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Charax wrote:
Almost everyone who expresses an opinion on Squats was not around in the hobby to experience them their first time round. They were entirely setting-appropriate for the period they were in - a time before GrimDark (Literally, Grimdark takes its name from the tagline of 3rd edition 40k, when it was becoming more widespread and mainstream). The Black Codex was the start of Second edition, and at that point the lore was becoming more settled and taking itself a little more seriously, the design team had already decided they weren't going to bring Squats into 2nd edition at that point.

"In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war" is very prominently displayed on the 2nd ed. box. Now GW at the time was all about bright colors and the painters were in love with red, but that was also a function of the aesthetic of the time. Stallone's Judge Dredd was dressed like a Vegas lounge act, but it was still supposed to be a grimdark storyline.

Third ed. had a darker look because the Goth asethetic had emerged and was thought to be edgy and cool.

Well, except for the Tau, who were bright, clean and shiny, and I think theirs was the only codex that featured cheerful, sunlit artwork on the cover. But I digress.

Taking their RT/start of 3rd Lore and going "haha, lookit the silly biker dwarves, they don't fit in 40k" is like going "haha, lookit the half-Eldar Ultramarine Chief Librarian" or "Oh look that Inquisitor is named Obiwan Sherlock Clouseau" or "haha, Chaos Genestealer Cults with possessed patriarchs" - yes, they look silly when you examine them outside their original context, but if they had gone through the same complete transformative change every other race had gotten in the transitions from RT to 2nd to 3rd, then they'd have become a more serious and integrated part of the lore rather than the weird little biker parody they started of as, but the design studio couldn't think of a direction to take them in.

Right, they only worked as comic relief, which was my point.

I mention the Black Codex not because it was authoritative, but because it showed the state of the art at the start of 2nd, and a possible blueprint for the future growth of army miniatures lines. It's interesting to see what was expanded vs what was let go, and the evolutionary dead end that was Squats was already apparent.

To put it another way: yet another subfaction of the Imperium required more differentiation than defending Snow White.

I am pretty sure calling early edition Orks derpy and criticising the Inquisition War books is a bannable offence on this forum?

Completely agree with Charax's post above about the Squats being 'of their time', which was specifically a Rogue Trader range of minis. They went perfectly with the 2000AD-esque aesthetic of wounded marine miniatures, punk/sci-fi guard and pirate eldar. So judging them by modern standards (which was a defence you often read by people who were actively opposed to Space Dwarves returning) I don't think was fair at all.
Now the LoV (Latrines of Venice) fit perfectly with the modern 40k aesthetic and are a pretty damned cool range of miniatures. I would say they fit in better as a concept than something like the introduction of Primaris does, and certainly have done a lot less to upend the suspension of disbelief within the setting.

 Pacific wrote:
Now the LoV (Latrines of Venice) fit perfectly with the modern 40k aesthetic and are a pretty damned cool range of miniatures. I would say they fit in better as a concept than something like the introduction of Primaris does, and certainly have done a lot less to upend the suspension of disbelief within the setting.

I think there's more agreement than disagreement in terms of why they were dropped.

As to whether they fit now, they've certainly got more lineage than a lot of the Space Marine stuff.

And at this point, the design space is so incredibly cluttered that having duplicative units seems to be the rule rather than the exception, so there's the functional case against them in 1995 is no longer valid.

Once GW got serious about 40k, there was a desire to strongly differentiate the armies. The generic categories of troops, fast attack, heavy support, etc. or the sense that every line should have an equivalent weapon system/unit function was anathema to the design philosophy. Instead, the whole point was how radically different the armies were, necessitating significant differences in play style.

That policy started to go away in 3rd and GW never looked back. This creates room for the Lassitude of Voltan to do their thing.

Worth noting the first true sign Squats weren’t coming back wasn’t until Epic 40,000 dropped, a year or so before 3rd Ed ruined everything ()

All throughout my 2nd Ed Codex Collection, we’re told Codex Squats is coming, and allies could be picked from it.

But Epic 40K? Squats gone, despite being a gorgeous army for Epic.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Worth noting the first true sign Squats weren’t coming back wasn’t until Epic 40,000 dropped, a year or so before 3rd Ed ruined everything ()

All throughout my 2nd Ed Codex Collection, we’re told Codex Squats is coming, and allies could be picked from it.

But Epic 40K? Squats gone, despite being a gorgeous army for Epic.

funnily enough they aren't mentioned as allies in the 2nd edition Sisters of battle codex either, released in the same year as epic 40k

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
"In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war" is very prominently displayed on the 2nd ed. box. Now GW at the time was all about bright colors and the painters were in love with red, but that was also a function of the aesthetic of the time. Stallone's Judge Dredd was dressed like a Vegas lounge act, but it was still supposed to be a grimdark storyline.

2nd edition was still a very very niche product, it wasn't generating any tropes of its own. I'm not saying that the Grimdark style didn't exist before 3rd edition, there are obviously many many things that the term could retroactively be called Grimdark, but the term and trope itself came about through a combination of 3rd edition's skyrocketing userbase and the shift to a more relentlessly dark tone compared to both RT and 2nd edition, not literally "it was the edition with those exact words on the box"

 TheChrispyOne wrote:
But- back to stunties: To me it seems GW is trying to shoehorn/ retcon in more futuristic look to humans and the Squats are supposed to be Abhumans with dark age o' tech stuff, so it looks more tau-ish/ closer to primaris/ custodian stuff. Which means, GW had to have a reason why the Imperium's stuff looks different instead of "New edition, new look, deal with it".

Except the Leagues aren't aligned with the Imperium and don't share technology with them. The Leagues are using technology that would have been used by Golden Age Humanity thousands of years before the Emperor even started the Unification Wars.
There are similarities because the Imperium uses STCs but not to the same degree as the Leagues who have fully functioning STCs as the the minimum standard for their industrial base and can manufacture things beyond the capabilities of the Imperium because they didn't suffer the ravages of the Long Night and the repression brought on by Mechanicus and Imperial dogma.

People need to stop using the word "retcon" whenever new things are added to the background. The Squats of old are represented as Kin who joined with the Imperium and were largely wiped out by the Tyranids. They were the outermost worlds of their race and still had advanced tech but not to the degree of the homeworlds in the galactic core.
It's not a "retcon" to say the Leagues weren't present in the galactic playground in a major way until now because they didn't need to be. The Galactic Core was resource-rich and largely out of the way of the major players so the Leagues didn't need to bother with the rest of the galaxy. Some did such as the Imperial-aligned Squats and the T'au-aligned Demiurg but both groups kept their origins and homes a secret because they didn't need the extra hassle. It suited the wider race to have the galaxy not believe that the Leagues were actually all over the place and hiding in plain sight as minor Xenos or holdouts suited them.

Indeed. Their addition has been about as organic as it could be. Certainly a smoother introduction, to my mind at least, than the Tau.

Their whole Schtick is being able to thrive in the Galactic Core, enduring conditions no other race really can - hence other than other species native to that region, nobody else has really made inroads.

That they share a common lineage of tech with The Imperium helps with that.

Their use of Bolters for instance matches the reason they were mass issued to the Astartes Legions. They’re short ranged, almost carbine, assault rifles well suited to boarding actions and other claustrophobic conditions. Rather than Plasma, they use Ion tech. Not quite as powerful, but zero chance of cooking yourself.

Add in their lore answers some questions, whilst posing new and interesting ones for me is just the cherry on the cake.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Their whole Schtick is being able to thrive in the Galactic Core, enduring conditions no other race really can - hence other than other species native to that region, nobody else has really made inroads.

Presumably this is a good way of keeping the classic rivalry with and hatred of Orks, as Orks are one of those races sufficiently tough to thrive pretty much anywhere and have likely been bothering LoV settlements for millennia even within the core.

That and they’re thieving, treacherous sods who are likely incapable of keeping to a trade agreement. Not to mention utterly anarchic, and so prone to just smashing stuff up and being generally disorderly.

The hatred could also be coded into Kin DNA. I mean, mankind must’ve encountered Orks fairly early on to our sojourns into the unknown. Given Orky nature is fairly straightforward, encoding instant hostility against a race known not only to pilfer whatever isn’t nailed down (and like Feegles, prise up anything that is nailed down, and filch the nails as well) would help protect the stockpiles of whatever has been mined.

 Gert wrote:


People need to stop using the word "retcon" whenever new things are added to the background.

I agree, but I had no real word for the fact that due to real-life technology/ aesthetics the look of many armies changed over the years, and GW had to say why at some point. My Ork example was just one of many- the 'Nids, Guard, Marine Boyz, all look different now than they did years ago. And now that we have 30k HH games, it's more prevalent between the newer models vs the old RT ones.

I'm not sure I follow exactly.

People didn't need it explained to them when models were updated before for 40k armies and they don't need it now.

When a model has significant changes such as various Marine characters moving to Primaris, then yeah a reason is given but that is an exception.

For the Leagues the explanation wasn't to do with the Imperium or the T'au or needing a justification for Primaris, it was just that the design team had finally found something they wanted to do with the Space Dwarf archetype and went for it.

 TheChrispyOne wrote:
I agree, but I had no real word for the fact that due to real-life technology/ aesthetics the look of many armies changed over the years, and GW had to say why at some point. My Ork example was just one of many- the 'Nids, Guard, Marine Boyz, all look different now than they did years ago. And now that we have 30k HH games, it's more prevalent between the newer models vs the old RT ones.

It's a good word because it describes what is going on. GW can't just say "yeah, forget that old stuff, we're selling now models now," so they come up with an in-game reason for the changes.

But it is still "retroactive continuity," that is a link inserted after the fact to try to make the new thing they are doing fit.

It can only work in this kind of setting. In a non-fiction context, we'd call it anachronistic or simply wrong.

What we have here is GW recognizing that the Squat legacy still has resonance, and so they tried to find a way to get them into the current grimdark lineup.

Which is fine, but there's no reason we can't be honest about what is going on. At least the Tau were new idea, previously foreign to the background (and they should have stayed that way, but I digress). The Lemons of Venicebeach are obviously Squats, and so GW has to do the nostalgia/retcon to both present them as new and fresh to the kiddies just entering the game and the graybeards who want to know when the new chopper trike is model is coming out.

Yeah, that was what I was kinda getting at. The background of 40k is a bit more 'fluid"- everything is true, but not everything is canon. For all we know the half-eldar librarian was a bad drug trip that some Adeptus Administorum had, and filed for later.

 TheChrispyOne wrote:
Yeah, that was what I was kinda getting at. The background of 40k is a bit more 'fluid"- everything is true, but not everything is canon. For all we know the half-eldar librarian was a bad drug trip that some Adeptus Administorum had, and filed for later.

What's with that half Eldar librarian again? I've heard about this story once but don't quite remember

Illiyan Nastase is a half-Eldar, half-Human Imperial Astropath, who was the Chief Librarian of the Ultramarines in late M41. Before this, Nastase had been a Consul helping to run the advisory Senate to the Master of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, and had assignments with the Imperial Fleet and Dark Angels Chapter

Old lore is old

Love old lore, that's so silly

Again praising Taran, that lovely french website that translated like 90 of it from WD, codices, rulebooks, RT....

Of course, that’s from before Space Marines were genhanced, post-human crimes against nature!

The early days of 40K are really fascinating. Over my collection of 1st Ed books, you can see it go from “sod it, put it in”, and over the years refined to the point where very late stage Rogue Trader was pretty much 2nd Ed.

And not just in terms of rules, but background. As a study in wild and unrestrained creativity, it’s a blast!

Taran translated Waagh da ORKS, Realms of chaos, and summarised all what was published by GW in those early years, subdivided in RT ans 2nd edition sub-categories. It appeared to me just as you describe it: gradually refined into a form so thorough in both rules and lore they finally jumped into a second edition.

That's how I got acquainted with senseis star child, old squats and all myriad of strange stuff that ended up as dead ends or changed but I keep as head canon because it is just that great.

I'd have to remind them, but I actually email Scribe Patatovitch, founder of Taran, to know of any 2nd edition events were live that I could go to. His website is full of colourfull battles and campaign reports and I'd like to dive into that old 40k!

On topic, Ind like to fight against squats in their 2nd iteration as I like them and wished they still existed, as out of place as they would now seem.

And to fellow Frenchmen who would happen to read by:
Compatriotes, si vous savez où trouver des parties V2, envoyez un message privé, ça m'intéresse!

I thought the idea was (and still is) that the squats we knew back in the day were outlying member of the LOV (remember not many people know about the LOV even if the interact with some of them occasionally) and those squats were devastated by the nids.

So to many people it might appear that had been almost entirely wiped out because the rest of the species was keeping to themselves in the galactic core. Until the galaxy was torn in half and now they need to vernture forth once more.

Even if that’s not canon it’s a good enough head cannon to simply explain what’s happened.

But the idea that the nids are the squats has been around for a long time

Exactly that. The new lore is more about “so why didn’t they poke their heads out before” than “oh they were well known just nobody thought to mention it”.

Tbh, this explanation of the LoV and their relation to the squats is not at all bad, I have notm grudge against it. I don't like their aesthetic though.

Has anyone got memories of when DE were introduced? How did their introduction compare to that of LoV? Mostly considering that rather than a whole new race, they are a facette of the wider Eldar race, much like LoV would be the wider species of squats.

Doc maybe?

Dark Eldar came out in 3rd, as part of their boxed set.

Sadly, that was an era when Codexes contained very little….anything. Certainly pretty much bugger all background. We knew about Commoragh, and that Vect was top dog. But it was all very bare bones.

It wouldn’t be until around 12 years later and their next Codex we got much in the way of proper background. However there may have been more in novels!

So….super poor to be honest! Tau and Necrons were treated better, as their advent was the next iteration of Codex, where GW remembered the lore is a significant part of the appeal.

Yeah I've got almost all 3rd codex (well in fact almost all codicies anyway), including DE (actually my copy is the 3.5), and their is almost no lore. Nice modelling pages however and miniatures' photos look neat.

That's strange though that they made so little lore for a faction that was included in the starter set, if my information is accurate.

I would love to know where that Nastase bit of background came from - I suspect it's based on the Romanian tennis player Ilie Nastase. I've just checked and he retired probably around the time Rogue Trader was being written, but was it just a name plucked from a sub-concious or is there something more to it? (Obviously nothing as crude/obvious as Obiwan Sherlock Clousseau! )

On the Dark Eldar front I kind of like how the background for them has been integrated as the game has developed. To begin with you just had 'eldar pirates' and these horribly malicious and belligerent aliens attacking and enslaving, during the first encounters in the great-crusade period, and then it was only later that humanity realised that there were different types of them.

 Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote:

 TheChrispyOne wrote:
Yeah, that was what I was kinda getting at. The background of 40k is a bit more 'fluid"- everything is true, but not everything is canon. For all we know the half-eldar librarian was a bad drug trip that some Adeptus Administorum had, and filed for later.

What's with that half Eldar librarian again? I've heard about this story once but don't quite remember

Huh, I thought I'd done a Retro Review on that issue but I guess not. Have a Lexicanum link instead.

https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Illiyan_Nastase

Basically Ultramarines were one of the first chapters to get a full write up, including their quadriplegic commander, their desert world filled with sand worms and their half Eldar librarian.

My pet theory is that history in the Imperium is like history in 1984.
"We are war with the Eldar, we have always been at war with the Eldar."
"But weren't the Eldar our allies literally last week? And isn't Illiyan over there half Eldar?"
"Illiyan who?" (Takes out bold pistol)
"As you say sire, we have always been at war with the Eldar."

Remember this is the most oppressive regime imaginable.

 Pacific wrote:
I would love to know where that Nastase bit of background came from - I suspect it's based on the Romanian tennis player Ilie Nastase. I've just checked and he retired probably around the time Rogue Trader was being written, but was it just a name plucked from a sub-concious or is there something more to it? (Obviously nothing as crude/obvious as Obiwan Sherlock Clousseau! )

On the Dark Eldar front I kind of like how the background for them has been integrated as the game has developed. To begin with you just had 'eldar pirates' and these horribly malicious and belligerent aliens attacking and enslaving, during the first encounters in the great-crusade period, and then it was only later that humanity realised that there were different types of them.

Well, some of humanity. Ciaphas Cain has met Craftworlders and Commorites, and either doesn’t know or care about the distinction between them given it tended to be under combat conditions.

Tongue in cheek as those novels are, they don’t really break the lore in anyway. So outside of the Inquisition and Astartes (even then possibly only the command echelons?) if it’s got pointy ears and a gun, it’s a threat in need of shooting.

Returning to the original question, keep in mind all of the RT armies were a bit samey, limited by modelling tech, capital to invest and a desire for cross compatibility (everyone used the same weapons for example).

It was only in mid to late RT they started to take on lives on their own with Eldar Craftworlds and Harlequins, the Chaos Books, Etc.

For Squats their real development was in Epic.



They went from short bikers to a full Steampunk Jules Verne/HG Wells army with armored blimps, land trains, and building sized super tanks.

Which is why I still prefer the AoS Sky Dwarves to the Legends of Vegas NASApunk (love that word)/Atomic Age models. To my mind the Epic Squats are imprinted as what the army should be, and even after Steam Punk Dwarves have sort of become a fantasy cliche they're still what I see in mind's eye.

On the other hand? A race noted for its technological knowledge and capability sending its warriors into battle with a ballistic vest for armour….doesn’t sit right.

Their current gear echoes the Terminator armour project. Starting from mining and industrial equipment, and finding a way to turn that into useful armour, without comprising the original benefits (sealed environment, comms units etc).

 TheChrispyOne wrote:
Yeah, that was what I was kinda getting at. The background of 40k is a bit more 'fluid"- everything is true, but not everything is canon. For all we know the half-eldar librarian was a bad drug trip that some Adeptus Administorum had, and filed for later.

I think you have that backwards, everything is Canon- not everything is true.

To be fair, thinking about 2nd edition covers and artworks and models, in the end, they all were kind of "goofy", both because of tech and aesthetics.

But look at space marines. Can you get goofier than they were in those old artworks? In these silly robot like armours?

And yet they were refined both in minis and artworks with 3rd rolling out and setting up a new tone.

Which leads me to think, in the end, squats could totally have followed the same path: less bright colours, better scaled armour, and better models, and they could have looked cool too. But we'll never now.