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.

I’m going to resist the urge to just write the word “Squigs!” until I hit this article’s typical wordcount (a neat 1,000, if you’re wondering) and will instead attempt to at least appear objective and professional.

Squigs squigs squigs squigs squi

The Narrative Materials

Contrary to my bouncy and boisterous intro, however, the first part of this magazine concerns the Flesh-Eater Courts. These gristly gatherings of ghouls and gribblies are possessed by a cannibalistic tendency, spurred on by their bestial vampire overlords. While Soulblight Gravelords get to mess around with the fancier, corrupted nobility (I repeat myself) aesthetic, Flesh-Eater Courts are firmly on the grodier side. They believe themselves to be honorable knights on a crusade, but are all deluded beyond relief. I wrote a bit about this in the Dawnbringers series, which fleshed out this idea. It’s been part of the lore for this faction for the bulk of Age of Sigmar, with no shortage of jokes about how “Bretonnia is still around, look at these guys!” Only recently have they gotten the model updates that reflect this a bit better, and some deeper backstory to back that up. Some of that is also detailed here with a few of their kingdoms getting boxouts, each of which are essentially a variation on that same theme. Sometimes they wound up buying into this delusion after some great moral and martial failing, other times through more arcane means, but one and all, they’re some kind of faded nobility gone mad. It’s cool stuff.

As alluded to, Squigs get their own article next, replete with a Battle Record to fill out. Squigs are not so much controlled as they are wrangled. These ill-tempered little gumballs bounce to and fro, biting away at whatever they’re pointed at. What interests me more is that these Squig herders don’t just see this as a job, but as a pastime. I wonder how long you have to Squig wrangle for a farm team before getting noticed by the major leagues.

Blakknit Grot-Grabba was wadding up spare cloth around the base of his grotty robe. “Ain’t no Squig-bite gettin through dis!” he said aloud, instructing his fellow Squig Herder. Grulslik took a break from his own work to ask “Ey boss, where’d this cloth come from anywots?” “Don’t you mind that none” said Blakknit, pausing his own stuffing and sewing to rip more fabric from the suspiciously grot-reminiscent mound of Squig droppings behind him. How much their improvised armor would actually do was yet to be tested; this particular herd of Squigs, the Headstompaz, had a resting irritation towards the rest of the world typically held only by the most reclusive of writers.

The Hobby Materials

Unlike usual, we get instructions for everything in the Squigs kit instead of just a single option. That mostly boils down to which variant of Squig Herder you want to build, but still. More impressive is the fact that every Squig head can go on every Squig body, meaning you could potentially build 100 Squigs without a single repeated body and head combination. This, of course, is the ideal army. The kit itself is wonderfully detailed, with a really pleasing depth to each Squig’s face. Heads are generally a face piece layered over a mouth, making what were once single-piece metal models into cute little goobers with a pleasing amount of dimensionality. I’m not as wild about the ones leaping off mushrooms, but I love the kit regardless. They get the typical paint tutorial treatment, which gets them to a pleasing finish, if not necessarily one as bright as I’d like. I also think they’re a great opportunity to add some wild colors to your army, while here they’re all presented in kind of a dull burgundy.

The Gaming Materials

The gaming section has the rules you’d expect for our Squiggly beasts, but more interestingly, has a section on army construction. It breaks down units into six key roles: Line Holders, Line Breakers, Snipers, Disruptors, Force Multipliers, and All-Rounders. Specific units from our collection are called out, and I think it does a good job at helping new players identify what units are good at. Everybody’s gotta have a job in an army, and while you can just throw together whatever units you like, they’re all designed to do something specific.

Players will ideally carry these lessons forward in this week’s mission, Orruk Hunt. The story continues from last week, and in the aftermath of the battle over the exploded magical artifacts, the forces of Order are cleaning up. Some Orruks escaped with stolen treasure, and Lord-Imperatant “Danny” Aello Bladeborn has sent a party to get those relics back, my favorite of which is “Shield, Unbreakable, Fragment of”. This culminates in a pincer maneuver, this time with the forces of Destruction boxed in. With their backs to the wall, these forces of Destruction get +1 to hit rolls while within 1″ of at least two Order units. It’s a pretty simple mission, but I like that bit of flavor in its mission rule.

Final Verdict:

A Squig Herd is a $59 kit at time of writing, so this cover’s MSRP of $13.99 is getting one for like 75% off. With how many I see in an average Gitz army, stocking up on this particular issue is a great way to build up a sizeable herd without breaking the bank. The rest of this issue is fairly slight, but even if the rules are an edition out of date, I like the breakdown of unit roles in the gaming section. And just to make sure I hit my wordcount:

Squigs.

See you next issue, warhams.

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