Blood Bowl – Chaos Dwarf The Zharr-Naggrund Ziggurats

On NOVA this year Games Workshop gave us the preview on an updated Chaos Dwarf Blood Bowl Team, the Zharr-Naggrund Ziggurats, and we were more than excited to see them again!

Chaos Dwarfs have been part of Blood Bowl since the 90s, and this team, the Ziggurats, was around back then, as part of the Death Zone supplement for Blood Bowls third edition, both released in 1994. The new Zharr-Naggrund Ziggurats arrived quickly, with the announcement in August and a full on release in October 2024. And this large batch of miniatures is something, that we want to take a closer look upon starting today with the regular team boxed set.

The name of the team is picked up as written above from the third edition of Blood Bowl, which was available as made-to-order from Games Workshop back in 2017 and 2019 for two occassions at reasonable prices, but rather odd compilation of positions. Anyhow, the name is rooted in the lore of Warhammer Fantasy. Zharr-Naggrund is the center of the Chaos Dwarf empire, and the entire city is built on a series of tall steps, like a Ziggurat. Therefore the name of this team - the Zharr-Naggrund Ziggurats.

The Chaos Dwarf Blood Bowl Team boxed set has a RRP of 42 EUR or 33 GBP and covers 14 miniatures (along with four markers and four balls) across two identical sprues, a black and white instruction leaflet and decals. I like the easter eggs that they put the very old school icon of the team on the card board boxes lashes, where on other boxed sets the product range icon is. Love the nostalgia.

As usual with the side games (Blood Bowl, Necromunda, Legions Imperial/AT/AI) you get the same sprue twice, in some cases like Blood Bowl with A/B variants. The casting quality is proper, minor amount of mould lines, sharp details and a very good use of the space within the sprue.

With Blood Bowl you usually get an identical set of decals in two variants, black and white on the same sheet. No colours, but a proper mount of numbers, icons and names for your miniatures. And depending on your team colours you can use one of these. You should be able to tint the white ones with contrast or shade paints, if you have a steady hand, in case neither black or white is working for you.

We are going to build the players from this set and a neat thing in this case is, that you do get 14 instead of the usual 12 players that are covered in these sets. We're going to build a single sprue and show you the variants.

The first two miniatures you see are Chaos Dwarf Blockers, they come with two poses per sprue and have an alternate face per sprue, so your four blockers will look a bit different from eachother - directly from the kit, without further conversion (Which you can always do). On the third picture you see the alternative faces. Those are spare parts after you have build your total of four blockers.

In this set are two special positions, included in this team, the Flamesmith and Sneaky Stabba. These are new positionals for Chaos Dwarfs and are included once per sprue, but they come with alternative parts for the second build as well. In case of the Firesmith you get a different hand gesture and head, the second Sneaky Stabba has a different arm position and second head option.

Then there are your regular linemen, the Hobgoblins. Three per sprue, and each of them has an alternative head for the second batch, and creating quite a few different models with the total of six linemen.

Here is the line up from a single sprue, in addition each sprue gives you Re-Roll Markers and Blood Bowl Coins, along with two balls. Remember as we have two sprues, we get twice the amount. As I currently don't have access to the Spike Journal #18, I can't tell you if the balls have special rules. The pitch anyhow does and we're going to cover that in the according review.

The plastic set of the Zharr-Naggrund Ziggurats is an update to the classic team from 1994, sculpted by the talented Gary Morley (who sculpted the entire range for Blood Bowl back then) and you can see the new models got a bit taller and certainly more detailled. Amazing what is possible in plastic today.

But the plastics are not on their own, there is already a proper amount of resin positionals for the Chaos Dwarfs available, with two Star Players and two different sculpts of Bull Centaurs as you can see. And their size is impressive.

Some final shots of the line up, of a half a team of Blood Bowl Chaos Dwarfs.

Conclusion

Wow. Simply wow. The Chaos Dwarf came a bit out of nowhere to be honest. After the latest, rather silly releases for Blood Bowl like the Gnomes, I didn't really expected the Chaos Dwarfs at this point, and especially not as quickly after the announcement on NOVA.

A very well made team, with iconic design, proper alternative poses for the set and even with the new price of 42 EURs, I think that is reasonable for the team of 14 miniatures. However, the full price, if you go beyond that is easily in the three digits and everything that was released for the Chaos Dwarfs sums up to to almost 230 EUR (Team + Star Players + Dice + Pitch + Journal) and half of that is already out-of-stock. Which is a temporal thing with the star players, but permanent for the dice. And there would be another 34 EUR for the minotaur, that is currently out of stock as well. This is quite a sum for a "skirmish" sized Fantasy Football miniature board game, for a single team. Anyhow, Blood Bowl Chaos Dwarfs never were cheap, back in 1996 the team costs 50 DM, with 30 DM for H'thark and another 30 DM for a Minotaur (using Grashnak Blackhoof), buying a second team for the missing positionals as they didn't have a team blister as far as I remember (+50 DM) and Zzharg Madeye and the Bull Centaurs didn't have Blood Bowl sculpts, so you would need to buy a blister of Chaos Dwarfs with Blunderbuss for 20 DM (for 3 models) and two blisters of Bull Centaurs, that you had to cut off the weapons for 15 DM each - suming up to 210 DM, which makes about 178 EURs in todays money. Without the themed pitch, dice and Spike Journal. So the new release is not that far apart, but certainly offers the more modern miniatures.

So beside the price point, which is a bit high for a game with that few miniatures, you get proper value as Blood Bowl has a replay value and very active community, so once you have painted your less than 20 miniatures, who barely take up space in your hobby room or on travels, you are ready to go to participate in a lot of events, from casual to competitive gaming. And if you think the team is not enough, there is a splendid range of Forge World / Warhammer Forge Chaos Dwarfs you can convert into staff, like coachs, cheerleaders and so on.

This is not the end of our Chaos Dwarf coverage, as we will review the individual star players along with the pitch on here as well. And after that, I gave the plastics into the cunning hands of our DinoTitanEdition. He painted the Mork's Maulers and will take care of this team as well. And to be honest, this was probably one of the hardest times handing over the miniatures, because they were loudly told me to keep them. But I have the vintage team and we will do some Blood Bowl in the future as a team project.

Blood Bowl is a brand by Games Workshop.

The reviewed product item was provided by the manufacturer.