Games Workshop Is Reviving One of Warhammer 40K’s Weirdest Races

Warhammer 40,000 is house to a lot of unusual and peculiar factions, past the realm of its poster-child Imperial zealots in the Space Marines. There’s haughty Space Elves of each the usual and goth varieties, there’s hive thoughts Xenomorph knockoffs, there’s Space Orks (to not be confused with common outdated Orcs), and extra demons than you’ll be able to shake a chainsaw-sword hybrid at. But none of them examine to the weirdness of the sport’s newest returning faces.

On April 1, Games Workshop posted a reveal alleging that one among 40K’s oldest—and, for a really very long time, retired—factions, the Space Dwarves, also referred to as “Squats,” could be returning to the venerable skirmish sport. Players laughed it off, and went on their manner, until this week Games Workshop mentioned “well, actually, we’re not joking.”

The Space Dwarves might be reborn as a brand new Warhammer 40K faction later this yr referred to as the Leagues of Votann—a subspecies of humanity that was minimize off from the majority of the race that will rework into the Imperium of Man, shortened over generations of colonizing gravity-dense environments and flourishing with their very own mercantile society exterior of the Imperium’s fascist, non secular dogma. They share the identical heritage because the Squats did after they had been launched manner again within the very first version of Warhammer 40K, when, as a by-product of Games Workshop’s fantasy game, the miniatures maker took fantasy trope races like Orcs, Dwarves, and Elves, and turned them into sci-fi counterparts in a sport referred to as Rogue Trader.

Originally extra of a joke than a severe faction—the Space Dwarves had been, for all intents and functions, roaming biker gangs of diminutive space-Viking-esque warriors—the faction disappeared from Warhammer 40K by the third version of the sport, launched in 1998, and since then, have largely been consigned to Easter egg references in lore. Twenty years after they pale from official guidelines, simply two fashions for the faction have launched—and even they had been one-offs for the spinoff gang warfare sport Necromunda, quite than a standalone faction.

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That’s all altering this yr, nonetheless. Reimagined for the present ninth version of 40K, the Leagues of Votann will replace the Space Dwarves’ outdated aesthetic—and ditch the derogatory Squats title—in addition to flip the hardy race into a totally fledged faction within the sport, with its personal guidelines and, in fact, a completely new vary of fashions. Only one has been revealed thus far, ditching the outdated biker-gang aesthetic in favor of… Dwarf-sized energy fits? Hell yeah.

It’s a enjoyable method to broaden the present state of Warhammer 40K, bringing again and modernizing one thing bizarre and foolish from the sport’s earliest roots whereas nonetheless embracing a few of that inherent peculiarity that 40K has strayed from because it leans into its “grimdark” tone. Plus, it offers gamers who’d wish to play a human-esque faction that doesn’t contain caping for the obscurely-veiled satire of the Imperium’s fascism, and when you get to try this whereas additionally being plasma-gun-toting dwarves in energy armor? That’s nice.

The Leagues of Votann are set to reach in Warhammer 40K later this yr.

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