Sinister, gothic, and baroque, the latest Stormcast Eternals models are everything that critics said they weren’t when they debuted in 2015. The seven models revealed for the faction, previewed by Games Workshop during a Warhammer Age Of Sigmar stream on Wednesday, firmly cement the new aesthetic for an army that once seemed at odds with the whole legacy of Warhammer.
The Stormcast Eternals are the flagship model range for Age of Sigmar, and have received substantial model releases with each edition, just like their Space Marine cousins. But unlike the Space Marines, those designs haven’t proven timelessly popular with fans, a fact that Games Workshop tacitly admitted when it retired large numbers of Stormcast kits before the release of Age of Sigmar 4th edition.
Of course, that just makes way for new minis, and what minis they are! The classic Lord Celestant returns from retirement with better proportions, a choice of armaments, and a cloak that isn’t made from tiny magic hammers. They’re a similar design that, with its lions-mane cloak, references Sigmar’s origins as a barbarian chieftain before he was an Emperor.
The Lord Relictor has also returned (from the grave), with more skeleton-themed drip, and a black reaper’s cowl. Where the old model looked over the top, the new figure is just slightly subtler – it looks like a model representing and over-the-top person, perfect for a warrior priest who protects the souls of those doomed to die in battle. 
Multipart models for the Lord Terminos and Reclusians are every bit as imposing as the monopose kits in the Vermintide launch box set.
Their sinister little Memorian sidekicks, mortal humans tasked with keeping their soul-damaged masters anchored in reality and human morality, make a pathetic counterpoint that emphasises the Stormcast’s sheer inhuman scale.
Stromstrike Palladors, warriors astride armored gryph-chargers, are the first time that Stormcast cavalry has looked knightly. These aren’t explicitly a call-back to the Empire’s Demigryph Knights, but these minis are more grounded than the dragon-riding Dracothian guard, and more military looking than the Vanguard Palladors. The inclusion of a caparison under their armor plates is very grounded.
The kit for Iridan the Witness, which can also be built as a Lord Vigilant on Morrgryph, is a work of art. This mounted hero rides a classic gryphon. The axe-wielding, armor-cowled Iridan looks like an executioner, a design reflected in his Morrgryph Ariax, which wears a hood that resembles both an executioner’s cowl and the hood for a hunting hawk.
The Stormreach Portal, a faction terrain piece, is the most prosaic of the new kits previewed. But it carries across some of the architectural flourishes we’ve seen in art of Azyr, a design packed with heavenly arches and engraved starmaps.
To a certain extent these models look better because, as the Warhammer design studio has grown more assured with digital design methods, it’s been able to create figures with better and more naturalistic proportions, losing the cartoony chonk that defined the first wave of Stormcast. But it’s not just technical: these models are better conceptualised.
The earliest Stormcast models were fantasy Space Marines with a fetish for hammers, lightning bolts, and the occasional cat or dragon face. They felt divorced from the dark renaissance era fantasy that came before them, but the busy motifs that crusted up the armor of elite troops also didn’t communicate a sense of a coherent new identity.
For a long time, the Stormcast Eternals were left behind by the other Age of Sigmar armies which were carving out new, high fantasy identities in their model design. That was a shame, because the Stormcast lore has always been brilliant: warriors snatched from death and turned into artificial angels, stripped of mortality and doomed to an eternity of constant war, death, and reincarnation, gradually losing their memories, humanity, and soul.
They’re heroic, tragic, and very sinister. They continue classic Warhammer themes of cyclical violence, doomed hope, and dangerous protectors, even as they’re something new and original. These latest previews, and the other models released for AoS 4th edition so far, are telling that story in model form for the first time.
For more thoughts on the importance of model design, here’s a defence of the (much maligned) new Blood Angels miniatures.