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 am a young player who doesn't know much about the Squats.

Here's what I know:

They are Space Dwarfs
They were removed from the game at some point
Many people liked them
Some people still have Squats today

Here's what I want to know:

Why were they removed from the game?
When (as in what year) were they removed from the game?
Why were they liked so much?
When were they popular?
Were they underpowered, overpowered, or balanced?
Were they a fun army to play?
How much was a box of Squats?

Any other information would be helpful. Thanks in advance.

Okay. Here's what I know about the Squats, having been gaming back when they were still around:

They were removed from the game because nobody in the design studio could figure out what to do with them. 40K was, in 2nd Edition, gradually moving away from the more parody or satirical elements in its background in an effort to make the game more serious. Squats were pretty much just Warhammer Fantasy Dwarves in space, and GW wanted to make them something more unique. Their army list read like a shorter, drunker version of the Imperial Guard army list, and they needed to be made to stand apart so that they would stand out more. Unfortunately, nobody could think of exactly how to do that in 40K, so they kept getting pushed back and pushed back and pushed back and then they quietly decided not to continue making them.

There was never an official press release that stated "The Squats are Dead!", so there isn't an exact date for when they were excised from the game, but they had been quietly taken out back and shot some time prior to the release of 3rd Edition. So, whenever 3rd was released is a pretty good date for when the Squats were... well, Squatted.

I can't say why they were liked so much... you'd have to ask all the Squat players and then do math to figure that answer out. I can tell you why I liked them: all of their vehicles were Imperial designs, so I could field a Squat army on the cheap using the IG and SM tanks I already had. I just had to buy Squat infantry models. When I started this game, I did not have a lot of money to buy stuff with, so I had to be frugal. It's why I started with Space Marines, the cheapest army to put together back then.

They were popular during 1st Edition (Rogue Trader) and during 2nd Edition, and for a little while in 3rd, before the realization sunk in that they weren't coming back. Then they became something 40K players bitched about at Games Day. Today, fan reaction and hassling of GW staff are the reason GW hasn't ever killed off another army in the game. Sisters of Battle haven't had new models made for 20 years, but GW still writes codexes for them, because they don't want to have to put up with irate Squat *and* SoB players every Games Day.

As far as balance goes, its hard to say. 2nd Edition was a hot mess, but by and large things were balanced in that there was so much randomness involved in the game, it was hard for one army to be overpowering. Certainly, there were individual characters that were powerful (the generic Imperial Assassin, ho boy...) but the only army I can recall that people kvetched about was Tyranids, and even then it was because of one specific mission they could force you to play which stacked the odds in their favor. So I'd say the Squats were no more or less balanced than any other army. They did get Graviton guns, at a time when only one other army could get them, and they functioned a whole lot differently back then.

Were they fun to play? That's down to personal preference. I liked having a block of WS 4 T4 infantry that could actually take a charge from orks and survive, as opposed to my IG guys who tended to fall down a lot and die when that happened. They weren't a very mobile army unless you had a lot of guys on motorcycles; consequently everybody had lots of guys on motorcycles. I had fun with them whenever I put them on the table, but as always, YMMV.

A box of plastic Squat infantry would've been priced around the same as any other box of plastic infantry at the time... say around $20.00 for a box of ten.

Hope I've been helpful.

squidhills wrote:
Okay. Here's what I know about the Squats, having been gaming back when they were still around:

They were removed from the game because nobody in the design studio could figure out what to do with them. 40K was, in 2nd Edition, gradually moving away from the more parody or satirical elements in its background in an effort to make the game more serious. Squats were pretty much just Warhammer Fantasy Dwarves in space, and GW wanted to make them something more unique. Their army list read like a shorter, drunker version of the Imperial Guard army list, and they needed to be made to stand apart so that they would stand out more. Unfortunately, nobody could think of exactly how to do that in 40K, so they kept getting pushed back and pushed back and pushed back and then they quietly decided not to continue making them.

There was never an official press release that stated "The Squats are Dead!", so there isn't an exact date for when they were excised from the game, but they had been quietly taken out back and shot some time prior to the release of 3rd Edition. So, whenever 3rd was released is a pretty good date for when the Squats were... well, Squatted.

I can't say why they were liked so much... you'd have to ask all the Squat players and then do math to figure that answer out. I can tell you why I liked them: all of their vehicles were Imperial designs, so I could field a Squat army on the cheap using the IG and SM tanks I already had. I just had to buy Squat infantry models. When I started this game, I did not have a lot of money to buy stuff with, so I had to be frugal. It's why I started with Space Marines, the cheapest army to put together back then.

They were popular during 1st Edition (Rogue Trader) and during 2nd Edition, and for a little while in 3rd, before the realization sunk in that they weren't coming back. Then they became something 40K players bitched about at Games Day. Today, fan reaction and hassling of GW staff are the reason GW hasn't ever killed off another army in the game. Sisters of Battle haven't had new models made for 20 years, but GW still writes codexes for them, because they don't want to have to put up with irate Squat *and* SoB players every Games Day.

As far as balance goes, its hard to say. 2nd Edition was a hot mess, but by and large things were balanced in that there was so much randomness involved in the game, it was hard for one army to be overpowering. Certainly, there were individual characters that were powerful (the generic Imperial Assassin, ho boy...) but the only army I can recall that people kvetched about was Tyranids, and even then it was because of one specific mission they could force you to play which stacked the odds in their favor. So I'd say the Squats were no more or less balanced than any other army. They did get Graviton guns, at a time when only one other army could get them, and they functioned a whole lot differently back then.

Were they fun to play? That's down to personal preference. I liked having a block of WS 4 T4 infantry that could actually take a charge from orks and survive, as opposed to my IG guys who tended to fall down a lot and die when that happened. They weren't a very mobile army unless you had a lot of guys on motorcycles; consequently everybody had lots of guys on motorcycles. I had fun with them whenever I put them on the table, but as always, YMMV.

A box of plastic Squat infantry would've been priced around the same as any other box of plastic infantry at the time... say around $20.00 for a box of ten.

Hope I've been helpful.

You've been very helpful.

Thanks.

They are Space Dwarfs

Not quite. They were humans that had had colonized high gravity worlds and shrunk.

They were removed from the game at some point

True. It was one of the first 40K armies that GW "retconned" out of existence.

Many people liked them

This is a matter of opinion, as they were never a "real army" to begin with. Back in the late days of Rouge Trader (you could think of it as Warhammer 40K Second Edition), there were very, very few "full armies". Really, the only armies available were Space Marines, and I'm not talking Space Wolves, Blood Angels, Dark Angels. I'm talking generic Space Marines, and all they really had was some infantry. Eldar were a thing, Orks, Imperial Guard, Chaos and not much else. Squats existed as much as Sisters of Battle did. As in, they had a few models, rules for a bunch of other stuff, and that was it. In those days, if you wanted, say a Space Marine Hover Tank, you built one yourself (see the infamous "Deodorant Tank").

Some people still have Squats today

I'm sure some people do, but they are an army with no rules, and no other game system really comes close to a sci-fi skirmish game like Kings of War for fantasy. So anyone that still has squats probably don't do much with them but sigh a lot.

Why were they removed from the game?

Lots of speculation about this, but pretty much when 40K moved into 3rd Edition, it was a whole re-write of the entire system. Everything was simplified, rules were tossed out, and everything was in the main rule book. The main rule book had rules for every army and model that GW wanted to promote. All the RT era codexes, army books, and supplements were rendered null and void. My personal theory: Squats were not selling that well. They were pretty ugly miniatures and if you wanted any of the "good units", you had to make them yourself, and when you have a white metal dwarf, trying to cut it to fit on an Ork Bike (Orks were the only army with Bikes for a long time) was a horrible experience. My belief is that GW wanted to make room for Dark Eldar, who were the newest army in the game for 3rd ed.

When (as in what year) were they removed from the game?

It was when 3rd Edition came out, so 1997? 1998?

Why were they liked so much?

Again, this was simply a matter of taste and/or style. For me, they were ugly, misshapen models, and the rules were awesome if you had some kind of tank in your army as they were awesome at fixing things. The problem was, there were not too many tank models in the game. I think the people that say Squats were awesome are looking back at Rogue Trader with rose tinted glasses.

When were they popular?

I would actually say they were never that popular, as the line was never really fully fleshed out and/or explored. They were presented in a White Dwarf article, and later added in via RT Compendium into the game.

Were they underpowered, overpowered, or balanced?

It was Rogue Trader. The game was super silly and more about fun then anything resembling a "power level". A single Space Marine in Terminator Armor could pretty much walk through an entire army if he was armed correctly- double assault cannons, vortex grenade launchers, 1+ rerollable save... Baharroth, the Eldar Swooping Hawk Exarch, basically had infinite attacks with his Web of Skulls. RT was full of such nonsense, and balance issues was one of the main reasons the slate was wiped clean with 3rd ed.

Were they a fun army to play?

Depends on your definition of fun and why you were playing 40K to begin with. Like I said above, RT was way more silly, tongue in cheek, and purposefully over the top in those days. The game and GW did not take itself seriously.

How much was a box of Squats?

Irrelevant, as it would be in 1990's money, and you can't buy a box anymore anyways. To put things in perspective though, and as much as it hurts me to say it today, you could pick up 10 white metal space marines for about US$10, and that was considered pretty expensive at the time.

Piece of advice? Don't bother with Squats. It's been 18 years since GW got rid of them, and they have stated over and over again, no Squats will ever be reintroduced into 40K. Over the last 18 years, they haven't even so much as produced a promotional model or "fun rules" in White Dwarf. The closest I think GW has ever come to a new Squat is the special Grombrindal model in Space Marine Armor you could get for having a subscription to White Dwarf. Even if you got a bunch of Squat models, the closest you could come to playing them on the table would be a "Counts-As" army, and then what army would you count them as?

The Squats are an interesting little bit of GW history that we will probably never see again.

Probably worth mentioning they were much more developed in Epic than 40K.

They had some enormous vehicles, such as the Land Train, which was exactly what it sounds like, a large airship (the Overlord) and the Goliath Mega Cannon (a big AA style gun which, at 40K scale would be somewhere between a Knight and a Warhound in height!

They were a blend between SM and IG in play style, heavily mechanized but with infantry that were individually tougher and more skilled than a Guardsman but not quite on par with a Marine, they had pseudo Terminators in Exo Armour and also commonly featured a heavy biker element.

Their fluff heavily mirrored the original (non AoS) Fantasy fluff, they had runes but no psykers, and venerated their ancestors instead of any sort of deity.

Honestly, given the way the scale of the game has escalated, with once Epic only scale vehicles now technically possible to manufacture at 30mm scale and a ruleset that includes them, the time is probably right to look at them again, there is enough scope for them to carve out a niche, even if done as a FW only army rather than a full, plastic, GW release.

Oh, and their homeworlds were eaten by a Hivefleet, if you can pin down which article or book first referenced that, you'll be able to date when they were actually killed off.

They stopped making rules for them after 2nd ed. I don't think that they made models during 2nd ed, as far as I recall the rules were all for rt models. I never saw a squat army, and played a lot during 2nd ed. They weren't popular, which was half of why they were dropped.

When rt first came out, it was basically scifi versions of the fantasy range, ogres, elves, dwarves, slann etc. Over time, the elements that didn't really seem to fit in got phased out, and new races that were unique to the setting emerged.

People just like to refer to them to moan about gw. If you had to have had a squat collection, or even a single model, to be allowed to refer to them, you'd almost never hear of them.

My small collection of them was binned with my bloodbowl teams and half a sm army when my mother had a clear out whilst I was at uni. Never forgiven that.

Squidhills gets more right than Tamwulf.

As to the cause of their popularity, well, I don't think they were ever super popular in 40k, but in Epic they were a bit more fleshed out. They had a lot of character in Epic. I had two land trains, a colossus/leviathan, 3 overlords, lots of gyrocopters, and I found them more fun than my other generic Imperial stuff. Don't know why, I just did.

 JamesY wrote:
They stopped making rules for them after 2nd ed. I don't think that they made models during 2nd ed, as far as I recall the rules were all for rt models. I never saw a squat army, and played a lot during 2nd ed. They weren't popular, which was half of why they were dropped.

Kind of a chicken and egg scenario there though, no new models and a handful of entries in the black codex does not a popular army make.

Good points, everyone. Thanks for posting.

From the horses mouth so to speak: http://www.chaos-dwarfs.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=11181

 Tamwulf wrote:

Many people liked them

This is a matter of opinion,

"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 % quantities that the Squats pulled down, especially when you look across all of the ranges produced by GW rather than just those for 40K."

Either there were very few players that were very wealthy, or else they did indeed have a fairly decent fan base.

As Azrael13 said they never really shinned in 40k but in Epic they were, well, EPIC!

The Squat army in Epic was all about artillery, superheavy tanks and bikes. Nothing in the middle between a trike and a tank the size of a Costco. They had small field batteries of thud guns and mole mortars then then they had Golliath Mega Cannons! Guns the size of the Empire State Building lobbing shells the size of a Mack truck!

For fliers they had air ships dripping with cannons and bombs.

And all of this in a wonderful steampunk style long before steampunk was even a thing.

When they were removed in 3rd edition it was done as poorly as could be imagined. First silence, they just didn't get a mention in the 3rd edition rulebook. Then mockery in White Dwarf. Then censorship, when a short story featuring Squat Engineer Grimm was reprinted, he magically became Tech Priest Grill.

There's an old Citadel Journal article from around 2000 where Jarvis Johnson explains their demise and recommends using the models as either Orks or IG.

Since then there's been a few subtle mentions. Dan Abnett snuck them into an Eisenhorn book, and they show up in the appendex of the 6th or 7th edition rule book. And eventualy the Inquisition Wars books were reprinted with Grimm intact in all his glory.

I for one would love for them to show up in Horus Heresy or Beast Awakens. I mean if the Jockaero can come back what is stopping the space dwarfs?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
OK why can I remember this thread and not basic Hindi vocabulary?

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/183357.page

And all of this in a wonderful steampunk style long before steampunk was even a thing.

Never thought that fit with 40ks aesthetic or style tbh. I didnt like or hate them, they were just meh to me - in 40k anyway. I do agree Epic fleshed them out more but as of now, they feel way too retro and a bit damn camp.

I've always found the 'we didn't know what to do with them' excuse a little half baked, as many idea's from both the Tau and the Mechanicus could have been applied to the Squats, ie more Suits / Drones / Robots retooled from mining kit to wargear and Tech a step ahead of the majority of IoM

And like others have mentioned their Epic range was excellent, even had a little flyer that's clearly the proto-type for the Vendetta (with some credit to Skynet)

 Azreal13 wrote:

 JamesY wrote:
They stopped making rules for them after 2nd ed. I don't think that they made models during 2nd ed, as far as I recall the rules were all for rt models. I never saw a squat army, and played a lot during 2nd ed. They weren't popular, which was half of why they were dropped.

Kind of a chicken and egg scenario there though, no new models and a handful of entries in the black codex does not a popular army make.

True enough. I'd like to think that it was a decision based on sales performance whilst properly supported, but we'll never know.

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
I've always found the 'we didn't know what to do with them' excuse a little half baked, as many idea's from both the Tau and the Mechanicus could have been applied to the Squats, ie more Suits / Drones / Robots retooled from mining kit to wargear and Tech a step ahead of the majority of IoM

I think it's mainly a case of no one at the studio being particularly interested in the squats. There was probably genuinely no one who knew exactly what they wanted the squats to be and so they spent their time and efforts on the other factions that had developers that were really into them. Similarly, WHFB had gnomes at one point.

Jes once said it was because armoured dwarves riding tricycles was just too silly for third edition.

 JamesY wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

 JamesY wrote:
They stopped making rules for them after 2nd ed. I don't think that they made models during 2nd ed, as far as I recall the rules were all for rt models. I never saw a squat army, and played a lot during 2nd ed. They weren't popular, which was half of why they were dropped.

Kind of a chicken and egg scenario there though, no new models and a handful of entries in the black codex does not a popular army make.

True enough. I'd like to think that it was a decision based on sales performance whilst properly supported, but we'll never know.

We know from Jervis himself that was not the case. It's already been quoted in this very thread.

Granted, we'll never know if Jervis was 100% honest regarding what he said, but I don't think he had any reason to lie at that point. Specially because if the decision had been based on sales performance the GW Studio guys wouldn't have looked so dull and incompetent. Basically they didn't know what to do with Squats. I mean... seriously? They couldn't come up with anything at all? Even in such a case, keeping them alive in the game à la Sisters wouldn't have hurt anyone, although sometimes one has to wonder if Sisters have not been completely discontinued at this point due to the massive Squats backlash.

Not that it stopped GW from squatting entire factions in WHFB.

 Fifty wrote:
Squidhills gets more right than Tamwulf.

Very true.



Take have of what people have said on here with a grain of salt, because a lot of it sounds like stuff that folks have just heard over the years instead of actual facts from people playing at the time.


If you want an idea of squat models check this out

(http://www.solegends.com/citrt2/index.htm)

For the time, RT & 2nd Ed, they had just as a divers group of models as every other army. They had:

1) Infantry
2) Bikers
3) Heavy Weapons
4) Exo Armour (terminators)
5) Ancient Ancestors (psychers)
6) Tech Priests


In RT all Imperial armies had access to Rhinos I believe squats had access to Land Raiders as well. 2nd Ed changes things up a bit, but squats had great cheap heavy weapons, you could make practically a whole army of squat Devistators, IIRC they were call Thunder Squads or Thunderers.

As for the reason to why they were pulled the tongue in cheek answer given at Games Days was they were eaten by Tyranids. Managers would say they didn't sell well, that may just be the "toe the line, corp response forced on them". However I did live near the old US factory in Maryland around the time epic was being phased out just prior to the release of 3rd and all epic was 20% off except Squats which were 35% and not moving.

Now that doesn't say much for why they didn't get included in 3rd. I can't say much for how things worked back then, but a friend of mine worked for GW for years and he knew a couple of the guys in the designe studio. I have been out of the WH loop for a while, but how it worked in 3rd - 6th was a pitch system. The head of the design studio says they are going to release a new codex. The writers put together a pitch for whatever book they want. They have a few models laying around from the sculptors that they are told they have to work in, but are otherwise free to do what they want. The head of the studio basically picks the best pitch and it is given the green light to go to play testing and then to the printer. The problem with this system is if none of the designers are interested in the army, it doesn't get done. There is no schedule or time table to do each army for each edition, just whoever is interested. This is the reason why Britonians were never done past 6th, nobody was interested in them in the studio. Everyone wants to make their mark on the flagship Space Marine codex, so they get done every ed.

So I can't speak for Squat specifically but I would guess that none of the designers were interested and thus they never made it off the drawing board.

 Mr. S Baldrick wrote:


Take have of what people have said on here with a grain of salt, because a lot of it sounds like stuff that folks have just heard over the years instead of actual facts from people playing at the time.

 Mr. S Baldrick wrote:

I can't say much for how things worked back then, but a friend of mine worked for GW for years and he knew a couple of the guys in the designe studio.

 Mr. S Baldrick wrote:
I have been out of the WH loop for a while, but how it worked in 3rd - 6th was a pitch system.

 Mr. S Baldrick wrote:
There is no schedule or time table to do each army for each edition, just whoever is interested. This is the reason why Britonians were never done past 6th, nobody was interested in them in the studio. Everyone wants to make their mark on the flagship Space Marine codex, so they get done every ed.

 Mr. S Baldrick wrote:


So I can't speak for Squat specifically but I would guess that none of the designers were interested and thus they never made it off the drawing board.

Kinda sounds a little like your initial advice applies more to your own post than anyone elses...

It's worth mentioning too that there was no 2nd ed codex for Squats outside of the "Codex Imperialis" = the small codex which came with the 2nd edition game. A proper fully fleshed out codex was never printed.

In addition, as mentioned, models were not available during 2nd edition (except early when they were simply selling off the last of the models). As such you had to already have acquired an army prior to...say, 1994 to really be able to even field them. As such no young kids had squats unless they'd inherited them.

So even in the mid-90's the squat players were mostly older and many probably left the hobby by the time 3rd or 4th came around. A bit of a "dying" breed so to speak. That being said I know plenty of folks who still have squat armies stuffed in boxes, etc.

There are still folks that use there squat models today. They are perfect for IG. I have even used mine as SW from time to time. The exo armoured guys work great as Wolfguard or Grey Knights. I have even seen people use them as Ratlings. There are plenty of ways to fit them into 40K.

Most people answered it, but the tl;dr I it is this:

Squats were the comic relief, they were akin to the silliness of Skaven. So they were partly removed because they were not grim dark enough.

Additionally, they played exactly as IG did so basically they were shorter IG, GW did not want to print two army that played the exact same.

Added fluff bonus, squats were the ones that crates the terminator armor, it was based off their mech/ mining Exo skeletons

Rule 1 about Squats: There is no such thing as Squats. Those people who have seen tiny bearded men in 40k are obviously hallucinating.

@Iron_Captain: Seriously? The other people in this thread will disagree with you. The other people in this thread have been very helpful.

He is throwing some humor in...They are not mentioned in current fluff, so according to current 40k they never existed. No need to be so serious.

 troa wrote:
He is throwing some humor in...They are not mentioned in current fluff, so according to current 40k they never existed. No need to be so serious.

Oh.

 troa wrote:
He is throwing some humor in...They are not mentioned in current fluff, so according to current 40k they never existed. No need to be so serious.

I think in current 40k they exist as a minor race that got nommed by Tyranids.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Jes once said it was because armoured dwarves riding tricycles was just too silly for third edition.

He'd probably have less trouble sculpting them instead of the sleeves on those plastic sisters of battle he's slaving over.

In addition to the humor level not matching the “modern” setting, they also had problems meshing with the grimdark in other ways.

They actually knew how things worked. None of the by-rote psudo-religious mysticism of the modern Imperium of Man. Their existence, especially as part of the IoM, made the AdMech look kinda silly.

Thematically, they filled a similar role to the one the Space Wolves were growing into. How many hard-drinking Nordic-esque armies do you need in your setting?

IIRC from the time, it was a combination of most of the things listed in this thread.

Poor sales
Nobody in the studio to champion them
Game mechanics were not unique enough to give them a niche (they were a blend of SM and guard)
Fluff didn’t fit with the direction the game was going, and conflicted/was co-opted by other factions.

I’ve got some the little buggers kicking around still. Or or two might actually be painted.

I plan on playing some 2nd edition games with the new Mantic Forgefathers as Squats. They are a great reimagining with a look that fits "modern" 40K quite well.