Squats arrived today!

They back as leagues of votann though the vibe of them is very much different.

Yeah same, but voltann are fun too. Glad to see them back, at least it means I can also field these guys as proxies so to speak.

I've been deep diving on why squats/space dwarves were squatted in the first place and it's kind of fair enough. They were selling fine, according to jarvis but design wise they felt they just missed the mark of what dwarves should be in 40k, especially as GW turned up the grimdark. Other races adapted to it because their styles were more solidified. There's lovely charm in these guys, but they definitely needed some refinement, as their designs either leaned into being space dwarves and the models are great. The ones that looked like just more imperial guard, not so much. I kind of wish they did have a go of revamping them back then. Some of the unreleased models that have leaked are excellent and would have fit nicely, and definitely leaned even more into space dwarves (cyber beserkers and Nordic stylings..which seemed to later appear in space Wolfe's funnily enough)

In saying that, ive been obsessed with them since I started in 2nd ed. But given I'm Australian, at the time they were super rare to come across to even buy back in the day. The only original squat I bought in a blister was a standard bearer, which I lost years later in a break-in. So I bought this set to finally have a small army of them.

I don't think the voltann models are 100% there yet, but the lore and artwork in the latest codex is amazing. They've taken that Dwarven miner look, futurised it, and added a unique quirk in the maintaining of tech and cloning from the dark age. In particular, I love how they're hiding AI STLs from the imperium and how they use them as oracle's, and I like how they treat AI troops just as one of the team. When the helmets are down, how do you know if it's flesh or not, and does it matter?

Which leads to some interesting head canon too - there's lots of cybernetics and cloning going on in this army. What if all of the voltann are nothing but completely controlled and manufactured "flesh bots" for those AI oracle's they worship. One more connecting piece..what if they used the original squat DNA for the clones?

Fun stuff and I love it :D

Haha I did not. That is amazing