GW News: SKAVEN VICTORY! #NewAoS

Despite only having been around today, that Squat video has become the second most-liked post of recent memory in Warhammer Community, after only the Golden Demon Winners announcement:


GW are going to disappoint a lot of people if they go back on their word tomorrow...

 

Well, I hope they do it properly.

When I first started Squats models were available, but it was a joke. The models were terrible and there weren't even any rulesets out.

They'll need some good rules if they're going to make them all M3-equivalent.

And some good hardware... Vehicles... GUNS....

 

hell, maybe the positive response alone might be the trigger needed to convince the CEO to make squats again, even if it started as a joke originally

Would be a cool story.
- Random designer "boss I got a great idea for an april fool's joke. Let's tease squats"
- CEO approves joke.
- Teaser does reaaaaaally well, showing a clear oppertunity.
- CEO approves squats for real.

 

https://www.warhammer-community.com...mS49585QXPSPBxvPambBx2lT6nEn3F7JO1_ME3RAQ-3-8

 

[Deep Rock Galactic intensifies]

 

@Killer Angel you were doggone right, my friend, the joke was purely that it happened to be shown on April Fools’ day - but the faction itself is not a joke at all!

SQUATS ARE BAAAAAACK!!!!!!!



Finally a new faction for 40K, the first since Genestealer Cults in 2016. A full faction, not just a Kill Team or other Easter Egg. And not just any faction, a reinvention of the Squats updating them to the 40K universe we know and love. An excellent model, and excellent background lore so far, I’m impressed they’ve gone the route of separating them from the Imperium and giving them their own agendas and motives underneath the temporary alliance they’ve forged with mankind to combat the greater threats of Chaos and the Xenos races (the original Squat race was just another arm of the Imperium with a Dwarven veneer).

This faction has huge potential, I shall watch its career with great interest.

 

Temporary alliance? Is the grimderp getting a bit less dark and slightly more sensible?

 

I think the model looks ridiculous.

His arms are huge, the proportions are off in general, and the haircut isn't helping

 

That too my man.

even if they went derivative and made tomb kings mayan, worshipping a godbeast instead of nagash to tie in with the overarching Ghur Story arc, and brought them back that way I would be ok with it.

Come on GW, bring back the right stuff.

 

I mean, that's how dwarfs generally look.

 

No, it's not. The arms don't normally look like a gorillas

 

yeah they do.

They get relatively thick, muscular & long arms compared to their torso. Add on powerarmour and you get this. Especially if you add a freaking powerfist of all things like in the artwork. Those things are stupidly bulky on a human, let alone on a dwarf.

And on top of that the cloth of his suit seems to be quite loose. Further accentuating the bulky nature.

O, and then we also have a perspective that makes it look like we're looking down upon it from quite close. Which again, accentuates how bulky and short the guy is.

Essentially what you got here is a bulky & short creature, wearing bulky armour & loose clothes, wielding a ridiculously bulky weapon, and a perspective that literally looks down upon the dwarf. Of course the proportion are going to look weird then, as literally everything in this artwork accentuates the bulk and shortness of the dwarf.

As for the haircut; for some reason GW likes mowhawks, can't say I know why. But there isn't much else to say about that.

 

Hold your horses, you two, we don’t know everything that’s happening with TOW yet. Bretonnia is already going to come back in that game (otherwise GW wouldn’t have shown that Warhammer Community article on it) and Chaos Dwarfs and Tomb Kings have both been hinted at on other maps (and the latter has also been referenced in ‘official’ GW-made memes). I can’t see GW going back on their word and avoiding releasing those factions at some point once TOW’s arrived, especially as all three are either in or going to feature in Warhammer: Total War. Given TOW probably isn’t going to come out until at least 2025, it still won’t be for a while yet and if the game isn’t out, GW won’t be willing to spill the beans on much in the way major yet (especially given the minuscule articles they’ve sparingly given us).



There’s no hard-and-fast limit on which factions should be brought back and which shouldn’t (or at least there shouldn’t be any hard-and-fast limit). I was similarly pissed about Sisters of Battle last year and the year before as you both are about this, for the same reason - that there are other factions out there that haven’t been given the same level of respect - but since then I’ve realised that saying GW should have brought back this faction instead of that one makes us no better than GW themselves have been in the past - we’re giving different factions different levels of respect just as GW have done, we’re just reversing it round so that we want our favourite factions to get all the love and others to be the ones that are shitted on. Instead we should be congratulating GW on making amends for one of their deepest and longest-lasting atrocities against the gaming community, and encouraging them to do the same for every other faction they’ve ditched in the past.

I know how you lads feel without a doubt - you saw me spitting bile at Slaanesh and Vampire Counts getting so much new stuff over the past year or more - but I know I should be better than that, and you should too. Every player in the Warhammer community should be allowed to benefit from GW’s support for the armies they play, not just those who play specific armies, at the expense of those who play others. It’s possible, indeed it’s vital, that every unloved faction makes a triumphant return, and we need to give GW praise for every unloved faction they resurrect so that they’ll keep bringing more back. If people start moaning about Squats coming back, that may well result in the opposite effect, with GW avoiding doing the same for other executed factions for fear of the same lukewarm response from the players.

If GW are serious about atoning for the injustices they have committed (which they now seem to be so far given we have seen first plastic Sisters of Battle over the past year or two and now Squats returning, something they’ve made jokes about for years), then all the unloved factions will get a turn.

 

Not an unreasonable jump, but I think they will have a full release schedule for ToW with Kislev, beets, and now Grand Cathay.

Which, while I am dreading the prices, I do want to see what models get produced. If only to serve as specialty troops and characters for a force comprised of bulk troops from wargames Atlantic (warring states Chinese are on the release schedule)

 

In all fairness, when they canned the old world and went to AOS, the factions and models they stopped producing was because they weren't selling. Why bother mass producing models that are underperforming?

The popularity of Total War is showing that there is renewed demand for the old world and the old armies. But when the old world ended and AOS came out, Brettonian and Tomb Kings simply weren't selling, the people that wanted to play them had their armies, and had for years. The few models that were selling got rolled into a much smaller faction. Everything else was not worth the cost of production.

 

I'm not so interested in the armies for TOW as I am in what the ruleset will be like.

That is the most important make-break point for me.

The close second is will they ACTUALLY (not propaganda but in the actual rulesets, etc.) let me play my 8th armies. And will they do a brush-off update to fit with TOW? Or will it be a proper, gamer-oriented update.

I'm feeling pretty negative about both these points, but I'm happy to be proven wrong.