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.
In a recent Independent Characters episode, I got to chat about how much lore of GW’s settings got established and fleshed out in the pages of White Dwarf. While reading some newer issues and their Flashpoint articles, I got the sense that this tradition is alive and well, at the very least in the case of Age of Sigmar. It’s easy to take for granted how much this is a living setting, and I’m not just saying that because of the upcoming transition to the Realm of Life.
The Narrative Materials
Despite the plague-ridden Skaven on the cover, our first article this week concerns the Ossiarch Bonereapers. These are Nagash’s most elite servants, constructs of bone who represent the orderly march of death Nagash likes best. They’re quite literally built into a caste-based system, rigidly adhering to their roles. How much autonomy any of them truly have is left as a mystery here, but with some of their number having ranks and proper names, it’s safe to assume that somewhere up that chain of command they gain some kind of sentience. Their bodies are crafted from bone, mostly gathered in the Bone Tithe, wherein they ride out to cities, tribes, and settlements, and demand just that – an osseous tribute of bone. When it’s satisfied, they’ll leave the place alone or even offer protection, but in the same way you’d protect your garden before harvesting its vegetables come fall. They will be back, they’ll want more next time, and when they return, the crypts and graveyards might already be empty. It’s something that can be written to be truly horrific or extremely comic booky, but here it’s high level enough that your imagination can do the work.
The next article is a recap of the Fury of the Deep set from 2022. This box pitted Fyreslayers, under the leadership of Flamekeeper Yaelgar, against Idoneth Deepkin, led by Thrallmaster Cascalan. Despite nominally both being on the alliance of Order, elves and dwarfs (or aelves and duardin if you want to honor the trademarks) never get along. The Fyreslayer magmahold of Ryftmar was a crumbling fortress, but few aside from Yaelgar knew that secret. Apparently the Idoneth did though, and they came to settle some ancient grudge or another. The recap of the events sound perilously one-sided – the Idoneth launch a surprise attack, magic mist paralyzing the duardin defenders, and then flood the place with waters from the Vitriol Sea. Eventually the place floods, the end. It doesn’t explicitly say Yaelgar and his diminutive nudist friends slept with the fishes, but it doesn’t look good for them at the end.
Fulfilling the promise of the cover, we get an article on the Skaven next. Goonhammer’s own Saelfe wrote an excellent Lore Explainer piece on them, far more comprehensive than either this article or my own knowledge base could convey. The extremely short version is that they’re mischievous, distrustful, swarming subterranean rat-men with wackadoo technology as dangerous to them as everyone else. Betrayal and subterfuge are baked into their treacherous DNA, and even their god, The Horned Rat, doesn’t care much for them. They’re comic relief, horror antagonists, or sometimes both depending on the author.
The Hobby Materials
If you couldn’t guess from the trio of lore articles, this issue doesn’t contain any new miniatures. It does, however, have a pair of paints: Knight-Questor Flesh and Coelia Greenshade. Knight-Questor Flesh is a pretty solid medium skintone, and I often use it as a highlight for darker skin, or as a base for a medium-dark skintone. Here they show using it to highlight wood, hair, feathers, and, of course, skin. Curiously, Coelia Greenshade isn’t used in any of the painting tutorial pages. It’s a great color; a versatile green-blue wash that’s perfect for giving a dank, mossy feel to rocks or building up a cool toned patina or animal skin.
The Gaming Materials
We get the Battle Trait for Kharadron Overlords, but that’s none too exciting at this point. More important is The Last Stand battlepack, the final set of missions in Stormbringer. A new City of Sigmar is being established, but is under attack by the forces of Destruction, keen to strangle it in the crib. Now the armies of Order have to defend it in a linked campaign. The next ten missions make up the campaign, with minor bonuses for victory in each battle. These bonuses range from picking deployment zones and bonus command points to control over priority. I like minor bonuses like this in a campaign; it gives the battles stakes without resorting to laborious bookkeeping.
For our first battle, Fall Back!, Aello Bladeborn is leading the forces of Order in a fighting retreat. Their hold in a ruined Aqshian city had to be abandoned to aid a city in Ghur, itself still holding on as the forces of Destruction burned and salted the earth around it. As they discreetly move towards the realmgate, Killaboss Snaglak Wall-Smasha is trying to ambush them from both sides of the gate, leading to this week’s mission. This battle has a pretty wild map, resembling a sideways capital T instead of your typical even rectangle. The forces of Order deploy on the narrow end, while Destruction takes the wide end, with a line dividing the two representing the realmgate. Any models standing on that realmgate line will be destroyed at the end of the battle round, and it’s up to the forces of Order to break through and get to the objectives behind it. It’s a very cool deployment map, and it gussies up what is otherwise a fairly standard mission. I’ve bemoaned uninspired missions that didn’t reflect their setup before, but this lives up to the story it’s trying to tell while providing a novel experience. In short: I’m very much here for it.
Final Verdict:
It’s a paint issue, and those are never the best value for the money. At time of writing, these two paints will cost you $12.35, but with international trade fuckery courtesy of the ghouls who are haplessly or not attempting to burn the United States to the ground, that might change sooner rather than later. God, it’s hard to write about toy soldiers in light of this day-in, day-out shit.
Dollar value of paints aside, it’s a good issue, with enjoyable lore and an inventive and fun mission.
See you next issue, warhams.
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