For those that are new to Blood Bowl, it might come as a surprise that there is a thriving independent market for “Fantasy Football” minis from various third party companies. During the years when Games Workshop halted production, and in some cases even sent Cease and Desist letters to players who even mentioned the words Blood and Bowl on their websites, these small operations kept the Blood Bowl community up to its collective eyeballs in new minis. If you think that trend has halted… or even slowed a hair since Games Workshop has put the game back into print, you are very wrong.

The independent Blood Bowl miniature scene is still VERY much alive, and at times it seems like you cannot throw a rock without hitting an indie company starting a campaign, or pre-order for a new team. Case in point… today, Word Forge Games successfully completed their Gore Ball Ogre team crowd funding campaign, and on the same day, Star Player Miniatures started pre-orders for their new Undead and Necromantic combo team.

Star Player Miniatures is fairly new to the Fantasy Football Miniature scene, having only been around for the last couple of years, but I have first hand experience with their minis and can confirm that they are really nice. I bought their Amazon team a year or so ago, and can report that the minis are very nice. I know a few people who had a problem with how much skin the Amazon team was showing, but for a team of AV7 players, I would say that it is relatively appropriate. Besides… I am a guy and I like boobs.

Anyway, back to their new Undead and Necromantic team! Star Player Miniatures produces metal minis exclusively, so if you only like plastic and resin teams, this team may not be for you. They are also 32mm scale, which some people do not prefer, but for an all metal team, they are EXTREMELY competitively priced at only 59,00 € for a team of 16 metal minis. According to the Star Player website, this 16 miniature package includes:

2x Mummies

2x Golems

2x Wights

4x Ghouls

2x Werewolves

1x Lizardman Zombie

1x Silver Arrow (High Elf) Zombie

1x Deep One (Fish Guy… OK) Zombie

1x Marauder (Chaos Pact/Alliance) Zombie

It is worth noting that this package will not get you a full roster of either the classic Undead, or the Necromantic team, but it should allow you to have a playable roster for both teams. They do offer boosters that you can add to your pre-order so that you can fill out both rosters… with one exception. They apparently do not have any Skeletons for the classic Undead team. I have actually seen this a number of times lately. I know that Skeletons are not super popular on the Undead roster and most coaches only seem to take one or two if they take any, but an option for a Skeleton mini would have been nice.

Lets take a look at the minis by position:

The Mummies. They are reasonably imposing looking. I am curious to see how big they are physically next to other minis. For ST5 minis, the 3rd edition Mummies are woefully undersized compared to other ST5 minis, though they are the only ST5 players in the game that are not classified as Big Guys. A number of newer companies like Willy Miniatures and Vortice Miniatures have made their Mummies full Big Guy size, so it will be interesting to see if Star Player follows suit.

The Flesh Golems. Those familiar with older Games Workshop Blood Bowl minis will notice that the Flesh Golem on the right looks a LOT like the classic Frank N Stein mini from 2nd edition. I do not think that is a necessarily bad thing.

The Wights. I am not really sure how I feel about the helmets on these minis. I kind of feel like they are a little too similar to the Mummy helmets and I do not know that it was really necessary to give both positions such regal looking, pointy helmets… Honestly though, that is nitpicking more than anything.

The Ghouls. I am lukewarm about these minis, honestly. I kind of prefer the look of the classic 3rd edition Games Workshop Ghouls, personally, but these minis look good and they give a nice sense of speed which a MA7 player should have.

The Werewolves. You know, it seems surprisingly difficult to find decent looking Werewolf minis that are not nude, and work well with Blood Bowl. Now, it is not that I have a particular problem with “nude” minis, but a Werewolf with no armor or clothes makes it REALLY hard to paint it in team colors, which I do have a problem with. I do actually like these Werewolf minis, and that is a fairly rare for me.

Last, but not least, the Zombies. This is another newer trend with independent mini companies… race specific Zombies. This does make a little sense considering the Undead team rule that allows you to add a free Zombie to your roster if you kill an opposing player during a game, though I have never been too keen on the idea. I do like that their race specific Zombies are sculpted to look very much like minis from some of their other teams. They do not look like random Zombie minis, they look like Star Player Miniatures Zombies, and I do like that. Having said that, I am not really sure why they included the Deep One Zombie mini since the Deep Ones team is nowhere close to official…

Now that we have had a look at the whole team, I have to say that I like it. I cannot say that I love it, but I give it a solid B+. The team at Star Player Miniatures is nice and their communication is good in my experience. To sum up, if you are in the market for a new Undead and/or Necromantic team, and are OK with metal minis at 32mm scale, then I definitely recommend giving this team some consideration.

Let me know what you think!