Leagues of Votann - Game History: The 1st Edition of Warhammer 40,000 was called Rogue Trader, a tabletop miniature wargame chock-full of fantasy standards drawn from Games Workshop's own Warhammer universe and reimagined in a grim, dark, futuristic, space fantasy setting. Instead of Orcs, there were Space Orks, Elves became Eldar (and then Aeldari), Ogres were Ogryn, and so on. And then there were the Space Dwarfs.These first models were clearly Dwarfs wielding lasguns with a generous smattering of heavy weapons. Their background positioned them as miners -- the descendants of Human settlers from the Age of Technology who had evolved to survive on mineral-dense worlds with heavy gravity in the galactic core. Over the millennia, they had diverged into an Abhuman subspecies of Mankind formally named Homo sapiens rotundus, but better known to baseline Humans as "Squats" -- similar to Humans in many ways, but culturally and physiologically distinct.Squat strongholds -- autonomous mining colonies -- formed allied leagues, with recognisable Dwarf traits from Warhammer Fantasy Battles such as ancestor worship, facial hair, a hefty dose of grumpiness, and a knack for metalwork, advanced technology and engineering projects of vast scope. A more futuristic twist was their favoured mount -- the leagues rode heavy bikes and trikes into battle, combining the aesthetics of Viking warriors and leather-clad biker gangs.The first major evolutionary step for the Squats came in Titan Legions, a game of massive battles using tiny models at the Epic scale -- just 6 millimetres! Many of the larger units for the present tabletop game of Warhammer 40,000 have their origins here, including all those lovely Titans and Knights. It also went on to inspire modern specialty games like Adeptus Titanicus and Aeronautica Imperialis, though these are at a slightly different scale.The Epic system brought with it an enduring enmity for the Squats with the Orks,** along with loads of machines and vehicles you could not find in the Imperium -- including gyrocopters, armoured dirigibles, land trains, and ludicrously massive siege weapons. And while they never produced Titans, ordnance like the Cyclops, the big green tank with the Gargant-killing cannon on its prow, was no less deadly.The Warhammer Studio continued to flesh out the background of the Squats, giving the leagues a distinct aesthetic, history, and style of warfare. Where else would you find biker gang Space Dwarf industrialists piloting battle-trains?The later years of Rogue Trader brought plenty of trikes, living ancestors (Squat psykers), and elite infantry in big, round suits called exo-armour, but while the 2nd Edition of Warhammer 40,000 offered stopgap rules for the faction in its initial boxed set, the Squats would never receive a full codex or any more new models.For a while, however, the leagues of the Squats continued to evolve through the vividly coloured artwork of this era. These stout warriors were shown wielding more science fiction standard weapons, armour, and iconography -- but you could still see lots of golden ancestor sigils and plenty of beards, axes, and warhammers.Homo sapiens rotundus may have started life as a sci-fi restyle of fantasy Dwarfs, but as the setting grew, they too became more unique. A galactic power in their own right, the Squat leagues were powerful enough to trade and negotiate with the Imperium on an even footing -- in fact, Imperial commissars were forbidden from executing their soldiers who served in the Astra Militarum -- and such skilled technologists that the Adeptus Mechanicus sent tech-priests to study with them, which would probably be considered tech-heresy nowadays.And then...nothing. The Squats were not officially updated for the 3rd Edition of the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop game, and Epic came to an end. For a long period of time in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Games Workshop took the stance through its silence that the Squats had simply never existed -- older republished novels were edited to remove all references to the Squats. In other cases, books were not republished due to the stories featuring Squat characters or other obsolete species.According to the former Games Workshop designer Jervis Johnson on a forum post in 2004 in response to the endless speculation of fans about why the faction had disappeared from the game and its universe, the Squats would probably never be a major Warhammer 40,000 faction again, rather remaining in the background of both the tabletop miniatures wargame and the universe's fiction.Jervis explained that this was largely because the Games Workshop designers of the late 1990s eventually regretted transferring the Squats over from Warhammer and never felt that the Dwarf-like species really had a clear identity or fit very well in the background lore of the Warhammer 40,000 universe as it developed over the decades.The disappearance of the Squat army from the game rules was eventually addressed by a background story explaining that the subspecies' homeworlds had been devoured by the Tyranids. The story went that the Squats had been virtually destroyed, and the few remaining homeworlds were annexed by the Imperium over several hundred Terran years after the attacks. Only a few scattered and embittered remnants of Squats survived throughout the Imperium.However, the Warhammer 40,000: Rulebook for the 6th Edition of the game reinserted the Squats into the universe's background when it explicitly named them as an Abhuman subspecies officially recognised by the Imperium.The Demiurg, a minor xenos species later allied with the T'au, were also an attempted revitalisation of the Squats' original "Space Dwarf" concept that was better integrated into the Warhammer 40,000 background, though the race never received much expansion beyond the appearance of several of its starships in the Battlefleet Gothic tabletop specialty game of starship combat.Despite this, certain miniature companies continued to produce their own Space Dwarf models to meet the continued interest in the Squats, and some players even converted the rules of Warhammer 40,000 to allow them to play. However popular this trend proved to be, the official ruling from Games Workshop was that only official Warhammer 40,000 factions could be used in the tabletop game.Another solution favoured by fans at this time was to field an Astra Militarum army made up of Squat models, which was allowed under then-current rules.Finally, in 2018, following the introduction of the highly successful 8th Edition of the Warhammer 40,000 game and a decision by the Warhammer Studio to reintroduce and update older concepts from the game's past, Games Workshop formally reintroduced Squats into the setting with a Squat character and miniature in Necromunda: Underhive.On April 1, 2022, Games Workshop announced that the Squats would be returning as a fully playable faction to Warhammer 40,000. Unfortunately, because the announcement was made on April Fools' Day, many fans believed it to simply be a joke on the company's part. In fact, the next day, April 2, Games Workshop published a second notification on its Warhammer Community website announcing that in fact the Squats were truly returning as a fully-fleshed out faction in the 9th Edition of Warhammer 40,000 and would be known as the "Leagues of Votann."The fruits of that decision are now available for all to see above on this page, and throughout this wiki.