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.
Wouldn’t you know it, between all the 40k hubbub this Grotmas, we got some Age of Sigmar goodies too! Check out our review of the new Regiments of Renown, and see which ones are worth your time. I didn’t have anything to do with that review, but you should read it anyway. Hell, maybe that’s precisely why you should read it.
The Narrative Materials
This week opens up with the Maggotkin of Nurgle, a faction at the top of my “I don’t want to paint these guys ever” list. This corpulent crew of diseased daemon dudes is buckwild about being sick. Like shouting from rooftops about how cool it is to have the Flume Flu, Bubonic Buttdump, or whatever gross ague they’ve most recently collected. They want to transform the Mortal Realms in Nurgle’s image, creating plague gardens and sickly swamps as tribute to their god. There’s also a disease here called the “Chortlin Murrain” so I got to learn what “murrain” means. It’s an antiquated term for an infectious livestock-born illness. Let nobody say this wasn’t educational.
While Nurgle is all about a perverse take on life and rebirth, our next article concerns endings – namely the afterlives and underworlds of Shyish. It’s explicitly stated that souls arriving in Shyish find themselves in the afterlives they believed in, so if your culture thinks everything’s all rosy after passing – good news! You’ll find yourself in paradise, provided Nagash doesn’t nab your soul for ghostly manual labor. Between these realms of the dead are cities of still-living people, kind of like living in a more temperate Florida. Crusades and campaigns need to deal with the constant presence of the restless dead who might try and drag the living down, ignore them, or in some cases, even aid in their cause. Alliances of convenience are as common as games with more than two players that actually finish in a reasonable amount of time – they’re not impossible, but they sure are rare. A few key settlements also get boxouts here, from the Ossiarch strongholds of Ossia and Necros to the underworld of Hallost, where dead heroes fight the forces of Nagash. Now a faction of undead good guys is fascinating, and I’d love to see more about that. Dolorum is Lady Olynder’s seat of power, a Nighthaunt wasteland where the ghost host with the most sallies forth. While Flesh-eater Courts are everywhere, The Prime Innerlands (more like Prime Innardlands, amirite?) are rife with them, as that’s largely where mortal populations are centered.
Lastly is a Battle Record on Sneaky Snufflers. These are the foragers of the Gloomspite Gitz; grots who take their Snufflesquigs out to hunt mysterious fungi in the field. When the Bad Moon rises, fungus blooms, with Looncap mushrooms and the like sprouting for these Grots to collect. Said mushrooms drive the Gitz mad, turning them into frothing berserkers in the field, all of which the Sneaky Snufflers find very funny.
Gobzat Hacknibbla felt the tug of his Snufflesquig, Daisy, as she yanked the diminutive Grot towards imminent danger. The town of Carportia was well defended, and Gobzat didn’t exactly want to put himself or Daisy in range of the Carportian guns, but onward she pulled. Were there even mushrooms this close to the ‘umie fort? Daisy was clearly keen to find out, that is, until XYZ heard a sudden “Click!” and “Bang!” and the next thing he knew, his Snufflesquig, their haul of fungi, and most of his own body were flying in different directions. His last thought was that landmines were a dirty trick – the boss would’ve loved it.
The Hobby Materials
This week’s models are the Gloomspite Gitz equivalent of truffle pigs, Sneaky Snufflers. While the kit doesn’t have that many different options, there’s a load of variety with how you build them instead. You can put any grot head on any body with any mushroom basket (which are actually upturned spiders), and they can take any Snufflesquig while they’re at it. The Snufflesquig noses trigger a certain trypophobic discomfort in me that I’m not wild about, but the kit is excellently engineered. There’s a painting guide which is pretty comprehensive, though I wish they went for a brighter color on the Squigs; the shaded Khorne red they use is too dreary for them in my opinion.
The Gaming Materials
Predictably, our Snufflers have their own Warscroll, and lest we forget about our Sylvaneth collection, there are some tactics articles there too. They generally still ring true, as the Spirit of Durthu certainly is still a powerful monster worth including in a list.
Our mission this week is The Motherlode, following up on a Destruction defeat last week. The Orruk Killaboss Snaglak Wall-Smasha has found a field with mounds of what must be buried treasure, only to loudly and violently find out they are magical landmines. An Order patrol nearby goes to investigate, as they didn’t lay those mines either, and they’re clearly laid around something worth protecting. This is represented on a map with an unprecedented nine objectives which players can cut out from the back page of the magazine. At the end of each player’s turn, before scoring victory points, that player may choose to investigate any objective markers they control. They roll a D6, and on a 1-3 the marker explodes, removing it from the battlefield and causing causing D3 mortal wounds to each unit contesting it. On a 4-6 they score a point immediately. After that, players score normally. Interestingly, you don’t have to search the objectives, and nothing says you can’t search them multiple times. Cowards can enjoy their nine objective game, but for players with some courage, this scenario sounds fun as hell.
Final Verdict:
Sneaky Snufflers are a $45 unit, so getting them for a third that price with this issue’s $13.95 cover price is a great deal. The painting guide for them will get some good results, and the lore section is informative and reasonably enjoyable. This mission is also one of the first I’ve encountered in this magazine where I wanted to drop what I was doing and play it today. Looks like we’ve got another banger in our hands, folks.
See you next issue, warhams.
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