Review: White Dwarf May 2013

New month, new White Dwarf, new releases. This issues main release is the High Elves for Warhammer Fantasy and after the last issue I can't say I had high hopes for this one, but was actually a little surprised in a positive way this month, continue reading to find out why.

New releases
We get a lot of new kits for High Elves big and small along with the new Army Book, I won't get into detail about the kits (check GW website for that) but I must say I'm liking them more and more. One really pleasant surprise here is that they will release a new Uniforms and Heraldry book and of course this one is about High Elves. I have the Empire one and I really like it, I hope GW will continue to do these as they are great inspiration when painting your armies as well as you get some nice fluff about your army as well. We get a better preview of both this book and the Army Book which is something I have asked for, could be a lot more fleshed out but better than nothing. We get a new Radagast model for the Hobbit and some BL books but nothing major and most we have already seen.

Painting

So what is the Army of the Month? You guessed it, Space Marines once again. Well Blood Angels for being more precise and it belongs to the veteran model maker Mark Bedford so it is a really nice looking army. Just wished we would see something else than some type Space Marines. In Blanchitsu we see more Blanche inspired models but this time it's not from himself but from Julian Bayliss who have won multiple Golden Demons.

In Hall of Fame we see the Chaos Helbrute from the DV box and in the Parade Ground we continue too see loyalist Dreadnoughts, both converted and non converted. All of them looks nice but we have all most probably already seen them, except the last one who was sent in by a reader, a really cool and heavely converted Deathguard Dreadnought...ehmm I mean Helbrute.

In Kitbash we get to see some really different models, a Chaos Warshrine who rides on top of a Maulerfiend (an idea I had for a while as well), High Elves Spearmen of Chrace and Chaos Cultists. The we also get a second Parade Ground which features different Titans which most of us already have seen probably. We also get to see some more of Japan's Golden Demon winners, but just two pages this time which is enough in my opinion.

I the past Paint Splatter has been a real Hit or Miss, and mostly misses. But this time it's a lot better actually. They have focused on the High Elf models of course and they actually show a lot of details, good paint jobs and not just the most basic of techniques. For example who to paint the Phoenixes, white cloth, magical bows, silver armour and more. We also see a quite nice tutorial on how to paint different looking horses, really useful which is really nice for change.

Rules and Fluff
We don't get much about the rules but we do get some fluff when they talk about the new HE books, nothing we haven't heard before as it's mostly a explanation of who the High Elves are. But at least it's something.

Gaming

Battlereport! High Elves Vs. Ogres. The armies are ~3200 Pts it is explained in the text but I don't know why they aren't showing us exact numbers like they used too, if the readers want to find out what the exact costs are for different units without buying the AB there are plenty of better ways to get that info. They are of course showing us the new units in the HE army and we get to see Jes Godwin's Ogres again as the enemy army. Other than that the Battle Report follows the same formula as the previous ones. Quite good but nothing spectacular. 

The other stuff
We get two new articles this month! The Armchair General where Adam Troke explains why he loves the Dark Angels and why they are so fun to play. Although we have seen Adams army before it was nice too read about why he likes them so much and what he usually fields. The second new article is called The Time of Dragons where Mat Ward and Trish Carden writes about Dragons, fluff and how the GW Dragon models have changed over time, quite interesting article but it would have been better if we got too see even more of the really old Dragon models.

In 'This Month in' we get some goodies as well some painted models from the WD team with little focus on HE and Dreadnoughts, and at the Design studio we get some words from the sculptors about the new High Elves. At Forgeworld we see the Fellglaive heavy tank and Space Marine Legion Outrider bike (the HH bikes for short) and some painted models including some really cool Pre Heresy Night Lords. At Black Library we get a chat with Guy Healy about his first BL novel called Baneblade.

Conclusion
Even though a lot of things is like the last issue I feel some things is addressed here. We got two new articles this month which is really nice and I hope they continue in this manner. Also one major thing I thought about the April issue was that we didn't have any reason to re-read it, I didn't find that there was anything useful to come back to. Not at all so in this issue, better painting tutorials is one thing and I just feel they have got more stuff in this issue that is interesting. This is issue is far from prefect but I feel that maybe we are now going into a up going trend.

Rating: 3 out of 5