Blood Bowl – 1994s Chaos All-Stars Team

I've talked about the start of a new league franchise, and while the team owners are battling over which Chaos team will start in the new CBL (Chaosbunker Bloodbowl League), let's see how the roster is set up.

The league is set up around the miniatures from the 3rd edition of Blood Bowl, which was released in 1994 and partially updated beginning in the 2000's. Blood Bowl was a side-game produced by Games Workshop directly back in the day, later moved to Fanatic Games / Specialist Games and nowadays split between Games Workshop and Forge World.

The initial White Dwarf issue was UK Issue #174 in April 1994, to introduce the new boxed starter game and retiring the 1987 boxed set, that was quite popular, covered plastic miniatures, had an astrogranite matchfield and even a Dungeon Bowl supplement, that added even more plastic miniatures to the game.

Somewhen back a lot of years ago, I got one of these for my collection, but during slimming down my stock I handed it over to my oldest wargaming buddy Indigo. But one item, that I'll always cherish is my first ever wargaming boxed set, a german copy of the Blood Bowl boxed set, that I still own. I managed to keep it complete, yet a bit beaten around the edges, but hey, it's in my collection for 25 years and the components used over and over again.

The game had a brighter, more colourful look to it, it was compact and fast to play and manageable on a young wargamers budget. And I like to return on that, the team size makes it once again manageable, but this time from the time budget. Painting a group of 16 miniatures is do-able for wargaming dad. And the game is great fun, so it's very rewarding on that. Especially on a quick schedule, as you don't need terrain, everything is in the box. That's it.

So after we've sorted out, let's see what to start with. The plastic miniatures from the starter box? No way. They did their job back in the day, but that's it. All of them replaced by proper metal miniatures in the new league, and we're starting with Chaos.

The 3rd edition of Blood Bowl started in 1991 and the Chaos All-Stars got a new boxed set in  1994, sculpted by Gary Morley. The team covered 11 miniatures, 3 different poses of the Chaos Warriors and two each of the 4 different Beastmen poses.

The All-Stars got a huge re-vamp with the third edition, as the name was already around in earlier editions of Blood Bowl, but the Chaos All-Stars were more of a renegade team. No beast men, but outcasts of different "evil" races that made up the team. That concept was picked up again later in the Living Rulebooks.

So this mid-90s Chaos team fit more the 4th/5th edition flavour of Warhammer Fantasy, with the design of the miniatures, the colour choice and so on. You needed the Death Zone supplement, to have access to the roster, along with the new star players and big guys. And of course, the mutations.

The available range of the Chaos team box (50 DM when it was released in Germany, so about 38,20 EUR in todays money), the mutant blister (3 models) 20 DM, Lord Borak 15 DM and Grashnak Blackhoof 30 DM. The team box along with the mutant chaos warrior (not the beast men) was available as made-to-order by Games Workshop for 42 EUR in 2019 (which was quite a fair pricing considering inflation and the 12th player).

So that would be the range to choose from and very conveniently, this fills up a regular Blood Bowl roster of 16 completely, giving you enough option for variants of a starting team as well as a high ranking pro-team.

Where did the Chaos Team go in the revamps of the Living Rule Book as well as the 2017s updated official release? In the early 2000s of 5th edition / LRB, the minotaur option got an additional miniature, as you had access to a non-starplayer one. The main range of the Chaos All-Stars was kept the same, but another famous Chaos team, the Nurgle Rotters were (re-)produced, covering Pestigors and Rotters (and another update in 2018). Later an update of the "regular" Chaos Team was released, rebranding the team as Doom Lords and the faction of Chaos Chosen - with a reboxing / new box art, moving it from the rather grim Warhammer-type to the more Fantasy Football appeal of the 2nd season. And even a third Chaos team was recently released, the Skull-Tribe Slaughterers (Khorne Blood Bowl team). The star players and big guys were covered by Forge World with new releases in resin as well.

The roster covered in 3rd edition, which - I repeat myself - I am going for, up to 4 Chaos Warriors (three different poses + mutant) and up to 12 beastmen, which would be filled with 10 miniatures over 6 different poses (4 regular beastmen twice and the two mutants). And further expanded with the option for Starplayers; a Chaos team would have access to Lord Borak the Despoiler, Grashnak Blackhoof (the minotaurus, optional used as a big guy), Morg'n'Thorg (Ogre, optional used as a big guy) and Ripper Bolgrot (Troll, once again, optional use as a big guy). I chose Lord Borak as well as Grashnak Blackhoof, the other options I'd prefer in other teams (yeah, I know I could use them as "freelancers" or doubles, but I like the narrative and prefer to have them spread across the league's teams).

My next steps are cleaning the mould lines, and choosing the fitting bases. I want to drop the square bases for the big miniatures and do round bases for them all. So Big Guys go from 40mm square to 40mm round, and some Star Players on 32mm. That way this gets a bit more refreshed, but I am still able to play on the "old" field.

And this is my starting roster, based upon a value of 1 Million gold pieces and a rating of 100. Next up, further prepping the team and deciding the colours, badge and so on.