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.

It’s been a hot minute since we had a Premium issue to write about, with the last being a Krondys-focused Stormcast issue back in week 18.5. We turn from the noble, majestic dragons of Dracothion to the decidedly less majestic but markedly angrier, fist-shaped dragons of the Orruk Warclans.

The Narrative Materials

This issue serves as the introduction to the Ironjawz; or it would if it had more to the lore section. Instead all we get is a single page on Gordrakk, the Fist of Gork. He’s the boss of bosses and the self-described strongest Orruk to ever live. He’s happily been destroying cities and cultures across the Mortal Realms, uniting increasingly more of the forces of Destruction under his banner. His ultimate goal is to fight Sigmar himself, proving that Orruks are the inheritors of the Realms, not humanity. For whatever reason, this chosen warrior of Gork has come to our little corner of the Mortal Realms, and we get to find out why in this issue’s Battle Record:

“Oi, I smells wiz-biz-boyz out here,” Gordrakk said to Bigteef, his massive Maw-Krusha. The two of them had been hunting the Stormcast sorcerer Avran Shieldbreaker across Ghur, arriving now in Garagevale. “Where’z da boiz?” he asked his companion, to no coherent answer. Their hunt had taken them bounding across the lands of Ghur, and Gordrakk and Bigteef had utterly outpaced the rest of the Ironjawz mob. No matter, thought the warboss – this would be an opportunity to gather more Boyz!

The Hobby Materials

The vast bulk of this issue is dedicated to the similarly-vast bulk of Gordrakk. Extensive instructions are given on how to build this big son of a gork and his even bigger Maw-Krusha, Bigteef. I did not have time to build and paint this bowling ball of a model in time for this review, so you’ll need to settle for Rich Nutter’s gorgeous take on the alternate build option from the kit, the generic Megaboss on Maw-Krusha.

This kit is broken up into five subassemblies, with most being reserved for Bigteef. He’s broken up into a body, each arm/wing, and his mask. Gordrakk is also kept separate. I think it’s possible to paint the model only keeping Gordrakk separate, but subassemblies are your friends. It’s not too complex a model to build, with most seams well-hidden between the scales of the big punchdragon. Most of this hefty modeling section is devoted to painting the big lug, using seemingly every paint in our collection thus far plus many we haven’t gotten yet. I will say, the process is very different rom my own, but the results look great, and any painter should be able to follow them to a similarly positive result.

Personally, this is one of the first Age of Sigmar models that really won me over. He’s emblematic of the Ironjawz range, displaying most of the textures and visual cues we’re still seeing fleshed out now. It turns out it’s very hard to go wrong with “big orcs in big armor” and even harder to go wrong when they’re on a big honking lizard. It’s a far more brutal take on the classic Orc on Wyvern archetype from the days of old, and while a part of me laments the loss of the Trish Carden dragons on Warhammer’s visual identity, the newer models are cool as hell in their own right and likely more appealing to people who aren’t currently losing their hair.

The Gaming Materials

We get a warscroll for Gordrakk in this section, and it’s him against the world in Herald of Mayhem. The bulk of our Stormcast collection takes on the big boss, and if they kill him, they win. If Gordrakk kills all of the Stormcast, he wins. Of course, no warboss worth his teef goes to war completely alone – every turn the Destruction player can take one unit from their Destruction collection and bring it onto the field. It’s a loosey goosey “I’m bringing all my toys to play” kind of mission, and I think that’s a fun way to use this big new model. At first I was hoping it would be a Krondys vs. Gordrakk kaiju battle, but you could always set that up afterwards. This is a better way to show off his relative power and scale anyway.

Final Verdict:

Each Premium issue clocks in at $60, according to my napkin math. The somewhat unusual price point of $137 is the MSRP for Gordrakk or his generic cousin, the Megaboss on Maw-Krusha. That discount is genuinely nuts, and if you already have Large Orruk On Cabbage in your collection, you can just build the other option or run multiple Megabosses in a list. The magazine itself is light on variety this week, though its painting section is honestly pretty fantastic. I think the mission would be fun once, just as a quick way to play with some toys for an hour.

See you next issue, warhams.

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