As many may be aware, the Squats are returning at long last to Warhammer 40’000, with a vengeance. Warhammer community have a slew of nice little reads on various new concepts and units and wargear that these Leagues of Votann will sport.
Hilariously, the precious central computers which these Space Dwarfs depend on were not designed for being in operation for twenty thousand years, and so the accumulated memory has slowed down these once-lightning quick artificial intelligences to an agonizing crawl, with many problem queries to the machines requiring centuries of loading before solutions are received.
What do you think? Any favourite new reveals? Yay or nays? Planning to collect these stunties?
My take: Design choices such as beards and proportions aside, this is the thorough treatment that Squats deserved to originally get.
Of the same kind the Eldar got during Rogue Trader:
We are at last getting fantasy Dwarfs in space, who are much more than just that.
Asteroid mining, clunky AI, the whole shebang. At last the Games Workshop design studio was inspired by a vision for Squats.
Remember that Squats were sidelined during 2nd edition, despite selling reasonably well, because the studio folks had no good ideas for them. Unlike, for instance, Eldar.
They felt that biker Dwarfs in space who hated Orks were too lacklustre, too close to their fantasy counterpart, without a driving vision, and thus they put Squats in fallow.
Which in hindsight was the correct decision, because now the current studio crew has a vision for Squats. As refreshingly loosely based on their fantasy archetype, yet being something far more, as Eldar were to High Elves during the Rogue Trader era. And I say this as a fan of the original Squats; much as I like them, they were also always lacking something essential in their background to tick properly. And yes, I will convert whatever Leagues of Votann models I add to my Squat army to be more Dwarfy, especially with big beards and runes and Viking ornaments. And 80s Rogue Trader Squat stuff. And Ork trophies.
The current GW studio has hands down surprised me delightfully with how good of a vision for 40k worldbuilding they possess: Just look at the Adeptus Mechanicus, Genestealer Cults, new Sisters of Battle units, everything in Necromunda and now Squats. This isn’t just an endless repetitive codex cycle of ever more Space Marine releases. It’s an actual exploration of the galaxy, with plastic kits to boot. And it’s not a shoddy exploration, but a thought-through one.
What a great time to be alive: The GW studio has turned freewheeling creative again, not unlike the Rogue Trader days, and they are expanding the setting true to its spirit, without breaking the overarching themes (with a caveat that the ongoing Primarch return plot may risk to break it; we’ll see). You cannot reasonably expect the Warhammer 40’000 setting to be in such good hands after 35 years of personnel rotation and risk of picking up outside influences for the worse. We’d better count ourselves lucky.
Let’s be clear: Long live the current Games Workshop studio!
