From Squats to Leagues of Votann, Warhammer 40k’s lost faction returns

The Leagues of Votann Army Set reintroduced the Squats in 2022 after 24 years of absence, bringing the old space-dwarf idea back to Warhammer 40,000 as a rebuilt modern faction. Games Workshop kept the industrial heart of the faction intact and rebuilt everything around a new identity for the tabletop, the lore, and the current model range.

What the Squats were in early 40k

The original Squats belonged to the early Rogue Trader era, when Warhammer 40,000 was still experimenting with tone, silhouette, and scale. They were the setting’s space dwarfs: tough, pragmatic, industrial, and shaped by mining culture and frontier grit. That visual and thematic package made immediate sense in a young universe that still had room for oddball ideas and hard sci-fi leftovers.

Then the faction faded away, and the hobby turned that disappearance into one of its longest-running jokes. “Squatted” became shorthand for being removed from the range, and the gag lasted long enough to become part of the faction’s legend. By the time the Kin came back, the absence itself had become a piece of 40k culture.

What the Leagues of Votann kept

The modern faction keeps the parts of the Squats that still read clearly on a 40k table. The core image is still dwarfish in the broad sense: sturdy warriors, industrial language, mining heritage, and a people built around hard work rather than heroics. The Leagues of Votann are formed of the Kin, in Warhammer Community’s phrase, “a pragmatic and resilient clone race of sturdy warriors and miners.”

The survival of the old idea is easy to see in the new faction’s internal logic:

• hard-wearing infantry rather than fragile elites
• industrial and mining themes instead of ornamental fantasy-dwarf imagery
• clan-like social structure that feels close to the old Squat frontier ethos
• a strong sense of self-sufficiency and practicality

The Kin still carry the stubborn, resourceful energy that made the original Squats memorable, but the faction is no longer presented as a joke or a relic.

What 40k rewrote

Games Workshop did not simply restore the old faction and stop there. The Leagues of Votann are framed as a network of vast interstellar alliances and mercantile conglomerates comprising hundreds or thousands of autonomous groups, which gives the army a scale and political texture the original Squats never had. The lore also leans into the Kin, the Votann, and the idea of kindreds, so the faction now has its own vocabulary instead of borrowing from a previous era.

The modern range includes Hearthkyn Warriors, Hernkyn Pioneers, Sagitaur transports, and the Hekaton Land Fortress, giving the faction clean silhouettes, varied battlefield roles, and strong machine design. The old space-dwarf joke became a serious army with its own engineering language, its own vehicles, and its own presence next to the rest of the 40k range.

On the table, the Leagues of Votann are still recognisably the descendants of the Squats, but they are no longer just “dwarfs in space.” Their visual consistency makes them feel like a modern launch rather than a retro callback. They are a clone-based society with advanced kit and organized kindreds.

How Games Workshop brought them back

The return was staged carefully through spring 2022. Warhammer Community used the April 1 reveal, What April Fools? The 41st Millennium’s Next Faction is Real - Here’s a Model to Prove it, to signal that the comeback was real, not a one-off joke. Preview material in The Leagues of Votann are coming, but what actually is a Votann? and the NOVA Open reveal coverage, The Leagues of Votann Unveiled, built the faction’s identity before the launch box arrived.

The Leagues of Votann Army Set released that year, making the Squats playable again. An early rules look in Take a First Look at Leagues of Votann Rules With This Hearthkyn Warrior showed that the army was being treated as a real part of the game from the start, not as a novelty release. Post-launch balance coverage continued after that.