Warhammer 40K fans! If, like me, you’ve been living in a cave recently, then perhaps the most exciting Warhammer 40K announcement of all time will have escaped you. Just in case you missed it… Zoats are back! If you play Blackstone Fortress, that is.
Only the wisest (sic old) of Warhammer 40K players will probably have heard of the Zoats. The rest of you, and probably the majority, are scratching your heads right now. There are those of us of a certain age, that remember a time when 40K existed without a starter box set. You had one option only, and that was to buy the rulebook on its own. To be fair, it was the only thing you needed, and luckily for GW the only thing they published for the game.
The Origins Of The Zoat
We are talking Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader. The first edition. The universe was but a barren landscape compared to the rich and diverse worlds we have now. But, even then, the seeds had been sown for much of what we know today. All the information that was needed to field a fighting force was contained within the Rogue Trader’s pages, with much of the layout reminiscent of the roleplaying games of the time. As well as the core units we have come to love, the bestiary style listings hinted at a rich and diverse universe full of alien creatures, some of which disappeared into the warp for several editions. The Zoat are one such creature. Originally classed as Tyranid engineered slaves, they were the mainstay of a Tyranid army, but like so many of their fellow bestiary creatures, they had disappeared by the time Warhammer 40K Second Edition arrived.
Earlier this year, the fine folks over at GW revealed the latest expansion for Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress. The designers must have been at the ale too much at Bugman’s, during a lock-in, because someone… somewhere… thought it would be a fantastic idea to bring back the Zoat, or at least one Zoat. Blackstone Fortress: Deadly Alliance includes a single sixteen-piece multi-part model of The Archivist, a Zoat. This freshly sculpted miniature not only captures the raw essence of the original Zoat model of the 80s but also brings it slap, bang, up to date aesthetically to the rest of the current 40K line-up.
The Zoat mini from the 80s was cast using lead-based pewter (Yes, you heard me right - LEAD!), using vulcanized rubber ‘rota-cast’ molds. Believe it or not, this was the preferred way to buy your miniatures, as not only could you do some real damage to your opponent if you lost a battle, but the plastic injection molds lacked the fidelity and detail we have today. Assembly was always a nightmare, as the cludgy metal castings had to be glued together with two-part epoxy glue; along with a quick prayer to the Painting Gods, hoping that the glue would hold and the arms wouldn’t fall off. Put it this way, today, armed with some plastic glue, we can have a fully assembled model in the time it took us to mount a single arm.
The Zoat Today
As great as all this reminiscing is, what does the release of Blackstone Fortress: Deadly Alliance and the include Zoat mini have to do with 40K today? Good question! The cavalier crew at GW has thought of everything! Included within the box are a set of rules for using The Archivist in your armies. Gone is the requirement that you have a Tyranid army. Instead, this particular Zoat is unaligned and can be used by any of the factions We’re not sure if he is a free Zoat, long since escaped from his Tyranid slave masters, or whether the Lore has been amended to finally give Zoats the recognition they fully deserve. Either way, now that they have returned to canon, we are hoping to see much more from them in the future.
What’s Still Missing
Now, the one thing missing from modern 40K and that people have asked for time and time again are dwarves, but this wasn’t always the case. Nicknamed Squats by their human brethren, squats are humans that have spent generations upon generations on high-gravity worlds. While Squats have their loyal fanbase, after the first edition they were relegated and explained away as being corrupted by Chaos. Hardly a fitting end. Fans have long campaigned for their return, after all, if you can have space orcs, why not space dwarves? A glimmer of hope for squat lovers came in the form of Necromunda: Underhive with the release of a squat miniature Grendl Grendlsen and a tongue in cheek release video from 2018.
We can even take this one step further and look at the boxed games. Around the same time our Zoat first appeared, GW had a range of boxed games that they no longer publish. Some of these deserve to never again see the light of day, but a few have seen more recent iterations released. Notable games such as Space Hulk, Blood Bowl, and Necromunda were obvious choices but there are a couple of absentees that deserve blowing the dust off. Some of you may remember Dark Future, a mad max inspired turn-based car combat game. Or how about Battlefleet Gothic? The spaceship battle game involving ‘capital’ class ships facing off against each other. With tabletop gaming at its highest peak ever, there is obviously a market for new games. I wouldn’t be surprised if the GW egg-heads have been tempted to raid the games cupboard in order to pull on the heartstrings of gamers old and new.
With all that said, and as much as we want to see a full battalion of Squats facing off against an equally impressive sized army of Zoats, this is unlikely to happen. What is more realistic is a slow and steady use of named characters and creatures from Warhammer lore that will play significant roles within the boxed games. We can but hope, but in the meantime, we can always fall back to adopting our own Zoat.
NEXT: Alternative color schemes for upcoming Warhammer 40,000 revealed
Sources: Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader Rulebook, Warhammer Community
