Island of Blood Rumour Roundup

[Darnok]

Last updated: 07/23.

This is the RR thread for the upcoming "Island of Blood" WHF starterbox. If you have useful additions, please send me a PM.

The release date seems to be 4th of September, with the price being £60/$99/€80. Pre-orders start on 10th of August.

See this GW blog article: "Island of Blood: Un-boxed".

Included are High Elves and Skaven, the contents seem to be:

One mage
One noble on griffon
10 Swordmasters with full command
10 Sea Guard with full command
5 Reavers

One warlord
One warlock engineer
20 Clanrats with handweapon and shield
20 Clanrats with spears and shield
One Warpfire Thrower
One Poison Wind Mortar
Two Rat Ogres with Master Moulder

This may or may not be everything for the models.

Other contents include templates, dice, and of course a small rulebook, including the full rules for WHF 8th.

To clear up the original post and some misconceptions:
~None of these are the current models from currently available sprues, not even the clanrats. The clanrats (read: not slave sprues) have fixed shields on 20 of them and I believe are 2-part models(like much of the box, thus very easy to assemble).
~The Reavers and the Griffon Rider have the legs sculpted onto the body of the mount but you could substitute and upper torso for conversion purposes quite easily (read: Dragon Princes, Empire/Bret heroes on griffons etc).
~The Reavers come pre-equipped with bows...they are part of the upper torso mold. Why? Im not sure, would make non-bow Reavers hard to WYSIWG for tournament purposes but the models are first class all the way.
~As I said most are 2-part models, easy to assemble and need minimal to no gap filling. (The griffon might need green stuff on the back for gap filling though to do up properly)
~The swordmasters have different head options, I counted at least 4 different types of "masks/helms". One is sure to raise some eyebrows as it is a KKK-style hood (not that I care but might not want to paint it bright white?)
~The banners are "textured/raised" and are specific to the swordmasters and sea guard (someone posted pics from the UK? where the banners look switched), meaning you can spray, basecoat and drybrush for the "free hand" challenged among us. Someone can correct me, but this is only such type of banner I ever seen for Warhammer...a first?
~The skaven bits will be a goldmine for conversion types. Can do the rest of the weapon teams with only minimal conversion skill.
~Release was quoted as Sept 9th (perhaps that Saturday? dunno).
~Price was retail 99.00 US Dollars.
~I saw no other terrain bitz people are claiming in the box (no objective markers etc). There was some template stuff.