Well the new brand of White Dwarf has begun today and with it the opinions of many gamers abound on the internet. As I am one of many strongly minded gamers I figure I'll throw my 2 cents into the pot while the mag's are fresh in my mind.
Last night at midnite I was at our FLGS to pick up the mags and play some board games. I purchased the White Dwarf Weekly as I intend to do for the first full month of its run. While I did not purchase visions I did have a good long look through it from a friends copy.
Let's discuss the Weekly first.
The magazine is full size as the old White Dwarf magazines and seems pretty well put together. The pictures are good and the stock it is printed on seems thicker than regular magazine paper giving it a sturdier feel. It is composed well and everything reads as such. They discuss the new models that are going up fro per-order to be released next week. Included are the builders notes discussing why they sculpted the models as well as some painting and assembly articles. Not big ones, but they aren't terrible either. Their are of course a number of bits discussing upcoming releases still and an article by Jervis which in this 1st issue discusses a silly little game to decide who will go first in a battle. A simple push your luck dice rolling game. There was also a small discussion and rules "peak" at one of the new Dwarf special characters which gave you some of his rules but I'm certain not all. Particularly since his stats and info didn't include his mundane equipment such as Gromril armor which was discussed int he accompanying article with him. While I did enjoy the Weekly magazine I think that it was left lacking a bit. There was no gaming article or modeling article which are two of the things i want to see. I appreciate the painting article though and liked it. Overall I'm middling on this magazine. I will give it every hope that GW begins putting a little more pertinent content into the magazine and if they do it could/should be worth purchasing. If I were to give it a grade I would say B- to a C.
Now for Visions.
Clocking it at its massive number of pages there have been numerous complaints about this magazine already on the net. Few of which in my thoughts are left wanting. The magazine basically equates to a place for GW to publish all of its photo's with little to no extra content. There are a couple of spots where there is some text discussing a paint job or a modeling effort put forward but with very little detail in the way of the processes used. The paper is the thinner more magazine style quality but the colors are bright and the pictures high quality. When GW announced the new magazine formats I had read their descriptions to understand that Visions would be their hobby/modelling magazine and while it certainly shows off a lot of models it included nothing and i mean 'Nothing' of interest to me. The most disappointing part is that if all you are going to give me is literally a magazine full of nothing but photo's then give me a full size magazine but GW didn't do that here. The Visions magazine is roughly the same size as the starter set mini rulebooks for Fantasy and 40K. Disappointment abound. I'm glad I didn't buy this and I will continue not to do so. That said GW I'm certain will get a LOT of feedback from this first month and I will keep my ears and eyes open next month to see if things change. To grade this is hard. I want badly to give it an F but I will stop at a D as the magazine is bright, colorful and full of high quality photo's. Again, hopefully GW will improve next month.
So there you have it. My 2 cents concerning the new White Dwarf format magazines. I plan on sending GW and White Dwarf an e-mail with my thoughts as I recommend all of you reading this to do. I had and honestly still have a lot of hope for the new format but GW has to hear our comments and heed them to get there. I would be curious to know anyone else thoughts on the matter so feel free to e-mail or post comments here.
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