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So there has been a lot of talk about the Squats coming back (which, honestly, is nothing new to this hobby! I think they were probably first speculated to be returning around the time they first disappeared...)

I came up with my own version of how I think that could be accomplished in regards to lore/theme, and you can read the little short-story I wrote about it in the fiction forum (hint: it's DARK), but this post isn't about ME:

How would YOU re-introduce everyone's favorite space-dwarves back into the 40k lore? What happened to them? Where are they now? How have they changed? What is their "theme"?

Obviously this is just for fun, but I'd love to hear everyone's ideas!

As skeletons on bases.

I'd rather see the Demiurg get brought into the fore for Tau than Squats for Imperium.

Eh, to me they are really the same. The actual "squats" of lore are probably going to be very different when/if they come back, so to me the Demiurg are pretty much just another version of that.

What themes/ect would you like to see the Demiurg use?

I don't necessarily think we need any more factions, but I would do it via "Codex Rogue Trader". It would be a sort of "mercenary" codex where you would have some Squats, Zoats, any other popular-at-the-time but long forgotten units out of the original RT book and maybe some units out of other sources. You would give them 40k rules and each unit could have rules for what armies they can be hired out to. You could even use it to encapsulate units like the Gellerpox, and Tau auxilliaries.

Aquatic themed armor and vehicles that operate on land but regardless have a distinctly water-to-land/amphibious aesthetic. They have been dwelling under the ocean of a large planet with essentially zero land mass. This Atlantis-esc underwater lifestyle has allowed them to avoid the eyes of Tyranid fleets, as the planet appears to be nothing more than a decrepit waterworld.
Enough time has passed and enough progress has been established that they may at last emerge from their salty reefs and benthic dwellings.

Yeah, first. Change the name. Demiurg are a functional return of the "squats".

Asthetically i would like to see almost (but not really) steam tech. By that i mean masssive thick sheets of metal with rivets. Huge girders and beams. Glowing red reactor cores billowing smoke, steam, or venting coolants. Radiation weaponry coupled with oversized slug throwers.

But maybe save the rad weapons for rakgul who totally should be in the game.

I'd just make a Demiurg codex and include a section that talks about how Demiurg are the same species as Squats but squat is an insulting name given to them by humans. At some point in history a large amount of demiurg split from the "core empire" to go their own way. The core empire was subsequently folded into the Imperium but later abandoned to the Nids.

Learning of this the Demiurg are very anti-Imperium but they're an independant race now with some being full allies of the Tau, some are mercenaries, some are Chaos and some are independent in a small region of space with a lot of spatial anomalies.

Fluff wise I'd give them a focus on mining and using technology to force the enemy into attrition warfare and outlasting them with superior technology/specialised armies. Gamewise it would be a lot of deployable terrain as part of units like energy walls and barricades and the army overall would focus on artillery, shooting and charge resistant melee units. Make it different to Tau castles by giving units that can basically ride bikes/vehicles to various parts of the board and spend a turn setting up firepower and some artillery that doesn't do damage but applies debuffs.

I think that AdMech occupy the thematic ground where 'space dwarves' would otherwise be. I'm pretty much against them coming back as a faction while so many others need attention.

I hope they will get a look thats completely different from https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-BE/Grendl-Grendlsen-Squat-Bounty-Hunter-2018.

Don't get me wrong, the miniature itself is great, but it feels too much like a generic fantasy dwarf to me. Not enough Grim Dark.

I'm not a big Dwarf fan in particular, but I would like them to be released for all the people who are really into them.

Look into the new video game Age of Wonders Planetfall.

In a nutshell: Russian space dwarves.

 harlokin wrote:
I think that AdMech occupy the thematic ground where 'space dwarves' would otherwise be. I'm pretty much against them coming back as a faction while so many others need attention.

We could have more xenos love but it's so much more important that we have more primaris.

leerm02 wrote:

So there has been a lot of talk about the Squats coming back (which, honestly, is nothing new to this hobby! I think they were probably first speculated to be returning around the time they first disappeared...)

I came up with my own version of how I think that could be accomplished in regards to lore/theme, and you can read the little short-story I wrote about it in the fiction forum (hint: it's DARK), but this post isn't about ME:

How would YOU re-introduce everyone's favorite space-dwarves back into the 40k lore? What happened to them? Where are they now? How have they changed? What is their "theme"?

Obviously this is just for fun, but I'd love to hear everyone's ideas!

As a Tau Client race. Not as Demigurg either - I just like this idea of Tau as being a merc faction with a couple swappable units from minor races like squats and hrud

 harlokin wrote:
I think that AdMech occupy the thematic ground where 'space dwarves' would otherwise be. I'm pretty much against them coming back as a faction while so many others need attention.

Yeah. While Squats would be cool, it's more important to make existing factions better in terms of feel, lore, and completeness, than to add yet another faction.

A few units as Tau Auxiliaries, though, would be cool.

I'd just include rules for using the steam dorfs from AOS in 40k. I don't think they need a whole second technodwarf model range.

pm713 wrote:

 harlokin wrote:
I think that AdMech occupy the thematic ground where 'space dwarves' would otherwise be. I'm pretty much against them coming back as a faction while so many others need attention.

We could have more xenos love but it's so much more important that we have more primaris.

Correction:

We could have more xenos love but it's so much more important that we have more primaris lieutenants.

I'd basically want Squats to play like the awkward love child of Guard, Orks, and AdMech (though the AdMech also covers much of what the Squats used to). Horde troops, goofy and weird vehicles like attack gyrocopters and bomber zeppelins, 2+sv shooty exo-armor biker units, lots of conventional fixed artillery, and some humongous lords of war.

That said, it'd be neat to get both Imperial and Chaos squats. I'd basically treat them like Knights, where they can be an integral part of Imperial or Chaos armies with some distinct differences.

As for what happened to them and where they are now? Easy, take the "Tyranids ate 'em" story and run with that, they've been largely under siege and been mostly killed off, a few various forces scattered through the galaxy survived along with a couple small world enclaves mean there's enough for them to be relevant, with enough variation such that people can kit them out in a number of different themes. We've seen them have strong fantasy/tolkien/D&D, norse, russian, cyberpunk, judge dredd, steampunk etc visual themes, and these could all be explored further in different ways as the "survivors" of the Tyranid invasions figure out their new places in the galaxy.

SoB already fill the niche of heavily armoured "normals". Squats should stay dead on the tabletop. It's nice to have a reference here and there, but that is all it should be. At most, add one as an Inquisitorial Henchmen like the Jokaero.

Kind of disappointing that people come into this thread with no actual contribution for the original posters question.
The thread is literally asking how you would bring them back - not whether or not they should be brought back to begin with.

If you don't think they should make a comeback, this thread really isn't for you in the first place.

I'd have to consider their tabletop role before lore. What role would they have on the table. Melee? Obviously not. Resilience has always been the theme for Dwarves, so I would build around that. High reliance on gravity based weaponry. Mole mortars, termite transports, etc. Their strength vs opponents would be ways to slow them down (like tremor shells but not as obnoxious), including melee (reduce enemy attacks, strike last etc). They themselves would be slow moving on foot, but possessing high T and good saves. Armoured suits that are close ranged firepower and melee focused, almost like golems.

 bullyboy wrote:
I'd have to consider their tabletop role before lore. What role would they have on the table. Melee? Obviously not. Resilience has always been the theme for Dwarves, so I would build around that. High reliance on gravity based weaponry. Mole mortars, termite transports, etc. Their strength vs opponents would be ways to slow them down (like tremor shells but not as obnoxious), including melee (reduce enemy attacks, strike last etc). They themselves would be slow moving on foot, but possessing high T and good saves. Armoured suits that are close ranged firepower and melee focused, almost like golems.

The problem is, they're imperium.

What role is not filled in an imperium army between the profiles for

Guardsmen
Scions
Sisters
Marines
Primaris marines
Terminators
Ogryns
Gravis
Centurions
Custodes

"No, I'm stuffed"

"But zir, eet ees only a wafer-thin faction!"

If they come in as a Tau ally, instantly, instantly you know what role they fill that a normal tau army does not have. Every complaint that everyone has ever fielded vs Tau can be resolved (especially if they have some psykers)

 BaconCatBug wrote:
SoB already fill the niche of heavily armoured "normals".

I don't think that was ever the Squats niche either, their basic troops were much more Guard equivalents.

Accounting error. No seriously lost by the administratum and presumed eaten by Nids as the wrong piece of paperwork got crossed off....

They are no longer allied to the Imperium - in fact they now very much hate the Imperium. Because the treaties of mutual protection that they had as a result of their tithe of troops were ignored when their home world(s) were nommed by the Tyranids; they waited for help to arrive and it never did - the Squats hold long grudges. Now an entirely space faring race, previously mostly equipped for mining operations, now retro fitted as pirates, raiders and mercenaries. They work for the highest bidder - they will take scrap and the spoils of war as payment, or they just turn up after the main part of a war is over, to loot the detritus of the battlefield for supplies, or just to pick the fringes for easy targets.

As for in the game, standard troops, with middling armor, hard hitting but short ranged weaponry on basic infantry. Supported by few but very heavily armored vehicles.
They would be allowed to work with Tau, Orks, Chaos as an allied detachment (maybe others).

The "how" - plenty of uninhabited and uninhabitable systems/entire regions that are now in the midst of massive chaos storms. They might have happily existed on rogue planets, or in solar systems devoid of all other life, slowly building their forges and living their mine-centric lifestyle. The loss of even a few roving fleets would be devastating, and might force them out into the larger galaxy.

The theme... that's trickier. There are a lot of specialized armies in 40k already, so it's hard to come up with a new style that would be fun. My initial thought is a sort of anti-Tau; technologically sophisticated, but with a focus on melee and manipulating the other army as opposed to being a shooty castle and manipulating yourself. For example, their "tanks" might function more as shields with battering rams, soaking mortal wounds meant for the infantry that march alongside in a slow advance. You might be able to impair enemy vehicles by making them suffer wounds for moving/shooting, forcing your opponent to decide between suffering damage to cause damage or waiting for one more turn. Maybe some tools to move enemy troops in a random direction.

So pulls, traps, stuns, cover manipulation, that sort of thing. Battlefield control fitting for a group of technologically-advanced miners. GW seems intent on making the game run faster, so I doubt we'd see the sort of slow, methodical gameplay this would require, but I think it would be thematic and pretty different from other playstyles. An army that controls the battleground, occupies objectives, and punishes mistakes more than loading up on firepower and trying to blow everyone off the board turn 1.

 Llamahead wrote:
Accounting error. No seriously lost by the administratum and presumed eaten by Nids as the wrong piece of paperwork got crossed off....

Best idea so far - first step in bringing them back is to squat (heh) that fething stupid bit about the 'Nids attacking their Homeworlds, as that has never made sense (which given I seem to recall it was an off-the-cuff answer in a seminar when someone got annoyed, explains why it doesn't make sense). Going by the 2nd ed map of the galaxy, they *will* have lost worlds to the Giant Tear in Space-Time, which does open up the possibility of Chaos Squats. Still, the main area marked as being the Squat Homeworlds falls south-east of the Maelstrom, so I'd say ~80% of their space is out of the rift.

As per the fan-made "gold" codex for 2nd edition, I'd have had them as moderately tough fixers, technologists and robot masters with a "diggy diggy hole" theme. High-tech armoured multifunction suits too.

They never quite felt right as Guard proxies, which is why they were dumped in 2nd. Although many of the models had simple padded armour, there was no single theme. They were a mix of high-tech suits, IG troops, space Vikings and biker gangs. I'd expect them to have better kit, even if it's hastily converted mining gear. In that respect, Mantic's Forge Fathers or Macrocosm's (now owned by Sandstorm Miniatures) Digger Corps have a better look as a complete line.

AdMech (and Tau) have kind of filled that design space; Genestealer Cults pinched the theme. It does mean that there are some nice vehicles and bits (spacesuit torsos, lights, weapons) to do my own thing.

As for where were they? Even hundreds of missing years is nothing in a galaxy of 400 billion stars with uncountable planets and chunks of rock/ice that you can call home. After their planets were eaten, the squat diaspora lives on in a million enclaves, colonies, ships and mining expeditions in the darkest, coldest reaches of space.

I'd like to see a mercenary codex with units of various races included. Most would be unaligned like the spindle drones. Each entry would have a little blurb that states "may be included in armies X, Y, and Z, but do not get any army bonuses, but also do not make that army lose faction bonuses. They also do not count towards mandatory slots".

This would allow a book of rules for all the oddball units floating out there in White Dwarf, GW webpage, and box-only rules. It would also allow for things like Kroot Mercs, or even 2-3 units of Squats.

It would be neat if at least a couple of these factions like kroot and Squats could technically make a limited army list of pure Kroot or Squats.

 Dysartes wrote:
that fething stupid bit about the 'Nids attacking their Homeworlds, as that has never made sense

What about it exactly does not make sense?
Even if it was an off-the-top response/idea. What about it would be illogical or unreasonable?

I'd make them the remnants of asteroid miners. Feeling anti Imperium due to having been left to the Tyranids, just trying to carve out a new little piece of the galaxy for themselves.

Both super fast attack and slow infantry with seige artillery.

Troops are bikers, extra zooty on flat terrain, useless in anything more treacherous. Air droppable bikes too.

Heavy almost Obliterator/Devastator gun lines but almost unable to move like IG HW teams.

Maybe a super heavy of some sort to keep them competitive with current armies but having lost the ability to make land trains and the like due to being almost entirely space based.

Infantry gets good saves for not having moved (going to ground style rule).

Artillery almost impervious to LOS restrictions to represent mole mortars.

Like a cross between the Cult of Speed and Bad Moons of yore.

I’d leave them dead...