Quote from: KrakaJakTrry at least plus +40 on all stats (maybe +20 on WS & BS, if you want to be nice).

Space Marines are born Space-Marines(cloned actually). They don't come out of the pod "before the Mods", they don't get their Power-Armor until they survive indoctrination (combat training and brain washing) and they don't get off the ship until they get their Power-Armor. It's not like some sort of promotion. Space-Marines were born a modified mighty-warrior and they will die one.

Really, these guys are 7 ft. tall, 500lb (before armor), cloned, Emperor serving killing machines. Space-Marine Power Armor is the socond best armor in the ENTIRE known galaxy, the best being Space-Marine Terminator Armor. Standard equip them with Bolters (Which are 78mm, fully-automatic weapons with exploding bullets) and there's a bit of a power disparity between them and Joe Void-born.

First off I based my numbers on how WHFRP stated giants and dragons.  

Second marines aren't cloned they're humans with modifications implanted after they prove themselves worthy through a series of grueling tests.  And they have been since Rogue Trader.

Third they're eight feet tall, which goes to show how little of the actual 40k material you've ever read.

Lastly it's a +20 that stacks with all the other strength and toughness advances a human can possibly buy.  It's a system specific solution.

As I've said repeatedly, I prefer the =][=nquisitor system which lets them have a base line 250 Strength (+10% for powered armour) and 150 Toughness.  But that's just not how Dark Heresy scales things.

Quote from: David JohansenThird they're eight feet tall, which goes to show how little of the actual 40k material you've ever read.

.

Be nice. Its 8 feet IN armor. Always has been. That leaves a LOT of leeway on the marine OUT of armor. For all we know they could be 4 foot tall and use stilts.  

Okay... we know that's out of the question (stupid Squats...) but...

According to an old and rare White Dwarf supplement (or not) the soles in the boots are only two inches thick tops!

Never the less the marines have never been clones ever in any of the fluff ever barring the novels which I can't claim to have read.  Well there was that one based on Advanced Space Crusade but given the anal penetration metaphor used to describe a marine assault boat docking with a tyranid vessel I think I can be forgiven for not going back.

Though I'll note that the marine scouts in that Rogue Trader era novel were hive world born RECRUITS!

They did grow progenoids in clones that were confined to growth tanks, but that's mainly the adeptus terra for use in creating new marines.

Quote from: SpikeBe nice. Its 8 feet IN armor. Always has been. That leaves a LOT of leeway on the marine OUT of armor. For all we know they could be 4 foot tall and use stilts.  

Okay... we know that's out of the question (stupid Squats...) but...

Hey...how come there's no Squats in this game....(uh oh!)

Quote from: Erik BoielleDumbasses. Sad truth is BI brought it on themselves.

I know right. Selling out the same week it came out. Jerks. They brought that level of success on themselves.

-=Grim=-

Yes. There are many people who would kill for the kind of sucess that means looking for a new job in march.

Quote from: KrakaJakHey...how come there's no Squats in this game....(uh oh!)

In WHFRP they called it the Galloping Trots instead.



Looking at the new Ork codex I'm guessing Squats aren't too far off for the minis game anyhow.  With Jervis being the last man standing I think we can look forward to more fluff and less balanced rules stuff in the future.

I suspect that those who destroyed the Squats have all left the building.

Someone that reads a lot more of the 40k stuff told me that in one of the corebooks there's some fiction about the Squats home-planet being overrun by Tyranids and then being declared Exterminatus.

Might be wrong though. I think the squats at least deserve a mini army list for the folks that actually bought them.

The Squats were overrun by the Tyranids, then written out of canon. However, I have seen some model proofs and drawings that suggest that a race of 'space dwarves' were meant as sort of a client list of the Tau at one time.

Definetly not Squats, however.

You'll have to make do with ratlings, I'm afraid...

QuoteI 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 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...

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...

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

Also:-

QuoteThere is a clock in GW headquarters called the Squat Clock. It is set to 12 hours. When it reaches zero, work on the squats will begin. Unfortunately, every time someone in the world mentions the word Squat, it gets reset. So far, the closest it has come to zero is 11:59:57.

Quote from: GrimJestaPrime example: I'm using the system for a Necromunda RPG. No Inquisitors, no Acolytes (which means they don't get the starting 400XP, but whatever), nothing. Just a gang trying to hack it in the Underhive.

Any additional info on this game would be appreciated.  The idea of running a Necromunda game sold me and I managed to find a copy for cover price via mail order.  Now I just need to wait for it to arrive.

Quick note:

Inquisitor, Necromundia, and other such discontinued GW games exist in free downloadable .pdf form through the GW website; look for the "Other Games" menu tab and go from there.

Prior to me doing the impulse buy thing with the copy of Dark Heresy I found while on drill this past weekend, I was quite content with the aforementioned free things and my d6 Space book for a game I had in mind.

Hope this helps the curious.

Quote from: Erik BoielleYes. There are many people who would kill for the kind of sucess that means looking for a new job in march.

Whoa, hey Logical Fallacies R Us. Settle down now.

(a) The game sold out almost immediately. That's success.
(b) GW yanked the license because their company isn't doing well.
(c) 'b' has little to do with 'a'. Therefore, you're retarded making a rather hasty assumption. And one that's wrong.

Dark Heresy is a success. GW just doesn't give a shit about that.

Quote from: John MorrowAny additional info on this game would be appreciated.  The idea of running a Necromunda game sold me and I managed to find a copy for cover price via mail order.  Now I just need to wait for it to arrive.

Well, the Gang Member career has enough advances that three gansters created at the same time need not look alike. Factor in a Psyker and an Assassin [Spyrer in my game] and it's rounded out.

Are you looking for info on how the game can be used for Necromunda, the game in general or what my personal game is shaping up to be like? THe latter doesn't have a death metal soundtrack and invincible, hulking Marines wading through 100,000 Orks unscathed, so Erik would hate it.

-=Grim=-

Quote from: Dan AbnettAs far as I know, all Black Industries stuff has been canned. That’s the way it goes. If it didn’t sell, it wasn’t worth doing. You can’t argue with that. GW is making cuts across the board, and I am especially pained to see the loss of my good friend and BL publisher Marc Gascoigne. I will miss him, enormously.

..

Quote from: GrimJestaWell, the Gang Member career has enough advances that three gansters created at the same time need not look alike. Factor in a Psyker and an Assassin [Spyrer in my game] and it's rounded out.

OK.  If there is already a Gang Member career, that certainly helps.

Quote from: GrimJestaAre you looking for info on how the game can be used for Necromunda, the game in general or what my personal game is shaping up to be like? THe latter doesn't have a death metal soundtrack and invincible, hulking Marines wading through 100,000 Orks unscathed, so Erik would hate it.

Either.  Both.

Necromunda has always fascinated me as a role-playing setting that I've never had a chance to role-play in.  So if you want to talk about your game, I can live vicariously through your experiences.

Maybe I can talk my group into a mini-campaign once I get some free time.

While I've often used a heavy metal soundtrack for Warhammer FRP (particularly Savatage's Hall of the Mountain King), I'm not a huge fan of hard core death metal and I'm not interested in invincible, hulking Marines wading through 100,000 Orks unscathed, so it sounds fine for me.