Happy Warhammer Fest weekend everyone! And happy Mothers’ Day to all you moms in the US! Unfortunately living in the US I couldn’t make it to Warhammer Fest (sigh … maybe some day) but it was exciting to wake up this morning and check my social media feeds for updates from the big Games Workshop convention. It felt like being a kid on Christmas morning again! Except with news instead of presents. About stuff I’ll have to spend my own money on instead of gifts from Santa. Enough chit chat, let’s get to the good stuff, Wyrd Stones & Tackle Zones favorite game: Blood Bowl!
The first big reveal, the next team! We just had the Chaos Chosen Doom Lords the other week so I’ll admit I was surprised to see the next team completely revealed and it’s none other than the wicked dark elves!
The Naggaroth Nightmares are back! Interestingly the design of the minis references the 2nd edition dark elves and the Age of Sigmar (well leftover from Warhammer Fantasy) Dark Aelf Corsairs more than they do their Blood Bowl 3rd edition namesake.
I’m guessing the model in the upper right without the helmet is probably the runner, the one in the bottom middle is obviously the witch elf and in the lower right is with the bulkier armor is the blitzer. The rest being line elves.
Here we see the cover to Spike! Issue 2 and the Naggaroth Nightmares box art.
Dark elf teams have access to lots of positional players, including assassins! Looks like we’ll get two to complete the team, it doesn’t look like they will be in the box set, but it’s unclear if they will be GW plastic or Forge World resin.
Of course there will be all the extra goodies as well, including as Andy Hoare teased on Warhammer Live a couple weeks ago that the next set of dice would be even classier than the Chaos Chosen dice. And the dark elf pitch which looks like the deck of a ship and the flip side being the deck becoming overtaken with water and some rather large and sinister looking tentacles.
I gotta say I was thinking about converting the elf union team into a dark elf team, but I’m really glad I decided to hold off (underworld is next actually!) because the Naggaroth Nightmares are looking really good. Er … bad. But bad meaning good. I’m not crazy about the witch elf holding a blade and a heart as it looks more like a warrior than sport player, but that’s easy enough to change.
And of course if you’ve got a team, you’ve got to have some star players to go with them! To segue from dark elves to star players, let’s take a look at Roxanna Darknail first. There’s never been a model produced by Games Workshop for this profile before so this is our first look at the witch elf extraordinaire.
This next guy is a Blood Bowl oldie but goldie, and if you were shar-eyed enough you could catch him in an email teasing the Warhammer Fest event that GW sent out the other day. You may have been sharp-eyed to spot him, but his eyes are hypnotic. It’s none other than Eldril Sidewinder!
And there’s even more elf star players! The two-for-one special Swift Twins. These guys are new to BB16 so I’ve never tried them out before. I think the models look great, but too similar to each other. I wish one looked a little more blitzer and the other more like a catcher like their profiles suggest.
Games Workshop also showed some more images of the Forge World troll we saw a couple months ago at the Specialist Games Preview and the human booster pack we saw ages ago that many people were doubting we’d ever see their release.
And last and least enough to be overlooked by the Warhammer Community site, the folks over at Battle Bunnies have shots of cheerleaders. Yes, everyone’s favorite surplus-to-requirements minis are back in the game. I’m guessing these will be Forge World for sure.
I actually think some of the chaos cheerleaders could work as conversions for female beastmen (beastwomen?) players on a chaos team.
Wyrd Stones and Tackle Zones 
Yea, that’s an amazing announcement for BB. I wasn’t expecting Delves next. Nor that they would look that good. I relay can’t wait for that Human booster. And hopefully someday soon, an Orc booster! The Chaos Cheerleaders look pretty good, but if they are FW, I’m definitely passing.
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Yep, I hear you on that. At Forge World prices and shipping I’ll pass. Cheerleaders are a fun addition to a collection but really are for the completionist.
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A pretty solid line up of goodies. I’m still divided on the new spike format for rules. Could of been a bit thicker in content.
There’s more team cards on route too but their expensive here in the UK at £15 a pack.
Dark elves look great I was wondering how gw would make a starter box with rooster, answer was drop the assassins.
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Despite having the Iron Golems dark elf team I am intrigued by this new team. I’ve always loved the dragon skin cloaks and I think it was a good design choice. Unfortunately that Witch Elf while a good design has a poor posture. Roxana Dark Nail looks great but the regular witch elf looks like a coach on the sideline. A frenzied player needs the look of motion. Perhaps in the long run if they do positional players a la forgeworld it can be remedied but I’m sure that will be a long way off.
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That Roxana Dark Nail might end up as my second Witch Elf. Very nice looking sculpt.
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Yeah, she does look great. I’d say “but then what would you do when you want to hire her as a star player” but then I don’t have occassion to usually hire a star player.
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I’m starting to think I have an addiction. Those Dark Elves look cool, although I was hoping the Witch Elves would have different sculpts. I guess leaving the Assassins out was a no brainer. At least they would be easy to proxy with other minis since they are the least Blood Bowly looking players. The Swift twins might double as the remaining blitzers despite the lack of spikes. Good to see boosters. I unfortunately bought extra sprues of orcs and humans to max out my rosters.
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I agree, the Dark Elves look really good. I like the witch elf sculpt, but two of them on the pitch will look a little redundant. I think I’d definitely convert another model for the team.
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