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Alpharius wrote:

Chowderhead wrote:
Original 40k, it fits.

Modern 40k, it does not.

The concept as originally portrayed 'back in the day' does not fit in "modern" 40K.

Can it be updated and made super delicious awesome x 2 for 'modern" 40K?

Of course it can.

My thoughts exactly.

"Since they were to come in the days of the power of Melkor, Aulë made the dwarves strong to endure. Therefore they are stone-hard, stubborn, fast in friendship and in enmity, and they suffer toil and hunger and hurt of body more hardily than all other speaking peoples; and they live long, far beyond the span of Men, yet not forever." – The Silmarillion, "Of Aulë and Yavanna"

Hunterindarkness wrote:In no way are they the "Lest silly". The name itself takes them out of the running, and the steam-tech/super tech, Viking, bigwheel riding bikers was just...a bad joke. In my 40k They never happened. I could see a heavy worlder type of Abhuman, but not a whole xeno race and not that silly. May be a bit odd but I do not like a lot of silly in my 40k.

Squats were abumans... not xenos.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Abhuman#.T1JQE_WD9WU

If they ever come back, they're going get more grimdark faster than you say "skulls for the skull throne"

I think they could be perfectly fine without a single bit of grimdark. No skulls, no arcane techno-religion, nothing. That's what would bring them into conflict with the other factions. They'd be the base of Squats, but that's it.

How this?

[Insert name/Demiurg]: High gravity-world abhumans, lost after the Dark Age. They had to succeed on their own until M41, so their technology remains "pure" of the religious facet of Adeptus Mechanicus meddling (so no purity seals, sacred oils). Maybe their plasma weapons don't malfunction (much like Chaos vs Imperial in 2nd ed) and their vehicles mount a high number of old tech like conversion-beamers. Their vehicles could actually be sleeker versions of Imperial vehicles, maybe hinting that they are using less-degraded STC plans that they saved/found.

They don't have the high numbers of the other races, so maybe they make up for it by still using Robots. (Which would be akin to the old Imperial Robots, which were completely mechanical, but kept limited to be as intelligent as Servitors.)

They have no inherent psychic abilities, and a very long lifespan compared to humans, but a few of them go above and beyond that age. As they get older, they unlock their psychic potential, and their households revere them as "Living Anscestors".

I really can't see how that would seem strange in the modern 40K game setting.

It was all the Mad Max stuff they slapped on the originals that made them goofy.

AegisGrimm wrote:

They have no inherent psychic abilities, and a very long lifespan compared to humans, but a few of them go above and beyond that age. As they get older, they unlock their psychic potential, and their households revere them as "Living Anscestors".

Well, that's not contradictory at all.

Demiurg already have an established background.

And it most certainly is not that of them being Abhumans! They are their own, unique alien species.

And again, GW is showing how un origional and silly their game designers are with the name demiurg. While the word demiurg as a whole word does not mean short, the word demi does. Jervis mentioned in his Citadel Journal article about how it was a very bad idea to name a race "squat" to show prejudice towards their height. Now they are going to call them "Demiurg" ? With Demi being the root word of demiurg?

Can't they be more origional without being condescending?

Personally I want the Squats back, but with a different name and upgraded technology. I don't want the name to show any connotation towards their height either.

The Squats now fit in to 40k more than they ever did in Rogue Trader or 2nd edition, if GW would just get their act together and realize that there really is a player base that actually likes the concept and it isn't as small as many people paint it.

Yeah, the whole biker theme may not appeal to some people and I get that, but there has always been more to the Squats than that. The fact that they have a lot of tech that was origionally concieved in Epic Space Marine can now be brought into Apocalypse and even regular 40k.

Some Space Marines have a stunty Thunderhawk Gunship. Imperial Guard now have Valkyries and vendettas. Squats had Iron Eagle Gyrocoptors which look strikingly similar in design. But Squats had the Iron Eagle before the Guard had valkyries or vendettas.

Space Marines have the Thunderfire Cannon. But Squats had a piece of anti aircraft gear called a Thunderfire Cannon. They also had Mole Mortars and Thudd Guns, which the current Space Marine Thunderfire Cannon mimics. So they basically took the name of Squat gear from one piece of tech, and put two other pieces of Squat tech together, and gave it to the Space Marines.

So if the Squats were such a bad idea, why are they now using those same ideas with Space Marines? Doesn't that by default also make the Space Marines a bad idea?

All of the races in 40k during the Rogue Trader era were silly. They still are. This is a kids game, not an adult game. Sure, adults play it, but it is marketed towards children.

Roadkill Zombie wrote:And again, GW is showing how un origional and silly their game designers are with the name demiurg. While the word demiurg as a whole word does not mean short, the word demi does. Jervis mentioned in his Citadel Journal article about how it was a very bad idea to name a race "squat" to show prejudice towards their height. Now they are going to call them "Demiurg" ? With Demi being the root word of demiurg?

Can't they be more origional without being condescending?

Personally I want the Squats back, but with a different name and upgraded technology. I don't want the name to show any connotation towards their height either.

What makes you think that the "demi" in "demiurg" refers to their height?

There exists an actual term in the form of "Demiurge" which makes far, far more sense to have been used as the basis rather than it being a short people joke.

The word "demiurge" is an English word from a Latinized form of the Greek δημιουργός, dēmiourgos, literally "public worker", and which was originally a common noun meaning "craftsman" or "artisan", but gradually it came to mean "producer" and eventually "creator".

The Squats now fit in to 40k more than they ever did in Rogue Trader or 2nd edition, if GW would just get their act together and realize that there really is a player base that actually likes the concept and it isn't as small as many people paint it.

It's nowhere near as large as people paint it either. It's an outspoken minority, with a large portion of it quite likely never handling or seeking out the models. I'd hazard a guess that much of the "fanbase" just seems to think it's a great idea because veterans talk about it in awed tones.

Yeah, the whole biker theme may not appeal to some people and I get that, but there has always been more to the Squats than that. The fact that they have a lot of tech that was originally conceived in Epic Space Marine can now be brought into Apocalypse and even regular 40k.
Some Space Marines have a stunty Thunderhawk Gunship. Imperial Guard now have Valkyries and vendettas. Squats had Iron Eagle Gyrocoptors which look strikingly similar in design. But Squats had the Iron Eagle before the Guard had valkyries or vendettas.

Not to be a jerk, but I don't really see any kind of "striking similarity" between the Iron Eagle and the Valkyrie or Vendetta.

Well, except that they are aircraft.

Space Marines have the Thunderfire Cannon. But Squats had a piece of anti aircraft gear called a Thunderfire Cannon. They also had Mole Mortars and Thudd Guns, which the current Space Marine Thunderfire Cannon mimics. So they basically took the name of Squat gear from one piece of tech, and put two other pieces of Squat tech together, and gave it to the Space Marines.

So if the Squats were such a bad idea, why are they now using those same ideas with Space Marines? Doesn't that by default also make the Space Marines a bad idea?

I would suggest you take a look at the Death Korps of Krieg line from Forge World.
They do have mole mortars and thudd guns both, and they do not futz around with the names.

The Thunderfire Cannon has nothing in common with the Thunderfire Cannon of the Squats.

Still, GW lost IP on Squats... they're gone, anything too similar could start a whole nother round of lawsuits.

IF they come back, they will have to be different enough (which is fine by me).

Would you care to elaborate in that? I wasn't aware of any legal issues pertaining to the space stunties.

NagothDaCleaver wrote:

Hunterindarkness wrote:In no way are they the "Lest silly". The name itself takes them out of the running, and the steam-tech/super tech, Viking, bigwheel riding bikers was just...a bad joke. In my 40k They never happened. I could see a heavy worlder type of Abhuman, but not a whole xeno race and not that silly. May be a bit odd but I do not like a lot of silly in my 40k.

Squats were abumans... not xenos.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Abhuman#.T1JQE_WD9WU

Thank you sir for the correction. But making them Abhumans and not xeno's is not much better. As I said I could see a heavy worlder Abhumans...they are simply not it.

Lobukia wrote:I thought it was pretty widely known by now that Squats dissapeared because one of the employees who developed them won an intellectual property lawsuit after he was fired and the Squats went with him.

Seriously, this is why. Everything else was normal GW CYA BS.


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That's also why they are gone and won't ever come back.

Is that true, or just a rumor or a shot at GW? I'd be amazed if there was any intellectual property their to claim. However, I'm willing to be educated. Got a source?


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Hunterindarkness wrote:In no way are they the "Lest silly". The name itself takes them out of the running, and the steam-tech/super tech, Viking, bigwheel riding bikers was just...a bad joke. In my 40k They never happened. I could see a heavy worlder type of Abhuman, but not a whole xeno race and not that silly. May be a bit odd but I do not like a lot of silly in my 40k.

Dude, space orks and space elves with orange mohawks are sillier.


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Roadkill Zombie wrote:All of the races in 40k during the Rogue Trader era were silly. They still are. This is a kids game, not an adult game. Sure, adults play it, but it is marketed towards children.

That hits the nail on the head, and a lot of people are in denial about it. 40k was always silly and remains silly. The only thing they did with "grimdark" (which translates into English as "I need more skulls on my minis") was make it even sillier. Except the a lot of 40k players don't realize this, which in turn makes them silly which makes the game still sillier.

Me? I love silly.


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Kanluwen wrote: {refering to the Squat fanclub} It's nowhere near as large as people paint it either. It's an outspoken minority, with a large portion of it quite likely never handling or seeking out the models. I'd hazard a guess that much of the "fanbase" just seems to think it's a great idea because veterans talk about it in awed tones.

How do you know that? Because people don't bring Squats to the local GW store? It would be odd if they did. I have a whole army (about 100 figs) of the little buggers, and I play with them whenever I can play 1ed. If they were brought back, a lot of people I know would dust off their old armies. Why do you make the assumption that the Squat fans are an outspoken minority?

Zinderneuf wrote:

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Hunterindarkness wrote:In no way are they the "Lest silly". The name itself takes them out of the running, and the steam-tech/super tech, Viking, bigwheel riding bikers was just...a bad joke. In my 40k They never happened. I could see a heavy worlder type of Abhuman, but not a whole xeno race and not that silly. May be a bit odd but I do not like a lot of silly in my 40k.

Dude, space orks and space elves with orange mohawks are sillier.

Honestly, not to me. sure the Orks are odd and a bit funny at times but the concept isn't bad at all. Many warrior cultures used bright colors, garish outfits and odd hairstyles. An ork is funny, until you stop and think about what an Ork is.They are a biologically engineered race with genetic memory and only programed for one thing. They are built to fight, nothing else, Evey thought , every action, even their biology is built to do one thing. Make war.And then you have this almost perfect weapon, cast adift without someone to shape and aim it.

Eldra started as space elves, all 40k was just fantasy in space, but they are not simply space elves. If you made them look inhuman it would change nothing about the race. In the end you have a long lived, dying race that brought about its own end. You could call them elves or volons or any number of other things. And even if you leave them as space elves how is that more silly then "Steampunk,hightech,big wheel riding dwaven-viking space bikers?"

There is nothing redeemable about the sqauts, nothing. The name is bad, the big wheels are bad, the viking-biker thing is bad, the steampunk/high tech we are not sure what we are thing is bad. All you are left with is dwaves, also kinda bad honestly. If you want heavy world Abhumans cool, but not a single reason they should or need to be "Space dwarfs"

Hunterindarkness wrote:

Zinderneuf wrote:

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Hunterindarkness wrote:In no way are they the "Lest silly". The name itself takes them out of the running, and the steam-tech/super tech, Viking, bigwheel riding bikers was just...a bad joke. In my 40k They never happened. I could see a heavy worlder type of Abhuman, but not a whole xeno race and not that silly. May be a bit odd but I do not like a lot of silly in my 40k.

Dude, space orks and space elves with orange mohawks are sillier.

Honestly, not to me.

No, Dude. They really are.

Hunterindarkness wrote: An ork is funny, until you stop and think about what an Ork is.They are a biologically engineered race with genetic memory and only programed for one thing. They are built to fight...

And, evidently, wear orange mohawks.

Hunterindarkness wrote: If you want heavy world Abhumans cool, but not a single reason they should or need to be "Space dwarfs"

Because pointy eared space elves (with orange mohawks) are not silly.

Really man, this is just an exercise in turning an aesthetic judgment into fact. That never works. I personally think that the sadist Dark Eldar are not only silly but extremely chilidish, but I won't tell that to anyone who worked hard on painting such an army. Why? Because all it is, is my opinion, not a fact. I'm only ribbing you with the orange mohawks to make this point. All this stuff is pretty silly, but I don't think that gets you anywhere.

I admitted the orks are funny and comical, but only until you know what they are. I just find nothing redeemable at all in the squats. You could make the "Orks" Looks different, give them a new name and it changes nothing about them. The same can not be said for the squats. All they have is that they are "Space dwarfs". Once you cut away the odd, silly crap you simply have nothing left worth saving. If you "dark them up" you no longer have the same thing. To "fix" them you have to change them into something else totally.


Its a favor thing, I am ok with a level of silly, but those things took that level, dressed it as a clown, got drunk and rode a rode a rainbow unicorn, naked though the house with it.

Hunterindarkness wrote:I admitted the orks are funny and comical, but only until you know what they are. I just find nothing redeemable at all in the squats. You could make the "Orks" Looks different, give them a new name and it changes nothing about them. The same can not be said for the squats. All they have is that they are "Space dwarfs". Once you cut away the odd, silly crap you simply have nothing left worth saving. If you "dark them up" you no longer have the same thing. To "fix" them you have to change them into something else totally.


Its a favor thing, I am ok with a level of silly, but those things took that level, dressed it as a clown, got drunk and rode a rode a rainbow unicorn, naked though the house with it.

But really, you are saying that space dwarfs are sillier than fungus creatures with submachineguns? based on what?

Also, remember that the orks were retconned into what they now are, which is arguably infinitely sillier than what they were in 1ed. Why not the Squats as well? Change the name, take away the trikes, give them a nice Norse background where their high tech prowess is favorably compared with the mythological dwarfs making magic weapons, and I think you really have something.

I am afraid that this might be heading into flaming if we keep going back and forth, and I don't want that, so I'll let you answer, and then just see what others have to say before making any more replies, but all I have seen so far is "GW says space dwarfs are silly, and space orcs are not, so that is how life works."

Man I did say to me. Everything we post in this thread is nothing but our own opinion. The OP and the very thread title is just that, an Opinion. I respect yours and take nothing you say personally, no need to worry about flames.

Here is a bit of background. I come in not knowing 1e Warhamer or 2e, nor 4e or any Table top version in fact. I have never played them and came in though the RPG side. I have learned what I know from hunting stuff down and online wikis. So I just see what they were. I like the setting and can except what it was and what is it becoming.

Truth is ( as I see it anyhow) GW seems to be shedding some of the odder and yes sillier stuff. some of the stuff made and fit in just because someone made a mini for it . NAd they seem to feel squats are something that no longer fits.

And yes to me the bio engineered plant people with guns are not as silly as squats. And In my Opinion the squarts are not something worth saving, I do like the concept of a heavy world Abhuman, but they do not need to be space dwarfs. Once you take away stuff that ( I feel) is a poor fit all you are left with is dwarfs.

Now if you want a dwarf like concept , I am cool, but everything about squarts was bad I feel. Over the top silly and bad.


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Maybe a wee bit off topic but if you wanted to salvage the concept I would do something like.

Make them have been long cut off or over looked, give them some old tech, maybe that have some nice STC templates or some hertek or border line hertech/archnotech style stuff. I would make them a small empire, no navigators just wrap "skimming"

I would go "dwarf" sized, wide thick limbs, pale and albino like. Hairless, large eyes with poor /weak daylight but great low light vision. Kinda like something that crawled out of the deep mines or a heavy grav, deathworld of some type.

That is what I would do, but they are not really "squats" anymore.


Can we at lest agree squats is the worst name ever?

Lobukia wrote:I thought it was pretty widely known by now that Squats dissapeared because one of the employees who developed them won an intellectual property lawsuit after he was fired and the Squats went with him.

Seriously, this is why. Everything else was normal GW CYA BS.

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That's also why they are gone and won't ever come back.

I missed this the first time I went through the thread. Despite having played Warhammer 40,000 since the old days when Squats were a viable choice (one which, incidentally, I saw very few people ever actually play), I have never heard this claim, nor even anything similar. It doesn't even make legal sense, since (unless I understand UK law in this instance very poorly) the copyright holder of a work made by an employee in the course of an employment is the employer. Even though (unlike US law) freelance or commissioned work technically belongs to the author of the work, it is an invariable feature of such contracts that intellectual rights to the completed work fall to the contractor.

Unless you can substantiate your claim in some fashion, I'm just going to conclude you're uncritically repeating more of the bitter whining that GW (rightly and wrongly) perpetually attracts from their players.

@Veteran Sergeant: Orcs are way older, as a narrative device, than GW's or Blizzard's take on them. Essentially, they were enemies designed to be so lowly and evil the heores could massacre them without any moral qualms.

@English Assassin: I recall having read about this IP thing here in Dakka, later last year. People think that some freelancer single-handledly sculpted the entire Squat range when in fact that's not quite true. Some minis were sculpted by Bob Olley, others by the Perry twins, and there probably were some other sculptors involved.

Hmm. Sounds deeply dubious to me; the only sculptors I can find listed for the old Squat range are the Perrys and Bob Olley, neither of whom have appear publicly to have claimed anything of the sort.

Surely, even in the unlikely event such a claim were true, the mystery freelancer might be able to claim the ownership of the particular Squat sculpts on which they had worked, but not the rights to the name and concept, which belong unambiguously to GW, since Rogue Trader's principal author (Rick Priestly) and contributing writers (Brian Ansell, Alan Merrett and editor Jim Bambra) were all GW employees. The same goes for the credited writers of the further-developed Squat background (Ansell, Nigel Stillman, Graeme Davis, and later Andy Chambers and Jervis Johnson).

So, unless any kind of substantive evidence emerges to support this unlikely claim, I would write it off as just something else invented for the sake of sneering at GW. (And who needs to make things up when we have Finecast, Mat Ward, Prices and Codex: Space Wolves to disappoint us.)

@Kanluwen...I wasn't saying that the word means short, just that it evokes that image. Intentional or not, people around the world will still make the short joke about them because they went from being "Squats" to the "Demiurg" and either word you read evokes images of short people. Maybe not intentionally, but very few people know what the associated word Demiurge even means without looking it up.

So the made up word Demiurg (notice the spelling isn't the same) will without doubt evoke images of short people.

Now about the Gyrocoptor. Remember that it was sculpted in Epic scale and designed at a time when the process of miniature casting was not to the level it is now. So it's a little bulky. But if you were to examine one of the actual models you would see that the nose and tail look a lot like the Vendetta/Valkyrie. The tail was actually supposed to have two sides to it held together with two pieces of metal that formed an x at the center similar to helicopters used by the United States in the Korean conflict.

The giant turbofans take up most of the wings on the gyrocoptor but for the Vendetta/Valkyrie they moved them sideways and made them smaller, thus needing to put more wing on the vendetta/valkyrie.

Now the Gyrocoptor miniature had to be bulked out and made one solid piece on the tail section because if they didn't make it that way the miniature would have been very fragile and it would have broken very easily. However, you can see that the design of the tail section has two sides to it and should have been hollow between those two sides the way the Valkyrie and Vendetta are. The designers then had to bulk out the back of the gyrocoptor so they made it a little blocky near the tail fins but in the 40k scale vendetta/valkyrie they didn't have that problem so they were able to just put a flat piece of plastic between the two sections.

Anyway, when you examine one you will definitely see the similarity. I own 20 of them and the similarity is definitely there.

I'm fairly certain that people don't think of short people when they think of "Demigods". I cannot think of any case where the prefix "demi" would make someone reasonably exposed to the usage of the prefix to think of "short people".

I really, really, really think you're reaching on this one Roadkill Zombie.

Agent_Tremolo wrote:@English Assassin: I recall having read about this IP thing here in Dakka, later last year. People think that some freelancer single-handledly sculpted the entire Squat range when in fact that's not quite true. Some minis were sculpted by Bob Olley, others by the Perry twins, and there probably were some other sculptors involved.

It was likely put forward as a theory, rather than as fact.

However there is precedent. Chris Fitzgerald, who sculpted much of the Dark Elf metal range, had also produced the new "Mengil Manhide's Manflayers". They were not part of what he was supposed to have sculpted though, and he left the company before they worked out details. The result?

It took almost five years for GW and Fitzgerald to hammer out an acceptable arrangement before they released.

It's no reach at all. From the dictionary the word Demi is a combining form appearing in loanwords from french meaning half, or lesser.

How is that a reach to say the prefix Demi means short people when it clearly is talking about something being half or lesser. When used to describe a race we already know as short...therefore demi? half height or a lesser human as the imperium sees them?

Roadkill Zombie wrote:It's no reach at all. From the dictionary the word Demi is a combining form appearing in loanwords from french meaning half, or lesser.

How is that a reach to say the prefix Demi means short people when it clearly is talking about something being half or lesser. When used to describe a race we already know as short...therefore demi? half height or a lesser human as the imperium sees them?

The prefix--by itself-- does not mean anything but "half". The second part of the word is the important part. In this context, that is "urg". What in the world is "half an urg"?
The fact of the matter is that "Demiurg" is far more closely related to the term "Demiurge" which is an English bastardization of a term used to denote a skilled artisan or craftsman.

Isn't a Demiurge a creator god?

CthuluIsSpy wrote:Isn't a Demiurge a creator god?

It has come to be accepted that it can refer to it.

Wikipedia has a great article on the term "Demiurge" though.

Gah, I need to learn that 'Edit' and 'Quote' are not the same.

So the made up word Demiurg (notice the spelling isn't the same) will without doubt evoke images of short people.

Without doubt?

Now thats the most opinionated comment in this thread.

When some someone says Demi... I think of Striptease, GIJane and That Seventies Show.

When someone says Demiurg I think of MtG and little rock men from 40k rumors (and interesting space ships from BFG).

DeffDred wrote:

So the made up word Demiurg (notice the spelling isn't the same) will without doubt evoke images of short people.

Without doubt?

Now thats the most opinionated comment in this thread.

When some someone says Demi... I think of Striptease, GIJane and That Seventies Show.

When someone says Demiurg I think of MtG and little rock men from 40k rumors (and interesting space ships from BFG).

Yes, without doubt. But I didn't say it would do that to every single human being on the planet now did I ? You, obviously, are one of the exceptions.

You still haven't said what an "urg" is that makes you think of a "short human".