Stormbringer is a weekly hobby magazine from Hachette Partworks introducing players to Warhammer: Age of Sigmar. In this 80-week series, our intrepid magazine-receiver will be reviewing each individual issue, its included models, and gaming materials. A Premium US subscription was provided to Goonhammer for review purposes. If you want to follow along at home, US Customers can check out Stormbringer here.
If you’re reading these as they drop, you may be thinking: “Wait, wasn’t issue 04 last week?” To this I reply in the affirmative. You see, we were testing you, and you passed with flying colors. We absolutely didn’t have a Big Dumb and publish them out of order. A Liberator Gold star for you, dear reader.
The Narrative Materials
Our first article this week is about Ghur, the Realm of Beasts. It’s also where Realms of Ruin takes place; imagine that! Ghur is a predatory land, where everything is both predator and prey, down to the landmasses themselves. Mountains move and devour their neighbors, trees feast on the dead, and civilization clings on in fortresses of bone. Even the citizens of those cities partake in the festivities, eating the monsters that would have seen them dead. It’s basically Monster Hunter but without the cat mascots and anime haircuts.
Following this is an absolutely charming in-universe guide to the monsters of Ghur, written by an as-yet unnamed author. Having this mortal perspective helps ground the setting in a way that the previous articles on the Mortal Realms’ lofty cosmology never could. Along with some folksy hokum, the guide defines Maw-Krushas and Carnosaurs, with some art accompanying each. Carnosaurs, even when tamed by Seraphon, are not creatures you want to be near. Once they taste blood, they go nuts, and “tame” becomes more of a suggestion than a fact. The Maw-Krusha section, I shit you not, paraphrases Bee Movie. Turns out these things can fly, even though all laws of aviation dictate otherwise. The suggestion is that gravity itself is too afraid to interfere with a Maw-Krusha, and that’s good enough for me. It also says “The tiny brains of these creatures are filled with nothing but hate,” describing both Maw-Krushas and my cat.
Oh, but we’re not done. We’ve got a new unit this week, which means we get a new Battle Record to roll up. Stormcast Vindictors have joined the fray, and these thunderstrike armor-clad troops have plenty of tables to roll on.
Garagevale was overrun with Chaos Cultists, the mad followers of the dreaded Billy, Lord of Nurgle. The few surviving mortals of the Garagevale Guard were huddled behind their walls of wood pulp cubes and plasticine cylinders, waiting for death to come. As they prepared to make their final stand, a peal of thunder rang out; clouds gathering in a once-clear sky. Karissa Shieldbreaker struck the soil in a bolt of lightning, the dirt below evaporating as electricity coruscated around her. The other four members of her regiment, Karissa’s Purifiers, followed in the seconds after. The five Stormcast formed a wall of Sigmarite between Billy’s foul forces and the surviving mortals of Garagevale. Not a single innocent would die this day.
The Hobby Materials
This week we get 5 Vindictors, the defensive backbone of any Stormcast Eternals army post-2021. These are the models that initially sold me on Stormcast; a group of high fantasy hoplites with better proportions and details than the tubby babymen of the past. I leaned hard into this aesthetic for my own Stormhost, The Undying Phalanx. The models themselves are push fit, but I used one of my X-acto knives plus the Citadel clippers and plastic glue supplied with this issue to build them. They go together easily, and the Citadel tools are perfectly functional. The tiny moldline scraper they sent along is less useful; even my Men’s Medium Glove-sized hands cramp up using it. It’s basically just the head of the moldline scraper they sell, sans handle. Maybe I’ll take a woodworking class and make a handle for it.
Back to the models themselves – the detail is generally lovely, with maybe one or two of the heads coming across as a little soft. Most of the bare heads are great though, and as you can see above, I generally trended towards them. There’s enough helmeted and bare heads to build the regiment whichever way you’d like. Their huge kite shields are also easily left off for ease of painting, and you can attach them later. It’s a lovely kit for your rank and file troops, and it goes together quickly and easily.
The Gaming Materials
We’re still in early days here; so early that our first gaming article is titled “How to Use Dice.” While you, my babyfaced reader, may be pondering how to use these hexahedrons, fret not: They are not for eating or putting in your nose, but for rolling. I’m having a goofum/joke/jape for my own benefit here, but defining D3s, roll offs, modifiers, rerolls, stray dice, and so on is important. Following these basics are a walkthrough of Warscrolls, with the understanding that the simplified Warscrolls of these early issues will be expanded upon in the future. These consist of the Wounds, Save, and basic melee weapons of each unit, with Movement, Bravery, Keywords and Special Rules to come in the future. This all plays out in a Border Skirmish, a simple slugfest where the Orruk Killaboss and Stab-grot take on a pair of Vindictors, while the Stormcast Knight-Arcanum thumps a trio of Gutrippaz. As units fight and die, they move to the next step on a somewhat confusing multipage flowchart. It feels kind of like they overengineered a simple problem. The presentation is visually appealing, but I think it would be simpler to just lay out the turn structure and say “repeat until one side is dead” or something similar.
Final Verdict:
A set of 10 Vindictors will set you back $60. At $13.99 for this issue, you’re paying less than half price. Unlike last issue’s Gutrippas there’s no kit with multiple options out there, so there’s no fancier version to compare to. Now, the past 3 issues have also contained all the models from the Warrior edition starter set, which goes for $50. Between this issue’s cover price, the first issue’s reduced cover price, and the free second issue, you’re spending under 20 bucks for those models. Now, that starter set contains the rules and a very cute shoebox fort to fight over, but if the models are more important to you, these first three issues are the way to go. The rest of this issue is enjoyable, with some fun background and plenty of naming tables to roll on for future Stormcast heroes. The gaming section is likely going to be a bit slight for a while to go, but as a veteran of Imperium, I know what to expect there. Until then, the dripfeed of rules may be useful for some, but more experienced game enjoyers will likely want this for the models and background instead.
See you next issue, warhams.
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