Happy Blood Bowl Second Season release weekend everyone! Yesterday I popped down to my friendly local game store to pick up the treeman I preordered for my wood elf team. I preordered my starter box directly from Games Workshop and at this time I’m still waiting on a shipping notice, but hey it’s all going to be worth it when I get that sweet, sweet Early Access to the Blood Bowl 3 video game which will inevitably be buggy because it’s Early Access yay! That’s not what you’re here for though, you’re here to see what’s in the box!

Nice! Games Workshop included a molded plastic insert that keeps the frames secure. Nice touch.

The treeman is two frames. Here’s the front and back of the first frame. It’s got the top branches, the front part of the face and arm bits.

The second frame has the rest of the body, leg bits, arm bits and the options for helmet and face guard.

Unlike the other big guys, the treeman comes with a 40mm base rather than the 32mm Blood Bowl bases. Of course there are instructions inside which include the new Second Season stat lines. Time to get this tree guy put together.

Upon clipping out the bits, I noticed this really nice detail I hadn’t noticed before. There’s a trophy inside the main cavity of the tree. It’s a really nice touch, but it’s a shame once the treeman is put together it becomes really hard to see and therefore I imagine really hard to paint unless you do so in a lot of sub assemblies.

Here’s the treeman all built … and the bonus star player you get in this kit as well! Akhorne the Squirrel, well technically you’ve got to buy the November 2020 issue of White Dwarf to get Akhorne’s rules, but he’s a fun little bit that you can glue anywhere on the treeman. I decided to put Akhorne on a 25mm bases because he’s so tiny, he looked really silly on a 32mm Blood Bowl base.

The treeman comes with options for a helmet and a faceguard. I think the helmet makes it fit in better with the wood elf team. The faceguard can go on with the helmet or not. What I do really like about this kit are the options to create different looking figures. You have four options of headgear: bareheaded, helmet, just faceguard or helmet with faceguard. The arms are ball and socket joints so you get a decent variety with the arm positions. I opted for his right arm to be pointing forward like he’s pointing out another player or about to reach out and grab a player. The left arm can be angled upward so it looks like he’s about to throw a halfling. While those are still fairly limited options, you can create four distinct looking treeman which is helpful now that Old World Alliance teams can also have a treeman on their roster.

How big is this big guy? Here he is next to some of his future wood elf teammates. He’s definitely big. And you can see the squirrel is very very small. But how does the treeman compare to other big guys?

Here’s the lineup of the new treeman alongside the Forge World minotaur, Games Workshop ogre and my troll conversion based on the old Battle for Skull Pass troll. The treeman is most certainly the tallest mini of the bunch, but that’s mostly due to his branches. If you were to cut off the branches the minotaur would probably be taller. If you consider the minotaur is hunched forward in a charging pose he would be even taller. My converted troll is the most upright of my big guys, but he’s also the lankiest. Does the treeman look like a ST6 player then? He’s not necessarily bigger than the other big guys, but he definitely has the biggest, thickest arms and it looks like he’s got a pretty solid mass and low center of gravity.

In conclusion the new Games Workshop treeman isn’t my favorite treeman model I’ve ever seen, but it in the process of building it, it has grown on me. I really appreciate the helmet and faceguard options as well as the range of positions you can achieve with the arms. If you collected halfling, wood elf and old world alliance teams you could buy four of the next model and be able to achieve four distinct looking figures (2x for the halflings, 1x for the wood elves and 1x for the old world alliance). Personally I’m not a big fan of the facemask as I feel like it obscures the details on the model. I’ll probably use the helmet on my model but I’ll paint it separately to make things a little easer.