http://pegaminidesign.vendder.com/

Good links, I will probably be getting some of the miniatures in those ranges in the near future. I especially like Bob Olley's Scrunts.

Finished my Squat Commander in Exo Armour.

Current project: Exo Armour Squad, I converted the Sergeant to have a power fist and a trooper to have an assault cannon and powerfist.

Ok, so I got this Star Trek model in a trade about 6 years ago. I was just going to use it as a crashed Xeno ship terrain piece but why not make it more useful. Squat Valkyrie maybe? It is kind of short and fat! So far, I changed out the short stubby side wings and with longer cardboard/plastic card ones and added a center wing between the jets on top. I've added heavy bolters to the front, a turret mounted lascannon on top and hunter-killer missiles on the wing tips.
I'm still planning on adding much more detail to the wings and hanging hellstrike missiles underneath. Sorting through my bits box for more 40k bits to add to her. Thoughts and suggestions welcome.

King ninja hijack

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SPACE DWARFS LIVE !!!!!

With the very exciting announcementlast night on Beasts of War I would like to congratulate Mantic Games for comming such a long way in a very very short time.

Not only proving that the little guy can produce miniatures up to the highest level but then to give the rules away to play fast fun games with huge armies and have a whale of a time doing so I canot comment you enough.

I am the founder of a very small but growing web comunity that hopes to become the nexus for all squat and space dwarf activity within the wargaming hoby.

Our Mission Statement:

So long as the popularity of Warhammer 40000 continues, a source is needed for the Space dwarf army to keep pace. Space Dwarves Online provides a community with a forum for members to learn about, inform others about, contribute to, and evolve the Space Dwarf army in a welcoming and open minded environment. Space Dwarf Thaines, old and new, can unite under a common banner that Space Dwarfs Online is happy to provide.

I would be most excited if possible for

http://spacedwarfsonline.freeforums.org

To help and contribute in any way possible to your cause.

We at the momment have set asside a space for Mantic rules to be discussed and noted upon WARPATH! With the exciting sci-fi announcement new game and miniatures range from yourselves we applaud you and would wish to aid any way we can.

we have sub forums for not only the evil empires contribution but we hope to include Battle Reports & Campaign Discussion, Tactics and Advice, Not to mention blogging and showcasing of any producer of great quality miniatures, Some of Mantics dwarven rifle men have already made it into our blog section.

We are very excited about the development and hope that you pop by to say Hi on

http://spacedwarfsonline.freeforums.org

At the moment we have 40 members at our small but growing community . I hope to see many more at our forums.

Yours Thorne.













Yes I admit I went back to old school milliput but I think the results of thesecloaks speak for themselves.



better or worse shot od dwarf Var Dur I'm not sure but a perfect leader to this battleforce so far.



Exo armoured works in progress very retro



with flash on damn it makes the models look very odd



Im sure you can now see the retro stylings of these models



power fists and a lonely power axe for what will be my exo armoured squats



Storm bolter going to bee's the one on the far right was a press mould rather than a sculpting and turned out awfull. The shoulder isnt to bad so that may be a donnor for a heavy weapons trooper.



You are weak tyranids you should not have returned !!!











Sculptings okay just a shame about the paint job

I tend to get carried away when making my exo armoured squats as they take a great deal of time and concentration to pull off, I shall however remember when making my standard squats as they are possibly the easiest to leave between stages the workability of the milliput makes it difficult to leave, I shall try and create one with greenstuff.

Now with one squad of exo armoured troopers done I simply had to do another squad. Im thinking eventualy to build the numbers of Exo armoured troopers to at least 50 eventualy too add some real fear and teeth to appocalypes size battles. Scare the bejesus out of all whom face the power of the squats. That said 50 troopers is a little ambitious but not impossible and to think that a standard squad of GW terminators costs £27.70 in real terms a entire pack of milliput for £3 doesnt seam so bad even when you put in context the labour involved in making a single figure.

Here are the prommised pictures















I think I need to enhance their more battle scared look but they are not looking to shabby for 2 packs of milliput.


Thank you for reading this wall of text.

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Thorne, great post. I see you put a lot of work into the Exo-Armour Squats. I like the Imperial Guard heads on Gretchin body idea, simple but effective! So you sculped all those Exo-Armour guys by hand?

Enclosed are some more (WIP) Exo-Armour Squats. I have 10 fully assembled now, 5 more to go. One Segeant has a powerfist and the other a thunder hammer and storm shield. Each squad will have a heavy weapon as support. I have two assault cannons, the final squad will have a heavy flamer.

The EXO armour took forever to sculpt but yes I'm proud to say they are all hand sculpted apart from the cloak that holds the legs and arms to the body that is part of a master cloak model that I made the impression in super sculpy and baked it for a hour to ensure it was hard. Knowing my medium well as I do I tend to use a lot of talc as well as water with milliput the results speak for themselves I think. On a positive note I feel your work coming along rather well and wish too see much much more

Srsly, I love watching you guys keeping Squats alive here. Who knows, maybe one day I'll take the plunge and use my Codex: Orks for something even more forgotten by GW's archive servitors than my Genesteela Kult


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The 2E Gretchin idea would certainly make for a fitting homage in an Orksquat collection...

I always liked the Genestealer Cult, its a great idea. The hybrids always looked very menacing.

Alright so I re-did my Warlord's hair color. The orange seemed to clash with the gold too much and I figured a Warlord would be a little more "salty" so I gave him dark gray hair instead. No more ginger. I also finished his body guard, which leaves me with two more Exo Armour Squads.

Finished my Veteran Squad today. Sgt with Powerfist and Bolt Pistol, Vox-caster with Bolter, three squats with flamers, and five squats with shotguns.

Love the sergent with his squad. You really made those old squats pop keep up the good work. If you ever get the time come see space dwarves online too. Keep up the good work.

Invicta missing your work bud !!! Any chance of s update on your guys ? Keep up the faith and fill that dwarven goodliness

I've lost interest in my squats I will be selling my entire squat army for $400. It is completely painted to a high table top standard, includes 55 miniatures, 2 rapiers, and 4 vehicles. I used to field them as Imperial Guard Veterans so an Imperial Guard Commissar and Preacher are included (to keep them in line!) A lot of rare miniatures in this lot such as a ratling cook, adeptus mechanicus squat, and the first squat GW ever made. This is what it includes:

Warlord with thunder hammer and las pistol
Ancient with force weapon and familiar
Champion with power sword and las pistol
Ratling cook (medic)
Imperial Guard Commissar
Imperial Guard Preacher
Adeptus Mechanicus with power axe, las pistol, 3 servitors
3 ten man infantry squads
1 ten man ratling sniper squad
2 rapier cannons with 4 crewmen
Sentinel with autocannon (conversion)
2 Leman Russ battle tanks
1 Hellhound with heavy flamer (conversion)