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Racerguy180 wrote:

MarkNorfolk wrote:

Per the designers, it wasn't a sales issue. It was a 'we can't think of anything interesting to do with them'

Yet they had no problem with Space Elves, Space Orcs, & Space Empire...

This is the thing that still pisses me off.

In many ways Dwarves in Space makes more sense, as even in the fantasy setting they are ingenious engineers, have no problem with small, dark spaces etc.

I think that was the line from Jervis Johnson when he wrote that conciliatory letter to the Squats fans all of those years ago, saying in retrospect they probably should have just dropped them from 2nd edition, but that they wanted people to be able to use their existing collections. And then the actual removal of them was handled poorly/crassly (THEY GOT EATEN BY TYRANIDS AND THEY SUCK ANYWAY LOL" - or words to that effect)

Grimtuff wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
Not sure if this is true, but I had heard that one of the senior GW staff/designers that previously despised Squats (I'm not sure whom), and had said Squats would only return over his dead body, has now left. This is why you have a few of them sneaking back in to things like Necromunda, which at one time absolutely would not have happened.

Is anyone in a position to verify my questionable statement?

I'm not really in a position, but I certainly think that statement has some merrett to it...

Ah OK - thanks! Yes that ties up with what I had heard previously.

Dysartes wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Since we're talking about Space dwarfs that are missing in our Science Fantasy game a question crossed my mind: have there ever been Trolls in 40K? I know there were/ are beastmen, we have ogres and hobbits and elves, Zombies, werewolves, Vampires and Orks, but no trolls, right? In the Ork faction dreads took their typical role, so I guess that's why they're out? Same as giants who don't really have a place next to Imperial Knights?

I remember Trolls being a thing for Chaos in Epic, but can't recall if they were in 40k. The same might have been true for Minotaurs, too, but my memory is a little fuzzier about those.

From memory - no trolls. I know Ogres got pictured in WD alongside some Rogue Trader 40k minis (prior to Ogryns being released), I think to try and get some cross sales for that system. And of course in RT you could do almost anything. But as far as I can remember I didn't see anything official, and certainly nothing in 2nd edition onwards.
I did used to like Trolls in Epic, remember in battle reports a unit just sat there picking their noses and refusing to follow orders

 Gert wrote:
How is it a cop-out? If the design team was wanting to push 40k away from being a SciFi mirror of WHFB but couldn't find a way to make the Squats work 20-30 odd years ago thats hardly them not trying. Hypothetically the Squats could work now as others have proposed (IMO they're just nostalgia bait and won't actually add anything) but 40k is a much more expanded setting and models are much better now than when Squats were first made.
As for Craftworlds not getting a revamp, all that needs done is a revamp of the "Core" stuff like Guardians and Aspect Warriors since there's already a bunch of modern kits in the range. Plus the Rumour Engine is looking Aeldari now and there's the fairly reliable rumour dump that Craftworlds are getting a revamp this coming year. Maybe 2022 will be the year all the Craftworlds players finally stop griping about their models.

Yeah, I don't think its a cop out.
I mean back then the creative side of GW was what, a dozen people, less? You can trace the history of the other factions through the decisions of the usual suspects. If circa 1991-1993 they all responded with "nah" to "can you think of a cool way to do Dwarfs in Spaaace?" then its not surprising the project just died.
As we know they concluded the very name of "squats" was kind of insulting and stupid, and hence resolved to wipe them out.

But ultimately if someone new can come up with a combination of "art, miniatures, lore and in game mechanics" to make the faction a thing, why not? Sisters appeared to be toast. Genestealer Cults were a memory.

 Pacific wrote:
But as far as I can remember I didn't see anything official, and certainly nothing in 2nd edition onwards.

Trolls and minotaurs were both in the Daemon World army list in the 2nd edition Chaos codex.

Demiurg I thought were a pretty cool take on dwarves in space that is sufficiently sci fi. The idea of squat, strong aliens from high gravity worlds works fine in my opinion, especially given the rest of 40k mostly ignores gravity.

 Duskweaver wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
But as far as I can remember I didn't see anything official, and certainly nothing in 2nd edition onwards.

Trolls and minotaurs were both in the Daemon World army list in the 2nd edition Chaos codex.

Thanks for the correction! I have just checked and you are indeed right, entries for both in the codex.

Trolls suffer from Stupidity and Minotaurs have a trait called Blood Greed where they have stay where they were after a close combat victory, feasting on the remains of their foes. Excellent.

Voss wrote:

 Gene St. Ealer wrote:

 Skinnereal wrote:

 oni wrote:
No. No one wants them.

And I believe anyone who says they do want them / would buy them is being disingenuous.

If you say so...

I promised here that I would buy digital codexes before they were a thing, and I have bought all 3 versions of the same codexes since.
You keep your delusional view of other people's personal convictions....

IIRC Oni has some insider knowledge of GW sales volumes from awhile back. That might be where he gets this opinion from. Yeah, the playerbase has grown and changed, but if Squats really and truly did sell... squat (ba dum tiss) back in the day, I get why you'd think they won't sell today too.

Per the designers, it wasn't a sales issue. It was a 'we can't think of anything interesting to do with them'

Where was this said? I remember reading something about them selling at least as well as the other armies (so much so that they had to ban the discussion of them from the forums after they were squated) but I can't remember who/where/what that is from.

Here's a copy of Jervis talking about it some time ago (not quite 20 years) on Portent (before it was Warseer).

https://www.40konline.com/index.php?topic=70533.0

tl;dr; they worked in epic, but in 40k, no muse, no inspiration.

 Da Boss wrote:
Demiurg I thought were a pretty cool take on dwarves in space that is sufficiently sci fi. The idea of squat, strong aliens from high gravity worlds works fine in my opinion, especially given the rest of 40k mostly ignores gravity.

I have to agree and I hope that these new "Squats" will indeed be demiurg and an addition to the Tau roster (alongside new kroot, of course). Small and contained, not a whole new faction by themselves.

Voss wrote:
Here's a copy of Jervis talking about it some time ago (not quite 20 years) on Portent (before it was Warseer).

https://www.40konline.com/index.php?topic=70533.0

tl;dr; they worked in epic, but in 40k, no muse, no inspiration.

Which is equally lame...

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Since we're talking about Space dwarfs that are missing in our Science Fantasy game a question crossed my mind: have there ever been Trolls in 40K? I know there were/ are beastmen, we have ogres and hobbits and elves, Zombies, werewolves, Vampires and Orks, but no trolls, right? In the Ork faction dreads took their typical role, so I guess that's why they're out? Same as giants who don't really have a place next to Imperial Knights?

Chaos codex of 2nd allowed to bring a "WHFB" chaos army to the 40K table representing the population of daemon worlds in the eye of terror. Apart from trolls you had also beastmen and minotaurs.

Racerguy180 wrote:

Voss wrote:
Here's a copy of Jervis talking about it some time ago (not quite 20 years) on Portent (before it was Warseer).

https://www.40konline.com/index.php?topic=70533.0

tl;dr; they worked in epic, but in 40k, no muse, no inspiration.

Which is equally lame...

Oh, no. Its much worse. 'Sales suck' is unfortunate, but a legitimate reason for a business to discontinue a product line. Customers aren't buying this product, so we should focus on other things is a real motivation.

'We couldn't figure out how to make dwarf engineers in space interesting' is an utterly baffling thing for one of 'the creatives' to say. As a group, they couldn't figure out how to make them interesting at all... but only for 40k. They were fine in WFB AND, most damning, in Epic 40k. Just not... 28mm 40k? What? And then they reimagined them as the Demiurg for BFG, but again for 40k went... splat. Not because they failed, but because they didn't even try.

It is just not understandable that they could somehow do them justice in the spin-off games, but not in the main game. _Especially_ at the time, when there weren't any real tech experts in the setting.

Really, really lame.

Squats got sooo much love in epic, but elves and orcs are more important...apparently?

Quite a few things that made Squats popular in Epic probably wouldn't've worked in the 2nd edition rules framework - super-heavies, the Goliath artillery, Land Train, the flyers, etc. I can sort of see that.

Doesn't mean there weren't things that could've been done, though.

Heresy here..... I can live without squats.

If they DO reappear I'll have a look, but .. even bigger heresy.. I have enough stuff atm.

I think there's room for a T4 1W 1A race with a 3+ armor save now that marines have moved on to two wounds and two attacks.

Basically squats can take the old marine design space, but be better at vehicles and not fast. It would line up with their old WFB stats to a degree. Maybe they could have a mix of vehicles like knights and infantry.

I honestly can't tell if the hype arounds squats is a meme or not.

I get the wanting something that we once had but has since been taken away, but it's still very much a 'fantasy in space' trope.

I also get that 40k is basically fantasy in space rather than proper sci-fi, especially the old stuff, so I can forgive it.

Me personally, I'm happy with them being a small-time faction that shows up in things like Blackstone Fortress as kind of a nudge-nudge-wink-wink type deal. I could see them featuring in a Tau codex one day as heavily armoured auxiliaries.

But then again, they gave Harlequins a whole codex, so who knows at this point.

Mantics Forgefathers exist.

It would be interesting to see how well they sell compared to the rest of the Deadzone range Or how well they are represented at gaming club/Store/Table level.

That small subset of info would be useful (in a limited way) to gauge popularity of Space Dwarves.

Whilst thinking about it. Even if Forgefathers were the most popular of the Deadzone range. How does GW take the legal high ground with IP and a distinctive and protectable range?

A literal generation has no idea what Squats are. For all intents and purposes companies like Mantic have planted the flag first. Seems to me that start up costs on Squats include GW legal figuring out if they can own the flak armoured short arses.

Would we support a GW Go Fund Me to take on Ronnies Evil Empire?

OldCrons before Squats.

A literal generation has no idea what Squats are. For all intents and purposes companies like Mantic have planted the flag first. Seems to me that start up costs on Squats include GW legal figuring out if they can own the flak armoured short arses.

From GW's perspective, Mantic isn't relevant here.
The concept is Dwarfs in Space- they can't 'own' it no matter what, its far too public domain. From GW Legal's perspective, that has been the problem all along, regardless of the creative team's failure. Hence the 'Demiurg,' but they didn't do anything with them either.

The big problem with Forgefathers (beyond the basic models being ugly) is Mantic did the tanks wrong. The seams between layers of armor are on top, rather than protected by the next layer. Its effectively a giant bullet catcher.

Voss wrote:


The big problem with Forgefathers (beyond the basic models being ugly) is Mantic did the tanks wrong. The seams between layers of armor are on top, rather than protected by the next layer. Its effectively a giant bullet catcher.

If that bothers you, I hope you don't look too closely at the Leman Russ.

I think the Steel Warriors look great, just what I'm looking for in Dwarves in Space. Not so sold on the Brokkrs and whatever, even though I have a few of them.

I would buy a Squats codex in a heartbeat. I have an unassembled squat force in mothballs ready for just such an occasion. I have the Necromunda Squat, 20 or so Mantic Forgefathers, a Mantic Tank, about 40 or Wargames Atlantic models, one of the AoS Sky Dwarf characters, and a bunch of AoS bits for conversions.

I remember when the Tau were first being teased as a new faction. People then were complaining about how they would be no different from Imperial Guard. Well, as it turns out, they are PLENTY different from IG, even before they went totally nutso for bigger battlesuit variants.

Squats could be set up to feel a bit less like "Close combat IG that are tougher", and a bit more like "Dark Eldar, but slower and tougher". I think the small warband feel would work well for them, even if they still have superheavies.

While we are on the topic of superheavies, other than the StormRaven, is there any other vehicle in the game that can also transport another vehicle? I think it would be neat to see a larger tank pop it's hatches and dump out a handful of Killa Kan sized Squat vehicles.

 Insectum7 wrote:
OldCrons before Squats.

Already exist in the fluff. There's several worlds of the Necrons currently running around that work like the oldcrons do. Even if they didn't you can represent them on the board with your dudes as you feel like.

At one time, I'd have probably said "yes, people want squats", and probably would have included myself in that.

In hindsight, it's mostly meme, and any reintroduction would probably be extremely inherently meme driven at this point. As specialist auxilia available to various Imperial forces, I think they'd work great, even being meme-driven. As an entire dedicated faction? They'd need some extensive reworking.

In previous editions, Oh, Heck yeah! Certain members of my primary astartes and doctrined IG army were on the short side.
Now? Eh, I'd have to see how they're done. Otherwise I'd just continue to proxy them with whatever rules, including xenos factions.

 cuda1179 wrote:
While we are on the topic of superheavies, other than the StormRaven, is there any other vehicle in the game that can also transport another vehicle? I think it would be neat to see a larger tank pop it's hatches and dump out a handful of Killa Kan sized Squat vehicles.

The Cyclops Demolition Vehicle can be carried by a Chimera (and possibly a Valkyrie?). Not sure the rules allow it, but the image of a swarm of them emerging from a Gorgon's ramp amuses me.

The Valkyrie Transporter could, well, transport things, as could the Thunderhawk Transporter.

Would you count a Dreadnought Drop Pod as a vehicle carrying a vehicle?

I think most people are apathetic about squats but if you put them on the spot and make them vote yes or no then you will get one of those answers.

Mostly I think we’re all a bit sick of seeing the usual factions get attention and the usual factions being ignored. And that creates a cube of wanting something new to create a bit of interest generally rather than if a given release is something you find interesting because it for your army, for example

It would just feel like a cheap shot at nostalgia points for me, it would only work for a select portion of the community who were actually around when Squats were a thing and I'd wager more people know Squats from memes than as an actual army. Plus there's 100% going to be the whole "GW RUINS SQUATS" because they aren't exactly like the old Squats and nobody wants that.

1. They are a meme at this point.
2. Like many other races, one can use existing rules and create a "counts as" force without problem. For ease of convenience, I used to paint the name of the unit on the base. As always, a coolly converted army is usually highly appreciated.

I don't really care one way or another if we get Squats or not. I don't know how they'll reintroduce them, and what will make them unique from all other factions.