White Dwarf... Good?

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The Other Dave
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White Dwarf... Good?

Post by The Other Dave » Sun Feb 03, 2019 10:22 pm

Having lived through the "White Dwarf is literally and explicitly just a miniatures catalog" era, I was a little trepidatious of picking up the January WD for some AoS skirmish rules, but man, they've relaunched it into an actual hobby magazine with a vengeance. The January issue has:

An actual "letters from readers" page in TYOOL 2019
A couple pages of reader-submitted models
An interview with Phil Kelly about the job of background writing
Some AoS fiction about sky dwarves
An interview with Jervis Johnson about rules design
Full rules for AoS skirmish (although the campaign rules will be next month, th' skinflints)
A lore writeup on one of the AoS realms, including thematic painting and conversion ideas for a number of armies
A writeup of some dude's awesomely painted and heavily converted Nurgle army
A Shadespire tactics article
Full rules for Kroot mercenaries in kill team (that just sort of incidentally also let you include kroot in your Tau kill team)
A couple pages of Blackstone art including artist commentary
An interview with one of the designers who's also a golden demon winner, with lots of pretty high-level talk about painting theory
A writeup of the latest golden demon winners
An "'Eavy Metal Challenge" where they give six of the team the remit of "paint a mage" and let them loose
Some 40K fiction about ultramarines on Vigilus
An interview with Robin Cruddace about designing 40K 8th edition
Full rules (chapter tactic, warlord trait, and stratagems) for the Crimson Fists, along with a fluff-dive
An interview with the studio painter who did the studio C-Fists
A full 40K battle report, of a game played by some tournament folks

All supported with lots of glossy photos, of course.

It's... a lot of stuff, most of which is actually pretty dang interesting (well, if you're into GW games anyway, of course). I'm definitely going to be keeping my eye on the magazine moving forward.
Feel free to call me Dave!
-----
Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
Miniatures painted in 2024:
Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 3 infantry

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jus
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Re: White Dwarf... Good?

Post by jus » Mon Feb 04, 2019 2:45 am

Ooo good to know, it pick one up later on. Sounds like a return to form, i always liked the hobby aspects of the magazine

Auxryn
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Re: White Dwarf... Good?

Post by Auxryn » Mon Feb 04, 2019 1:24 pm

I heard it has been better recently. They've been publishing cool beta rules and such. Haven't picked one up though.

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me_in_japan
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Re: White Dwarf... Good?

Post by me_in_japan » Tue Feb 05, 2019 12:16 am

that sounds...quite good, actually. The kind of thing I'd be willing to spend money on, in fact. How much is one o them white dwarfies, then?
current (2019) hobby interests
eh, y'know. Stuff, and things

Wow. And then Corona happened. Just....crickets, all the way through to 2023...

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The Other Dave
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Re: White Dwarf... Good?

Post by The Other Dave » Tue Feb 05, 2019 1:59 am

me_in_japan wrote:that sounds...quite good, actually. The kind of thing I'd be willing to spend money on, in fact. How much is one o them white dwarfies, then?
1400 japan bux, but that's after an inevitable exchange-rate markup I'm sure. And it's hefty - I consider its "the same cost as a nice lunch" to be well-spent.
Feel free to call me Dave!
-----
Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
Miniatures painted in 2024:
Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 3 infantry

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me_in_japan
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Re: White Dwarf... Good?

Post by me_in_japan » Tue Feb 05, 2019 7:37 am

hmmn. Perhaps the kind of thing I might pick up if I were in an airport about to board a veeeeeery long flight to scotland...
current (2019) hobby interests
eh, y'know. Stuff, and things

Wow. And then Corona happened. Just....crickets, all the way through to 2023...

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Primarch
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Re: White Dwarf... Good?

Post by Primarch » Tue Feb 05, 2019 7:56 am

It's nice that White Dwarf has returned to being a hobby magazine again. I have fond memories of it way back in the olden days. I remember picking up rules for Hero Quest, Dark Future, Space Marine and Space Hulk among others. Classic Golden Daemon entries, DIY terrain and battle reports were always fun to read.
I think that a lot of that stuff is now available online in some form or another. YouTube has made battle reports and painting advice far more accessible and informative. Blogs and forums offer advice for terrain. And as M_i_J and others have demonstrated, social media is full of pictures of gorgeous models.
So, old White Dwarf has some serious competition these days. GW's own net presence is also a form of competition in a way. The odd magazine might be good for those times when I know I will be offline, but it's a little too pricey for me, especially considering my relationship with GW these days.
I've heard good things about the Conquest magazine, but I don't think that is available in Japan, is it?
Painted Minis in 2014: 510, in 2015: 300, in 2016 :369, in 2019: 417, in 2020: 450

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The Other Dave
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Re: White Dwarf... Good?

Post by The Other Dave » Tue Feb 05, 2019 10:08 am

Yeah, I think in some sense it's pretty obviously a reaction to that kind of perceived redundancy of print in general, and hobby-related stuff in particular. There's really nothing in even this rebooted WD that they couldn't just put online if they wanted to (although giving out rules for free - even the couple pages they needed for the AoS skirmish, Kroot mercs for kill team, and Crimson Fist stuff - is pretty antithetical to the GW Way), and in fact all the interviews with the studio guys seem to be distilled versions of what each of them talked about on the official podcasts over the past month or so. So producing a content-packed, glossy, slightly expensive magazine with a few rules you can't get elsewhere is a way to keep it relevant. I mean, they can't not produce White Dwarf, you know? So they may as well do what they can to make it something people want to buy.
Primarch wrote:I've heard good things about the Conquest magazine, but I don't think that is available in Japan, is it?
Not yet, although from what I've heard it's just that they have to find a sales partner in every country they want to sell it in because of the nature of the thing - it's not just a magazine, so different laws and supply chains apply in some places. They're launching in Spain later this year, apparently - it seems like the sort of thing that would mesh with GW's Japan strategy of hooking people in through painting and modeling, so I'm sure they're trying hard to bring it to the market here. It's basically one of those DaAugustini things you see on TV all the time here, except you get full Ultramarines and Death Guard armies, and paints for them, instead of Space Battleship Yamato or whatever.
Feel free to call me Dave!
-----
Miniatures painted in 2023: 252
Miniatures painted in 2024:
Epic scale: 9 vehicles, 56 stands of infantry, a whole buncha terrain
32mm-ish: 3 infantry

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