Blood Bowl Black Orc Team - First Look and Assembly
Inside the Blood Bowl Starter Set, we have two teams. One is a human team, called the Imperial Nobility. The second, and one we’ll be looking at today, is the Black Orcs. The Black Orc team is comprised of 6 separate sprues. The first two sprues are identical, and from each you can build 3 Black Orcs and 3 Goblin Bruiser Linemen.
Black Orc team sprues.
The Goblins are the simplest models in the entire box to assemble, other than perhaps the referees (more on them later). As the smallest models, you’d expect them to have the fewest number of components, and they do, comprised of 2, 3, and 5 parts each. There are 2 lots of 3 separate poses, and 2 different heads for each pose, so no Goblin need look the same.
Six Goblin Bruiser linesman assembled and ready to paint!
Like the goblins, there are 3 variations of Black Orcs, again with 2 different head options, so no Orc need look the same. Again, there are relatively few pieces here, although more than the Goblins. The number of components that makes up each Black Orc does vary with which head you use, as some heads come in multiple parts, but the first Black Orc is comprised of 4/5 parts, the second of 6/7, and the third of 7.
The Black Orcs are ready to do smash some heads in!
Assembly gets a lot more complicated with the Troll. The Troll is comprised of 19 components, across 2 sprues, which is more piecies than 3 Black Orcs put together! This means it has the most components of any single piece in the kit. If you’ve got previous experience assembling miniatures (from Games Workshop, or any other company), this won’t be problematic for you, but could be quite daunting to a new player. I accidentally broke the ankle chain when assembling mine, so be extra careful when you remove it from the sprue and clean up the mould lines. It’s quite fiddly to fix, so I ended up leaving it off the final model, and the absence isn’t noticeable.
Sprue and assembly guide for the team’s troll.
Varag Ghoul-Chewer is one of two star players in the set. He can be fielded with any team that has the ‘Badlands Brawl’ or ‘Underworld Challenge’ special rule, so you’re not limited to playing him just with the Blood Orcs. (If you don’t want to buy the whole set just for Varag Ghoul-Chewer, it’s worth looking at eBay). Varag is comprised of 18 pieces, one less than the Troll. Like the troll, the components for Varag Ghoul-Chewer are spread across two small sprues. As you’d expect from a star player, Varag is crammed full of detail.
Varag Ghoul-Chewer’s sprue and assembly guide.
It's also worth mentioning at this point are the tokens which come with each team sprue. You get 2 balls per sprue, one with a peg and one without (for a total of 4 per team). One round token and one standing token are also included on each sprue (4 tokens per team), which are used to keep track of the score, re-rolls, and turn number.
Varag Ghoul-Chewer and the team’s big guy - a very angry troll!
Hopefully, this gives everyone a good insight into the Black Orc team, and I’ll be posting a picture of the team up soon!
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Happy gaming!
Chris