I’ve posted a few times recently about picking up some old Citadel Squat miniatures. I don’t really have an excuse aside from ‘I always really liked them’ and ‘money is overrated’. Once I decide on a colour scheme and a basing style, I’ll paint up a small squad for Necromunda, but I do have an eye to expanding to something approaching an army.
The problem is that the Squats haven’t had an army list since the initial release of second edition Warhammer 40,000 in the 1990s, and even then it was a small, colourless list. It was enough to spark my affection, even though the models were already unavailable in stores by 1997, but a handful of 5-model squads and some bikes isn’t really the sort of thing I want to focus my collecting around.
1989′s Compendium, on the other hand, has a beautiful Brotherhood army list, for the Squat Homeworlds. It features robots, bikes, Exo-Armour Hearthguard and some unusual squad alignments. Plus, you know, it’s the only Squat-only army list out there. It’s a good place to start!
1988′s Book of the Astronomican, on the other other hand, contains no less than five army lists, including the first proper Space Marine army list (for the Whitescars chapter and they are weird) - and three of these lists feature Squats.
Finally, we can consider what Squats could counts-as in eighth edition Warhammer 40K. People use Space Marines, Mechanicus, or Imperial Guard. For my collection, focusing on Paul Bonner-style quilted jackets and sturdy gear, Imperial Guard are probably going to be the best choice for my infantry squats. Robots and bikes are a different problem.
There is also the Horus Heresy list, where one can get apply Survivors of the Dark Age and Abhuman Helots to the Imperial Militia lists, so that’s something to consider.
But first, let’s go back in time to 1988. I was a toddler, half of you Tumblr kids weren’t even born yet….
Hylgar’s Hell-Raisers is the first Imperial Army list. It has some similarities to the modern Astra Militarum - there are humans in it, and lasguns. Importantly, it offers several Squat options:
The only Squat character, the Sergeant-Major is equipped a little oddly - he has what is a special weapon in 8th-edition terms! He also has no other options, a feature of the early lists.
Character: Plasma, sword, bolt pistol, mesh/flak armour.
The basic squads, these lads are also a little different from modern squads, but broadly similar: 10 soldiers, lasguns and a special weapon (in this case a flamer) or a heavy weapon (heavy bolter). The part that takes some getting used to is how the squads have either a flamer or a heavy bolter, rather than the ‘one special, one heavy’ that is common across nearly every modern 40K list.
For some reason the Striker Squads have mesh instead of flak armour, but as long as you make it clear to your opponent, I can’t see the modelling making much difference.
Infantry Squads: 10 men with lasguns, a sergeant. Tactical squads have a flamer; Striker squads have a heavy bolter. Tactical sergeants have a laspistol; Striker squads a lasgun.
A squad of characters! Well, minor ones, anyway. This looks more like what we’re used to in contemporary 40K - a squad of 10 bolters, with one special (flamer) and one heavy (missile launcher), along with a sergeant with a pistol and a nasty melee weapon. A hand flamer is pretty unusual though!
Infantry squad: 10 men with bolters, one flamer, one missile launcher. Sergeant has a hand flamer and power glove/fist.
Finally, we have an assault squad. Again we have the mesh armour, but the main thing here is that everyone has laspistols, with one special weapon (another flamer) and one sergeant with a power glove again.
Infantry squad: 10 men with laspistols and knives, one flamer. Sergeant has a pistol and power glove.
So for the Imperial Army squats, this can be broken down as:
9 Lasguns, bolters, (las)pistols
One heavy bolter OR missile launcher/squad max
If bolter troopers, then missile launcher AND flamer.
Sergeants either lasgun OR chainsword OR power glove (maybe also hand flamer(!))
The notable thing here is that other special or heavy weapons are notably absent, except for one officer (well, non-com) who has a plasma gun.
This is all a little strange, and makes it a bit hard to match this with both non-Citadel Space Dwarfs, who usually offer 10-man squads with a heavy and a special weapon, and the Citadel range, which has a number of various heavy and special weapons within. Modern lists don’t make taking heavy/special weapons compulsory, so I guess that would be fine..? Onwards!
The next list is for a Rogue Trader’s company. It’s a mixed-arms list, consisting largely of Marines, with a healthy dose of other Imperial forces, including Guardsmen, Astropaths, and our Squat friends.
No characters this time - there are no ranking Squats among Borodin’s forces. The Tactical squad is identical to that in the Imperial Army, except that we have some upgrade options now - we can give them chainswords (but not lose their lasguns) and give the sergeant a plasma pistol. This is called a Close Assault squad, but bears little resemblance to the Assault squads of the Imperial army - I suppose Borodin has more money than the average Marnier Militaris.
Infantry squad: 10 men with lasguns, a flamer, a sergeant with a laspistol.
Infantry squad: 10 men with lasguns, chainswords, a flamer, sergeant with a plasma pistol.
These are basically identical to the Imperial Army Guard squads, with the addition of further equipment rather beyond what I’m worried about. Most Squats have visors - I guess these ones can be photochromatic if they want.
Infantry squad: 10 men with bolters, one flamer, one missile launcher. Sergeant has a hand flamer and power glove/fist.
So much for Squats in a Rogue Trader fleet. I suppose with all those marines around, Borodin can’t hire on many abhumans. These look like:
Can have chainswords for lasgun squads.
If troopers have bolters, also a missile launcher.
Sergeants have laspistol - can add chainsword & plasma pistol OR if troopers are bolters, power glove and hand flamer.
Other special or heavy weapons are totally absent.
This is even more strange, although I at least know which model they wanted for the Champion-Sergeant, as I have him on my desk. He definitely has a hand flamer and power glove!
At any rate, next up we have pirates…
This is where the Squats really shine in the Book. We have several characters and squad types.
A character! Another plasma gun! This time also with a power glove. I have no idea what model they intended him to be for, and somewhat suspect they meant plasma pistol, given the illustration there.
Character: Plasma gun (pistol?), sword, bolt pistol, mesh/flak armour, power glove.
More characters! This time one is compulsory - you want to be space pirates, you gotta bring some space dwarfs. Again, they have a special weapon! What the heck!
Character/s: Bolt gun/pistol, chainsword, flamer.
Only the one squad (although again, they’re compulsory!), probably because the pirate list also has a lot of pirate Eldar and regular ol’ Humans and so doesn’t lack for variety. Plus, this has loads of weird options, but first let’s look at the basics…
..which involves splitting the squad between autoguns and bolters. This is the first time we’ve seen Squats with autoguns, although there were four in the Citadel range and they are common among other companies. So we have eight riflemen, split between autoguns and bolters, one heavy bolter, and a sergeant with a chainsword, bolt pistol, and… flamer.
It’s certainly a very characterful squad, representing well the scarce resources and motley nature of a bunch of pirates, but it’s also weird. What are those options in the sidebar?
Oh, yes, another Close Assault deal, where everyone gets chainswords and the sergeant gets a plasma pistol (so he has two pistols, a chainsword, a flamer, and a partridge in a pear tree). That’s fine, even if I don’t think any of the Citadel range has plasma pistols. What’s the other option?
Oh, cool, power boards. what the actual fuck
Sure, they existed in the Rogue Trader material and are incredibly cool, but there are absolutely no miniatures for them. Which is an absolute shame and I now want a recce squad of space dwarf rascals on hover boards because read that sentence again and then you should know why.
Infantry squad: 4 men with autoguns, 4 men with bolters, a heavy bolter, a sergeant with a flamer, bolt pistol, chainsword. MAY TAKE HOVER BOARDS!!!
Infantry squad: 4 men with autoguns, 4 men with bolters (all with chainswords), a heavy bolter, a sergeant with a flamer, bolt pistol, chainsword, plasma pistol.
Despite the weirdness of the hover boards (!), this is basically more of the same from the Imperial Army and Rogue Trader lists:
Officer with plasma gun and power glove
1-3 Officers with flamers.
May add chainswords or hoverboards.
Sergeants have bolt pistol, chainsword, flamer. If the squad has chainswords, he gets a plasma pistol.
Overall, the Astronomican lists treat squats in much the same way across the board: ten-man squads, with an emphasis on single-man special weapon additions, nearly always a flamer. Elite squads have bolters. Assualt squads have chainswords. Some squads have heavier weapons. Pirates are a bit weirder, including the only autogun unit. [Autoguns and lasguns were similar weapons (and, since 3rd edition, have been basically identical). Most squat riflemen models have lasguns, so this is a bit academic.]
So, let us travel forward in time to 1989, and see what Squats doing it for themselves might look like….
I find this army list a bit annoying, actually. The background material is great, and it features a lot of truly excellent artwork (a lot by Paul Bonner), but list design has definitely improved over the last twenty-nine years. Ansell, Stillman, and Davis wrote a list with very few characters and an excessive amount of minimum units. The most egregious of this, for my money, is that you only get one Guildmaster if you take seven guild bikers - and even Engineers Guild lists only get the one, and they have to take fourteen. You should be able to have a couple lower-ranked engineers running about for the robots, am I right?
Anyway. That’s a problem for some other time. Nobody is going to hold me to any rules or regulations when it comes to an army which nobody plays with using these ancient rules, anyhow. This is just a guideline for me to have something to hang a collection on.
And we’re only looking at infantry, anyway. For the infantry, you must take a Warlord, and then 3-4 Combat Squads…
First off is the Warlord, who has four hearthguard bodyguards. This is pretty interesting, as they have carapace armour as a default and can take all kinds of weird, mostly invisible to WYSIWYG, wargear (anti-plant grenades indeed). The Hearthguard themselves get to roll on the equipment charts, which a modern collector can use to justify whatever armament they like. Which is what I intend to do.
The alternatives are threefold, for the Citadel range: the original Hearthguard models, which had plastic arms - that is, you can model whatever armament you like, or roll up if you prefer. Alternatively, you can get yourself a squad in Exo-Armour, or mount ‘em all on bikes.
My intention is definitely to eventually get a squad of exo-armour. I’m lukewarm on the Hearthguard catapace armour - it’s a bit too fantasy dwarf, and not enough ‘rugged miners’ for my taste. Exo-armour fetches a pretty penny on the second-hand market, so I’m definitely in no hurry on this front…. unless someone wants to give me a very early Christmas present? No?
Character & 4 Elite: Very flexible. If you don’t mind the armour not necessarily being ‘carapace-y’, it’s do as thou wilt.
Woof, look at those options.It looks weird, but most of it is grenades. Things to note:
8-man squads. This is very unusual for Warhammer 40K, which uses 10-20-man squads for even alien species. I think even the Tau have moved to 10-man units, although they don’t have base-10 mathematics.
Lasguns as the default, although they can be swapped for bolters.
Gunslingers everywhere. While a very cool look, I think I want to be a bit more uniform. It’s a good look for sergeants, though.
Everyone can have a heavy bolter(!). This is a long way from the limited heavy weapon selection of the pirates, army, and rogue trader Squats!
One other heavy weapon per squad, with a wide selection.
No ‘special’ weapons, aside from grenade launchers - no plasma guns, melta guns, or flamers.
Leaders have a very broad range of options, but it basically boils down to ‘a different pistol’, ‘a shotgun’, ‘a combi-weapon’ or ‘a melee weapon’, although I guess you could go with a power sword and a regular sword, if you wanted.
In terms of army design, having an army where the basic infantry unit can be equipped entirely with heavy weapons is an interesting one. I kind of like it. It has a great synergy with their low movement of 3 and works in terms of giving a feeling of grouchy, dug-in warriors.
In a modern list, this would never do - heavy bolter squads would be a Heavy Support choice, but with the way 8th edition detachments work, this wouldn’t necessarily prevent a player with an extensive heavy bolter Squat army from being able to play.
For me, I think I’ll have mostly or entirely riflemen squads, but it could be interesting to have one or two heavy bolter squads.
Putting aside the heavy bolter legion issue for a moment, 8-man squads would immediately mark the Squat army from being different from Imperial Guard or Space Marines. In gaming terms, you have a lower ‘trooper-tax’ for your special/heavy choices, allowing a more MSU approach to your army. In aesthetic terms, it helps reinforce the idea that Squats are fewer, but tougher, than their true human cousins. I really like this idea.
In 2nd edition, incidentally, the regular Squat squads were reduced in scope considerably, to 5-man teams, either Warrior Squads (lasguns and one special/heavy), Attack Squads (bolt pistols & axes, choose from the assault list, one special), or Thunderer Squads (lasguns, but everyone gets a special or a heavy - this is your all-heavy bolter squad).
This was the gap-filler ‘Codex Army Lists’ list, which wasn’t intended to be permanent, but it’s also a little bland to be basing my collecting around. I’m not collecting a weird, antique, 30-year dead army of old lead in order to paint generic 5-man squads! I want recce teams of hoverboards and cigar-chomping bearded miners with bionic hands!
Sergeant with power glove and rifle, Theoc Miniatures. Sculpted and painted by Chris Nicholls.
Having written all this out, I’m still no closer to figuring out what I want to do to organise my collecting strategy. I’m leaning toward the unusual 8-man Combat Squads of the Brotherhood, with a single heavy weapon each - or a heavy weapon and a heavy bolter - and maybe a handful of special weapons as a Hearthguard.
..but then I do want an exo-armour Hearthguard squad, so maybe I could get 6 Combat Squads in total and keep a few flamer-armed chaps around for some space pirates. Maybe some extra riflemen if I use the army as counts-as Imperial Guard. After all, exo-armour can be counts-as Terminator armour, and the new detachments allow a lot of flexibility in that area, especially if bikers count as Marine Scouts.
