Last year Games Workshop announced their Made to Order program where they would, for a brief period of time, make older, out of print minis available for order. As soon as I heard about the program, I knew that Blood Bowl would be the perfect for the program as even with all of the third party Blood Bowl mini options, a number of the older Games Workshop teams are still in pretty high demand. These teams often sell for insanely high amounts of money on eBay. For myself, while I have almost all of the older Games Workshop minis that I actually want in my collection, there were still a couple of gaps. As a result, when Games Workshop recently announced that Blood Bowl was coming to the Made to Order program, and featured a Chaos Dwarf Bull Centaur no less, I got excited.

You see, the 3rd edition Chaos Dwarf team is probably my favorite team that I never got around to buying, and the mini usually go for a small fortune on eBay. I have seen a single blister of Chaos Dwarf Blockers go for $40-50 on multiple occasions. Was I finally going to get my chance to get this hard to find team? When the image above was teased, immediately questions started flying all over the internet. What all minis would be available? How much would they cost? Would they be in the original 28mm scale, or the new 32mm scale? Would they be metal or plastic? Luckily, Games Workshop released some additional details soon after and everyone had a better idea of what was going to be available.

There were going to be a few teams, consisting of the Chaos Dwarves (YEAH!), Chaos including the Claw mutation Chaos Warrior, and Dark Elves. There would also be the Dark Elf Star Player, Horkon Heartripper, the Bull Centaurs from the Chaos Dwarf team, and the Blood Bowl trophy minis. The teams were going to be $54 each (with one notable exception), and of course, they were going to be in the original 28mm scale. There was a little grumbling that more would not be available, but I was grateful for what was made available to us.

The minis went on sale on April 8th, and I immediately placed my order. The Made to Order program says that the minis ship around thirty-five days after being ordered, so I was pleasantly surprised to get an email right about two and a half weeks later saying that my order had been shipped. I was even happier when we got home from my son’s swimming lesson this morning to see a box on the doorstep with my name on it.

Time to get this unboxing started!

Man, I sure have gotten a lot of these lately. My wife is starting to give me the stink eye a little when new boxes show up…

The first thing I see when I open the box is an advertisement. I guess I cannot really blame them for that… However, this shiny picture went straight into the trash can.

This is more like it! White Citadel boxes and blisters filled with minis from yesteryear!

I ordered two copies of the Chaos Dwarf team. One that included the Bull Centaurs and one that did not. For some reason, the Bull Centaurs were by far the most expensive minis coming in at $25 a piece which made two of them just as expensive as entire teams of other minis. The Chaos Dwarf team without the Bull Centaurs was the same $54 price as the other teams, but the version of the team that included the Bull Centaurs was a whopping $104. Why did I get two copies of the team itself? Well, the team box only comes with four Chaos Dwarf Blockers, but you can have six on your roster, so the only way to get a full compliment of Blockers was to buy two teams and end up with a bunch of minis I did not actually need. I plan to put the extras on eBay at some point and try to recoup a little bit of the way too much money this cost me. Anyway, back to the unboxing.

Close up of the box.

Close up of the Bull Centaur blister. Time to open these bad boys up!

Old school Games Workshop metal minis. Yes! Games Workshop originally advertised that the minis would ship with the new 32mm slotted bases, which I was not thrilled about. The new bases can look a little big with the new larger scale minis. I was concerned that they would look even larger on the older 28mm scale minis. I am happy to report however, that the Made to Order minis shipped with the old style 25mm slotted bases. This was a very pleasant surprise to me.

Here are the minis cleaned and attached to bases. Apologies for the Chaos Dwarves in front being a little out of focus. One of these days I will get the hang of taking good pics of minis. There was a bit of flash to remove that anyone used to older Games Workshop metal minis will be familiar with. Mold lines are pretty minimal, and what is there should be easy to remove, which is nice.

Here is the team with the Bull Centaurs. The Bull Centaurs had the original cavalry bases included which can be very awkward, even on the new, larger Blood Bowl boards. I plan to replace them with 32mm round bases as those tend to fit better, even on the old 3rd edition boards.

Some close-ups of the Bull Centaur mini.

For those who are not familiar with the older minis, there are four individual sculpts for the Blockers… and they have HUGE hats! 🙂

Rear view…

Interestingly, there were originally four different sculpts for the Hobgoblins, but in the Made to Order program, we only got three of those four sculpts. Son, instead of getting two copies of four different minis, you get three copies of two different sculpts, and two copies of the third sculpt. A little less than ideal, but I will not complain… much.

Well, that is pretty much all for these minis. I am pretty stoked to finally get my hands on this team. I already have a Chaos Dwarf team, but it is a combination of 2nd edition and Impact! Blockers, Phil’s Phigs (now Impact!) Knolls for Hobgoblins, one original 3rd edition Bull Centaur and one heavily converted 3rd edition Bull Centaur, and a Heresy Miniatures Deathball Minotaur. It is a good team, but I have always preferred the pure 3rd edition team.

Let me know in the comments below if anyone else picked up one of these Made to Order teams.

P.S. This is not the only box I got in the mail. I also got a nice box from Forge World. Be sure to check back to soon to see the post for that unboxing as well!