Ogre Team Booster and Diversity

As promised, here is an unboxing of the Blood Bowl Ogre team booster pack from Forge World. It was released in 2020 but seems to have been discontinued. It is unclear why that is the case as I have not seen any official statements about it.

I think the sculptor of this release addressed several points from the community with a bit of tongue in cheek. A lot of people have an issue with the very dynamic poses of the Blood Bowl minis. They want their minis to be sturdy and representative of the players characteristics, for example, why have a movement 3 mummy in a sprinting pose when he will barely move through the first half?

People have started joking that there must be a rule stating that all Forge World models must have one foot in the air. I feel like the Gnoblar must be Forge World's response to this. The armoured troll came out about the same time, and he also had both feet on the ground and was brandishing a severed leg over his head. 

In the 2008 rules review of the Blood Bowl Living Rulebook 5.0 (making it LRB5+), Bertha Bigfist was introduced as a Star Player, able to play for the Amazon, Halfling or Ogre teams. She never got an official model so perhaps the two ladies in the ogre booster pack were a homage to Bertha. 

As with many teams, the ogres had no female representation in the box set. The booster rectifies this problem. An honourable mention should go to the Dark Elves team for great gender diversity, as they have included female linemen, witch elves and one of the Assassins in the booster pack.  

From 2020 onwards we see Games Workshop starting to include female positionals in more teams. An easy solution from a technical standpoint, but in my opinion, it doesn't go far enough to close the gender divide which is apparent.  

I didn’t plan for this post to become something political but thought it would be interesting to look into some stats, as the hobby would benefit from being more inclusive and welcoming for girls and women to join. So, how well are female characters really represented?

•  9 teams contain some female models. 
• 14 teams have only male models. 
• 6 teams have none gendered races (Lizardmen and Greenskins) or in the case of the Tomb Kings, it is difficult to tell if the models are gendered. 

So, the percentages look like this:

• Female 31%
• Male 48.3%
• N/A 20.7%

Whilst this may look like a healthy split, it is important to remember that even though a team may have female models, in reality what this may mean is two females in a team of 12. 

Now, moving on to the Star Players. 

• Female ≈ 14.9%
• Male ≈ 64.2%
• Non-gendered ≈ 20.9%

Now, I would have thought the stars were more diverse than the teams. A lot of strong female Star Players came to mind: Karla Von Kill, Willow Rosebark, Roxanna Darknail and Gretchen Wächter in particular. At the last count there were in fact 10 female Star Players as opposed to 43 males and 14 N/A.

As I have said previously, it does seem like the trend is improving, especially as Games Workshop release new versions of the old teams. My wife's Dark Elf sevens team is full of kick-ass ladies and it was the possibilities this team presented that peaked her interest in Blood Bowl and may have drawn others like her to the hobby. She magnanimously included one male model in her team whom she assures me is a vital component. Bob 'The Meatshield'. 

Back to the booster. Looking at the gut plates, they look pretty much the same as gut plates from other plastic ogre kits such as the normal plastic ogres or the ogre from the Iron Blaster kit for example. However, they don't actually fit. The Blood Bowl Ogre kit is a much closer fit, not perfect but with a bit of work you could swap with those if you preferred.

Packing managed to give me two 24mm bases and one 32mm. I appreciate wanting to give the gnoblar his space to shine but I believe it is a bit optimistic trying to fit the ogre gals on 24mm when you can see that they barely fit on the 32mm in the pictures on the packaging.

Assembly instructions