Yeah, I'm not too happy about the loss of JSA units in vanilla, and my usual suspects were just the Tokusetsu. No Squatting here, you now have a new faction to play (with some proxying of Unit 9 with Raiden models and Tanko with Haramaki). Because CB did leave it open to bring the Exrah back in the fluff. Probably after they go through and re-unify the designs to reduce mold wear. Besides, the Squats were nuked back in 1998, so GW got there first.
Yeah, at this point, the Squat incident has become rather infamous and is the archetypal "miniature company screwing their fans over purely financial reasons" situation. There is a reason GW hasn't gone back to that well even as Dark Eldar and Sisters of Battle are basically on life support. Because people don't like it when you fuck with their miniature collections (and Dwarft players especially, know how to hold their grudges). As for the bolded bit, so did GW. The whole "the Nids ate 'em!" thing was a joke response to a letter asking about them in a White Dwarf and not specifically a background development. Squats started getting mentioned again in the background back in 5th or 6th edition and this year GW will be releasing a new Squat mini after 20 years of nothin' (it'll be for Necromunda) as well as providing stats to run a 100% Squat Necromunda gang. It's kind of crazy how much GW shaped up after Kirby left, they've got a long (long, long, loooooooooooooooooooooooong) way to go still, but their new strategy of catering to their existing (and past lapsed) fanbase has been a nice breath of fresh air after they went for so long down the continual customer attrition rabbit hole. There is a reason they've been having record-breakingly good business lately, and it's mostly because they're catering to old GW grogs like me (though they're still trying to make that whole Age of Sigmar thing work...). But hopefully Exrah fans aren't left hanging for that long.
On the other hand, Squats are actually back. Frankly, whatever fluff justification there is, it takes roughly 1 paragraph to retcon anything. Oh well. I do know that GW pretty much "created the meme", being first and all, I was just screwing around for the most part, to be honest. Although half-seriously I did imply that CB is known for doing exactly the same, and half-consistently too at this point.
It's also worth noting that GW's attitude was "They disappeared, and if you bring it up, screw you they all got eaten by Tyranids" vs. CB's "They still exist in fluff, and our line on it is that we are too busy to re-introduce them to the game, not that we don't want to."
To be honest Space Dwarves were a relic of 2nd Edition 40K and possibly even before.. they never had a full blown army release, just a smattering of miniatures here and there with no real concept and this has been the reason for their fate. GW just couldn't come up with a viable concept of what they should be and what they could/should do within the 40K narrative and as time progressed it became less and less of a priority until they bagged them for good (maybe pissing off a few die hard fans who now had miniatures and nothing to do with them). I don't know if they'll ever come back (doubt it) but they would have to find a niche of their own in terms of gameplay and miniatures and i don't think GW is too concerned with them. As a company you sometimes have to make the hard call that may piss of Veterans, especially hardcore veterans who have painstaikingly assembled and collected a specialist and unique army only to find out that the company axed that army when they transitioned between editions or did something else. It sucks and i can understand the anger (this is why i still can't touch Age of Sigmar even though i hear it's become a good game now) but the company has to decide what's better in their long term plan (of which the player usually has no idea about). This is what CB is doing now.. they advanced the story that's been hinted at since the beginning of the background, made a few sacrifices modelwise (i am still curious as for the actual reason, maybe they'll explain it in an article sometime) but introduced a whole batch of cool new models for the new JSA. Yu Jing players with a heavy dose of JSA models could easily adapt and have a second army now by buying a few key models from the new range so i don't see the downside.
I wouldn't go anywhere near crying foul unless it became some obvious pattern for sales rather than a mechanism for story development... Though now I can't help but imagine CB fragmenting all the factions. The mental image of... say... FRRM, Corregidor, Hassassins, Shasvastii and Military Orders all breaking away from their parent factions within a 3 year span for 'reasons' amuses me.
As much as Pan-O being a bloated Belgian cow in need to a diet, I don't think there's much room for faction splits like this. The unfortunate sectorials that are the uninspiring StarCo and Ikari are taking up the space that Pan-O alone would need to split their forces off to make room for future Pan-O sectorials and content - if that space is even required. Most of the other factions aren't actually all that big, and only Ariadna is bloated when it comes to sectorials.
If they were to split off MO, then I'd have to think it'd take a long storyline of Corpo-PanO slowly sliding into criminal activity to retain financial supremacy, and the knight-folk eventually growing sick enough of it to cause an internal ongoing war between the different side. ... And even if that were to happen, I don't see it causing a fracture the way JSA betraying Yu Jing and the dual line of emperors could. There'd have to be a distinct culture, and a people to carry it, that'd split off.
Wouldn't be bad, would actually make for a much more inspiring sectorial than Ikari/StarCo once some of the loan units have been replaced (off the top of my head, OS redesigned to be closer to Fusiliers in points and stats while Specialist Order Sergeants gets to be their own unit). That split would only bring Pan-O down to Yu Jing level pre-split. Or the Pan-O leadership getting sick and tired of the crusading wackoes and finally mustering the political clout to kick them out :p (I was told over on the Pan-O side of the forums that Pan-O military leadership didn't really want the Knights in their organisation to begin with)
Well, they are the Church's Priva Military Company, it just happens to only work for PanO. Pretty much the only reason they are allowed is because they are subordinated to the PanO High Command, and the Church puts in ALL of the monies they cost. So they are free troops for PanO.
That's not how it works. ALEPH actually does all the resurrections, the religions just select WHO gets them.
