Review: White Dwarf Issue 12

Warning: This “review” contains extreme levels of bias. Issue 12 hits the shelves of your local Games Workshop today and features models from my Hobbit collection. I use the term review lightly because this is more a collection of my thoughts on White Dwarf Weekly. Read on to see what I thought of this week’s issue.

White Dwarf is full of tools this month.

With Issue 12 in my hand, I do what I do with every issue. I find a quiet spot in my house, make a cup of tea and read it cover to cover. I collect models from all three Games Workshop games, so there is always something of interest in every weekly issue for me. This month the new releases are a new range of Citadel hobby tools, Archaon: Ever Chosen novel from Black Library and a Storm of Vengeance computer game.

Interesting article on collecting.

There is no guest column this week. Instead the articles include Adam Troke explaining the joys of collecting an armies of the Imperium force and reminiscing about a 25 year piece of artwork. Hall of Fame sees Seb Perbet’s Snikrot nominated by Simon Adams. The Battle Report is the first three scenarios from the Hobbit main rulebook played out by Dan Harden, my friend (and Manager of Games Workshop Barnet) Cat Austin and myself. There is an article called Hammer of the Emperor, where Adam Troke and select few pundits talk about the new Astra Militarum release. Sprues and Glue looks at the new hobby tools and gives some tips and advice on using them. Paint Splatter looks at Citadels texture paints and to finish off there is a selection of snippets in the The Week in White Dwarf section at the back.

Remember you saw the models here first on Tale of Painters.

I want to use this opportunity to look at my contribution to White Dwarf. This is my third appearance in White Dwarf all appearances have come about from contacting the What’s New Today in White Dwarf blog and sending in pictures of my models. The key to this isn’t how well I paint, but how well I photograph the models. You need clear, bright photos, whites are white and blacks are black. Everything needs to be in focus, no short depth of fields and the files need to be as large as possible.

So having established contact with White Dwarf since the summer of 2012, I’ve been sending them pictures and chatting about my hobby to them.  One thing leads to another and before you know it I’m  loaning them 15,000pts of Ultramarines. Skip towards the end of 2013 and I’m suggesting how cool it would be to see more Hobbit models in White Dwarf whilst sending them pictures of Azog and Fimbul, combining collections we realise we virtually have all the models needed to play through the missions in the big rulebook. I get some emergency lessons at Games Work Shop Barnet where Cat helps me with the rules. To express my gratitude to Cat I asked her if she’d like to join me at Warhammer World and help play out the scenarios with Dan. This worked out great because to control all the Dwarves and all their special abilities is a little daunting for one person. Two people sped things up and ensured less mistakes were made. Here are a couple of behind the scenes pictures of our trip to Warhammer World (I post this kind of stuff to our Facebook page all the time).

I also met Adam Troke, the author and games designer for the Hobbit. He signed my rulebook “one game to rule them all” Legend!

Conclusion:

It’s been a couple of months now since White Dwarf evolved into it’s more concise weekly format. Only available from Games Workshop stores, Independent Traders, Games Workshop online and as an eBook from Black Library we’ve all had to adapt our buying habits. I tend to jump on my motorbike on a Saturday morning and do a 30 mile round trip to pick up my £2.40 magazine. This is great for me because I love riding my motorbike and I love reading the new White Dwarf.

This issue doesn’t have any model releases, so they’re aren’t any rules in this issue, but all the rules (and points values) for all the other releases have been in previous issues. That alone is worth the cover price. White Dwarf weekly cuts down on the number of pictures and instead fills the pages with body text, pull out quotes and box outs. There are no adverts in the traditional sense, no store listings. It’s a genuine joy to read and I really like the writing style of Dan and Adam. Battle reports could do with a couple of pages more just to get more pictures and details in and maybe some maps showing model movement, but if you buy Warhammer Visions you tend to get the additional Battle Report pictures in that.

10/10 (what did you expect, it has my models in it)

Tell me your thoughts in the comments below.

News just in… 

All of my Hobbit models featured in this week’s White Dwarf are (at the time of writing) on display in Games Workshop Barnet. Why not pop along and speak to Cat the Manager about how the games played out.

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