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’ve been saying “execute issue sixty-six” out loud to my monitor for the last twenty minutes trying to write this thing and it’s still a blank document. Guess I’ll have to actually work this morning and write things the old fashioned way.
The Narrative Materials
Our narrative section is ceded largely to the Realm of Life this week, one of the few places across all the worlds of Warhammer that I think might be pleasant to live. Well, selectively pleasant. Being a realm governed by nature means that plants are always in bloom, the woods and animals are thriving, but I can only imagine my allergies would be going nuts. A lot of the pagan folkloric elements of Warhammer live here – monsters in the woods, appeasing nature deities before hunts, and so on – to the point that it makes me doubly sad Beastmen are no longer in Age of Sigmar proper. Naturally the other forces of Order also can draw Alarielle’s ire since they cut down her trees for their lumber, pollute her air with their factories, and all the other Man vs. Nature stuff you’d get after seeing the Ents destroy Isengard in Lord of the Rings. Among the beautiful glades and lush fields are also Chaos pus-swamps, venomous bugs, and other nasties since Nurgle invaded, but for the most part it’s pretty swell. “Life” isn’t too picky about whose life is flourishing. The realmstone of Ghyran is called cyclestone, a jade-like material that cycles through solid, liquid, and gas states. That’s a very fun fantasy concept, and I’d love to see more done with it.
Where life thrives so does civilization, and Ghyran’s got its fair share of cities that have sprung up over the years. Fertile soil means abundant food, rivers carry magically fresh water across the realms, while living wood and abundant stone make building materials easy to come by. There’s something I remember from an old interview with one GW writer or another (likely Phil Kelly but I don’t recall) where he said characters for a faction should be either archetypical or atypical, exemplifying the faction’s whole steez or going so far against the grain that they become interesting. I bring this up because it feels pertinent with the main cities of Ghyran. First is Greywater Fastness, the faction I painted for my own Cities of Sigmar. This is basically the Old World’s Nuln brought into the Mortal Realms, a giant city of industry and gunpowder, with its smoke-belching factories supplying Sigmar’s armies with weapons and wargear the realms over. The Sylvaneth aren’t too wild about these particular neighbors of theirs, and as a result the two couldn’t be allies on the tabletop back in 3rd edition. The Living City is instead more archetypical – Alarielle’s own city wasn’t built in a day, but it was grown in a week, and it’s a harmonious place where Sigmarites, Duardin, and Sylvaneth live together in peace. Last is Hammerhal Ghyra, one half of the Twin-Tailed City. The other half, Hammerhal Aqsha, resides in the realm of fire. The two halves support each other, with Aqsha being the home of industry, and Ghyra being the home of agriculture.
Last are a trio of battle record pages to name our upcoming Ironjawz heroes, give some background to our champions of Ghyran, and to our battlefields in Aqshy. I’m not gonna roll up on em now, but they’ll come into play soon enough.
The Hobby Materials
It’s a paint issue this week, and we’ve got a pair of oranges to slap on our palettes. Squig Orange is a desaturated light orange, great for applying the final layer of highlights to a less saturated red. It’s a niche color but if you’re going for a deeper, less vibrant red on your models it’s a good final highlight. Second is Wild Rider Red, which is nominally a red, but is really more of a reddish orange. It’s also great for highlights, I often use it as the first layer on colors like Mephiston Red to really make them pop. I’ve updated my scheme in my own documentation, but my old Stormcast painting tutorial has me using it pretty often. Painting guides walk us through all the places we’d use these two colors, and they’re consistent with my own experiences – highlights, gemstones, Orruk eyeballs and the like.
The Gaming Materials
We’ve got some tactics pages for Mollog’s Mob and the Aleguzzler Gargant. We are invited to take advantage of Mollog’s “diverse squiggly abilities” and I genuinely can’t think of better tactical advice in this or any publication.
Last is our mission, Fire in the Hole. A Destruction warband is bored after their victory, and are killing time until the next fight. One of their shamans has a vision of the earth opening up, fire and Stormcast Eternals spilling out. He reasons that by going to the place he saw in this vision and eating the Stormcast, they’ll harness that power. The bosses figure that’s as good a reason as any to fight, so they gather up the boyz and head to the prophesized location. To their surprise, the shaman was right, and a big fissure of fire has opened up in the middle of the field. This is represented on a pretty standard deployment map, with four objectives running across the center line of the field. Units standing within 6″ of them take D3 mortal wounds at the end of each battle round, as the geysers of flame open up. It’s a simple twist, quite similar to many recent missions, but I like the inherent risk and reward of objectives hurting you.
Final Verdict:
It’s a paint issue, so we know the value isn’t gonna be all there. It’s $9.10 worth of paint for $13.99, which ain’t exactly the best deal in the world. Considering how often we get expensive character models and the like for 60% off or better though, it definitely comes out in the wash. The magazine itself is a decent one, with plenty of background on the Realm of Life, some fun tables we’ll get to roll on soon, and detailed painting advice. It ain’t the best issue we’ve had so far, but it certainly wasn’t a bad one.
See you next issue, warhams.
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