One of Games Workshop’s recent innovations is to produce lavish ‘campaign books’ for its core games. These tend to coincide with the releases of various models and other accessories for the relevant game. The current story for Warhammer’s fantasy game, Age of Sigmar, is Dawnbringers. This is the story of a relatively doomed crusade to try and bring order and light to the Mortal Realms, the place where all the Age of Sigmar stories are set.
The armies of the god Sigmar have set out their Twin-Tailed Campaign, with one crusade heading into the Realms of Life and the other into the Realms of Fire. Dawnbringers: The Long Hunt details the tail end of the campaign, when the mostly mortal heroes near the end of their abilities, and all seems lost. Without getting into spoiler territory, things do not run smoothly, and though this is mostly told from the perspective of the (decidedly vulnerable) forces from the Cities Of Sigmar, we do get a broader sense of the Mortal Realms with this book. Games Workshop don’t like to waste ideas, and villains and characters from previous iterations of Age of Sigmar turn up to cause trouble.
It’s a well-written war story/campaign, with much of the tale setting up the reasons for various battles. The whole thing boils down to magical knights coming into conflict with very fancy wood elves, Ogres, and dragon-like creatures.
Rules-wise, the book covers four different armies: the Draconith Skywing, the Evergreen Hunt, Lofnir Drothkeepers and the Roving Maw. We get Ionus Cryptborn, Warden of Lost Souls, Belthanos, First Thorn of Kurnoth, and the Blacktalons, which, of course are all recent releases.
We only received a digital copy of this book for review purposes and are unable to confirm the quality of the hardcover. The book is jammed full of art and photos of brilliantly painted models that looked okay on the screen, but if you’re buying a physical copy, you may want to check in-store first.
Overall, it’s a fun excuse to get the toy soldiers out and roll some dice.
