Squat Thunderers

What a Thunderer may look like in non-Epic scale.

Squat Thunderers, just like their fantasy counterparts are units made up of the most hardened and veteran Brotherhood members. They appeared during the times of Epic, acting as a more mobile form of the Brotherhood Heavy Weapons Team. Thunderers supply withering support fire for the Brotherhood on the battlefield, devastating concentrations of enemy troops or tanks and forming strongpoints to hold the battleline. Thunderer units are exceptional in that their members are armed with Heavy Bolters, Lascannons and Missile Launchers

Tabletop on ye olde days

As previously mentioned, Thunderers act as a more mobile version of the Brotherhood Heavy Weapons Team. While they may not carry as much weapons variation or special weapons as the Brotherhood Heavy Weapons Team, the Thunderers excel at being very mobile.

If equipped with Heavy Bolters, the Thunderers become a walking, suppressive engine of Blob cleansing. If equipped with Lascannons or Missile Launchers they turn into a slow moving, engine of Rape, destroying entire tank formations from left to right, turning them into Necrons.

Rebirth

With the rebirth of the Squats as the Kin and their faction as the Leagues of Votann in the 9th Edition many of the old Squat units have found themselves being reimagined. The thunderers are no exception, and have been rebranded as the Brôkhyr. These folks serve as the engineers and lead craftsman of the Leagues and are named after the dwarf of Norse mythology, Brokkr, who built the magic hammer Mjolnir for the Thunder god Thor. Honestly they just blow tech priests out of the water on every level, as not only do their (creatively named) A.N-vyl Terminals (just picture a 3D printer but for guns) have MANY full STCs inside that make all their guns all that and a bag of chips in comparison to those of the Imperium, but they're also not limited by dogma and orthodoxy when it comes to technological advancements, meaning they actively upgrade their shit. That said, when duty calls for them to step up and directly contribute to the fight they are more than willing to do so, wading into combat after strapping on powerful exo-frames to become the mighty Thunderkyn. While their armor is not the most durable the Leagues can produce it does provide them with augmented strength allowing them to heft the heaviest man-portable weapons the Leagues can muster like bolt cannons for dealing with enemy hordes or SP conversion beamers for dealing with heavy infantry. So yeah new name and with a slightly expanded role what with the new engineering skills, but in the end they are still basically the same old mobile heavy weapons units as before.