Review: White Dwarf December 2012

A little late I know, I actually got my issue quite late this time around (got it on Monday . Also I have been sick so I haven't managed to write this review until now. So because of this and also the fact that the design and layout is the same as the two previous issues I won't go into that any more in detail. So on to the rest then.

New Releases
Big focus on the big release this month with The Hobbit: An unexpected Journey Strategy battle game of course, with the new rulebook, the Starter set with a limited ed. Radagast miniature, trolls, orcs, goblins, the white council a couple of characters and a kit called Goblin Town which are walkways and ramps like in the Starter set and makes a good addition if you want to expand the battlefield. We also get a Hobbit Figure case and Paint set. Not much more stuff besides the Hobbit stuff then, but we do get a nice Wh40 k Campaign book called Crusade of Fire and looks like a W40k version of Blood in the Badlands for Fantasy.   They also releases the Imperial Defence Network in three separate boxes.

Painting and Modelling
Yeah we know the drill by now do we. We get the usual segments like in the last two issues like Blanchitsu, Parade Ground showing different nicely painted flyers for W40k among them a reader's flyers and this time it's actually Garfy from Tale of Painters, great work btw. We also get the Kit Bash showing villains and and monsters, really nice stuff and a segment I really like. In Battleground we get a look on the big Somaro Starfort, a cool looking Orbital Space Station which is one of Battlegrounds in the Crusade of Fire book. Paint splatter is showing us how to paint the different Dwarfs and Goblins from the Hobbit Starter Box. Very briefly though as they just show us which base colours to use, and from what I can tell there's more into it than that to paint them to this standard. I don't mind these easy painting tutorials but I would like to see a `Master Class` like before now and then as well showing us how to paint a miniature from start to finish. I like the Keith Robertson part though where we get to see how he does his rust effect seen all around his army. And this army is shown in the Army of the Month segment in this issue, a really large Ogre Kingdoms force sporting even Halflings and Chaos Dwarfs and we get a little of the classic look as well with green painted base rims. For last we also get two pages of Hall of Fame showing us the beautiful Coven Throne.

Rules and Fluff
Not much of this in this issue either, we some here and there where they explain the new Hobbit game but not more than that.

Gaming
A Hobbit battle report of course, showing us one of the scenarios from the rulebook. It's nice and clean but as I have said in the past two issues, I think there are to many small pictures and we don't get any pictures showing us the movement on the battlefield. This makes it a lot harder to follow in my opinion.

The Rivals segment is back this month with Andy Clark saying that Ork Nobz can be kitted out to win any fight versus Simon Grant who thinks that Wolf Guard is the most powerful unit in the game. They then do three mini battles with 500 pts Nobz against 500 pts Wolf Guard just trying to kill each other and then in a bigger battle with two 2000 pts armies. I like this segment even though I thought the first one was better.

The Other stuff
In 'This month in' White Dwarf we see some of the painting projects the team is working on for both Fantasy and 40k. In the Design Studio it was focused on the different Hobbit miniatures made by Alan & Michael Perry and Aly Morrison and what they thought when they sculpted these miniatures. In Forge World we get some nice new photos of the Averland BSB, Night Goblin BSB and Dwarf Thane as well Legion Space Marines with Autocannons and the new Land Raider variant called Cerberus. Also from Black Library we get two interviews with CL Werner and James Swallow, so all in all a good read from all the 'This month in' articles.

Conclusion
The best part of the new WD format is that even if we have big release we also get something for those who's not that interested in that release. This was not the case before where we could get a magazine filled with only stuff regarding the latest release on not much else except ads. So I hope that this will stay, other than that I also hope that they change around the segments a little. You know, instead of just showing us the final result in Battlegrounds instead show us how it was made. Just as an example. So finally, it's a solid issue but it lacks something really interesting I think, maybe it has to do with that I'm not really that interested in the new Hobbit stuff.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5