7331Dude wrote:
Mainly, I recall Squats aiding Commissar Yarrick in the returning of his Baneblade from an ork world.

PredaKhaine wrote:
IIRC, GW had a campaign and of about 500 people, only 2 played squats.
At the end of that campaign, GW decided that the squats got eaten by the tyranids

JWhex wrote:

PredaKhaine wrote:
IIRC, GW had a campaign and of about 500 people, only 2 played squats.
*After* that campaign, GW decided that the squats got eaten by the tyranids

LOL NO, as usually IIRC is followed by something totally made up.

There was never any campaign like you mentioned.

SerQuintus wrote:
GW staffer as in studio or as in redshirt?

The bit about it being down to purely creative decisions not sales comes from the horses mouth: Jervis himself posted it on the old Specialist Games forum, I think the post is still available as an archive.

PredaKhaine wrote:

JWhex wrote:

PredaKhaine wrote:
IIRC, GW had a campaign and of about 500 people, only 2 played squats.
*After* that campaign, GW decided that the squats got eaten by the tyranids

LOL NO, as usually IIRC is followed by something totally made up.

There was never any campaign like you mentioned.

Really?
Well thats news to me...
Now you've made me do some actual research. The campaign I was referencing was the Ichar IV campaign (the results were in white dwarf 192). Thats why it was the nid's that ate the squats, not the orks or any other race.
The reason I said IIRC was that I didn't think to get the gw staffer who told me that at the time on camera so I could make my point better 15 or so years later on the internet. Apologies, I'll try harder next time.

*I should've said *after* and not *at the end of*

And I know the internet opinion on things learned from GW staffers, so we can skip that bit?
It was just something I found interesting at the time.

 Psienesis wrote:
The time for the Squat's turn has come and gone, and will probably not come round again.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Squats are listed in the 6th Edition book. So they're not extinct.

However, they aren't going to return as an army. Games Workshop can barely keep up with the armies they do have, and aren't going to bring back an old one that has a low chance of profitable return.

It would be cool if they brought out a limited run Squat hero for the Imperial Guard. But I think the days of GW and novelty figures is long over.

As far as the old days, and what "should have been done" with Squats, was to fold them into the Imperial Guard. They had the same gear anyway, and used the same basic vehicles. "Squatting" them was a terrible idea. And you can see that GW learned its lesson in the way it has treated the Sisters of Battle, an army they have little interest in continuing, but have continued to publish rules for them so that legacy players can use their armies.

 Eiluj The Farseer wrote:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Squats are listed in the 6th Edition book. So they're not extinct.

However, they aren't going to return as an army. Games Workshop can barely keep up with the armies they do have, and aren't going to bring back an old one that has a low chance of profitable return.

It would be cool if they brought out a limited run Squat hero for the Imperial Guard. But I think the days of GW and novelty figures is long over.

As far as the old days, and what "should have been done" with Squats, was to fold them into the Imperial Guard. They had the same gear anyway, and used the same basic vehicles. "Squatting" them was a terrible idea. And you can see that GW learned its lesson in the way it has treated the Sisters of Battle, an army they have little interest in continuing, but have continued to publish rules for them so that legacy players can use their armies.

I think this is true for Squats, however I do think the Sisters will get another codex. I think it will be later but I do think they will get one.

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
When it should Zoats given be a chance too?

 pretre wrote:
Yeah, nothing says big sales like 'maggot men'.

Tower75 wrote:Absolutely no disrespect to SoB players, but how can GW justify cancelling the Squats, but let the SoB continue?

 Lynata wrote:

Tower75 wrote:Absolutely no disrespect to SoB players, but how can GW justify cancelling the Squats, but let the SoB continue?

Didn't read my link, huh?

Hah, found the original: http://web.archive.org/web/20070221095649/http://forums.specialist-games.com/epic/forum_b/topic.asp?ARCHIVE=true&TOPIC_ID=2532&whichpage=3
6th post on page 3

 Tower75 wrote:
Hmm... Link doesn't work for me, for some reason.

Jervis wrote:
Posted - 07/28/2004 : 10:41:29
I know I shouldn't get drawn on this... but... can't... resist

Seriously, a couple of points just so you can have an informed debate based on the real reasons that Squats are no longer available. Be warned, it is going to be hard reading for people that like the Squat background.

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
Head Fanatic