Incline Warhammer 40,000 Lore Thread

[Mangoose]

I think you attribute a bit too much thought and depth to a setting that was designed by some british dudes way back in the 80s.

As a more comedic spinoff of Warhammer Fantasy, nonetheless.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Yeah, I think a lot of people forget that 40k was a weird, goofy spin-off of WHFB. It was just some british nerds taking the piss. It's just that it was so well received that it ended up surpassing it's older cousin, so the point they killed the cousin and replaced it with a retarded nephew that wants to be more like it's uncle.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I completely lost what little respect I had left for Warhammer 40k and it's lore when Dan Abnett was allowed to reduce the entire Horus Heresy and everything after to the fault of a woman having a strop. It'd be funny if 40k was actually the satire tourists claim it to be. But we are meant to take this as a profound twist on par with Darth Vader being Luke's father. Something that is supposed to recontextuallize the entire 40k Universe. Someone at GW needed to smack Abnett with a rolled up newspaper. But GW don't care about the integrity of their setting beyond selling minis. So why should I?

Yeah, that was pretty bad. Which is a pity, because Abnett does seem to understand the setting.
I mean, he did write this, apparently:

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Neat idea, right? Well, publisher Rackham went bankrupt in 2010 and the game hasn't had a new edition since. That's the problem with 40k dominating the entire tabletop space.

AT-43 was cool. Didn't like the prepainted minis, but the designs looked pretty neat. It's a pity that every competitor to GW just ends up going full retard and yeet itself off a cliff, leaving GW to continue growing across the hobby market like a cancer and do some anti-customer shit in the process.
Like raising their prices yet again, when their kits are stupidly expensive. Or still making you pay for rules when they aren't even well written books to begin with and have short lifespans, even shorter once you factor in Errata.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Neat idea, right? Well, publisher Rackham went bankrupt in 2010 and the game hasn't had a new edition since. That's the problem with 40k dominating the entire tabletop space.

AT-43 was cool. Didn't like the prepainted minis, but the designs looked pretty neat. It's a pity that every competitor to GW just ends up going full retard and yeet itself off a cliff, leaving GW to continue growing across the hobby market like a cancer and do some anti-customer shit in the process.
Like raising their prices yet again, when their kits are stupidly expensive. Or still making you pay for rules when they aren't even well written books to begin with and have short lifespans, even shorter once you factor in Errata.

I have a few ideas for innovating the hobby. Namely, create open source projects where you can play virtual tabletop, import models and paint them, that sort of thing.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Making STLs available for 3d printers would be an interesting innovation.
Maybe make old STLs available for free permanently as part of a loyalty reward or something idk.

 

[Mangoose]

Yeah, I think a lot of people forget that 40k was a weird, goofy spin-off of WHFB. It was just some british nerds taking the piss. It's just that it was so well received that it ended up surpassing it's older cousin, so the point they killed the cousin and replaced it with a retarded nephew that wants to be more like it's uncle.

And the Imperium's fight against its enemies is ironic - there is a shitload of bravery and people sacrificing themselves for the Emprah... But that's because it's a setting of endless war and inevitable failure.. So it's like we're very very brave mice.

 

[Mangoose]

btw:

The majority of 40k players do not play Space Marines. The mainstream community finds them the plebeian choice - Games Workshop's posterboys.

Imperium is a different story because you can't get hordes of vehicles anywhere else.

Actually plenty of Space Wolf and Blood Angel players too. Because they have specialer rules and aren't boring like generomareens.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

On that topic, you may have all seen this:

The abundance of Chaos armies was put down to how Chaos had three editions of starter sets in a row (6th, 7th, 8th). Necrons then current position was obvious (9th). I'm guessing Nids have now ascended high (10th). What's interesting to me is that old faithfull Orks were next, despite not having a starter box since fifth edition; they are the perennial classic enemy of humanity, I think, more than Chaos even, and I bet were among the first xenos mankind ever met in fluff - I think Orks are due their third "starring role" in a starter set for 11th edition.

I still think of the "original" factions as having a kind of historical prestige, heirachical primacy: Space Marines, Orks, Craftworld Eldar, Imperial Guard, Squats, Tyranids. Chaos was added in an expansion. Sisters of Battle were added in second I think, maybe early Necrons in late second edition. That was to me, the point where classic 'formation' of the hobby ends, i.e. second edition codified the core of the setting. Then more factions arrived in third; Dark Eldar, Tau. These are not too distant. Things that were given a full miniature range really late, like the Adeptus Mechanicus, or Adeptus Custodes, never mind Knights, seem very distant additions to the hobby. You see the primacy of the original factions in how Battlefleet Gothic started with four fleets: Imperial Navy, Chaos, Ork and Eldar. Or how Epic 40,000 also had: Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Orks, Eldar and Chaos. Games tend to feature some combination of these first factions. Check out this really nice bit of lore from third edition, where it says mankind always thought the Eldar and Orks were the two most ancient races in the galaxy:

Orks are co-prestigious with Eldar, in their sheer depth of antiquity, but don't know it, or care. Second and third edition produced some great Codecies lore-wise. Codex Imperialis remains the best 'overview of 40K' lore-book. Stuff like Codex Necrons and Codex Orks from around then are still some of the best material GW ever put out.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

A suprising number of different departments of the Imperium of Man possess their own warships or fleet. I always have the fleets for Battlefleet Gothic in my head, making me think of only the Imperial Navy, Space Marines, Adeptus Mechanicus, League of Blackships, and Rogue Traders. But lore says even the Adeptus Arbites have some strike cruisers:

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Imperial Fleet < Adeptus Administratum < Adeptus Terra* < High Lords of Terra < The Emperor

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---- Imperial Fleet / Warfleets (aka the Imperial Navy / Navis Imperialis, thousands of cruisers per Segmentum)

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---- Imperial Fleet / Civil Fleets (privately licensed, owned by highborn families, corporations, free traders, etc)

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---- Imperial Fleet / Merchant Fleets (the 'chartist captains', state-owned, 90% of all interstellar ships, no navigators)

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League of Black Ships < Adeptus Astra Telepathica < Adeptus Terra* < High Lords of Terra < The Emperor

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Basilikon Astra < Adeptus Mechanicus* < High Lords of Terra < The Emperor

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Ecclisiarchy Ships < Adeptus Ministorum < High Lords of Terra < The Emperor

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Inquisition Ships < The Inquisition < The Emperor

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Space Marine Ships < Adeptus Administratum < Adeptus Terra* < High Lords of Terra < The Emperor

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Adeptus Arbites Ships < Adeptus Arbites < Adeptus Terra* < High Lords of Terra < The Emperor

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Rogue Traders < Adeptus Administratum < Adeptus Terra* < High Lords of Terra < The Emperor

* The Adeptus Terra, known as "The Priesthood of Earth"
* The Adeptus Mechanicus, known as "The Priesthood of Mars"

Humanity might be the mightiest shipbuilding race of all time, though we don't know how the Eldar or Necrons compared at their height. I'm guessing Orks are their closest competitor now, though I imagine Eldar and Dark Eldar maintain big fleets. The League of Blackships is described as the second largest fleet in the galaxy, with thousands of ships. That means more than any xenos race, presumably. However, I am guessing it might also depend on how you count. If every chapter of Space Marines gathered their total fleet, would that number come out higher, or are they already being counted as a whole? The Imperial Navy had 600 Lunar-class cruisers in Segmentum Obscurus alone. It seems to also include system ships for planetary defence, so it's total size is probably huge. The Merchant Fleet must be utterly massive, but travels set routes via charted warp jumps without navigators.

 

[Tyranicon]

The League of Blackships is described as the second largest fleet in the galaxy, with thousands of ships. That means more than any xenos race, presumably.

And just imagine, human fleets were incomparably better during the Dark Age of Technology.

The space elves probably erased all mention of their fleets getting lol-deleted by high-tech humans.

 

[Mangoose]

The League of Blackships is described as the second largest fleet in the galaxy, with thousands of ships. That means more than any xenos race, presumably.

And just imagine, human fleets were incomparably better during the Dark Age of Technology.

The space elves probably erased all mention of their fleets getting lol-deleted by high-tech humans.

Actually it's the elvish incest clusterfuckery that started off this whole thing.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Yeah. Whilst the Imperium itself can be to blame for a lot of the shit it's in, remember that the whole reason why it's in this mess to begin with is because some aliens couldn't stop buttfucking each other.

 

[lightbane]

There's also the implication at times that the Eldar sabotaged the Men of Iron or something like that.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

Another idea that has been mentioned in passing, is that Chaos corrupted the Men of Iron with demonic scrap code.

Don't trust even the basic assumptions of what happened in the "Dark Age of Technology" and "Age of Strife". Not even fundamentals like a war between man and machine. I think people should take every claim about the era as provisional, with a heavy pinch of salt, down to even basics like how humanity fell from it's Golden Age of Technology. How has the lore changed subtly between editions, from different authors, with different agendas? I can't remember if the Men of Iron were even mentioned in early 40K, I would have to re-read Rogue Trader and Codex Imperialis. People can interfere or change the emphasis of a story to suit their biases. For example, want to blame humanity, for it's own hubris or decline, to shift blame from Xenos? Then increase the number of cautionary tales that implicate humanity for it's own downfall, shift the blame either away from the Eldar, or onto the Eldar, as it suits the author's belief in external evil; shift blame onto a human creation like the Men of Iron, or their technical decadance.

One example of a recent slow-and-subtle change I think I'm noticing, is the tendency away from "natural mutation" toward conscious "genetic engineering". The old implication, as far as I remember, was that 30,000 years of natural selection had created Abhumans, such as Squats, Ratlings, Ogryns and Psykers. For example, the Squats had spent 10,000 years mining high-gravity planets, in caves, in the ancient Deep Core stars, suffering deaths from radiation sickness, and rock-falls. It had left them with mutations for short stature and hardiness. Now 40K is moving toward human volition, picking up this old hint from third edition, 1998:

"Votann itself, who is also known variously as the Primal Ancestor, the Gilded One, or the Stonemind, amongst others. In some Kin myths, Votann was not one being but many, and is sometimes depicted as a group of gleaming golden figures or a wheel of graven stone faces." - Leagues of Votann Codex, 2022​

To interpret this, the usual fan assumption, the implication of this speculative tidbit, about the "Men of Gold" creating the "Men of Stone", is that a race deliberately engineered the Squats, to act as a race of miners in the Deep Core. This would actually make more sense, since Squats are a uniform stable Abhuman mutation, like a hominid species/race. However, I'm not sure what effect this will have on the lore long-term, if it is heavily taken up as the true origin of Abhumans, as it seems like another way being introduced, in which humanity made potential errors or mistakes of it's own, during the "Dark Age of Technology", quite independent of the Eldar.

 

[Mangoose]

Another idea that has been mentioned in passing, is that Chaos corrupted the Men of Iron with demonic scrap code.

Don't trust even the basic assumptions of what happened in the "Dark Age of Technology" and "Age of Strife". Not even fundamentals like a war between man and machine. I think people should take every claim about the era as provisional, with a heavy pinch of salt, down to even basics like how humanity fell from it's Golden Age of Technology. How has the lore changed subtly between editions, from different authors, with different agendas? I can't remember if the Men of Iron were even mentioned in early 40K, I would have to re-read Rogue Trader and Codex Imperialis. People can interfere or change the emphasis of a story to suit their biases. For example, want to blame humanity, for it's own hubris or decline, to shift blame from Xenos? Then increase the number of cautionary tales that implicate humanity for it's own downfall, shift the blame either away from the Eldar, or onto the Eldar, as it suits the author's belief in external evil; shift blame onto a human creation like the Men of Iron, or their technical decadance.

One example of a recent slow-and-subtle change I think I'm noticing, is the tendency away from "natural mutation" toward conscious "genetic engineering". The old implication, as far as I remember, was that 30,000 years of natural selection had created Abhumans, such as Squats, Ratlings, Ogryns and Psykers. For example, the Squats had spent 10,000 years mining high-gravity planets, in caves, in the ancient Deep Core stars, suffering deaths from radiation sickness, and rock-falls. It had left them with mutations for short stature and hardiness. Now 40K is moving toward human volition, picking up this old hint from third edition, 1998:

"Votann itself, who is also known variously as the Primal Ancestor, the Gilded One, or the Stonemind, amongst others. In some Kin myths, Votann was not one being but many, and is sometimes depicted as a group of gleaming golden figures or a wheel of graven stone faces." - Leagues of Votann Codex, 2022​

To interpret this, the usual fan assumption, the implication of this speculative tidbit, about the "Men of Gold" creating the "Men of Stone", is that a race deliberately engineered the Squats, to act as a race of miners in the Deep Core. This would actually make more sense, since Squats are a uniform stable Abhuman mutation, like a hominid species/race. However, I'm not sure what effect this will have on the lore long-term, if it is heavily taken up as the true origin of Abhumans, as it seems like another way being introduced, in which humanity made potential errors or mistakes of it's own, during the "Dark Age of Technology", quite independent of the Eldar.

Squats don't exist.

Votann are Squats.

Squats don't exist.

Votann are Squats.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

GW cannot stop me referring to the Kin as Squats

The new Codex of course says that the "Squats" and the "Demiurge" are just different culture's names for the Leagues of Votann's outer fringe of peoples (maybe including the now-destroyed Emberg-Aegnir Bloc). They were words that different Imperium, Eldar or Tau worlds perhaps gave to Votann prospects, without ever knowing the core culture of the Leagues. The old lore books however, were clearly referring to the entire stocky Abhuman race we would now call the Leagues of Votann's people, when they talked about the forgotten history of how the galactic core came to be populated by humans:

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When the worlds around the galactic core were first colonized by humans in the far distant past they discovered vast, almost limitless mineral deposits. These resources included compounds that had been smelted in the furnaces of dying stars and also strange substances that had been formed when the galaxy was born and before the laws of physics had stabilized. The discovery of these materials was very auspicious as the resources of Earth had been long exhausted and as a consequence the exploration and exploitation of the galactic core had been deemed imperative for the survival of humanity.​

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Hundreds of thousand of miners, engineers and explorers in specially adapted spacecraft were sent to exploit the newfound wealth of the core which quickly turned into one of the most densely populated parts of the galaxy. Due to the inhospitable physical characteristics of the worlds here they are generally considered to be quite unlikely places for human colonization and life. The original colonists coming to these worlds were hardy frontiers folk. These tough miners and explorers dreamt of reaping fantastic riches and then return to Earth.​

The old map showed the Squat Homeworlds in a vast area near the core:

Let's say that the Imperium allied and traded with the Squats (but actually it was only their outermost Leagues), encountering them during the Great Crusade, and believing they met their demise in the 41st Milennium. Those colonies are now implied to have been just outlying factions of the larger Leagues of Votann civilization. Then "Squats" is still a legitimate way to refer to them as a whole, I imagine probably the Low Gothic form, as I imagine "Eldar" is for "Aeldari". I like when old forgotton pieces of lore are re-integrated. The Squats need some novels to flesh them out, as they could be very interesting!

Other old legends await revival....

Foremost of these was the mekboy known only as....

Orkimedes

, the real brain behind Gazaghkhull Thraka:

 

[Storyfag]

Yeah. Whilst the Imperium itself can be to blame for a lot of the shit it's in, remember that the whole reason why it's in this mess to begin with is because some aliens couldn't stop buttfucking each other.

Ahem. The scholarly consensus amongst the Magi Xenobiologi is "murderfuck".

 

[Storyfag]

There's also the implication at times that the Eldar sabotaged the Men of Iron or something like that.

 

[NwNgger]

I still think Votann are a bland, Age of Shitmar esque poor replacement for Squats. I liked them being Biker Dwarves. And I think that concept could be salvaged without erasing that identity.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

They made them short viking space marines. Which is lame and gay.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

I still think Votann are a bland, Age of Shitmar esque poor replacement for Squats. I liked them being Biker Dwarves. And I think that concept could be salvaged without erasing that identity.

This is my hope - that they will 'Make Squats Dwarven Again'.

I'm hoping for novels, longer beards, the "Great Dataslate of Grudges", Dwarf on Ork wars in the dark, berserkers, "delving too greedily and too deep", etc. Just as the Eldar are space Elves, the Squats need an infusion of ideals from their fantasy kin, to give them some identity, rather than just being "short humans".

The first miniatures had armor that I didn't like, but maybe they have gradually been making each miniature release more Dwarven? Hearthguard have more angular armour with decorative details. The new Yeagirs have moved further away from the rounded Warrior armour, toward leather greatcoats. It's the lore though, that is the lacking element. All the potential is there, names or cultural elements are present, like their society being dominated by Norse concepts, so they just need to lean in a little, maybe have them be more of a violent drinking culture, read the sagas.

The mini styling isn't quite there yet, it doesn't need to be a silly characature, but could do with being closer to this:

 

[NwNgger]

I still think Votann are a bland, Age of Shitmar esque poor replacement for Squats. I liked them being Biker Dwarves. And I think that concept could be salvaged without erasing that identity.

This is my hope - that they will 'Make Squats Dwarven Again'.

I'm hoping for novels, longer beards, the "Great Dataslate of Grudges", Dwarf on Ork wars in the dark, berserkers, "delving too greedily and too deep", etc. Just as the Eldar are space Elves, the Squats need an infusion of ideals from their fantasy kin, to give them some identity, rather than just being "short humans".

The first miniatures had armor that I didn't like, but maybe they have gradually been making each miniature release more Dwarven? Hearthguard have more angular armour with decorative details. The new Yeagirs have moved further away from the rounded Warrior armour, toward leather greatcoats. It's the lore though, that is the lacking element. All the potential is there, names or cultural elements are present, like their society being dominated by Norse concepts, so they just need to lean in a little, maybe have them be more of a violent drinking culture, read the sagas.

The mini styling isn't quite there yet, it doesn't need to be a silly characature, but could do with being closer to this:

Could you imagine how fucking cool it'd be to marry Hells Angels style Bikers to that WFB Dwarven lore and aesthetic. It'd be metal as fuck. Quarrelsome dwarves on motorcycles charging into a Necron Tomb World to avenge a 300 year old grudge. All chanting the ancient Dwarf battle hymn, Welcome to the Jungle. Swinging hammers around to crush Necron heads as the motorcycles roar.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I still think Votann are a bland, Age of Shitmar esque poor replacement for Squats. I liked them being Biker Dwarves. And I think that concept could be salvaged without erasing that identity.

This is my hope - that they will 'Make Squats Dwarven Again'.

I'm hoping for novels, longer beards, the "Great Dataslate of Grudges", Dwarf on Ork wars in the dark, berserkers, "delving too greedily and too deep", etc. Just as the Eldar are space Elves, the Squats need an infusion of ideals from their fantasy kin, to give them some identity, rather than just being "short humans".

The first miniatures had armor that I didn't like, but maybe they have gradually been making each miniature release more Dwarven? Hearthguard have more angular armour with decorative details. The new Yeagirs have moved further away from the rounded Warrior armour, toward leather greatcoats. It's the lore though, that is the lacking element. All the potential is there, names or cultural elements are present, like their society being dominated by Norse concepts, so they just need to lean in a little, maybe have them be more of a violent drinking culture, read the sagas.

The mini styling isn't quite there yet, it doesn't need to be a silly characature, but could do with being closer to this:

Could you imagine how fucking cool it'd be to marry Hells Angels style Bikers to that WFB Dwarven lore and aesthetic. It'd be metal as fuck. Quarrelsome dwarves on motorcycles charging into a Necron Tomb World to avenge a 300 year old grudge. All chanting the ancient Dwarf battle hymn, Welcome to the Jungle. Swinging hammers around to crush Necron heads as the motorcycles roar.

Remember when GW was run by metalhead nerds who grew up on Conan and Judge Dredd, instead of the new team who are into capeshit and WoW? The longbeards remember.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

I still think Votann are a bland, Age of Shitmar esque poor replacement for Squats. I liked them being Biker Dwarves. And I think that concept could be salvaged without erasing that identity.

This is my hope - that they will 'Make Squats Dwarven Again'.

I'm hoping for novels, longer beards, the "Great Dataslate of Grudges", Dwarf on Ork wars in the dark, berserkers, "delving too greedily and too deep", etc. Just as the Eldar are space Elves, the Squats need an infusion of ideals from their fantasy kin, to give them some identity, rather than just being "short humans".

The first miniatures had armor that I didn't like, but maybe they have gradually been making each miniature release more Dwarven? Hearthguard have more angular armour with decorative details. The new Yeagirs have moved further away from the rounded Warrior armour, toward leather greatcoats. It's the lore though, that is the lacking element. All the potential is there, names or cultural elements are present, like their society being dominated by Norse concepts, so they just need to lean in a little, maybe have them be more of a violent drinking culture, read the sagas.

The mini styling isn't quite there yet, it doesn't need to be a silly characature, but could do with being closer to this:

Could you imagine how fucking cool it'd be to marry Hells Angels style Bikers to that WFB Dwarven lore and aesthetic. It'd be metal as fuck. Quarrelsome dwarves on motorcycles charging into a Necron Tomb World to avenge a 300 year old grudge. All chanting the ancient Dwarf battle hymn, Welcome to the Jungle. Swinging hammers around to crush Necron heads as the motorcycles roar.

You and I think that would be cool, but apparently the "Dwarf bikers" aesthetic was one of the things GW identified as something that hadn't done the Squats favours. You might have seen this before, but there was this long explaination given by a GW employee years ago, about why they perceived the Squat range failed (they say it wasn't numbers, but rather the aesthetic didn't mesh):

"I know I shouldn't get drawn on this... but... can't... resist ​

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Seriously, a couple of points just so you can have an informed debate based on the real reasons that Squats are no longer available. Be warned, it is going to be hard reading for people that like the Squat background.​

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First of all, Squats were *not* dropped because they were not selling well. There were then, and are now, plenty of other figure ranges that sell in the sort of % quantaties that the Squats pulled down, especially when you look across all of the ranges produced by GW rather than just those for 40K.​

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No, the reason that the Squats were dropped was because the creatives in the Studio (people like me, Rick, Andy C, Gav etc) felt that we had failed to do the Dwarf 'archetype' justice in its 40K incarnation. From the name of the race (Squats - what *were* we thinking?!?!) through to the short bikers motif, we had managed to turn what was a proud and noble race in Warhammer and the other literary forms where the archetype exists, into a joke race in 40K. We only fully realised what we had done when we were working on the 2nd edition of 40K. Try as we might, we just couldn't work up much enthusiasm for the Squats. The mistake we made then (deeply regreted since) was to leave them in the background and the 'get you by' army list book that appeared. With hindsight, we should have dropped the Squats back then, and saved ourselves a lot of grief later on.​

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Anyway, the Squats made it into 2nd edition, and since we were doing army books for each of the races, we started to try and figure out what to do with them. Unfortunately we just couldn't figure out a way to update them and get them to work that we felt was good enough. The 'art' of working on an army as a designer is to find the thing that you think is cool and exciting about an army, and work it up into a strong theme. This 'muse' didn't strike any of us, and so, rather than bring out a second-rate product simply re-hashing the old background, we kept doing other army books instead, with stuff we did feel inspired by.​

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Now, while this was all going on for 40K, we were actually doing some rather good stuff for the Squats in Epic. On this scale there was a natural tendancy to focus on the big 'hand-made' war machines the Squat artisans produced, and this created an army with a feel that was very different to the biker hordes in 40K. However, this tended to reinforce the problems we saw in the Squat background rather than alleviate them, underlining what we *should* have done with the Squats in 40K.​

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In the end (and it took years to really get to the roots of the problem) this led to a realisation that we were going to have to drop the Squats in their 'Squat' form from the 40K background. There was little point having a major race that we weren't willing to make an army book for, and their inclusion in the background meant that people kept asking us when we'd do a Squat Codex. Instead we decided that we'd write the Squats out of the background by saying that their Homworlds had been devoured by a Tyranid Hivefleet. This would give us the option in the future to return to making a race based ont he Squat archetype for 40K. This race was given the name of Demiurg, and a certain amount of preliminary work was done to get a 'feel' for what the race would be like. At present the only hint of the Demiurg in 40K is the Demiurg spaceship for BFG. However, we do have this race 'in our back pocket' as a possible new race for 40K, or an interesting character model in Inquisitor, or whatever. So far the Demiurg have lost out to other projects, and it may be that their time never actually comes, as they will have to win through on their merits, not simply because we once made some Squat models in the past. At present, I have to say that it is more lilely that they *don't* make the cut than do, as there is a certain predudice these days to simply taking races from Warhammer and cross them over to 40K like we did in the early days, so it may be that the Squats/Demiurg end up remaining a footnote in the history of the 40K galaxy. Only time will tell...​

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The second point I'd like to make is about 'old moulds'. In the past, Mail Order in the UK and US used to be the place that we kept all of the retired moulds for Citadel Miniatures, and we used to offer a service where you could order any Citadel Mniature ever made from MO. However, there are now so many of these 'back catalogue' miniatures that it is simply impossible to keep all of the old moulds in Mail Order and offer this service. Instead, we pick and choose which back catalogue miniatures are kept available. At present we're still struggling to produce special catalogues for these ranges (in the US there is the 'Phone Book' catalogue with everything in it, while the UK has special 'collectors guides' that are themed round a race). Once we've ironed out the kinks in the way we deal with the range of collectors models we want to keep permenantly available, the plan is to offer up other parts of the back catalogue for limited periods of time. In effect this will divide the back catalogue into three parts: a range of classic models that are permenantly available, a range of classic models we dip into and bring out for a limited release, and a range of retired models that will no longer be sold either because we've decided that they are embarrassingly bad, or because we are no longer allowed to sell them due to licencing agreement changes. So far we're still slowly working on deciding which classic models we want to keep permenantly available, and its going to take several years to work through just those. The old Squat range is most likely to end up as retired models, I have to say, though there is a good chance that the Squat war engines they could simply into the limited release classic range. Once again, only time will tell...​

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I'll finish off by saying that whatever we decide to do 'officially', there is nothing stopping players with Squat armies from using them, either in Epic or 40k for that matter. There is no GW 'rule' against using old Citadel Miniatures, as long as you use them with exisiting army lists and in a way that won't cause confusion for other players. I recommend taking a positive stand by saying "Have you seen these cool old models? They're called the Squats and GW used to make them back in the late eighties/early nineties. I love 'em, so I count them as Imperial Guard and use them with the current rules..." Put like this I can't imagine that anyone would stop you from using your army.​

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Best regards,​

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- Jervis Johnson, Head Fanatic​

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Votann so far feel a bit generic to me, but on the plus side, they are a blank slate, with potential to become something as deep as Orks and Eldar, given some more thought. I'm hoping that is exactly what will happen in future Codecies, the way Necrons changed between 3rd and 5th - a "correction" in this case, a tonal shift, away from Leagues being like corporations aethetically, I hope, to something more like a violent honour culture.