Due to the Games Workshop’s change from resin teams to plastic, it might still be a little while before the Elf Union team hits shelves. Luckily, in the meantime, we’re still getting fairly regular releases for Blood Bowl. Recently Forge World put the Chaos Renegades Coins & Tokens set and the rookie Minotaur up for pre-order, and today, a box from the UK showed up in my mailbox!

Let’s start with the Chaos Renegades Coins & Tokens set… Like the previously released Underworld Denizens Coins & Tokens set, Chaos Renegades set consists of four counters for Chaos Renegade teams. As usual, it contains two coins and two fist tokens.

The packing is pretty much identical to all the other Blood Bowl blisters released in the last year.

Here’s a closeup of the front artwork. As there is no assembly required, the card is single-sided and there really isn’t anything worth showing on the back side.

Here are all the contents of the blister. As previously mentioned, it contains two coins and two fist tokens.

All the counters are pretty easily cleaned up and ready for painting. As with all resin models, just be sure to remember to thoroughly wash the pieces to remove any release agent still on the resin.

The counters are on par with the other team counters released to date, which is to say that they are definitely nice. Personally, I like these types of counters much more than the cardboard counters included in the 3rd edition boxed set. If you are interested in a full Chaos Renegades team, you can order a team from the Forge World website now.

Moving on to the Minotaur!

Here are shots of the front and back of the packaging. Again, it’s pretty much identical to other Blood Bowl 2016 blisters.

Here are closeups of the front artwork and assembly instructions on the back. As you can see, this mini has very few parts for a Big Guy… and that’s a good thing!

Like other blisters, this one contains two different types of bases. It also contains four resin blocks with a total of six parts attached for the Minotaur.

Starting with the torso… as you can see on the left side of the picture, the torso had some pretty gnarly mold lines running from the waist to the armpits. The one on the other side of the mini was quite a bit worse. Having said that, they cleaned up reasonably easily.

Here is the torso ready to be attached to the base. At this point, we see what has become a fairly common issue. The mini only attaches to the base at a single point, and that point does not provide much surface area to glue to the base.

As a result, I went with what has become a fairly common fix… I pinned the mini to the base. I wish I didn’t need to keep doing this with these minis, but it’s not like it’s hard to do, so my complaint over this is a fairly small one.

Here is the torso piece now glued to the base. You can see where I had to do some serious filing on the side near the belt and up the side here. Primer and paint should cover the file marks without issue.

The head went on fairly easily. It will need a little bit of green stuff to fill gaps and smooth the transition, but otherwise, it’s a nice fit.

First arm attached with only a slight joint. Once primed and painted, the gap will not likely even be noticeable.

The second arm fit even tighter. There was really no noticeable gap on this piece at all.

Piece five is the skull on a spike that fits onto the shoulder pad. Again, it assembled very easily with only the slightest visible seam.

This brings us to the tail, which is the one piece of this mini that I have issues with. The tail looks good, but it’s awfully thin. Because of how thin it is, I have some real concerns with how long the tail will last before it snaps off during transport or even general game play. Stealing an idea from a former league mate, I decided to attach the tail using magnets. The idea is that if pressure is applied to the really thin plastic tail sticking out of the back of the mini, the magnet provides an easy place for the tail to “break” on purpose, so that it doesn’t break somewhere else on accident.

After some careful work with a pin vise, I was able to insert a small magnet into the base of the tail.

Being careful to get the polarity right, I placed a larger magnet into the socket where the tail attaches to the back (dare I say ass?) of the Minotaur. I was careful to get both magnets completely flush with the resin so that the tail attaches very smoothly to the torso and does not wobble at all.

The nice thing is that since the tail is meant to be detachable, it can be spun around and placed in any orientation I want.

With this, the Minotaur is now completely assembled. I have to say that the mold line filing not withstanding, this mini went together really easily. It’s also a really nice looking mini with nice details. The only real issues I have with the mini are the tail, and the fact that the pose of the mini makes it pretty front heavy. I accidentally knocked it over on its face several times while trying to take some final pictures. Both issues are fairly easily fixed. You can add magnets to the tail like I did, or you could even just fill the tail socket on the back of the torso and not use the tail at all. For the front heavy pose, I plan to add a weight to the base to help keep it upright. With those two issues addressed, I think this is a really nice Minotaur and I’m glad to have it in the collection.

Here are a few pictures of the fully assembled mini from different angles.

That just about wraps things up. To summarize my feelings on this mini… it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty darn nice, so I recommend picking it up if you’re in the market for a new Minotaur. I will leave you with a couple of size comparison pictures. Spoiler alert: The Minotaur is big, but it’s not crazy big.

What do you think? Are you planning on picking up the Minotaur or the Chaos Renegades Coins & Tokens set?