Over the last six months, I set myself a challenge to design a concept for, and then build a full Squats army.

Getting deep into the lore*, I came across the idea of a satellite society, one that survived the Tyranid Devouring of the Squat Homeworlds.

In setting out this idea, I wanted to try and find a ground between Imperial and corroded, broken tech without hitting the religious Machine Spirits or making it look too Nurgle.

The main concept I wanted to get across, is that these guys are first and foremost, Bug Hunters. They do not stop, constantly chasing down Tyranids with no regard to their own longevity.**

There is no praying to the Machine Spirits, just welding and repair when on the move, tanks and bikes discourged from drop ships from a single massive battleship that counts as both home and military base.

*my memory

** which is long

The Hearthguard

First and foremost, I wanted the Hearthguard to look unwieldy and somewhat, well, ridiculous. Terminators in a shorter scale that had some of the Exo-Chickens from the Fifth Element. Dumb, but brutal.

How well that came across, I leave to you to decide.

The Skyboarders

There is, somewhere back in the mists of time, a piece of artwork of a Squat holding a surfboard. That is, without any doubt, the reason I went down this path. The only reason.

The “energy blasts” came from some transformers figures I bought for dirt cheap, mostly for tech-looking-parts, but then my 2 year old son stole them and they live in his Scooby Doo Mystery van now. The boards were built from plasticard with gribbles from the bitzbox of all shapes and sizes. I planned to run these guys as Jump Back Assault marines, but never managed to get a build that worked as well as I hoped.

The Big Bertha

I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I wanted something that resembled the old Super Heavy Tanks of EPIC!. As much as trying to recreate the Levathian or the Cyclops appealed, I felt I had to go smaller. As a result, Big Bertha was born!

Bertha was built from a leftover Rhino and Leman Russ, with plasticard and gribbles from the bits box filling in all the seams. I was reminded of the second of the Cybertron games from High Moon Studios during the build, and how they spoke about some vehicle moods being “a fast, armoured fist”. This was more than likely in the forefront of my mind when adding in the plates upon plates of armour.

The Troops

I very much considered the old quilted flak jacket, sculpted over the Kharadron Overlord bodies. The heads mostly came from Ramshackle Games with some 3D printed parts to add variation throughout the units

I very much decided early on to go for white beards all round, as a way to signify these fellas are all of a certain age, and spend the majority of their lives in spaceships chasing down the Tyranid fleets.

Everything from Space Marin bionic arms to Imperial Guard boots to Ork Bitz went into the creation of these units. On the feild, they run as Firstborn Marines with an inch removed for movement. I ran tehm once as Dethskull Orks, and whilst fun, it didn’t work as well as I would have liked. Though, they did demolish a Tyranid force in three turns.

Which was nice for them.

The Longrange League

The Honoured Ancestor

The Biker Brotherhood

The Fasttrak

This ugly beauty was built from a Repressor with Leman Russ tracks. and then, as usual, plasticard and gribbles.

A lot of plasticard.

I do adore how this one came out. The idea of a fast moving, turbo charged super-quick rocket-engine tank firing row after row of misslile appeals to some childlike wonder part of me. You can’t see some of them in the gallery, but there are over thirty missiles ready to fire.