Originally Posted by Jervis johnson
I know I shouldn't get drawn on this... but... can't... resist
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 on the 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...
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.
Best regards,
Jervis Johnson
Head Fanatic
So given all these rumors I figured it was finally time that I reveal the rumors that MY source has given me. The guy's totally trustworthy and has an inside line into the GW design studio. He said that given all the misinformation out there it was time to clarify what was going on with 6th edition. Now some of this stuff might be slightly off in order to protect my source's sources, but he's always been right in the past.Most of this is just regurgitated pap from the "leaked" PDF playtest rulebook. However, if you look closely you will find an easter egg depicting the actual source of EVERY 40k 6e rumor floating around on the web right now! Post in the comments if you suss it out...
- A lot of the devs have been saying that 6th Edition will be a "throwback" edition, with a lot of elements from 2nd edition merged with some modern gameplay elements that we've seen from the last two decades of development.
- Now the phases are Movement, Action, and Recovery. Assaults and shooting will be done simultaneously in the action phase. Recovery phase is for doing morale checks.
- Units moving in the Movement phase have a standard value (no die rolling). Difficult terrain cuts your movement in half, but only for the portion of your movement that goes through that terrain.
- So the Action Phase is where the majority of the game takes place. The active player gets to allow each unit to perform a single action, like shoot or charge or use a psychic power.
- Every unit affected by a given action will have a chance to respond to that action if they pass an initiative test. For example a unit being shot at could choose to return fire or take cover. A unit being assaulted could counter-charge, stand and shoot, or retreat to try and get out of assault range.
- Xeno and other armies will have a bonus to certain reactions. For example orks have terrible initiative and will routinely fail to stand and shoot or take cover, but have a bonus to initiative checks to do things like return fire or counter-assault. Different Space Marine chapters have bonuses and penalties. Good luck getting Black Templar to take cover!
- There is a major change with regards to armor and invulnerable saves. Armor save modifiers are back! Cover provides either a +1 or +2 bonus based on hard or soft cover (hello 2nd edition!) but can be ignored by template weapons like flamers. Weapons have modifiers based on strength and other factors.
- Randomness has been incorporated into assault moves, but it's not that bad. Charge range is base movement + 1d6 to represent running at the enemy.
- Another big change in assault: Fearless wounds are gone! Instead the opposing side gets a free attack for every point the fearless side lost by.
- Casualties are now handled differently. Wound allocation shenanigans are gone! Whole models must be removed as much as possible. Normally players dictate what models are removed except for certain circumstances like a Vindicare or other special effects. Wound balances are carried within the unit as opposed to a specific model, so no hiding a wound on a Nob and then conveniently forgetting about it later.
- To mitigate the effect of things like hidden power fists Independent characters can attack specific models in CC.
- Units have another reason to fear flamers; assault weapons can now be fired from a vehicle regardless of how far they moved. This makes the Land Raider Redeemer pretty devastating.
So yeah, that's what my exclusive insider GW source has told me. What have you guys heard from YOUR sources?
- Some of the biggest changes have been to the philosophy being applied to this edition. GW is really trying to appeal to both the casual and competitive gamer. For the tournament player the rules set is really tight and streamlined. The mantra we've been hearing is "simple rules, complex gameplay." For the casual player GW put a LOT of effort into making an AWESOME campaign system with an amazing mission generator. Things like allies and purchasing strategic elements are part of the campaign system.
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