Allowing collectors to assemble collections of both Order and Destruction for Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Stormbringer Magazine is now on shelves and arriving through letterboxes as part of subscriptions! We recently took a deep dive into the value of the magazine, broke down the miniatures collection and checked out how many points you get for each army in our Stormbringer article, but we now have our hands on issues 1 and 2 and wanted to share what is inside the magazine!

Massive thanks to Hachette Partworks who have supplied us with a free subscription of the partwork series to review following the previous article!

If you would like to help support the site then why not pick up your Age of Sigmar reinforcements through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too!

I’ve also filmed a full video review of the issues, which you can see just below or over on YouTube

So let’s check out just what is included in issues 1 and 2!

Issue 1 – £2.99

Issue 1 will be in a lot of people’s hands already, but I still wanted to did into just what is included and the contents of the magazine itself in case anyone has not had the chance to pick it up yet!

Partwork series always tend to open with a cheap issue that grabs people’s attention, and from a miniatures point of view I think the first part does a decent job! Containing the push fit Knight-Arcanum and Killaboss with Stab-Grot that had originally been included in the Age of Sigmar Dominion launch box this gives players two fun characters to build up. Being push fit, it makes it easy for people who might be new to the hobby as no glue is needed. Now they will need removing from the sprue, and while you might be tempted to just twist the parts off the frame I would recommend investing in a set of sprue clippers (Subscribers actually get a set with their second delivery) – luckily decent clippers can be found easily from not only Games Workshop but also places such as Hobbycraft or even Amazon.

The models actually have a couple of optional parts too – the Knight-Arcanum has a choice of two different heads, and the Killaboss has an optional flail instead of the shield. The collection recommends building with the bare head on the Arcanum and the shield on the Killaboss to best represent the rules in the magazine, however completionists may want to pick up a second set of models to build up with the alternate parts, and at £2.99 this is not too costly either!

The magazine also includes a couple of additional bits for use when playing games or following the magazine to learn the rules. 6 dice (D6’s) are included along with a double sided battle mat for learning your first few games. Once side of the mat has circles superimposed on it in order to abstract the mechanics of movement – we’ll have a look at how this works a little later! You also get a poster featuring the gorgeous artwork from the Age of Sigmar 3rd Edition rulebook!

Also included in the magazine is a foldout piece that details every single unit that you will get over the run of the magazine (Though optional premium subscription extras are not detailed here), this also acts as a great way of tracking the collection and marking when each unit is built, painted and used on the battlefield!

So what about the contents of the magazine itself? I’d say this one is very much focused on introducing people to both the magazine series and the hobby itself, as I suspect a lot of people will be introduced to Age of Sigmar through this series and so the magazine needs to set the groundwork for establishing just what the Mortal Realms are, who the various forces are and introducing the concepts of the game. We get instructions on how to built the models and details of what is to come in future with painting guides and background.

One thing I really love about this magazine are the narrative flavour that you get when introduced to a new unit. In the above photo you can see how the magazine encourages you to generate background and names for your models, which is a really nice touch (There’s even space on the army collection handout for you to name them) – there’s also the Warhammer equivalent of video-game achievements for you to try and unlock with your units. For example, if your Killaboss uses 5 command abilities in a single battle then they unlock the “Supa-Kunnin'” achievement, which unlocks additional rules for your model further down the series. This is great fun and I can see people collecting this magazine as their entry into the worlds of Warhammer fully jumping on board with the narrative flare and feeling of these being their own unique characters!

We also get some basic introductory rules for how to do combat in a game of Age of Sigmar – this starts out with simplified concepts to demonstrate how the mechanics of the game work, I suspect as the magazine run continues we will see the rules fleshed out and expanded until by the end of the series collectors are able to play a full game of Age of Sigmar. Again, the magazine is initially focused at those who are younger or perhaps new to the hobby, and enables the magazine to teach the game over 80 issues in manageable chunks

Overall issue 1 is a great buy, and if you are on the fence about committing to the series I would highly recommend picking it up! From a value point of view you are getting a couple of cool hero models and a magazine for £2.99 – the models are not available separately, so in the value breakdown article I priced these at an approximate £21 for the pair as this is what similar sized character sets sell for, and like mentioned earlier are potentially worth picking up a duplicate of in order to build all available options. While the content is very beginner focused, I still think there’s great stuff in here such as the narrative name generation charts for your models!

Issue 2 – £5.99 (Free to subscribers alongside Issue 1)

Issue 2 is bundled together with Issue 1 for free if you are a subscriber, but is available in store for £5.99 – and may be a decent source of models if you are starting a Kruelboyz army!

The main draw for issue 2 is the sprue of 10 Kruelboy Gutrippaz – now for clarity these are the push fit models that were originally in Dominion and not the multi part kit currently available in stores. That said they are still fantastic models and are a battleline choice for your Kruleboyz army – meaning that you will probably want to pick up a couple of these to make the core of your army (Something easily done by picking up a second copy of the magazine.) While the full kit costs £32.50 for 10, I’m giving these a more conservative value of £20 – but that’s still a cracking buy attached to a £5.99 magazine.

This is also a step up for new collectors who may have only built the heroes from issue 1 – there are a lot more parts here, however being push fit these models are very easy to build and the magazine contains detailed instructions showing you exactly how to do this. While some people use glue for push fit models, personally I have only very rarely needed it in order to make a model stay together, finding that push fit tends to work fine (I would perhaps use a little glue to attach the model to the base however, as sometimes the peg holding them in place can come loose over time)

From a magazine point of view we start to see what likely to see from the series run. We open up with an overview of what the Mortal Realms are and are introduced to the concepts of the Grand Alliances with this issue taking a look at Order (covering the Stormcast Eternals, Kharadron Overlords and Sylvaneth) and the forces of Destruction (with the Ironjaws, Gloomspite Gitz and Kruleboyz). I expect all of these will be expanded as the magazine series continues, and again this is framed in such a way to gradually explain these concepts and armies to new collectors.

Following on from the fun narrative content in issue 1 we also get info on the Gutrippaz and multiple charts to roll on in order to generate background and names for not only the Boss but also names for each model in the unit and the name of the unit itself! Again fun achievements are included to unlock during games.

The gaming content this issue is focused on the concept of Armour Saves and expands upon the scenario in issue one in order to explain how these work and how some units have better saves than others. Again, like with issue 1 I think this is a great way of teaching these ideas to newcomers and particularly youngsters. If you are an experienced Warhammer player who has kids, then these scenarios are a great way of introducing the hobby to your children and getting them used to these concepts before moving onto more advanced mechanics

Again, I think this one is a great buy for the models, particularly if you don’t have Dominion and want to build up a Kruelboyz force as you will want a couple of units for your battleline choices. For £5.99 for a magazine and 10 models this is another nice gateway into the hobby!

We also get a look into the contents of future issues with issue 3 containing 5 Vindictors (a £16.25 value compared to the £8.99 magazine) and issue 4 containing 4 paints and a brush (The paints alone have a £11.95 value compared to the £8.99 magazine, basically giving you a free pot of paint)

We’ll be digging into each episode as they arrive through our letter box, so make sure to stay tuned to Sprues & Brews for all the Stormbringer news as it happens!

Published by Matt Crowther

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