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.

God why’d they have to go ahead and send along a gobbo last week? Now I’m wishing I was getting new goblins ever week. I’m fully fungusmaxxing and goblinpilled over here.

The Narrative Materials

We begin this week in the Realm of Heavens, Azyr. It’s the only realm to never fall to Chaos, and Sigmar’s kingdom lies in its glittering cities. The extremely hard to parse Sigmarabulum is a floating city built around the metal core of The Old World, and is the fortress where the Anvil of Apotheosis lies. From here, the Stormcast Eternals are forged, reforged, and reforged again, and the surrounding armories and labs create their equipment. Azyr is the model for civilization in the Mortal Realms; a lofty city on the hill for mortals to aspire to.

It’s been a minute, but we finally have a second installment in the article series about magic and the Collegiate Arcane. Aside from just having some lovely old David Gallagher art from Warhammer Fantasy, the article is written in-universe by a particularly haughty wizard, all but sneering at the reader. The best I can do is just quote it; something I seldom do but will illustrate my delight at this series better than my own writing could:

Some claim that exposure to the aetherquartz mechanisms results in arrogance and paranoia, but I can report this is a myth – I have spent years around Luminarks, and I remain among Sigmar’s most humble and temperate servants.

The Armies of Chaos march forth in this issue’s centerfold, with some beautiful photography of Archaon’s hordes. The basics are touched on without too much detail – the mortal tribes and armored legions that make up the Slaves to Darkness, the god-specific devotions of the Blades of Khorne and Hedonites of Slaanesh, and the Path to Glory they all follow. Daemons, Skaven, and Beastmen (RIP) are also given brief boxouts, and the point is made clear that the forces of Chaos have conquered the realms once, and they’ll try and do it again. Every step forward towards progress or civilizing the realms is taken at least one step back as another city is burned and another life sacrificed in one arcane ritual or another. It ain’t 40k’s level of grimdark, but I don’t think I’d like to live in at least 7 of the mortal realms.

Next we get not just a battle record for our new Azyrite Fountain, but for our battlefield in Ulgu. We’re firmly out of Ghur’s Monster Hunter: World world, and into Yu-Gi-Oh!’s Shadow Realm. Let’s roll these up and see what we get:

In a joke funny only to one ancient settler, and even then only when written and not spoken out loud, the twin village to Ghur’s Garagevale was Ulgu’s Garageveil. This similarly sleepy town was darker and murkier than its sister in the Realm of Beasts, but was founded in a relatively safe part of the Realm of Shadow. Its stability meant it was a valuable staging ground for the Dawner Crusades that would venture into Slaangoria, but why you’d march into a region named for something that would gore you, cut you in half, and then do something unmentionable to your remains was beyond the average Garageveil citizen’s ken. Garageveil was certainly not the first foothold made in this part of Ulgu, as at its center was a long-dry fountain and the ruins of what was once most certainly a library, its scrolls and tomes long since raided or used for kindling. The weight of lost knowledge around these foundations has been known to sap the willpower of any would-be loiterer, driving them into a depression the likes of which no apothecary’s compounds can draw them out of.

The Hobby Materials

This week’s miniatures are a lovely little set of scatter terrain, the Azyrite Fountain. They go together easily, some pieces only being one or two bits on the sprue. The painting directions will get you some great results, as a basecoat, wash, and drybrush to tie the model together is really all you need for terrain like this. This is also the second hobby magazine I’ve ever read to define what a sextant is, the first being a Lego magazine in 1998. The Lego-to-Warhammer pipeline is an extremely short one. The recommendation here is to glue the chest open and paint said sextant, but I’m made of neither time nor money, so I kept it glued shut.

The Gaming Materials

The rules content was a bit of a surprise this week. While much of it is just presenting the movement section of the rulebook, there’s a hefty amount of tactics tutorials as well. Using the redeploy order to screen units, pull back from enemy units, or even get onto objectives is the kind of strategic editorializing I don’t usually see in rules sections. I’ll admit, I’ve underutilized the redeploy command in AoS third edition, though I’ve been characteristically himbopilled all throughout the edition.

The mission this week is Fighters in the Fog, one of the more playful scenarios we’ve yet encountered. The confounding, impenetrable fog of Ulgu has a Kruleboyz mob and Stormcast detachment both hopelessly disoriented, and the two forces need to pull themselves together and face their enemy. While the goal is simply to kill each other, the twist is that you place your opponent’s models instead of your own. There’s even a polite reminder to ask your opponent’s permission before touching their stuff, or to simply indicate to them where they should be deploying. It’s the kind of playful narrative twist that accompanied several games of my youth, and I smiled when I read it.

Final Verdict:

The terrain included in this issue was part of the Azyrite Shattered Plaza, a beautiful set of functional terrain you can no longer purchase from Games Workshop. It was a perfectly good set of terrain and it’s a real shame that they don’t make it anymore, but at least you can own a piece of it with this issue. These pieces occupy one of that $80 kit’s four sprues, so you’re looking at a $20 value in models alone. Those models being otherwise unavailable sweetens the deal, bittersweet as it may be. The rest of this issue contains an enjoyable lore section, some good hobby materials for a first-time terrain painter, and a fun little twist you can bring into your narrative games.

See you next issue, warhams.

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