Review: White Dwarf 193 (385)

Oh my god, this time I am really too late… I already read February’s issue by now… but just for the records, here’s my review of january’s White Dwarf. You know, the one with the vampire… and remember, as usual I will be reviewing the german edition so if you own a different one, the titles of some articles (which I will have to re-translate back into english) may be different… but first, short and good…

The précis

• Warhammer 40 000:  this issue is surely bleak for fans of the Grim Future. There’s just a Tactica on Necrons, which is fine, but not enough. And I won’t start with those two army lists, they are just fillers… - D
• Warhammer Fantasy Battles: While the whole issue appears to be for Fantasy, actual content is thin. On the positive side we have the first part of the Civil War expansion and a scenario for the Vampire Counts as well as some “exclusive” excerpts from the army book and a host of useless army lists. The rest is absolute rubbish  – B-.
• Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game: one word: nothing. And no, I won’t count that “Armies on Parade”-display in, that’s no content, that’s a joke – D.
• Hobby:  I would call that one solid: a photo spread of ‘Eavy Metal-painted Vampires and two painting workshops (Mortis Engine and Ghorgon). Nothing too inspiring and no frame diagrams, though – B.
• Entertainment:  Only one battle report, but that one’s well-written  – B.

A so  All in all, I give this issue a C and that’s almost too generous (and because I have a feeling I still need some lower grades for other issues this year). There are no interviews with designers, there are no interviews with sculptors, there are no painted frame diagrams. Instead we have seven pages of “exclusive” extracts from the army book and no less than eight sample army lists – who needs that many?

Who can buy it? The collector, of course, and perhaps people who often play against Vampire Counts players. Probably Gaming clubs should buy one issue (1), too, for the Civil War expansion. But definitely no one else. For 40K or LotR, there’s not enough content. And if you are a Vampire Counts player, you cannot find anything here you won’t find in the army book – at least nothing of real interest.

And now…

The long tour

• [--] Front Cover (Dave Gallagher): and another one by Mr. Gallagher and yet another cut-out from the cover of an Armybook. Here it’s a vampire who surely looks as if he’s pissed off… don’t know, just not to my taste this time…
• [00] Editorial (Andrew Kenrick): Mr. Kenrick loves the Vampire Counts, even though he’s playing Tomb Kings – or so he says…
• [02-15] Warhammer Vampire Counts (New Releases): the new year 2012 starts with quite a lot of plastic and Finecast resin rising from their graves… and I wonder if some hadn’t better stayed six feet under… but then, I have to admit, I am not really into Vampire Counts. So, what do we have?
  • [04-07] Coven Throne / Mortis Engine (Martin Footit, Aly Morrison): no new month without a shiny new dual kit it seems… but I won’t complain about this one. It is a flamboyant, cool kit with lots of options for Bitzhunter like myself. While I would have no use for all the ghosts that carry the actual throne/shrine, I am thinking about getting this kit for the rest:  the three vampire ladies could – with new Dark Eldar heads – make for some splendid Dark Elf Witches in some self-made Cauldron of Blood I am thinking about for a long, long time, while most of the parts of the Mortis Engine would fit to my plans for doing my Skaven looted Steam tank… and who knows, perhaps those ghosts could be used for some weird monument? Yes, probably this one will be mine sooner or later, if only for the bitz…
    I have to admit that four pages of advertisement for just one kit is a bit insane, though…
  • [08-09] Vargheists / Crypt Horrors (Giorgio Bassani, Ed Cottrell): another dual kit, but one I definitely dislike. I know that monstrous infantry (and the Vargheists are airborne, too) are something good in 8th edition, but those miniatures are just… meh… I actually expected more from Mr. Bassani, many of whose miniatures I like, but perhaps all those bland limbs and unremarkable faces and wings were more the work of Mr. Cottrell, whom I heard of for the first time here. Anyway, the Vargheists are better than the Crypt Horrors. Don’t know about the rules, but model-wise, I would always go for them.
  • [09] Wight King (Martin Footit): I was astonished that only one Lord choice was released as a mini-plastic kit, I clearly expected more of those and less of Finecast this time around… I actually quite like the Wight King. Of course it is sad that he comes with no choices of weaponry but sword and shield, but then you have to take those kits like you used to take the pewter miniatures: if you don’t like anything about them, convert them – and actually it’s pretty easy to swap Mr. Kings weapons.
    Definitely one of the best of the new plastic blister-miniatures.
  • [10-11] Black Knights / Hexwraiths (Alan & Michael Perry): ah, the return of my favourite sculptors! I had actually almost given up hope to see anything by them for Warhammer Fantasy this year, given the fact that they are probably the main sculptors for anything related to the Hobbit movie tie-ins… but here they are with their cavalry kit and I LOVE IT. Of course I have no use for them in my armies, but the Black Knights are among the most splendid cavalry models in the whole Warhammer range. I know many people out there in the internet dislike the Hexwraiths, but I like those two, especially the heads and weaponry.
    Even though it’s the Coven throne kit I might be buying for myself, this one is definitely the best kit released this month.
  • [12] Krell, Lord of Undeath, Isabella Von Carstein (Juan Diaz): two new Finecast releases marking the re-appearance of Heinrich Kemmler’s companien Krell and the arch-vampiress Isabella. As models, both are nice. I like the axe (especially its handle) and the head of Krell and the finely detailed bodice and skirt of Isabella are marvellous. Just like the vampiresses of the Coven throne I could imagine that with a head (and weapon) swap, Isabella would make a fine gothic Dark Elfin Witch, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find some serious casting issues with the finer parts of the miniature here and there…
  • [12] Von Carstein Upgrade Pack (Gavin Newton): Another Finecast release, a standard and 12 shields (6 designs) for Von Carstein minions like Skeleton Warriors. They look good, but I am not sure if many people out there are willing to pay some additional 15,50 € for those… I would, though. After all, you don’t count money if your evils want to look good…
  • [13] Warhammer: Vampire Counts (Phil Kelly), Battle Magic: Vampire Counts: and finally here it is, the shiny new Army Book, written by no other than Phil Kelly, arguably the best (but definitely the least hated) designer at GW. The seven Battle Magic cards were sold out in no time and I expect them to appear on eBay soon, fetching some insane price… after all, those are not the Beastmen…
  • [14-15] Vampire Lord on Zombie Dragon / Terrorgheist (Martin Footit, Mark Harrison), Heinrich Kemmler (Gary Morley), Skeleton Warriors (Mike Anderson, Aly Morrison, Brian Nelson), Sartosan Vampire (Mark Harrison), Blood Knights (Mike Anderson): now this is something embarrassing. I am used to have some two-page shiny advertisement in the White Dwarf… well, advertising all those wonderful Games Workshop miniatures already available for some army… but here we have them in the “New releases” section, mixed up with some (though not all) re-releases in Finecast. Of the miniatures on this page, the two really disappointing me are Heinrich Kemmler, whose sculpt is much to static and old to deserve a Finecast re-release, and the Blood Knights. Five riders for 80 €? If I were a Vampire Counts player, I would buy some Chaos Knights and equip them with some Skeleton Warriors bitz…
    I loved the inclusion of the Sartosan Vampire, though. It’s a great miniature often neglected (it’s not too easy to find on the GW homepage), has a lot of character AND it’s the only pewter vampire left in the building… I prefer Finecast and plastics to pewter, but if there’s only one left, even I get sentimental…
    
• [16-17] Dreadfleet: even though I do like and own the game, I really wish it would eventually sell out – the constant ads for it are starting to annoy me… I don’t think the blurp stating that one game with all 10 ships lasted for more than SIX hours is helping to sell this thing…
• [18] Black Library (New Releases): only one page this time, including a very short (and largely uninteresting) excerpt of Nick Kymes short story City of Dead Jewels that appears in Age of Legend. Some more ads for books here: Galaxy in Flames (Audiobook by Ben Counter, read by Martyn Ellis), Deliverance Lost (Gav Thorpe) and Word Bearers – The Omnibus (Anthony Reynolds).
• [19] News: nothing of interest or importance here, except an miniscule announcement of the celebration of the 25th anniversary of Warhammer 40.000 in February. Talking about heating up the vibe…
• [20-23] Warhammer Vampire Counts/The Undead rise (Anonymus, Phil Kelly): Now we get to the point where this issue really starts to annoy me. You know, I don’t mind many pages of new releases, accompanied by shiny photos of miniatures (geez, I am a hobbyist, that’s what I like. Really). I can even accept (though grudgingly) the absence of any painted frame diagram for any of the new kits (and be sure I would have loved a frame diagram of the Coven Throne or the Black Knights!).
  BUT THIS IS THE SECOND CONSECUTIVE MONTH WITHOUT ANYTHING RESEMBLING AN INTERVIEW WITH THE DESIGNERS! That’s right: no words from Phil Kelly on his design choices, no word from Martin Footit, Aly Morrison or the Perries. I always love to read how designers think about their models and in several cases (like the Nemesis Dreadknight or the Stormraven Gunship) it even helped me accepting an otherwise weak design, because it somehow made sense once the designers explained why they sculpted them that way.
  No, nothing this month. Instead we get some (quite substantial) excerpts from the Army Book. They are labelled “exclusive”, which is quite a stupid way to say “we were to lazy to make some real content)… here it is two pages on the nature of the Undead.
• [24-33] Born of Blood (Simon Grant): somehow I do like Simon Grant. He can write pretty well and he surely does the best out of hopeless assignments. Here he tells us how great the Vampire Counts are and he does that quite convincingly. Still, already being annoyed by the absence of any interview content, I couldn’t quite enjoy this – sorry, Simon!
  Inset are so many splash texts and army lists that they easily make up 90 % of the whole article. They include statements by Phil Kelly on the Winged Vampire Lord and Isabella Von Carstein, the “exclusive” excerpt of Phil Kellys army book – the entryof the  Coven Throne – and no less than three double-page sample army lists, each of around 3.000 points. One is centered around skeletons and Lahmia vampiresses, one is trying to live (joke…) with few magic and much fast attacking units and one is a strigoi army full of rotting flesh… and I refuse to write anything more on those, rarely met such uninspired page-fillers…
• [34-37] The Dark Arts (Simon Grant): Simon Grant again, having little space to write about necromancers and necromancy. Again not a bad one, but I would have preferred a solid interview with Phil Kelly…
  Inset is another “exclusive” excerpt of Phil Kellys army book – the entryof the Mortis Engine – and yet another sample army list of 2.000 points with Heinrich Kemmler and Krell. At least that one is only one page long…
• [38-41] ‘Eavy Metal Vampire Counts (Joe Tomaszweski, Neil Green, Dave Heathfield, Darren Latham, Matt Kennedy, Anja Wettergren): as I said I don’t mind fine photographies of finely painted miniatures, so I enjoyed this one (hey, I love to read National Geographic Magazine, too…). I would only wish the ‘Eavy Metal team would give some details as to which exact colours they used and which techniques they applied… you know, talking more like friends and less like artists… on page 40, there’s a Crypt Horror painted by Matt Kennedy in warmer, reddish colours. It looks much better than the official paintjob (just telling…).
• [42-56] War in the Border Princes (Simon Grant, Jervis Johnson): in yet another blatant display of editorial lazyness we have another “exclusive” excerpt of three long pages from Phil Kelly’s army book on an episode of Warhammer history – Mannfred von Carstein kidnaps High Elfin Princess Aliathra to further the distrust between Elves and Dwarves…
  Or so I thought.  But after this extract we have a scenario based on this text and a battle report where Simon Grant’s High Elves barely escape the evil clutches of Jervis Johnson’s vampiric forces… actually I enjoyed this one quite a lot. The Scenario itself is quite solid albeit specific. It would take little effort to change the setting to any army present, I guess.
• [58-59] Standard Bearer (Jervis Johnson): there are people out there that dislike Mr. Johnsons nostalgic look at the game, but I pretty much enjoy it, so I am always looking forward to the Standard Bearer… and as SBs go, this one is very good, dealing with the fact that Games Designers are the worse at playing (and winning) their game that they are at designing it. Sounds weird, but after reading I agree: yeah, that pretty much makes sense.
  Wasn’t nice by Mr. Johnson to claim Alessio Cavatore having become a bad gamer, too…
• [60-67] Tactica: Necrons (Mat Ward): this one is solid. Mainly, he is discussing most of the main units of the Necrons and how (not) to use them. I think this will be more interesting to foes of Necron players than to those themselves – I guess the “real” Necron aficionados already know most of what Mr. Ward is writing.
  Inset here are some little texts – on the C’tan shards, Gauss and Tesla weapons and so on – and two sample army lists running at 1.500 points each.
• [70-75] Painting Workshop: Ghorgon (Chad Mierzwa): a nice long painting workshop for the Ghorgon miniature for the Beastmen. I won’t complain about that one – techniques for skin and fur are always useful. That he used 30 different Citadel colours (and that they had to include one page on Citadel stuff just for advertisement) gives it a slightly strange taste, though…
• [77-85] Warhammer: Civil War (pt. 1/4) (Jervis Johnson): One cannot help the feeling that they finally found a job for Jervis Johnson after they took Specialist Games from him: to provid content for the White Dwarf… so we have some new rules here for pinching two Warhammer Fantasy armies of the same kind against each other, brother against brother… the rules part of it is actually quite simple: set up a battlefield and roll once on a “Civil War Battle Table” (which provides for some common events like “all units hate the units of the other army”) and once on an army-specific table with 11 different army-specific special rules. This installment has tables for the Vampire Counts, the Beastmen, the Ogre Kingdoms and the Lizardmen, with the rest coming in the next three issues.
  Personally I love the events and special rules presented here. They are by no means balanced or even, but they surely are colourful… quite sad that my friends and I looked carefully that we would collect different armies and with Warhammer Fantasy laying dormant between us for years, no one of us has enough adaequatly painted models to provide for two armies… yet…
• [88-91] Sorcerous Pacts (Anonymus): here are the updates for Storm of Magic that have become necessary due to the new army book. And due to the fact that we all seem to just love that, there are two sample army lists – again…
• [92-93] Games Day 2012 (Anonymus): the dates for the Games Days this years and the official presentation of this year’s exclusive miniature – Juan Diaz’ re-interpretation of the Blood Angels captain that was featured on the cover of the 2nd edition box of Warhammer 40.000. Love that one, hopefully I can pick up one on eBay…
• [94-95] Armies on Parade: Dan Harden’s Haradrim (Dan Harden): I am a patient guy and I do admit, I like the Games Workshop kits. I even enjoy the White Dwarf without complaining… but to find two pages on an fairly uninteresting display piece after having to “enjoy” so many army lists… no, Sir, this is too much…
• [98-105] Painting Workshop: Mortis Engine (Steve Bowerman): I would have preferred a Painting Workshop on the Coven Throne, but I do welcome all the tips given here.  It definitely is the better workshop in this issue (which is strange, usually I prefer those by Chad Mierzwa to Steve Bowerman’s or Chris Peach’s). Strangely enough I do think the paintjob of the Mortis Engine by Mr. Bowerman is better than the official one by the ‘Eavy Metal team… especially the ghosts look better.
• [107-119] Auspex.
• [120] Citadel Hall of Fame (Kevin Chin, Juan Diaz): Kevin Chin nominates Juan Diaz’ Space Marine Chaplain in Terminator Armour for the Hall of Fame (which I should note, hasn’t been updated on the GW homepage in ages…). A good choice, a great miniature – but only one page dedicated to it? At least in the german edition the answer of Mr. Diaz looks badly edited. As if he had a nice answer and the editor said: but we only have one page instead of two, because the customers want more army lists… really, this is a heartless!
• [--] Back cover: High Elves battling with a Vampire Counts army – and behold, the whole scenery is handmade!

And that’s it for this issue. Sorry for the delay, will start writing February’s review tomorrow!