Helsmiths of Hashut, known to many in the Mortal Realms as the Chaos Duardin have been forging their daemon powered creations since the Age of Chaos. But with the events of the Vermintide throwing their long assembled plans into chaos, the Helsmiths are finally playing their hand and marching forth from their Ziggeruts.

Up for pre order today, the Helsmiths of Hashut army set contains not just an assortment of the new miniatures for the range, but also the brand new Battletome for the latest Chaos faction. In this full unboxing and review we’ll be checking out the new book and seeing how they play, what the background is and thinking about what may follow for them in the future, while also building and painting the contents of the new box to see what they look like in the flesh!

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us the new Helsmiths of Hashut army box to check out on the site. If you would like to support the site then why not order your Helsmiths through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

We’ve also filmed a full unboxing of the army set, flipped through the entire book and painted up the models, which you can see just below or over on YouTube

So without further ado, let’s dive into the secrets of the Helsmiths of Hashut

Helsmiths of Hashut Army Set Review

The first place to get hold of the Helsmiths of Hashut is the Army Set, which tends to be how Games Workshop put out most Age of Sigmar releases with a lot of new models – we saw similar for the Soulblight Gravelords recently for example. They tend to be a collection of new kits bundled with the Battletome and the warscroll cards at a discount.

This one has a price tag of £120 and includes 4 new kits, the limited edition Battletome and a set of Warscroll cards. Interestingly for this one, the contents of the Army Set is exactly what is going to come in the Spearhead when that launches. If you take the contents of the Spearhead at £87.50, that’s giving you the Battletome and cards for £32.50. That said, I’m not sure if the Spearhead will drop soon after this box – after all, we got the Gitmob Army Set early this year, and it’s only up for pre order today, so the discount based on individual kits is probably a little higher, and this box does give you a great assortment of kits (Some of which are duel build and well worth picking up multiples of)

The included Warscroll cards are always a nice bonus too, and you get them for every unit in the Battletome, not just the stuff in the box

The Limited Edition Battletome is very nice, with some foiled details and a great image of a Dominator Engine towering above the battlefield. The contents are the same as the standard version when that is released, you’re just getting a really nice cover if you opt for the Army Set.

So what about the kits? What do they look like when built and painted?

First up is a HQ option in the War Despot. This is a really nice small frame that puts together this combat and support focused character. There’s a nice mix of different textures on this one, and while I’m a little disappointed there’s not a Helsmith in the box, this guy was great fun to paint!

Next up is a sprue of 10 Infernal Cohort, who are the main infantry unit for the Helsmiths of Hashut. This kit actually builds two different warscrolls, Infernal Corhort armed with Spears or Blades. This isn’t just a weapon swap either, with both units having quite different roles. We’ll be looking at what they each do later in the review, but I opted for the Spears as I felt this is the better of the two units, especially for getting the most from your Daemonic Power rules (More on this later). I particularly like the fact that the musician has a Hobgrot lugging around his gong for him! You’ll notice that there’s a nice flat surface on the banner, and thankfully the box also comes with a transfer sheet to make this look great

There’s lots on this sheet – Icons for each of the four main Helsmiths of Hashut clans, along with a load of runes, icons and suitably daemonic looking script!

Next up is the Deathshriker Rocket Battery, which can also be built as a Tormentor Bombard. Both of these have very different rules and are suited to different targets. The Bombard is best at taking down Infantry and Cavalry, while the Rocket Battery is amazing against Monsters and War Machines. With a little work you could probably build this so that you can swap between the two loadouts – build up both weapons and use a little blutac or magnets to make them interchangable, though as I’ll be picking up another set I just decided to build the one I liked the look of most.

I would recommend keeping the crew separate to make things a little easier to paint, some of their detail will be hard to get to if you just stick it all together.

The final kit in the Helsmiths of Hashut Army Set is another duel build – the Dominator Engine! This can be built with Bane Maces (making it great at close combat, especially when an enemy hero is nearby) or with Immolation Cannons which are very short range but have the potential to put out a truck load of attacks if you fire it at multiple targets. There’s a few different head and icon options here so that if you have multiple in your army you can have them all look different. This is probably my favourite kit from the box, and I’m already excited to pick up another one.

All of this will be in the Spearhead too, but not knowing when that’s out I’m pretty tempted to pick up a second box to build all the alternate assemblies for these – and I suspect it’ll still be cheaper than getting them individually.

Helsmiths of Hashut Battletome Review

So with the models out of the way, the next big question is what’s the battletome like and how does the army play? Let’s dive into the new Battletome and check it out.

This is an interesting one as it’s the first new army that Age of Sigmar has had for a while. One of the most exciting things for me in this game is when we get something brand new that I can sit down with and absorb the lore before giving into the profiles to see just what they do on the tabletop.

Gamers of a certain vintage will know of the Chaos Dwarfs of Warhammer Fantasy. These were an army of evil Dwarfs who used daemon infused warmachines to rain hell down on their enemies, while their Hobgoblin cannon fodder did their best to distract and annoy. Released as a White Dwarf supplement, they never got a true Army Book as such (though the supplement was released in a physical version) and were later revisited by Forge World for the Tamurkhan’s Horde book.

When Age of Sigmar came into being, rules were released to use those old Chaos Dwarf models, but a lot of this range and rules slowly faded away.

Since then, there’s been lots of rumblings about Chaos Duardin and Hashut in the lore. We’ve seen Warcry warbands aligned to Hashut, tales of the Chaos Duardin making technology for various factions, and even the Hobgrots being a new take on Hobgoblins. A lot of people have been super excited about them coming back, and in the book we get a lot of lore covering exactly who they are, what they do and who their god actually is.

If you want to go into this book without any spoilers then make sure to scroll down to the next section covering the Faction Rules – for those who want to know a little more then we’ll continue with some spoilers after the Helsmith!

Still with us? Ace! So yeah the book gives us a really good deep dive into the Helsmiths, or the Zharrdron as they are called in their own tongue. We learn that Hashut was actually the brother of the other Duardin gods and back in the mists of time the siblings were working out which of them would look after each Realm. Heshut had hoped to tend to Aqshy and Chamon, but his siblings relegated him to Ghur, which he saw beneath him – and slowly his bitter resentment grew.

In his rage he managed to find the Forge of Souls in the Realm of Chaos and sort to forge gifts that would be used to get revenge on his kin. Grimnir saw through this however, and his sister Valaya enacted a plan that would banish Hashut at the cost of her also vanishing forever (I do wonder if this is setting up her return at some point too)

Years later, the Duardin who has followed Hashut had fallen upon bad times – their lands were besieged and in their desperation they listed to the whispers of Hashut, who had now become a dark and sinister god. Hashut taught them how to bind Daemons into crafted things, and how to use Daemonic essence as a power source (All those green flames on the models – those are the souls of Daemons being burned in order to power the warmachines!). This twist on Daemon Engines not only being bound with daemons but also fueled by them puts them at odds with some of the other Chaos factions who see this is an insult against their gods.

I’m really interested to read how all this plays out further, as it’s good for the lore to be shaken up every now and then! There’s lots of info in here about the structure of Kharrdron society, lore about all the units and information about the different clans and I had a great time reading through it.

Faction Rules

So with the background out of the way, the thing a lot of people will be excited about is how they play!

The main mechanic for the Helsmiths of Hashut is Daemonic Power. This represents how the Helsmiths lay waste to the land, channel Daemonic Essence and imbue it into their own units. Every turn (each players), the Helsmiths can choose to place a Desolation Token on an objective or terrain piece that they control. Then on the Helsmiths turn they can place a Daemonic Power token on units for every Desolation Token on the battlefield. So by the end of the game you could have 10 Desolation tokens on the board, with the ability to place 10 Daemonic Power tokens on your units. Units can have up to three tokens placed on them, with every unit having a trio of powers that activate based on how many tokens they have placed on them. There’s a couple more ways of getting Daemonic Power tokens too – some extra ones can be granted for a command point, and Infernal Cohort with Spears can also be used to give friendly units extra ones. You remove them all from your units at the start of each turn, and any unspent are lost – so the main jigsaw puzzle here is allocating them as best fits each turn. It’s a shame there are not any tokens to represent these in the box, so might be a good idea to get some suitable dice to mark them.

There’s 4 Battle Formations and they all revolve around giving units with 3 Daemonic power tokens an additional ability.

Hashutite Host is all about your Infantry – when they have 3 tokens they get to roll an aditional 3 dice when rallying.

Bullfather’s Horns favours Cav and Monsters, giving those units +2 move when they have 3 tokens

Arcane Dominance gives your Priests and Wizards +1 to casts and chants when they have 3 tokens

Castigation Battery is probably my favourite one, as it gives Warmachines +1 attack when they have 3 tokens, and you are going to be bringing a lot of guns!

The Helsmiths of Hashut get 3 Heroic Traits. Servile Automaton allows your hero to make a nearby Dominator Engine become a bodyguard – the hero gets a 5+ ward save (if on foot) and the Dominator gets Strikes First, a really nice combo! Fire You Worms is an amazing one which essentially allows a nearby unit to “overwatch” when they are charged! The picked unit only hits on a 6, but this is really good considering how much firepower you have! Finally An Eye for Weakness is probably the strongest one, you pick a unit every hero phase and all your Helsmiths get +1 to wound against it – only a 18″ range here, but very powerful.

There’s also 3 Artefacts – Scroll of Petrification is an interesting one, its a one use item that gives a unit a 2+ ward save, but they cannot use any abilities, be targeted by abilities and can be moved through by enemy models if they wish to. This is really cool and could be a get out of jail card to keep a unit alive at a critical moment of the game. Crucible of Hate is another one use item, this one allows you to get 3 Daemonic Power on the bearer, at the cost of not being able to get Daemonic power for the rest of the game – could be handy to trigger a decent ward save, but I feel there’s better options. Finally Gauntlets of Punishment is a shooting attack that does D3 mortal damage to a target on a 2+, I quite like this one for the free mortal wounds every turn.

Surprisingly the Helsmiths of Hashut don’t get a manifestation lore or a terrain piece (I suspect these will follow in their next book) but they do get a spell lore and player lore. Their spells are fairly no-nonsense with Hateful Fractures halving movement of a target, Ashen Smog making a terrain piece obscured while doing mortal damage to all enemy units contesting it, and Molten Metal being a blast from the past – you roll 2D6 and deal 1 mortal damage for every point that beats the target’s armour save.

As for Prayers, Black Fumes of Hashut is an Unlimited spell that has you roll a dice for each model in the unit, dealing a mortal damage for each 5+, or for each 4+ on a casting roll of 8. I really like this one and it’s got the potential to decimate big units when cast fully charged. Furnace Blessing increases rend on your units, and also gives them Crit Mortals when boosted and finally Storm of Obsidian Shards deals mortal damage and reduces the Control of a target, and can be put on an additional target when boosted. I feel the prayers are pretty powerful and multiple priests will be a good shout when list building.

Warscrolls

So let’s check out the new units and see what they all do!

Urak Taar – The First Daemonsmith, and Taurus riding Warmaster. He’s pretty cool with a ranged attack with 6 attacks and crit two hits, each with the potential of causing D3 damage, and a reasonable if low AP melee profile (The Taurus is pretty good with 6 attacks that hit on 4, wound on 2 are rend 2 and 4 damage on the charge). He is a Wizard (2) and his casting improves as he gains Daemonic Power. At 1 token he has a 6+ ward, and 2 he is +1 to cast and a 5+ ward, and at 3 he is +2 to cast and also has a 4+ ward against magic). His unique spell has you draw a 9″ line between two points on the battlefield, with the chance to do Mortal Damage to anything under it, and he has a cool ability that lets you shift around your Daemonic Power tokens in the enemy turn too!

Daemonsmith on Infernal Taurus – Is only a level 1 wizard, and doesn’t have a unique spell, but if you are going Centaur heavy then you’ll want to bring him along as he gives friendly cav the ability to fall back and charge, and take no damage when they fall back. Not quite as strong as Urak Taar, but that Cav ability is so useful I’m going to have to weigh up which of the two centrepieces to take! His ward save improves as you give him tokens, similar to Urak, though he doesnt get any cast bonuses.

War Despot – This is your combat hero who does the regular “pick a unit to fight after he fights” thing, but in addition to this he boosts the Control of units within 6″, with this range increasing by 6 for every token on him.

Daemonsmith – This is your infantry caster and healer! His main ability allows you to heal D3+x health to Warmachines where x is the number of tokens he has on him. It starts at a 6″ range, but like the Despot this increases as you give him tokens. Both of the Taurus characters have the Warmachine keyword too, so you’ll want to bring at least one of these for healing duties.

Ashen Elder – This is the only Priest in the army so far, and as long as he is standing next to a piece of terrain with a desolation token on it he gets a free ritual point every turn. It’s not just prayers this guy has to offer though, as he makes friendly units ignore the first point of damage they suffer each turn – like with the other heroes this aura starts at 6″ and increases as you give him power.

Infernal Razers with Blunderbusses – This is the first of the two ranged infantry units in the book, and these boast a longer range and less shots but damage 2. Stock they have no rend, but gain a point of rend for each token on them. They also have a chance at giving whoever they shoot at Strikes Last, which is really nice.

Infernal Razers with Flamehurlers – The other ranged option is lots of shots at short range but only 1 damage each – again they start with no rend but increase as you give them tokens. These guys have a chance at reducing the OC of targets they shoot at.

Hobgrot Vandalz – These guys have a very similar profile to the Kruleboyz version, but with a better armour save and no ranged attack. Instead, at the start of the game they make a free move, to take their place as cannon fodder ahead of the Helsmiths of Hashut lines.

Infernal Cohort with Blades / Spears – There’s two different profiles here but I’ve lumped them both together here. Attack profiles are much the same, just the spears are anti-charge and anti-cav while the swords are anti-infantry. Both units also have increasing Ward saves based on how many tokens you have given them in much the same way as the Taurus characters. Both units are very different in their abilities however. Armed with Blades they never move less than an extra 4 inches when running, while armed with Spears they are able to give a friendly unit one Daemonic Power Token as long as they are sat on an objective. For me, spears win out for this utility to maximise token placement.

Bull Centaurs – These are one of my favourite units in the book, and work particularly well with a Smith on Taurus. They have pretty good statlines with 4 attacks that hit and would on 3 and deal 3 damage on the charge – they only have rend 1, but cause mortals on crits. In addition, you roll a dice for each model on the charge (adding 1 for each token on the unit) and for each 6+ you cause mortal damage. I feel a big unit of 6 will be great. they also get to increase their charge by 1 for each token too!

Anointed Sentinals – These guys have less attacks, but have a brilliant ability in that they are Strike First when they Counter Charge. A brilliant unit to try and take advantage of a Counter Charge into a fragile unit. They also get bonuses to charge rolls based on how many tokens they have, so this makes them really reliable at counter charging.

Deathshrieker Rocket Battery – I love this thing. 3 attacks base (which can be boosted by the warmachine formation) with each shot dealing D3+2 damage or 5 damage if the target is a Monster or Warmachine. On top of that they also deal Mortal damage to every other target within combat range of the main target! Get this up to 4 attacks with the formation and you can deal up to 20 damage to a monster. Only rend 2, but still really nasty

Tormentor Bombard – The other ranged warmachine, this one has extra rend against infantry and cav and 4 attacks base, but the D3 damage makes this a little more swingy. It does have a really nice ability that can stop units that are hit by it from using commands however. I feel the Rocket is a little better, but there’s defo a place for this too.

Dominator Engine with Bane Maces – Another unit that I love! This thing hits like a truck with 4 attacks base that can do 4 damage on the charge (If only at rend 1) – what’s really cool is that it increases it’s attacks and movement for each token on it, meaning fully juiced up it has 7 attacks! On top of that, if after it has fought for the first time a turn it’s within 3″ of an enemy hero then it can fight again (with strikes last) meaning that this has the potential to do up to 56 points of damage in a single round of combat!

Dominator Engine with Immolation Cannons – Another mental unit, though a very niche one. It’s packing a short range 8″ cannon that starts with 5 attacks. It has the same Daemonic Token rule as the other version, so give it 3 and it has 8 attacks. It’s a warmachine, so in the Warmachine formation it gets 9 attacks, and then if you target 2 or more units you gets an additional 2 attacks for every target – so if you are in range of 9 targets then it would get 3 shots against each of those 9 targets. it’s going to be rare that this goes off to that extent every game, but I love this mechanic and think it could catch people out, especially as it can shoot in combat.

Spearhead

As mentioned earlier in the article, the Helsmiths of Hashut Spearhead actually consists of the contents of the Army Set. A Despot, a unit of Infernal Cohort with Spears, A Tormentor Bombard and a Dominator Engine with Immolation Cannons. All of these units are decent in Age of Sigmar, so I don’t think anyone will be disappointed building these models in that loadout. Hopefully the stand alone spearhead comes sooner than later, but the Army Set is still a good buy until then! From a rules point of view we get a slimmed down version of the Daemonic Power mechanic, with the player getting tokens equal to the battle round number and allocating just like they would in the full AOS rules.

I feel the Dominator is going to do really well on the small Spearhead battlefield too, though it doesnt get bonus shots for shooting multiple targets here.

As ever, a full painting guide is included, which does a decent job at replicating the box art for those wanting to get dug into painting Helsmiths.

Path to Glory

I was really hoping that the Path to Glory section would give us the option of making a Centaur hero, but sadly that isnt in the book (Hopefully a sign that we get a Bull-Centaur hero in a future book), but this does give you the chance to create your own combat character, helsmith or priest. all three of these can be mounted on two different flavours of Taurus too, so im planning on created a mounted Priest, as I love the prayers in this battletome. Interestingly, there’s also an upgrade to made a non-priest get the Priest(1) keyword, so there’s lots of potential here for tooling out your characters.

Two new paths are included too, one for Heroes and another for non-heroes, with some nice options for ward saves and healing abilities.

Helsmiths of Hashut Armies of Renown

The Helsmiths of Hashut get two new Armies of Renown in the book, the first is Taar’s Grand Army which represents the Daemonsmith heavy forces of The Forge Anathama. Instead of Daemonic Power tokens, the army instead gets a different cumulative ability every turn. Battleround 2 all weapons are Crit 2 hits, BR 3 Gives you +1 to cast and chant, BR 4 has crits trigger on a 5+ and BR 5 increases the power level of your wizards and priests. In addition to this, all War Machines have a 6+ ward save and you can recycle slain infantry units for 1 CP. This is a pretty solid Army of Renown, and they also have a couple of unique spells and prayers that are pretty decent too – they can stop enemy units from scoring criticals, and have the ability to subtract attacks from enemy units and make them strike last, while also making your units ignore the first point of damage each turn (and thats ontop of your hero who can already do this) – I really like this one and plan on giving it a go

The other one is Ziggurat Stampede, and this is all about an army of Cav and Monsters being led by a Daemonsmith on Taurus – This one is really fun too, for each unit that charges you get +1 to charge on every other charger, and this stacks so if you charge with everything you’re going to end up with some silly long charges! All of your units are allowed to Power Through each turn, and you can also spend a CP to allow a unit to fall back and charge. They also get a unique spell lore including ways of increasing the rend of your units and make terrain pieces Obscuring.

Regiments of Renown

The Helsmiths of Hashut also get two Regiments of Renown that can be taken in all Chaos armies. The Curse Steel Battery gives you one of each artillery and a Helsmith – the Helsmith gets a spell which lets your units ignore the first point of damage each phase, and the regiment has a rule where if you spend a command point you can count any of the war machines as having 3 Daemonic Power Tokens to get the best from their abilities

The other one is Seeker of the Dread Durge and this consists of a Dominator with Maces and an Ashen Elder. This one is a little weird, as it has a rule that allows the Ashen Elder to get ritual points if it’s on a terrain piece with a Desolation Token, but I can’t see any way of placing those tokens in this regiment – hopefully an FAQ drops to clarify this!

Summary

So what do I think of the Helsmiths of Hashut? Well this is a really fun book and a great range of miniatures. It’s always fun when a new army comes to Age of Sigmar, and especially so when it’s inspired by a Warhammer Fantasy army that I loved. I think this is going to be a fun one to play around with, most of the mechanics revolve around best placing your Daemonic Power Tokens, and I think it’s going to take a couple of games to get to grips with this mechanic. I also expect that this army will be expanded further in the future. I feel a manifestation lore and terrain piece are more that likely on the horizon along with a centaur character and more warmachines to capture some of the older pieces that existed in the past.

Hopefully it’s not long to wait until we get the full army release so I can paint up some of the other kits, especially the Taurus and the Centaurs!

Age of Sigmar may be 10 years old, but it’s still got cool things coming out breathing new life into it!

The Helsmiths of Hashut Army Set is up for pre order today and is released Saturday 27th Septmber

Games Workshop provided Sprues & Brews with a free copy for review purposes.