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’ll be real with you: I don’t fully know when or where I should be including this fourth and final premium issue. Should I have written it immediately on receiving it? It came too hot on the heels of Premium Issue 3, so that would have been too soon. Save it for last? That seems disingenuous, given how long it has resided in my fathomless Closet of Opportunity. Why not review it now, moments before said closet is moved to another location, in an effort to review this before it is shuffled into some large unlabeled backlog box? Better to review it now than wait until it emerges from one box or another, long after the most precise and intentional packing is done.

The Narrative Materials

There’s precious little lore in this issue, as is typical of these Premium issues. Before we dig into the Battle Records, we can go over just what these Troggs are. A Dankhold Troggoth is a type of Troggoth who expands or contracts to fit the size of their caves – the titular Dankholds – and emerge often as a different size than when they went in. They’re not especially bright, and they fight alongside the Gloomspite Gitz on the regular. Somewhat smaller and more numerous are Rockgut Troggoths, a stony-skinned variety of rock-eating Troggoths that can be found all over the Mortal Realms. You are what you eat, I suppose. They too stick by the Gloomspite Gitz, where their hardy constitutions and natural magic resistance make them powerful shock troops.

Hormung the Dim hadn’t left his cave in, well, far more years than he could count. He ran out of fingers and toes to count several hundred years ago, and had just been guessing since then. In all that time, the magic of Ghyran had taken root on his body, where plants of all varietals now sprouted.

A trio of troggs dubbed “The Blong Thumpers” were searching for new crystals to munch on, and in their grocery shopping/spelunking came across Hormung, who was none too happy to have his fifth century of solitude disturbed. Before anything resembling a fight or flight instinct could kick in, the Thumpers scarpered out of the cave, where Hormung would likely be lost for at least another century.

The Hobby Materials

As you would likely assume, we have instructions on how to build these handsome lugs. The Dankhold Troggoth is extremely straightforward – the instructions don’t teach us how to build the Troggboss variant, but I like the look of the regular ol’ Troggoth better anyway. There’s a few little details you can add to his base, but it’s pretty minimal. The Rockguts, however, get loads and loads of options, making for one of the most customizable kits out there. Eight different heads, half a dozen different left and right arms, and three sets of legs that can all be put together in any combination you’d like to make your preferred selection of Rockguts. This is not only thorough instruction, but also excellent for would-be army builders who want a wide variety of poses and details across their army. The paint guide is similarly thorough, walking us through every detail on each of these models, and showing us techniques for how to paint them. These ask for a comprehensive use of everything we’ve learned so far, combining washes, drybrushing, glazing, and edge highlighting to complete these models. Honestly, walking through step by step and asking the reader if they’ve caught every bone and bit of rope on the models feels more like an I Spy book than a hobby magazine, but given how many little bits of bric-a-brac are on these models, it’s appropriate.

Holding these models and looking over the paint guide, it brings me back to my youthful summers at Historicon, where one year I played in an event called Fantasy Rules! which featured some kind of simplified Warhammer Fantasy ruleset. In that event, I took control of an Orc and Goblin army, and the satisfyingly chunky Stone Trolls which anchored my line. I don’t remember altogether too much about this game, but monstrous infantry – and those Stone Trolls in particular – have held a special place in my heart ever since. These Rockgut Troggoths are a modernization of those classic models, and while the details have changed, the spirit remains consistent.

The Gaming Materials

There’s rules here for both these units, but they’re out of date by now so I don’t think I’ll spend too long thinking about them. Their roles haven’t really changed in the newer edition, so the gist of “tough things that hit hard up close” is still as current as could be. Instead I’ll focus on the mission they come with, Unstoppable Force. There’s a tiny bit of fiction where an awakening Dankhold Troggoth named Thood groggily decides to smash some golden figures because it’s funny when they pop. That’s about it for setup this week. The mission has our new barbershop quartet of Troggoths take on a Lord-Imperatant and his Praetor bodyguard, and on each player’s Hero Phase they can add a unit to their army, arriving in their deployment zone. They duke it out over some objectives, and if either player is tabled, they lose instantly. It’s kinda wacky, but it’s a Stormbringer bonus issue mission, it’s not trying to teach you some core concept or anything. I dig it.

Final Verdict:

My napkin math has determined that these Premium packages cost $60 each, so we’ll have to compare that to the typical troll toll of these models’ MSRP. A Dankhold Troggoth is already $79 on its own, putting us fully in the black before factoring in the $62.50 price of a trio of Rockgut Troggoths. That’s $142.50 of ill-tempered Trogg for $60, which isn’t quite as wackadoo as the savings on the Kharadron package, but is still an excellent value. The rest of the issue is fairly slight as far as these things go, but with this much great plastic for such a good price, I’m not one to complain.

See you next issue, warhams.

Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.