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Tempest gave us a fantastic little option in the Imperialis Militia and Cults list in the form of 'Abhuman Helots' - which basically turns your guys into Squats! Combines with something like 'Survivors of the Dark Age' is it possible to build a realistic Squat army in the 31st Millennium?

First - what used to be in a Squat army? Here's the (very basic) breakdown:
- Squats were T4, I2 guardsmen wearing flak armour and armed with general imperial weapons like lasguns and bolters. They tended to favour plasma weapons and heavy bolters.
- They had access to Exo-Squats in heavy armour with power axes and bolters - like slightly toned down Terminators. They also had 'Hearthguard' who were like Veterans with better equipment.
- They had bikes, both Exo-bikes and regular 'Guild' bikes, including attack bikes.
- They had Rhinos and Land Raiders, plus lots of cool tunnelling stuff and, in Epic, great big war machines. Also Mole Mortars and Thudd Guns.

So, how does this translate into the IM&C list? If we take the two above Provenances, we get the following:
- All guys are now Squat-profile - T4 I2 Guardsmen
- We must take two squads of Grenadiers, which have a 3+ save, +1S on their guns and can lake a Rhino or a Proteus.
- Everyone else now has armour 4+
- We can take Thudd Guns (Quad Rapiers) and use the Mole Mortars as just regular Mortars.

But we have a few issues unresolved. Any ideas on these questions?

- EXO SQUATS. So, what do we use to represent Exo Squats? On one hand, you could use regular Infantry as Squats (4+ save), and the Grenadiers as Hearthguard (3+ save) but then what are Exo Squats? Ogryns? If so, they become T5, 3W, 3+Sv but only have BS2. Cool, and very tough, but not very Squatty and WAY more powerful than Terminators. On the other hand, you could just make the Grenadiers the Exo-squats and just say the Hearthguard are the command squad or something. If you do that, you end up with T4, 1W, 3+Sv Exo Armour, which isn't very good! The obvious solution is to ally in some Terminators, but I don't think you can do this in 30k without having regular marines too, since Rites of War is only possible on the Warlord??

-BIKES - As far as I can see, the only bikes available in 30k are fully power-armoured marine Bikers. You could justify the 3+ save because of the bike itself, but the S4, WS4, Ld8 would make less sense. If you were taking your Exo-Squats as 3+ save Grenadiers, the Exo-Bikes may work as regular Legion Outriders.

-TUNNELERS - To be fair, this was an Epic thing, but many 40k Squat armies have used Drop Pod rules for Termites, which is fun and fluffy. But I can't see any way of getting access to Drop Pods in the list yet. Again, you need a Rite of War to be able to take them, and you can't do that in the ally contingent. Dreadclaws are probably too confusing as they're flyers - it would have to be regular Drop Pods.

Is there some way I'm not seeing of taking an allied marine detachment of Terminators, Bikes and Drop Pods? That would be the easiest solution. Or do we scrap Survivors of the Dark Age altogether (bye bye Rhino Grenadiers) and just take an allied Marine Force with regular marines as the Hearthguard?

You can do a very nice squat list with the Imperialis Militia. I've been giving this some thought myself and would like to do a squat army.

What you need, as you noted:

a) Abhuman Helots - this makes the generic 'squat statline' and gives everyone access to Discipline Collars - giving them stubborn. You'll want to pair this with Discipline Master Cadres (model them as standard bearers or something) as Militia leadership is shoddy as all gak.

b) Survivors Of The Dark Age - gives access to two 'grenadier units' who are now essentially mini space marines. I know Advanced Weapons is an option, but it feels more apt to give this squad bolters. Throw in some flamer or plasma special weapon grenadiers for medium-heavy infantry hunting.



As noted, regular imperialis infantry do okay as squat infantry. Their damage output is laughable (BS3 lasguns) but their toughness is impressive (T4 Sv4+). As long as, again, there's a discipline master and discipline collars, you can trust them to hold in an assault for a few rounds of combat (the sergeant gets murdered in round 1, then in round 2 either the discipline master gets murdered or refuses the challenge, in which case you're down to LD7.....with stubborn and the reroll you might hold but it's not by any means confident).

Bikes - There's no bikes, but remember the 'classic' squat thing wasn't bikes but trikes. Trikes needn't be fast - I would recommend using auxilia sentinals to represent them!

Tunnelers - now this I'd forgotten about. But no, I'm afraid I can't see a way to do this.

Exo Armour - You're forgetting a key option (I forgot it at first, too) - you can take Ogryn Brute Squads as elites and they have the Provenance rule too. With the Provenances we're talking about, that means that if you take the option of carapace armour, each ogryn has T6, W3, Sv3+ - that's plenty impressive enough for me! I wouldn't give them any ranged weapons because you can't hide that shoddy BS score, but you can issue them with power axes and have a S6 AP2 melee unit. Give a few boarding shields and you've got a 5++ save and defensive grenades to boot.



Also, if you're inclined to do a bit of converting, take an Auxilia Baneblade or Stormhammer as your Lord Of War, convert it to look like a leviathan and then take a lone thunderbolt and make up a model which looks like an Iron Eagle Gyrocopter.

Honestly I think squats would be better represented using the Solar Auxilia more so than the Imperial militia just for stats and better armor.

With the proper Provenances, Imperialis militia have the same or better stats and armour.

Abhuman Helot, Survivors Of The Dark Ages Grenadiers have T4 and a 3+ save, and the regular 'militia infantry' and gun crew have a 4+ save like Solar Auxilia and T4.

The only advantages of solar auxilia over militia grenadiers are their lasrifle's collimators and blast chargers - and since Advanced Weapons can make the grenadiers' lasrifles (if you buy them) S4, it's pretty much just the blast-chargers.

The big edge of solar auxilia is the tercios and their support squads - flamer sections and veletarii sections - to back up the lasrifles. Militia can duplicate flamer support squads, but they've got nothing to touch veletarii with massed volkite fire up close - even advanced laslock-armed grenadiers can't touch them. By comparison, much more of the militia's fighting power is in its tanks (you'll notice for example that militia Leman Russ can take sponsons, which Solar-pattern tanks can't).

One odd problem with Imperialis militia is that they can't actually field that much infantry as each squad is a troop choice, rather than having multiple squads per choice as solar auxilia regiments do.

locarno24 wrote:As noted, regular imperialis infantry do okay as squat infantry. Their damage output is laughable (BS3 lasguns) but their toughness is impressive (T4 Sv4+). As long as, again, there's a discipline master and discipline collars, you can trust them to hold in an assault for a few rounds of combat (the sergeant gets murdered in round 1, then in round 2 either the discipline master gets murdered or refuses the challenge, in which case you're down to LD7.....with stubborn and the reroll you might hold but it's not by any means confident)....

Exo Armour - You're forgetting a key option (I forgot it at first, too) - you can take Ogryn Brute Squads as elites and they have the Provenance rule too. With the Provenances we're talking about, that means that if you take the option of carapace armour, each ogryn has T6, W3, Sv3+ - that's plenty impressive enough for me! I wouldn't give them any ranged weapons because you can't hide that shoddy BS score, but you can issue them with power axes and have a S6 AP2 melee unit. Give a few boarding shields and you've got a 5++ save and defensive grenades to boot.

Yup, the damage output of regular guys is rubbish, but if the main idea is to make them like the old Squat army, then this is pretty accurate!

I like the Exo-Squat/Orgyn idea, and agree that you could get around it by not using melee weapons, but you still end up with a Ld6 squad who are meant to be your elite Hearthguard!!

locarno24 wrote:Tunnelers - now this I'd forgotten about. But no, I'm afraid I can't see a way to do this

This is the annoying thing - no way as far as I can see to take any Drop Pods!

locarno24 wrote:The big edge of solar auxilia is the tercios and their support squads - flamer sections and veletarii sections - to back up the lasrifles. Militia can duplicate flamer support squads, but they've got nothing to touch veletarii with massed volkite fire up close - even advanced laslock-armed grenadiers can't touch them. By comparison, much more of the militia's fighting power is in its tanks (you'll notice for example that militia Leman Russ can take sponsons, which Solar-pattern tanks can't).

gmaleron wrote:Honestly I think squats would be better represented using the Solar Auxilia more so than the Imperial militia just for stats and better armor.

So, while it's in no doubt that Solar Auxilia are more 'elite' and have options which are really good (like Veletaris) none of these are actually required for a Squat army. I certainly think that that current ONLY way of getting a Squat-like stat line is Imperialis Militia.

Thing is, the minute you need to take SM allies to gain access to bikes and terminators (assuming you don't use Ogryns) then you might as well use Tactical Squads as your Hearthguard, since they have the same armour, BS and transports. If you do that, there's no need to take Survivors of the Dark Age, so maybe Warrior Elite is a better choice? Then you have Exo Squats (Terminators), Bikes (Outriders) and Hearthguard (Breachers/Tacticals in Rhinos) and your basic Squats are still T4 and Ld8?

I like the Exo-Squat/Orgyn idea, and agree that you could get around it by not using melee weapons, but you still end up with a Ld6 squad who are meant to be your elite Hearthguard!!

a standard bearer (discipline master) is in that squad, right? Then they're Ld9 with a reroll and stubborn (discipline collars). That's better than a lot of astartes units.

Aha! Actually, it seems that you CAN take a rite of war with an allied force, which makes it possibly quite easy:

- Guildmaster (Force Commander) with Abhuman Helot and SOTDA.
- Regular Squat Infantry (BS3, T4, I2, 4+) as Infantry Squads, Command Squads, Fire Support (Mortars), Rapier Quad Launchers (Thudd Guns), with no transport allowed.
- Hearthguard (BS4, T4, I2, 3+) with super powered guns and in Rhinos
- Iron Eagle (Thunderbolt)
- Stormhammer (Land Train)

Then allied space marines (Iron Warriors? Salamanders?)

- Exo-Squat Warlord (Praetor) with Pride of the Legion and Terminator Armour
- Exo-Squats (Terminators) as Troops in Proteus Land Raiders
- Guild Bikers (BS4, T4, I4, 3+) as Outriders and Attack Bikes, with the 3+ save being the bike.

It's only really the initiative of the SM section that is out of place??


Automatically Appended Next Post:

locarno24 wrote:
a standard bearer (discipline master) is in that squad, right? Then they're Ld9 with a reroll and stubborn (discipline collars). That's better than a lot of astartes units.

Yeah, but potentially even more confusing as each Exo-armour squad of super-Killy tough guys has to include one flak-armoured banner bearer hiding at the back, and they all become Ld6 if he's sniped out!!

Also, for clarity with my opponent, I wouldn't use standard bearers as discipline masters when there are clear standard bearer options available in the list (vexillas)