How to arm a squat?

[Kaled]

Of course, people can ignore whichever bits of fluff they want - but if we we're going to ignore all the bits that are ridiculous there's all whole lot more than the demise of the squats to get rid of...

[Cortez]

True.

Although I do find the whole Squat thing very strange. If they don't want to make a new Squat army fine. Makes no sense to me, as the desire for the army is undeniably there (or was amongst veteran players), but it's their decision. Just don't try to write them out of the fluff and pretend they never existed.

[Dolnikan]

I prefer it the way that the squats were concentrated near the core but had plenty of worlds away from there. The tyranids thing is a bit strange  (or more like absurd) but so is a large part of the background, I prefer to ignore that, after all, the squat homeworlds were a series of powerful fortresses, not something a hive fleet can overrun and then disapear. But then again, there are lots of parts of the background I refer to ignore.

[Kaled]

Where ever possible I try not to ignore any fluff completely and try to work in the gaps it leaves us.

The canon says that the tyranids destroyed the squat home worlds - which seems unlikely, but apparently it happened. What gaps does that leave. Well there are later mention of squats in the canon (they weren't written out completely) survivors of the tyranid attack who were integrated into the Imperium, while other survivors were bitter at being abandoned by the Imperium and broke away to be mercenaries etc.
Plus there's a reference to some people believing them to be a mythical race. To me that leaves us with plenty of scope, we have at least two groups whose worlds were destroyed, plus there are likely to be worlds the tyranids didn't reach, squats who were not on their home worlds at the time and so on. They're obviously not a well known powerful faction anymore, but there's still plenty of ways to use them in our games without having to ignore any bits of canon.

[seiterarch]

Well, since canon is generally written from the Imperium's perspective it wouldn't be stretching belief too far to say that the imperium merely observed a tyranid invasion of the squat homeworlds (as contradictory as that is with the tyranid canon) and presumed them all destroyed. After all, the squats receded from the imperium during the age of Apostacy iirc. So it's not as if they would be under massively close surveilance since they wouldn't  really have been too high on the priority list.

[Kaled]

The squat home worlds supplied minerals, troops and armoured vehicles to the Imperium well after the Age of Apostasy and I think it's safe to say the Imperium would (eventually) investigate why the tithe was no longer being delivered. Plus the fluff in Citadel Journal accompanying the article on what to do with your squat models now they've been 'written out, is pretty clear about their worlds being devastated and what happened to the survivors. Why ignore all that when it still leaves us plenty of options for including squats in Inquisitor? It even gives opportunity to include them in 40k.

[Dolnikan]

To be honest I don't exactly know what it says, not having that magazine and all that. To me the entire squat race getting eaten by tyranids who just disapear afterwards is one of those overly silly things. I have spoken to the other members of our group and we have concluded that the squat race indeed did lose most of the homeworlds, but we just don;t involve the tyranids, the many other menaces, such as orks and chaos(including of course chaos squats) would be more than capable of such an act with some luck and some strong warlords. When the dust clears those who almost destroyed the squats are badly beaten and fall to infighting like they tend to do.

[Macabre]

I ran into Alan Merrett in Bugmans some years ago when I worked for GW (I think we were doing the Storm of Chaos campaign at the time) and we got talking about the Horus Heresy art books, and I remember asking whether they'd be including any xenos artwork (like the Fall of the Eldar), but somewhere along the line we got talking about Squats and their rediscovery during the Great Crusade.

Of course, the reason why Squats were 'removed' from canon is that they (GW) felt that as a race they didn't translate that well into the current direction in which 40k was heading, that they were too wacky and came from a bygone era when 40k was very tongue in cheek (which most of us already know). I actually asked him why a tyranid invasion, and he said that they just needed a way to completely wipe them out, but elaborated in saying that it could just as easily been a massive supernova that scorched the entire stronghold region, exterminatus, viral outbreak or some other catastrophe, and that all the Imperium knew was that one day the Squat homeworlds were found barren and lifeless.

We also talked about the survivors appearing in games such as Inquisitor (the idea of a squad of them as an IG abhuman auxiliary unit was also discussed), but GW wouldn't be doing anything official about them mostly for two reasons; 1) they would need a complete image/background rewrite to fit in with the current ethos/mythos (to distance them from being 'space dwarves' again), and 2) people would want an army of them again (which would take them back to square one).