New White Dwarf Magazine Impressions

I picked up GW's new White Dwarf magazine a couple of weeks back out of pure curiosity. I'm not a collector of hobby magazines in general but I do have a small collection of White Dwarf magazines that I purchased when I was a nerdy teen first starting out in the hobby.

So when I heard that White Dwarf was getting revamped (again) I thought I'll get one to see if I'm missing anything.

I picked up Issue 4 on 22 Feb 14 which focuses on the recently released Imperial Knights. Here's my impression of the product.

Contents

White Dwarf is now a weekly magazine that can only be picked up at a GW store (for €3.20). I assume this was done to coincide with GW's new strategy of weekly releases.

The magazine has 32 pages broken down broadly as follows:

Page 1: Opening Salvo (Editor's intro) and table of contents;

Pages 2-13: New Releases - Imperial Knights, a couple of digital supplements and Black Library books;

Pages 14-17: Imperial Knights - info on the fluff of the Imperial Knights and their creation by the Studio team;

Pages 18-21: Paint Splatter - brief painting tutorial for two Imperial Knight houses: Terryn and Raven;

Pages 22-23: Sprues and Glue - some tips for assembling the Imperial Knight;

Pages 24-27: The Rules - some teaser rules for the Knight Paladin and Knight Errant;

Pages 28-32: The Week in White Dwarf - random stuff

Impressions

I'm no Sherlock but it is pretty obvious the magazine was designed as a platform to promote the current week's new releases (or in this case pre-release).

Of the magazine's 32 pages, 26 pages is devoted to covering the week's big release: the Imperial Knights. The coverage is pretty comprehensive as it gives us lots of pretty pictures to drool over, some fluff to give us a feel for the new faction, some ''behind the scenes" commentary by the creators of the Knights, some hobby tips to give you ideas and lastly some teaser rules to wet your appetite. The last bit really surprised me as I have not seen rules in a White Dwarf in a long long time. I call it teaser as they don't actually give you enough to field any Knights. You'll still have to buy the Codex to do that.

The magazine does feel really short as you can go through it in 15 mins. However I do feel there is a good balance of photos and content. With the focus on the big release of the week there is a lack of contents on other areas of the hobby. However this is clearly what they were going for as each issue will target a specific portion of their market i.e. 40K Imperial players for this issue, Fantasy Dwarf players for the previous issue and so on.

Given that I was interested in learning more about Imperial Knights, this magazine was a satisfying read. In particular, I really enjoy the interviews with the original creators: Jervis Johnson and Jes Goodwin and their take on the new Imperial Knights.

The rules section is a bit weak in that it is not functional i.e. you can't play the unit with the rules printed. However the intent is clearly to give potential buyers a glimpse into what the unit can do i.e. Superheavy, D weapon chainsword and Ion Shield. Oh baby.

The last section is a hodgepodge of random stuff which I found a very entertaining read. The Codex Apocrypha gives some wiki like descriptions of in-universe terms relating to the current week release. In this case Adeptus Mechanicus techno babble such as scrap code and Lingua-Technis. A funny take on readers letters in Ask Grombrindal (i.e. the White Dwarf) and my favourite Gaze of the Inquisition where the White Dwarf team speculate about some 40K mysteries including who they think is the "giant of a man clad in baroque power armour" referred to in Trazyn the Infinite background. Adam Troke argues it is the Primarch Vulkan. Man I love all that fluffy shit.

Verdict

Like a lot of hobbyist I get a bit nostalgic when talking about White Dwarf. However I think the mentality of "everything was better in my day" tends to introduce too much negative bias. With that in mind, here is my verdict from a scale of "Pyrovore" (Buy at Your Own Peril), "Bolter" (Not Great But Not Bad) and "2++" (This Will Blow Your Mind!).

2++

This is a short magazine that wouldn't appeal to everyone. I myself will not be picking this up every week. However if there is a release you are really interested in, a copy of the new weekly White Dwarf is not a bad way to spend your hard earned €3.20.

Do you even Kanban bro?

I'm sure I'm not alone when I say I have a TON of unpainted minis.

The problem I have is I don't hobby on a regular basis but I buy new minis like my life depends on it. Even when I'm actively hobbying I rarely complete projects as I get distracted too easily.

This leads to two very undesirable outcomes:

1. I don't game nearly enough as I dislike playing with grey plastic; and
2. I get demotivated by my lack of progress and rage quit

One very handy tool I've found recently is Kanban board. This is a scheduling tool that can help you organise and manage competing projects.

It was originally devised and used in the automotive industry but can easily be applied to painting your man dolls. I jumped on the Kanban bus after listening to the guys over at the Independent Character Podcast. They have done a short tutorial which I have linked here. This would be a good place to start if you are interested in trying out this tool.

My Kanban Board

Above you can see my Kanban board as of today.

One thing I really like about this tool is that it is very visual and allows me to see at a glance what my current projects are and how far they are from being completed.

I have minis from a variety of different gaming systems which I keep track by colour coding each one. There are loads of functionality such as setting due dates, setting sub-tasks etc. which you can try out to further improve your productivity.

My board only includes what I consider my "current" tasks. Which as you can see is pretty big already. The scary thing is that this is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of my mini collection.

I thought I'll bring this to the community's attention as it is certainly a fantastic tool which is no more complicated to operate than an excel spreadsheet.

This also provides a preview of what you can expect to see on this blog in the near future.

Welcome to my blog, there are many like it, but this one is mine.

Hello all,

Welcome to my blog where I will wax lyrical about my various hobbies.

I'm a keen (read obsessive) miniature collector and have minis from systems including WH40K, Infinity, Warmahordes, Anima Tactics and many others.

I'm alright with a paint brush and will showcase my hobby projects. I intend this to be a self motivator to help me finish my many open projects. I will strive to make a post on this blog at least once a week. As a side effect, I also hope this will be of interest to my fellow hobbyist. If you learn a trick or two, great. If I inspire you to work on your own hobby projects, even better.

I'm also known to throw down dice and game with my man dolls. This happens too little as of late. Real life tends to get in the way. However I intend to remedy this soon. Additionally I will also make posts of my games and even perhaps tutorials of lesser known systems. All for your entertainment and education.

My nerdy interests encompasses more than just table-top gaming. As such I will interject my table-top hobby posts with discussions/reviews of my other interests including video games, books and movies. Variety is the spice of life as they say.

As a taster here are some pics of my previous hobby endeavours:

Well that's it for my first blog post.

See you soon.