Workshop Wednesday: ‘Warhammer Age Of Sigmar’ The Helsmiths Of Hashut

Welcome to the table,

The lore in Warhammer just makes me smile. It reminds me of the elder nerds who fed me pizza, taught me about rad music, and explained why I needed to avoid World of Darkness LARPs until I was old enough to leave on my own if I felt uncomfortable.

These folks really were looking out for me in ways that I never even realized until I was much, much older. One of my favorite things to do was listen to them tell me about the lore of Warhammer Fantasy while they painted minis. I learned about the Skaven and the Tomb Kings, the Knights of Bretonnia and the Vampire Lords, even the Lizardmen and the Chaos Dwarves. I would sit and absorb bits and pieces of this lore like it was ancient secrets and pick. I chose bits from it to fold into my fledgling homebrew D&D games, honoring the elders who came before me, who passed down the old myths to me so that I could be entertained and informed.

Because of this, I make it a point to try to lock in, listen, and absorb as much of the new lore as I can. I hope that, if ever given the chance, I will pass along what I know to the next age of fans. That being said, check this out…

Ohhhhhh man! The Helsmiths of Hashut are so freaking cool! These guys are essentially the Warhammer: Age of Sigmar‘s version of Chaos Dwarves. They have so much unique lore tied up into them that it’s going to take me more than a single article to try and dig into, but I’m going to do my best to at least give you an overview of this rad new faction to the Age of Sigmar.

As the lore goes, the Helsmith of Hashut started way back in a time known as the Age of Chaos. Quickly: it was when the forces of Chaos and their demonic agents burst forth from an extra-dimensional space and flooded into the world of mortals. This caused havoc and broke things for a vast swath of time. “Vast swath” is a very vague term, but it’s safe to assume it’s somewhere between 500 and 1,000 years, give or take a decade or two.

During this time, many of the dwarven communities locked themselves in their strongholds in an attempt to wait out Chaos and its various machinations. However, after decades of isolation, their resources dwindled, and starvation began to take its toll. Desperate for a solution, the dwarves hatched a dangerous plan. They decided to break some of the protective runes in the lowest levels of their city’s strongholds in an attempt to lull the demons inside, where they could crush them by collapsing parts of the city’s foundation.

The plan worked smashingly! The demons were destroyed, and their bodies littered the underbits of the dwarven cities, giving the dwarves strange remnants laced with the powers of chaos to begin to experiment with, and experiment they did. From these broken bodies of things that crawled through holes in reality, the dwarves built blades, shields, and strange new devices, all powered by the strange chaos magics they had been hiding from for ages.

These new creations were devastatingly effective against the forces of Chaos, and empowered by this discovery, the dwarves grew hungry for more bones and bits to build upon. The dwarves learned to summon demons and destroy or bind them so they could use them in their strange creations. They started using so much Chaos magic that their bodies began to show mutations in the forms of horns and tusks and other far stranger things that can occur when you subject yourself to the magics from beyond time and space.

This is how the Helsmiths came to be, a faction of dwarves driven by desperation and demonic power to turn their craft into religion, a technological revolution that looks an awful like religion that twisted their bodies, gave them great power. It even brought about, depending on who you believe, the existence of their very own god.

So that’s how the Helsmiths of Hashut came to march from imposing ziggurats, beneath skies choked with smog and flame. These masters of the dread arts of daemon-binding use the energy of these ruinous entities as fuel for their industry. Accompanied by stomping daemonic engines, they leap from the pages of lore and onto the gaming table thanks to my pals at Games Workshop.

Games Workshop sent me this box, and it is massive! It’s packed with a ton of minis that can be used to forge your own complete Helforge Host Spearhead army in the Warhammer Age of Sigmar.

This boxed set includes 1 War Despot, 1 Dominator Engine with Immolation Cannons, 1 Tormentor Bombard, and Infernal Cohort multipart plastic miniatures. There are a ton of build options in the box as well. If you are trying to get a bigger force going, you don’t have to use them as an exclusive Spearhead force. The Dominator Engine can be built with a pair of Bane Maces or Immolation Cannons, and also has cosmetic options for the chest plate and head.

The Tormentor Bombard can alternatively be built as a Deathshrieker Rocket Battery, giving you some variation on how you want to put it together and paint it.

With the versatility, if you are looking to get into the Helsmiths of Hashut, this is a great way to kick off your collection without having to pick each piece up individually. The box has the new 90-page hardback Chaos Battletome: Helsmiths of Hashut, complete with special cover and packed with lore, rules, and rad artwork to pore over while you are waiting for your paint to dry.

Somehow, that is not all. There are also 30+ warscroll cards and a transfer sheet with 450 waterslide transfers to elevate your army once you put them together and paint them. The transfer sheet includes symbols for the Ur-Zorn, Muspelzharr, Zharr Vyxa, and The Forge Anathema ziggurats, along with other cursed sigils and runes to decorate your miniatures.

The miniatures in this box will be available separately at a later date, and the supplement provides a one-use code to unlock Chaos Battletome: Helsmiths of Hashut content in the Warhammer Age of Sigmar App, which can be used when the battletome goes on general release.

You can preorder at this link, and there are more units coming, including Urak Tarr, who is an ancient figure among the Helsmiths that is so old he is said to have studied under the watchful eye of their found god, Hashut, the Father of Darkness.

This was shown as part of The Big Summer Preview, and it is freaking epic!

Until next time, there is so much to unpack with this faction that I can’t wait for more minis to drop and more lore to roll out, as I think the addition of these bull-themed demon dwarf makers of magic and mayhem makes me really happy.