Review: White Dwarf 199 (391)

I guess you could rightly say that there is no need for this review anymore as it’s only one more week ’till the next White Dwarf will be released…

some might even add: IF it will be released in time, but then I don’t think that rumor about the next WD being pushed back or late is correct. Even worse, we all know that July’s White Dwarf is all about the new Edition of Warhammer 40.000 – and by now, virtually everyone who would be interested in that already has ordered his or her  specimen of the big, bad rulebook, so they all don’t need to know what’s in the magazine anyway…

But, you know, I am a tad old-fashioned… I’ve always written a review of the White Dwarf ever since I keep this Blog… and even though most people wouldn’t give a damn about this one now, I won’t give up my habits just because of that… detail… after all, as they say: the goal of a journey is the journey itself, not the destination…

That said, let’s get on with it!

 

July’s White Dwarf has on its cover one fierce blue Ultramarine Warrior with some slightly… disarranged Chaos warrior and the rather bold announcement: THERE IS ONLY WAR… and as you can see above, my german issue tells me that THERE IS NO PEACE… War and Peace – can they keep this promise? Is there War and Murder and suicidal action in this issue? Or is it just a mag full of coloured advertisements? Let’s take a look…

 

Warhammer Fantasy Battles

• Nothing at all in this issue! - well, that’s not really true, ’cause we have…
• Armies on Parade – Dave Taylor’s Empire Army: some beautiful photos, some beautifully painted miniatures… yes, I do agree I am impressed… still: did we really need those? After all, this whole issue is about…

 

 

Warhammer 40.000

• There is only War: Simon Grant gives us some insight why the new rulebook is the best one they have ever written about the grim future… and he’s doing a fine job with that, probably being the most talented writer they currently have in the White Dwarf team…
  Really, before I had read this article (and others, of course) I was content to wait for the starter set to get a mini-rulebook and be content with that…. did it that way during the last two editions… but then I read and I wanted and finally I did order my big book… now that’s good advertising…
  That said, I am afraid there is no content to be found here that is of use once you have the rulebook (apart from the photos… there is always a place for more photos…).
• Armies of the 41st Millennium: this is more or less a huge collection of professional photos of no less than 22 armies for 40K, wrapped up with some thoughts about them provided by their owners/painters. Personally I am always a sucker for miniatures that are well-posed, well-converted and well-painted (the latter being something I am definitely NOT able to provide) – so I pretty much liked this one. Some of those armies were already featured in earlier White Dwarfs, but at least they used new photos in those cases.
  The armies in the order they are presented here:
  - Black Templars (Carl Dafforn)
  - Blood Angels (Christian Byrne)
  - Chaos Space Marines (Glenn More)
  - Daemons of Chaos (Wade Pryce)
  - Chaos Space Marines (Steve Bowerman)
  - Dark Angels (Ben Jefferson)
  - Dark Eldar (Stu Black)
  - Eldar (Matt Hutson)
  - Grey Knights (Glenn More)
  - Grey Knights (Robin Cruddace, Stu Black)
  - Imperial Guard (Chris Peach)
  - Imperial Guard (Mike Anderson)
  - Necrons (Joe Tomaszewski)
  - Necrons (Robin Cruddace)
  - Orks (Stu Black)
  - Orks (Dave Heathfield, Neil Green)
  - Ultramarines (Dave Andrew)
  - Imperial Fists (Matt Hutson)
  - Space Wolves (Simon Grant)
  - Space Wolves (Emma Parrington)
  - Tau Empire (San Dinwiddy)
  - Tyranids (Christ Peach, Steve Bowerman)
  …which is pretty much every army in the game apart from the Sororitas… I especially liked that Black Templars-Dreadnought using a Dreadknight’s hammer as his close combat weapon… might end up doing the same with my excess hammer… the most impressive battleforce to me is the heavily converted Imperial Guard detachment Chris Peach did.
• The Scouring of Kasr XV: After many months with ridiculously bad battle reports, we finally get the real thing again! I didn’t really expect that…. we have Andrew Kenrick (Imperial Guard/Grey Knights) battling against  Simon Grant (Chaos Space Marines/Daemons of Chaos), while giving us a first glimps at how the new editions plays of the table.
  A nice, solid battle report, sweetened by the fact that the Grey Knights detachment is quite beaten up – something we wouldn’t have expected during 5th edition.
• Battlefield Terrain: one of the new things about the 6th edition is that one can add certain (defensory or shooty) scenery pieces to his or her army. Of course all of those can be represented by shiny plastic kits from Games Workshop, who would have had that one coming? Though my sarcasm is actually wrong, I love those rules, while planning to build all of those terrain features without the use of those kits…
  But back to the article. It is quite short, showing us some terrain pieces and short texts about the how they now work in the game. I am fine with that.
• Assault on Fellstorm Airfield: this is the second battle report of this issue. It’s a late bloomer of the 40K campaign that dominated last month’s White Dwarf. Again we have Steve Bowerman (Orks) and Duncan Rhodes (Space Marines) battling it out.
  I generally like battle reports and this one is ok, too… but as it happens with “second reports”, it ended up too short and too sketchy to be much fun. I would rather have preferred to see the pages of this report used for  something else – even though I personally think that both the background story and the setup of the “Fellstorm Airfield” made a better read than those of “Kasr XV”… but at least it’s the Orks who win…
• Army Project: Tau Empire: well, there can never be enough painting guides, so here come Steve Bowerman and Duncan Rhodes and show us with loads of little photos and almost no little text how to paint standard units of the Tau Empire. And even though I am not too much of a fan of  the Tau (at least some of my time) I am pretty impressed with the results, especially the “dancing” Crisis Battlesuit…
• Forge World: I rate this one as being one step more than the usual advertisement for the products of Forge World. It’s rather a “Forge World 101″ for new players, possibly because they expect the Games Workshop-stores to hand out specimens of this issues to newcomers. So we get some short introduction on the many kits Forge World does for Warhammer 40.000 – from the Deathkorps of Krieg to the Tau Empire Manta. 960 £, anyone?
  It’s here that we also find the announcement for “Imperial Armour Aeronautica” – that new book on the various Forge World flyers, probably printed to bring their rules on par with the 6th edition.
• The Hour of the Witch: well, the new edition comes with new psychic disciplines and Mat Ward himself is telling us a bit about those and which are the best for which 40K army – and he makes sure that the new disciplines are aways the best to use… provided your faction can use them anyway…
  No, let’s be honest: it is not as bad a read as this may sound… actually liked that one.
• Preview: at the end of this issue we find a nice photo of Chaos Space Marines with a couple of Daemons of Chaos for better sport and the announcement that next issue would be about Battle brothers and allies from hell… Anyone else thinking about those rumors telling us we would see a shiny new codex for the Chaos Space Marines in August, perhaps accompanied by a wave of plastic daemons?
  For us in Germany, August’s issue will be No. 200 and thus they also announce here that it will be a special “Anniversary Issue with a Gimmick”. In times bygone this would sound like some extra miniature in pewter or plastic, but nowadays I’m afraid all we’ll see is some poster about Citadel Finecast…

 

 

The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game

• Now there’s really nothing about that in this issue - now don’t tell me you expected something different? My, my, are we some optimists here…

 

 

Miscellaneous

• Standard Bearer:  They tell us that Jervis Johnson is missing (hopefully not to be found again over at Warlord Games, one might add) and thus we have Jeremy Vetock taking over the Standard Bearer. He is giving us a lecture on his view of the hobby and what one might pay attention to, while going at it…
  I wouldn’t call this piece “bad”, but it is definitely rather fogettable. Personally I would have preferred some “Blanchitsu” instead of this… and recognising Rick Priestley on one of the pictures only makes me missing him more… heck, I’ll probably even buy the new Bolt Action rulebook just to have another piece written by this guy…

 

 

Well, after a very disappointing issue 198/390, this one is a Dwarf I really enjoyed reading. Sure, this issue is mainly one huge advertisement for the 6th Edition of Warhammer 40.000 – but at least it’s enjoyable advertisement. You know of that kind you sometimes watch in the movies where you can later tell everybody: all right, that movie was really bad, but at least there were some funny ads before it started… not that the new edition is like a bad movie… by now I do own my big bad rulebook and it’s a great read…

So we have an issue with enjoyable  battle reports, fairly informative articles and many photos that are inspiring for my own projects.  There really are a lot of worse ways to spend your time!