Review: White Dwarf April 2013 (400th issue!)

Quite late with the review this time and that's because I got my magazine one whole week after it was released, quite strange as I normally get them one or two days earlier. And it's kind of a special issue this time, being the 400th issue of White Dwarf. So what do we get in this 400th issue then, well at least a couple of more pages bus not much else which is a shame.


And even if this issue is longer I will actually make a review which is shorter, It feels like I'm repeating myself in each review telling you of what's in each segment, when there's actually not much changing from issue to issue. So I will go through this faster and more brief and see how it goes, so on with the review.

New releases
The big thing this month is all the new stuff for Tau of course. And well I like the new miniatures and it looks like there will be some really nice kits with extra bits etc. But I also feel that this release is a little bland, to much... well we do a bigger robot then.... and after that, no we need an even bigger robot! and.... well you understand what I mean. The flyers looks interesting but is apparently not that great rules wise just as the DA flyers.

Hobbit gets some love as well with some new models for Bilbo, Gandalf and Gollum and also Thrain and captains of Erebor and Dale. A more odd release is a t-shirt with an logo of the ten-tailed cat (an inn in Talabheim) also included is a drawstring bag and both items looks good enough but a little expensive for my taste.

Black Library releases some new books, including two featuring Tau. We also get the fourth Omnibus for Gotrek and Felix that I have to buy soon. The most intresting book released this month in my opinion though is the Imperial Armour Vol 12: The fall of Orpheus from Forgeworld. Of course this is mainly because of the Minotaurs which is one of the three factions focused on in this book. So I may have to buy this one as well, damn that they are so expensive.

Painting
Not an Space Marine army in this 'Army of the Month' but an quite cool looking Beastmen army, not the best painted Beastmen army I've seen but there are some quite neat conversions in there. Blancheitsu does it's thing and there are Parade ground first is once again Golden Demon entries and then we also get one focused on fantasy monsters. There is an 400th issue extravaganza in the Kit Bash segment, but I didn't spot anything special with it, there are some kit bash conversions just like there usually are... strange.

There are a bigger Battlegrounds segment this time showing how they built and painted a large city scape battlefield to be featured this this months Battle report. Quite nice but could be better with showing each step in the process of building it for example.Paint splatter is like they usually are, very brief on how to paint different things. This time it's Tau with colour schemes from different septs, (not for Farsight enclave though) and also how they painted the Battlefield I mentioned earlier.

Rules and Fluff
As always, almost non existent. Next!

Gaming
Battle report with Dan Hardens Tau vs. Jes Bickhams Tyranids we have seen a couple of times by now. The report is like they have been earlier, pretty much exactly the same actually. Just switch armies and your good to go. It's not that it's bad, it's just not that fun to read. They should have different battle report formats I think, in this one for example they start with a background and a perfect opportunity to have narrative trough the bat rep, unfortunately this isn't the case.

The other stuff..

Here's what it differs some, we actually get a article we which don't belong in the usual segments. And it's called Rise of the Battlesuits and is about the... you guessed it Tau battlesuits. Jes godwin, Matt Holland and Daren Parrwood talks about the first concepts and the evolution of the new suits. Quite a good read and I hope we will see more articles like this one in the future.

So what more did the WD team do to celebrate the 400th issue? A small article in the 'This month in White Dwarf' where we get some words from four of the previous WD editors, this could be a so much bigger article digging in nostalgia and showing pictures from old issues but no, this was it I'm afraid. We also get some new pictures from 'This month in Forgeworld' showing WIP:s of the Merwyrm from Monstrous Arcanum book, a Bull Centaur Taur'Ruk, Squig Gobber (a big Squig spitting out smaller squigs like a rock lobber) and for 40k the Tesseract Ark and Rapier with Heavy Bolters.

Conclusion

Sure this issue is bigger and we actually got, well one at least new article. But for being the 400th issue I must say I'm underwhelmed. It just isn't that much fun to read, sure many fancy pictures on miniatures for all the systems but where is the fluff? New rules, or preview rules for the new army or anything at all? There's isn't much useful stuff in this magazine to actually make you go back and read it, and that is probably the biggest drawback with the new format. I hope they mix in more new articles and just don't use the same over and over again, if they do that I will rate them much higher.

Rating: 2 out of 5