Review: White Dwarf Oct 2013

Pictures where circulating long before (than usual at least) the magazine was out this time, but there where also quite a lot of rumours regarding this months Release. So did we get any useful information or did we get any clarifications about the rumours? See below.

This review is a little late because I got my subscription issue one week late, it seems like I have this problem each other month. Strange...

New Releases
This month it's Dark Elves who get a much needed facelift, and some new plastic kits as well. All are presented in a really nice way with a green backgrounds or with awesome terrain in the background. We get  nice and clear pictures of all the new models and I must say I like pretty much all of them, even the Hydra who many didn't like that much. We get a little preview of the book as well and it looks like nice book as always, and we also get some bits about other new releases like, Codex Supplement Tau: Farsight Enclaves, the computer game Blood Bowl: Star Coach, second Forgeworld HH book Massacre and a lovely painted version of the WH Forge Merwyrm.

The Best
Aside from the Dark Elves part which of course is a large part of the issue there is actually quite good mix in this issue. Of course we get mostly fantasy because of the DE but there's plenty of Wh40k stuff as well. Like an article explaining what we will get from the new FF Horus Heresy book 'Massacre' and another part about how sculptors Will Hayes and Mark Bedford thought when making the Mechanicum models.

We get the conclusion of the War Diary where we see all the completed Army Display's, all of them looks really nice and there is a nice mix of armies as well. My favourites are the Carl Dafforn's Ogres with some lovely snow and ice effects and Dan Harden's Ostermark Empire army.

In this month's Parade Ground we once again see some really nice models taken from this years Throne of Skulls as well as from 'The Fang Painting Comp' in Netherlands.

There are some things that I think is both good and not so good, so here's the good part about them.

The Battle Report have really nicely taken pictures in this issue and you can clearly see what happens on the battlefield, they also showed us Points costs in both armies so we can see that they are balanced (at least points wise). It is also nice to see some Orcs and Goblins in the bat rep.

The next thing that I did like but that I have some issues with are the Army of the Month which is from fellow blogger Garfy over at A Tale of Painters. And don't get me wrong, it's extremely well painted and it's one of the largest Wh40k armies Iv'e ever seen, and painted in that high standard is amazing. Also some of the pics taken here is extremely cool (see the one with the Thunderhawk).

The not as good
So what's wrong with it? Nothing really, it's pretty much up to my personal taste to be honest. But Ultra Marines no matter how good they are painted, converted or anything else don't excite me much. And that is because we have see them so many times in Codexes, White Dwarfs you name it so even if the paint job is amazing I still think they look boring. Also this is fourth Space Marine army of the month since the new format WD started (fifth if counting CSM), more diversity here please. This may have come out as a rant on Garfy's army, that is not my intention at all. His army as Army of the Month is well deserved, but still.... they are Ultra Marines!

So next one then, the Battle Report. The biggest problem I have with it is the imbalance between the armies in it. [SPOILER] The DE army looks quite solid and balanced, especially for a WD Bat rep with big blocks of troops and some really hard hitting units. The Orcs & Goblins on the other hand sucked quite badly, they do have the big Savage Orc big un block with Shaman and shrunken head but that pretty much on the only really competitive in here. A unit of fiften Orcs? A unit of 20 common goblins? Why? Sure I think this is a hard matchup for the Orcs and Gobbos anyway, but I think adding some War machines, Fanatics, Manglers and what not should have made the game more even at least.

According to the Bat rep itself you could read that the first game they had went even worse for the O&G player which lost all of his troops in Turn 2. Crazy. I totally understand that not all Bat reps will be tight games where we only see the winner in turn 6, but this fight was over just before it begun. I could see only looking at the lists that the O&G would loose hard. And this frankly made the report a quite boring read.

There where some segements missing this month as well, like the Armchair General and Kit Bash. Not a huge loss but those two have potential to be good articles.

Conclusion
Felt like I wrote a lot of negative stuff in this review, but I actually quite liked this issue. Good variety and much of it is interesting to read. Of course there is always room to improvement, more fluff and narrative for example. Also my biggest concern is the re readability, except for some minor things like painting tips and such there isn't much that makes you feel you want to read again in the near future. I guess this has much to do with all the 'useful' stuff GW puts in iBook store now, much of those articles would fit perfectly in WD, some already have and some would have been in it if it wasn't for the additional money GW can make by selling them individually instead, shame really.

Rating: 3