I asked GW if I could do a review of the new box about a month back. They were kind enough to write back saying they’d send my request along, but unfortunately I never heard anything about it afterwards. So as much as I’d like to have a little disclaimer here about how this was “paid advertising”, it isn’t. Maybe next time!!

This is going to be a long one.

I want to start with how pleasantly surprised I was at my local non-GW games store getting so many of these boxes. I’d heard that small stores were only going to be able to get 1 Skaven box per 5 core boxes they had ordered, which is ridiculous in a game that has such a big existing community. So, good start.

I have no idea how much it cost, but I picked up the Death Zone book, this box and the warpstone dice for about $100 CAD which wasn’t unreasonable.

Whats in the box?

It’s a cool looking box.

There are two of these sprues inside it. I love how full this sprue is!

There’s a Skaven theme decal transfer sheet! I paid extra money for such a thing when I made my Dreadball rats, and I’m totally going to use the shit out of this one!

The models were easy enough to clip out of their sprues, with only a few awkward angles. Every piece is pretty easy to figure out where it’s supposed to go. I lined them all up on the instructions to make sure each rat was right, but I think it would be very hard to mess this up as each model has very specific tongue-and-groove fittings.

Also on each sprue are a little Blood Bowl marker and 4 ball tokens. I don’t know what the one with the hand is supposed to be, but there are two awesome looking warpstone themed balls that fit into the little hole on the bases, and one free-standing ball.

Lastly on the back of the assembly instructions is a short army list. I’m a little disappointed here, as while it contains all of the rules for each model in the box, it doesn’t have rules for the rat ogre. One more table row would have made this a complete army list for the Skaven, but someone decided not to include it. Maybe they didn’t have space, since there are 3 translations here, but I think a complete roster would have better, and maybe would have helped entice new players to seek out and buy a model for it!

I’m a little sad that the box doesn’t have more of a complete team, needing just 1 more linerat, 2 gutter runners and an ogre to finish it off. The ogre I definitely wouldn’t expect to be in here. I also think that 12 models is a good place to be, and if you had to pick 12 out of the 16 possible, these are a good 12. But buying a second box and not needing 9/12 of the models is annoying. When/if they put out an individual box of Gutter Runners and a Rat Ogre, it will be amazing. But that last line rat is going to bug me for a while.

Assembly

Assembly was a breeze. I’m miserable at mold lines, but near as I can tell these are barely visible at all. The sprue venting holes are placed in easy places to clean off (shoulder plates mostly) and in one case is completely covered by a piece that is placed over it.

I really like the new inclusion of a hole on the base for the ball to fit in, and I also really really like that they went to 32mm bases. 25mm is too small for Blood Bowl.

The models are really damn good looking, but aren’t at “bloody amazing”. The poses are great, and really dynamic. When I first saw the photos I was stunned, but the more I look at them, the more I feel that the details are just a little soft. I’m also very concerned about these tails. I’ve heard of some folks cutting them off and magnetizing them and I may do that myself shortly. There is no chance that the throwers tails will survive transport.

I glued them together with plastic glue, but I don’t think they needed gluing if you didn’t want to. The tongues were all push tight enough they would stay together without it. But with that, I wish they were green plastic or something. 😛

Here are some close ups! Nice thing about having duplicate of each model is I can take one photo and show multiple sides. 🙂

Death Zone

I don’t have any photos of the Death Zone book. It’s nice, but doesn’t have enough difference from LRB6 to make it super worthwhile. I mean, there are a few differences you’ll need to know about, but that’s not my thing to talk about, I let others do so. It’s a nice book, buy it if you want more Blood Bowl in GWs future.

Dice

The dice are crazy. Translucent green, with a sweet font for the numbers, the BB symbol is on the 6, all the dice you need to play the game and it comes in a cool little box.

A friend recommended I check the dice for bubbles, since he’d known other GW produced dice to have issues. I did under my desk lamp – no bubbles I could see.

Also, unlike some other GW dice (the Khorne ones), these ones feel and roll like actual dice, rather than like plastic toys.

They were a total impulse buy, and cost $16 for something I did not at all need.

Summary

The box is awesome, and I’m looking forward to individual releases for more. The models are great. The book is good, but you could probably get away without it. The dice are sweet, and kind of expensive.