Jumping into Squats

 I always loved the Squat miniatures, starting when I was a little kid looking through my brothers GW mailorder catalogue. For some reason I never seriously considered collecting them. I played 2nd edition with my friends and my brother and there was always newer, and way more accessible stuff available to get excited about. I think I preferred buying my miniatures off the shelf and as advertised in White Dwarf.

I bought a few things here or there out of the catalogue, I have fond memories of sitting next to my brother on the phone calling the UK and proceeding to painstakingly read out the model codes one by one. Then the excitment of receiving the mail order box, zoats, scifi adventurers, and other weird old models. I still keep some minis in a few of the old boxes:

I vaguely remember the feeling of 'why did I want this again?' when it finally arrived. A feeling based on the fact, I think, that I never bought what I really wanted because I didn't have the means to make a whole army. This is underlined by the fact that I had an Epic Squat army:

Well now I am older and have the means and like many of us I found myself with a considerable amount of spare time this year. I started rereading old White Dwarfs and decided I wanted to start a big project. Inspired by my brothers large collection of  vintage GW miniatures, I decided to tackle a dream army from way back at the beginning and began collecting Squat models.

I pulled out the old catalogue, unfortunately hole punched, as GW regularly recommended you do back in the day, and falling apart as a result:

These are the models I drooled over, the champions with their powerfists, the synths (because it's the future), the weird roman legionary style standards (I'm assuming that was the Perry twins sneaking in their love of the historical, but the Imperial Guard had similar details at the time).

I now have a few models and have been trying to narrow down what informed my vision of Squats. Centrally it is the Paul Bonner artwork which was present in the catalogue, this drawing in particular:

The mass of squats piling out of the rhino defines their character to me, so much individualism compared with the guard, highlighted by the comissar towering over them obviously uncomfortable/annoyed. The fact that there are squats in the infantry with biker sunglasses, earrings, and caps, and they all seem to have their own customised weaponry really makes them stand out from other armies. They come off as goofy and incompetent but in reading the background they are actually far more competent and capable compared to other imperial armies, capable of repairing and inventing their own equipment and not reliant on religion and the warp. I enjoy this contrast.

The second artwork is the cover of Ork and Squat Warlords by Dave Gallagher:

The image of the Squat war machines behing the sort of dumpy and old but heroically posed Squat here again speaks to goofy but competent image I have of Squats in my head. Not to mention the bright primary colours really vibe with cartoony nature of the army and the dwarf look in warhammer fantasy as well.

As this is the only Squat art in colour that I remember really loving, it was pretty clear that I would need to paint my army in the colour scheme shown here, I looked for a palette online that was pleasing to me that had similar colours, mainly the contrasting orange/red and deep blues

Then I got to it and painted a test model with these colours. I also added a bit of interest in the visor, doing a Sky-Earth reflection which I would carry throughout the army. I really enjoy doing little technical parts, so this sort of thing I leave until the very end of the model and keeps me motivated

I am pretty happy with how it turned out, I think the yellow gloves might be a bit much so I will try toning that down and see how it goes. Super happy with the reflection though and didn't take long at all!

Time to get started on some batch painting!