The Return Of Squats In The 41st Millenium

These are exciting times in the hobby. With specialist games like Blood Bowl and Necromunda making a comeback, which I once thought would never see the light of day, we now have proof that one of my old 40K favorite races is also returning. Squats!

I have long felt that Squats truly belonged in the 40K universe and were never given the treatment they needed. The fantasy races into the future archetype was what originally attracted me to collect and play Warhammer 40K.

Recently previewed squat mercenary at the Forge World open day

I have to reign myself in a bit because what I want is a full on army release, but this may just be a one off. If that is all this is, then I'll just have to be satisfied with a cool looking mini that says that Squats are indeed a current part of the 40K universe again (beyond the small blurb in the rulebook). I do have my doubts that the time and money would be invested into this model if Games Workshop wasn't already thinking of what the potential could be for a larger release. This could be an expansion to a full on Squat Necromunda gang to an army list for 30K or 40K. Noted, you could have a Squat-like army in 30K if you used an Imperial Cults & Militia, but you either have to convert most of it, which some people aren't as interested in or buying the expensive RT or 2nd edition era models. 

One of my favorite scenes out of the 2nd edition rulebook.

That's right, kill that cheesy Eldar scum!

I see potential for some really cool miniatures down the road if GW proper of FW decided to move this forward. Epic had a fully fledged army for the squats back in the day and that would be a welcome move for me. 

Land Train HO! Choo Choo

 Who wouldn't like seeing a 40K scale land train on the table? I don't know of anyone that thinks this would be a bad move on the part of GW. Plus, I could add it to the growing 30K army that I have been working on for the last two years (slowly, at that).

Horus Heresy Project: Abhuman Helots, Imperial Squats

Time for a much needed posting. After having hit my last project goal of painting 2000 points of Necrons I decided I wanted to switch gears back into Horus Heresy mode. I already have 2000 points of traitors (EC) painted up, but I felt like I also needed a force to represent the loyalists. I couldn’t quite get into the mood of painting yet more power armor so I considered my options, which there are a few non-legion armies available for Heresy Era gaming. I narrowed down my choices to an Imperial Cults and Militia list. By far I think this is one of the most flexible armies available and it appears in volume 5. I used to play a small Squats army in 2^nd edition 40K and saw that this army could be replicated somewhat by taking the options of Survivors of the Dark Age and Abhuman Helots. Some of the other forums out there like Dakka Dakka and BoLS have shown the Technomartyr Studio conversion before. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any comprehensive project log for someone making a Squat themed ICaM army. That is what I would like to do over the following months.

This army would represent one of the Homeworlds that allied with the Imperium against Horus, but also has a history of fighting xenos threats during the great crusade. I will have more vehicles in this army than in my EC traitors.

I already had a small amount of minis already painted that I will integrate into this list.

Classic Squats in all their glory

I think one of the hardest parts of a project like this is building up a collection of models from a discontinued range. Luckily I can find most of what I need off of Ebay, but I also wanted to do some converting based off of WHFB (AoS) Ironbreakers and Space Marine Scouts for my Grenadiers. Having to have a minimum of 20 in my army I thought this conversion would be more sensible than using Exo-armor or Hearthguard minis. This conversion is fairly easy, I only needed to do some trimming for the shoulders and filing down the feet. Some green putty is needed to close some gaps in the arms. I also used a Death Korps of Krieg backpack to give it more of a future battlefield element.

I will also be using some classic Squat plasics to represent my lighter armoured militia.

 

I’m gathering up more minis to fill out this army and hopefully I can make enough progress to display on this forum. Stay tuned for more!