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 drove by a school yesterday and the sign out front read “BRUH get those assignments turned in, that’s aura, no cap” and I cringed so hard I nearly crashed my car.

The Narrative Materials

Where last week we got the conclusion to Alyria Swiftwind’s story with Spearhead (no not that one) we now get the conclusion to Venom (no not that one) which is the Orruk side of the narrative wrapper explaining why our sundry miniatures are palling around. Golmrog City-Eata, our point of view Orruk Killaboss, has been shamed, beaten, and is without a WAAAGH! to call his own. He’s been doing orruky stuff all on his lonesome, and all that pillaging and murdering just ain’t the same when you’re doing it alone. He wanders around for a bit and stumbles into Ghur, where a massive gathering of all kinds of Orruks, Grots, and Ironjawz is laying siege to a city. He’s instantly challenged by another Orruk, starts losing the duel, and runs away from the fight, grabbing a crossbow on the way. He suddenly sees some Stormcast fighting the orruks around him, and reflexively shoots our Spearhead protagonist, Alyria Swiftwind, putting an end to her story. The same lightning blast that blew up the Orruk siege engine at the end of her tale also happens to kill the challenging Orruk boss from earlier in this one, and through one part cunning and three parts luck, Golmrog City-Eata finds himself in command of a whole new WAAAGH!. It’s funny to me that the “bad guy” of these intertwining stories actually gets his happy ending, at least until issue 80 invariably serves some follow up story that serves as a post-credit stinger teasing the inevitable Age of Sigmar partworks magazine series to come.

We get another anatomy article from Herman Splott, our Sigmarite scholar who can’t help but deliver his findings with maximum derision. This time it’s about Troggoths, or Trolls if you’re old and don’t care about copyrightable words. He introduces these monsters as “nonsense creatures… designed by a drunken god” which definitely sets the stage. Splott has sent several researchers into Trogg caves (and then more researchers to recover the first researchers’ bodies, and then more researchers to recover those bodies, who are surely returning any moment now) and his information is contradictory and slight. He theorizes that maybe he came up with Troggoths while high and they aren’t real, because what kind of universe would allow for an animal-fungal-mineral amalgamation that can change shape and regenerate? I’m going to miss these articles. This lens shows us more about the monsters of the setting, sure, but says just as much about its out of touch narrator, all while being genuinely funny and compellingly written. Maybe they’ll get republished on Warcom someday, but it’s very much in the same vein as The Regimental Standard and Hammerhal Herald, both of which had their tongues firmly planted in their Imperial regulation-sized cheeks. When Warhammer gets to be funny, it makes the horrifying parts that much more horrifying.

Next we get an article on Stormdrake Guard, the Stormcast dragon riders we’ve been collecting now for two weeks. The Draconith are a species of dragons allied to Sigmar, and every so often they pick formidable Stormcast Eternals to ride them to war. As any horse girl knows, the horse has to pick the rider as much as their rider picks the horse. Naturally, we have a battle record to roll on.

Merogrus Heldenstrike held firmly on her reins; her Draconith, Thunderclaw, was swooping through a Grot scouting party and paying little heed to the stability of its rider. The pair had been at this for days – spotting Orruk and Grot scouting parties and summarily turning them to ash and ground meat before they could report back to their chieftains. Merogrus’ primary goal was to find another rider for Thunderclaw’s nestmate, but with this many Grots to burn, who has the time to play talent scout?

The Hobby Materials

We continue collecting our Stormdrake Guard this week, with the second part of the kit. We still can’t assemble the dang things until next week’s issue, even if we have the instructions from last week. The paint section got the memo here too, as it instead turns us towards existing models to do some finishing touches across our collection. The results are wide-ranging – adding patterns to our Lord-Aquilor’s fur cloak, painting the nails on our Marshcrawla Sloggoth, and even doing some beginner-level non-metallic metals on our Vindictor regiment’s banner. They’re all handy little tutorials, even if their scattered nature means coming back to a model you may have thought finished nearly a year ago.

The Gaming Materials

This week’s mission is Severed Lines. Our army of Order is now safely behind the walls of a city of Sigmar, but their supplies aren’t going to last forever. Scouting parties have discovered that the city’s supply caches have been plundered, or its supply convoys never got to them in the first place. It’s now up to an Order raiding party to take those supplies back from the forces of Destruction. This is represented by the objectives in this mission, which are caches of ammunition. Any model with a ranged weapon can make an extra attack while controlling them, which is a pretty strong impetus to stand on those 40mm rounds. It’s otherwise a pretty simple, straightforward mission, but that’s a welcome little twist to make things a smidge more interesting.

Final Verdict

This is a much beefier issue than last week’s, but you’ll still need to collect 76, 77, and 78 to build your pair of Stormdrake Guard. That comes out to $43.97, a far cry lower than their $127.50 box price, and that alone makes this trio of issues a great value. This particular one having some good painting advice, a decent mission, and some fun stories makes for a welcome return to form after last week’s slimmer offering.

See you next issue, warhams.

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