I've just this very week been going back and reading some of the '80s and '90s issues, just to see if the nostalgia filter was running.Originally Posted by ted1138
Guess what?
Turns out that it wasn't. White Dwarf really was that good back then, even if the models were ropey as hell.
'To you a hero is some kind of weird sandwich...'
KIL! KIL! KIL!
-Sent from my tower using pigeons-
White Dwarf highlights from 2011:
- Terrorgeist rules
- Sisters of Battle updated codex
Not great but at least they tried.
Mediocre stuff that should have been great:
- All the new army book release articles
It's a shadow of what it used to be.
This is simply a reflection of how the company has changed so drastically over the last 15 years.
It has moved away from listening to it's customers and targetted the 12-14 year old market.
WD is a catalogue rather than a magazine.
I've been eBaying a bit lately to fill in the gaps in my collection (still missing 134 and 145, apart from that I've got everything going back to 100, before 100 eBay prices get ridiculous so I'll leave it at that).
I only really got them for the sake of completeness but I've read each one for longer than any of the recent issues (even though they've got half the page count in some cases). Obviously the physical quality (paper, ink, photos) of the new White Dwarfs are miles better - but the quality of the content in old White Dwarfs was a world apart.
In particular I found myself reading a battle report from, ooh, must have been 130-something, of a Space Marine (ie. Epic) game, featuring Blood Angels against Orks; and it made for gripping reading! From reasoning why the armies deployed as they did, to the tactics in the minds of the players, to a discussion of the mistakes in generalship that was the main reason the loser (Jervis) lost: it was a really interesting report that showed that the game was about tactics, not dice rolls or ridiculous rules. (They even talked about house-ruling changing how teleportation works in future, to stop it being too powerful! Nowadays they'd just boast about how awesome teleporting Terminators are and how everyone should buy them...) I've never played Epic 40K and have zero interest in doing so - but it was fascinating to read, so I was more than happy to put the time into reading it. Compare that to any modern WD battle report: "I took all the latest models in my army. The game was on a knife edge until I rolled a double 6! Man of the match was the big expensive monster we've just released - BUY IT!". I can't be arsed to read the batreps any more for games I do play - old White Dwarf managed to make battle reports interesting for the games I don't play, and have no interest in so doing.
So yeah. Yet another voice in the "old WD was miles better than new WD" crowd. It's not just rose-tinted glasses - old WD was crude and unpolished but it was a damn good read.
Yeah, I’ve been reading old White Dwarfs too. Things that stand out to me are terrain building articles, often not involving Citadel materials at all, and short stories.
There was a short tactica article about Space Marine scouts. It showed a map, asked you where you’d deploy your squad, and told you what the likely results would be if you placed them in any of eight (or so) situations. I liked that one. There were also short scenarios, like one where scouts try to sneak up on Grot sentries. Rules for a joust in WHFB. A Spanish WD had an article on playing a 40k army against a WHFB army.
They weren’t always great. A supposed tactica on titans was mostly just descriptions about titans that didn’t teach players anything new (basically an ad for non-Epic players to read), with a couple of paragraphs of list-building advice. Very little about how to actually use a titan in battle. Spanish ‘Eavy Metal wasn’t very good, either.
My first issue was the one with the blood angel 2nd box art and came with a marine sgt-my brother had a huge stack of previous issues too-Im not really all that articulate but yeah it really was a great magazine back then, the battle reports worth it alone.
I remember when WD used to have short stories, new rules for things, different ways of using your models, proper army articles, just loads of great fluff, where has it all gone? It was probably easier when they had Necromunda, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, Advanced Heroquest, Epic, Blood Bowl and various other games that have come and gone. I remember when they included a whole section on an IG battlegroup and detailed it in forensic detail, kind of like the campaign books from Forgeworld.
I occasionally buy it, but there's not much readable in it. Of the WD I've bought in the last few years LOTR seems to get the best treatment, with new scenarios, rules and fun stuff.
How hard can it be to add a new mission, apocalypse formation, special character etc? You might get people to buy stuff to convert just for fun.
They release new black library books all the time, there must be loads of inspiration in there, can't they tap into it?
The problem seems to be now they only have 3 systems to fill a 100(ish) page magazine 12 times a year now. There just isn't enough content in those systems to warrent such a huge amount of space.
Member of J.A.D.E.DTrying to convince Warseer that GW are anything less than perfect is like trying to teach a horde of zombies that lettuce is a perfectly acceptable alternative to brains.
Lest we forget
Actualy there is so much that can be done within just the 40k and WHFB game systems that the content of most of the last decade is just insulting.
Lets look at what they could be doing for the 25th anniversery of 40k. They could have done a series of articles focusing on a race an issue, showing the eveloution of the background, art style and play styles over the years tieing in painting article and scenarios or battle reports based on important battles from the background.
Hell they should have something like the above for every new army release.
Have background stories for special characters, there are enough older ones that they could simply reprint one or two a week for a long time before they run out of material. Include the full rules and tips for using the models in your armies like they used to do back in around WD250's.
There is so much they used to do, so much varied and interesting content. All it would take is some effort. But thats not going to happen so I'll stick to gaming magazines like No Quarter and Wargames Illustrated to get my hobby content from. If they ever degrade in quality like White Dwarf has I'll stop buying them too.
The 5 Rules of Page 5 - MKII
1) Thou Shalt Not Whine
2) Come Heavy Or Don't Come At All
3) Give As Good As You Get
4) Win Graciously And Lose Valiantly
5) Page 5 Is Not An Excuse
Surely that would require them to both highlight and explain a rather large number of..... erm.... "changes" in the background, which would never happen as remember - it's always been that way..hasn't it?..
The thing is all that "varied content" came from having more than 3 systems to publish for. Certainly the two "different" warhammer universes have enough to fill a magazine with each month, but the individual games don't.
Member of J.A.D.E.DTrying to convince Warseer that GW are anything less than perfect is like trying to teach a horde of zombies that lettuce is a perfectly acceptable alternative to brains.
Lest we forget
Between rules articles, tactics and fluff for two (or three) universes; and painting/modelling/hobby which the last couple of posts seem to have ignored; there's plenty to fill a whole magazine with every month, easily. Sure, it would be even easier if they dipped into specialist games as well (and yes, that's something I'd like to see), but that's not even a requirement. It's not that they can't, it's that they won't.
...or at least haven't. Word on the street is the WD team all had to reapply for their jobs (ie. got replaced by a whole new team) and we should expect genuine changes in WD later in the year, around August time I suppose. Hopefully this won't be yet another "new-style WD!!!!!!!!!!" that involves one issue with one or two marginally more interesting articles than the average, then straight back to the normal sludge. I won't hold my breath.
I will have to respectfully disagree here. Take out the 50% of the catalogue which is direct adverts and "store finders" and even a 20 page indepth tactics/painting guide per race, per system series of articles would barely cover a years worth of serialization (and with that level of coverage you could have 2 races per system per issue for all 3 systems in 120 pages and still have several issues in the year to fill). I completely agree that they won't, but again, that's more of a "what could we do next year?" issue.
Quite honestly the best thing that could have happened (if true). It cannot get any worse at the minute. I thought, however, this had happened 6-12 months ago, so we should have seen the "benifits" of this already?
Member of J.A.D.E.DTrying to convince Warseer that GW are anything less than perfect is like trying to teach a horde of zombies that lettuce is a perfectly acceptable alternative to brains.
Lest we forget
Ok, lets write a White Dwarf.
0: Cover
1-2: Diorama spread
3-4: Editorial, news and contents
5-10: New releases (+/- 4 pages depending on month, though only a full army release should deserve 8 double pages of new releases)
11-13: Reader contributed short story
14: Advertisement for units featured in short story.
15-17: Step-by-step simple terrain feature from scratch.
18: Hobby supplies used to build terrain
19-24: Feature Article (for example: what is your reasoning behind the rules for the new XX army)
25: Advert or picture
26-40: Battle report 1. 1 page intro, 1-2 page per each army talking about unit choices, double page for each turn, 2 page wrapup. I'm probably being light on pages here...
41-46: 'Eavy Metal painting guide plus ad for model they painted and paint tools
47-50: Tactica Something.
51-52: Conversion Guide
53-60: Tale of Four Gamers (put this on a rotating system cycle as a regular feature)
60-64: TOFG Battle Report
65-70: Feature article
71-72: Quick Painting Tips
73-76: Chapter Approved
77-82: Reader contributed feature army
83-86: Standard Bearer
87-90: Specialist Games feature
91-96: Feature article
97-100: Golden Daemon showcase.
100-XX: Store locations, club guide, all that jazz.
Two solid 6-page feature articles on anything. Have one meta-article (interview rules writers) and one in-game article (adeptus astartes). A good battle report could take 20 pages without much issue. Have user submitted content like short stories or armies on parade. 3-4 solid How-To articles, a Tactics article... I think you could go quite a while without needing to rehash anything.
I disagree with some of your specific suggestions (user-contributed story? ugh) but agree with the fundamental point which is that, yes, it's fairly straightforward to fill a magazine with meaningful content.
One of the other magazines I subscribe to is about hockey (that's "field hockey" to our trans-Atlantic cousins). Can you believe they fill a whole monthly magazine with articles about only one sport!?!?! Amazing! You'd think they'd merge it with articles about cricket and canoeing as well, but no, by some sorcery of journalism, they fill a monthly magazine with interesting stuff every month. I'm fairly sure White Dwarf could do the same. (Though, yes, I still agree with shelfunit that it's made easier if you cover specialist games too... in which case... do that, then).
Pretty much as SunTzu wrote - back when WD was readable it had plenty of "short stories", but they were split into 2-3 paragraph sections dotted throughout the main article, often following the jist of the article itself. The new releases really don't need that much attention - there are rarely more than 3-4 new kits per month and they certainly don't need more than a whole page each - especially if they are featuring in the "new xx army" and/or battle report sections. Also until the prices are frozen or reduced by a (very) large margin any "tale of..." is going to be a bit depressing - "what did you get with your £50 this month Jervis?" "ermm, Well I got two boxes for a total of 10 Excecutioners and... erm... that's about it...". As for store locations etc, at best you only need your own WD's country's shops in it so that cuts down the guff to about 5 pages tops - add the remainder to specialist games and you'd have something I would buy.
Member of J.A.D.E.DTrying to convince Warseer that GW are anything less than perfect is like trying to teach a horde of zombies that lettuce is a perfectly acceptable alternative to brains.
Lest we forget
I think what I wrote could turn out to be an awful magazine, if GW got hold of it.
First, you make the short story about Blood Angels. Then, you build a Blood Angels Temple. Then, you have a feature article about the history of Blood Angels. A battle report of Blood angels vs Tyranids. The specialist games section about space hulk...
^^ That seems to be what GW does now. I think the magazine would be much more readable if they instead tried for an even split between games systems and armies. Actually tally up the articles a particular army has had over the last X months to see whos turn it is.
The reason I suggested 'reader contributed' stuff is... its cheap and interesting. If GW offered a Battleforce (heck, even a Blister Pack) as a competition one month for stories and player army articles, they'd get enough entries to last them a few years... plus most teenage fanfiction would be just as good as some of the official GW stories.
I agree that the To4G thing is much harder to do on current budgets, but I never really felt that the budget was the important thing there; for me, it was more to do with seeing someone grow an army over a few months, a little bit at a time, rather than just appearing fully-fleshed on the scene like the studio armies do.
It's also freely available to anyone with an interest. Anyone who wants to write fanfic or do a plog can put it on WordPress - simples. If I'm paying money for a magazine, I want professionally written high-quality content, not something I could get even more of for free by visiting Warseer's fiction or modelling sections.
Perhaps strangely, I'd make an exception for reader-contributed armies and models. I think it's a crime that 'Eavy Metal Masterclass no longer exists, and it should return pronto - but, with the exception of that Masterclass (which should be one per month), the 'Eavy Metal team are busy painting stuff to deadlines, to show off new releases. You could easily feature Golden Demon winners and ask them to talk about the techniques they used; and themed, interesting armies (maybe Best Painted Army winners from Throne of Skulls) are always going to be more inspiring than the one-of-each-of-everything armies that the 'Eavy Metal team have to produce. Feature those in White Dwarf and there's no concerns over quality (they're prize winners!) and it's a chance to see how top hobbyists do stuff outside the 'Eavy Metal limitations. Could easily give eight or more pages a month to that kind of thing.
Just please god, no letters page. Please.
Nowadays WD is just like finecast. It has got more and more expensive, is of questionable quality and as long as people are buying it, they won't change it.
The only difference I can think of is that you can't return a WD for bad content
Visit and rate my fantasy log : A lot of green against a feeble mind
Models painted 2011= 45 / 2012 = 62 / 2013 = 7
You can return it if there are holes in it thoughNowadays WD is just like finecast. It has got more and more expensive, is of questionable quality and as long as people are buying it, they won't change it.
The only difference I can think of is that you can't return a WD for bad content
Sometimes a post is so rotten I have to respond like dr.Cox-- My Dwarven painting log -- My Lizardmen painting log -- My Scurrying Skaven painting log -- My nurgle beastmen painting log --My Tau cadre painting log -- My knights of the white wolf -- My Ork painting log
---> Newest: 13-5-2013; Lizardmen, tournament pictures, Won best painted army! ---> New: 7-4-2013; The friendly riptide saves a firewarrior
There has been some excellent content (outside of armies) from outside the studio in the past - Sherman Bishop's series of articles on Tyranid invasions (excepting the absurd type size and colour), and Mike Walker's 'shed' series, for example.
Sure, you could probably get that stuff online nowadays, but that's more or less true of everything which you might find/have found in White Dwarf. Personally, I much prefer to read something in hard copy (and then be able to obsessively file it away somewhere...) than off my laptop.
I made a Genestealer Cult! --- 2nd edition Tyranid army!
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