Official May 2012 White Dwarf (USA 388, UK 389 etc) Feedback Thread

[Wintermute]

Its time for yet another White Dwarf Feedback thread, this time for the May 2012 issue (US 388, UK 389 etc).

If any of you wish to make more general comments about WD, please will you make them in the General White Dwarf Feedback Thread.

I would like to make a couple of other requests. If you post the score you have given to the current WD on the thread, would you please explain why especially if you have voted 1 or 10. I think this is useful (and interesting) for other WarSeer members reading the thread, it also provides useful feedback for others who read the thread which may include GW Staffers.

The other request is related to the previous one. Do not criticise people for posting their score and views about WD, I believe we are all entitled to voice our opinions without the the fear of them being criticised.

As always, all off-topic posts and spam will be deleted without notice.

Wintermute
The WarSeer Inquisition

[librerian_samae]

Just got white dwarf, as usual for me 5 is the average of 'meh it's not good but it's not bad either'

So my score for this months was an impressive 8!

Firstly the new releases, loads of different angles and war gear options shown, plus 2 new thinghs;
1- pictures showing variant construction methods (tomb blades are shown with various ways you can fit the guns)
2- recommended paint palettes by the new items showing paints that will work well together (ie for layered green armour casing and layered bare metal)
I found the little extras made this section far more enjoyable.

Then there was the army project showing someone's Nihilakh dynasty necrons, this involved a army showcase shot, close ups on various units and a rather nice step by step painting guide.
Loved this part, mainly due to the new style paint guides being so easy to follow (also I love necrons painted like this, it's making it really hard for me to resist buying an entire army just to paint!)

Huzzah! a return to designer notes!
Mat talks us through the newly released necrons units and offers a few 'tactical' (rolls eyes) tips.
very basic and a bit buy buy buy but nice to see some thing from the designer.

Moar step by step painting guides for various basic troopers from all over.
Very basic but easy to follow and a good refrence.

Next bit kinda carries on from the last but focuses on various empire states.
mmm... ...colourfull

I loved this next bit just a really short loverly book of heraldry look at demi griffon knights.
Great, great, great.

Storm of magic extras detailing insane mage on mage multi player action with a side salad of warrior priests and witch hunters for dessert.
Opened with a down right excellent fluff piece on the night of a thousand duels.
what followed was nice add on rules for storm of magic.
Excellent piece with both fun background and loads of rules that looked fun and could be added as desired and slotted in piece meal if desired.

standard bearer- haven't read this yet I'm sure it's more thinly vailed corporate blegh but coated in Jervis' enjoyable prose.

necron vs. ??? campaign layout-
nice and indepth with out too much for the sake of too much.
Was good to read and they had examples from when the studio ran it as necrons vs. space marines and eldar.

tale of four gamers.
As usual not enough and meh,but nice army pictures I suppose.

Couple of bits of scenery based on kits 'death world-ed up'.
actually looked very nice and not to difficult for a layman to achieve.

usualy gumph at back.

In summery,

WOW a load of actually interesting rule, painting, modelling and general gaming ideas all crammed into this month!
Now it might just have been a weird very un-probable conjunction of stuff I happen to love,this month did just seem entirely worth it and full of what white dwarf should be full of.
Now don't get me wrong it was all rather slanted to bigging up new stuff etc, but it was done in a very palatable way.

Every article was interesting and engaging, here's hoping white dwarf carries on with the stuff.

[Avatar_exADV]

Definitely an improvement over some of the recent issues.

The Necron painting guide had a couple of interesting effects (the weathered turquoise was nice), and then we got another "here's a dozen models and their simple four-color paint sequence" series. It ain't Golden Daemon, but they're nice easy-to-use guides that show a newbie "hey, highlights go here!" And then another series of color guides for the Empire... for WD that's a pretty heavy emphasis on hobby.

Was it free from buy-the-new-stuff? Hardly. But I'll take painting guides and a campaign layout over "here is another article about why Space Wolves are so great" any day.

The question is, can they give us a WD that's this enjoyable in a month when there's more than a handful of new models being released, or will it go back to the old "let's showcase the big model AGAIN"?

[gutsmaka]

I actually found it lacking in the 40k department. the campaign was good, and the Nihilakh painting guide was better than last, but the tactica was awful, and there was no real battle report! standard bearer has come back from last issue where it was missed but had a lot of "our rules are great and our minis the bes.t in the world" ads.
I give it 3...

[Lord Damocles]

Is it just me, or has the great 25th year of 40K degenerated into shoving a big 'Warhammer 40,000 25' logo on the cover of an issue which would by 40K-heavy anyway, and pretending it's somehow special?


Editorial - basically, Mat Ward seems to have produced most of this month's content.
Poor

News/New Releases - Double page spread of Necrons is totally needed here. Double page spreads for most of the new releases are totally unnecessary.
While I applaud the little bits of fluff (Legion of the Damned, and the Necrons' 'Get off our lawn!' at the start of the issue), they could (should) be integrated better. In ye olden days there would often be 2-4 page spreads with background and new releases (not that the Marines are even new!) scattered throughout issues. This was much better.
Poor

The Nihilakh Dynasty - And then another double page spread of Necrons. Now, I like Necrons and all; but... we've pretty much had this article before. This just seems like a cheap re-hash using the new models. The 'Necron Showcase' page shows the Stalker. The very same Stalker is shown on the previous page, and a couple of pages prior to that. I'd rather see some different armies (Nihilakh is in the Codex after all) - or - and I'm going to go way out here - some background!
Poor

Tomb Worlds Unleashed (Necron... pictures? You can't call this a tactica with a straight face, surely) - Of the six pages in this 'article' (and I'm using the term in the very loosest possible sense here), there's barely a single page worth of text.
The 'tactics' contained herein are laughable in their vagueness.
Poor

And then there's ANOTHER DOUBLE PAGE SPREAD OF NECRONS

Random advert for Water Effect

Citadel Miniatures Painting Guide - More of the mini-guides we got last month and online. I mean, accompanying the new paints, these were fine, but they're no substitute for 'Eavy Metal guides.
Poor

Colours of the Empire - More mini-guides. We get it. New paints. we can paint stuff. We should all buy How To Paint Citadel Miniatures. Is that Crossbowman made out of Greatsword parts?
Bigger than half-page advert for the Empire army book. Smooth GW. Real smooth.
Poor

Demigryph Knights - New background good. Full-page advert for Demigryph Knights totally pointless. If the content of the article is good, then people should be inspired to buy the associated product(s). Shouting 'BUY IT NAOW!' isn't required.
Should have been longer.
Good

Tome of Battle (new Storm of Magic scenario and Cataclysm Spells) - I don't really know much about Storm of Magic (beyond Fantasy Apocalypse), but there's background, scenario, new rules.
Good

Standard Bearer - Oh joy, Jervis is back. We should compromise. except when we shouldn't. That's that clear then. Oh, and we should just roll dice to decide what happens when there are holes in the rules or somebody argues.
Poor

The Battle For Tanrak (Necrons vs. others campaign) - In no particular order, some thoughts:
- The background to the campaign is poorly explained. It's implied that Krispekh (Necrons: just add -kh to the end...) is the leader of the Nihilakh Dynasty, but never stated; that's, y'know, kind of important information in this scenario. An Ork Waaagh! is randomly mentioned just the once. Why are the Eldar there? How come they can operate in the superdeathkillkill wilderness too? when is all this happening?
- Necrons vs. Marines. *sigh*
- Grey Knight Razorback spam with Psyflemen Dreads! Right there in White Dwarf!
- The new scenarios are fun looking (even if the background is derpy), but no indication is given as to when they should be played. Given that the outcomes have quite an impact on later games, that's kind of necessary info.
- The battle reports are so fake.
- The pictures of non-studio armies/models are good!
- The Apocalypse datasheets are OK, but not particularly inspiring (the Apotheosis Orb seems kind of... rubbish... considering the description of it (two of the three effects only work on the Stalker it's carried on!)
- Random tables. Yay.
- Part 1 of X.

I'm not sure what the primary purpose of this is. Is it a 'how to play this campaign' with 'here's how our campaign went' added on, or is it the other way around?
personally, I think it would have been better split up into several articales - Liber Apocalyptica (do try not to just pimp out the new models for once...) (they could have taken the opportunity to update the Necron stratagems/formations too - give that most of them don't work any more), some new scenarios, and army showcases. These could have been put within a loose framework of the background to a campaign, without the battle reports and masses of huge pictures which don't show anything of value.

It's not terrible, but it's hardly great stuff either.
OK

Double page spread of Warhound Titans. Should be doing cutaway datafax thingies.

A Tale of Four... *Zzzz Zzzz*
Poor

Modelling Workshop: Death Worlds - Stick some bits of plastic jungle trees on other plastic terrain and shove in a double page spread of terrain sets.

Never mind, next month we can find out how they drybrushed some standard plastic terrain white and sprinkled a statue with snow-flock.

Oh yeah. Still got it

A pale shadow of what terrain-making articles used to be.
Poor

Stuff at the Back - Does what it says on the tin.
Poor

----------------------

On the surface, it seems like there's quite a lot here, but actually there's relatively little content. Some background on Demigryph Kights and Storm of Magic spells for Fantasy, and a couple of Necron-specific scenarios for 40K, plus some horrible background.

Nothing much more to say about it, really.
EDIT: Wot, no Empire battle report? EDIT 2: Wot, no Empire battle report?

A 3 from me this month.

[SunTzu]

One thing I found very amusing: the inside back cover shows a "Next Month" preview for the first time in ages, promising "The White Scars Take The Fight To The Foe". Oh, and the Necrons of course, who feature heavily in the photo on the same page... but I guess they couldn't advertise "Next Month: More Of The Same Necron-Photo-Heavy Tripe We Gave You This Month!"

One thing I found sad, more than amusing: Jervis Johnson pleading with people to learn to compromise. Maybe my expectations are too high, but I thought everyone over the age of nine already knew that compromise was important...? Two wasted pages. Though to be fair, most of the rest of the magazine was wasted too.

It just seems like the shameless advertising is getting worse, they're barely even pretending any more. They usually at least knock together a half-arsed "tactics" article describing the new units, but this time around they couldn't even call it that, just an "introduction"... because about the limit of the tactical advice was "Tomb Blades are really shooty". Thanks Mat, that's really helpful!

Some of the 40K campaign stuff wasn't too bad. It didn't exactly set the hobby world alight, either, though. The rest... dire. 2/10.

[Coasty]

Nice pictures of Necrons.

Um...thats it, really.

2/10

[zoggin-eck]

It may be that I'm just lowering my expectations, or desperately trying to find the good in White Dwarf, but I quite liked this issue. I've often grabbed a decade or two old issue off the shelf between finishing it each month, but it didn't happen this time

The ads at the start, I don't mind them and they'd be mad to not include them. At least it makes it even more obvious why they chose the naming conventions for the new paints with the little "suggested paints" boxout with some entries, and while I don't find it useful, I can see that others might.

Necron bits were OK. Tactics for them mean little to me, but were interesting.

Painting bits were just a list of colours, so not very exciting. Water effects warrants some space, since it's been gone for a while (I already have alternatives, but I guess it's useful to those who feel they need to buy everything in one store, something GW would be silly to ignore).

Demigryph knights bit was cool. I'd love to see this sort of thing for something other than humans, chaos and Skaven, however. I wish it had a short story or something instead of the page advert directly after.

Storm of Magic scenario and extras is fun to see, and I might just get some use from it. It even had a decent amount of text (even background!) and is an example of giving stuff to new models/the new army without ignoring everyone else. The people who screamed at GW for making the expansion in the first place will still be unhappy and imagine the army books they apparently would have made in its absence.

Standard bearer was rubbish. I know Jervis can write an interesting article, but he hasn't for a long time. Get him writing more "battlefield challenges" and maybe an article with an appropriate theme, maybe get him to re-read Nigel's "Stillmania" of old.

Necron campaign I really liked. Nice to see some different armies, too (yes, yes, I get that they chose the "new guys" for the theme).

I don't think that "four gamers" was that bad, either. The armies are looking good, and the little dioramas look good. Lotr on the Realm of Battle boards still looks ordinary to me. The terrain featured (often with a "how-to" article) when the first film/game came out was so inspiring. This just looks like every other photograph in the magazine.

The "alien world" terrain is another dull "small changes to our plastic terrain" article. I'm so sick of these. (Each one reminds me that they released a book with fantasy siege rules and didn't do a feature on making non-human castles ) I'm annoyed at myself for thinking it looks great, though. The palm trees look good as weird coloured leaves, as do the weird stumps growing in the craters.

.....

One thing I'm liking is the not so subtle reminders that they still see their games as casual play, often as part of a group, with themed games often as part of a campaign among friends. There's a whole relaxed attitude to the games which, to me, is at odds with some of the weird "this is overpowered", "something about army tiers or power level" or "nobody takes this unit" attitude you see from some people.

[gutsmaka]

One thing I'm liking is the not so subtle reminders that they still see their games as casual play, often as part of a group, with themed games often as part of a campaign among friends. There's a whole relaxed attitude to the games which, to me, is at odds with some of the weird "this is overpowered", "something about army tiers or power level" or "nobody takes this unit" attitude you see from some people.

Normally, I'd agree with you but this time, if you look at the imperial armies in the apoc game, psyback spam with added psylfemen, autocannon and lascannon predators, rhino rushes and asualt termies. the background was there but they were being very competitive

[The Clairvoyant]

Not a dreadful issue but not a good one either really.
No interest in Necrons, so not entirely sure why i bought this issue!
Standard Bearer was ummm, interesting. The bit about Mark Wells saying "And, instead of either/or" just made me think of this:

Mark Wells: "How can we increase the profit on our fantasy unit boxes?"
Grunt: "Well we could either reduce the contents or we could increase the price"
MW: "Hmm, why not do both?!"

I did like the fact they put the little painting guides for the necron armour bits which i'm sure people will find useful.
The rest of the painting guides seemed fairly good, but the picture of the finished daemonette looked horrible.

I like reading others reviews of the magazine, but "Editorial: poor" just makes me chuckle every time. What do you expect to have in here to make it good??

[paddyalexander]

Back in the day I used to really enjoy reading Fat Blokes' and Guy Haleys' editorials which often were witty observations about the hobby and included funny personal stories like Guys' Imperial Guard army getting tabled by his Tyranid playing buddy without killing a single 'nid model. There was more interesting content in those old editorials than there is in entire issues of White Dwarf these days.

[Graeme]

I went to the effort of writing out a detailed review of last month’s because I thought it was (very) poor but showed potential. This one is so bad, I just can’t be bothered to spend the time (voted ‘1’). Briefly:

No bat rep
Not only too many photos, but too many photos of the same minis!
Incomprehensible campaign/scenario/fictional series of games ‘thing’

Suffice to say, if I hadn’t been gifted a subscription I wouldn’t be getting next month’s.

Regarding the mag in general, I believe that the four gamers really did build and play with armies (warbands? LOTR collections). This represents an investment in resources. Surely, the most effective thing to do with this investment is use it as the basis for a proper battle report. Hey presto, you have actual content in your magazine.

I don’t believe that any of the battles (vaguely) described in the ‘thing’ actually took place.

It’s been said in these WD threads that photos are a cheap way of filling out the mag, relative to decent, text-heavy bat reps and other articles. As someone who’s worked in publishing and is currently a full-time writer, I’d be interested to know whether this is actually true. An experienced scribbler could bash out text for a passable bat rep/tactica/whatever in a couple of hours. I’d be willing to bet (a small amount of) money that it actually takes longer than that for the double-page images to be set up, photographed and digitally messed around with. ‘Tis madness.

EDITED TO ADD: Two people have voted ten?! There are people who seriously think that this issue couldn't be improved in any way? Would they like to maybe post rebuttals to any of the criticisms others have made?

[SunTzu]

EDITED TO ADD: Two people have voted ten?! There are people who seriously think that this issue couldn't be improved in any way? Would they like to maybe post rebuttals to any of the criticisms others have made?

Some people always vote ten. (Some other people always vote one). It's a bit sad, but it's only the internet. What ya gonna do?

[Lord Damocles]

I like reading others reviews of the magazine, but "Editorial: poor" just makes me chuckle every time. What do you expect to have in here to make it good??

To be fair, the chances of an Editorial ever actually being 'good' are slim, but as it is they tend to just state what's in the magazine - when the contents is on the very next page.
Also, in the interests of fairness, editorials of the past often did this as well - but they tended to only take up half a page with the rest of the page having something vaguely useful on it (rather than just more pictures).

Past Editorials have included various things which made them less terrible:
- Standard Bearer style sermonising (only not so condescending)
- What the team have been doing this month
- Fat Bloke talking about food


On the plus side, it's no longer written by a cartoon dwarf...

[Shamutanti]

EDITED TO ADD: Two people have voted ten?! There are people who seriously think that this issue couldn't be improved in any way? Would they like to maybe post rebuttals to any of the criticisms others have made?

Truth be told I only thought the WD was worth 7 or 8 this month rather than 10. But frankly I sort of just enjoy balancing out the 1s that come acropper haha

10 doesn't mean it can be improved, at least not for me. It just means I thought it was a worthwhile read for the price I paid for it. The same as previous white dwarves were generally worth the same rating based on the fact I pay hardly anything for them.

[shelfunit.]

Truth be told I only thought the WD was worth 7 or 8 this month rather than 10. But frankly I sort of just enjoy balancing out the 1s that come acropper haha

Odd that your 10's always appear before any of the 1's...

[Shamutanti]

Odd that your 10's always appear before any of the 1's...

Cause I know those bad boys are coming

[shelfunit.]

Cause I know those bad boys are coming

Ever think they might not if there were not so many 10's being handed out like candy?

[Tarax]

Thank Goodness the Tale of Four Gamers is over. It was only 3 months, but if they didn't do it, it wouldn't be missed.
The only thing that had me interested was in the first month when I thought that they would go on to build War of the Ring-armies. This way they could show people how they can build 'real' armies and how you can expand you LotR-collection to something bigger and still use it.
Aside from a fairly good first month, there was little to no contents in the other 2. No battle reports, little to no explanation why and what they bought and painted. It was almost as if GW said: 'Well, we have to do another To4G, but haven't got the time, because of other projects. Maybe we will take 4 fairly unimportant people to do it, but only a limited number of months, with a system that is not that important to us, but could generate more sales nontheless.'

As to the rest of the magazine, it was clumsily put together. Necron parts weren't that interested, with no or obvious tactics. A campaign that was incomprehensible. No (decent) battle report. And Jervis should think hard about what he will say next time, that will keep the interest of anyone.

The only thing that was any good, to me, was the showing of the new models. At least now I know (for certain) what will be released. You know, I recieved the WD last thursday, and today I recieved the newsletter telling me about the new releases, which was irrelevant by now.

Because there were some good things in there, I give it a 5.

[violenceha]

4.
There were things about this issue I liked, most importantly the non studio armies, shame the pics were so small when, as others have pointed out, large areas of the magazine were wasted.
I choose to read Standard Bearer as Jervis saying from now on comprimising your principles is wrong, and we won't see any more garbage articles from him.
If it hadn't been for the "painting articles" letting it down I would have rated this issue a 7 or 8.
The $79 Szeras made me laugh.... then check the site to make sure it was a misprint.