Well, another day, another box on my doorstep from Games Workshop. Today’s unboxing is the result of Games Workshop’s most recent Blood Bowl Made to Order releases. Now, the cynical view of the Made to Order program is that Games Workshop is profiting off of our nostalgia for older minis that we drooled over as we first learned to play the games we love. I don’t completely disagree with that view, but I also look at it as Games Workshop giving us what we want… which is the older minis that we drooled over as we first learned to play the games we love. They are also doing it at a (mostly) reasonable price. $54 US for a twelve mini metal Blood Bowl team is right about the same price that these minis were the last time they were available at retail about ten years ago. Honestly, when I first heard about the Made to Order program, I was worried that the teams would be marked at closer to double that price. The single minis like the Big Guys are not quite as much of a “bargain” as the teams, but beggars can’t be choosers.

As stated in my earlier write up regarding this round of Made to Order minis, I order the Treeman, the Vampires, and the Ogres. Everything together was a little pricey, but it was less pricey than eBay. As a matter of fact, it’s STILL less pricey than eBay… But eBay mini scalpers are a topic for another post. This post is all about the minis themselves.

Let’s start with the Treeman, sculpted by Mark Bedford during the very brief 4th edition period. This is one of those minis that I always liked, but never got around to buying… until now!

The mini is only in three pieces, which makes assembly pretty darn easy. It also comes with a 40mm round base.

The first thing I did was swap out the 40mm base for a 32mm round base. As you can see, he fits on the 32mm base pretty much perfectly. I did have to bend the mini slightly at the knee joints, as the angle on the bottom of his legs had him leaning forward quite a bit originally. the knees bent easily enough, and he now stands up straight.

Obviously, this mini is metal and the arms are large pieces, so I decided to pin them to help with the weight. Here you can see the pins in both shoulders, ready for the arms to be added.

The left arm went on with no trouble at all.

It took me two tries to get the hole in the right arm in just the right spot, but it came out just fine. And with that, the mini is completed already… If only the new minis went together this easily!

Let’s take a look at the Treeman from a couple of different angles.

And one final shot for a size comparison between the 4th edition Treeman and other current Blood Bowl Big Guys. As you can clearly see, the 4th edition Treeman is bigger than all of them, as well it should be. It is a walking tree after all!

Now let’s move on to the Vampires!

As I have said before, I wasn’t ever really interested in playing Vampires until I painted one of these teams for a friend last year. While painting that team, I started to really like the minis, so when they became available, I decided to jump on them.

Like previous Made to Order teams, inside the box is a clam shell plastic package with twelve minis and twelve 25mm round slotted bases.

Here are our twelve bases. They are 25mm because that’s what originally came with the teams back in 2nd through 5th editions.

In order to save time and effort, I will include all of the Vampires in a single picture. If you want close ups of individual Vampires, there are tons of places on the internet to view them with much better pictures than I can manage.

I managed to forget to take a picture of all the Thralls by themselves apparently, but here is a shot of all twelve minis together. I do really like these minis, but they have one major problem (and I was aware of this problem beforehand). Compared to modern minis, they are REALLY small. Even compared to other 3rd through 5th edition minis, they are pretty small.

Here is one of the Vampires (ST4 mind you) directly next to a new Human lineman. He is noticeably smaller and slimmer. It’ll be interesting to see how they compare to the Sukubus Vampires that are currently on pre-order. Once I get that team in hand, I will do some side-by-side comparison shots. Since the Games Workshop Vampires are a bit on the small side of 28mm, and the Sukubus Vamps are billed at 32mm, I expect the difference in size to be significant.

I am debating putting my Made to Order minis on 32mm bases going forward. I kind of feel like I might as well since all the other new minis moving forward will be on the larger bases, but I don’t really know if the bigger bases make these minis look even smaller than they already do. What do you guys think?

Finally, we have the Ogre team. This box is HEAVY.

Again, we have the plastic clam shell package.

Inside the package, we have five 40mm round bases. Like the Treeman, I wanted to put the Ogres on 32mm bases instead, but unfortunately their stances were sculpted way too wide to fit onto 32mm bases. They pretty much MUST go onto 40mm bases.

Here are all the pieces for the Ogres. For a few different reasons, I decided not to assemble the minis right now. The “team” box only comes with five Ogres, though I do already have a spare sixth Ogre in a drawer, and a single Goblin. I don’t have any Snotlings for the team yet, though I think I am going to use the new Blood Bowl Goblins instead. I don’t actually like Snotling minis as I have yet to come across any that didn’t disintegrate when you look at them, much less use them on a table. I also don’t really have room for these minis assembled on a shelf just yet, so for now, they will stay in the box.

The other reason that I think I am going to use Goblin minis as Snotling proxies, is so I can use the Goblin minis that originally came with the team and keep it looking natural. It’s a good mini, so no use in letting it go to waste!

I also decided to take a shot of the newly cast Goblin mini next to an original that I picked up a couple of years ago, for no other reason than the fact that I could.

Well, that is pretty much all for today. I haven’t heard any reports of any other new minis coming particularly soon, but as soon as something else gets released, rest assured that there will be an unboxing posted here!

Did you guys order any of these minis? Let me know in the comments below!