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.
Call me a Fyreslayer because I’m hot, short, and very angry! It’s 100 degrees outside, the garage I film in is not air conditioned, and I am very upset about both of these pieces of information.
The Narrative Materials
First this month is a section on some of the original antagonists of Age of Sigmar, the Blades of Khorne. These bloodthirsty bozos are a brutal coalition of armored, Chaos-empowered warriors, barbarian hordes, and Khorne’s own daemons. They don’t care if they live or die – only that blood is spilled in Khorne’s name. There’s a single line here about military discipline amongst the daemonic ranks and a typical description about Khorne’s hatred of magic (prayers are different, honest!) but there’s not really all too much more to add. Despite the blood, skulls, spikes and axes, the faction is pretty one dimensional.
A foldout gives us some additional detail on Khorne and the rest of the Chaos gods, detailing each god’s realm and motivations. The Horned Rat is not represented here, and until told otherwise, I will assume his realm is “a hole” and his motivation is “a cheese.” We’ll start with Khorne just to get the red meanie out of the way. All Khorne cares about is violence and bloodshed, and he sits on a big ol’ throne of skulls in the middle of a DOOM level. He’s working on making the Realm of Fire in his image, and there are huge parts now where the only natural resources are the blood and meat of dudes. Tzeentch is the god of magic and change, and he delights in tempting learned or curious folks with forbidden knowledge, dark magic, power, and all that other Faustian goodness. Despite the plots upon plots, plans within plans nature of this supreme intelligence, he mostly just likes a good old fashioned bonfire, provided that fire is built around a Sigmarite city. He likes the Realm of Metal best, where crystal mazes and living metal palaces hold all sorts of Tzeentchian mutants. He just likes making weird little guys, which, same. Diametrically opposed to him is Nurgle, the god of rot, stagnation, and disease. The Realm of Life is especially fertile ground for all his grody diseases and insect plagues. Last is Slaanesh, imprisoned at time of this magazine’s writing but not necessarily at time of publication, and their whole thing is temptation and obsession. The tween focus of this magazine means that the list of deadly sins Slaanesh is all about ends at “greed”, but that’s more evil than the rest anyway. Slaanesh’s power is strongest in the Realm of Shadow, where their followers emerge from the mists and drag unwary wanderers into hidden torture palaces. This can’t have been the first Chaos Crash Course we’ve gotten in Stormbringer, but this one at least has some nice art in it.
Things get a bit more interesting next with the associated fluff for Carrion Empire, a 2019 box that pit Skaven vs. Flesh-Eater Courts several years before either army would get their due. They’ve done this sort of thing before in issue 29 where they summed up 2017’s Blightwar and the introduction of Neave Blacktalon. I feel like these box sets made to sell a single new model per side are good fits for the breezy pace of your average Stormbringer issue. This particular conflict involved a Skaven Warlock Bombardier named Skatchnik hunting for the lost empire of Metallurgica in Chamon, the realm of metal. Instead of finding ancient treasures from the Age of Myth, he and his rat-men found the court of King Thyador Durenstein. Skaven greed met ghoulish delusion and ultimately Skatchnik and a few lucky rats were able to escape and survive.
A new unit means a new Battle Record, and this week that belongs to the Knight-Judicator. This Stormcast Eternals archer that launches arrows the size of a small tree from his Terminus Greatbow, and he’s joined by a pair of Gryph-Hounds. He can also shoot an arrow into the sky and call down a lightning strike on his chosen target, a sort of mythological power which is represented in his rules.
Khamsin Stormrazor whistled to get his Gryph-Hound’s attention. “Beaquis!” He shouted their name and let an arrow loose with his Terminus Greatbow. The dutiful Gryph-Hound rushed after the projectile – or more crucially – the sausage tied to it. Khamsin had been training his beasts all day. Compared to the more demanding sessions with his Stormhost’s Dracolines, Gryph-Chargers, and the beasts of war that joined his troops, the afternoons spent with his Gryph-Hounds were comparatively quiet. As Beaquis passed the one mile mark in pursuit of Khamsin’s last arrow, Surefriend trotted back to his owner, arrow grasped in his beak. The second Gryph-Hound dropped the preposterously long projectile at Khamsin’s feet and looked up expectantly. The mighty Stormcast Warrior dropped to one knee and riffled his companion’s feathered features, repeating a rhetorical question he had spoken aloud ever since he was but a mortal fletcher:
“Who’s a good boy?”
The Hobby Materials
The Knight-Judicator is a beautiful model, and his pair of Gryph-Hounds are dynamic and beefy takes on the critters. There’s only a single option in the entire kit – the Greek-style crested helmet, or this odd head with a facemask and plume that I really don’t get. That second head’s aesthetic isn’t reproduced anywhere else in the Stormcast range, so I’m guessing it didn’t click with the sculpting team either. That quibble aside, I love this model, and his powerstance rules. I painted him in my typical scheme, and painted the Gryph-Hounds in black as sort of a manifestation of goodwill for my (at the time) sick black cat. She’s feeling much better now, even if she doesn’t have any teeth anymore. The included instructions are serviceable, and I’d want there to be a suggestion to be careful with that perilously fragile bowstring. Their painting guide will get a decent looking Hammers of Sigmar scheme down, but I don’t like their use of Gryph-Hound Orange Contrast paint on the pair of Gryph-Hounds. I know their name is on the bottle, but it makes them look like Cheetos.
The Gaming Materials
Further core rules are added this week, fleshing out these now-obsolete magic and prayer mechanics. A datasheet for our new Knight-Judicator is in here, as are some more of those little tactics sheets for the Knight-Arcanum and Lord-Imperatant. These are very cute, with a series of positives and negatives for each. The Knight-Arcanum is more durable than other wizards and is a great support character, but she can’t do too much damage in melee. The Lord-Imperatant has some good support abilities and is a decent fighter, but your opponent will likely try and kill him quickly. It’s pretty surface level but if you’re a newer player, getting that sort of guidance can be helpful.
I’ve heard games called a coinflip before, but that’s truer now than ever in this week’s mission, Heads You Lose. A collection of Stormcast heroes takes on a group of our Orruk and Gloomspite heroes in a character showdown. There’s a trio of objectives which give points every turn, but the the twist is that this is an Assassination mission as well. The Destruction player secretly picks an enemy hero to be the “Target” and one of their own to be the “Prize”, and they’re trying to kill the former and protect the latter. That seems like a lot of control to give the Destruction player, but when it’s a 5v5 hero deathmatch and your opponent rides up with a Lord-Aquilor and all you’ve got is Zarbag sans Gitz, it’s an interesting way to address the power imbalance.
Final Verdict:
A Knight-Judicator and his pair of birbdogs will set you back $37 normally, so the $13.99 cover price here is a hefty little savings. With the remaining $23.01, I recommend you get a nice sandwich, like the kind that comes in a basket with some sliced pickles. The rest of this issue is pretty good, with a kinda wackadoo mission and a mix of obscure and pretty well-known lore nuggets, but it’s not as good as the kind of Rueben you could order for $23.01 from a decent deli. Hell, you could even get a drink, some chips, and leave a generous tip with $23.01.
See you next issue, warhams.
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