One of the most common questions (and to be honest, complaints) about the new box set concerns the lack of positionals to make a good team.

So, what do we have?

Dwarfs: The GW set comes with the 12 dwarfs you need for a basic team.  Job done.  The Deathroller is nice to have, but a competitive team would not usually have one, as it’s so much Team Value for something that’s not likely to have a huge impact on the pitch so it’s very optional.  The only problem is when you play in a league and want to go to more than 12 players, obviously.

Orcs: Comes with 2 Blitzers, 2 Black Orcs, 2 Throwers, and the best teams have 4 Blitzers, 4 Black Orcs, and probably only one Thrower.  Plus they have a Troll, which has now been released.  My most efficient recommendation for this would be to use the figures that are nominally Blitzers as Black Orcs, possibly marking the bases of all of them with a green strip to make it clear.  You can then put a red strip on 4 of the spikiest lineorcs, and use them as Blitzers.  Job done, or if you wanted to be fancy, you could do some head swaps, so that all Blitzers were not wearing helmets. Finally, add a troll.  For this you can use almost any fantasy troll model, as they are not usually carrying inappropriate weapons, or if they are they can easily be snipped.  Stick him on a 30mm or 32mm base, and you’re done.  A few Goblins might be nice too, but again any goblin figure without a weapon would do the job here.

Humans: Comes with 2 Blitzers, and you want 4.  You may want extra catchers too, but not such a big deal.  Simply use 2 of the bottom left linemen as Blitzers.  Colour code all the Blitzer bases red.  You should also be able to pick up some spare human linemen if you want them from people who bought the box set, or those who bought two boxes to fill out the positionals.  Finally, get an Ogre.  They’re awesome.  Either the GW one, or the GW Morg, or literally any Fantasy Ogre not holding a weapon.

Skaven: only 2 Gutter Runners.  Nightmare.  Easy peasy though, use the Throwers as Gutter Runners.  No one will mind.  Then nominate one of the linerats as a Thrower (you could stick a ball in his hand, from the sprue).  You will want extra linerats (my current tournament team has 13 players, rats are squishy, but almost every Skaven player will have bought two boxed sets for the multiple Gutter Runners.  You probably won’t want more than one Thrower in your team, unless it’s a long league.  Rats die.  A lot.  You will want a Rat Ogre model, and these are harder than the Ogre or Troll to proxy, but there are some good plastic options out there, or the GW Blood Bowl one.  In old ranges there was a Headsplitter model, which I like a lot.  The other option for extra Gutters is the Deathrunner from Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower, as the box comes with 2.  The weapons would be need snipping though, which is a shame as it’s quite a nice model.

Hope that’s helpful!  Thoughts welcome.