White Dwarf Weekly and Warhammer Visions Review
Background
White Dwarf is like your first love. It might not last forever but you will always remember it.
I've been reading the magazine since I can remember. The cover at the beggining of this post is from the #113 issue, the first I think I ever read; it's been a long time, but I think I made my parents buy it because of the Space Hulk contents.
I kept piles of old issues, when it was at least 30% lore, stories and background, instead of a mere shopping catalog and painting showcase. When "battles" in Warhammer 40,000 were with less than 15 miniatures per side, and there were new rules in most issues.
As I was young first my english was pretty basic, using constantly a dictionary and guessing many "strange" (fantasy) words. But I gazed at the impressive drawings, at the beautifully painted miniatures, even at the ending pages order lists and metal pieces.
I read them over and over, because I could convince my parents to buy me one each few months, until I could subscribe to it... well, really a local store near my house would bring it to Spain, sometimes missing a number or arriving quite late. But it was ok as I still got the chance to read more articles.
I read about Space Hulk, about Advanced HeroQuest, about Blood Bowl and Epic 40,000 ("Space Marine" in the edition I have) and Necromunda... Games that not were "pure Warhammer", and that either I already had or I've ended up buying years later because of that nostalgia and earlier reading.
But I've also known about Battlefield Gothic, about Man'O'War or Mordheim or Gorkamorka, games that I haven't played but I have read lore and articles and seen great minis and scenarios based on them.
I had too the first spanish number when White Dwarf was translated, with months of delay and older contents, before it was monthly and fully localized. I stopped buying it but I've been able to read many many issues and kept it's evolution "under surveillance" during most of the latest 15 years.
In the last years it slowly became a pure, badly concealed, marketing tool. A beautified shopping catalog with a few interesting articles among tons of new products showcasing.
When in late 2012 it was redesigned and a digital version was presented, I decided to give it another try and subscribed for a year for the digital. After those 12 numbers I've kept reading it all months until now.
In all it's "redesigned existence", the magazine has slowly falled even deeper into the marketing pit. Despite the beautiful HD zoomable images and embedded 360 degree images of some new minis, the digital version is only better in the fact that is cheaper than the physical one. And both have zero lore articles, crappy battle reports that no longer are consistent, repetitive conversions and endless miniature showcasing (there's a chaos champion mini that I love and have but I've come to hate because of having seen it so many times in the magazine).
It promised more quality and just had more advertisement. It is like a big ad, a pure catalog that you pay for. You get more and better news from internet this days, and for free.
And now, the next genius turn from Games Workshop: You want rules in the mag and no ads? No problem, you'll pay for it! And just in case you are interested in the new catalog items, you can buy it separately too, in a weekly basis!
Simply brilliant... charging you more for fixing mistakes and removing self-advertisement, when the main purpose of the whole magazine is already that. And even use it to speed up the release cycle so the information leaks around the net are less effective.
And it gets even better... So let's review both magazines separately.
The White Dwarf (weekly)
Imagine compacting the normal White Dwarf into 30-something pages. Imagine almost 50% is pure "new releases" and the other 50% is what was in the "old" WD plus the "new and awaited" rules for a single model.
Images are bigger so less text is needed to fill pages, but you get so few actual content (less than 20 pages) that should almost be free.
The paper magazine has exactly the same paper width and height, just with less pages. There is an epub/mobi version at Black Library, which further demonstrates the bigger images by having just one or two paragraphs per page and a big image (not all pages but many).
So basically is an ultra-minimalistic version of the old WD, with some sections missing.
3.20€ per week (2.99€ the digital edition), almost 13€ per month if you want all issues. Nice marketing idea to allow you to choose but end up charging you more than before.
The Warhammer Visions (monthly)
This is actually quite surprising, and really dissapointing. It can be summarized as hundreds of pages... of photograpies of miniatures and battle scenes. The "sections" are only as a way of categorizing the photographs, but the text is so scarce it could be entirely removed.
It is "multilanguage", as texts and descriptions come in english, french and german, but at least there isn't much around the photos.
Photos are nice, until you notice they are overabused. Tons and tons of Tyranids, same units in different angles, zoom levels and color schemes, until smells like pure page-filling.
Digital version needs to be read in landscape mode (rotated), but the plus is you don't get "cut" images as in the paper version.
It has a new releases section (like the weekly WD), just having tons and tons of pictures, Parade Ground and battle report... full of images and that not even tries to make sense anymore or just communicate properly what happens in each turn.
Kit bash is also here, as Blanchitsu, and the small painting tips. As everything is in big pictures, what was a 3-4 pages article now spans over 6 to quite-too-many pages of and unnecessary huge photos.
And the store list is here instead of in the weekly WD, which also makes no sense except to make fatter this magazine and thinner the weekly one.
Last White Darf was about Tyranids, first Visions is also focused on Tyranids on the 40k part. Repetitive and looking as not wanting to make much effort for a first issue that should be amazing to hook people up.
The "best" thing is that, as some people around blogs have been suspecting, some of the photos of the Tyranids are actually repeated. I have also January 2014 White Dwarf digital version and I can confirm 100% sure that some images are repeated from last White Dwarf.
For example the Hive Crone images are the same photograps, some of them cleverly cut in different rectangles, some like the first one with violet background exactly the same in Jan WD and Feb Visions WB.
Se we have like half of the old WD, with less text and going towards a photo catalog. Such a dissapointing "new" magazine.
9€ per month (9.99€ the digital, more expensive than paperback one!).
My conclusions
They've lost their minds. They have hacked into pieces the old and already bad White Dwarf and made it even worse and way more pricey for just a few rules and more photos. Whoever thought it was a good idea to divide the magazine in two should probably be congratulated by getting fired.
The nonsense goes as far as not even being consistent: Weekly version has a cheaper but worse digital version (with quite minimalistic formatting) in compatible formats, while the Visions one is more expensive, only available for the iPad but with the paper version design.
Why they didn't just went one way? we can't know, although maybe they want to get the most from the new weekly magazine not sharing any revenue with Apple.
Either WD will die, or I'll lose my faith in humanity if people really welcomes this absurd and money-grabbing change. This is the worst movement they could have thought about.
LEGO Links and Warhammer 40,000 Art
2x1 post.
First, I'd like to share that I've updated the recommended links page with some links to LEGO related websites, from people contributions (by far the best part) to scans of set building structions or the biggest wiki about our beloved building blocks.
And second, in the official forums of Eternal Crusade* there's a thread of choosing the favourite piece of Warhammer 40,000 art. At the time of this writing it is 35 pages long and there are dozens of high resolution artworks from most of the races.
Definetly recommended having a look at it, I found some new images I still didn't had on my "digital collection".
* In case you don't know what I'm talking about, check the Dark Millennium Codex website for all available info about EC MMO.
Tags: Offtopic Warhammer 40000
Book Review: The purging of Kadillus
The Purging of Kadillus is another book about the Dark Angels, this time combining stories from multiple points of view: Belial (captain of the 3rd company), Boreas (chaplain), Naaman (scout sargeant) and other secondary characters, while they fight a fierce battle with the orks at Piscina IV.
Each chapter tells part of the story from a single point of view, sometimes returning to the same character, sometimes moving on to another. Although the book is just a battle with not so many twists, this multiple angle storytelling makes it more appealing.
Dialogues and action itself are just decent, certainly not the best I've read. I actually had more interest in reading the orks chatting but sadly there are quite few occurrences.
It was an ok read, I will probably read other "Space Marine Battles" books to see if they are better than this one.
Oh, and here the lore about Dark Angels is quite small and barely to fit having DAs instead of other chapter, but at least isn't another Ultramarines story :)
Tags: Books Warhammer 40000
Book Review: The Emperor's Gift
The Emperor's Gift is the fourth full book dedicated to the Grey Knights, after a not too great trilogy.
We follow through the eyes and mind of a "young" GK, Hyperion, who seems to have quite some psychic powers, above the average knights, but also seems a bit hesitant and "thinks too much" instead of just following orders from his superiors.
Some fights against chaos forces will slowly take him to great and unforseen battles with not so good... "happenings".
I quite enjoyed this book, it is well written, has plots, secrets, thought moments, nice action... Also I think here the Grey Knights are properly depicted, as being few but really powerful, and yet only superhuman, not fully invulnerable.
Recommended if you want to expand your lore about the Emperor's finest.
Tags: Books Warhammer 40000
Book Review: Space Hulk: The Novel
As the name implies, this book is a novelization of 2009's special edition of the Space Hulk Boardgame, depicting missions from Blood Angels space marine terminators against genestealers.
All the boardgame missions are narrated, capturing quite well the atmosphere and narrative of the old Space Hulk text excerpts present in rulebooks.
We read adventures of 5 man squads of terminators, cleansing a dangerous space hulk. And in this point is where the story breaks with old roots, because this novel says that "a hundred terminators, plus techmarines are sent to the hulk", which would mean that the full 1st company of the Blood Angels would be risked on a single space hulk at once. This feels quite unrealistic, plus in old stories (and in real games) only one or two squads are deployed at the same time.
Another thing I learned with this book is a nice trick: If you want to make a novel larger, put a letany each two character sentences. Like "purge the unclean!", of course followed by another as a reply from a fellow marine. This way you get almost twice the pages with the same real content.
Despite the abuse of letanies, the novel is an enjoyable tale, hooking correctly most of the lore, marines, weapons and monsters from the boardgame in the novel.
Tags: Books Warhammer 40000
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