What actually happened to Squats?

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**some bloke**

So the squatting of the squats was before my time. I am aware that there used to be squats, and that they were subsequently removed from the game. Fluffwise, were they wiped out, or did they just remove all references to them, in the same "just don't mention it" style that they re-wrote the Necrons?

**Banville**

Eaten by Tyranids, I think.

**beast_gts**

The Squat Homeworlds were devoured by the Tyranids.

**Tyranid Horde**

Their race died to Tyranids which effectively got rid of them from the fluff but FW have done some mercenary squats so they're likely just the remaining few.

**beast_gts**

Jervis Johnson's explanation

**beast_gts**

Jervis wrote: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

**Ratius**

I actually agree with JJ.
Whilst I have fond(ish) memories of the Sqauts and liked their exo armor models, GW really didnt do anything special, interesting or lovable with them as Dorfs in Space.
Hell I think the Kharadons from AoS are more interesting than original Squats.

**some bloke**

beast_gts wrote:
Jervis Johnson's explanation

That was a good read, thanks for that. When was it that he wrote that? Has there been any mention of Demiurgs since?

**beast_gts**

some bloke wrote:
beast_gts wrote:
Jervis Johnson's explanation

That was a good read, thanks for that. When was it that he wrote that? Has there been any mention of Demiurgs since?

The date on the post is 07/28/2004. Demiurg are still in BFG and at least one of the Cain novels - they're Tau Auxiliary.

**Deadshot**

beast_gts wrote:
some bloke wrote:
beast_gts wrote:
Jervis Johnson's explanation

That was a good read, thanks for that. When was it that he wrote that? Has there been any mention of Demiurgs since?

The date on the post is 07/28/2004. Demiurg are still in BFG and at least one of the Cain novels - they're Tau Auxiliary.

Demiurg are also mentioned in one of the big rulebooks as one of the "Abhuman" subspecies along with Felinids, Orgryns and Ratlings to name a few. I believe it's 7th Ed.

**chromedog**

Demiurg got mentioned in 3rd ed rulebook, too.
Alongside several other XT "threats" that little was known about.

**some bloke**

Well it's good to know that there is still some scope for squats in 40k.

I'm thinking of doing chaos ~~squats~~ demiurgs at some point, thinking something along the lines of the Dwergi from Van Helsing, combined with chaos dwarves from Fantasy. Seems suitably evil and vicious!

**beast_gts**

some bloke wrote:
Well it's good to know that there is still some scope for squats in 40k.

Yes - they weren't erased, just the designers ran out of ideas. The 2nd Ed.(?) Squats were just dwarves with guns -

Spoiler:

**Formosa**

two things

the first is the "race" of the squats, the space dwarves basically, they had their own worlds, history and technology, these squats no longer exist, they were not eaten by tyranids, they were just written out of the fluff and have never existed within the fluff in the current 40k.

then we have the re introduction of the squats ab humans, these are not the same, the lack the history, tech, fluff etc. of the originals and are just ab humans like ratlings, orgryns and beast men, a stable alternative human species.

**Racerguy180**

Screw Jervis and his lame-ass response. They just chose to not develop them any further. GW had no problem doin it with space Elfs, Space Orks, etc... so WTF?

It really pisses me off when Kharadrons are basically Squats and aesthetically look kinda exactly like they should. If I remember my galactic geography correctly, the nids would be really close to Terra if they made it all the way to the Galactic core(where Squat homeworlds are). Even the great "squatting" was half-assed.

**Formosa**

Racerguy180 wrote:
Screw Jervis and his lame-ass response. They just chose to not develop them any further. GW had no problem doin it with space Elfs, Space Orks, etc... so WTF?

It really pisses me off when Kharadrons are basically Squats and aesthetically look kinda exactly like they should. If I remember my galactic geography correctly, the nids would be really close to Terra if they made it all the way to the Galactic core(where Squat homeworlds are). Even the great "squatting" was half-assed.

I thought the tyranids comment was from Ian watsons inquisition war series, the preamble in the omnibus?

**gnome_idea_what**

Racerguy180 wrote:
Screw Jervis and his lame-ass response. They just chose to not develop them any further. GW had no problem doin it with space Elfs, Space Orks, etc... so WTF?

It really pisses me off when Kharadrons are basically Squats and aesthetically look kinda exactly like they should. If I remember my galactic geography correctly, the nids would be really close to Terra if they made it all the way to the Galactic core(where Squat homeworlds are). Even the great "squatting" was half-assed.

His response may seem crappy to you, but during the time Squats were Squatted GW didn’t have as large of a creative team (not a Small Indie Game Company, but smaller than they are today) and was already making some risky decisions in other parts of the company, with specialist games coming out around that time. Their plans for the next few years were fairly packed if their output during that time is any indicator, and Squats may not have warranted any room. I wasn’t wargaming at that time so I’m not defending or justifying GW’s decisions, but in context they’re a little more understandable. Kharadrons are great, and I’d love to see something like them in 40k, but they’re also higher quality than most of what GW produced when they chose the Squatting.

**nareik**

Formosa wrote:
two things

the first is the "race" of the squats, the space dwarves basically, they had their own worlds, history and technology, these squats no longer exist, they were not eaten by tyranids, they were just written out of the fluff and have never existed within the fluff in the current 40k.

then we have the re introduction of the squats ab humans, these are not the same, the lack the history, tech, fluff etc. of the originals and are just ab humans like ratlings, orgryns and beast men, a stable alternative human species.

i'm pretty sure squats were always an abhuman strain. The throw away mention in the 6/7th BRBs were just a shout out for old squat fans, not the start of something new under the same name.

Either way, outside of that shout out, the necromundan bounty hunter and the recent white dwarf edited by JJ, squats have been ignored for 20+ years.

**some bloke**

So, fluffwise it wouldn't be beyond the spectrum of possibility (if there is such a thing in 40k!) for one of the squat worlds to have had a chaos cult which was saved by the dark gods (in exchange for eternal servitude etc), all of which went unnoticed as the tyranids ate everything...

Just thinking through the fluff for my idea...

**epronovost**

some bloke wrote:
So, fluffwise it wouldn't be beyond the spectrum of possibility (if there is such a thing in 40k!) for one of the squat worlds to have had a chaos cult which was saved by the dark gods (in exchange for eternal servitude etc), all of which went unnoticed as the tyranids ate everything...

Just thinking through the fluff for my idea...

Nothing is ever beyond the spectrum of possiblity. Spread the wings of your imagination and fly!

**NinthMusketeer**

Racerguy180 wrote:
Screw Jervis and his lame-ass response. They just chose to not develop them any further. GW had no problem doin it with space Elfs, Space Orks, etc... so WTF?

It really pisses me off when Kharadrons are basically Squats and aesthetically look kinda exactly like they should. If I remember my galactic geography correctly, the nids would be really close to Terra if they made it all the way to the Galactic core(where Squat homeworlds are). Even the great "squatting" was half-assed.

Speaking as a creative/artist/fluff writer person I can say their reasoning is sound. It may not seem like it from the outside, but being unable to find inspiration in developing a faction will kill it. The lack of that spark WILL come through in a lackluster final product one way or another. Had they the resources they do now it would be a matter of finding someone who did feel that inspiration, but that was not the case back then.

**some bloke**

I did some more reading on the wikia page, and apparently there were squat worlds which were lost to the warp, and the squat territory was also near to a Maelstrom;

So it's going to be fairly easy to write them back in again, especially as there's al lthese rifts in the warp going on at the moment. out pops a chaos dwarf planet which has been trapped in the warp for millennia and unleashes it's wrath on the galaxy that forgot about it. Could even be an uncorrupted squat planet which was simply flung through time, with minimal warp-time, and gets angry that the imperium has written them out of history! make the squatting of the squats part of the squats fluff

**Ratius**

That second ed map xxx

**pm713**

Is it just me or is it weird seeing Earth being called Earth instead of Terra?

**Arctic Dragon**

Squats were my first Rogue Trader army and I will buy some more if they return. Kill Team might be a good venue for them to start in to see if they have decent sales.

**some bloke**

I'm not 100% up to speed with the newest fluff, but I gather that there are warp rifts appearing across the galaxy. What if this is actually the squats trying to escape from the warp?

There's certainly a design space, as the squats are supposed to be ahead of humans technologically, as during the age of strife, they kept developing technology, whilst the imperium shunned it, declared it a dark art and only use existing tech. What if the squats managed to make a shield to protect them from the warp, and then managed to tear a hole large enough for their system to escape, but went too far, creating the rips in warp space?

**Slipspace**

Racerguy180 wrote:
Screw Jervis and his lame-ass response. They just chose to not develop them any further. GW had no problem doin it with space Elfs, Space Orks, etc... so WTF?

It really pisses me off when Kharadrons are basically Squats and aesthetically look kinda exactly like they should. If I remember my galactic geography correctly, the nids would be really close to Terra if they made it all the way to the Galactic core(where Squat homeworlds are). Even the great "squatting" was half-assed.

He's not wrong though. Squats seems to have taken on this near-mythical status among 40k gamers but they were always a poorly fleshed-out semi-joke army. Most of the character they had came from these jokey elements and they really didn't do enough to justify themselves as a race on par with Eldar or Orks in the 40k universe. They weren't even Dwarves in space as that would imply a level of development for them that simply wasn't evident at all. They were barely an army at all, at any point.

If the creative team at the time couldn't find the inspiration to develop them into an army it was the right call to drop them. It's interesting to note that Tyranids were a less well-developed race at the beginning of 2nd edition but they clearly had something that provided inspiration that allowed the designers to flesh them out. The same can't be said of Squats.

**DeathKorp_Rider**

There is a lot they have neglected that the could reinvigorate. 40K Beastmen and mutants could be brought back as part of a new Traitor Guard codex.

**Martel732**

What should have happened to blood angels. GW wussed out and delegitimized nids as a credible threat.

**Pacific**

some bloke wrote:
So, fluffwise it wouldn't be beyond the spectrum of possibility (if there is such a thing in 40k!) for one of the squat worlds to have had a chaos cult which was saved by the dark gods (in exchange for eternal servitude etc), all of which went unnoticed as the tyranids ate everything...

Just thinking through the fluff for my idea...

The death of Squats was an extremely facetious act on GW's part (they admitted as much later on, saying they would have handled it differently if the situation arose again) - I think you can be equally 'light touch' with coming up with pretty much anything as a justification for why they are still about

Would recommend Mantic's Forge Father range if you're looking at making a force - think they're probably the kind of thing that GW would have done themselves if they had matured the concept, and it will also let you build up a force for less than a million pounds (old original Squat miniatures on eBay)