First Look: The Age of Sigmar Starter Set, The Age of Sigmar Painting Guide, White Dwarf 75

Well my order came into today, quite excited about that!

While I am now knee-deep in clipping, positioning, and gluing, I wanted to take a quick First Look at everything before the deeper reviews.

White Dwarf 75

This is most certainly your primer/introduction to the Age of Sigmar. There is some introduction about the universe, a few photo galleries with text about who the two armies in the starter set are and then a bunch of begginer information. The rules are in there, how to clip and clean models, how to glue and paint. A lot is very basic, but that's to sell it to potential new players. The art is a mix of photos of the models and actual art, and it's all very striking. There are even a few hints at other armies in there. I'm sure once I dive deep, I'll start pulling out that savory lore and world building I'm into.

Starter Set

This is a beefy box set! You get a bag of dice, some whipping stick measuring sticks, a bag of bases, a laminated card stock rule sheet, and of course the starter book and sprues of models. The models are gorgeous, the few I've put together already are full of detail and very sharp. They have weight and movement to them and are very well done.

The book starts with more lore and information, as well as a few hints at alternate Stormhosts and Warbands for the Storm Host and Khorne armies. After that, there is six scenarios that work as both a linked campaign and tutorial. Each has some fluff that sets up what's going on and it also starts with a few models and rules and gradually adds more until all the models on both sides are used. It looks to be an interesting way to introduce the game and runs parallel to the novella that I'm reading it seems.

There is also a few hints at other armies to come as well as the warscrolls for all the units and also Battalion Warscrolls, which are basically bonuses for taking a specific "canon" formation of troops. If we see that carry forward, that will be very cool. I want to start reading into the warscrolls and not only looking at what tactics the different unit abilities do, but what lore I can pull out from how the abilities manifest.

Painting Guide

This actually surprised me. For a 120 page book, the first 30 is full of deeper lore! Not only do each starter set miniature get more detail about what they are, but they also have named retinues and tribes for each unit! Beyond that there is some good detailed close-ups and step by step paint steps for every unit. Again, I'm not planning on painting right away, but it's nice to have some good shots of what I'm looking for if I do.

The most interesting thing will be combining these three sources with the Gates of Azyr novella to see how much lore can be gathered from all. While there will be repeated info, I'm sure, its seems that each on has a little something different. By putting them all together (and adding the big hardback coming next week), I'm excited to see how deep it goes.

I think I'll actually read White Dwarf 75 cover to cover (and review) before diving back into the Gates of Azyr (of which I'm halfway done), as 75 seems like it gives the broadest strokes to the universe.