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.
Age of Sigmar is going through a pretty cool little refresh at the moment with the Scourge of Ghyran… event? Rules pack? I don’t know what you’d want to call it, but it’s meant a bunch of free new rules for everybody, and if you’re into AoS enough to read this column, you’ve probably got some fancy new rules to play with. Why don’t you read the words of several smarter and better-informed writers here at go on hammer dot com and see what they think of them?
The Narrative Materials
On the cover and leading the charge this week is Archaon, the Everchosen. He’s the very best at being the very worst – bar none the absolute meanest son of a gun to ever engineer the end of the world. Despite having blessings from all four Chaos gods, he doesn’t like them or any other god out there. Hating what gives him power is an interesting inversion on the typical “for the Dark Gods!” and “Blood for the Blood God!” battlecries that pass for characterization most Chaos dudes get, but you don’t get much interiority from these high-level articles. The Chaos gods themselves even snatched him up from the destruction of the World-That-Was, hoping that maybe this time in the Mortal Realms he’d play ball. Since then they’ve even tried to kill him, just for funsies, and he’s fed all their champions to his mount, Dorghar. With or without the blessings of the Chaos Gods, he’s been wreaking havoc, tearing down civilizations, and doing Big Bad Shit from the Age of Chaos through the Age of Sigmar. Maybe the Horned Rat will try something with him next and we’ll get a giant rat mount option, I dunno.
One of the strongest defenses against Chaos isn’t a bastion – it’s a Bastian. Bastian Carthalos is the Lord-Commander of the Hammers of Sigmar, leader of their entire Stormhost and one of the greatest warriors and generals in the Mortal Realms. We didn’t see him for the first few years of the game because he was running the show from Azyr, but now he’s sick of his desk job and ready to pound some faces in with his giant hammer, Uskavar, the Sunderer. Now what’s he doing with our humble host? Why, let’s roll and find out:
The Sigmarite settlement of Garagevale had never quite taken hold, its log walls and cobbled together houses nearly falling to ravaging Orruk warbands, week after week. While such a small hamlet would normally be below the notice of a man of his stature, Bastian Carthalos knew the importance of optics: if the people of Garagevale were being watched over by the very Lord-Commander of the Hammers of Sigmar, then Sigmarite settlers from Ditchburg to Shedbury would feel that maybe they too had the eyes of the Stormcast Eternals upon them. Inversely, the grots and orruks raiding these towns would live in fear, knowing that these towns would be defended by more than just rangy farmers and fishermen. Bastian gathered a half dozen of the Hammers’ most impressive heroes and shot down to Garagevale in a bolt of lightning. It was time to show the citizens of the Mortal Realms who was watching out for them.
The Hobby Materials
This month we get a banger of a model – Bastian Carthalos, Lord-Commander of the Hammers of Sigmar. I’ve already written a more comprehensive review of this model, but a slightly younger version of myself can give you the gist:
Bastian Carthalos (who I just typoed as Bastian Stormcast) is probably pound-for-pound the most Stormcast per inch of Stormcast you can get. He crystalizes the newer Stormcast aesthetic into an absolute banger of a model, with enough detail to make a wash and drybrush painter happy, but plenty of smooth expanses of cloth for anyone who uses blends, airbrush, or freehand detail. There’s a great mix of details and textures on him and I found him to be a joy at every step from unboxing to placing him, finished, in my display cabinet. While there are a couple minor quibbles – namely a slightly too soft beard and the aforementioned trickiness with assembling the cape – it’s nothing that I would say should steer someone away from this model.
The guide here suggests painting the body, head, cape, and base all separately, but I painted mine all in one piece without issue. His pose is open, his cloak billows, and his base is wide enough that I didn’t have trouble reaching any particular detail, and his head stood out enough that I could paint it attached as well. No shade if you go this route though, and the painting instructions will certainly get you a good result. We’re far, far past just doing a few base coats and waiting for Nuln Oil or whatever.
The Gaming Materials
Now we don’t technically have to take Bastian with us into the Valley of Shadows, but this week’s mission is a character-centric smackdown, so why wouldn’t you? The forces of Order are licking their wounds after a particularly rough battle last week, but Bastian Carthalos has shown up to tell them where a repository of shadowstone is. With this realmstone of Ulgu, they’ll be able to hide their troops and surprise the enemy in future battles. A party of heroes volunteers to find the magic rocks, and a hidden spy from the forces of Destruction finds this out and sends their own party out to hunt the heroes and take the realmstone. In this week’s mission, each player takes five Heroes, and they deploy on a small table. There are four objectives, and when a unit contests one, you roll to see if it’s the one true objective or not. Whoever holds that one objective at the bottom of the fourth turn wins. I’ve played plenty of missions like this and they can feel wildly swingy – a player might get punished for trying to identify objectives early, only to automatically make the objective their opponent holds the “true” one, or a player can get their objective on the first try and now their opponent has to come and take it after spreading out. I don’t mind something swingy like that in a game this silly though – Oops! All Heroes! is a fun way to ensure nobody takes this seriously or expects altogether too balanced a showdown.
Final Verdict:
Right now the big boi Bastian costs $45, so nabbing him for this issue’s $13.99 cover price feels real good. At that price, you could even justify grabbing two and converting up your own cool Lord-Celestant or whatever. The lore section is decent but scant, while the hobby guide is downright comprehensive. I feel the one drawback to these later issues is that the longer tutorials don’t give room for as much background or narrative on the setting, but by issue 72 you’ve probably got a decent feel for the characters and the setting and no article about a particularly obscure Glup Shitto is required reading.
See you next issue, warhams.
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