This month the sons of Caliban come back with a new codex and new models to hunt their fallen brethren once more. Read on to find out what Interrogator Chaplain Stahly has to say about issue number four of relaunched White Dwarf.
This month’s copy of White Dwarf has 156 pages, 8 pages more than last month and thus the biggest WD so far (together with the first relaunched issue that came out last October). Apart from the usual production values it also sports a free poster of a similar design as last month. This time it has a gallery of Hobbit models on one side and a gallery of older Lord of the Ring models on the other though. I don’t know who would really put up such posters apart from shop owners, it would be so much better if they would make posters with a nice piece of artwork for example. The content of the magazine follows exactly the same pattern as the last couple of issues, so chances are high you know the deal by now if you already had a look at one of the issues (or one of our reviews) after the relaunch.
The big release are Dark Angels, you’ve probably seen pictures that were photographed off WD pages floating around the internet before. It seams the WD photographers went into an old English cave to compose the pictures in this month’s New Releases section. Thankfully they did without any artistic light effects and just present clear and well taken pictures that don’t distort the paint jobs. The centrefold is taken by the Dark Talon and Nephilim Fighter. There are also a couple of new Hobbit models but there is no other LotR coverage apart from this section and two short tutorials in Paint Splatter.
The Army of the Month is editor Jes Bickham’s Tyranid army. It has already shown up a couple of times in in the last months, so I found this army showcase a bit boring. I would like to see them go out and feature more armies from outside of the GW headquarter, otherwise this feature might become stale soon. Jervis Johnson talks about finding motivation to paint even if you’re not an ace when it comes to picking up a brush. The Battle Report features Dark Angels and Chaos Space Marines unsurprisingly. They used a special scenario, yet they didn’t take the chance to add some narration to the report. It’s also a bit daft that they didn’t set a point limit, but just put down all the models they had. At least there are a lot of player painted models featured.
In the Rivals, White Dwarf’s Matt Hutson and Glenn More pitch thunder hammer wielding Terminators against a squad of Grey Knight terminators and see which squad can beat up more in close combat. Blanchitsu is again very short with just two pages and features models that weren’t built and painted by John Blanche himself, but other selected painters with a similar style. Hall of Heroes features Karl Franz on Deathclaw, sculpted by Brian Nelson and nominated by Alan Perry.
Parade Ground is sort of different this month, as it is a 16 pages long gallery of 2012’s Golden Demon winners from Germany, the USA, Spain and Australia. It’s said to be part 1, so expect another gallery for the next issue. There are some very cool models featured, however the image quality is sometimes a bit rough and the article might be a bit overly long. Next up is Kit Bash, rather short with three converted 40k terrain models on four pages. Battleground has the Dwarf themed board on display that can be found in the back of the 8th Edition Fantasy rulebook. Not much new to see in this four pages long showcase apart from some new close ups. Paint Splatter explains techniques for painting Dark Angels, including dark green, bone and black armour and for various details. There are also basic painting guides for the Fortress of Redemption terrain piece, for Jes Bickham’s Tyranid paint scheme and for painting the giant eagles and wargs that were released this month for The Hobbit.
Jervis Vetock talks about what he likes more – playing at home or outside. After the boring shop guide comes “This month in…”, the monthly look behind the scenes. As usually there are the latest painting and gaiming efforts of the WD team, short interviews with Black Library authors, such as Gav Thorpe regarding his new Ravenwing novel, and some WIP Forgeworld models. The main interest is of course the design studio, whose designers are talking about the new Dark Angels. I found this article quite shallow this month, as there is no concept art shown and you learn absolutely nothing about the new codex and its rules.
Verdict
More of the same really. The Golden Demon showcase is a slight change of the formula, though I found it a bit overly long. Drawbacks for me were the Army of the Month and Battleground showcases, which both featured stuff that has already been seen elsewhere. Also this issue tells you very little about the new Dark Angels codex itself, and absolutely nothing about new the new rules or army list. I found it enjoyable to flick through, but it hadn’t any real highlights, so an average 6/10 from me.
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Thanks for the review. Got my WD yesterday, I think its probably the worst issue yet. The poster was stupid, and lazy. I didnt really like paint splatter I thought the standard marine tutorial was fine for a basic tutorial, the terminator scheme looks awful they should have used the standard colours. They need to include proper tutorials by eavy metal painters like they used to.
Jes's tyranids, I'm seriously fed up of seeing them.. I guess he is just really proud of his army and being the editor has an outlet to show it off but please no more.
Battle report was awful for so many reasons..
Kitbash boring, too short, no real information. I think thats a big problem with the whole magazine, no real information being shared with the reader.
anyway I'm going on a bit so will shut up
Cheers 🙂
Just to play devils advocate this issue left me motivated and inspired. Golden demon was brilliant. I thought it was funny Stahly saying it's too long, where someone on our facebook page was complaining it wasn't long enough.
The editor's tyranid showcase left me wanting to return to mine and paint some up. I want to buy Eagles for the Hobbit, I want to paint my Dark Angels from Dark Vengeance, I have spare building kits I want to turn into Adeptus Arbites Precinct… it completely left me with so many ideas.
OK so paint splatter is crap for anyone other then a beginner, but I don't read tutorials really anyway so it doesn't bother me.
Garfy's score 8.5 (for what it's worth).
You know, this is the first issue where I got the digital version and I have to say it was pretty damn cool. Dangerous too as they have links on the pics of the new models that you can just click on to take you straight to the pre-orders pages – so much easier to impulse buy that way.
On another note what's up in the design studio? New lead or new blood, compensating for the issues with finecast? The sculpts are all so static these days. I like the kits for conversion opportunities, but not big on all the grand heroic poses (love the new flier though).
i got some rule infos out of it
& confirmation of what has been said elswere
Plas speeder has 2 firemodes 3x 3" or one 5" blast
Darktalon has bomb that does -3 to WS & I
and the gun does BLIND (test I or reduce WS & BS to 1)
Darkknights have the fortress shield rule wich gives them T5, Strikedown (from BRB) you can not hide (??) and they are WS5 equiped with a weapon that can use SMASH S10 ap2 at ini (half attacks) once per game
ofc they porpusly don´t show point costs or exactly what the rules do… but they want to sell the dex!
The Bat.Rep is pretty rubbish… worse than those in the old WDs… crapy pics IMO…. looks like the toke the pics in a garage with a mobilefon cam! -.-
Instead of WD being a advertising catalouge, its more like a broshure now… like the once you get for cars… its still only adverts, only that they are missing the price
the content is just reuse of stuff from Online galleries like CMON or fliker. The artikles itself are a boar to read. Its all how about how much fun everything is and how not serious they take it & everybody likes everything. -.- The actualy hobby tutorial part is only 6 pages. Most disapoiting is the hobbit poster… not even a poster a shoot from the movie or a big miniatures battle, only a summary of everything you can buy! 🙁
Only positiv thing about the new WD is that the paper & print quality is better.
I personaly wish they would have at least keept the old bat reps… were you could see what was happening on the pics.
The only reasons to buy it now is to get a heads up on rules that might have not been leaked 2 weeks ago & to see a few more produkt pictures that are not on the website.
i want to add
why do i as a german customer need 10 pages just full of lists of stores and flgs all around the world???
thats kinda of a wast of paper?
Thanks for the review, always appreciate what is in the newest white dwarf hobby wise before I buy it. One thing that I have noticed and maybe you can correct me on though is…for all the hoopla of the new "direction" and design team nothing has changed. It's still almost nothing more then a catatlogue filled with pictures that I have seen online weeks in advance. I for one was REALLY hoping that it would be something more then that but I am guessing that is a bit of a pipe dream.
Erm it's no longer catalogue format. Gone are the days of double page spreads throughout the publication showing the same old advertising shots of the boxed games.
Eavy metal models are not the only models in the magazine anymore. Readers models are. This month we have a cool Ork Mek shop from a reader and all the Golden Demon winners are readers too.
The only catalogue like pages are the 2 pages with prices on.
If the images hadn't been leaked, would you have been more impressed with the issue do you think?
Golden Demon article didn't even featured US Slayer Sword winning model… After waiting for six months I expected full coverege.
I have to agree that the content and writing is severely lacking… even the "Versus" section with terminators just said "my dice failed and I lost" with no discussion of how a group of terminators should face down the opposition in question. The battle report was interesting and not as hard to follow as the last 2 issues, but the lack of any specifics other than about 4 dice rolls and the quality of the photos is lame. My favorite part is the one page "outsiders opinion" on the game because at least it talks about strategy, etc. I totally agree with Ghoulio that they have not "updated their format" and that it is still a $10 catalogue with very little actual meat to sink my teeth into. The models are inspiring, the terrain is great, and the few instances of seeing readers models (and even GW staff models) I like, but it isn't enough to keep me spending my money on it in months to come. Josh
Hi there guys, oink here from ipaintmodels (& oinks overambitious terrain projects!) blogs. You mention about ways to keep motivated – This is something that I struggled with at times in 2012 so myself and a friend have set ourselves up a challenge.
We set up a scoring system for painting different models and included aspects such as converting and basing etc. We also added scores for gaming – the threat of being outdone by each other becomes our motivation. However we also want to encourage other people to join in The Challenge!
You can read more about what this painting (and gaming) challenge is and how it works by following this link
Please, feel free to join in – it doesn't matter what your painting skill – it really is about just doing hobby!
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