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From what I could find out, they are the the dwarfs of 40k. However I wanted to know what there role was in the universe and most impotently why GW removed them.

They were removed because the studio didn't enjoy making them anymore. iirc, they found them to be a little ridiculous, even by 40k standards. The joke got old, as it were.

Basically, they were abhumans who were very good at building big war-machines. They were also space bikers.

According to the fluff in the Titan Legions Codex Titanicus, they are humans who settled in the high gravity core systems in order to mine the large quantities of minerals present there. Essentially, they are humans who have been 'squished' over time due to living in high grav conditions etc etc.

They were done away with largely because the Design Studio felt that Squats no longer fitted the 'grimdark' aesthetic of 40K that they were aiming for post 2nd Ed.

Yeah, they were abhumans in the same vein as Ratlings and Ogryn, only unlike those two, they developed their own ruling culture during the time they were lost to the Imperium, and kept it afterwards as opposed to being totally folded into the Imperial Cult, though they were stanch allies. Essentially they were part of the Imperial Guard, but usually under their own leadership.

Squats were basically part of the Rogue Trader aesthetic, where they fit in perfectly. People more or less covered their fluff. Humans that had settled high gravity worlds at the galactic core and gradually shrunk. They were cut off for a while and developed their own kingsdoms until they re-established with the Imperium. It's important to note that the 40K universe wasn't fully developed back then and the fluff of Great Crusade wasn't really even a thing yet, so the way the Imperium was sorta "allied with" the Squat homeworlds may seem a bit anachronistic, and it is.

However, 2nd Edition's transition to what we can think of as "Modern 40K' meant they basically didn't have a niche anymore. Essentially the designers at GW couldn't figure out how to keep the old Squat background, but bring them into the game as a unique army. It's easy to overlook, but every army in 40K has its own aesthetic and play style. Squats kinda fell into this gap between Orks and Imperial Guard, where they didn't have their own identity. While Orks as an army was able to fully embrace being the comic relief by the very essence of their fluff, Squats were "too serious".

Squats were basically short Imperial Guard. In Rogue Trader they were armed principally with lasguns, and used Rhinos and Land Raiders as transports, which so did the IGuard. This was before the introduction of the Leman Russ or Chimera. But they also had bikes, trikes, and exo-armor (which was basically terminator armor for Squats).

Ultimately, Space Marines were the heavy armor faction, Orks were the silly Mad Max army, and IGuard were the stalwart bog-standard infantry faction. And those three stole everything that made the Squats unique. You can't really remove Space Marines, Imperial Guard, or Orks from the setting, so the Squats ended up on the chopping block.


What was GW's chief, and almost criminal, mistake, was eliminating the army completely. Hence the term "Squatting". What GW should have done was make Squats an option for the Imperial Guard, which would give the Squat players at least the opportunity to use some or most of their models. Instead they blew players off for around ten years before throwing a tantrum and just flat out pretending Squats never existed, lol. It's one of the more amusing facets of GW history. That basically they screwed over a segment of their fanbase, writing them entirely out of the game and invalidating all of the models they'd purchased, then pretended like that was okay.

But they did learn their lesson. You can see the way they handled the Sisters of Battle, who despite not having received a new GW model in almost ten years, received rules for both 5th, and now 6th edition. This allows them to essentially abandon a model line that, for a variety of reasons, they aren't continuing, without screwing over their players.

The Squats are the reason Tau players have a new codex. Ditto for Sisters of Battle and Necrons. After the backlash GW suffered at the hands of Squat players (and quite a few people who just liked trolling at Games Day) GW decided to never drop another army from the game. Though it may take a decade or more, every existing army gets a new codex eventually, because of Squats. Even though Ork players haven't seen a new codex for 3 whole editions of the game, they know they will get an update eventually. Not because Orks are popular (as far as GW is concerned, only things with 3+ armor saves and boltguns are popular), but because: Squats.

Squats were the most noble of all of the 40K factions, because they died to ensure that every other faction would live forever.

So basically...Squats are plastic Jesus...

squidhills wrote:
The Squats are the reason Tau players have a new codex. Ditto for Sisters of Battle and Necrons. After the backlash GW suffered at the hands of Squat players (and quite a few people who just liked trolling at Games Day) GW decided to never drop another army from the game. Though it may take a decade or more, every existing army gets a new codex eventually, because of Squats. Even though Ork players haven't seen a new codex for 3 whole editions of the game, they know they will get an update eventually. Not because Orks are popular (as far as GW is concerned, only things with 3+ armor saves and boltguns are popular), but because: Squats.

Squats were the most noble of all of the 40K factions, because they died to ensure that every other faction would live forever.

Wise words.

squidhills wrote:
Even though Ork players haven't seen a new codex for 3 whole editions of the game, they know they will get an update eventually.

Let's see.. 3 whole editions...
5th is one

Whoops, guess not.

edit: Updated, thanks Poly!

6th isnt over so you cant count that as a whole edition either...

TL;DR: Dwarves in SPESS!

A few things about squats.

They rule their own worlds and have thier own armies but are tied in the the Imperium at a high level.

Squats still understand their technology and don't form part of the Cult Mechanicus, squats dont pray to machines they understand physics and engineering instead. Marines and tech priests go to them for training and have cultural relations problems because the squats clearly know what they are doing while complete ignoring all rituals of the machine cult.

Squats have very few psykers, those they do have live a very long time and are known as living ancestors.

Squats have their own unit structure their guard-like armies include exo-armour which are essentially terminators. Some of their termies ride bikes. Squats also have more access to heavy weapons than other races and can equip some whole squads with heavy bolters.
Not much else was developed except standard infantry before they were withdrawn.

Had. They had those things.

And then they got eaten by Tyranids, and now all of those things are gone.

They were dwarves in space who rode motorcycles. When RT moved to 40K proper, and lost a lot of its apparent silliness (becoming, instead, silliness underneath a thick layer of grimdarkness), the Squats had to go. The creative team at the time simply could not do anything with the concept that was not a retread of another faction, or was simply not silly as hell. So they were dropped.

Yeah a real shame, love squats, they were a big part of the 40k universe [see Inquisitor by Ian Watson] but then GW lost it's sense of humour and had to make this game of toy soldiers REALLY SERIOUS, I keep flrting with the idea of starting a Squat army but that way lies madness [and an empty wallet].

I didnt find the Squats anymore silly then the rest of the rouge trader or up to 3rd edition 40k. Genestealer Cults and Chaos Cults were a massive part of the old fluff and they got swept under as well they were the reasons Hive Fleets and Chaos Warships in the Warp Could find planets to attack. Wish we had em all back not just use a codex that kinda works for them.

Way to reset the clock again. Sheesh.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 tyrannosaurus wrote:
see Inquisitor by Ian Watson.

Worst books ever written in the history of books.

Sorry didnt see how old the thread was just browsing

 Field Marshal Wiley wrote:
Sorry didnt see how old the thread was just browsing

I do not think he was referring to your "Bump" but the book Inquisitor by Ian Watson.

2 months is considered threadomancy, from what I read, not 2 days.

Squats was made as Dwarves in Space but then realised by 3rd Edition they covered no unique playing style and they started with a pretty sub par storyline.

Pretty much everyone has listed their origin of being Pre 30k Humans who lived in Mineral rich but low/no atmosphere planets and thus moved underground.
Upon joining the IoM, they did all mining work while the IoM protected them. Explorations since then probably just involved them working with the AdMech or IG.

Game Play wise, it is really just IG allied with SM Terminators and Bikers.

I think with the level of Tau technology as presented on the tabletop, GW could have easily re-released Squats with the mechanics of the Tau and called them Demiurg. The Kroot could even have instead mechanically been some sort of unit of "Slayers" in space, considering how they originally were in close combat. The Crisis suit variants could have looked more like Dwarven warjacks from Warmachine, or Mantic's Iron Ancestors.

Hmmmmm.......I still play games of 4th edition, which uses that era of Tau Codex (for the Kroot in their original CC version))....with the Forgefathers from the Deadzone kickstarter's second survey coming soon, I could imagine a counts-as conversion army forming..............

Hobbyists who never ever had a squat army in RT/2nd ed era (even Epic) bemoan their loss as the greatest wrong GW have ever committed.

Objectively they were not as popular in RT as they were in Epic.

2nd ed had the writing on the wall for the dwarfs in Spaaaace trope.

It's a shame, I really like what Mantic did with their Forgefathers, which is basically high tech squats.

They would have made a far more interesting 2+ save faction than the Grey Knights, that's for sure.

DrDuckman wrote:


They would have made a far more interesting 2+ save faction than the Grey Knights, that's for sure.

I cannot exalt you enough for this!

Theory; squats are actually related to one of the lost primarchs, that's why everyone gets so antsy when they are brought up.

Discuss. :-)

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
But they did learn their lesson. You can see the way they handled the Sisters of Battle.

Not really the same thing, though. They did try to make models for the SoB, and didn't actually want to discontinue them.

They were also their own faction in Epic where perhaps they carved out more if their own niche. I don't remember them that well although a friend had squat army. I just remember they had a massive zeppelin model that rained death and they also had some pretty chunky aircraft. I did like their bikes - like stumpy little Harley riders, beards and all.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Boggy Man wrote:
Theory; squats are actually related to one of the lost primarchs, that's why everyone gets so antsy when they are brought up.

Discuss. :-)

Not sure of the validity of thät, but I sense cross-over relevancy with the 'How Tall were the Primarchs?' thread.

They were mutants, basically dwarves in space, from a high-gravity mining world, with some crazy mining-based tech and power armor and etc.

They got eaten by grue. I mean, the nids.

 Melissia wrote:
They were mutants, basically dwarves in space, from a high-gravity mining world, with some crazy mining-based tech and power armor and etc.

They got eaten by grue. I mean, the nids.

Just to clear up, is that actually referenced in any printed material? I though it was just head-cannon from someone on the design team on the GW forum.

In any case, the Eldar got "eaten" by Slaanesh, and they're still around, albeit in greatly diminished numbers. I see squats as they same way, except dwarves don't spend all day moping and actually know how to <BLEEP> correctly so I wouldn't worry about them. In fact they're probably much more likely to survive the Imperium falling, given their low profile. (Plinkettlaugh; HAHAHA /Plinketlaugh)

Well, their former worlds have been annexed, they are not exactly keen with the AdMech, and there weren't that many surviving. Now that they've moved off the heavy-grav worlds, it's probable that the environment-induced mutations that made them Squats will mean that, soon enough, they are no longer Squats.

knas ser wrote:
They were also their own faction in Epic where perhaps they carved out more if their own niche.

Pretty sure that Jervis even said this himself. He said that they fit better into Epic because they could focus more on their vehicles. Though obviously that wasn't enough.

That, basically, was what killed Squats in standard 40K of the time. Vehicles and heavy armor were not as prevalent, especially not the huge land-trains the Squats had.

Bike armies were covered with 2 or 3 other Codices already, and the lighter, tanky Squat vehicles were done (and done better) in IG armies.

So you were left with biker-dwarves with shotguns and a few guys in heavy pseudo-power armor.