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.
There’s a little-known rule that all Warhammer magazines need to run for a minimum of 34 issues if they want to be carried by British newsstands. Google “Warhammer Rule 34” to find out more.
Edit: Goddammit I made a better version of this joke in Imperium 34, forgive me, my brain is absolutely cooked.
The Narrative Materials
We’ve got a super short narrative section this week, with only two articles. The first is on Grand Alliance: Death. If you’re interested in this army yourself, we’ve written up how we think their points stack up in AoS4. Anyway, this grand alliance is in service to Nagash, the Great Necromancer and current god of death. If you die in the Mortal Realms, you’re instantly drafted into the Skeleton War, courtesy of Nagash. Despite his predilection towards sterility and order, there’s still a load of variety in this grand alliance. You’ve got vampire aristocrats and their hordes of skeletons and zombies, the bone constructs of the Ossiarch Bonereapers, the delusional cannibals of the Flesh-Eater Courts, and Nagash’s petty pet project, the Nighthaunt. There’s maybe two sentences on each of these, along with a smidge of artwork. It’s not enough to really distinguish Ossiarchs from your classic rattle-me-bones skeletons or Flesh-Eater Courts ghouls from Soulblight zombies, but it gets the general spooky vibe across.
The second article is a Gloomspite Gitz naming table, which we’ll get to use in the coming issues as we gather more gobbos. I randomly rolled up Glorbag Brew-Masta, who I’m pretty sure I worked with when I was having one of several third-to-mid life crises and I worked at a brewery. I think he was smoking weed in the walk-in.
The Hobby Materials
It’s a paint issue, but fortunately the two paints this week are rather good ones. First is Incubi Darkness, a slightly desaturated dark blue-green that I use for all the shields on my various Chaos duders. It covers reasonably well, and is a great way to have a somewhat neutral tone on a model without just falling back on grey or brown. It’s used here mostly on Kruleboyz cloaks and the like. The second color this week is Nuln Oil, that ever-useful black wash that should be in every painter’s toolbox. There’s the temptation to pull a full Frank’s Red Hot and Put That Shit on Everything, but I believe it’s best used sparingly, and mostly on metals or greys. Quick tip: if you want to darken a color, don’t just shade it black. You can muddy things up that way. Consider the tone and temperature of the color you want to shade and how you want to do it. For instance, shading a yellow with an orange to intensify the color, or shading a red with a purple to cool it down and add some contrast. There’s a load of options out there, and just slapping Nuln on everything will only get you so far. The painting instructions this week mostly focus on using Nuln Oil to shade silvers, blues, and some white areas on our collection of Stormcast Eternals, as well as metals, leathers, wood, and squig skin on our Orruks and Gitz. There’s a helpful little section calling out some particularly tricky areas that will require cleanup across our collection, which I do appreciate. Understanding that you can go back and just fix a mistake is something I wish I internalized earlier as a painter.
The Gaming Materials
The bulk of the rules section this week concerns monsters, their rampages, and how to use them. None of these rules really translate to the new edition, and I usually forgot they were even there in AoS3, so seldom did I encounter them. I’ve listened to some interviews with Jervis Johnson where he talks about unnecessary complications added for the sake of adding new stuff, and this system very much struck me as one of those.
Naturally, monsters don’t feature at all in this week’s mission, Power Unleashed. A magical ley line has awakened, and is unleashing magic power around it. The Stormcast Eternals want to secure the area and build a Nexus Siphon to contain it, empowering the wizards of the Collegiate Arcane. The Kruleboyz instead want to use it to turn the whole area into a swamp. This is not the first time one of these missions has had this sort of narrative hook, but the competing motives of settling an area versus Floridaforming it are diametrically opposed. The Kruleboyz already have a head start on their Floridafication of the area, as everyone here is packing heat. Any unit contesting an objective can cast Arcane Bolt, even if it’s not a wizard, and even if it’s already been cast this turn. It’s wackadoo, Super Smash Bros. with items-on nonsense, and I’m here for it.
Final Verdict:
The two (admittedly good) paints in this issue will normally set you back $12.35, which ain’t great against this issue’s $13.99 cover price. There’s also precious little narrative to sink your teeth in here, although I do love the Gloomspite Gitz naming table. We’ve established that I’m a sucker for D66 naming tables over Stormbringer, Imperium, and the 40k Badcast’s own Mutant Melee segment, so you know I’m onboard for that. The mission is a fun one, and the hobby guide is generally useful. I don’t think this is the strongest issue or value by any stretch, and you could probably skip it if given the option.
See you next issue, warhams.
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